Category: Power

Berberian Sound Studio at the Donmar Warehouse review ****

Berberian Sound Studio

Donmar Warehouse, 14th March 2019

I sort of stumbled across Peter Strickland second full length film by accident. Always keep half an eye on what’s coming up on Film 4. Record anything that I recognise as requiring a watch, (on the basis of pretentious film buff recommendations), probably leave it unwatched for months and then likely dump it. Just occasionally though a bit of research and or plain old fashioned curiosity means I end up watching them before pressing delete. And so one rainy Sunday afternoon on went Berberian Sound Studio. The presence of Toby Jones helped but, five minutes in, laptop and phone were switched off and I sat, bewitched, for the next hour and a half. Have raved about it ever since whenever the chance comes up to raise it in conversation. Which, as those of you that may know it, isn’t really that often.

For the film is a critique, or maybe continuation, of the Italian giallo film genre. Giallo, to quote Wiki, is “a particular Italian thriller-horror genre that has mystery or detective elements and often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, exploitation, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements“. It reached its apogee in the 1970s and stems from the Italian for yellow, the colour of the paperback mystery novels popular in post-WWII Italy which provided th plots for many plots for many of the early cinematic examples.

Now, to be clear, these films wouldn’t be my cup of tea, though, to be fair, I haven’t tried. Mr Strickland’s film though takes the post-production studio for one of these films as the setting for a surreal mediation on the main character’s dislocation and eventual breakdown. Gilderoy has arrived at the studio to work on a film about horses. Or so he believes. He is a Foley artist whose work has come to the attention of the film’s director, Santini, through the soundtrack to a nature made in Gilderoy’s home county of Surrey, Dorking to be exact, where he lives with his Mum. Out of his depth, and plainly shocked by the nature of the film, Gilderoy nonetheless sets to work on mixing the sound effects for the film’s torture scenes and the voice-overs from session actresses, Silvia and Claudia. He is held captive by a mixture of professional pride, bullying by the film’s producer Francesco, failed attempts to get his expenses reimbursed, (it turns out the flight he came over on doesn’t exist), concern for the actresses and, maybe, fascination with the material. The language barrier, his own lack of worldliness and the material he is dealing with leave him increasingly disorientated and unhinged. A new actress arrives Elisa to replace Silvia who has been attacked by Santini. Gilderoy eventually goes full-on gaga mixing up reality and the film. The end.

Now I can’t pretend that there weren’t times when the film became a little frustrating and, well, just a bit weird but it is so atmospheric, so different and so fascinating that I have watched it again and, as with all good art, have occasion to think on it. Toby Jones is brilliant as Gilderoy, (as he is in pretty much anything he does – most recently on stage as Stanley in last year’s Birthday Party revival) ,as are the rest of the Italian, largely based in Britain, cast. The exposure of the mechanics of film-making, specifically the sound-track, composed in the film by Broadcast, the Foley effects and the voice effects from Hungarian performance artist Katalin Ladik is intriguing, especially the horror genre, and the theme of alienation, on many different levels, is intriguingly explored. Strickland himself was brought up in Reading but lives in Eastern Europe.

So how to put this on stage. Well clearly the first thing you need is a convert which is where Tom Scutt comes in. Mr Scutt is a top drawer designer, (Julie, Summer and Smoke, The Lady from the Sea, Woyzeck, Les Liasons Dangereuses, King Charles II, The Deep Blue Sea, Elegy, Constellations – and that’s just what the Tourist has seen), and Associate at the Donmar, but this is first directing gig. He has teamed up with Joel Horwood, (whose work I don’t know but who I see has previously focussed on pantos !!), to adapt BSS for the stage.

And what a very fine job the two of them have done. The adaptation stays close to the original story, with some changes in chronology, for most of the 90 minutes run time but wisely condenses the breakdown of Gilderoy at the end. This shifts the focus more directly to the relationship between him, Francesco and, eventually, Santini, (a confident debut from Luke Pasqualino), and the actresses, where the characters have been mixed up and changed a bit. Elena/Sara is played by Eugenia Caruso who actually played Claudia in the film and starred in Strickland’s next major film The Duke of Burgundy. Sylvia is played by Lara Rossi, (who I remember well from The Writer at the Almeida), Carla by Beatrice Scirocchi and vocal composer Lore Lixenberg takes on the Katalin Ladik part. All clear? Nope. Don’t worry. there is no confusion in the play. Well aside from in Gilderoy’s mind.

