Tag: Rae Smith

Catching up (Part 4)

January 2021 to April 2021

The novelty of digital entertainment by now very much worn off but, fortunately, there were plenty of other worthwhile distractions (the return of birdwatching after four decades perhaps the most surprising) for the Tourist to mask the lack of live cultural stimulation. (And travel, which absence, I am ashamed to say, loomed larger than it should have done).

I can see from my list of film and TV watching, (yes I keep lists of that, so what, it doesn’t make me sad), that, even with the shameful stuff which I choose not to record , my viewing habits were rapidly deteriorating. From art cinema, via Netflix box-sets, to My Kitchen Rules. Clearly, in order to maintain my customary high level of cultural snobbery, effort was required and, no doubt, these were the hard yards of lockdown.

BTW I am acutely aware that these catch up lists are veering ever closer to those humblebrag “family year in review” missives your get at Christmas from “friends” you never liked in the first place. For which I am truly sorry.

January 2021.

As it happens we kicked off the year with a family outing to Christmas at Kew Gardens. Now the Tourist has a very soft spot for light displays, especially at Christmas. This is in sharp contrast to his Scroogerian approach to the rest of the festive season. Anyway this fetish has meant that the SO, BD and LD have been dragged along, much against their collective will, to some shockingly bad would be son et lumieres. (It has just occurred to me that MS has, stealthily, managed to avoid these outings). As it turned out this one actually hit the mark though maybe this said more about our lockdown ennui than the displays themselves. Don’t tell the family but I’ve already booked for this year.

A couple of “live” theatre streams. One a revisit. ITA’s Kings of War which remains a top 10 bucket list watch for all of you (along with their Roman Tragedies). Obvs not as thrilling on a screen as in a theatre but I didn’t miss a moment of the 4+ hours, though, wisely, they offered a break for me tea. Ivo van Hove adapts a translation from Rob Klinkenberg of Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III, focussing on the successive kings as leaders amid the politics that informed their decisions. That doesn’t mean he jettisons the human dramas for the big picture stuff, you will recognise the plays and in some ways the human foibles are made more acute, but it does mean a skewering of detail and a different take on language, translating the Dutch back into English sub-titles, so stripping back verse and prose to the essential. Jack Cade, most of the hoi polloi gone and the women reduced largely to necessary accessories (though this in itself is illuminating). Battle scenes replaced with a crashing score. Other key scenes given a contemporary twist and repeated visual signifiers given centre stage. The corridors of power delivered in a sterile office aesthetic. The technological trickery of video, live and pre recorded. Voice-overs, sheep, trumpet fanfares, war poetry. And Hans Kesting. bursting out of his too small suit, quite simply the best Richard III ever. History plays as Netflix Nordic thriller. Which trust me, in this vase, is a marvellous thing.

Quite a contrast with Mischief Theatre’s Mischief Movie Night in which our favourite comedy theatre troupe take a genre, location and title from the (premium paying) on line audience and improvise a film from there. Like most of Mischief’s works the spontaneity is, of course, well tempered with meticulous planning, and MC Jonathan Sayer has to push, shove and stall in certain directions, but there are some genuinely funny improvised moments (even for Sayer himself) amid the water treading. It has been interesting to watch Mischief, on stage and screen, keep trying to expand the boundaries of their craft, and monetisation, of their concept. That they can continue do this is down to genuine skill from the core troupe. I confess there are times when it can get a little repetitive but just as the ideas start to pall, even annoy, along comes another laugh out loud moment or idea. Mind you, it isn’t always that memorable. Witness I can’t actually remember what film they created the night the family tuned in. Oops.

What else? A couple of European theatre recordings that were interesting but at the outer limit of the Tourist’s tolerance and lost not a little in translation: Deutsches Theater’s Maria Stuart directed by Anne Lenk and Theatre of Nations The Idiot based on the Dostoevsky classic. Closer to home, revisits of Lucy Kirkwood’s “science” play Mosquitoes and Hytner’s NT Othello with the most excellent Messrs Lester and Kinnear as well as the 2013 Young Vic A Doll’s House (though Hettie Morahan was a bit too strung out for my taste). Not so bowled over by the NT’s cash cow War Horse (see what I did there), which I finally clocked. Though not because of its obvious quality, just because this clearly needs to be seen in a theatre and not beamed through a little laptop with a buggered screen. (It would be so helpful if NT at Home could solve the daft technology gap when it comes to Samsung tellies).

February 2021.

I won’t bore with waxing rhapsodic about the live stream of ITA’s Roman Tragedies. You can find my “review’ of the real deal at the Barbican elsewhere on these pages. Like Kings of War this is 6 hours of your life which you will want to get back. that’s why I watched it all over again. Very interesting to see the back stage camaraderie at the end of the adrenaline marathon, a clear demonstration of why this theatre company is the best in the world.

Another online theatre offer from The Original Theatre Company, The Haunting of Alice Bowles, adapted by Philip Franks from MR James’s The Experiment. Great cast led by Tamzin Outhwaite, Max Bowden and Stephen Boxer, a bright updating and some smart technicals but not quite as chilling as hoped. But then ghost stories when taken off the page rarely are, though the SO, who loves this sort of thing, lives in hope.

More successful was the Almeida’s Theatre’s Hymn, and not just because of the writing of the multi-talented Lolita Chakrabarti. I get the impression that she, and hubby, Adrian Lester, pretty much do what they like when it comes to acting. Because they can. When they work together, as here, and as in Red Velvet, well, you just know it’s going to be good. Though the secret sauce here came from Danny Sapani who played Benny to AL’s Gil. Ostensibly it’s a simple story of two black friends and their connection, simply staged and directed (by Blanche McIntyre). In other hands it could veer into cliche, Gil is a professional, comfortably off, Benny less so, but precisely by avoiding the soapbox and concentrating on their emotional connection, happy as well as said, they sing and dance would you believe, it draws you in and, by the end, wrings you out. That is down to the brilliance of the leads, you don’t even notice the distancing requirement, but also the naturalness of the writing. it is my belief that Ms C still has something even better up her sleeve.

