Uncategorized

“The Pride” at the Trafalgar Studios

Leave a comment

Nearly six years after its premiere at the Royal Court’s upstairs theatre, Jamie Lloyd once more directs Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play, The Pride, this time at the Trafalgar Studios. A story of gay life, set in 1958 and 50 years later, it deserves to be seen again, and by more than those who could squeeze into the Royal Court’s smaller space. Examining changing attitudes and personal politics, the play insures a broad appeal – just – by virtue of its heartfelt emotions.

The Pride is occasionally verbose. Kaye Campbell doesn’t wear his learning lightly, but there is no doubt the writing is accomplished. Lloyd’s direction is the key to its success: he brings out the drama and speed in a script that could lag and his bold staging, with a mirror used to create a spooky confluence between the ages, injects theatricality.

L-R Mathew Horne & Al Weaver - The Pride - Trafalgar Studios - Photo Marc Brenner
Mathew Horne and Al Weaver

A time-travelling structure, flying between the 1950s and the present with exciting speed, allows the actors to shine. Harry Hadden-Jones and Al Weaver play the lovers Philip and Oliver, wracked with guilt and fear in the Fifties and just as confused with their contemporary freedoms. Three cameo roles performed commendably by Matthew Horne provide the majority of the play’s humour. But the star is Hayley Atwell as Sylvia, Philip’s wife in the past and Oliver’s friend in the present – the most interesting roles in the play performed with great skill.

The historical scenes pack the most punch, as there seems to be so much more at stake. The contemporary version of Oliver’s character, battling with fidelity and a sex addiction, seems trivial in comparison. But Kaye Campbell has a powerful idea – highlighting hard-won freedoms as a call to action among the gay community for continued political involvement. At a time when legislation in Russia focuses attention on gay rights globally, the play seems topical and important: the cast’s appearance at the curtain call with protest placards, dedicating their performance ‘To Russia with love’, deserves applause.

Until 9 November 2013

Photos by Marc Brenner

Written 21 August 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“A Doll’s House” at the Duke of York’s Theatre

Leave a comment

The Young Vic’s widely acclaimed production of A Doll’s House opened its West End transfer this week at the Duke of York’s theatre. Directed by Carrie Cracknell, Ibsen’s classic story of Nora, a housewife and mother in 19th century Norway, and the breakdown of her seemingly perfect marriage, is tackled with great verve and features a superb spinning set by designer Ian Macneil. The show deserves all its many critics’ stars and is not to be missed – it only runs until 26 October.

The star draw is Hattie Morahan in the lead role. She picked up both the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards last year, and it’s easy to see why. She plays Nora as naïve – but only because of the society she was born into. Morahan makes the limitations women experienced at the time seem normal, no matter how bitter. Nora’s flashes of brilliance, as she comes to understand and rebel against constraints, are believable and moving.

Morahan is joined by a cast that is close to faultless. Caroline Martin (pictured above with Morhan) gives depth to the role of her old school friend, whose marriage of convenience has been a more obvious failure, and Nick Fletcher gives a magnificently understated performance as the money lender who wreaks havoc on Nora’s ideal home. Hiding her debts from her bank manager husband is only one of the lies her marriage is based on. As her partner Torvald, Dominic Rowan has to tackle sexist remarks it’s to be hoped make most people blush. The commodification of his wife may seem incredible, but Rowan manages to bring Cracknell’s pointed production home – Torvald’s fantasies about his wife raise uncomfortable questions relevant to men and women today.

This marital master and his slave are fantastic creations and with Simon Stephens’ adaptation of Ibsen’s text they breath anew. Injecting a strain of ‘Englishness’ into the play makes it recognisable, and there’s a cleverly suggested Pre-War feel to much of the language. Even better, ironic touches (again praise for Morahan here – her delivery is perfection) elaborate Ibsen’s dark humour and there’s even a sexiness here that has a disturbing edge. Stephens’ script is the key to this doll’s house being such a big success.