It also lays bare the process of creating the sound-track to the film with two on stage Foley artists in the form of the silent Massimo and Massimo, (Tom Espiner, who has form on this as the on-stage Foley for Simon McBurney’s Magic Flute of which more to follow on these very pages shortly), and Hemi Yeroham), brooding janitor Lorenzo (Sidney Kean) and the voice of Giovanni (Stefano Braschi). The distance between the process, squashing a melon say, and the intention, some unspeakable violence, of the sound is as sharp a metaphor for the illusion of theatre, or film, as you could imagine.

However the heart of play lies with the performance of Tom Brooke as Gilderoy. He initially cuts a more confident air than Toby Jones in the film, determined to show his skill, (which also allows us even more insight into the technological processes). However the constant harassment and worse by Francesco, Enzo Cilenti is superb here, and the entreaties from the women, are what push him over the edge, perhaps less than the content of the film. It feels more like he is lashing out rather than disintegrating as he goes round and round trying to create the “perfect” closing torture scene soundtrack. In the end he is complicit as we see him scare Carla into giving the perfect “real”scream . What is clever though is that large swathes of the dialogue between the Italian characters, except where Francesco intervenes ostensibly to help Gilderoy, are spoken in Italian. Leaving the audience, mostly, in the dark alongside our hero.

It also, of course, means that, in a story centred on sound, the sound design had to match the ambition of the adaptation. It did. Thanks to the go-to stage sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, alongside the aforementioned mentioned Tom Espiner’s Foley, (there is a lot of vegetable abuse here), and Lore Lixenberg’s vocals. Lee Curran as lighting designer, Sasha Milavic Davies (who is one of the best in her field methinks), projectionist Mogzi Bromley-Morgans and even the superb studio set of Anna Yates (with Tom Scutt’s input) all had to take a back seat to the brothers Ringham. Pound for pound I doubt you will ever see a more extraordinary manifestation of the technical craft of theatre-making.

Did it work as a play though? Yes definitely. The team has wisely not tried to go for broke with the more surreal visual conceits of the film and to offer more complexity in the relationships between characters, and, I think, to point up, by implication, the misogyny of genre and industry. The idea that creatives have some responsibility for the material they create also comes through even if the individual isolation of Gilderoy is less explicit. Santini’s twisted justification for the film to Gilderoy, and Gilderoy’s own disavowal of, I think, Elena, “I’m just a technician”, are key scenes in this regard.

There is suspense and direction in the story. There are even a couple of jump-scares. The play also expertly captures the slippery meta elision between play and film within a play, (I note that Jamie Lloyd captured the same vibe in his version of The Slight Ache in the Pinter season recently). To be fair it does sort of just end, there is no conclusion, but that is common to the film. I can see exactly why everyone here wanted to bring this project to life and I for one thoroughly enjoyed it. On the other hand if you weren’t familiar with the film, took a punt and are not nerded up by the technical aspects, then I could see this being a little frustrating.

Mother Courage and her Children at the Royal Exchange Manchester review ****

Mother Courage and her Children

Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, 28th February 2019

Brecht. Royal Exchange. Headlong (This House, People, Places and Things, Labour of Love, Common, Junkyard, 1984, The Glass Menagerie, American Psycho and Enron – and that’s just what I can vouchsafe), Anna Jordan adapting, Amy Hodge, the Associate Director alongside Jeremy Herrin at Headlong and Julie Hesmondhalgh as Mother Courage (“MC”) herself.

Strap yourself in. This was bound to be an exhilarating theatrical ride. And so it was. Full of great visual moments. Even if the transposition of the story to a future (2080’s) European war, Reds against Blues in a continent divided up by grids, probably subtracted from, rather than added to, its contemporary relevance. Brecht finished Mother Courage in 1939 and he pointedly set it in the Thirty Years War of 1618 to 1648, proportionately the most destructive conflict in human history, as a message of the forthcoming horror. The greatest “anti-war” dramatic statement of all time? Probably, though it is more analysis than fulmination. One pf the greatest plays of the C20, and all time? Certainly. So f*ck about with it at your peril.