And then there was the Sonia Friedman Uncle Vanya filmed at the Harold Pinter Theatre. I was too late into the run so missed out on the live take but this was a more than satisfactory replacement. Obviously Conor McPherson was just the man for the job when it came to another updated adaptation of Chekhov’s, IMHO, best play, and Toby Jones was bound to be a perfect Vanya. And directed by Ian Rickson, the master of letting classic texts breathe ,(I offer you Paradise, Romersholm, The Goat or Who Is Sylvia, The Birthday Party, Translations), whilst still offering contemporary connection. Here augmented for screen by Ross MacGibbon who gradually moves the cameras closer to the “action” as the emotional intensity screws up whilst always remembering we are in a theatre. With Rae Smith serving up a stunning set of decrepitude. The real win though came in the rest of the cast, Roger Allam’s pernickety hypochondriac Alexandre (replacing Ciaran Hinds from the stage version), Richard Armitage’s idealistic Astrov, Rosalind Eleazar’s languid Yelena, Aimee Lou Wood’s cheerful, in the circumstances, Sonya. Tragi-comedy I hear you say. Right here sir I say. Or rather on I Player until the end of the year.

The Young Vic Yerma with Billie Piper giving her all and more, the NT Antigone, more memorable for Christopher Eccleston’s Creon and Soutra Gilmour’s design than Jodie Whittaker’s Antigone, Russell T Davies’s whizz bang Midsummer Night’s Dream and a bonkers Nora: Christmas at the Helmers, Ibsen update from Katona Jozsef Szinhaz Theatre in Budapest.

But the best filmed theatre came courtesy of the (in)famous Peter Hall version of Aeschylus’s Oresteia from 1981, performed at the NT and then filmed for TV early on in Channel 4’s life. (Interesting to see what our “ostrich anus eating for money” Culture Secretary would make of that were it to be repeated). You can cobble together the three parts, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and Eumenides, thanks to some nice people at YouTube. Brace yourself for masks courtesy of Jocelyn Herbert, a stupendous, propulsive score from Harrison Birtwistle, a verse translation from Tony Harrison that mixes modern idioms with invented expression and some top drawer performances from the all male cast notably Pip Donagy’s Clytemnestra, Roger Gartland’s Electra and, especially, Greg Hicks’s Orestes. Not far behind as part of my Greek tragedy homework was Pier Paolo Pasolini’s quixotic Oedipus Rex.

March 2021.

Another offering from the team that brought us What a Carve Up! (see my prior catching up post). Though this The Picture of Dorian Gray wasn’t quite up to the standards set by that predecessor. The idea of updating everyone’s favourite fictional narcissist as a modern day influencer, replete with Instagram and dating apps, makes eminent sense and Fionn Whitehead as Dorian leaps at the chance to boost his likes and, literally, preserve his profile. However, despite contributions from the likes of Joanna Lumley, Emma McDonald, Alfred Enoch, Russell Tovey and Stephen Fry. Henry Filloux-Bennett’s adaptation never quite broke free of its central conceit (see what I did there) to properly explore Wilde’s morality tale.

Another enjoyable family entertainment this time in the form of Les Enfant Terrible’s Sherlock Holmes: An Online Adventure. This company has a proven track record in innovative, immersive theatre, and whilst this didn’t push the boundaries genre wise, it is straight sleuthing, guided, but it was fun, and for once Dad didn’t get left behind by his smarter, savvier, kids.

The RSC’s Dream, which used cutting edge live capture and gaming technology to give us half an hour with Puck in the Athenian forest, looked marvellous but, in some ways, the Q&A, showing how it was done, was more interesting that the film itself. Always remember theatre is text, actors, audience. Spectacle can expand but not trump this. At the other end Greenwich Theatre’s The After-Dinner Joke, directed by James Hadrell, was a billy basic Zoom rendition of Caryl Churchill’s TV play which served to highlight its proselytising flaws rather than its smart one-liners. And it pains me to say it but The Orange Tree‘s first foray into the C19 digital world, Inside, three plays, Guidesky and I, When the Daffodils and Ursa Major from respectively Deborah Bruce, Joel Tan and Joe White, directed by Anna Himali Howard, was somewhat disappointing. I know all involved can do better. Actually to be fair in Guidesky and I Samantha Spiro made a lot of her character’s lashing out to mask the grief after her mother’s death, Deborah Bruce wisely aping the master of the tragicomic monologue Alan Bennett, but the other two-handers felt forced.

More success this month came from my opera viewing. Bergen National Opera‘s streamed production of La clemenza di Tito, with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Edward Gardner, was an excellent introduction to the late Mozart opera which, until now, has passed me by. Mind you Mr Gardner has a habit of persuading in any opera that I might be predisposed to. He and his Norwegian band also offered the pick of the fair few streamed concerts i too in this month with a programme of Beethoven, Ligeti, Stravinsky and Berio. Scottish Opera filmed take from last year of Cosi fan tutte, a sort of reality TV take, didn’t quite convince but that is as much to do with the libretto/plot as the production. I am still waiting for that killer Cosi. On the other hand it was a joy to revisit Netia Jones’s exquisite Curlew River from 2013. Can’t match being there but well worth tracking down.

April 2021.

