Category: USA

Catching up (Part 5)

May 2021

La Clemenza di Tito – Royal Opera House – 18th May – ***

First live event out of the block in 2021. A visit to the socially distanced ROH with BUD to see La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart.s late opera, from 1791, with libretto from  by Caterino Mazzolà, after Pietro Metastasio. 

Now first up I must say like the ROH more than half empty. The price to seating value in the ROH is normally dreadful, even in the stalls (never done a fancy box mind) and I have had some major run ins with rude punters there, proof that the entitled, including me, are a generally dispiriting bunch. Anyway this time I went cheap(ish), front of amphitheatre, yielding a good enough view, and no BUD squashing. No bar scrum at the interval and everyone masked up, unlike now where the majority can’t be arsed. People, it’s just a bit of cloth, intended to help others out (not least those who work there), not the beating drum of totalitarianism. So get over yourselves.

Anyway I had put in a bit of research by watching the Bergen National Opera LCDT production stream a few weeks earlier though, frankly, the plot ain’t rocket science.

Imperial Rome. Vitellia seeks revenge against Emperor Tito because his dad deposed her Dad. She winds up Tito’s mate Sesto, who fancies her something rotten, to sort him out, but then she calls him off because she, Vitellia, now reckons she can pull and marry Tito. I know the old “I want him dead, I want to wed” routine. We’ve all done it. Tito though plumps for Servilia, Sesto’s sister, as his bride, and sends Annio, Sesto’s mate, off to tell her. An in person proposal clearly beneath him. But, uh-oh, Anno loves Servilia, and she requites, so she tells Tito and he does the decent thing and steps away. However Vitellia hears about this and goes apeshit, once again telling Sesto to top Tito. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, beyond the excuse for a cracking aria, “Parto, parto, ma tu, ben mio”. And then, blow me, if Tito doesn’t decide to marry Vitellia who realises that bullying his mate into being his hit-man is not a good look. Sesto goes for the old “burn down the Capitol” assassination technique which strikes me as a bit OTT. Everyone reacts with horror thinking Tito is now toast, literally, but Vitellia manages to muzzle Sesto before he blabs. Curtain.Interval.

Annio announces big Tito isn’t dead; the corpse Sesto saw was another geezer (yep really) and that he only stabbed another bloke dressed as Tito. Annio persuades Sesto to stay and face the music, but the Court finds him guilty. Annio begs Tito to go easy his bessie and offer him a way out. But pig-headed Sesto says he deserves to be executed, “Deh, per questo istante solo”, so Tito, because he can, (thats autocracy for you), tears up the death warrant. Final twist. Just before Tito can reveal his mercy trip at the Games (where other poor buggers are about to be torn apart by lions), Vitellia confesses that it was all her idea, but Tito, now puffed up on all this clemency lark, lets her off too. Universally acknowledged, Tito, for a tyrant, is a top bloke.

Now you can probably see some flimsy propaganda at work here. And indeed, LCDT was commissioned by the Estates of Bohemia, on the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (which was still a thing), as King of Bohemia, to keep the nobles sweet. Remember the great and good all over Europe were sh*tting their collective pants about what was going on in France, so it was good to remind them that Leopold was having now of that Revolution nonsense in his back yard.

Metastasio’s libretto was already an opera standard, but Mazzola edited it down when WAM came on board, seeing a big purse, Salieri having turned down the gig. And our Wolfie turned it round sharpish, 18 days apparently. Maybe it shows. It isn’t on a par with Figaro and Don Giovanni but, hey, it’s Mozart so it is a) now pretty popular and b) in places sublime. Both BUD and the Tourist couldn’t go all in though: ULTZ’s monochrome set gets shunted around a fair bit and Richard Jones’s direction, in part to accommodate Covid 19 restrictions seemed disjointed at times, with on stage actions not always clear in intention or delivery. We warmed to Emily d’Angelo’s babyface, footballing (?), Sestus far more than the star turn here of Nicole Chevalier as Vitellia (who sometimes risibly over-acted, though she can sing) with Edgaras Montvidas’s Tito lacking a little authority, visually and aurally. Angela Brower (Annio) and Christina Gansch (Servilia) looked and sounded more comfortable. The “intimate” scenes notably between Sesto and Tito proved more affecting than the “public” scenes which were a bit underpowered, unfortunate given the nature of power vibe is what I think Mr Jones was aiming for. The orchestra, under Mark Wrigglesworth, delivered though, in my bank you can always step on the gas more with Classical scores, the harpsichord continuo made its way up to the gods and the chorus, sadly offstage, was lovely.

Flight – Bridge Theatre – 27th May – ****

A very different live theatrical experience a few days later. BD and I had planned to go to see Flight during the late 2020 window but missed out as it was serially canned. So glad I persisted. Vox Motus, led by Jamie Harrison and Candice Edmunds, promise “a theatre of story-telling visuals, transformational design, magic, comedy, music, physical performance, puppetry, multi-media and most importantly thrills.” To be fair Flight doesn’t quite live up to that promise but only because of its format and not in its impact. It is conceptually simple; a revolving diorama containing miniature models in lit-up boxes with an accompanying soundtrack on headphones. After a bit of necessary C19 induced marshalling we were shown to our individual booths and straight into the story of Aryan (voiced by Farshid Rokey) and Kabir (Nalini Chetty), Afghan orphans who are orphaned Afghan boys who make the hazardous journey from Kabul to London. Along the way they nearly freeze to death in a lorry, are enslaved and forced to pick fruit, encounter hatred and compassion. They make it but there is no happy ending. The models are beautifully crafted, some of the tableaux extremely imaginative and the text involving. Maybe the revolve it is a bit slow and the juggling of viewpoints horizontally and vertically a little sapping, but the story is so heartfelt that this can be forgiven. The innovation format drives home the message. Forced migration isn’t going to go away. Likely the reverse. Lines on a map won’t make any difference. Hate won’t work. Love might.

Walden – Harold Pinter Theatre – 29th May – ***

Producer Sonia Friedman, who pretty much single-handedly gets quality theatre into the commercial West End, what we might call a vital actor in the theatre economic ecosystem, was quick out of the blocks with her Re:Emerge series post lockdown. Anna X was a hit at the 2019 Vault Festival, J’Ouvert (still availble on BBC I Player) came via Battersea’s finest Theatre 503 and Walden, which I plumped for, was a new work from New Yorker Amy Berryman. For me the draw was Ian Rickson as director, though a cast of Gemma Arterton, Fehinti Balogun and, especially, Lydia Wilson, helped. Gemma Arterton is a better actor than her credits suggest, her performance in Josie Rourke’s Saint Joan at the Donmar is evidence thereof, similarly Fehinti Balogun is set for a stellar career (as is his namesake Michael, he of the extraordinary backstory, check it out). Lydia Wilson, however, was my favourite going in after spying her in Rebecca Frecknall’s Almeida Duchess of Malfi and the Cheek by Jowl Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and, post this performance remains so, though there isn’t much in it.

All three however were excellent in a play which, having started with a bang, but failed to develop its interesting themes, relying instead on the somewhat limited opposition between two sisters, Stella (GA) and Cassie (LW). It’s the near future, climate change has ravaged Earth, so it’s time for Homo Sapiens to ravage the rest of the solar system. Stella was the designer of the off Earth settlements, Cassie a botanist thereon. High achievers both, Daddy was a big cheese at NASA and don’t they both know it, Stella has turned her back on the Project to shack up with climate activist Ryan, Cassie drops by (though this is a cabin in backwoods America, where the water is still clean) to try to persuade her back into the fold. Believable debates ensue about the fate of man and woman kind, principle vs pragmatism, scientific duty and ethics, ambition and fulfilment, laced with a bit of sexual frisson, all against a backdrop of sisterly rivalry. The text matches the concept, Mr Rickson’s tempo is note perfect as usual, it is just that Ms Berryman, having laid it all out can’t find anywhere to go thereafter so dramatically it just fizzles out. A bit more bite, a bit more ambiguity and this could be a very powerful play.

Best of the rest

A couple of live exhibitions on top of these three outings. Matthew Barney’s Redoubt at the Hayward Gallery (***), a multimedia exploration of Ovid’s Diana and Actaeon, which I assume is also a climate change plea, was just too dense for the Tourist to fully appreciate. Mr Barney has created a (long) silent film where he figures as The Engraver, a ranger in the Idaho Rockies, who tracks and is tracked by a sharpshooter Annette Wachter, and her two sidekicks, a Watching Virgin and a Tracking Virgin. Woods, rocks, water, snow, trailer, skies, skis, rifles, deer, wolves, cougars, bears, copper plate and its processing, there is a lot to take in, ad I confess to bewilderment when I trawled through this back home. However the sculptural output, burnt, scarred trees amalgamated with coppers, alloys, resins, plastics, often in the form of gun parts, is fascinating, the copper plates marginally less so. As are the myths and facts that flow from Barney’s investigation. I only scratched the surface (no pun intended) but it isn’t difficult to see why he has such a high reputation in artistic circles.

South African portrait photographer Zanele Muholi is also lauded, though the focus of their practice is very different, as the Tate Modern retrospective (***) revealed. Across 260 works they describe the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities. Their perspective may change but their intent, to show love and joy, bodily delight, as well as sickening trauma (“corrective” rape still exists in SA) and discrimination, and thereby shift perceptions, is unyielding. Political as well as political, dripping with satire. Makes you think, makes you stare. BD is better placed to walk you through the context. I was bowled over, in parts, by the beauty, aesthetic and intelligence of the later staged images, especially the self-portraits. And genuinely saddened by the realisation that some of their subjects and collaborators were now dead, victims of violence and HIV/Aids.

Which just leaves a couple of baroque concerts and a couple of theatrical entertainments on screen. Pale Sister (also available as part of the lights Up series on I Player) has Lisa Dwan playing Ismene, Antigone’s sister, written for her by Irish man of letters, Colm Toibin and directed by Trevor Nunn. I yield to no man in defence of the virtues of Ms Dwan, but the monologue actually steers too closely to the Sophocles inspiration when I was hoping for some departure. Still well worth watching.

Much better, and actually a surprise highlight of my on line viewing, was Bristol based Wardrobe Ensemble’s distillation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Tamsin Hurtado Clarke and Jesse Meadows, along with director Tom Brennan and dramaturg James Newton, have preserved, indeed in some ways, enhanced, the essence of Fitzgerald’s elegant skewering of the American Dream, condensing it down to just 90 minutes and imaging as one long, and increasingly, desperate party. They neck champagne from paper cups, sing and dance, make use of a few props. The two actors play all the key characters, Jay Gatsby, Nick Garraway, Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, George and Myrtle Wilson, even managing to convince when simultaneous dialogue is required. FS-G’s heightened plot, as in the book, is easy to digest. OK so the material trappings of these shallow lifestyles is obscured as is the duplicitous complexity of the characters therefore sacrificing some of the novel’s bite. On the other hand their often ambiguous sexual identity is brought into focus as is the tragedy at its heart. Well worth seeing.

Ravens at the Hampstead Theatre review ***

Ravens: Spassky vs Fischer

Hampstead Theatre, 18th December 2019

I can see why Tom Morton-Smith would have alighted on the infamous chess match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in 1972 in Reykjavik. There are a ton of tomes on the subject and, after all, if it was good enough to spark the imagination of the ABBA boys …..

A proxy for the Cold War, then at its height, the clash between two ideologies, the “chess machine” Spassky up against the “maverick genius” Fischer, maybe the greatest player of all. No wonder the world was enthralled by the contest in a way that chess has never repeated. Added to which was Fischer’s erratic personality, he was never formally diagnosed, but he left the US, dropped out of competitive chess for two decades after winning this World Championship, got into legal scuffles, and devoted much of his time to vicious anti-Semitism.

Plenty of scope for drama then. TM-S’s smash hit Oppenheimer, which the Tourist, annoyingly, never saw, it coinciding with his peak poorly, so please someone revive it soon, similarly dealt with heightened personal drama set against the backdrop of big geo-political stuff. Other earlier plays have also successfully ploughed the same furrow.

So why didn’t it quite lift off then? Well the action is concentrated on the hall in which the match took place and various ante, hotel and other rooms around this. No faulting the way in which Jamie Vartan’s design, Howard Harrison’s lighting, Philip Stewart’s composition and sound, Jack Phelan’s video and, especially, Mike Ashcroft’s movement all combine to bring animation and excitement to the various confrontations, between and within the two “teams”, and between Spassky and Fischer during and outside the game. All overseen by Annabelle Comyn’s rhythmic direction. The two lead performances are also vivid and credible, Ronan Raftery as the self-contained but somehow melancholic Spassky, and, especially, Robert Emms as the aggressive Fischer. He has a lot more “personality” to play with, drawn out in some striking scenes on the telephone to the voice of Henry Kissinger (Solomon Israel) and his Jewish mother Regina (Emma Pallant). The rest of the cast, (wisely opened up a bit gender wise as I am guessing the reality was almost entirely geezer), don’t have too much opportunity to delve into character though Philip Desmueles has a decent crack as the German chess arbiter Lothar Schmid as does Buffy Davis doubling as the US team, bumptious head honcho Fred Cramer and Bobby’s mentor Lina Grumette.

T M-S’s dialogue too is incisive, and light on forced exposition, though it can’t quite escape chess-y banter, and all of the controversies of the match are rehearsed, notably the bizarre requests and counter-requests that tried the patience of the stoical Icelandic organisers and which was borne of mutual paranoia, notably from Bobby. My favourite was the argument over the chairs.

Like I say it is a cracking story. But not quite a cracking play. For the problem is that, however good the staging and the text, this is a tale of repetitions, which diminish in their return to the audience across the near 3 hours of the play. The scenes may differ, and are, to repeat, entertainingly executed, but don’t really move the narrative on. And, of course, we know the ending. Which means the political and psychological context needs to be explored in more depth than here. We get a sense of the financial and ideological stakes, the way in which Fischer’s mind games undermined a Russian team with an eye on their own government’s reaction, (though Spassky was avowedly apolitical,) and an insight into Bobby’s own, damaged, neuroses, but nothing that really surprises, provokes or disturbs.

My guess is that, having focussed on bringing the “facts” to kinetic life, by the time T M-S went looking underneath the play was already “done”. It might have been more interesting to step outside the detail of the match itself and start elsewhere, in flash-back from Bobby’s later life maybe (though I see that is pretty cliched). The imagined scene between Bobby and his Icelandic bodyguard Saemundur Palsson (Gary Shelford), which lends the play its title, is perhaps a pointer to want might have been of TM-S had left the facts behind.

Fairview at the Young Vic review ***

Fairview

Young Vic Theatre, 11th December 2019

Fell like a bit of a fraud putting pen to paper on this. For, I confess, I did not completely understand Fairview. African-American playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for the play. The conceit is ingenious. A birthday dinner for the grandma in a well to do African American family is first dramatised straight, in pointed sit-com fashion, then through the eyes of four candid white “observers” through voice-over and then on stage in various, exaggerated, performative personas.

It is a dazzling formal experiment which skewers the racist assumptions which underpin white America’s loaded, appropriating view of black American culture. Representation trapped by definition in a racist framework. The “white gaze”. It made me think. And it made me uncomfortable. Guilty even. But I don’t know what to do with these feelings. BD tells me to change. To question everything about my privilege. And then? Give it up? Stay away? Engage? Who decides? Who defines? The infinite regress of identity examination. Meanwhile the rich c*nts, of which I am one, go on getting richer. And the world burns.

And, as I say, many of the references, the pointers, the lessons if you will, that the white characters discuss in Act 2 and then garishly visualise in Act 3 are outside of my cultural milieu. Leaving me lost. Tom Scutt’s designs, Nadia Latif’s intricate direction and the fearless performances of Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Donna Banya (especially at the finale), Nicola Hughes and Rhashan Stone, and then David Dawson, Julie Dray, Matthew Needham and Esther Smith, are simultaneously intoxicating and precise. The fourth wall is smashed. And then some. Much like my head after watching this. It needs to be seen.

Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse review *****

Appropriate

Donmar Warehouse, 3rd October 2019

After deconstructing a Victorian melodrama in An Octoroon and satirising modern tragedy in Gloria, London now gets to see Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s 2013 take on the dysfunctional American family drama. Only this time the secret which lies at the heart of the Lafayette family is about as shocking as it gets. Move over O’Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee, Hansberry, Wilson, Shepherd and Letts.

Franz (Edward Hogg), Toni (Monica Dolan) and Bo (Steven Mackintosh) have come back to the family home in Arkansas following their Dad’s death, with the intention of selling house and contents. Franz (Francois) is a classic fuck-up, addled by past addiction, but now seeking redemption with new, very young, new-ager girlfriend River (Tafline Steen). He is still hiding something however. Bo (Beauregarde), egged on by Jewish wife Rachael (Jaimi Barbakoff), wants, and needs, to extract the cash asap and get out. They have two kids, Gen Z tween, Cassidy (Isabella Pappas)and hyper 8 year old Ainsley (Oliver Savell). Toni, the eldest, was left to look after their increasingly difficult and infirm father, is therefore the dictionary definition of long-suffering and is keen that everyone knows it. She is joined by slacker teen son Rhys Thurston (Charles Furness).

Not much happens beyond the inevitable arguments and raking over of the past. But this is not just a forum for the frustrations and grudges of the three siblings, though the fact that they seem incapable of restraint makes that forum often mordantly comic. The discovery of a book of photographs of black lynching victims, and worse, suggests that their father, who spent most of his life in the North East before retiring to the family pile, was no upright liberal but the worst sort of racist. Legacy and loss take on a far darker tone with each character’s. mostly, worst traits reflected through the prism of this pivotal disclosure.

As in BJ-J’s other plays, the plotting is perfect, the rhythm sublime and the dialogue riveting. What turns this into one of the best plays of this year though is Fly Davies’s breathtaking set, the junk filled interior of the dilapidated plantation house, which together with Anna Watson’s lighting and Donato Wharton’s, into a gothic place dripping with memory and history. More than that though is Ola Ince’s direction. Ms Ince worked as Assistant to Phyllida Lloyd in the Donmar all woman Shakespeare trilogy as well as Associate positions at the Finborough, the Lyric Hammersmith, Theatre Royal Stratford East and, now, the Royal Court, where she directed Poet in da Corner. On the strength of this I expect her to sustain a glittering career. Everything fell into place faultlessly to deliver a drama which thrilled and edified in equal measure.

Now it helps that all the cast brought their A games to the performance. And it helps even more if one of them is Monica Dolan. Even when she barely has anything to work with Ms Dolan ends up being the best of the best on stage and screen. When it is just her, as in her debut play monologue The B*easts, which should be a GCSE text already, or she has something to really sink her teeth into as here with Toni (Antoinette), she is, cliche alert, a force of acting nature. Bitter doesn’t even come close. And then, as the family history unfolds, increasingly vulnerable. I had to do the thing where I look away to a point above the stage to prevent and embarrassing blub near the end. Magnificent.

Appropriate is audacious, clever, funny, twisty, surprising, absorbing and insightful. By not hammering home, or resolving, the consequences of denying America’s racial past, in fact here that past is turned by the family into potential commodity, he makes us even more aware. The play is haunted by the ghosts of dramatists past. But it knows and relishes that. And what a genius title.

Two Ladies at the Bridge Theatre review *

Two Ladies

Bridge Theatre, 2nd October 2019

Well on the plus side the new season just announced at the Bridge looks to be a humdinger. A revival of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, directed by Polly Findlay with Roger Allam and Colin Morgan as Salter and son(s), Nick Hytner taking on an adaptation of Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage, following on from his triumph with His Dark Materials during the NT years, a new play by Paula Vogel based on They Shoot Horses Don’t They, directed by Marianne Elliot, and a new adaptation of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman starring Simon Russell Beale. Avid readers of this blog will note that not hours ago, in the review of Peer Gynt, the Tourist pleaded for a new version of this very play. Serendipity indeed.

Which makes me far less inclined to be unkind about Two Ladies. But really? Why did this get a run? A plot riddled with holes which starts off as implausible and ends up as truly incredible. A pair of unlikely leading characters, which despite the best efforts of both Zoe Wannamaker and fine Croatian actress Zrinka Cviesic, blurt out all manner of candid disclosures within minutes of meeting each other. And three paper thin supporting characters, played by Yoli Fuller, Lorna Brown and Rahhad Chaar, whose only purpose is to trot out a mesh of hoary stereotypes. They are, like the ladies, alarmingly keen to unpack their emotional baggage at every opportunity. Minimal research, a naive, if well-intentioned, political message and some very workmanlike dialogue and exposition. I spent too long thinking it was going to be some sort of absurd satire which would deliberately break out of its naturalistic bounds to make its comic points but no, it was, even with a few wry touches, pretty much played straight.

ZW plays Helen, the liberal British journalist wife of the younger French president (sound familiar). ZC is Sophia, the Croatian trophy model wife of the older American president (sound familiar). Their husbands are at a conference on the French Riviera where the POTUS is seeking the support of the Republique for a retaliatory attack on some bad guys, (I can only assume that, for once, us supine Brits told him to fuck off). However some naughty protestors have hijacked proceedings so that the first we see of the ladies is them being rushed into and empty conference room punctiliously designed by Anna Fleischle with Sophia’s elegant white suit smeared in blood (sound familiar). They then get down to slagging off their husbands, bemoaning their respective lots and hatching a preposterous plan to get the attention of both power and people.

Whilst I haven’t seen any of her work before Nancy Harris is an established playwright with a solid reputation. Which makes how this got to the Bridge stage even more of a mystery. Charitably you could argue that it might have been rushed. The extracts from the diaries of various partners of men in power in the programme suggests that there is a play to be written on the subject and the exclusion of women from power is still a vital topic for modern (and earlier) drama. But certainly not in the form of the simplistic tick-list of issues displayed here. Perhaps too Nick Hytner, having commissioned the play and with a theatre to fill, backed his own directorial skills to make it work and paper over the tonal inconsistencies. He was wrong.

Still the good news is that it was all over in 90 minutes and there was no interval (which I had expected). Which meant the SO was quick to forgive. Me, not the play.

Two Trains Running at the Royal and Derngate review ***

Two Trains Running

Royal and Derngate Northampton, 12th September 2019

Another instalment in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle though, four in, the Tourist still has some way to go. Two Trains Running premiered in 1990 and is set in the turbulent 1960s – remember each of the ten play series covers one of the decades of the C20 and all bar one (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh.

All the action in TTR, well words really, for August Wilson’s plays prize dialogue and character over plot, both their strength and their weakness, takes place in 1969 in the neighbourhood diner owned and run by Memphis Lee (Andrew French). The 1960’s saw the economic decline of the Hill District, once a byword for prosperity and cultural relevance in Black America, accelerate, prompting intervention from the Pittsburgh Urban Development Authority. Vast swathes of the neighbourhood were demolished to be replaced by a white elephant Civic Arena and failed public housing projects. Many residents were displaced and the redevelopment became an object lesson in how not to do “urban renewal“. Memphis’s business has seen better days but now he is holding out for the price he thinks it is worth from the City authorities, not just for the money but also to take a stand for the overlooked and disparaged community. He dreams of returning to his Southern roots from where he and so many others were compelled to escape in earlier, darker, decades. Frankie Bradshaw’s set captures this transition with the beautifully detailed diner sporting a hole in its roof above which is suspended a massive wrecking ball.

Memphis is assisted by cook and waitress Risa (Anita-Joy Uwajeh) who constantly has to push back against her boss’s criticism and the sexist comments and assumptions of the regulars. These include the assured West (Geoff Aymer), the local undertaker whose business is thriving, hustler Wolf (Ray Emmet Brown), who uses the diner’s phone to run a numbers racket, and the stoic Holloway, an unemployed painter and decorator, (Leon Herbert). Most poignant though is Hambone, (the excellent Derek Ezenagu), brought low by his obsession with getting fairly paid by the white butcher customer for work he did twenty years ago. The outside world relentlessly encroaches upon the lives of the company, first when the animated ex-con Sterling (Michael Salami) returns to the Hill looking for work and for Risa, and as the rallies, protesting racial injustice, increase in intensity.

Impossible to fault all the performances or the careful direction of Nancy Medina, who was similarly adept with Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman at the Young Vic and, I gather, Inua Ellams’s The Half God of Rainfall at the Kiln. Easy to see why she has won both the Peter Hall Directors Award and the Genesis Future Director Award. The lighting and sound design from other young talents Amy Mae and Ed Lewis was equally accomplished. Which means the somewhat discursive nature of events of stage is down to August Wilson alone. That is not to say that the lyrical dialogue, what and how the characters say, isn’t pitch perfect. Just that there is rather to much of it. Too many layers if you will. This is true of the other plays in the cycle I believe but here the contrast of individual reversals with societal transformation is just a little too carefully wrought.

As a production it matches the high standards previously set by English Touring Theatre. As a play maybe not quite as convincing as the others in the cycle I have seen. Still very keen to see further instalments however and given the resonance of the parts that AW wrote for black actors I expect I won’t be waiting too much longer for just such an opportunity.

Until the Flood at the Arcola Theatre *****

Until the Flood

Arcola Theatre, 10th September 2019

I am in awe of actors, and indeed other performers, who are prepared to step out on a stage alone to entertain, inspire and educate us. A one character monologue is tricky enough. To present multiple characters surely more so. To inhabit 8 different, very different, people with no more than a jacket and a chair. 8 fictional characters though all based on the testimonies of real people. To also pack a emotional punch, lay bare the fault-lines of race in modern America but never harangue or proselytise. Surely impossible.

Not when Dael Orlandersmith takes to the stage with her work Under the Flood. The Tourist first alighted on Ms Orlandersmith’s work through the revival of Yellowman at the Young Vic a couple of years ago which tells the story of two friends Eugene and Alma across three decades, dissecting race, gender and, especially, colourism, and was way better than anticipated. Until the Flood, where she is both writer and performer, also blew me away despite now raised expectations.

It was first performed in St Louis in 2016 and as a response to the shooting of Michael Brown and in the suburb of Ferguson and the protests that followed. 18 year old unarmed African American Michael Brown was shot by a 28 year old white police officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. The circumstances of the killing were contested with the account of Michael Brown’s friend Dorian Wilson, who was with him, significantly diverging from that of the police officer. The police response to the unrest which followed the killing was viewed by many as excessively heavy-handed. A grand jury decided not to indict Wilson and a US Department of Justice investigation concluded that he had shot Brown in self defence. Many in the community believed this to be a cover-up given inconsistencies in witness statements and forensic evidence and biases in the legal process.

Prior to this short run at the Arcola the play was a highlight at the Edinburgh Festival. Dramatisation of cause celebres is a staple of recent American theatre but DO goes a stage further by attempting to show the character types which inhabit the world where this kind of tragedy is possible, almost inevitable, and to show the behaviours, prejudices and reactions that underpin it. There is Paul, a young black man, consumed by fear of the police and violence, hanging on until he can escape to college. The unapologetic white homophobe racist, Dougray, who revels in his hate, describing how he would gun down a group of black teenagers. Rusty, the retired white police officer who excuses shootings as inevitable given the stresses of the job. Connie, the white liberal woman whose attempts at balance only serve to highlight the assumptions she makes. Louisa, the wise black senior woman who tells us of the overt racism of her childhood, including so-called “sundown” laws. The pumped up, frustrated black youth who only sees disrespect around him. A black, female, lesbian minister who speaks to a convincing tolerance. Reuben, the barber shop owner who refuses to conform to the stereotype that two students, one black, one white, who come to Ferguson to study the case, wish to impose on him.

All these characters become more than their race or situation in DO’s hands – education, class, employment, neighbourhood change, gender roles, all get a look in – but it is race, and maybe more importantly, shared white privilege, is what pulls the narratives together. Takeshi Kata’s set offers a shrine to Michael Brown’s memory backed by video designs from Nicholas Hussong introducing each character and offering, along with Justin Ellington’s sound, snatches of the events in Ferguson. I suspect Neel Keller didn’t have too much to do by way of directing DO who is a mesmeric stage presence. It is tough to listen to, and moving as you would expect, but DO still finds humour.

Faith Ringgold at the Serpentine Galleries review ****

Faith Ringgold

Serpentine Galleries, 22nd August 2019

Once again it has taken the Tourist way too long to gather his thoughts on something he has seen. Which means this snappy retrospective of the work of Africa- American artist has now finished. Sorry. It was Very Good. I guess that doesn’t help.

I first encountered Ms Ringgold’s work at the Soul of a Nation exhibition at Tate Modern in 2017. Thematic anthologies are always a dream for an art numpty like the Tourist, giving an opportunity to discover all manner of ideas and artists, but this exhibition was especially fertile. Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Charles White, (especially) David Hammons, Timothy Washington, Barkley Hendricks and Melvin Edwards. All blokes. Which made Betye Saar and especially Faith Ringgold stand out, because not only does their art tackle issues of race, African-American identity and history, it also powerfully explores gender inequality.

Given Ms Ringgold’s engagement with the civil rights and feminist movements in the US over her five decade career it is perhaps surprising to learn that this the first exhibition devoted solely to her work in Europe let alone the UK. Through paintings, posters, books, sculpture, performance and her fascinating quilts she makes acute political points whose relevance has certainly not declined with time. Through her teaching and through the National Black Feminist Organisation which she founded in 1973 with her artist daughter Michelle Wallace, Ms Ringgold has been as much activist and influencer, (with real purpose, not like today’s self-obsessed “model/icons”), as artist.

She was born (1930) in Harlem where she grew up immersed in jazz culture and the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, majored in art education and started her career teaching. She began painting in the 1950s and 1960s influenced by African art, Impressionism and Cubism and inspired by writers such as James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka. She turned to art full time in 1973.

This survey opens with 7 paintings from her American People series from 1963 to 1967 which examines social inequality and racial tensions at the height of the Civil Rights movement from a woman’s perspective. These works formed the core of her inaugural exhibition at the Spectrum Gallery in 1967. The large scale US Postage Stamp Commemorating The Advent Of Black Power about sums it up. Oversizing a stamp, Pop Art style, depicting 100 sets of eyes and noses, in a grid, with 10 black faces across the diagonal, (symbolising the 10% of the population that was African American in 1967), the worlds BLACK POWER are spelled out across the other diagonal, but with WHITE POWER not so subtly encrypted horizontally. As with her quilts later on you are presented with an arresting overall image, here using flat, bright paint, which demands further detailed inspection, even after the message has made its mark. At the time FR said she did not have a clear idea of what Black Power represented but she did feel the need to ask the question about how women would fit into the struggle. And, if you ever wondered where the inspiration for the iconic Obama Hope poster campaign came from look no further.

In the 1970’s she led protests against the representation of women and Black artists in galleries, designed posters to support her politics and organised The People’s Flag Show in 1973 where she was arrested for “desecrating” the American flag. Her paintings darkened in tone, drawing from African art and, away from traditional oils. She began to explore the potential in fabric after being stirred by the C14 and C15 Tibetan tanka paintings that she saw in the Rijksmuseum on a visit to Europe in 1972.

Less convincingly to my eyes were the abstract works from the Windows of the World series made with her fashion designer mother Willi Posey. This diverse practice was represented in Room 2 but. based on the punters when I visited, one work in particular reels you in. The United States of Attica dates from 1971/72, prompted by the Attica NY prison riots where 43 people died, and depicts a map of the US in green, red and black, the colours of Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist flag, recording the details of genocides that have occurred in the US from the colonial era.

In the 1980s FR first turned to the story quilts for which she is best known and which form the heart of this exhibition. These incorporate images and text to present the inter-generational stories of African American women from slavery through to the present, often painful and poignant, but also powerful and uplifting. FR’s great-great grandmother Susie Shannon, born into slavery, was compelled to sew quilts for plantation owners.

I was particularly struck by the triptych of quilts extracted from the Slave Rape series which show naked women modelled on FR’s daughters fleeing through stylised undergrowth. The colours and lines reflect the rich textiles of Central Africa, the images are made more alarming by the absence of the pursuers. Then there is Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemina? from 1983 which reimagines the racist stereotype from interwar minstrel shows used in the pancake mix brand as a determined matriarch who runs her own restaurant chain. The embroidering is exquisite, the characters sparkle, the text demands to be read. Rare sight to see people. after the regulation snap on their phones then standing still to follow the story across four generations. The other highlight was the personal Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pounds Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt from 1986.

Later on in the 1980s FR moved away from narrative quilts to something closer to her earlier oil paintings and, for me at least, some of the classic art of the Harlem Renaissance, most obviously in Jazz Stories . Though the powerful political messages remain. In fact maybe even more so. Even without the text these dense complex works, as in the earlier pieces, need time to fully take in. We Came to America from 1997, part of the American Collection, shows a dreadlocked Statue of Liberty with black baby in one hand and torch in the other, astride an Atlantic Ocean, filled with writhing black bodies. The ship in the background is based on JMW Turner’s The Slave Ship. FR created a fictional artist creator for the series who dreams of walking back across the sea to Africa arm in arm with her brothers and sisters.

The Tar Beach quilt from 1988 is more autobiographical recalling childhood summers spent on the hot roof of her apartment building in Harlem with parents, friends and siblings. This formed the basis for FR’s acclaimed books for children. Subway Graffiti from 1987 shows friends and neighbours crammed on a subways platform with names and tags filling the panels which surround them.

But just in case we get too comfortable this collection ends with something more trenchant in the form of 1997’s The Flag is Bleeding again from the American Collection. We see a black women bleeding from her heart protecting her two small children all against the backdrop of the Stars and Stripes. The title is the same as that used in the American People series which opened the exhibition though that picture shows a black man armed with a knife, a white woman, and a white armed man peering through the bleeding flag.

The exhibition, and this is no criticism, did not include any of FR’s mixed media masks and costumes which she created in 1973, notably the Witch Mask series and the Family of Woman Mask series. Or any of her life-sized soft sculptures, which, like the masks, take inspiration from African art. The masks and costumes, together with music and dance, formed the basis of FR’s performance in the 1970s and 1980s which often retold the stories in her quilts.

Even without these elements this exhibition gave a very clear overview of FR’s practice. This is art with a clear message on behalf of those marginalised by race or gender, aware of its origins and its history. Nothing ambiguous or simplistic here. It elevates materials and making over theory and process, anger over aesthetic, and invites the viewer to take time to reflect on its meaning.

Above all else FR is a story teller. I like stories. And, I’ll bet, you do to. It’s just a shame that some of these stories still have to be told.

Radio at the Arcola Theatre review ****

Radio

Arcola Theatre, 25th June 2019

Never easy to work out what to sign up for at the Arcola Theatre since so much of quality and interest passes through the doors. So the Tourist has adopted a somewhat whimsical approach and given up worrying too much if he misses the cream of its output, However this was different. I was very taken with Al Smith’s take on Diary of a Madman at the Gate and thus more annoyed that I missed his last effort, Harrogate, at the Royal Court, So this, a revival of one of his first plays, written when he was a regular for Holby City and Eastenders, was an opportunity not to be missed.

And, whilst I cannot imagine another way of playing Peter Shaffer’s gift of a part, Adam Gillen was a memorable Mozart in the NT Amadeus from 2016. For Mr Gillen it is who plays Charlie Fairbanks the “star” of Radio. As the blurb says, “Charlie Fairbanks was born in the dead centre of the United States at the deda centre of the 20th century. Americans are going to the Moon and Charlie’s sure he’ll be the first one three. But as he shines his spotlight on the Moon, so too does it illuminate the darker side to his nation’s history. Radio is a story about memory, love and spaceships“.

A pretty fair summary. From this notion Mr Smith spins a yarn that more than holds out attention for its 80 minutes or so running time even if it only hints at a critique of modern America’s inability to live up to its Dream. Adam Gillen’s Charlie is an optimist, brought up in Kansas, though his Dad moves the family around to ensure his tourist schtick, the house at the centre of the US from which he sells flags, is maintained. His dreams of being an astronaut, fuelled by the radio and the optimism of the 1950s and the Kennedy presidency, fade as he confronts the reality of the Vietnam War, the actual Moon landings and destitution as a veteran through the Nixon and Ford years.

The intricate text meanders but always illuminates, Josh Roche’s direction is never rushed, Sophie Thomas’s set is minimal, a skein of wires in red, white and blue and a few props and Peter Small’s lighting is similarly direct in the atmospheric downstairs space in the Arcola. So everything is focussed on Mr Gillen. There is more than a whiff of Forrest Gump in Charlie but his performance commits and so persuades us of Charlie’s brand of self-conscious sincerity, whilst still sketching out the supporting characters, Mum, Dad, girlfriend and so on. This kind of close-up monologue always takes guts on the part of the actor, especially when playing an Everyman on to which the external world is projected, but AG, bar a few accent slips, is utterly convincing.

King Hedley II at the Theatre Royal Stratford East review ****

King Hedley II

Theatre Royal Stratford East, 6th June 2019

The Pittsburgh (or Century) Cycle. Ten plays written by August Wilson (above) charting the African- American experience in the US in each decade of the C20. All bar one set in the same Pittsburgh Hill district, where August Wilson grew up. In the 1920s and 1930s this district was the hub of jazz culture. By the 1980s however, as the community was left behind and the planners, unsympathetically, moved in, Pittsburgh suffered the same fate as many other inner city areas in the US. The Cycle is not strictly chronological but is often connected. There were Pulitzer Prizes for Fences and The Piano Lesson. AW was inspired by, in his own words, blues music, the writing of Argentinian Jose Luis Borges, the African-American playwright Amiri Baraka and the African-American artist Romare Bearden, (most well know for his powerful work in collage).

So far the Tourist has seen this, Fences (with Lenny Henry as lead Troy Maxson) and the NT production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with its A list cast led by Sharon D Clarke. And I have Two Trains Running coming up at the Royal and Derngate with the others on the bucket list. From the experiences so far this are slow-burn, emotional, painstakingly constructed dramas which carefully scrutinise characters, showing the joys, frustrations and disappointments of their everyday lives. Very specific in terms of time, place and setting, but universal in terms of message. Political with a small “p”. Measured and naturalistic.

King Hedley II certainly take its time, clocking in at near 3 1/2 hours, and starts small ending on a more melodramatic scale, almost Chekovian. All the action takes place in the back yard of Ruby’s (Martina Laird) brownhouse on Pittsburgh Hill, and silence, or any non-naturalistic trickery, is not part of the gig. So you have to want to hear these people speak. Fortunately the words Mr Wilson puts into their mouths are powerful, real and compelling. Which gives the cast here, under the direction of Nadia Fall, plenty to get their acting teeth into. Ms Fall’s first season in charge at the TRSE has been a triumph. Her second season looks like it will be a repeat. A combination of home-grown and brought in productions that celebrate diversity, are relevant and, above all, are entertaining. The house is filling up and reaching out. That’s impressive.

Anyway King Henley II was probably the pick of the crop on last year’s announcement, (though I would suggest The Village, The Unreturning and Equus, which is transferring to Trafalgar Studios and deserves your attention, all turned out to be better), on the strength of Mr Wilson’s reputation, the generous support of Mr Wilson’s widow Constanaza Romero, and the casting of Lenny Henry. As I know from Fences, Othello and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, our Lenny is a magnetic stage presence and packs an emotional acting punch. In some ways he is almost too big a character. However here, in the role of Elmore, he takes something of, well I hesitate to call it a back seat, but he is not the linch-pin of the action. That role belongs to Aaron Pierre who plays the eponymous title character, and he is, properly, awesome.

Mr Pierre hails from Lewisham, where he went to the local college, before getting into LAMDA. His professional debut was as Cassio in last year’s Othello which marked Sir Mark Rylance’s return to the Globe. He’s done a bit of telly as well, (he will appear in Barry Jenkins’s The Underground Railway on Amazon), but this is this first stage lead. He will be a big star no doubt. And, just to be clear, he doesn’t play for Shrewsbury Town.

King Hedley II is an ex-con who returns to his childhood home after serving seven years for murder but is having difficulty adjusting back to life. He wants to provide for wife Tonya (Cherrelle Skeete) and start a family but employment proves elusive, this being 1985 in Reagan’s America/ So he conjures up a plan with his upbeat best mate Mister (Dexter Flanders) to sell knock-off refrigerators to the local community. Once they have saved enough they will then set up a video store. The plan, you will not be surprised to learn, doesn’t come off. King Hedley and Tonya share the house with Ruby. Hedley’s mother, though the relationship between mother and son is fractured. Ruby left Hedley to pursue a singing career so that he was brought up by his aunt, whose house this was, and is angry that she has returned to claim the house after his aunt died. Stool Pigeon (Leo Wringer), who is something of a fire and brimstone prophet, lives next door and, whilst we never see her, the death of Aunt Ester (“a washer of souls”), who appears in other plays in the Cycle, hangs heavy over the action. Many of the characters here first appear in Seven Guitars the play which premiered before KHII, in 1995, which is set in the 1940’s.

The opening act is not all doom and gloom, there’s plenty of bantz, but Hedley’s anger at the cards that life has dealt him, as he slouches in his chair in the yard, fiddles with his gun and tries to plant some seeds, is palpable. Into this volatile mix comes Elmore, Lenny Henry’s character, an ex-lover of Ruby and a hustler and chancer with a natty (if you like 70’s suits) dress sense. Hedley, as we find out, has good reason to resent Elmore and tensions build.

There are several strands to the story and Mr Wilson and Ms Fall are determined to give them all a fair hearing which does mean the play drags a little before it all comes together. The ending aims at tragedy but doesn’t quite scale the heights of the Greeks or Arthur Miller. Fate, male violence, the impact of the past on the present, the crushing of hope brought on by Reaganomics, individual responsibility, all are themes which are rehearsed in some often wordy monologues. Peter McKintosh’s set is a faithful retention of the brownstone terrace but there is little therefore to distract the eye. Howard Harrison’s lighting is a treat and there are a few, though maybe not enough, musical distractions, alongside Christopher Shutt’s electronic sound design.