On the other hand the whole point of BB’s epic, Verfremdungseffekt, theatre is to set the audience on its toes and get the grey matter working overtime, and to let the theatre makers create their own take. Which they certainly do here. With the utmost respect to Ms Hesmondhalgh who is predictably a mighty presence, the star of the show is a repurposed ice cream van, standing in for the cart of the original text. Not something I expect to write again on these pages. Joanna Scotcher’s design looks like it came from it was sneaked out of a forgotten storeroom at a Hollywood studio marked “Vietnam War/Mad Max for charity”, right the way down to Yvette’s (Hedydd Dylan) pink plastic “catsuit”. There isn’t much in the way of fixed bric-a-brac as it should be in Brecht and as is warranted by the Royal Exchange’s in-the-round space. Which left the van, sans engine but still with its jingle intact, free to perambulate across the stage, pulled, before their respective early demises, by each of MC’s three kids, Eilif (Conor Glean), Swiss Cheese (Simeon Blake-Hall) and Kattrin (Rose Ayling Ellis). Foods, drink, water, shirts, uniform, clothes, guns, furniture, you name it, MC stocked it in the ramshackle van. Everything you need to profit from a prolonged war. It even doubles up as a nightclub.

Music (Jim Fortune), which nods back to Weill, sound (Carolyn Downing) and lighting (Lizzie Powell) was similarly pimped up to match the setting and aesthetic. Musician Nick Lynn, positioned in the circle, served up, often at MC’s request, a barrage of sound at times to set alongside some of the gentler, folksy numbers. And Movement Director Raquel Meseguer put the hours in to marshal the nine strong cast through the 12 scenes (covering 12 years of the conflict).

Now the Tourist knows from Anna Jordan’s other recent, superb, work with Frantic Assembly, The Unreturning, that she is the doyenne when it comes to ambitious, physical theatre. And so it proves here. This adaptation comes in at a couple of hours. It can drift closer to three. With the on-stage intros to each scene and some fairly direct exposition it is easy enough to follow even for the uninitiated, and all the narrative elements are intact, but it scampers along at a heck of a lick and, with all the visual stimulus, the constant motion, the soundscape, the dizzying array of accents, there just isn’t much time to think about what is going on and what Brecht is telling us.

Not a complaint. The production looks and sounds so good that this is easily forgiven but don’t come here looking for any gestural detail in the main relationships, between MC and the children, or between MC and respectively the Cook (Guy Rhys), the Chaplain (Kevin McMonagle) and Yvette. Julie Hesmondhalgh and the rest of the cast, notably these three, are too good for Brecht’s messages not to sink in but the true horrors, the deal with the Recruiting Officer to conscript Eilif, Swiss Cheese’s torture, MC’s denial of her son after the botched ransom, Kattrin’s rape, Eilif’s execution, the Cook’s rejection of Kattrin and Kattrin’s sacrifice don’t always register as strongly as they might. Mind you the bleak conclusion certainly does: MC taking up the van’s harness as a single fire burns out.

MC’s determination, even desire, to profit however from the war, despite the damage it does to her and those around her, does ring clear. Julie H is a ballsy, artful fiercely protective but, ultimately wary and realistic, MC. As she should be. This isn’t Hollywood – we are supposed to engage emotionally with the characters but not be emotionally manipulated by them. Ultimately we aren’t really supposed to sympathise with MC, just to understand why she has to act as she does, to see the damage that war does to those at its periphery as well as the fighting protagonists. MC thinks that her business is the way to safeguard her children. Manifestly it is not. We see that. She cannot.

And to see how war, when churned through the prism of difference and ideology, is an integral part of the economic sub-structure, orchestrated by the powerful. One day perhaps Brecht’s lesson will have no relevance. No sign right now though we should remember that the global and supra-national institutions which were built post WWII to rein back our worst excesses have largely succeeded in restricting conflict to the national, or intra-national, level, though still often as proxies for economic accumulation.

