RSC THEATRE OPENING
The opening of the new RSC Theatre and the refurbishing of the Swan is a great historical occasion as the base of English fame in the theatre is Shakespeare and that Elizabethan/Jacobean era when England dominated the world in its originality and quality of playwriting. The enormous collection of English theatres and theatre artists with a dynamic energy became the world centre of drama and theatre for that time. The rebuilding of these foundations is again a major happening affecting the whole world yet it still comes from the market town of Stratford-Upon-Avon. The Swan remains just as it was with new seats and a new wooden stage floor with enough depth to have the famous trap doors from which to perform as well as the height for flying. But it’s the balconies on the upper levels that are enticing. The entrance to the Swan itself has changed and is part of the main entrance with its shop, now cleared out of the Swan, sharing the major shop space in the main entranceway. It leaves wide open room for the Swan lobby with a proper bar leading to the untouched library. However, the actors now have their own entrance to the dressing rooms, a reversal of what once was…. a shared entrance to dressing rooms of the Swan and its own entrance to the theatre.

There are runways throughout the main building connecting all the individual buildings and a brick tower standing on its own looking ominous. It’s only a tower for the lifts and has nothing to do with the RSC Theatre. Just as ‘all roads lead to Rome’ so is it with the all the runways that lead to the new and separate building of the main RSC Theatre. All that remains of the old building are the marbleised walls and floor of the old entranceway and some of the back wall of the old theatre plus the Art Deco staircase leading to the dress circle and its fountain. You walk through a runway to the new RSC Theatre. It resembles the Courtyard except that it is more intimate with its back wall much shorter allowing the circular seating to be close to the thrust stage with its deep wooden floor allowing for trap doors and ceilings for flying with its fly tower to insure the moves. It is a building on its own, all brand new, with an open stage allowing a report with the audience. There are cafes and bars easily accessible with dressing rooms all equal for the actors with no star categories. It’s ensemble down to the last shower in some of the bigger dressing rooms, but all are close to the stage plus surrounded by attached balconies overlooking the Avon. There are actual cubicles surrounding the back wall of the auditorium for the quick dress changes. But wood dominates the buildings as thick as concrete when necessary for foundation and a substitute for it. The weight of concrete would overburden the building. And so here is a theatre a combination of the old with all this new technology. In between it all are great sight lines for the audience plus the acoustics which resound with vigour. The only question mark is what will happen to the Courtyard and if possible the return to the Other Place Theatre. Hopefully, the Courtyard could be placed in one of the London parks for summer fare. We’ll see. But what must not be forgotten is the triumph of this whole event…I remember the chaos and broken spirits of a company when everything fell to pieces under Adrian Noble and his fallen departure…. The horrendous beginnings for Michael Boyd to pick up those pieces both of the buildings and the morale of an entire company. He not only managed to create a change in the spirit of the company but in its enterprising energy of opening its doors to the world, to the children, to the students, to the educational advantages and participation, to retaining an ensemble company of training actors to stardom, and sustaining a programme of new directors and new plays. Those glorious workshops that produce metal work and leather for the props, the seamstresses, the technicians such as the lighting designer whose invention of moving lights without cables is grounded at the RSC. The arts and crafts of theatre, its expansion into the curriculum, even Chiltern Railways’ final acknowledgement of the RSC significance in its train scheduling, made this enormously positive swing because of Michael Boyd. There is a great debt due to his undying integrity and selflessness; his triumph is as great as the buildings for without such generosity of spirit there would only be cold buildings with no heart. Now for the productions to enter the arena!!!!