I am sorry to say that Outside, the second trilogy of streamed plays from the Orange Tree Theatre, didn’t really improve on the first, and not just because of a technical problem on the evening I tuned in. If I were a betting man, (which I resolutely am not, low risk, compounded returns being more my thing), I would say that Two Billion Beats, Prodigal and The Kiss by, respectively, Sonali Bhattacharyya, Kalungi Ssebandeke and Zoe Cooper and directed by Georgia Green, maybe lacked the two secret ingredients of great theatre, collaboration and time. More of both and all three plays could be turned into something tighter and more convincing to build on strong performances and the kernel of ideas they already have.

Witness Harm, Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s Bruntwood Prize winning play from the Bush Theatre directed by Atri Banerjee and with Leanne Best as the Woman in the version shown on BBC (Kelly Gough in the theatre version). She is an estate agent who sells a house to influencer Alice, whose friendship turns into obsession. A black comedy that presses all the right buttons could have been crashingly predictable in the wrong hands but not here. And I bet (looks like I am turning into a gambler) Ms Eclair-Powell went through careful iteration before polishing this jewel as well as benefitting from the insight of others along the way.

Sorry getting distracted again. Sadie, by David Ireland, which is still available on BBC I Player in contrast to Harm, was a casualty of lockdown never making its premiere at the Lyric Belfast, but instead filmed for the BBC Lights Up festival. The title character, played by Abigail McGibbon, has a fling with a Portuguese cleaner half her age. He seeks therapy, Sadie’s head is invaded by relatives from the past. This “triggers” an excursion into classic David Ireland absurdist black comedy, with the unresolved sectarianism of The Troubles as the backdrop, and, like Everything Between Us, Cyprus Avenue and The Ulster American, it is compelling, funny and unsettling in equal measure. BTW the BBC, for the same price as Netflix, keeps on churning out reams of unmatchable culture, drama, comedy and documentary. Netflix in contrast, mostly derivative shit. Christ I wish there was a way that the BBC and all the nepotistic elite that work for it (I am being sarcastic here) could find a way to shift its ecosystem to a financial model which allowed them to tell the Clown and his pathetic “culture war” acolytes to f*ck right off.

Talking of subscription models you would be a fool not to sign up for NT at Home. I confess I have not made as much use of this as I should have done since signing up but that is only because I have already seen most of the plays now showing. However, the Phedre from 2009, directed by Nick Hytner and using a Ted Hughes translation which hypes up Racine’s Alexandrian verse into something even more direct, was a welcome addition to the Tourist’s canon, neo-classical French drama still being a massive hole. Helen Mirren as lady P, Stanley Townsend as near-cuckolded Theseus, Dominic Cooper as hunky Hippolytus and John Shrapnel as sly Theramene all take a munch out of the bright Greek island scenery but that I guess is the play.

Rufus Norris was the directorial hand behind David Hare’s stage adaptation of Katherine Boo’s lively essay of life in a Mumbai slum in the shadow of the international airport, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Another inexplicable omission for the Tourist when it appeared in 2014 in the Lyttleton. It looks tremendous, the cast, eventually, inhabit their diverse characters, and the focus on one story, young Abdul’s determination to maintain his dignity and honesty, pays dividends.

Some tip-top theatre then but the best viewing of the month came from NTGent and Milo Rau’s The New Gospel. Now the astute observer will know that this is actually a film, despite its appearance as a paid for stream on the website of one of these avant-garde European theatre companies that the Tourist is so in love with. Typical remainer, “everything’s better in Europe”. Forgive me though as I didn’t know this when I booked it. Swiss director Milo Rau, to whom the Tourist, twenty years ago, bore a passing resemblance, is a cultural polymath who likes to cause a stir politically with his work. Top bloke. He has big plans for an activist NT Gent where he is now AD, which I will need to purview based on The New Gospel. Like Pasolini before him, M. Rau takes a dramatisation of Christ’s crucifixion, but his Christ is black, Yvan Sagnet, a Cameroonian activist who has taken on, and beaten, Italian gang-masters in real life. His followers are fellow migrant workers. The New Testament scenes are interspersed with documentary action as well as auditions and rehearsals. Matera in Basilicata is the setting, as it was for Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St Matthew, when it was a symbol of barely credible poverty in Italy’s South. Matera’s now chi-chi luxury (we know, we’ve stayed there) is here contrasted within the nearby migrant camps. And, brace yourself fans of the meta, Enrique Irazoqui, Pasolini’s amateur acting Christ, is cast as John the Baptist, Maia Morgenstern, Romania’s acting queen, pays Mary, as she did in Mel Gibson’s execrable Passion of Christ, (which was also filmed in Matera), and the brilliant Marcello Fonte, the maker of the wonderful film Dogman, is Pontius Pilate. Cinematographer Thomas Eirich-Schneider’s background is in documentary but his set-pieces are also stunning.

Barber Shop Chronicles at the Oxford Playhouse review *****

Barber Shop Chronicles

Oxford Playhouse, 10th October 2019

My regular reader is likely on the verge of giving up on the grounds that otiose attitude, (a sign of which is that I am running out of synonyms for lazy in these preamble apologies), means most of these comments take so long to appear on the page that the associated entertainment has invariably come on and gone.

But even by the Tourist’s shocking standards this takes some beating. Barber Shop Chronicles, which catapulted the careers of writer Inua Ellams and director, Bijan Sheibani, first appeared at the NT in 2017. Since then it has embarked on two national tours and returned to the South Bank. In this tour it will finally visit Leeds Playhouse before crossing the pond for a week at Brooklyn Academy of Music. New Yorkers, do not miss it.

So you can see it took the Tourist an inordinately long time to get round to seeing it, having initially assumed that it wasn’t for him, what with all that modern dance music, then that it wasn’t convenient and then having got slightly antsy at all the people telling him he must see it. Finally, and somewhat shamefacedly, he snuck off to Oxford to take a peek at the ever delightful Playhouse. Where fortunately a bunch of students were lapping up the on stage pre-show that frames the play sparing us boomers from any embarrassment.