Until 26 October 2013

Photo by Richard Hubert Smith

Written 16 August 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“The Same Deep Water As Me” at the Donmar Warehouse

Leave a comment

Following the success of Nick Payne’s award-winning Constellations, Josie Rourke, artistic director at the Donmar, has the coup of presenting his new play, The Same Deep Water As Me. Set in a ‘no-win-no-fee’ lawyers’ office in Luton, it’s a departure for the young writer, moving from intimate personal dramas into the wider world of work. Payne tackles big issues with humour and intelligence and deserves great success.

Superbly directed by John Crowley, the play’s plot, an attempt to swindle large companies via insurance claims, serves to explore the theme of lying. The rather desperate Kevin suggests the idea to his old school friend Andrew, who has made good as a lawyer. In a bravura performance, Daniel Mays takes the lead, deceiving his character’s older colleague Barry and renewing an attachment to his first love, now Kevin’s wife, Jennifer (a charming Niky Wardley). Payne’s strong characterisations emerge as they become embroiled in the scam.

There are some marvellous one-liners here, some of the funniest you’ll hear on stage in London at the moment, and the delivery from Marc Wotton’s Mephistophelean Kevin is superb. Nuanced observations on class are used to particularly great effect when a claim is contested in court: Peter Forbes and Monica Dolan play a sleek legal establishment magnificently and Isabella Laughland’s cameo as a lorry driver is arresting (if a shockingly small role for such a talented actress).

Payne’s writing has a strange modesty that makes for a unique voice – a joke denied a punch line, unstated emotions suggested with restraint – and surely many a dramatist would have opted for the more dramatic criminal court instead of a civil one? Playing down has a purpose: raising questions about access to justice is topical but, providing a further satisfying weight, a Kantian universalizability shows that this is deep water we really are all in together.

Until 28 September 2013

www.donmarwarehouse.com

Photo by Johan Persson

Written 12 August 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“As Is” at the Finborough Theatre

Leave a comment

Reportedly the first theatrical response to the AIDS crisis, William H Hoffman’s 1985 play, As Is, receives its first revival in London for over a quarter of a century. The play takes us back to a dark age of paranoia and persecution. Estranged lovers Rich and Saul become reunited in the face of tragedy through their fear and resilience as they feel the epidemic “closing in” on their community. Set in the intimacy of the Finborough Theatre, the play has a rawness, anger and honesty that grab you and hold you.

As Is isn’t easy. Hoffman’s writing is poetic, with a staccato style and wealth of graphic detail that can overpower. His incessant irony becomes a touch laboured and some references are dated. All the more credit then to Andrew Keates’ direction: he keeps up to pace with the script and adds clarity. Using the cast as a chorus, frequently left on stage to react to events and take on a variety of roles, Keates makes the most of several set pieces, from bars to support groups and telephone helplines, with some intelligent, stylised touches.

In the lead roles Tom Colley and David Poynor seem an odd couple at first, but they soon establish their characters’ shared history and manage to reflect the churning emotions experienced with a force that can make for uncomfortable viewing. Among the strong supporting cast Anna Tierney’s part as their friend stands out, as does Jordan Bernade, who plays Rich’s brother and a host of minor characters superbly.

For all this talent, As Is has a big problem – its jokes. There’s no reason any play dealing with dark subjects shouldn’t contain humour. Laughing in the face of death is common, but here those laughs seem too hollow. Some jokes fail because they are dated, a few are poorly delivered, most just aren’t funny. But the passion in the play is enough to recommend it. As a tragedy and a political statement, this work is important. As a love story in which commitment is promised unconditionally – as is – in sickness and in health, it is timeless in its power.