Which is why MCAHC will go on being restaged and re-imagined (Lynn Nottage’s Ruined for example) for new audiences to watch and learn. At the matinee performance the Tourist attended there were, as is to be expected, throngs of school students. They seemed to be all over it. I assumed it was still some sort of set text for drama students. Apparently not. Only Brit playwrights good enough for the Government when it comes to reaching GCSE drama. Interesting in the context of the breakdown of the political order in Europe that this adaptation presages. Still we should be grateful that this shower of a Government hasn’t interfered with syllabus and teaching for, what, all of a couple of years. And, unless the nutters back down, they won’t be able to for many years to come as they sort out the never-ending shower of sh*t that is coming down the tracks once we have “Brexited”. It’s only just begun folks. And not in a nice, Karen Carpenterish kind of way.

Got me to thinking about what our proud youth study for drama at A level. Faustus, Lysistrata, Woyzeck, Antigone, Much Ado About Nothing, A Servant to Two Masters, Hedda Gabler, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Jerusalem, Yerma, The Glass Menagerie, Metamorphosis, Cloud Nine, Our Country’s Good, Bronte, Earthquakes in London, Stockholm, The Crucible, The Visit. Across the various boards. Bloody Hell. If they master that lot then I have nothing to fear for they will know everything there is to know about the human condition. Drama is integral to democracy and citizenship. Ask Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides.

I Am Ashurbanipal exhibition at the British Museum review ****

I Am Ashurbanipal King of the World, King of Assyria 

British Museum, 15th February 2019

Crikey. Those Assyrians had a way with reliefs carved in gypsum/alabaster. Even if it was primarily all in the service of terrifying aggrandisement. The King hunting, the King and his soldiers slaying his enemies, the King relaxing with the ladies. It is all about the big man. Seeing these panels adorning the main rooms of the Empire’s palaces, painted in bright pigments, you certainly would have known who was the boss.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire took in most of modern day Iraq, Syria and Iran from 911 BCE to 612 BCE and Ashurbanipal was in the hot seat at its zenith from 668 BCE to 627 BCE. One way or another the Assyrians had been a big noise in the region for the previous 1500 years or so but it is only when the factions came together, and decisively defeated their neighbours, that the Empire was able to take in Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Turkey, Egypt and the Persian Gulf. The Neo-Assyrian Empire kicked off with Adad-nirari II but it was Ashburanipal’s daddy, Esarhaddon, the son of a “palace-woman” not the Queen, who did the blood-thirsty groundwork for his favourite son. Even so little Ashurbanipal had to initially share with big brother Shamash-shum-ukin who ruled the rebuilt Babylon.

Whilst Ashurbanipal’s geographical inheritance was vast it needed looking after. First he had to take on the various Empires in Egypt including the Nubians. Then he had to decisively crush the Assyrians’ arch-enemies, the Elamites, and finally he had to take on his own older brother when Babylon rebelled. There is plenty of pictorial and written evidence to show just how cruel Ashurbanipal could be when it came to waging war but, as all you students of ancient history know, you can’t build an empire on brain-dashing alone. You needs brains that stay in heads as well. And this is where the exhibition steps in showing just how learned the great king was, (he had been trained to rule, and to spy and intrigue, from an early age), as he amassed his great Library, oversaw an unrivalled system of communication across the Empire, negotiated treaties and vassalships too hold together his various, proud peoples and turned Nineveh into the greatest city on Earth. He wasn’t troubled by modesty mind as the translations show. It all went to sh*te when he died, isn’t that always the way, but what is on show graphically reveals just how magnificent, (assuming you were on the right side, and ideally you weren’t a lion), it all was at its peak.

Now the British Museum has the lion’s share (haha) of the world’s Assyrian artefacts so curating this exhibition wasn’t too much of a struggle, I imagine. Even so much of this material is not on permanent display, there are plenty of astonishing loans on show and the way the story is told, as is usual at the BM, is superb. Most Assyrian art was lifted in the mid C19, (the Victorians went mad for it), having previous been ignored by scholars in Europe and the US. You can argue about the ethics of such an enterprise, but then again you might also want to consider the centuries before when the exquisite calcite alabaster palace reliefs, lamassu and large scale statuary went walkabout, and you also need to think about the wholesale destruction of what remained in situ by ISIS especially around Mosul. At the end of the exhibition this part of the story is highlighted including the work of the BM in supporting and training local archaeologists to examine and conserve what is left.

