Tag Archives: Vanessa Kirby

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“A Streetcar Named Desire” from NTLive

Provided during lockdown via the National Theatre, Benedict Andrews’ acclaimed production of the Tennessee Williams classic was a big hit for the Young Vic back in 2014: don’t forget there are two places to consider donating to this week! Intense and innovative, it reflects the spirit of its author and is a strong revival of a classic.

The legendary role of Blanche DuBois, the archetypal Williams heroine – a deluded, down-at-heel former Southern Belle – makes a star role for Gillian Anderson. The issue with such an iconic part is the struggle to make her appear new, and Anderson achieves this with a fraught interpretation full of pain that focuses on alcoholism and mental health.

Blanche is charming and sexy. Anderson makes her funny, too. But she is also imperious and her arrival and stay with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley, along with a romance with their friend Mitch, is full of condescension as well as tension. Blanche’s “awful vanity”, which Anderson does not share, make her unappealing and her attraction to young boys is downright creepy. The desire for “temporary magic” doesn’t convince as it might, but Anderson still makes Blanche a heart-rending figure.

Andrews’ use of a revolving stage made the production memorable, but Magda Willi’s design is downplayed in the recording in favour of close-up shots. This is to the benefit of all, as the fine work from director and cast is, literally, clearer. This Streetcar Named Desire is presented as a real four-hander.

Vanessa Kirby in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'
Vanessa Kirby

Vanessa Kirby’s Stella is at her best when showing sisterly concern, which she does with consistent skill. Ben Foster’s Stanley is entirely brutal, given none of the glamour sometimes associated with the role. He’s all “animal force”, which makes his final outrage against Blanche (a scene not for the faint hearted) terrifying; the predestination he claims – “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” – is chilling. Foster’s performance is stark but fits Andrews’ brutal vision. Violence pervades the show, domestic abuse is taken for granted, and even Blanche’s suitor Mitch moves from having a “sensitive look” to being a threatening presence in a brilliant performance from Corey Johnson.

Ben Foster in "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Ben Foster

Williams, like his creation Blanche, goes for “strong bold colours”, a preference literally reflected in Jon Clark’s lighting design and one that sums up Andrews’ approach. As the “evasions and ambiguities” Blanche has been living with lead to a total breakdown, there’s the suggestion that Stanley, as with every other man she has encountered, has gaslighted her. It’s a bold and enlightened way of bringing out Williams’ questions of “deliberate cruelty” that make this production even better on a second viewing.

Available until Wednesday 28 May 2020

To support, visit nationaltheatre.org.uk, youngvic.org

Photos by Johan Persson

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“Julie” at the National Theatre

Polly Stenham’s new play, described as “after” August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, has just enough going for it. A bold authorial voice and strong performance from Vanessa Kirby in the title role compensate for flaws in a stylish script full of contemporary touches.

Strindberg’s play, about a love affair that defies class, has been adapted before, but this updating is particularly bold. The 1888 text has been stripped bare: it’s all about the money, as a poor little rich girl starts an affair with her daddy’s chauffeur, with tragic results.

Stenham’s skill is with dialogue, and the way Julie speaks is exemplary, instantly recognisable and witty. We’ve all heard Julie around town or worked with her (one summer I served her in Selfridges). We see how smart she is, how superficially appealing her “technicolour” personality might be, and the tragedy of her “shapeless” life.

Julie makes for an in-depth character study that Kirby embraces – her performance will keep you watching. But sympathy with the character isn’t allowed – any self-pity is a luxury. You may agree with Stenham, or wonder why she is so tough, or speculate on how her decisions relate to Strindberg’s infamous preface to his play. But the sentiment slims the play down and director Carrie Cracknell ends up padding it out with party scenes that look expensive but add little. Robbed of credibility, Julie’s relationships with her servants, fiancés whose romance she destroys, are too crass; there’s little drama and no sexual tension.

Both Eric Kofi Abrefa and Thalissa Teixeira do well in the roles of Julie’s employees, taking advantage of the depth Stenham gives their roles. But the characters are a little too noble, lacking edge or danger. Likewise, Kirby depicts Julie’s mental instability with intensity, but the character is a mess from the start, her end too predictable. The problem is a lack of nuance that makes the show, like Tom Scutt’s stylish set, rather too monochrome.

Until 8 September 2018

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Richard H Smith

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“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

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“A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Young Vic

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Gillian Anderson is currently thrilling the crowds at the Young Vic Theatre as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.  Director Benedict Andrews’ eye-catching take on the Tennessee Williams classic is a respectful updating of the play that aims to avoid nostalgia. The production isn’t faultless, but it is admirably rich in ideas.

The use of a revolving stage is sure to prove memorable. Magda Willi’s carefully neutral design takes us away from a period feel and focuses on the claustrophobia of the flat lived in by Blanche’s sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley, a place to which Blanche retreats in disgrace after losing the family estate and having a mental breakdown.

Making the show quite literally dynamic is cleverly done. Props are plentiful and extra characters circle the stage menacingly. It all adds time, though, as does some current, rather distracting pop music, so that, all in, the production is well over three hours. And while it looks great, the slow revolve must be hugely demanding on the cast. You can hear everything, though, which is no small achievement, and watching them becomes unusually intense.