I don’t need to add to the reviews and word of mouth approval. This is as good as they say it is. Inventive, exciting, uplifting. All true. But what most impressed me was the ability of Inua Ellams to shine a light on what it means to be a “strong, black man”, a father, a son, a friend, a colleague, in Africa today. And he does this without apology or faint-heartedness. There isn’t really a plot as such, we switch between 6 barber shops/shacks in Africa and in London on the day in April 2012 when Chelsea take on, and beat, Barcelona in the Champions League semi. However, as the men talk football, politics, language, race, disapora, relationships, fatherhood, in argument, confession and in jest (they all share the same, tired, joke), the stories mesh together to reveal their shared hopes, fears and frustration. Actually when I say there isn’t a plot, that isn’t quite true as in London we learn the truth about Samuel’s (Mohammed Mansaray) father and his father’s friend Emmanuel (Anthony Ofoegbu), which turns into an epiphany for this angry young man. These two share their shop with the nonchalant Jamaican Winston (Micah Balfour), generally bemused by the Afrocan customers, and help support the acting dreams of new customer Ethan (Elmi Rashid Elmi).

Music and dance punctuate the rapid scene changes as chairs, tables, towels and razors are shifted into place, courtesy of Aline David’ s sublime choreography, across Rae Smith’s rough and ready set, spinning globe and posters signing location. Peckham, Lagos, Harare, Kampala, Johannesburg, Accra, may differ in terms of accent and fashion, (there are some very sharp threads on show), but these men share their masculinity, and, it is true, their misogyny, though generally in a humorous, not ugly, way. The 12 strong touring cast, (Okorie Chukwu, Maynard Eziashi, Adee Dee Haastrup, Emmanuel Ighodaro, Demmy Lapido, Tom Moutchi, Eric Shango, David Webber, in addition to the four above), effortlessly shift between the various characters, moving from cocky to compassionate in the blink of an eye. Maybe, at times, it might have been interesting to linger longer in each of the locations, though we do get to reflect on unsettling political truths in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Uganda, but, on balance, I can see why Inua Ellams, who spent six weeks interviewing and observing in Africa, whittling down 60 hours of recording to just two, wanted to cram so much of this vibrant dialogue in. After all his day job is a poet. Though with The Half God of Rainfall at the Kiln and his forthcoming take on Three Sisters back at the National it is his stage work which is in the ascendant.

Exhilarating, joyful thoughtful theatre. Ordinary lives rendered extraordinary. A must see. And a reminder to me that a) I am quite dull and b) that I am too awkward for anything but 10 minutes and a couple of grunted pleasantries in the Turkish barbers down the road. Never mind.

PS I also have learnt what a WHAM supervisor, here Andrew Whiteoak. Wigs, Hair and Make-up. Obviously pretty important in BSC And not, unsurprisingly, the DJ at Club Tropicana.

The Night of the Iguana at the Noel Coward Theatre review ***

The Night of the Iguana

Noel Coward Theatre, 16th September 2019

Last minute purchase. Just about worthwhile. The Night of the Iguana is not normally considered one of Tennessee William’s greatest hits, and I am certainly no TW completist, but the cast, the director, James Macdonald, the designer, Rae Smith, the pretty good, if mixed, reviews and, yes, the price drew me in.

The inspiration for the play came when TW met another young writer, just returned from Tahiti, in Mexico in September 1940, who was also afflicted with the same “troubled heart” that plagued him. Recognition of his talent, and money, was scarce, and TW was close to giving up, but this kindred soul, the environment, and a bunch of perky Germans, sympathetic to the Nazi cause, who appear in the play, spurred him on. A few rum cocktails, long suicidal and literary chats, and a perilous road trip with another guest, seemed to revive our Tennessee and TNOTI was the result. He turned the original 1948 short story into a one act play in 1959 and then into the three acts in 1961.

It concerns the lugubrious Reverend T Lawrence Shannon (Clive Owen) a washed up tourist guide and ex-priest, booted out of his church after an inappropriate relationship with a Sunday school teacher alongside borderline blasphemy. He visits the Mexican resort run by Maxine Faulk (Anna Gunn), the widow of his best friend Fred. She is assisted by a couple of workshy local lads (Daniel Chaves and Manuel Pacific). Alongside the aforementioned incongruous Germans, (Alasdair Baker, Timothy Blore, Karin Carlson and Penelope Woodman), we also meet the grumbling Judith Fellowes (Finty Williams), who leads the tour group which Shannon serially disappoints, and Charlotte Goodall (Emma Channing), a 16 year old member of the group who he may have seduced. More importantly the ageing poet Jonathan Coffin “Nonno” (Julian Glover) then arrives with his niece carer, spinster Hannah Jelkes (Lia Williams). Wheelchair bound Nonno is on his last legs and the couple rely on charity and artistic hustles to get by.

They are an odd bunch who frankly exhibit some pretty dodgy behaviours. Rev Shannon is supposed to be some kind of melancholic, tortured soul, who has lost his faith and suffered a breakdown, but is still irresistible to women. Maxine, (you will know Anna Gunn from her turn as Skyler in Breaking Bad), is pretty direct in her sexual desire, as is, more disturbingly, Charlotte, who says next to nothing, and Hannah is soon apparently under his spell. Yet, with his drinking and self pity, stumbling around the stage in crumpled linen suit, Clive Owen doesn’t highlight any particular hidden depths. Judith may well come across as typecast harridan but she probably has the measure of the man.