EVENING STANDARD THEATRE AWARDS - WINNERS
NATASHA RICHARDSON AWARD FOR BEST ACTRESS - Nancy Carroll After the Dance (National's Lyttelton)
BEST ACTOR - Rory Kinnear Measure for Measure (Almeida)/Hamlet (National's Olivier)
BEST PLAY Bruce - Norris Clybourne Park (Royal Court)
THE NED SHERRIN AWARD FOR BEST MUSICAL - Passion Donmar Warehouse
THE CHARLES WINTOUR AWARD FOR MOST PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT - Anya Reiss Spur of the Moment (Royal Court)
BEST DESIGN - Miriam Buether Sucker Punch (Royal Court)/Earthquakes in London (National's Cottesloe)
THE SYDNEY EDWARDS AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR - Howard Davies The White Guard (National's Lyttelton)/All My Sons (Apollo)
THE MILTON SHULMAN AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEWCOMER - You Me Bum Bum Train created by Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd (LEB Building, E2)
THE EDITOR'S AWARD FOR A SHOOTING STAR - Daniel Kaluuya for his performance in Sucker Punch (Royal Court)
THE LEBEDEV SPECIAL AWARD - Sir Michael Gambon for his contribution to theatre
THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE'S GOLDEN SEAGULL - Sir Peter Hall

THEATRE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION AWARDS
BEST DIRECTOR - LAURIE SANSOM DERNGATE/ROYAL NORTHAMPTON
BEST NEW PLAY - SPUR OF THE MOMENT by ANYA REISS ROYAL COURT
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A PLAY - MAGGIE STEED IN HAYFEVER WEST YORKSHIRE PLAYHOUSE
BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE - AYESHA ANTOINE MY WONEDERFUL DAY AT STEPHEN JOSEPH SCARBOROUGH
BEST EQUITY'S CHILDRENS SHOW _ POBBY and DINGAN CATHERINE WHEELS CO BRUTON THEATRE MUSSELBORO
BEST MUSICAL PRODUCTION - SWEENEY TODD DUNDEE REP
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A MUSICAL - ENSEMBLE in HIRED MAN OCTAGON THEATRE BOLTON
BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE IN A MUSICAL - LOUISE PLOWRIGHT WHITE CHRISTMAS MUSICAL THEATRE ROYAL PLYMOUTH
BEST TOURING PRODUCTION - THE EMPIRE from ROYAL COURT/DRUM THEATRE PLYMOUTH
BEST DESIGN - MIKE BROOKES/SIMON BANHAM for PERSIANS NT WALES
BEST LIGHTING - CHRIS DAVEY for DIAL M FOR MURDER/BEYOND THE HORIZON at w. yorkshire playhouse+royal/derngate
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE - MARK MORRIS for L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN OPERA - WELSH NATIONAL OPERA for DIE MEISTERSINGER
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN REGIONAL THEATRE - PAINES PLOUGH

Reportage - June 2010
BILLY BUDD at Glyndebourne directed by Michael Grandage is a stunner so beautifully directed and sung as never before. The set offers as much to the story, mood and atmosphere which creates a dynamics to this opera based on character progression rather than plotline alone. It’a a must to see.
A STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION at the Cock Tavern Kilburn is a one-man play written and directed by a famous Australian writer little known in the UK, Jack Hibberd. Mark Little is Monk O’Neill, an impoverished vagrant living in the middle of nowhere.
Like Robinson Crusoe he has put together a shack, growing his own tomatoes, and somehow managing to keep a supply of beer and even some wine. He is a charismatic vagabond telling his stories and defining characters in his Aussie speech that needs the interpretive list that’s issued. It is a great gesture on the part of the Cock Tavern to present this poet/writer offering nights of verse, days of comedy, and a stretch of the imagination.
LIKE A FISHBONE by Anthony Weigh at the Bush is directed by Josie Rourke whose dynamic energy puts life into her productions which create such exciting theatre. This is a writer who uses his characters as symbols then tries humanising those symbols so we can become involved in living creatures. He takes current political and social issues to fit into his mythical icons to whom he gives extra personal qualities. He has here his mythical theme of blind justice as opposed to the law of the land. The law is impersonally based on a concept of justice which is not necessarily real justice… by not being emotionally charged. The justice of god is sometimes evoked with blind justice. The issue is whether the horror of a school where the children were killed should be made into a memorial or destroyed. Blind justice is made into a real woman whose pain is so deep at the death of her child that the reminder of the school would be a constant open wound. To the law, represented by the architect, to keep every part and parcel of the devastated school would mean the prevention of anyone or group to attempt such acts again. It is the pain and not just the cerebral debate that confronts the characters. The brilliant style of this writer is his attack on the current approach to the milk of human kindness.
LULU at the Gate is part of the programme by Headlong where the classics are reworked in an original interpretation. The set is the star of this production. The enigma of Lulu actually being the sexual fantasy of men so that she becomes a different person in each of their eyes has the advantage of the fantasy being played out. Lulu’s downfall is gradual until she reaches the bottom where the serial killer The Ripper finally cuts her up. The climax of this production is the gory ending. The remainder is mostly performed on the stage floor which is un-viewable unless sitting in the first row. Wedekind’s Lulu is that strange work which catches the imagination generation after generation.

