2016

“Titanic” at the Charing Cross Theatre

Maury Yeston’s musical, set on the doomed ocean liner, won five Tony Awards, and praise for this production from the Southwark Playhouse has followed it around the world. Now that director Thom Southerland has taken up residence at an oddly charming venue underneath Charing Cross, there’s another chance to see the show. And it’s every bit as good as critics say.

Yeston, with the story and book from Peter Stone, succeeds in making a well-known story exciting enough. Seeing the ship as a microcosm of society is neat, if hardly novel. It’s all about the details, and a careful and inventive execution along with an ambitious and intelligent score ensure success here.

There’s the combination of observing different classes of passengers, mankind’s inevitable search for “progress”, and plenty of emotion when the boat sinks. Impressively, the dangers of Downton Abbey kitsch are avoided and the excitement and glamour of the boat is persuasive, despite audience hindsight. And get ready for tears before the end, with characters we have come to love at a rate of, well it would have to be, knots.

Niall Sheehy photographed by Annabel Vere
Niall Sheehy photographed by Annabel Vere

The production is hugely impressive. Southerland’s direction is faultless, a miracle of economically effective staging. David Woodhead’s set and costume design are smart, facilitating swift role changes for the 20-strong cast. Yes, 20 –and all performing at the highest standard. One bold thing about Titanic is that there aren’t ‘leading’ roles so it isn’t really fair to highlight individual performers. But indulge me. Niall Sheehy’s role as a coal miner stands out (there just aren’t enough songs about men from the Midlands in musicals) and I can’t resist pointing out that the cast includes the excellent Victoria Serra.

Of course, it’s Yeston who’s the real star. The lyrics, filled as they are with facts and figures, could so easily have failed, but the score energises them remarkably: combining waltz themes with historical references such as rag, inspired contemporary touches and a big choral sound that uses that huge cast superbly. This is a truly accomplished score. Adoration of the ship, described as a “perfectly working machine” could carry to a critique of the musical – its well-engineered construction is a marvel.

Until 13 August 2016

www.charingcrosstheatre.co.uk

Main photo by  Scott Rylander

2016

“Stella” at Hoxton Hall

The life of Ernest Boulton, the infamous Victorian cross-dressing entertainer, is a fertile source for fiction. Barbara Ewing’s book is recommended and a previous play, Fanny and Stella, made light work of this fascinating history. Neil Bartlett’s new piece is a more serious affair, deftly plumbing issues of gender identity and politics with sensitivity and intelligence.

Bartlett describes his play as a ‘one-man-show for two bodies’. Such succinctness is a boon for me as describing this bold and rich work isn’t easy. Following what’s going on is fine (read the free programme for the biography) but, while the older Ernest talks about the past and present, the younger version dresses for a night out as Stella and contemplates the future. It’s a deliberately fluid affair. Add direct addresses to the audience along with the characters advising one another and you have to have your wits about you.
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To play directly alongside another performer who has the same role, just at a different age, must make the job peculiar for a performer. There are two brilliant actors here: Richard Cant and Oscar Batterham are remarkable for their focus and synchronicity. In attendance is a third, silent figure, played by David Carr, who serves (to my somewhat literal mind) as a memento mori: helping with make-up or aiding the frail Boulton awaiting a hospital appointment.

The piece’s construction demands further study. Scripts of plays Stella performed in are used. Interviews were conducted with transpersons today and some of these “found their way into Stella’s mouth”. The aim is to show a character on his/her own terms. Boulton’s potential as a pioneering transperson isn’t essential – it’s transformation per se that is the focus.

The various roles that Boulton enacted, literally on stage or as a sex worker, for example, enforce the theme of fluidity. As such, Bartlett’s play is radically political, his independent thinking inspirational. Yet the overriding theme is when the writing really takes off and we see Stella as a meditation on life and death. With its reflections on the passing of time, and how this transforms us all, this play is full of good, old-fashioned wisdom.

Until 18 June 2016

Part of the LIFT Festival 2016

Production photograph by Dom Agius. Artwork ©Fred Spalding, reproduced by courtesy of Essex Record Office

2016

“The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” at the Union Theatre

This, the last show before the venue moves across the road to a swanky new home (with nicer loos, one hopes), continues a tradition of strong productions. Jim Cartwright’s hit 1992 play makes for an entertaining, dramatic evening with belly laughs secured by Alastair Knights.

This is a fairy tale, of sorts, with appropriately dark tones. Our Cinderella is a teenager with a taste for diva records she is uncannily good at imitating. Carly Thoms takes the title role, giving a concentrated performance. Credit, please, for speaking softly yet being heard – that’s not easy. When her turn in the spotlight arrives, performing as Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland and more, shine she does. I could happily have heard more from Thoms. Especially her Marilyn Monroe.