Now this being Tennessee Williams, there is poetry in the dialogue between these rather curious characters, even as the plot goes nowhere, and this, alongside Rae Smith’s set, the hotel verandah backed by a massive cliff and verdant planting, Max Pappenheim’s atmospheric sound and, especially, Neil Austin’s lighting, from bright day to dark night via electric storm, is enough to hold one’s attention. And then there is Lia Williams. She normally finds a way to steal the show, even in supporting roles on screen (The Capture, Kiri, The Crown and The Missing) or stage (The Prime of Miss Julie, Mary Stuart, Oresteia, Skylight), but here the rest of the cast are, metaphorically, in her shadow. In the 1964 film version no less an actor than Deborah Kerr played the role alongside Richard Burton and Ava Gardner, so you can probably imagine there is enough for a skilled actor to work on, but Ms Williams is astonishing. Sharp tongued when required, notably in her spats with Maxine, (who was played by Bette Davies in the original Broadway production so you get the idea), dismissive of Shannon’s indulgence, and drinking, yet utterly bewitching when describing her only brief sexual liaisons to him in the third act confessional scene.

TW wrote a ton more full length and one act plays after TNOTI but as his mental health deteriorated, his drug use increased and relationships failed to match that with soulmate Frank Merlo who died in 1963, nothing came close. I still quite make up my mind where TW sits in the pantheon of great playwrights but, for a few minutes as the two lead characters realised how much happier their lives might have been if they could only have been more like the other, I could, once again, forgive the pun, see the attraction. Like Chekhov a chronicler of lost, and odd, souls.

Rosmersholm at the Duke of York’s Theatre review *****

Rosmersholm

Duke of York’s Theatre, 6th May 2019

Right finally a review that might conceivably be of some value to my solitary, loyal reader. Not that you should need me to tell you to go and see this. The proper critics and committed theatre bloggers will already have told you that. But I can heartily concur. Though I freely admit this is, in part, because I am awestruck by Hayley Attwell, who turns in an even better performance than she did in Measure for Measure at the Donmar, Labyrinth at Hampstead or The Pride at Trafalgar Studios.

Rosmersholm is apparently considered by many Ibsen aficionados to be his best play though it is rarely performed when compared to say, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck or The Master Builder. Now that normally just means it has some fatal flaw which the clever luvvies are prepared to forgive but which leaves us normal folk a bit nonplussed. Well, on the basis of this production, it is hard to see what has held it back from being as “popular” as Ibsen’s other works. The ethical, religious and political message is more pointed, the heroine, Rebecca West, more “contemporary”, the hero, Rosmer, more conflicted, the plot more transparent and the message more “relevant”, (though you should always be wary of people who vest past dramatists with “uncanny foresight” – it is human behaviour that doesn’t change). If you like your Ibsen social critique raw and bloody, and characterisation that doesn’t fanny around with dainty nuance, then this will be right up your street.

I have seen some reviews that imply that director Ian Rickson takes his time here. Nonsense. As in his other, superb, productions recently, Translations, The Birthday Party and The Goat, and his work with Jez Butterworth, he doesn’t feel the need to display any directorial excess, simply concentrating on forensically letting his actors breathe life into the text. Now of course I cannot be sure if the adaptor here, Duncan MacMillan, has taken liberties with Ibsen’s intent, never having seen the play before, (and having fallen behind, actually having never left the starting gate, with my Danish). If he has then good on him. It works. There is a bit of maladroit symbolism on show, a vision of a white horse which first appeared after Rosmer’s wife, Beata, committed suicide a year earlier by throwing herself into the waterwheel, but this no less grating than what’s served up in Lady From The Sea, Little Eyolf or, in the closest parallel, Ghosts. Oh, and there is of course, this being Ibsen, apparently some unintentional incest.

It is true that there is no escaping the melodrama of the conclusion, as the burden of guilt for the central couple becomes to much to bear, but frankly I want to be emotionally manipulated by great drama. There is a reason why the Greeks, Shakespeare, Ibsen and Miller still punch in the gut and it isn’t located in cosy domesticity. Of course it is hard to believe that in the space of 10 minutes Rebecca and Rosmer make their pact but it is not as if the two of them have been hiding their emotional dissonance up until then. Oh, and there is, of course apparently some unintentional incest. So even if deep-rooted shame is something few of us in 2019 might recognise, (look to our political class for confirmation), it doesn’t require too much of a leap of imagination to believe it of Norway in 1886.

I can also see why some might not take to Tom Burke’s “actorly” portrayal of John Rosmer. Mr Burke has a particular intonation and delivery, (last see by us in Schiller’s Don Carlos), which doesn’t always ring true but it does make his character’s intellectual life explicit. You make not entirely accept what Rosmer is feeling here, especially when it comes to his guilt about Beata, but you certainly now what he is thinking. Set against Ms Attwell’s restless, impulsive Rebecca, whose “freedom” almost overwhelms her, and Giles Terera’s inflexible, but oh so reasonable, brother-in-law Andreas Kroll, his anguished, grieving Rosmer soon makes sense.

The tension between the Rosmer’s heritage as a rich aristo at the heart of local society who has lost his clerical mojo and the progressive leanings fuelled by Rebecca, and by Jake Fairbrother’s cynical reformist journo Peter Mortensgaard, all set around local elections, is pummelled to a pulp by Ibsen, MacMillan and cast, but that is what gives the arguments universality. The way in which values inform political positions, the way in which the press turns ugly and fans the flames, the struggle between engagement or withdrawal, (here taken to its ultimate, Romantic, conclusion). Lay on top the clarion feminist call that Rebecca represents, the doomed passion that follows Rebecca and Rosmer’s meeting of the minds and the dissolution of Peter’s Wright’s knackered Ulrik Brendel, Rosmer’s ex-teacher, the hypocritical foil to the buttoned up Kroll, and you have the full Ibsen package of contradiction.

