Tag Archives: Siobhan Redmond

“The Straw Chair” at the Finborough Theatre

There’s a lot going on in Sue Glover’s historical drama. The true history of an imprisoned noblewoman is told alongside the story of a newly married missionary and his young wife. Meanwhile the setting, a remote island steeped in paganism, elaborates on themes of religion and power. If the script is disjointed – an odd mix of romance and intrigue – The Straw Chair is always interesting.

First the location (the jail of Lady Rachel Grange as well as the parish needing a priest), the Hebridean island of St Kilda, is a character it its own right. Embodied by the only local we meet, Oona, played with great charm by Jenny Lee, there is a lot of anthropological detail. Might the role have a touch more drama? Should we be suspicious of Oona’s role as jailer? Nonetheless, her love of the island is evocative.

To hell, to Hades, to Kilda

For Lady Rachel, kidnapped and carted off to a house with only one chair, it is understandable and amusing that she hates St Kilda. In a commanding performance, Siobhan Redmond makes this great character fascinating as she plays with degrees of madness. She isn’t a figure of sympathy – her snobbery ensures that – but, as a mix of Mrs Rochester and Lady Macbeth, Redmond ensures the character has the required magnetism. It is to the credit of all, not least director Polly Creed, that the role doesn’t swamp the play.

Finlay-Bain-and-Rori-Hawthorn-in-The-Straw-Chair.-Photo-credit-Carla-Joy-Evans
Finlay Bain and Rori Hawthorn

Lady Rachel’s relationship with the newly wed Isabel could be elaborated on. It’s another strong performance – from Rori Hawthorn – but I wonder if the young woman is too naïve – and her growing affection for the island a little pat? The character is fuller when it comes to her relationship with her husband, the missionary Aneas, a role that benefits from a final strong performance, this time from Finlay Bain. The “rigid piety” of the aspiring churchman is offset by a convincing sense of religiosity and a nervousness around his young wife that Bain depicts expertly.

The play’s conclusion is wilfully frustrating. We don’t know what will happen to Lady Rachel or the couple whose marriage is tumultuous – little bodes well despite Bain and Hawthorn’s chemistry. And the minister’s conversion to Lady Rachel’s cause is so quick that it seems clumsy. This trip to this island feels rushed, but it is still a journey worth making.

Until 14 May 2022

www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Photos by Carla Joy Evans

"Vassa" at the Almeida Theatre

Mike Bartlett’s adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s 1910 play is a suitably irreverent and darkly funny version of a text with revolution at its heart. About capitalism as much as feminism, it provides a magnificent title role for Siobhán Redmond and a range of grotesque characters for a strong supporting cast to have fun with. Both Bartlett and director Tinuke Craig have a keen eye on entertaining their audience and, although the show is uneven, the production has enough humour to make it a success.

Vassa is as much a mogul as a matriarch. As her husband lies dying upstairs, her concern is to secure the family business by fiddling his will. She has to tackle her useless sons and mendacious brother-in-law, who each want their inheritance, along with their various romances, all of which are problematic. Herding these cats is done with a vicious tongue and a ruthlessness that beggars belief. Every acid line and heartless act is delivered to perfection by Redmond, who makes a brilliant villain.

Since it was revived this summer, you might think of Githa Sowerby’s Rutherford and Son as an English equivalent to Vassa: close in date, with another tyrannical capitalist and questioning economics. But Gorky, via Bartlett, has a more satirical edge that shows venality in many forms. Yet there’s a fussy feeling to the direction that detracts from how forceful the adaptation is. It’s interesting to see Craig play with elements of farce – notably with Fly Davis’ set full of doors – but unfortunately the comings and goings in this conspiratorial household aren’t that well-handled. Bouquets of flowers that cover the floor for the finale are another example: the idea might delight a florist but the blooms become bothersome.

It isn’t quite accurate to say Vassa only cares about money – her legacy plays a part, too. Any case for her as an arch pragmatist is weakened by this (for the better) while abuses of power for its own sake bubble underneath the text. The results allow a depth to her character that might surprise and that Redmond excels with. The relationship with her daughter, played exquisitely by Amber James, proves fascinating. Likewise her affection for her daughter-in-law Dunya, played by Daniella Isaacs, is developed well. More unhappily, the fate of her maid Lipa, superbly performed by Alexandra Dowling, brings home how high the stakes are.

It’s the men in the piece that let the production down. This isn’t quite Bartlett’s fault, or the performers’ – Vassa dominates the play so much that, when she’s off stage, interest plummets. As her sons, Arthur Hughes and Danny Kirrane have characters a touch too hysterical to deal with. And as Vassa’s potential nemesis, Michael Gould’s Prokhor just isn’t enough of a threat. Thankfully, with a lot of judiciously placed swearing, the text is fresh as well as funny. And the attention to detail is great. There’s a brilliant line about an off-stage character, described as “so drunk he fell over his own arm”. Touches like that aren’t just funny – they convey Vassa’s world so vividly that visiting it proves engrossing.

