Tag: Sally Ferguson

The Last King of Scotland at the Sheffield Crucible review *****

The Last King of Scotland

Crucible Sheffield, 28th September 2019

The Tourist generally agrees with all those smart people paid to review theatrical productions. That is a) because they now what they are doing, they are experts with experience and should be listened to, rather than some halfwit with his/her half baked opinions on social media, and b) because, and this is a subset of a), those professional opinions will inevitably influence the ever reflexive Tourist even if he waits until after he has seen an entertainment before passing comment.

Sometimes though I just think they are wrong. With The Last King of Scotland being a case in point. To be fair it did get some decent reviews in the local and specialist theatre press but the broadsheets gave it a pasting. And I cannot, for the life of me, see why. The elements of stagecraft used to convey the story were resoundingly successful in my view and any criticism focussed on the characters, most specifically Doctor Nicholas Garrigan, is misplaced. Why the fictional good Scottish doctor ended up tending the monster Idi Amin is an enigma, not answered in Giles Foden’s book, nor in this adaptation from Steve Waters. Is it fear? Is it professional pride? Is it love? We never know and that is exactly why the story is so compelling in my view.

Now I am a big fan of both book and the film 2006 film, directed by Kevin Macdonald, who also oversaw the film of Touching the Void, taken from a very fine book which itself is the current subject of an excellent theatrical make-over courtesy of David Greig. Who in turn is responsible for another current play of a film(s) of a book in the form of Solaris at the Lyric Hammersmith. The screenplay for TLKOS was penned by Jeremy Brock and no less than Peter Morgan, whose sumptuous magnum opus The Crown you may have heard of and is just about to return to our screens complete with its new roster of A list actors. Note that the Tourist and the SO last night took in Lungs at the Old Vic starring the outgoing Queen Liz and Phil the Greek in Claire Foy and Matt Smith. It’s a small world this drama lark.

Anyway the film deservedly earned Forrest Whittaker an Oscar for his portrayal of Idi Amin Dada Oumee and plenty of praise for the lovely James McAvoy, soon due to grace the London stage in Cyrano. No less than Gillian Anderson and David Oyelowo starred alongside them, but for me the best performance came from Simon McBurney OBE who played Stone, the jaded Foreign Office flunkey who attempts to recruit Garrigan to the British cause as they switch tracks and watch on helplessly as Amin rises to power. I always assume Mr McBurney takes on these film roles to fund his day job as one of the planet’s greatest theatre makers through his company Complicite, but he is never less than compelling even in the likes of Harry Potter or Mission Impossible.

In this stage adaptation however it is hard to take your eyes off Tobi Bamtefa who plays Amin, from the coup in Uganda which overthrew the repressive regime of Milton Obote in 1971 through to his deposal in 1979 and the return of Obote and civil war. Mr Bamtefa was a member of the original Barber Shop Chronicles cast and had a small part in Lee Hall’s adaptation of Network at the NT, as well as a few TV roles, and he is set to join the cast of Inua Ellams’s Three Sisters, set in Nigeria and coming up at the NT. But this was his first major stage opportunity I believe and he grabbed it with both ample hands. The character of the imposing, capricious Amin comes with audience preconceptions, (at least those old enough or interested enough to know something of the history), but, for me, Tobi Bamtefa was utterly convincing. Impossible to take your eyes off him as he turns from briskly comic to bizarrely cruel in an instant. Which is exactly as it should be. The scenes between him and Daniel Portman’s Garrigan were electric, from the early encounter when the doctor fixes Amin’s hand all the way through to full blown bedroom meltdown at the end. Adventure, idealism, influence, fear, fascination, love are all a part of why Garrigan stays long after, morally, he should have escaped. And, like all evil tyrants, Amin exerts a powerful charisma alongside brutal, erratic power. That is the warning from history which the play delivers.

Although the two leads dominate there are strong supporting performances from Akuc Boc as Kay Amin and Joyce Omotola as his other wife Malyam, as well as John Omole as Peter Mbalu-Mukasa, Garrigan’s doctor colleague and Kay’s lover. The scene where Garrigan refuses to perform and abortion for the couple, despite knowing the consequences for them should Amin find out, is riveting. Baker Mukasa plays Jonah Wasswa, the Minister of Health and eventually just about everything else, George Eggay the Archbishop who defies Amin and Hussina Raja is, amongst other roles, Pritti, a Ugandan Asia who takes on Amin at the time of the expulsion. Peter Hamilton Dyer is Perkins the hapless ambassador, Eva-Jane Willis his inhibited wife who rebuffs Garrigan’s advances and Mark Oosterveen plays Stone, here linked to the secret services.

Last King of Scotland aficionados will see that the plot here is much closer to book than film, which latter took a few liberties with Giles Foden’s original events and characters. To be fair, with its fictional TV clips with three recurring journalists (local, UK and US) to provide historical exposition, these events do move on at a fair lick which perhaps overly accelerates Amin’s descent from national saviour into crazed murderer. This, together with Garrigan’s, deliberate, passivity, might frustrate some viewers but it worked for me. Gbolahan Obisesan’s direction, (whose adaptation of Chigozie Obioma’s novel The Fisherman is well worth seeing), doesn’t try to resolve this equivocation which makes the central message even more disturbing. It is pretty easy to think that, confronted with such atrocity, we would walk away if we could but, more often that not, the reality is we wouldn’t, instead choosing to become complicit in the horror.