Andrews’ interpretation of Blanche is stark, focusing on her alcoholism and mental health. Of course, Blanche is a victim, a tragic icon made moving by Anderson’s performance, but Andrews takes her descent into mental illness too much for granted – there could be more of a fight here and the audience, like her potential fiancé Mitch (the excellent Corey Johnson), should be taken in by her “magic” a little more.

There are also problems with Stella and Stanley. Divorcing the action from the 1940s doesn’t help explain the class distinction in the play. Vanessa Kirby gives an impassioned performance but seems literally out of time. Stanley fares even worse. Ben Foster provides an animal presence, but there is surely more to Stanley than the “ape” Blanche says he is. Foster is powerful, but his performance is robbed of subtlety.

There’s no doubt that this is Anderson’s show. For a director as bold as Andrews, this might seem predictable but the focus is on the pain in the play – which is brutally and powerfully conveyed. Anderson deals with the responsibility placed upon her and is tremendous. She’s sexy and desperate, giving a raw and urgent performance that, by the nature of the production, is distraught and messy at times.

Until 19 September 2014

www.youngvic.org

Photo by Johan Persson

Written 1 August 2014 for The London Magazine

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“Edward II” at the National Theatre

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Director Joe Hill-Gibbins made his debut at the National Theatre last night with a radical version of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. He’s the King whose murder with a red hot poker makes him the medieval monarch schoolboys remember. This crazy collage of show revels in incongruous touches, using our current National anthem and the hokey cokey in its soundtrack, and wrenches the personal from an explicitly political text. Best of all, it boasts a lead performance from John Heffernan that must not be missed.

Hill-Gibbins’ inventive staging is bracing – a bag of tricks that updates Marlowe with a defiantly energetic touch. Projecting live films onto the walls, including scenes in an inside-out room (reminiscent of a Rachel Whiteread sculpture) that the audience cannot see into, gives a sense of intimacy and conspiracy. There are touches that will ruffle feathers – brash, bold and sexy – including the longest snog I’ve seen on a stage for a while. But the production is never obtuse; the court and its conflicts are consistently presented as a game played by debauched egoists.

The “base, leaden Earls” are deliberately overblown, outraged by the explicitness of Edward’s love for his minion Gaveston rather than questions of social status. Two roles, transformed into female parts, stand out, with Kirsty Bushell as Kent and Penny Layden as Pembroke, displaying sympathy toward the King that injects pathos. The biggest problem is for Edward’s wife Isabella. Vanessa Kirby proclaims her love for the King, between drags of her fag and swigs of bolly, well enough, but the production focuses so much on Edward’s homosexuality that it denies tension between the two of them.

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Kyle Soller

Gaveston, the “ruin of the realm”, is performed by Kyle Soller with magnificent dynamism – when he kneels to the King it’s as if he’s about to start a race. In Soller’s performance the morbid playfulness of the production genuinely unnerves. But the suffering is all Edward’s and the scenes of his torture, filmed and projected throughout the final act, makes this a gruelling role that establishes Heffernan as an important actor. Despite the manic action around him, Heffernan has the power to create a stillness and deliver Marlowe’s poetry magnificently.

Until 26 October 2013

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Manuel Harlan

Written 5 September 2013 for The London Magazine

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“Women Beware Women” at the National Theatre

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Harriet Walter is a woman to be scared of, at least, she is in the National Theatre’s current production of Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women. She plays Livia, gifted and cursed with a demonic persuasive power. Through deceit she organises an incestuous affair between her brother and her niece and engineers the rape of a newly married neighbour. Yet she does it all with a great deal of charm. She’ll manage to persuade you that she isn’t all that bad.

Her victims are Bianca (Lauren O’Neil) and Isabella (Vanessa Kirby). They transform from young, innocent women in love into killers bent on revenge. It’s a delicious change, and one the actresses clearly relish. Taking their lead from Walter, they adopt a cool, clever and cynical approach to marriage while passion boils inside them as they plot murder. As their metamorphosis occurs, Livia falls in love herself – she decides to take Bianca’s husband as a toy boy. Unfortunately for her, the transformation allows emotions to begin clouding her judgement.

And what of the men? They should have plenty of reason to beware these women, but their own arrogance and hypocrisy make them oblivious as to how they are manipulated. Richard Lintern is suitably villainous as the Duke who abducts Bianca, and Raymond Courtauld genuinely creepy as the uncle who loves Isabella. If Samuel Barnett seems slightly miscast as the man who manages to get Bianca to elope, he makes a good show of playing the doting husband and gets his fair share of laughs.

Focusing on the melodrama as a strategy for getting humour out of a revenge tragedy might seem like a risk. Making characters less rounded than they are written only works if you have a strong cast. Fortunately, director Marianne Elliott is working with fine actors and the payoff is a great deal of fun. Elliott has great skill as a storyteller and can cut through complicated plots to provide refreshing clarity. She is also visionary when it comes to staging and here the production takes off.

Designer Lez Brotherston’s set is magnificent. A decadent mixture of art deco glamour and baroque drama, it manages to reflect the grand and intimate, rich and poor, while evoking the games and perils of seduction. And it works in more than one way. Making the most of the Olivier’s revolving stage, the final scene of murderous mayhem is perfectly choreographed and truly thrilling.

Until July 4 2010

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Simon Annand

Written 29 April 2010 for The London Magazine