Highlights? The small-scale lion hunts, (though I reckon, based on the casual manner in which Ashurbanipal is despatching the beasts, that these reliefs may incorporate a little poetic licence even if they are anatomically perfect) . The Garden Party in the palace of Nimrud. (Let us hope Queen Liz doesn’t take up the custom of decorating the Buck Palace gardens with enemy heads). The wall of cuneiform on clay tablets, a summation of the Knowledge of the day, (a word to the wise – if you want your library to resist a fire, use clay). The copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first ever work of literature. The battle scenes illuminated with modern technology. The “painted” relief similarly enhanced. The lamassu, the human headed bull/lions with wings that stand guard. (How do you move these things? With great care I should imagine and without enlisting the services of the congenitally weak and clumsy like the Tourist). The sphinx of his arch-enemy. Taharqa. The imported Nimrud ivories. The decorated bronze helmet.The tiles. The obelisks. The statue of the big fella himself, alongside his bro. The Elamite art, pedestrian when compared to its Assyrian overlords.

The thing with the reliefs is that not only are they historically and aesthetically pleasing and interesting but they also tell an immediate story. It is this clear, (well, with a bit of help from the curators comments), narrative which makes this art and this exhibition special even if you aren’t normally one for the “dusty” as LD terms most History. Obviously some of the content, the pre-flaying, tongue-ripping, the bone-grinding, the beheading, appeals to our voyeuristic cravings, (don’t worry it isn’t TOO realistic), but it is the muscle, the movement, the energy, the vivid impression of something happening (even if the perspectives are that odd mix of profile and frontal/three-quarter that characterised pre-Grecian art), that makes it special.

And a lesson to all would-be tyrannical despots. If you are going balls-out to subjugate your people, do show an interest in reflecting your “glory” in art. Otherwise no-one will remember you.

The Good Person of Szechwan at the Barbican Theatre review ****

The Good Person of Szechwan

Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre, Barbican Theatre, 9th February 2019

I am a sucker for these Russian theatre companies. Despite the fact that I can’t say I was bowled over by the last visits of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg and the Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia. Much to admire but they don’t half go on a bit. Still it’s the idea of seeing Russian drama in Russian that appeals to this culture vulture. So I signed up for the Chekhov Cherry Orchard and this Brecht classic in an instant, though given that past experience, I went for the cheap seats just in case.

Which turned out to be a wise choice in the case. of The Cherry Orchard. No review for the simple reason that I only made it to the interval. To be absolutely clear this was not because it is a poor play, I have seen TCO on many occasions and when it works it can be as good as theatre gets, (though I prefer Uncle Vanya’s dose of comic deprecation alongside all the revelatory ennui). Translation is, and was, not a problem, though this version felt a bit peremptory, and my eye was a little caught between the sur-title banners. A minor irritation. Nor was I phased by the vogue-ish set and setting. A raked stage, made up of various entrances, a kind of crucifix in the centre, expressionist lighting, modern-ish dress, devoid of samovar and birch, stylised choreography with multiple “crowd tableaux”. Maybe the production advertised its Absurdism a little too loudly but nothing the Tourist can’t deal with having seen, and enjoyed, some challengingly bonkers stuff in the last few years. Creatives can, and should, arse about with Chekhov. The old boy can take it.

Nope the problem for me was that, amidst all this invention from director Vladimir Mirzoev and team, which certainly looked brilliant, and lent rhythm and context to the drama, Chekhov’s philosophical musings got a bit lost along the way. There was some pretty heavy-handed symbolism; one or two little sailor-suited Grishas, Madame Raneskaya’s dead son kept popping up, Lopakhin was sex symbol as well as vulgar, proto-capitalist, governess Charlotta, in full on Kate Bush Withering Heights mode, becomes a kind of spirit presaging the coming Revolution, there are blood-bags standing in for the Orchard !!!!. If there was a meaning in the text, or in the sub-text, then this production wasn’t going to hold back from offering up a visual signifier to make sure the you didn’t miss it. TCO is so much more than a bunch of air-head, spendthrift aristos blind to what is happening around them. There are individuals wrestling with their own destinies and there are relationships to be unpicked.