Along the way there are some good performances from those ready to exploit Little Voice’s talent: Ken Christiansen as wannabe agent Ray Say and James Peake as a local nightclub manager. Mandy Dassa gets laughs as the next-door neighbour of Little Voice’s dangerously dilapidated home. One minor quibble is the lack of chemistry between Little Voice and Glenn Adamson as her sweet, but underwritten, love interest.

Charlotte Gorton
Charlotte Gorton

It’s the wicked witch who makes the show – Little Voice’s mother Mari Hoff – a fabulous creation of Cartwright’s, with the soul of a poet and the slingbacks of Bet Lynch. The costumes alone get laughs (designer Libby Todd must have searched hard for that much leopard print). And Charlotte Gorton is superb as the garrulous whirlwind with her rapid-fire Northern wit. Even more impressively, Gorton develops the role from the ‘merry widow’ we first encounter to a figure as tragic as she is vicious. Great stuff.

Until 25 June 2016

www.uniontheatre.biz

Photos by Scott Rylander

2016

“Elegy” at the Donmar Warehouse

While (seldom) questioning the subject matter a playwright chooses, some should come with a warning. With its main character suffering a degenerative brain condition, Nick Payne’s new play – brilliantly written as it is – makes for a harrowing experience. Elegy calls forth questions as topical as they are uncomfortable and nothing about this play is easy.

New techniques in nanotechnology and neuroscience are knocking at the door, and Payne explores their potential effect on a mind slipping into dementia. They may prove a miracle that extends life, but let’s not use the word cure. Memory is lost and anyone who’s read David Hume will know the consequences of this. Lorna and Carrie, who married each other late in life, find their romance has been surgically removed in the process of ‘saving’ the former. That the person she was is gone, akin to the effects of dementia anyway, is one cruel irony. Another – her inability to recognise her lover means the treatment has worked – makes matters peculiarly grim.

The play is performed backwards. We meet the women after Lorna’s treatment and retrace the steps leading to her surgery. Becoming increasingly involved with this couple, there’s a cruel twist that brought me to tears. The reverse technique, well served by Josie Rourke’s direction, builds tensions and allows three excellent actors to give mind-boggling performances. Zoë Wanamaker’s struggle with the illness is as frank as it is moving. Barbara Flynn is a revelation as her wife: engaging, appealing and torn apart. They are joined by the superb Nina Sosanya as a doctor who slowly reveals her personal motivations behind her professional mask.

It’s Payne’s superior skill with dialogue that’s the jewel here. Painful conversations feel fresh, characters’ attempts at humour and their struggle to comprehend, believable. Particularly in rendering the incoherence of stumbling, confused and truncated speech, the economy and precision of language is brave and haunting.

Science has long been a theme of Payne’s – putting people into the equation is his skill. Elegy ups the stakes and demands a great deal. At its heart is the complex question of what makes us human, encompassing faith, love, history and our responsibilities to each other. The fear that we’re on the brink of unknown territory is palpable. Away from dystopian fantasy, this play feels real enough to give you nightmares, propelling us into the messy heart of a dilemma with piercing skill.

Until 18 June 2016

www.donmarwarehouse.com

Photo by Johan Persson

2016

“Christie in Love” at the King’s Head Theatre

This welcome revival of Howard Brenton’s 1969 play, about the serial killer who secreted eight victims at his home, 10 Rillington Place, is exceptional for its fearlessness. A police constable and detective uncover bodies and interrogate the creepily reserved John Christie in a play that’s frightening, bold and adventurous. Brenton casts a cynical eye on the establishment, incompetent and clichéd by turns, while his portrayal of the psychopath, including explicit sexual kinks, is unflinching.

Director Mary Franklin handles the eccentric text bravely. There are pauses aplenty and our first encounter with Christie, masked and masturbating, is truly bizarre. And Franklin secures three superb performances. Daniel Buckley plays the nervous young copper with a taste for nasty limericks, who impresses with his puppetry skills in a flashback scene that has a prostitute encountering Christie. Jake Curran is just as good playing the Inspector, a tricky part full of irony and repression that he makes thrilling. Murray Taylor takes the title role and is truly scary. Unafraid of making eye contact with the audience, he guarantees goose bumps, but this isn’t a shock-horror affair. Hugely committed, Taylor shows Christie as a part of society no matter how abhorrent his actions.

For all this – three of the finest performances you could wish for on a stage – the real star is designer Christopher Hone. With a giant newspaper-filled rectangular box performed on, in and around, this is a set full of surprises. There’s literally a balancing act for the performers, which adds a tension of its own, while the concept serves to focus attention and raise questions, just like the play itself.