OLIVIER AWARDS 2010
BEST NEW PLAY: The Mountaintop by Katori Hall (Trafalgar Studios 1)
BEST DIRECTOR: Rupert Goold for Enron (Theatre Downstairs Royal Court + Noel Coward)
BEST ACTRESS: Rachel Weisz for A Streetcar Named Desire (Donmar Warehouse)
BEST ACTOR: Mark Rylance for Jerusalem (Theatre Downstairs Royal Court + Apollo)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Ruth Wilson for A Streetcar Named Desire (Donmar Warehouse)
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Eddie Redmayne for Red (Donmar Warehouse)
BEST NEW COMEDY: The Priory by Michael Wynne (Theatre Downstairs Royal Court)
BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL: Hello Dolly! (Open Air)
BEST ENTERTAINMENT: Morecombe by Tim Whitnall (Duchess)
BEST NEW MUSICAL: Spring Awakening (Novello)
BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL: Samantha Spiro for Hello Dolly! (Open Air)
BEST ACTOR IN A MUSICAL: Aneurin Barnard for Spring Wakening (Novello)
BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE IN A MUSICAL: Iwan Rheon for Spring Awakening (Novello)
BEST THEATRE CHOREOGRAPHER: Stephen Mear for Hello Dolly! (Open Air)
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN: Burnt by the Sun designer Mark Henderson (Lyttelton)
BEST SET DESIGN: Jerusalem designer Ultz (Theatre Downstairs Royal Court + Apollo)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical designer Tim Chappel/Lizzy Gardiner (Palace)
BEST SOUND DESIGN: Spring Awakening designer Brian Ronan (Novello)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN AN AFFILIATE THEATRE: (Cock Theatre)
BEST NEW OPERA PRODUCTION: Tristan und Isolde (Royal Opera House) OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN OPERA: Nina Steme (ditto)
BEST NEW DANCE PRODUCTION: Goldberg: The Brandstrup Rojo Project (ROH2)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE: Rambert Dance Company for outstanding year of new work
SPECIAL AWARD: Michael Codron

The Critics Circle have just announced their winners:
Best Play-Jerusalem,
Best Director-Rupert Goold for Enron,
Best Actor-Mark Rylance for Jerusalem,
Best Actress- Rachel Weisz for Streetcar,
Most Promising Newcomer- Tom Sturridge in Punk Roc,
Most Promising Playwright- Alia Bano for Shades,
Best Musical-Spring Awakening,
Best Designer-Chris Oram for Red,
Best Shakespeare Performance-Jude Law for Hamlet

The National has renewed the Travelex ticket for another three years…hurrah!!! The next season’s programme looks good with great casts:
1.Olivier has Women Beware Women, Danton’s Death, Hamletwith Rory Kinnear, London Assurance.
2.Lyttleton has Frankenstein director Danny Boyle, the White Guard director Howard Davies, After the Dance director Thea Sharrock, The Habit of Art returns.
3.Cottesloe has Really Old like 45, The 14th Tale, Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O’Neill and Spring Storm by Tennessee Williams, Love the Sinner, Earthquakes in London directed by Rupert Goold, 12th Night directed by Peter Hall, King James Bible Readings,