I could see the parallels with the world today, an exalted elite about to be overwhelmed by a populist wave, interesting in the context of modern Russia, but it was also pretty clear that this wasn’t for me. So I missed the techno party in swimsuits and Alexander Petrov turning Lopakhin into a full-on oligarch, but I think it was the right call.

What it did do though was get the juices flowing for The Good Person of Szechwan. If this was the way a Russian company was prepared to shake up their own uber-dramatist, what might they do with the German sage, albeit with a different director, Russian wunderkind Yury Butusov in the hot seat. The last time I saw TGPOS was so long ago I had forgotten the details but I did remember it makes a few strong points tellingly well, even if it takes it time to do so, it is long on tunes and that whoever plays Shen Teh earns their fee.

Basics first. Brecht completed the play in 1941 by which time he was in the US though its first performance was in Zurich in 1943. Long-time collaborators Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau worked with Brecht, and the score and songs were created by Swiss composer Huldreich Georg Früh. However in 1947, Paul Dessau created and alternative collection of songs which is now the standard and which was used in this production. TGPOS has all the Brechtian “epic theatre” hallmarks though it was obviously inspired by an interest in the conventions of Classical Chinese drama, not just in terms of subject, a parable involving the intervention of gods on humans, but also the situation and performance style. There is also, to my eyes, more than a nod to classical Geek drama, with the intervention of the Gods at beginning and, in the trial, at the end. As well of course, as a classic double identity plot.

The original title translates in German as “love as a commodity” but also, in a different spelling as ‘true :one” which gives a fair idea of Brecht’s target. Shen Teh is a prostitute who struggles to live a “good life” in line with the morality handed down by the gods. Everyone around her takes advantage of her generosity to the point where she invents an alter ego male Shui Ta, to protect her interests. Shen Teh meets a suicidal unemployed pilot, Yang Sun, with whom she falls in love, but he too, egged on by his mum. only ends up exploiting her. Eventually Shen Teh deception is revealed and a trail ensues.

And so we have a dualism, a dialectic if you will, between gender, between altruism and exploitation, between the individual and society. Economic substructure defines the morality in the human superstructure; the gods gift Shen Teh the money to buy her tobacco shop, the relations between Shen Teh and her customers and her landlord, Yang Sun pretending to love Shen Teh to get his hands on her capital. There is also, for me, a religious dimension. Why won’t the all powerful goods intervene to prevent this naughty humans getting up to no good rather than piling all the pressure on Shen Teh? It’s not subtle but it’s still vital.

So plenty to get your teeth into if this is the bag you are into. Which I most definitely am. This being Brecht, there is plenty more beyond the Marxist, (filtered through the writings of theoretician Karl Korsch,) economics lesson. We begin, for example (after bit of sand play) in the prologue with a direct address to us, well the Gods, through the character of Wong, the unfortunate water seller, he played by Alexander Matrosov, in a somewhat disturbing, palsied “village idiot” manner. (I have to assume Russian audiences have a rather less enlightened attitude to disability). The set, designed by Alexander Shishkin is spare, and dark, denoting a “derelict, abandoned world” according to the programme, with props, (chairs, beds, bicycles, a noose, dogs – you know the usual apocalyptic detritus), scattered across the Barbican stage and three birch trees shielding a backdrop for sledgehammer visuals (Diane Arbus’s twins a particular brazen favourite). The lighting design of Alexander Sivaev is suitably harsh, though effective. The jazzy Dessau score and songs, in German, are used in their entirety though the on-stage band, under director Igor Gorsky, doesn’t skimp on additional eclectic arrangement and material, even some incongruous dub and EDM.

