Tag Archives: Paul Rhys

“Uncle Vanya” at the Almeida Theatre

Following his triumphant Oresteia last year, director Robert Icke has created a similarly bold and fresh adaptation of Chekhov’s masterpiece. Contemporary in feel, especially its humour, Vanya is translated into John, wearing comfy slacks, while his brother-in-law Alexander, retiring to the country, could easily be an Islington academic. Alexander’s second wife Elena accompanies him and unrequited love leads to questions about the meaning of life.

Icke breaks up the action into bite-sized chunks. The short opening act establishes these “closed off eccentrics” – family and friends – living too intimately together. Tobias Menzies quickly captivates as the local doctor with a passion for ecology (more big themes here). John’s problems are clear: feeling his life has been just “notes in the margin”, he wittily woos Elena with his guitar, while his steely mother (Susan Wooldridge) looks on.

UNCLE VANYA 97 - JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY AND VANESSA KIRBY BY MANUEL HARLAN
Jessica Brown Findlay and Vanessa Kirby

During the second act we meet Alexander, depicted so skilfully by Hilton McRae that it’s easy to understand how John feels “conned” into working for him. It’s clear that John’s drunken singing to Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life isn’t going to make up for years of devotion. But the scene belongs to Alexander’s daughter Sonya (Jessica Brown Findlay) and Elena, a part that Vanessa Kirby gets an impressive amount of comedy from. The women’s relationship is acted with the naturalism Icke aims for: stopping and starting conversations that reveal their exhaustion with the “petty cruelty” of their lives and their desperate search for love.

The boredom Elena and Alexander have brought with them is a dangerous “contagion”, contrasted with the not-so-gainful employment that’s been occupying everyone until they arrived. It’s John who suffers most. His breakdown is dramatic, if not without comedy, and Paul Rhys’ stumbling, fumbling portrayal is profoundly moving.

Icke is always sure-footed. Using Hildegard Bechtler’s slowly rotating stage, we get a great view of this human goldfish bowl. Addresses to the audience make this Uncle Vanya unusually direct. For the finale, the search for ‘The Art of Living’, glibly proposed as the title of Alexander’s next book, is never going to be lightweight. The only solace on offer seems to be hard work – literally. Join the characters as they hum ‘Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho’ and get off to see this show. Just don’t expect to leave smiling.

Until 26 March 2016

www.almeida.co.uk

Photos by Manuel Harlan

“The Master and Margarita” at the Barbican

Mikhail Bulagakov’s classic novel, The Master and Margarita, is a work known for its complexity. A satire, full of politics and philosophy, it is marked by what has come to be known as magical realism. With the action moving speedily between the trial of Christ and Stalin’s Moscow, and a cast including the devil and his cat, it’s easy to see why many would regard it as unstageable. But Simon McBurney, and his theatre company Complicite, love a challenge and this production shows that, as they approach their 30th anniversary, they are at the top of their game: drawing out the theatricality in the book, enjoying the farce, and injecting drama into the fantasy elements of the story.

Marked by a level of accomplishment that is truly breathtaking the action is presented with invention and wit. The set, designed by Es Devlin, is a facade of houses onto which some of the finest video work I’ve seen on stage is screened. Not content with this, McBurney uses the floor of the stage, filming live and projecting onto the walls; it’s appropriately disorientating and makes the production seem bigger than the theatre itself. The lighting from Paul Anderson is an essential part of the show, used with intelligence to great effect.

But no matter how stunning the show looks it would be just a bag of tricks without the acting that accompanies it. The text, devised by McBurney with Edward Kemp and the company, moves at a great pace, with short scenes that require instant emotions in surreal circumstances. Tim McMullan is so powerful as Pontius Pilate he seems to anchor the whole show and, taking the title role of The Master, Paul Rhys gives a stunning performance. Susan Lynch, who plays Margarita, shows great bravery (not least since she spends a good deal of the play naked) with the emotional rawness she brings to the part. Lynch and the company manage to make the story of The Master and Margarita, and the idea that is should appear on stage, believable.

Until 19 January 2013

barbican.org

Photo by Bohumil Kostohryz

Written 21 December 2012 for The London Magazine