Rae Smith has conjured up another elegant set. Much like Mike Britton’s construction for the Royal and Derngate’s Ghosts which the Tourist relished a few days earlier, authenticity was key, but here the faded grandeur of a long unused reception room in Rosmer’s ancestral pile was imagined. Lined with ancestral portraits which Rebecca instructs the staff to reveal from under dust covers at the opening, the new broom, (apparently the original text calls for Rebecca to sit in a chair knitting before the first line). Later on, just to make sure we haven’t missed them, Rosmer chucks flowers at his forebears. Neil Austin’s lighting design takes full advantage of the possibilities of the setting, as does Gregory Clarke’s sound. The servants are omni-present reminding Rosmer of his position and creating swish scene changes but only the pithy housekeeper Mrs Helseth (Lucy Briers) gets to chip in with dialogue. And big respect to whoever signed off the health and safety papers for the aqueous resolution.

As with Ghosts as I was leaving I overheard some punters saying that they liked the actors but that it was a bit “word-y”. I am going to say this fully aware of just what a patronising c*nt it makes me sound like but …. it is not just about whether you recognise the cast from the telly and …. it is a play …. it is supposed to be “word-y”.

Translations at the National Theatre review ****

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Translations

National Theatre Olivier, 6th June 2018

At the end of the day it is all about the words. That’s theatre. The power of language. Which is exactly what Brian Friel’s play is all about. A modern classic, first seen in 1980, in Derry (with Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson and Ray McAnally no less in the cast), to set alongside Philadelphia Here I Come, Aristocrats, Faith Healer, Dancing at Lughnasa and The Home Place, as masterpieces from his hand. All set in the fictional town of Baie Beag (Ballybeg). All exploring the particularities of Irish history, society and culture but all offering up universal insight. The Irish Chekhov as some would, with very good reason, have it.

So I wasn’t going to pass this up and I was going to insist the SO attend. I have no truck with those currently giving Rufus Norris and the NT a kicking. There have been some absolute belters over the last couple of years which more than compensate for a couple of missteps, so you haters can STFU. Anyway this is a marvellous productions. Rae Smith has conjured up another evocative, organic, set, the “hedge” school in which the play is set is foregrounded, leaving the rest of the Oliver stage as moorland which stretches to a backdrop of rolling mist and clouds. It is 1833 in Ballybeg and embittered Manus, (superbly played by Seamus O”Hara), lame in one leg, is setting up the school run by his father Hugh. He is joined by the voluble Jimmy Jack Cassie whose shambling manner and fondness for a tipple belies his classical education. He and Hugh are equally at home in Latin and Greek as their native Gaelic. Dermot Crowley and Ciaran Hinds offer up a par of towering performances. The hedge schools which were the source of their learning are about to be replaced by a free national school system. Sarah movingly played by Michelle Fox, whose speech is impaired, is joined by Maire (Judith Roddy who was also marvellous in the recent Donmar Knives in Hens), Doalty (Lawrence Kinlan) and Bridget (Aoife Duffin) in the school.

Through their interchanges we quickly become immersed in their domestic worlds, lives that may lack material plenty but are rich in many other ways. The Great Famine is still a decade away but the threat from potato blight is addressed. Translations is not an overtly political play, Brian Friel determined to avoid that commenting  that “the play has to do with language and only language … and if it becomes overwhelmed by that political element, it is lost”. However when Hugh’s other, prodigal, son, Owen, returns after a several year absence, the clash of culture between British coloniser and Irish colonised, is revealed. Owen (Colin Morgan, TV’s Merlin) has returned with two English soldiers, the ruthless and patronising cartographer Captain Lancey (accurately represented by Rufus Wright) and the more sympathetic orthographer Lieutenant Yolland (Adetomiwa Edun). Owen is a translator: the soldiers have been tasked with renaming the Irish place names into English. This was initially it seems a virtuous undertaking but the metaphor is clear and, eventually, as you might guess, the army seeks retribution when one of their number goes missing.

Now Mr Friel’s brilliant central conceit is to have both the English and Irish characters speaking in English. The two English officers speak no Gaelic, though Yolland as he falls in love with both country and Maire, tries to learn. Owen, initially misnamed Roland by the officers, picks his way carefully through his translations. And, it transpires, that a number of the Irish contingent know a great deal more English that they are letting on.

Hopefully my brief description should persuade you just how elegantly, and cleverly, constructed Mr Friel’s play is. But it doesn’t stop there. In scene after scene and line after line, he patiently, but insistently, drives his points home. Even so these characters are no mere ciphers; there is plenty of emotion too. The love scene, ostensibly in two different languages, between Maire and Yolland, is very affecting, Sarah’s yearning for Manus which echoes it, Manus’s flight when he realises there is nothing left for him in Ballybeg,, Hugh’s demons fuelled by drink, Owen’s cultural ambivalence; everyone has a story to tell, and not just in words.

Ian Rickson is as sure-footed in his direction of the marvellous cast as you could wish for though there are moments of over-deliberation. Neil Austin’s lighting, Ian Dickinson’s sound design and the music of Stephen Warbeck all stand out,  and a big hurrah for the voice work of Charmian Hoare and Jeanette Nelson and to dialect coach Majella Hurley, this being a play about language.

 

 

 

Nightfall at the Bridge Theatre review ***

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Nightfall

The Bridge Theatre, 10th May 2018

If you haven’t been yet the Bridge Theatre offers up London’s best large scale flexible space. And very nice toilets. You’ve probably know that if you have any interest in things theatrical. You will also have probably have read that the space, and specifically the stage itself, here “thrust” into the audience, is the biggest handicap, as well as attraction, for this production of Barney Norris’s new play.