Until 18 June 2016

www.kingsheadtheatrepub.co.uk

Photo by Chris Tribble

2016

“Sunset at the Villa Thalia” at the National Theatre

You can take the playwright out of Sloane Square and yet, it appears from Alexis Kaye Campbell’s new play, London is never far away. The subject here is the history of modern Greece, the coup in 1967 and its aftermath in the writer’s mother’s home country. But when an arty English couple snap up a second home at a bargain price, it feels as if the London housing crisis is giving rise to debates about politics and intervention.

Elizabeth McGovern
Elizabeth McGovern

Simon Godwin’s tight direction and a superb cast are the best things here. Theo and Charlotte, brilliantly performed by Sam Crane and Pippa Nixon, are a playwright and actress. Yes, the self-referentiality is tiresome, but it’s in keeping with the theme of personal responsibility in the play. Contrasts with an American couple, holiday friends, are fun and Elizabeth McGovern from Downton Abbey is a revelation as the drunken June, who likes her fruit punch without the fruit. It’s June’s husband, a shady American official called Harvey, that Kaye Campbell does best with: he’s a dark figure who claims his dirty dealings secure freedom and enable democracy (with its ‘twin’ the theatre) to flourish. Balancing charisma, intelligence and danger, Ben Miles excels in the role.

Sam Crane and Ben Miles
Sam Crane and Ben Miles

The laudable, openly declared question of ‘What would you do?’ is fair game. Cramming politics into a play is never easy, being blatant is fine. Nonetheless, it’s all too easy to dismiss many arguments here as naïve – left or right – even though Miles and Nixon are riveting. The effort is thorough, the play hard working and this surprisingly traditional piece is an entertaining, erudite affair. The playwright within the play is demoralised that his work is “quietly political”. Applying the same assessment to Kaye Campbell might not please him, but the passion often feels contrived, the arguments too easy, and so that label fits.

Until 4 August 2016

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photos by Manuel Harlan

2016

“Human Animals” at the Royal Court

Stef Smith’s new play looks at control and civilisation, depicting a particularly English apocalypse under the veneer of an environmental disaster. The dystopia created when pigeons and foxes go mad (my, how playwrights love these disasters) leads to quarantine and mass destruction. It’s predictably grim but nonetheless affecting.
The production is innervated by direction from Hamish Pirie, while Camilla Clarke’s colourful murals, video projections and windows splattered with blood create an impressive set. Efforts are made to inject tension, but the trajectory of the story and political responses of the characters frustrate this.
Human Animals
The cast is top notch. Stella Gonet plays a grieving widow wonderfully (it’s the best part), joined by Natalie Dew as her spirited daughter. Their respective approaches to the crisis – resignation and revolt – are the central dynamic for Smith and could have made a play of its own.
Human AnimalsA young couple, admirably performed by Lisa McGrillis and Ashley Zhangazha, share the dilemma of what to do as the state takes charge. One saves animals secretly and the other works for the company profiting from slaughtering all the wildlife. Their relationship is depicted carefully but the argument is blunt.
Human Animals
For a final pairing, oddity is the theme. Two unlikely drinking partners, with bizarre twists to their conversations, are apathy and action personified. Even performers as magnetic as Ian Gelder and Sargon Yelda can’t save the roles from being a puzzle. Showing their bestial sides, as society breaks down, isn’t enough of a pay off.
With the majority of characters too briefly sketched, and the scenario less than compelling, it’s fortunate Smith writes with a powerful, poetic turn. Vivid imagery and bold scenes, where the cast combines to choral effect, are the highlights that ensure this sketchy play becomes impressively pushy.

Until 18 June 2016

www.royalcourttheatre.com

Photos by Helen Maybanks

2016

“Realife TV” at the Barons Court Theatre

This solid and serious new play from Ian Buckley is tightly directed by Anthony Shrubsall. Tackling the subject of domestic violence through the prism of a documentary filmmaker, the play works best as a suspenseful thriller, uncovering the past of an initially charming psychogenic amnesiac. More cerebrally, Buckley aims at big issues surrounding the reporting of crime.

An incredible story, inspired by true events, the tension builds well. Clearly, a man recovering his identity would make good TV. It’s a shame that the lead character, an investigative journalist played commendably by Roseanna Frascona, is too well meaning and naïve to be credible. Likewise her creepy, clichéd TV producer (oh, go on then, maybe he is believable) is an unhappily clunky role for Alex Jonas. The debate is truncated and the characters sometimes flat.

The victims – labelling them as such indicates the central dynamic within the piece – are more interesting. Katrina Cooke fleshes out her character marvellously and similarly detailed work from Fed Zanni creates a husband and wife we care about. Estranged by a traumatic event, carefully revealed by Buckley, the TV cameras lead them to relive it and the result is tragic. The impeccably performed finale grips. This one scene is the germ of a play that could have been grown further, given the fertile ground here, but the piece impresses as it stands.