Until 31 August 2013

www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Photo by Scott Rylander

Written 9 August 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“The Sound of Music” at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

Leave a comment

This year’s musical at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s firm favourite The Sound of Music. Whisper it, but not everyone is a fan of the family Von Trapp, or the novice-turned-governess Maria’s journey of self-discovery: tarnished by TV, the problem to solve here is one of over familiarity. Courageously, this production demands an open mind, presenting the piece with remarkable freshness.

The Sound of Music is one of those musicals where everything is expressed in a song, and a good tune can literally be your salvation. While it’s hard to imagine a heart hard enough not to melt at the children cast as the Von Trapp infants, the real achievement is that that sweetness doesn’t become saccharine. Rachel Kavanaugh directs the show with ruthless efficiency and creates a version devoid of silly camp theatricality – no small feat when everyone is dressed as nuns and soldiers with a smattering of lederhosen.

There is an impressive simplicity that serves the show well, even managing to inject menace and tension. Kavanaugh seems to have taken Maria’s back to basic approach to music making to heart. The songs we love are delivered without fanfare and are all the better for it. And this approach is echoed by Peter McKintosh’s superb meadow-fringed set, effectively changing from convent to mansion, concert hall to mountain range with a magical minimalism.

Taking on the lead role must be an uphill struggle for any performer, but Charlotte Wakefield gambols along, sounding great, with a gawky, infectious charm. Like policemen, it seems Captain von Trapps are getting younger – surely someone with seven children has to have a tinge of grey in the hair? – but Michael Xavier has a great voice and is a virile presence on stage (remember, seven children). And who can remember the supporting characters in the much re-played 1965 film? Here, Michael Matus and Caroline Keiff make room for their roles as the Captain’s cowardly friend and sophisticated Viennese fiancée with humour and grace and a couple of decent songs. But my favourite thing? Helen Hobson as the Mother Abbess and her superfluity of nuns performing their chorus numbers with a real feeling of religiosity. A brave move that injects weight into the show and, as night falls over Austria both literally and figuratively, provides a stunning finale that has both a bang and a wimple.

Until 14 September 2013

www.openairtheatre.com

Photo by Johan Persson

Written 7 August 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“Daytona” at the Park Theatre

Leave a comment

Still in its inaugural season, the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park saw its first première of a new play open last night. Daytona by Oliver Cotton is a clever three-hander, well written and superbly produced. The story of three elderly Jewish emigrants to America, set in 1986, it sees a married couple’s well-ordered life disrupted by the unexpected return of a brother who had disappeared 30 years earlier. Arriving with the announcement that he has killed a war criminal while on holiday in Florida, he reopens wounds, both personal and political, posing moral dilemmas rich in dramatic potential.

Cotton is well known as a performer, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that he has written such wonderful roles. Under the skilful direction of David Grindley (fast becoming one of my favourites, given his excellent The American Plan currently at the St James Theatre), the performances here are truly accomplished. Surely, naturalism like this is only achieved with experience – the characters talk rather than recite, despite lengthy speeches that take us on a journey into the past. John Bowe plays charismatic, mellifluous-voiced Billy, whose return creates such shockwaves. His brother Joe is a retired accountant whose inner strength is revealed in a detailed performance from Harry Shearer. Completing the triangle is Elli, the marvellous Maureen Lipman, cleverly playing with stereotypes of the Jewish wife and injecting a steely tone that’s perfect for the play’s many surprises.

Elli and Joe make a great couple, not perfect – you can insert a shoulder shrug here – but, despite the trauma in their lives, their story is one of carrying on. Persistence, elevated to the point of a memorial to all their pain, makes Daytona an affirming play. And yet most of its power comes from the acting. For all its adroitness, Cotton’s text seems brief, leaving too many loose ends to satisfy. But the ambition to present an elderly trio as our sole concern is executed superbly. With theatre often obsessed with youth, it’s a welcome and original move.