Please note the plays listed below are not reviewed but recommended and to be recognised:
1. The Yorkshire Tragedy a maybe Shakespeare play at the White Bear was given a first production about the love of money making men weak.
2. The German play Innocence at the Arcola directed by Helena Kaut-Hausen questioned the essence of human innocence by a series of anedotes.
3. Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner helped raise money for the Wilton Musical Theatre, the oldest musical hall in London still exactly as it was …..with The Wasteland, a fascinating interpretation by Shaw both funny, frightening and moving.
4. The Miracle first at St Andrew’s Church and then at Leicester Square Theatre in the basement is about a company of desperate actors visited by the estranged wife of one of the group representing the symbol of death. Will the actors survive? Susannah York starred in it.
4. Orwell’s 1984 was revived yet again at BAC in a formidable production.
5. A Man of No Importance is a delightful musical about an Irish amateur theatre company that fall apart and in the end come together. It’s moving from the Union to the Arts Theatre.
6. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe was given a rousing modern dress production at Stratford Circus using tables as prop designs and opening up the text to an audience not used to the classics with amazing results. Joss Bennathan innovatively directed it.
7. Nic Green’s Trilogy in praise of women has had a good run considering 200 nude women come up on stage voluntarily to praise their feminity and not be ashamed. It ran at BAC and the Barbican.

The year was a tremendous year in theatres expanding despite the credit crunch and excelled itself in keeping au fait with the times. Political and social plays of enormous merit skirted the boards all over the UK and London saw many of the regional theatres’ work as well. The Bristol Old Vic reopened with glory in Andrew Hilton’s production of Uncle Vanya, the Manchester Royal Exchange created a pub in its studio theatre and performed plays in the pub…. It’s a protest against the closing of so many pubs, a loss of tradition. Chichester had Grapes of Wrath and a serious Oklahoma to offer. The gigantic winner, Enron is partly theirs. We were given probably the biggest hits in Enron and Jerusalem from the Royal Court going into the West End. Shades by Alia Bano and The Pride by Alexi Kaye Campbell opened vistas into prejudices of race and bisexuality in the Theatre Upstairs. Polly Stenham’s Tusk, Tusk cut deeply and was amazingly performed by such a young cast at the Royal Court. They have had quite a year of success under Dominic Cooke. At the National the £10 travelex ticket has changed the age of the audience and serious experimentations are constantly exposed. Our Class a Polish play about the burning of the Jews in the barn in a Polish village and Bruckner’s The Pains of Youth show the international range at the National. Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art and England People Very Nice are originals from NT, chaotic but hilarious. War Horse is still a great success in the West End. Michael Grandage had a fine season at the Donmar with classics such as Life’s a Dream, A Streetcar Named Desire, and an eathshaking original production of Red while his season in the West End at Wyndham’s gave the classics a run in its star casting of Jude Law’s Hamlet, Judi Dench in Madame De Sade, Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov. We have a limited run of the Misanthrope in the West End starring big film star Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis. Endgame with Simon McBurney and Mark Rylance plus Speaking in Tongues brought in depth drama to the West End as a happy surprise. Superior revivals that recall past eras relevant for today and hold a special place in theatre history are Priestly’s An Inspector Calls a la Stephen Daldry and Agatha Christie’s surprising A Daughter’s A Daughter starring Jenny Seagrove. The Old Vic had a success with Inherit the Wind starring Kevin Spacey and Almeida’s Judgment Day, Mrs Klein, and Rope brought modern classics to the fore in beautiful productions. Farenheit Twins at the Barbican, Orphans at the Soho, Stovepipe/ Apologia/ The Contiggency Plan from the Bush are all phenomenal productions. The Afghanastan Festival of newly written plays and the Not Black and White season of commissioned plays at the Tricycle are human feats to go down in the history books while A Man Of No Importance and Pirates of Penzance at the Union showed how to produce important musicals of value on a dime. La Cage Aux Folles and Sweet Charity at the Menier Chocolate Factory are experts at lush productions of musicals in intimate space. La Clique’s move to the Roundhouse is a perfect space for comedy circus acts where you eat and drink informally. The Orange Tree continues with its polished productions of undiscovered plays that are a joy to watch. Verbatim theatre at the Young Vic and Arcola are important to stress as this new form of environmental theatre is a growing style along with sight specifics which expands theatre in so many directions without the need of buildings. Robin Soans with Joint Stock have the expertise in this field. The Empty Space… Peter Brook Awards have highlighted this phenomenon and the growing new concept of ensemble theatre evolving from companies and technicians which BAC has been nurturing. Richard Eyre and Rupert Goold are the two giants in integrating video into to their live staging with a brilliance that is overpowering as they guide us into the new eras of theatre. It has been a fantastic year of innovations and a dynamics the rest of the world has yet to follow…Britain’s biggest export. Happy New Year !!!