There are plenty of memorable scenes visually, facilitated by Rebecca Brower colourful set and costume designs, Sally Ferguson’s lighting and Donato Wharton’s sound, even if sometimes the spacious Crucible stage swallows up the action. The film’s infamous meat hook scene is here eschewed but the horror is still effectively conveyed with a grisly scene near the end. Theatre cannot of course convey the immensity of such horror but it can, think Macbeth, Titus Andronicus or Richard III, try to get inside the mind of the man who presides over it. The Last King of Scotland doesn’t get anywhere close to this, that would be too much to ask, but as a slice of theatre, and history, with a moral message, this definitely worked.

An Adventure at the Bush Theatre review ****

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An Adventure

Bush Theatre, 26th September 2018

Now I cannot pretend that, when the lovely people at the Bush moved the matinee performance of An Adventure that I attended forward by an hour, and indicated it had metamorphosed into a three hour plus extravaganza, I wasn’t concerned. And reading the proper reviews, which were variable, but generally pointed to narrative ambition trumping dramatic momentum, didn’t help.

Well I can report that this is, give or take, a wonderful story, superbly, and smartly, told. The Bush is still claiming a 3 hour 15 minute running time but it isn’t, it certainly doesn’t feel anywhere near it, and there are a couple of intervals to catch your breath anyway. If anything I would have liked, whisper it, a bit more. It kicks off with feisty Gudjarati Jyoti, ostensibly 16, interviewing callow Rasik, ostensibly 22, one of the five suitors chosen by her father, on a stormy night on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in post-partition India in 1954. Not best qualified, Rasik doesn’t start his wooing too well but eventually, after a little sparring, Jyoti warms to him and the match is made. It is a cracking opening scene with emotional warmth set against the non-naturalistic set of Rosanna Vize, a golden plinth flanked by Louise Rhodes-Brown’s video designs (which help to anchor time and place throughout). The second scene, on a beach where Rasik, who can’t swim, clings on to Jyoti, is no less powerful and is the metaphor from which the rest of the story unfolds.

We then track the couple through Nairobi, during the fight for Kenyan independence in the late 1950’s, where Rasik goes into business with patriot David and buys him land, to London where the couple arrive in 1968, through the 1970’s, and daughter Sonal, and back to India, for the funeral of Joyti’s mother, where we meet niece Joy, and then finally Nairobi, in the present day. Along the way we see the India diaspora experience unfold, with exposition which generally doesn’t interrupt the flow, entwined with the personal journey of the couple. Home, emigration, immigration, post-colonialism, racism, gender roles, political activism, ageing, parenthood, the tyranny of everyday life, in fact just about everything that matters, is lightly ticked off along the way, but all is coherent.

The first part, (and the finale), in Kenya, is the most pointed in terms of political message, contrasting Kikuyu David’s support for violent Mau-Mau resistance with Rasik’s more pragmatic faith in a peaceful transition. This in turn contrasts with the personal politics of Jyoti who joins a union and campaigns to improve the conditions of British Asian working women in the 1970s. At the same time we see the racism that Rasik endures in his work and the strains that the struggle to get on put on their marriage. We see the next generation in the shape of Sonal looking to move up and on through education and travel encountering Jyoti’s motherly resistance.

This is though more a love story than history lesson and is all the more successful for it. In the final scenes, with the couple in their seventies, Rasik’s sight failing and mobility impaired, they look back and this, frankly, is where it really connected emotionally. I cannot claim to understand the journey of Jyoti and Rasik but I can certainly empathise with the prosaic intimacy of their relationship. For these final scenes Jyoti and Rasik are played by Nila Aalia and Selva Rasalingam, but you can still feel the essence of the characters shaped by the superb Anjana Vasan and Shubham Saraf in the earlier years. Jyoti may be headstrong but her inner strength shines through from the off. Rasik may be less certain, earnest in his youth, irascible in his old age, but they make an entirely believable couple. Writer Vinay Patel based his story on the life of his grandparents which is maybe just why.

Mr Patel’s expansive tale wears its learning pretty lightly. As with his previous work, notably his play True Brits and his TV drama Murdered By My Father, he shows that he has a way with story and character and can conjure up a lot of content from relatively straightforward starting points. An Adventure is more ambitious that his previous works, and maybe this time he has tried to pack a bit too much in to create his odyssey of marriage, but it is still a very entertaining and skilful attempt. I imagine he is a confident young man and I suspect he believes, as do I, that he will get even better from here. Madani Younis is, unsurprisingly, a completely sympathetic directorial presence; you get the feeling writer and director brought the best out of each other from the very start of the project. It will be very interesting to see what Mr Younis brings to the South Bank in his new role.

The cast, including a resolute Martins Imhangbe as David and impressive work from Aysha Kala as Sonal/Joy, is well matched to character, though, for me, Anjana Vasan stood out, as she did Life of Galileo at the Young Vic and Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the NT. Sally Ferguson’s lighting and Ed Clarke’s sound were able to navigate the intimate and expansive as the story demanded.

Six actors and seven characters, (well eight when you include younger daughter Roshni who literally phones in at the end), is not a lot to span this much history and geography. Then again the best way in drama to understand the big stuff is to see its repercussions at the human level. This is where Vinay Patel’s play works. He gets away with shoehorning in maybe just a bit too much of what he wantt to say because the characters are so real and the dialogue, with a few overly dreamy, symbolic interruptions, so apothegmatic. Above all there is that fearless enthusiasm for the power of drama that the best writers convey which makes this, for all its obvious faults, work.