Until 23 November 2019

www.almeida.co.uk

Photo by Marc Brenner

“Top Girls” at the National Theatre

Lyndsey Turner’s revival of Caryl Churchill’s classic play has a reverential air. With such variety in the writing – starting with a fantasy dinner party, turning into a domestic drama and becoming increasingly political – there’s no doubting the text’s importance. But in this staging, the humour in the writing stumbles, the edge is blunted and the production is luxurious to a fault.

The novel, and expensive, move is not to double up roles as most productions of the play do. So performers playing guests at the opening scene, women from different cultures and times, don’t reappear in other roles. Using actors the calibre of Amanda Lawrence, Siobhán Redmond and Ashley McGuire for just one scene seems positively wasteful and it also isolates the brilliantly bizarre prologue scene.

There can be no quibbles about the cast – or Turner’s massive investment in them. The play is capably driven by Katherine Kingsley as the highflying executive whose success we scrutinise. And there are strong performances from Liv Hill and Lucy Black as her estranged family. It’s possible these roles don’t have to have be portrayed as quite so downtrodden – Churchill’s point is still made if they are just ‘normal’ people – but the play’s themes of inequality and individuality are depressingly pertinent.

Ian MacNeil’s design is bold in its variety of spaces – restaurant, office and home are all very different – and the scene changes are impressive. And dealing so well with characters speaking over one another gets more praise for Turner. In short, the production is without question technically accomplished. But is all this sleek professionalism necessary? Or appropriate? Does a dinner party with the long dead or fictional characters need so stylish a setting? Or the shabby world of corporate recruitment have to look so lush? Turner has too much respect for Churchill’s work not to present it impeccably, but the play is strong enough for productions to take a more inventive approach with it. There’s a disappointing lack of energy, or anger, that seems inappropriate: Churchill’s message is there, but the challenge is not.

Until 20 July 2019

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Johan Persson

“Dunsinane” at the Hampstead Theatre

By the final scene of Macbeth, the tyrant is dead, justice is served and the witches’ prophecy fulfilled. So what happens next? Leaping at the topicality of an occupying English army, David Greig’s sequal, Dunisane, asks questions that seem relevant to our time.

There are some surprises, but the plot is deliberately familiar. The occupying force professes the noblest of intentions, to bring peace and stability to a fractured country, underneath the motive of security for their homeland. But the exit strategy goes wrong, the local culture is misunderstood and the battle for hearts and minds lost.

More specifically, as befits the interests of a playwright, this is a battle of language. The words politicians use conflict with the soldier’s vocabulary. The Scots struggle with the English tongue and use the English’s ignorance of Gaelic against them. The occupiers fail to see the poetry in the situation – the drama of revenge or the tragedy of loss, which Greig’s language artfully struggles to convey.

This is best seen in Sam Swann’s role of a boy soldier who recites the letters he writes home to his mother. Leaving aside the idea of an infantry man of the time writing at all, let alone with such a contemporary tone, the writing has an authenticity that works wonderfully in dramatic terms.

This boy soldier is also an essential foil for the more central characters. Greig has set himself the ambitious task of creating roles that would not seem out of place on a Shakespearean stage – the kind of roles that have a life of their own.  He is fortunate to have a cast that also embraces this challenge.

Jonny Phillips plays Siward, the English commander in charge of the occupation. His problem is that he is a good man and Phillips does a superb job in displaying this nobility alongside making his character a true man of action.  Holding true to his convictions to the point of mania, he is outwitted at most turns by the Scots.

Brian Ferguson’s Malcolm is the King established by the English. The consummate politician in many ways, although his deadpan admissions of selfishness raise a laugh, it is he who truly understands the workings of power.

Just as politic but with far more passion is Siobhan Redmond’s Gruach. She embodies this royal role with dignity but also an eye to the vulnerability of her position, playful in her sexuality and willing to manipulate her reputation. Redmond also adds a conviction about her character’s culture that the long removed Malcolm can only play at. She shares touching moments with Siwald as both characters have lost children. Gruach is reunited with the body of hers in one of those deeply moving yet grotesque moments that seems very Shakespearean and which Redmond manages to pull off.

The first of the RSC’s forays into the Hampstead Theatre, it is no surprise to see those trademark crowd scenes the RSC does so well. No surprise, but it’s no small achievement nonetheless. Roxanna Silbert directs her cast to make numbers appear huge and has clearly imbued a sense of camaraderie in this company appropriate to a military drama.  For while political commentary is present, above this, Dunisane is a good story, well produced. What happens after Macbeth? Plenty. It seems that his death is just the beginning.

Until 6 March 2010

www.hampsteadtheatre.com

Photo by Simon Annand

Written 18 February 2010 for The London Magazine