Tag Archives: Mark Bonnar

“The Little Foxes” at the Young Vic Theatre

Family dramas don’t come sharper than this. Lillian Hellman’s classic about the business affairs of the Hubbard siblings brims with tension in Lyndsey Turner’s production. A stunning cast does justice to quality writing, making this a real cracker of a show.

Leading the action is the ever-excellent Anne-Marie Duff, who plays the formidable Regina. There’s subtlety as well as high emotion in Duff’s portrayal of this desperate woman, who is ruthless, but perhaps not quite as competent as she might believe. While it’s hard to take your eyes of Regina, Duff and Turner are too good to make her the sole focus.

The men who come up against Regina’s plotting are excellent. Her two brothers – played by Mark Bonnar and Steffan Rhodri – are a great exercise in compare and contrast, showing two chilling sides of the business world. Does Benjamin’s cool pragmatism or Oscar’s stubbornness and stupidity scare you more? And there are two roles for John Light to excel in. Very neat casting has him double as a potential business partner and then transform into Regina’s dying husband. In both cases, it’s his money everyone is after, but Light gives the two characters startling depth.

John-Light-in-The-Little-Foxes-credit-Johan-Persson
John Light

Turner moves the play away from its original turn-of-the-century setting. Instead of 1900, Lizzie Clachan’s design is late 1960s, with some of the costumes sneaking into the 1970s. Tingying Dong’s sound design is very ‘now’, with some great choral arrangements from composer Phillippe Cato. There are, subsequently, incongruous mentions of horse-drawn carriages along with some very dated attitudes. And it makes the status of the African American servants (further excellent performances from Andrea Davy and Freddie MacBruce) something of a puzzle. Presumably the intention is to bring the audience up short, to move us away from comfy period piece and illustrate how enduring these concerns about big business are.

With the fictional family described as “locusts” more than once, it’s easy to see a critique of capitalism in Hellman’s work. There are nods to how greed impacts a whole community. Arguably, though, there is a cautious conservatism driving this – the motivation is more about taking care than any radical critique. 

It is the impact on the family that is at the heart of The Little Foxes. Throughout the play, Regina’s sister-in-law acts as a foil, being from a wealthy old family, now imprisoned in a loveless marriage. It’s a tricky role that Anna Madeley excels in, creating a sympathetic character and revealing alcoholism with super skill. As the play progresses, Regina’s young daughter comes to the fore. How will what she has seen shape her? So final praise goes to Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who takes this role so capably, moving centre stage, showing her character’s development and providing the play’s thrilling final moments.

Until 8 February 2025

www.youngvic.org

Photos by Johan Persson

“The Duchess of Malfi” at The Old Vic

The stage is set for high drama at The Old Vic with Jamie Lloyd’s new production of The Duchess of Malfi. Soutra Gilmour’s set excites at first, with accomplished lighting from James Farncombe, but it quickly tires. This gothic fantasia lacks subtlety and isn’t versatile enough – at one point it seems to snow inside a palace and, worse still, it has a cardboard cut-out feel that is unfortunately reflected in some of the performances.

Placing the focus on John Webster’s text, shouting the play’s complexity and trying to challenge our ideas about Jacobean revenge stories, Lloyd creates an exceptionally clear production. Clarity isn’t usually a fault but you can take anything to an extreme: much of the cast’s delivery becomes heavy and laboured. Lloyd is too good a director to make The Duchess of Malfi tedious but what should be a gut-wrenching ride of a play is too often halting.

There are important exceptions. Mark Bonnar plays the villainous Basola with great complexity. His treachery towards the Duchess and her steward (a fine performance from Tom Bateman), whom she has secretly married, is multilayered.

In the title role, Eve Best’s performance is never less than superb. It’s clear that for Lloyd her character is more than the victim of gruesome torture – she is a shinning light of humanity. Best is impressively natural, given the difficulty of the part. Believable as a real woman as well as a symbol of dignity, her performance saves the play.

Until 9 June 2012

www.oldvictheatre.com

Photo by Johan Persson

Written 29 March 2012 for The London Magazine

“The Cherry Orchard” at the National Theatre

Director Howard Davies is well known for his work on Russian classics. Last year, his production of The White Guard did phenomenally well at the Olivier Awards. His new production of The Cherry Orchard is a quality affair from a director who doesn’t rest on his laurels.

Davies is working again with designer Bunny Christie. Her set offers the first glimpse that this is something different: there’s no trace of quaint dacha here and not a samovar in sight (for that, you have to nip into the National’s bookshop for a particularly twee display), a set is a huge barn of a place, that really is dilapidated, whose owners are in dire financial straits.

Andrew Upton joins the team again with a text that is wilfully modern. Every effort has been made to make Chekhov’s story of the landowning Ranyevskaya seem contemporary. It will certainly jar on some ears. Maybe in our credit- crunched times her poverty rings a chord, but Ranyevskaya isn’t a member of the squeezed middle. She’s a frightful snob, yet her obstinate refusal to recognise the reality of her situation is conveyed with charm by Zoe Wanamaker.

There is little sense of Ranyevskaya’s journey in this production. Like her brother Gaev (James Laurenson) she seems little aware of the times she is living in. A sense of history that Chekov certainly saw as a theme of his work is diluted, the production seems more immediate and less didactic, but it’s a trade off that is debateable.

Wanamaker’s performance is generous, allowing the other characters to shine out: stories of lovers of different ages and status, all given equal weight, bring out the plays rich complexity. Kenneth Cranham is a truly revolting Firs, playing with Emily Taaffe’s Dunyasha with great cruelty. Mark Bonnar is convincing as Petya Tromfimov, one of those scholastic characters Russian dramatists love that are so difficult to perform; his impassioned relationship with Anya (Charity Wakefield) is a highlight of the evening.

Lopakhin, the merchant whose capitalism is so much at the core of The Cherry Orchard’s historic concerns, is played by Conleth Hill with passion. Hill is perfectly farouche and, if not quite believable as the businessman who could save the estate, his fragility makes his the most moving performance of the night.

All the casts’ performances are mobile, running around in a play that is usually static. The party scene is particularly raucous. These Russians know how to live it up but, of course, not how to live. The pain as they all try to find a place for themselves in their changing world easily transcends historical circumstance. Davies preserves the philosophical dilemma at the heart of The Cherry Orchard while presenting it with fresh eyes.

Until 13 August 2011

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Catherine Ashmore

Written 18 May 2011 for The London Magazine