Tag Archives: Anthony Banks

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“The Girl on the Train” at the Duke of York’s Theatre

Before embarking on a national tour, Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best-selling thriller is having a month in the West End. With considerable help from its star Samantha Womack, playing the alcoholic Rachel trying to remember what happened at the scene of a crime, it is a commendable effort to bring suspense to the stage. If you’re a fan of the novel, you might have some reservations, but the show’s journey is speedy and stylish, resulting in happy travellers.

As with a delayed departure announcement my heart sank at first. One of the more interesting things about the book is its unreliable narrator, deftly handled by Hawkins, and that’s sacrificed here for the sake of brevity. Rachel is, straight away, in a terrible state, puking up into a takeaway pizza box. Womack is a good stage drunk – her performance throughout is spot on – but Rachel is a victim from the start. It’s no plot spoiler to reveal that, unlike with the novel, you quickly dismiss the idea that she could be the villain of the piece.

The Girl on the Train is a mystery about memory, with maternity as a big theme. The suggestion fought with is that infertility has driven Rachel mad, while the victim of a crime, a babysitter called Megan, has a back story about a baby worthy of Barbara Vine. The themes are a juggling act Hawkins doesn’t quite pull off, so it’s no surprise that cramming it all into the play ends up unsubtle at times. Womack and Kirsty Oswald, who plays Megan, do well in emotional scenes, but director Anthony Banks doesn’t give them quite enough space.

You wouldn’t call the show very theatrical. Wanting to be faithful to the original source, and the film, takes precedence. Megan has some nice flashback scenes, but Oswald is oddly wooden in them. And Rachel’s tenuous grip on reality could surely have been made more of; might some of her fears be more literally shown? And maybe her ex-husband (while Adam Jackson Smith’s performance in the role is good) should be written with more ambiguity from the start?

For all these customer complaints, you wouldn’t want a refund. What the adaptation lacks in finesse it makes up for with action. The plot is précised expertly and the pace is fantastic. Banks does a keen job throughout. Jack Knowles’ work with the lighting is strong and the sound and music design from Ben and Max Ringham is up to their usual high standards. The audience is gripped and entertained at every moment, making this one train service with an eye on the clock that is a model of efficiency.

Until 17 August, then touring until 23 November 2019

www.girlonthetrainplay.com

Photo by Manuel Harlan

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“Twilight Song” at the Park Theatre

There’s a first-class cast in Anthony Banks’ premiere of Kevin Elyot’s last play. Flipping between the 1960s and the present day, Bryony Hannah plays Isabella. Pregnant in one scene then moments later an elderly woman, she can’t fail to impress. Paul Higgins and Adam Garcia double up roles, taking four parts in their stride. Higgins plays Isabella’s son and husband, differentiating his characters subtly, while Garcia performs as two strangers offering sex, adding chemistry to both of his scenes.

Adam Garcia and Paul Higgins
Adam Garcia and Paul Higgins

The actors, and Banks, have a thorough appreciation of Elyot’s theatrical world, where the middle classes mix with passion and occasional obscenity. There’s repression aplenty and touches of poetic romance tempered by prosaic lust. It’s all familiar territory from Elyot’s big hit, My Night With Reg, but sadly this play isn’t as good. The dialogue and jokes are flat, the characters underdeveloped. Banks handles every aspect of the play with more reverence than it deserves, drawing most of it out for longer than it can stand and making even the comedy hard work.

Philip Bretherton and Hugh Ross
Philip Bretherton and Hugh Ross

The differences with Elyot’s previous piece offer frustrating glances at potential unfulfilled. A central female character, which Hannah tackles well, feels tangibly imprisoned by history, but thinly drawn. An elderly gay couple, impeccably performed by Philip Bretherton and Hugh Ross, deserve a play of their own. In the end, a tasteless plot twist takes over. Let’s slide over the idea of an estate agent being so hard up for cash that he takes to prostitution; Garcia plays this “surprisingly sensitive” realtor and then a gardener with a “poetic nature” – and he performs both well – but it’s all a leap too far. A nastily cheap conclusion, that’s grim for the sake of shocking, embodies the flimsy feel of the play.

Until 12 August 2017

www.parktheatre.co.uk

Photos by Robert Workman

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“The Hotel Plays” at the Grange Holborn Hotel

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Tennessee Williams spent so much of his later life living in and writing about hotels that staging his plays in one seems so obvious, so very neat, that it’s instantly appealing. Site-specific theatre has to be special stuff to excite, and this thrilling trilogy of short works does just that at the Grange Holborn Hotel.

The Hotel Plays – Green Eyes, The Travelling Companion and Sunburst – afford glimpses into tawdry, lonely lives: a young couple arguing on their honeymoon, an ageing homosexual writer with his unwilling escort, and an elderly lady held hostage in her room by staff turned ineffectual thieves. Being late works by Williams, they are peopled by extreme characters and bold to the point of being blunt.

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Clare Latham and Matt Milne

These are difficult roles to pull off (and unfortunately the accents prove too much of a challenge) but all the cast manage to establish their characters with commendable speed. John Guerrasio does particularly well as what is surely a merciless self-portrait by Williams – a “much too much” homosexual writer with a camp performance that has an eye on the stereotype the author must have seen himself becoming. His co-star, Laurence Dobiesz, also impresses as a fragile hustler who becomes intoxicated during the short duration of the play. But the best and bravest performances come in the first work, with Clare Latham and Matt Milne playing newlyweds acting out trauma with a sado-masochistic twist.

The Grange Holborn Hotel may not be the most charismatic property, but all credit to its farsighted management for cooperating with the Defibrillator Theatre Company. Staging the plays in the hotel adds immeasurably to them. Performed in rotation, you can hear the arguments from one as you sit in the room above watching another, with careful supervision from a trio of directors (James Hillier, Anthony Banks and Robert Hastie) who embrace the claustrophobia of the setting. This evening of morbidly powerful vignettes is captivating theatre – incredibly intimate and excruciatingly voyeuristic.

Until 27 October 2012

Photo by Simon Annand

Written 9 October 2012 for The London Magazine