Until 29 May 2016

Call 020 8932 4747 for tickets

2016

“Monster Raving Loony” at the Soho Theatre

If you want to classify contemporary playwrights, James Graham is the one that writes about politics. His new play, via the Theatre Royal Plymouth, is engaging and imaginative. Taking as its subject David Screaming Lord Sutch and his political party, which gives the play its name, biography is combined with politics, cultural history and inspiring touches of English eccentricity. The masterstroke is to tell Sutch’s story via famous comedians. It’s a bonkers technique that’s appropriate for its subject and it’s original, funny and brilliantly written.

So, Sutch’s mum is first a pantomime dame. Then, as mother and son plan to open a bric-a-brac shop, she becomes Albert Steptoe. Interviews are conducted on Just A Minute and a visit to the doctor is a Monty Python sketch. It’s quite a carry on – yes that’s there too –  an encyclopaedic journey through comedy masters. In each sketch, Graham is up to the job – he could have written for any of these greats. And it’s all manipulated to tell Sutch’s life story. Wow.

Joseph Alessi & Samuel James Photo Credit Steve Tanner
Joseph Alessi & Samuel James

A demanding play for actors, the impersonations are non-stop and the delivery breathtaking. Samuel James gives a stellar performance as the lead, joined by four others, alongside Tom Attwood whose role as The Musician roots the play. Highlights may depend on your comedy preferences: Joe Alessi’s Alf Garnett is perfection, and how quickly Jack Brown embodies Kenneth Williams and Julian Clary cannot fail to impress. Tellingly reflecting the sexism of the time, the women have fewer pickings. But Vivienne Acheampong does well in a bed-hopping farce and Joanna Brookes is stunning in the male roles she adopts.

James’ performance is the one that requires real depth. Not that this stops a great Frank Spencer impersonation. But there is Sutch’s struggle here as well. Focusing on this fascinating figure is a task slightly at odds with such a high-energy show. Prone to depression and trapped in a public persona, his story gets a little lost despite the skills of director Simon Stokes. Sutch’s suicide seems too much for the play to handle.

Stokes shows fine work when it comes to audience participation – it’s cunning for a director to control this. Such planned fun is always a pet hate (joining in with songs makes my toes curl). But the raffle tickets and bingo cards waiting on seats have a point here that makes them (almost) worthwhile. Another bold stroke from Graham, games typify his novelty and magpie humour in this damnably clever piece.

Until 18 June 2016

www.sohotheatre.com

Photos by Steve Tanner

2016

“The Toxic Avenger” at the Southwark Playhouse

B-movie inspired musicals are an established genre, from Rocky Horror shows and Little Shops to recent examples such as Bat Boy at this very venue. Joe DiPietro and David Bryan’s 2008 work, based on Lloyd Kaufman’s film, shares the schlocky kitsch appeal and knowing references that fans love. And there’s a super cynical side that suits contemporary musicals, with a take on government and environmental issues – Urinetown springs to mind – ensuring wide comedy appeal.

There’s a superhero angle that provides laughs, as the town nerd gains great powers (applause for nifty costume changes throughout) and sets about tackling pollution in the town of Tromaville, New Jersey. Battling corruption and prejudice with a love interest thrown in, there’s plenty to parody, and The Toxic Avenger does parody very well indeed.

The script is a good deal stronger than the score, which lacks direction and possesses conviction only when it comes to comedy. But the lyrics are frequently inspired – geranium rhymes with cranium, for example – and the jokes are good. And the pace is impressive; this show is literally a laugh a minute.

The cast is accomplished and creates an infectious sense of fun. Mark Anderson takes the lead, deserving acclaim, with a superb voice. Hannah Grover is the blind librarian Sarah, uninterested in a romance until Toxie’s transformation; her comic skills make the most of jokes about disability and sexiness (a little too obvious a ploy to make this an ‘adult’ affair). Lizzii Hills impresses even more, playing both mother and town mayor, scoring a big hit in a number that is a duet between the two. The power behind all three voices skates over some bland musical moments.

The stars of the show are Marc Pickering and Ashley Samuels, who play all the other roles – doctors, scientists, policemen, thugs and Sarah’s girlfriends (condragulations (sic) on that one). Running around like mad, Pickering and Samuels’ standard of singing never drops, the folksy title number is delivered brilliantly, their interaction with the audience great and, under Benji Sperring’s strict direction, each gag itself is never overplayed.

However, the major drive in The Toxic Avenger is in the dismantling the conventions of musicals themselves and this does become repetitious. There’s a Les Mis reference and a Phantom gag. Everyone loves a show with in-jokes (think Forbidden Broadway) and Sperring ensures the humour feel fresh, spontaneous even. But it’s a shame The Toxic Avenger doesn’t go that little bit further. There’s a suggestion it might, with a darker turn of events. Instead, we fall back on the fact it has a small cast and one joke that builds superbly. But it fails to surprise.

Until 21 May 2016

www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk