Tag: Bob Crowley

Alys, Always at the Bridge Theatre review ****

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Alys, Always

Bridge Theatre, 25th February 2019

Said it before and I’ll say it again. You have to be careful with adaptations of novels and/or films on stage. There may be enough in character and plot to justify the transfer but there may not always, (no pun intended), be enough in the form of drama, spectacle and movement to make it a resounding success. So it proved here. There is plenty to enjoy here, and Nicholas Hytner’s direction wrings as much colour as its possible out of the material, especially against the backdrop of a crisp design concept from Bob Crowley, and it is, no doubt, a good story, but as theatre, well not quite.

I don’t know the Harriet Lane novel from 2012 on which Lucinda Coxon, (whose work for stage and screen I have also contrived to miss bar The Crimson Petal and the White adaptation), has created the text. But I can see the temptation. It would make a terrific mini-series. As would, I suspect, Her, Ms Lane’s second novel from the sound of it. Harriet Lane began as a journalist herself, I remember her Guardian column, before becoming a novelist when her eyesight was unfortunately imperilled.

Frances Thorpe is a humble millennial sub-editor cum factotum for a Sunday supplement, the Questioner, who, by a twist of fate, finds her life and career catapulted into a new, gilded league. How she plays the circumstances is the nub of the tale. Gold-digging schemer or realistic opportunist? Becky S, Brideshead, Ripley (without the sociopathic tendencies), Eve Harrington, Holly Golightly, those who find, or position, themselves amongst their “betters” are a cultural staple and these are only the most interesting ones. And, as it happens, in one of those serendipitous coincidences which punctuate the life of the idle Cultur-tarian, the Tourist has subsequently seen two of these iconic parvenus in the guise of stage versions of The Talented Mr Ripley and All About Eve. (More to follow, informed, as these comments are, by the far greater literary intelligence of the SO, my carer for all these entertainments).

The tale of Frances is more subtle than many of these comparators, being more contemporary, set in the rarefied world of publishing, but there isn’t too much that will come as a surprise here. Psychological thriller? That is probably a bit of a stretch. Wry comedy of manners? In parts yes, there is plenty to laugh at, but this doesn’t go all out to skewer the manners, pretensions and behaviour of its characters. We need Frances to present a conundrum, difficult to pin down, but not a total blank, and we do need the dimensions of her character to be explored. Which, by and large, they are not.

Frances’s journey is sufficiently supple though to require a convincing lead performance and, in Joanne Froggatt, (made famous by Downton Abbey I gather), that is what it gets. Whilst the narrative of put upon mouse at work rising to the top and dumping on former colleagues along the way is a little cumbersome it is, in parts, a treat. The relationship that develops with Alys’s family and specifically her grieving husband, Laurence Kyte, (not giving much away here you can’t read elsewhere), also provides an opportunity for some sparkling dialogue. However Robert Glenister has to work awfully hard to bring the overweening, prize winning author to life and the knife-edge of Frances’s conflicted motives starts to blunt in the later two-hander scenes.

Leah Gayer as vacuous daughter Polly has a lot more fun. This is her stage debut. She’ll be back. Polly verges on “poor little rich girl” cliche but Ms Gayer somehow manages to elicit some sympathy for the position her character finds herself in. Her brother Teddy (Sam Woolf) is initially on to Frances but fizzles out thereafter. Sylvestra Le Touzel has a lot of fun with Mary, Frances’s long-serving, frayed boss, as does Simon Manyonda as her condescending, partying colleague, Oliver. The rest of the cast don’t get much opportunity to delve beneath the lines with the exception of Joanna David as Charlotte, the family friend who alone seems to penetrate Frances’s feelings and actions.

If directing is all about moving actors from A to B then there is n0-one better than Mr Hytner, who creates forward momentum and some suspense, from what are quite static scenes. The set, with its thrust stage, sliding room configuration and generous use of video (Luke Halls), is likewise silky smooth. As is sound (Gareth Fry) and lighting (Jon Clark). But the impeccable presentation is part of the problem. The play’s two acts clock in at just over two hours but it doesn’t outstay its welcome nor feel rushed. I was intrigued and entertained but never really challenged. Nor was Frances. Her progress is untroubled by doubt, from self, the other protagonists or audience. I remember only one knowing aside from Frances and one killer line from Charlotte.

I gather the book is altogether darker and Frances a far sharper piece of work, and less reliable narrator, than we see here. Translating that tone, that voice, to stage is always challenging. By taking the safe route Mr Hytner, in the first play he has directed written by a woman, will deservedly get bums on the superb Bridge seats, which is after all his purpose, but I hope his next outing, a new Dream will be something more memorable. Mind you it’s Shakespeare so he is off to a head start. After all when it comes to stage tales of self-advancers big Will served up the very best. Richard III. Now that’s how to do it.

Allelujah at the Bridge Theatre review ****

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Allelujah

Bridge Theatre, 12th September 2018

Yet again by the time the Tourist gets round to seeing a major London premiere and, worst still given his feckless nature, comments on it, it is as good as over. Mind you the good news is that, as far as I can see, Allelujah was an unqualified success for the Bridge Theatre, playing to full(ish) houses which can only be a good thing. Nick Hytner, the Bridge AD and director here, and Alan Bennett go back a long way. If there was one thing guaranteed to get bums on those plush, comfy(ish) Bridge seats then this was it. Hopefully more people get to see just how marvellous this new theatre is and will return for whatever comes next. If they have any sense at all they will sign up for A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter, the new Martin McDonagh play, which opens here in a couple of weeks.

Now I am not sure there is, maybe bar Queen Liz II, a person more qualified to take on the National Treasure mantle than Alan Bennett. You know pretty much exactly what you are going to get when Mr Bennett puts pen to paper. If you love his wry, quizzical artistic voice, then you were never going to be disappointed by this. And plainly there is a pretty wide demographic who do love that voice. But that voice does come with some drawbacks, a few of which were on show in Allelujah. He can be, dare I say it, just that teeniest bit lazy when it comes to getting a laugh. (Mind you any image of louche behaviour in Yorkshire towns is pretty funny I guess). His characters have aged with him and he can veer towards the stereotypical. Overt nostalgia and sentimentality can seep into the text. He doesn’t really go in for plot, preferring to stitch together episodes to tell his story. All in all then sometimes Alan Bennett can be a bit too Alan Bennett.

Yet slowly and surely, underneath all that Bennettism, he makes his points here such that, by the end of Allelujah, I, and I suspect much of the audience, was both moved and angered by the plight of its subject, the NHS, here becoming a metaphor for the breakdown of community and State by decades of neo-liberalism and “market solutions”. The Bethlehem is an august Yorkshire hospital, meeting its “targets” but threatened by closure simply because it is too small and negates the fatuous “economies of scale” that Government demands. The surprisingly hands-on Chair of its trust, Salter, a robust performance from Peter Forbes, isn’t going down without a fight however, recruiting a documentary team (Sam Bond and Nadine Higgin) to the cause. The action is centred on the geriatric ward, highlighting that many of the patients here have nowhere else to go, from an august cast of twelve, dare I say, mature actors including the likes of Julia Foster, Gwen Taylor and Simon Williams. (I bet rehearsals for Alleluhah were a hoot). They sing, they dance, they reminisce, they moan, they have inappropriate conversations.

One of their number, Joe (a cantankerous Jeff Rawle, an AB regular), is paid a visit by his gay son, Colin, (Samuel Barnett), who just happens to be the slimey management consultant who is behind the closure plan. We also see a pair of grasping relatives, the Earnshaws, (Rosie Ede and Duncan Wisbey), who blame the hospital for robbing them of the inheritance, (note to AB, check out taper relief), feckless work experience teen Andy (David Moorst) and various put-upon staff (Manish Gandhi, Richie Hart, Nicola Hughes and Gary Wood).

The crux of AB’s didactic though is revealed by a pair of excellent performances from Sacha Dhawan as Dr Valentine and by the peerless Deborah Findlay as Sister Gilchrist. She has an alarming system to ensure efficiency on her wards. Yet when she delivers her valedictory “farewell” speech there is real poignancy. Deborah Findlay really is a special actor who never seems to miss a step in the roles she takes on nor in the performances she gives. This is no exception.

Yet if you really want to be reminded of just how biting AB can still be when he wants to then look no further than the closing lines, delivered direct to audience from Sacha Dhawan’s student visa immigrant doctor. AB, by his own admission a “blend of backward-looking radicalism and conservative socialism”, is angry about the country we have become, and the risks we face, and, wisely, uses its most beloved institution, to vent his spleen. Don’t worry this is no in-yer-face political diatribe, it is AB through and through, and he doesn’t preach, but there is a cumulative rage which takes it well beyond 2012’s People or the autobiographical plays.

Nick Hytner is obviously an expert at presenting AB’s material and creating action out of pure text and here he is immeasurably helped by Bob Crowley’s versatile staging and the choreography of Arlene Philips and her assistant Richard Roe. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a soundtrack album emerging from the play: if you wanted to keep the old folk happy with a “knees up” at Christmas this fits the bill kids.

Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art is currently on tout with Matthew Kelly as Auden and David Yelland as Britten and we have Mark Gatiss to look forward to in The Madness of George III at Nottingham Playhouse (to be broadcast on NT Live). I don’t think it will be too long before Allelujah gets another outing. It will be interesting to see just in what direction this country travels between now and then.

 

The Moderate Soprano at the Duke of York’s Theatre review ****

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The Moderate Soprano

Duke of York’s Theatre, 7th June 1018

There are a couple of weeks to go in the run of David Hare’s The Moderate Soprano at the Duke of York’s Theatre. There are plenty of (discounted) tickets left. You could do a lot worse than seeing this if you are after a bit of last minute theatre action. It charts the relationship of eccentric millionaire type John Christie and his singer wife Audrey Mildmay, (and the bunch of pre WWII emigres from Central Europe who helped them), as they set out to create the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in, essentially, their back garden. So if a gentle, though still involving, tale of toffs ill-advisedly pursuing their opera dream appeals don’t hesitate. If not I’d understand but you would be missing a treat from one of out greatest living playwrights.

Roger Allam, complete with convincing bald pate courtesy of make-up, and preposterously high-waisted linen trousers, plays Captain John Christie a textbook British oddball who inherited the Glyndebourne estate but didn’t then loaf around Brideshead style, instead leading his troops from the front in WWI, teaching science at Eton and then poking his nose into to matters of Efficiency in the matter of Government in WWII. He loved the opera, specifically Wagner, (I gather some people do though it beats me why), making regular pilgrimages to Bayreuth. He eventually finds love, late in life, and marries English soprano singer Audrey Mildmay played by Nancy Caroll, after much persistent wooing.

The Captain hatches a plan to build a small. 300 seater, opera house in the grounds of the estate, as you do. He recruits conductor Fritz Busch as Musical Director, (his brother was the founder of the legendary Busch Quartet), Professor Carl Ebert as Artistic Director and Rudolf Bing as Festival Director and overall marketing supremo. All three have escaped Nazi Germany, Bing, (whose extraordinary life is worthy of its own dramatisation), because he was a well-to-do Jew married to a Russian ballerina, Busch because his artistic freedom was curtailed (in savage fashion) by Nazi sympathisers, including his own orchestra at one point, and Ebert because of his voluble criticism of the regime. In a series of informal meetings between the five we learn, as does Christie who is initially sanguine about the changes in the Germany he admires, how the regime has attacked the culture it hates, how Christie’s arm is twisted such that Mozart, not Wagner, becomes the staple of the inaugural pre-war seasons for reasons of practicality and how Audrey becomes the glue that holds the whole project together (and gets to sing). Christie aim was to ring world class opera to Britain, previously accustomed to more amateurish fare, and to do this he turned to the best that Europe had to offer.

The most powerful scenes however, in large part thanks to the supreme skill of both Nancy Carroll and Roger Allam, are the flash forwards after the Christies have passed on the baton of running the Festival and as Audrey’s health progressively deteriorates. Audrey and their two kids were sent by Christie to the safety of Canada during the War but, unable to receive money from England, Audrey needed to sing to get by, which eventually led to a bust up with Busch when he refused to cast her in his Cosi at the Met, the shop where he, and Bing, had pitched up post Glyndebourne. They eventually made up and Busch returned to Sussex from 1950. It seems that Audrey was poorly throughout when she returned, often cancelling performances, but was still able to support Christie at Glyndebourne, help Bing set up the Edinburgh Festival, (yes that Edinburgh Festival), and sit on the Arts Council. What a trooper.

We see her near the end, having lost her sight despite surgery for high blood pressure, and the devotion and love between her and Christie pours out off the stage. I am a sucker for watching art portraying old people still plainly in love but I defy you not to be drawn in. Christie in turn is looked after, by faithful retainer Jane Smith (Jade Williams) after Nancy passes away. Lovely stuff.

I fear I may have given a bit too much of the story away but perhaps this means you can see why David Hare, who I assume loves the opera, was drawn to it. Now I have to admit that I would love to see Mr Hare rustle up one of those searing, state of the nation multi-character extravaganzas of old, much like his recent Collateral on the telly. On the other hand his more “domestic”, heir-to-Rattigan, ordinary-made-extraordinary dramas, of which this is a prime example, are just as satisfying. Jeremy Herrin, who has form with both writer and cast, directs with his usual flair, Bob Crowley’s new set opens up to reveal stunning interior and exterior representations of Glyndebourne itself, including Christie’s impressive organ, (no tittering at the back), ably assisted by Paule Constable’s lighting and Simon Baker’s sound designs.

Paul Jesson as Busch, Anthony Calf as Ebert and, especially, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Bing are all perfectly cast and tremendous foils for Mr Allam and Ms Carroll, who reprise their roles from the original Hampstead Theatre run. The comedy, which is wired in to Mr Hare’s text, is beautifully executed, to sweetly contrast with the pathos.

Now I ave never been, nor would I ever go, to Glyndebourne. For the same price as even a ticket upstairs at Glyndebourne I could get a couple of luxury visits to Covent Garden, and several years worth of fun from my normal high up perch, or three or four trips to the ENO. I don’t have an evening suit and would vehemently object to wearing one anyway. And I can’t be arsed to travel to Sussex with a bunch of braying toffs. Oh, and as I have said before, most of the classic canon in the world of opera, which is Glyndebourne’s meat and drink, is a dreadful bore. So I can assure you my enjoyment of this play has nothing to do with any great love of the institution despite the fact I am a shocking cutural snob. It is just a very pleasing presentation of a very interesting story, unafraid of its explicit Romanticism.