A well choreographed Anastasia Lebedev plays all the Gods, and Alexander Arsentiev is Yang Sun, here just Unemployed Man. The rest of the cast (with a few familiar faces from The Cherry Orchard) loads up on supporting roles with no doubling and the whole ensemble moves, sings and performs with gusto. And that is certainly the case with a shouty Alexandra Ursulyak in the lead role, for which she has been garlanded in Russia. Apparently the production is rooted in the concept of “behavioural plasticity” which is a real biological thing where organisms react to changing external stimuli. And there was me thinking they were acting. Anyway Ms Ursulyak’s torn fishnets, shiny plastic mac and gars make-up for Shen Teh, and baggy pinstripe suit, bowler and pencil moustache screamed alienated cabaret Weimar which persuaded me.

There were a few scenes which lagged (200, 330, 500 silver dollars) but, overall, as it should be with competent Brecht the 3 hour 20 minute running time wasn’t a chore, given a translation to follow, political lessons to be absorbed, songs to enjoy, after a fashion, and Shen Teh’s journey to absorb. And some cracking stagecraft. Rice rain anybody? Or better still a deluge of fag packets? The production first appeared in 2013, and I’ll warrant will be playing for many years yet.

The Tourist consumes a play that explores the contradiction between morality and capitalism, especially the commodification of relationships, bought to London by its most famous Russian oligarch emigre. Pick the bones out of that BD.

The Cane at the Royal Court Theatre review ***

The Cane

Royal Court Theatre, 21st January 2019

Somehow, until now, the Tourist has failed to see any of the work of Mark Ravenhill, either as writer, performer or director, or even his columns in the Guardian, surprising given the Tourist’s status as a paid up Guardianista. There was a recent revival of his breakthrough play, Shopping and Fucking, at the Lyric Hammersmith, but sadly the performance the Tourist signed up for was cancelled. (Made worse by the fact that the Tourist had gone straight to the theatre from an outing elsewhere during a period of deliberate mobile phone estrangement. It should be possible to chuck the bloody thing away, and to this day the Tourist doggedly persists without data, ring-tone or any social media, but realistically the everyday organisation of modern life prohibits a complete embargo. That, and the unhealthy compulsion to surf free wi-fi so as to rubber-neck the latest instalment in the Brexit car-crash).

Anyway the chance to see Mr Ravenhill’s latest play, after a hiatus of many years, at the ever reliable Royal Court, and its apparent subject, the education system, was not to be missed, and the SO agreed. Especially when directed by RC AD Vicky Featherstone and with a cast comprising Alun Armstrong, Maggie Steed and Nicola Walker. You will know all three off the telly, but their stage appearances are all too rare, though Maggie Steed was in the first instalment of Jamie Lloyd’s current Pinter anthology, and it was a privilege to watch Nicola Walker’s brand of nervy, restless emotional plasticity being applied to the role of Beatrice in Ivo van Hove’s A View From The Bridge.

Vicky Featherstone kicks off proceedings at a fair lick as we learn that Edward’s (Alum Armstrong) retirement as a teacher after 45 dedicated years is being disturbed by his historical engagement with capital punishment and by his school’s imminent takeover by an academy. There is a mob of kids outside Edward and Maureen’s (Maggie Steed) house and their estranged daughter Anna (Nicola Walker) has now turned up. It is a somewhat improbable set up but no matter. Mt Ravenhill uses this as a jumping off point to explore the uneasy relationship between the fretful couple and their seething daughter, how we apply the morality of the present to actions in the past, how much responsibility an individual should assume, and how much an institution, for excessive punishment and how violence and disciple become conflated, accepted and even internalised,

Within this tricky web Mark Ravenhill, using precise and considered language, cleverly shifts moral perspectives around and between the questions and the characters, sometimes even on a line by line basis. He asks a lot of questions but is never so crass as to give clear answers. There is a constant undercurrent of tension and hostility fuelled by the subject matter, and the symbolic cane, the weight of the past and the menacing family dynamic, visually realised in Chloe Lamford’s off-kilter, grim, and increasingly claustrophobic, set. The three actors are superb in the way they draw us in to this queasy moral maze. The looks they give each other, the barbs that they spit out, the arguments they advance and retreat from, the flashes of violence and acquiescence, all are expressively portrayed. However, over the unbroken 100 minutes or so, the flaws of all three characters become unremitting, the premise becomes over-stretched and just a teensy bit too slippery and the dialogue just a bit too predictably adversarial.