For mercurial designer Rae Smith, after the grim dystopian disappointment of the NT Macbeth, has conjured up a belter here along with lighting designer Chris Davey. A farmhouse cottage, its unkempt back garden, a massive, rusty oil pipe which runs behind it and a stunning realisation of the twilight sky, the backdrop for both acts. It looks amazing. Unfortunately the play itself, and its four characters, struggle to match its majesty. This is a play, as the criterati have unanimously observed, that would work better on a smaller stage. Not just because the subject, a dysfunctional family, is intimate, but also because the production, under the direction of Laurie Sansom, (he of the James Plays), is necessarily static.

That is not to say this isn’t an interesting drama, especially after the disclosures at the end of the first act. It just takes a bit of time to get going. We are on familiar territory. The inverse of the rural idyll. The trap that is the contemporary farm. I have raved before about director Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling, one of the best films of last year. which turns this setting into a visually and dramatically compelling narrative (The Levelling film review *****. The idea of Simon Longman’s Gundog at the Royal Court was powerful even if the play itself couldn’t support its weight (Gundog at the Royal Court Theatre review ***). Barney Norris himself has explored relationships in the rural setting of his native Hampshire before I gather, though I haven’t seen any of this work.

Jenny’s (Claire Skinner) husband has died leaving her the struggling farm. She is still grieving and prone to a sip or two of pinot grigio. Daughter Lou (Ophelia Lovibond) works at a local estate agent/developer but dreams of escape. Son Ryan (Sion Daniel Young, so good in Gary Owen’s Killology) has taken on the labouring. We first encounter Ryan with his friend Pete (Ukweli Roach) illegally tapping into the pipe, a ruse to rescue the farm. Pete has a bit of history with crime we learn and had a relationship with Lou, though she is now wary of him.

I understand why Barney Norris takes his time to flesh out his characters before advancing the plot but the wait does drag a little and, curiously, we don’t really get to appreciate why they have ended up tied to this place and each other. There are tensions, though again wisely, there are also still clear bonds between the four of them. As the secrets come out, as you knew then would, the pressure ratchets up. It doesn’t end well. Chekhov’s fingerprints are all over this.

Claire Skinner (a wonder in Terry Johnson’s underrated Prism at the Hampstead) does a grand job of showing Jenny’s slow disintegration and her desperation to keep the kids close at hand. Ukweli Roach and Ophelia Lovibond flesh out the relationship between Lou and Pete, alternately tender and matter-of-fact, and Sion Daniel Young shows us how immature Ryan tries to dodge reality.

It is worth staying with it, for there is truth in these characters, and it is easy to see what attracted Nicholas Hytner in wanting to stage it. I could also see, and hear, why people might be attracted to Barney Norris’s novels, where description and insight presumably augment any overly elegiac plotting. Writing about the everyday for the stage is hard, (the novel or film always works better), but Mr Norris knows how to. Just maybe not for this stage. Mind you I see that £15 will get you a seat up close in the pit for the last week or so and that is well worth it.

 

 

 

Macbeth at the National Theatre review ***

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Macbeth

National Theatre Olivier, 14th April 2018

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more

This was frustrating. No way of hiding it. It promised so much. A Macbeth. With Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff, both of whom, when furnished with optimal texts, directing and designs, are as good as it gets. Since we know the text cannot be at fault, though Macbeth productions do have a habit of disappointing, then we have to look to design and direction. It really pains me to say this, since I don’t think Rufus Norris’s stewardship of the NT is anything like as disappointing as some would have you believe, but here, as director, the ideas just don’t really work.

Most of the proper reviews have alighted on the cul de sac that is the design of Rae Smith. Now Ms Smith is a rare talent. I offer you St George and the Dragon, Girl From the North Country, This House, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, and, of course, War Horse in support of that contention, and that’s just what I know. Here though we have a backdrop of black plastic sheeting strips, like an explosion in a bin bag factory, which seems a very tentative way to solve the challenge offered by the Olivier stage. A steep ramp initially takes centre stage though this gets shunted to one side for most of the proceedings leaving a pair of ramshackle sheds to do most of the visual heavy lifting. It is pretty dark, though with harsh accents, courtesy of James Farncombe’s lighting design, and Dunsinane here put me in mind of nothing more than a camp of homeless people under some arches. There are some poles on which the witches have some fun later on, and which provide a foil to some back to front, shrunken head shenanigans, but generally this is not an insightful concept.

Nothing wrong with the idea, just maybe not in Macbeth, for, as the critics have indicated, this foul is foul visual starting point gives little room for the plot to develop. What exactly is it that Macbeth and the Lady are prepared to commit murder for? Untrammelled ambition and the pursuit of power over this rabble hardly seems worth it. Macbeth is dark, for sure, and gloomy certainly worked for the benchmark RSC Nunn/McKellen/Dench production from 1976, with its minimalist circle. This left everything to our imagination: in this latest NT production we are steered too aggressively towards a composite post apocalyptic dystopia and never get out.

The hackneyed Jarmanesque vision extends to Moritz Junge’s costumes. Back in the day, when the Tourist was a devoted Bunnymen fan, and camouflage gear and ripped jeans were de rigeur, he dressed like this. The witches are properly bonkers, weird sisters indeed, but their aesthetic is similarly post-punkish. This means the supernatural world is firmly tethered to the “real” world, which may respect contemporary Jacobean reality, (remember James I was an “expert” on witchcraft), but doesn’t help when it comes to ratcheting up the atmospherics. The visual brutality smothers the action as well with plenty of stage blood and fake beheadings. Personally I don’t have a problem with the visceral approach to Shakespearean violence but think it is better employed against a more minimalist design or potboilers like Titus Andronicus.

Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself,
And falls on th’other

The design distractions marred Paul Arditti’s soundscapes and Orlando Gough’s composition. As with the lighting, in isolation, this might have worked, but taken together with the look of the production, it was all just a bit too much. This left the cast with just too much to do to draw us into Shakespeare’s sinewy text, so fraught with development and repetition. Every word counts with Macbeth, even more so than the other tragedies, if the couple’s psychological horrors are to be fully realised. There were occasions when the bleak poetry captivated. Rory Kinnear and, especially here, Anne-Marie Duff are both too good as actors not to convince in many key scenes; when they plot the murder, in the immediate aftermath (a real sense of panic here), the Lady’s sleepwalking madness, her “unsex me here” soliloquy, Macbeth realising he has misinterpreted the prophecy.

Yet other scenes are less compelling, Macbeth’s “tomorrow” soliloquy, Banquo’s ghost, (drunken zombie and Lidl barbecue is not a winning formula), and the shock-horror apparitions. Mr Kinnear once again lays on the blokish estuarine, which worked so well for Iago, but which here gets distracting. I think he is an actor who shrinks just a little when the production has flaws, his Macheath on this stage and, as good as he was, his K in the Young Vic Trial, both revealed hesitations. It felt like that here at times. It is a shame as I think that in another Macbeth, shorn of all this overtly macho militarism, RK and AMD’s ability to show the couple’s brittle dissolution could have worked. The religiosity of the text, the childlessness, the notion of “evil” the inability to act, all get lost here.

Patrick O’Kane offered up a Macduff who contains his grief on hearing of the murders, which worked well, and Amaka Okafor impressed as a dignified Lady Macduff. Stephen Boxer, as is his wont, was perhaps a little too fruity as Duncan in this grimy world. On the other hand he has the measure of the language in contrast to Kevin Harvey’s Banquo and Parth Thakerar’s Malcolm who both chomped a bit at their lines. Trevor Fox’s comic Porter had plenty of stage time, though I am not entirely sure what point was being made by this, his warnings on “equivocations” were lost, and his look bore an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Spence’s Gyro Captain from Mad Max, though this may been my unconscious reaction to the look of the play.

Mr Norris has made some cuts to the text, (notably for Malcolm and Macduff in England) excised Duncan’s other son Donalban, and asked his cast to err too much on the side of dramatic caution. In a production which prized the visual over the textural, Birnam Wood, the battle scenes, the apparitions, the witches truncated first appearance, all were underwhelming. A weird paradox indeed that a production that set out to impress the eye, in a played seeped in the supernatural, conjured so few memorable images to highlight text and action.

This may well work better in some of the smaller spaces which the production will tour at the end of this year and beginning of next. Macbeth is a play where proximity to the actors helps. That is maybe why the film versions, and I include the film of the 1976 RSC production, as well as the 2015 Justin Kurzel version, Polanski’s classic and Kurosawa’s Theatre of Blood, work so well: close-ups allow us to see deep inside the characters, in a way that this production, with this set in the Oliver space, could not emulate. The lo-fi design, redolent of theatres with much less money to play with, may come into its own. Despite my comments and the rather sharp reviews, this is still well worth seeing. It is Macbeth after all.

There is an essay in the programme which takes us through the many ways Macbeth has been adapted through the centuries. It references the classic Ninagawa production which shows that a robust, definitive vision can work for Macbeth (Ninagawa’s Macbeth at the Barbican Theatre review ****). But it also, just maybe in retropsect, reads as a bit of an apology.

Something wicked this way comes.

 

 

 

St George and the Dragon at the National Theatre review ***

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Saint George and the Dragon

National Theatre, 31st October 2017

This must have looked a great idea on paper. A state of the nation play, with much to say about ill at ease contemporary Britain, told as allegory, in a format and staging that nods to a fairy tale. Writer Rory Mullarkey took as his inspiration The Dragon, the most well known play from Soviet writer Evgeny Schwartz which was an allegorical satire on Stalinism, with the knight Lancelot in the lead. Clearly Mr Schwartz was a brave man. There is also a whiff of Chaucer and Medieval morality play in Mr Mullarkey’s construction.

Designer Rae Smith has created an imaginative set, like a child’s pop-up book, which roams across the three periods that Mr Mullarkey’s story encompasses, the Medieval, the Early Industrial and our own Post Modern present. Lyndsey Turner, who is expert at these big ideas plays, gives the production plenty of room to breathe, with a light and often amusing tone that matches the “modern fairy tale” mood, and the rest of the creative team conjure up some magical aural and visual effects.

John Heffernan’s George is very affecting, alternately brave, stupid, confused and naive, Julian Bleach’s Dragon is as pantomime camp as you like, Richard Goulding’s henchman who is redeemed has real presence and Amaka Okafor strikes the right balance as feisty champion Elsa. The rest of the 22 strong cast also fit like a glove and we have a groovy 6 strong band.

But there is a but. It just all seemed a bit vague. The idea that we have needed and relied on a hero in the past to rescue us English when things go t*ts up was efficiently conveyed as were some elements of what might constitute our national identity, the things that bind and divide us. A nation remember is just some lines on a map (admittedly some sea is involved here) and a largely fictional shared history and SGATD was neatly rooted in this premise. The dichotomy between the enemy without and the enemy within was also engagingly scrutinised.

It is just that, when all was said and done on stage, we didn’t seem to have moved any further from this point of departure. Enjoyable yes, creative yes but not really very satisfying for me, which, at a time when anyone and everyone theatrical is trying to jemmy in a state of the nation perspective, was a little disappointing. There is more than enough on show to warrant a visit and there are plenty of tickets for the rest of the run, but the play, like the current England it depicts, comes up a bit short.