Until 18 August 2013

www.parktheatre.co.uk

Photo by Manuel Harlan

Written 18 July 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable” at the Temple Studios

Leave a comment

When it comes to ‘immersive’ theatre, Punchdrunk are at the top of the list and their return to London with The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is a hot contender for theatrical event of the year. Amazingly there are still some tickets left for August, so stop reading this, now, and book them.

Creating ‘The Temple Film Studios’, the production is unprecedented in its size. The scale, breathtakingly ambitious, is part of the point. As you venture around unaccompanied, ostensibly a guest at a wrap party waiting for filming to finish, you see behind the scenes and inside the minds of its inhabitants. There are spooky rooms of special effects and shrines to movie stardom, film sets and multiple characters you can choose to follow or ignore. You’re given a clue that the overriding story line follows two lovers, with infidelity driving one of them insane. You might see William killing Mary. Or vice versa. But there’s more going on here – an exploration of fantasies and fears dripping with a drug-induced hedonism. Mind-blowing stuff.

A whole movie-set town is recreated, along with a saloon bar and a cabaret room, a Twin Peaks style ball room and offices, oh, and a forest. Dancing on top of caravans? No problem. Or you might be drawn into a dressing room to watch one of the numerous cast prepare or perform some opaque ritual. But listing the sights seems to miss the point – the project is so mammoth selectivity is forced upon you and you come to live in this world rather than watch it. That each visitors experience will be unique is what makes it so especially theatrical.

Back to size again. It’s all a little overwhelming and the danger the whole thing will implode in on itself is clear. It’s no small achievement that the choreography, from Maxine Doyle, who also directed the show along with Felix Barrett, manages to makes a stand. There are times, in the dark, with the music very loud, you wonder where the action is and the sets, with Barrett working alongside Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns, are so crammed with detail you approach sensory overload – they even smell fantastic.

The masks the audience wear don’t make it comfortable (this seems a game for a young crowd all around) but they manage to claim back a strange intimacy for the show. They might also enable its sexiness; the plays on voyeurism are skilful and the casts’ interactions with the crowd bold. It’s a mixture of eroticism and death with a meta-text concerning the creation of our deep and dark desires that is potent. For atmosphere The Drowned Man surely can’t be beaten. It’s tempting to suggest it marks an apogee for this form of theatre that must not be missed.

Until 6 July 2014

www.punchdrunk.com

Written 8 July 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“The Ladykillers” at the Vaudeville Theatre

Leave a comment

The Ladykillers are back. After last year’s super-successful run, with the show nominated for five Olivier Awards, a fresh cast has taken over the show, now playing at the Vaudeville Theatre. Father Ted writer Graham Linehan’s adaptation of the Ealing Comedy, from 1955, is respectfully inspired by the much-loved film. Its central premise – a group of incompetent villains determined to try and do away with their little old landlady after she discovers their heist ­– is employed skilfully to create a clever comedy.

It’s a light affair, with just a touch of farce, and although slapstick is used effectively, it’s the quantity and quality of one-liners that stands out. And the superb characters. Everyone will have their favourite for sure, but Ralf Little brings real energy to pill-popping wide boy Harry, and Simon Day steals many a scene as the confidence man with no confidence, Major Courtney. Few people can suggest transvestism quite so amusingly as Day – it’s a rare skill indeed. Holding the whole thing together, as the criminal not-so-mastermind Professor Marcus, is John Gordon Sinclair; spot on the button with his comic timing and with an air of improvising that makes everything feel fresh.

It is the set and costume designer Michael Taylor’s work that impresses most. A proper ‘look at that’ stage, full of gizmos and gags, that really adds to the show. Working on its slopping surfaces must be oddly disorientating but the cast make it look jolly. Wickedly, it’s hard not to laugh at the very idea of assassinating Angela Thorne’s gorgeous granny Louisa Wilberforce, and the crooks failure to do so brings yet more invention from Taylor’s set – there’s even a railway tunnel at one point. The Ladykillers is free from twee and manages to be perfect family fun throughout – even for your grandmother.