It made us squirm, it made us think and the acting is top notch. But this is a play that deliberately sets the audience outside its world. Fair enough but it might have worked better for us in more concentrated form, or with some eventual solid pay-off to all the rug-pulls and hypocrisy exposures.

Pinter at Pinter 6 review *****

Pinter at Pinter Six: Party Time and Celebration

Harold Pinter Theatre, 17th January 2019

This for me was the best off the bunch so far in the Pinter at Pinter one act play season. And proof that Jamie Lloyd is the Man when it comes to directing the menacing Master. Mind you cop this cast. John Simm, Phil Davies, Eleanor Matsuura, Celia Imrie, Katherine Kingsley, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Gary Kemp, Ron Cook and Abraham Popoola. It is something when probably the least well known on this list, Abraham Popoola, just happens to be, as anyone who saw his performances in STF’s Othello, the Bridge’s Julius Caesar and Pity will know, one of our finest young stage actors.

Jamie Lloyd has profitably emphasised the clear connection between the two plays. Both have a cast of 9 and both are centred on functions in swanky locations. Soutra Gilmour’s alternately monochrome and gaudy sets and costume designs, and Richard Howell’s sharp focus lighting, elegantly reflect this. In both cases a wealthy elite, inured to the concerns of, and detached from, wider society, bickers amongst itself. There is the usual menace, threat, misogyny, oneupmanship, bitterness, jealousy, entitlement and exaggeration that is the HP hallmark but here employed in the service of biting satire. The social class that HP is shredding may differ in each play but the message is the same.

Party Time dates from 1991 and originally premiered with the more overt political satire of Mountain Language seen in Pinter One in this season. Phil Davis’s businessman Gavin is hosting a party where the barbed chat revolves around country club membership, luxury island holidays and past affairs. John Simm’s Terry cruelly bullies his wife Dusty (Eleanor Matsuura), particularly when she mentions Jimmy, her estranged brother. The other guests are equally offensive and vapid in their various ways. Occasionally the sniping and boasting stops and a bright white light is revealed through open doors at the rear. The outside world has plunged into violent disorder, suppressed by the state, and eventually Jimmy (Abraham Popoola) stumbles through the light to deliver a poetic monologue describing this collapse.

Celebration, from 2000., sees Ron Cook’s Cockney villain/businessman (“strategy consultant” in his own words) Lambert celebrating his wedding anniversary with wife Julie (Tracey-Ann Oberman) and brother Matt (Phil Davies), and his wife Prue (Celia Imrie), who is also Julie’s sister, in a swanky restaurant. Vulpine banker Russell (John Simm) and partner Suki (Katherine Kingsley) who Lambert “knows” eventually join them. Restauranteur Richard (Gary Kemp) and Maitresse d’ Sonia (Eleanor Matsuura) alternately schmooze and patronise their ignorant, nouveau riche guests. Waiter (Abraham Popoola) “interjects” to tell tall stories about the literary circles that his grandad mixed with. Here class is the target though some rather darker themes, misogyny, misandry, incest, domestic violence, also emerge.

As elsewhere in this excellent season, the connections that run through HP’s work, and their continuing relevance, are highlighted. The divisions between an elite, defined by wealth, and the rest of society are laid bare. The callous indifference and amoral stupidity of this moneyed, brash, narcissistic class, and those who seek to emulate it, is laid bare. Materialism reigns supreme.

Of course this being Pinter there are times when you are going to fell pretty uncomfortable with some of the dialogue, but, this also being Pinter, you are also going to laugh, a lot, notably in Party Time. Whether you are laughing at, or with, the characters, or at, or with, yourself, is for you to decide.

Impossible to pick out favourites with a cast of this calibre, but if pushed, I would go for Ron Cook and Tracy-Ann Oberman. The latter does not have quite as many lines as some of her equally renowned peers but every one strikes home (it would be good to see her back in some Shakespeare) and Ron Cook is about as perfect a Pinter actor as it is possible to get. Mind you the last few times I have seen him he has pretty much stolen the show (The Children, Girl From the North Country, The Faith Healer and The Homecoming).

One more collection to go as well as the production Betrayal. Even the venerable Danny Dyer, Martin Freeman, Tom Hiddleston et al are going to have there work cut out to top this.