Until 26 October 2013

Photo by Dan Tsantilis

Written 10 July 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“The American Plan” at the St James Theatre

Leave a comment

Arriving from the Ustinov Studio (Theatre Royal Bath), having already received a big thumbs-up from the critics, The American Plan opened in London last night at the St. James Theatre. Full of laughs and bittersweet wisdom, this exquisitely written play from 1990 by Richard Greenberg deals with not one but several love stories.

Here we have a fascinating trio of women. Eva and her “difficult” daughter Lili, wealthy refugees from the Nazis, are on vacation with their maid Olivia in the Catskill Mountains across a lake from other Jewish families who flock to the area. The women are isolated by an amusing, imported snobbery. Until a young man arrives.

Nick is a “blue chip stock” kind of guy, but true romance isn’t the story here. All these Americans, émigrés old and new, are full of plans and a warped determination to bring them to fruition. Plots might be a more accurate description if there wasn’t so much sincerity behind their motivation. The lies they tell are often deliciously funny but there’s real heart here, too.

Entangled with a family, not eccentric but “giddy around the circumference”, where the daughter is the wrong side of neurotic and the matriarch lives up to every stereotype of Jewish motherhood, you never much rate Nick’s chances. But he has secrets and pain of his own and watching them revealed is great theatre.

And the lies don’t stop with the introduction of the final character, Gil. In the part, Mark Edel-Hunt more than makes up for his later arrival with a great plot twist that, since I liked the play so much, I really don’t want to spoil.

Diana Quick is scene stealing as Eva (her accent alone fascinates), putting the metal in mittel European, and Dona Croll makes a marvellous foil for her as the “enduring” Olivia whose inscrutable privacy hints at yet more tales. Emily Taaffe fully embodies the “mercurial” Lili, delighting with her wit then shocking with a traumatic intensity. And effectively subduing his character’s hidden depths until just the right moment, Luke Allen-Gale is tremendous as Nick.

This production does true justice to a fine play and it’s clear those responsible have a thorough understanding of the text. More than his intelligent exploration of “intricately unhappy” lives, Greenberg brings a Jamesian flavour and intelligent humour to his examination of our deepest self-fashioning. The result is a play that resonates with depth.

Until 10 August 2013

www.stjamestheatre.co.uk

Photo by Jane Hobson

Written 9 July 2013 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“Macbeth” at Shakespeare’s Globe

Leave a comment

Olivier-Award-winning actress Eve Best makes her directorial debut at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer with an accessible and exhilarating production of Macbeth. It’s an assured first time effort that sends a chill down the spine even on a hot summer’s day.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given Best’s background, her version of the supernatural thriller puts the performers to the fore. Joseph Millson does a great job in the title role, his Macbeth’s fiery temper increasing the drama and sense of instability. Clearly at home in the Globe – like many of the cast, Millson’s direct addresses to the crowd create a sense of startling immediacy.

Best’s attention to her troupe only has one indulgence – an unnecessarily prolonged scene with the Porter. This aside, with such an excellent cast, giving every role its due is clever. Duncan’s court, at first sight, an array of powdered fops, develop their roles wonderfully and the short scene with Lady Macduff (Finty Williams) is superb.

Full of prophecy and portents rather than politics, Best downplays militaristic bravado, and the female roles in the play benefit from this. The witches, for example, are a beguiling bunch, ironically harmonious, using movement and music to cast a spell. Their fright-factor is all the greater for its understated spookiness.

Samantha Spiro is the star of the show. Her Lady Macbeth is dynamic, her transformation into a Queen astounding, and her performance one of great depth. Macbeth clearly blames her for the path he sets foot on and an alarming scene of domestic abuse is a brave and electrifying take on their famous conjugal complicity.

Until 13 October 2013

www.shakespearesglobe.com

Photo by Ellie Kurttz

Written 7 July 2013 for The London Magazine