****The Dublin Theatre Festival is a serious festival representing the varied but the most professional productions within the realm of reason. Edinburgh Festival has now become so eclectic and so vast that not even roller skates will get you everywhere nor is the range from drudge to heavenly inspired possible to cope with. The best of Edinburgh does eventually come to London. But in Dublin you can cover the shows with time to absorb the experience and thus evaluate the work. I have reviewed only a few of the many plays but Three Sisters, The Pitman Painters, To Be Straight With You, Kamp, Radio Muezzin, The Crumb Trail, Cet Enfant, Once And For All, The Dead School, Bud Jones And The Body Snatchers, A Woman In Progress, are just some of the programmes scheduled and all within walking distance or an easy bus ride. The bed and breakfast in which I stayed was the former home of Boucicault still in the same shape and size with fireplaces and chandeliers as in his day with wondrous staircases on a street lined with bed and breakfast converted from the once famous or rich. The churches on every street, the pubs to match, the old Georgian squares still there despite all the new architecture in Ireland to vindicate being part of the European Union which makes Ireland very expensive. But to spend time in the country of theatre which produced such writers and actors of the past and present is the true experience and worth the journey.
***TALES of BALLYCUMBER from/at THE ABBEY THEATRE by SEBASTIAN BARRY director DAVID LEVEAUX with STEPHEN RAE nicholas farquhar, DERHLE CROTTY his sister tania, AARON MONAGHAN evans, LIAM CARNEY his father
I found this a beautifully written piece in the lyrical language of broken hearts set amongst daffodils in Natures’ glory but gory in its human contacts. Reading this work is closer to the heart than just seeing it on stage as a dramatic play that needs much editing to escape the poetic repetition, the dead spots on stage, the rapture only of language. The story is mystical as young Evans visits older Nicolas, a bachelor farmer in rural Wicklow living in past memories of his childhood and of his mother whom he still refers to as alive. Nicholas being a simple man, a Protestant, has little contact with people or his community. Young Evans responds to a special rapport with Nicholas and has come to help him clear the jackdaws from the chimney. He opens his heart as he confesses his love for a Catholic girl with greeny-blue eyes. Nicholas’ sincere response of , ’you couldn’t be trusting a girl like that to be looking after you,’ obviously affects Evans who questions how you can distinguish a Catholic by sight. Evans has not absorbed the bigotry of the religions and is bewildered by the response. He leaves smiling. Nicholas is then stunned by the news of Evans’ suicide. His father holds Evan’s suicide note saying, ‘Nicholas Farquhar knows’. The father with gun in hand is ready to shoot Nicholas but his protest of complete incomprehension convinces the father to desist. Were there thoughts of paedophilia or was the father just baffled? Everyone is mystified by the boy’s death. It is yet another ghost to visit Nicholas who has the young girl who died of cancer as an hallucination amongst the daffodils. Nicholas’ live sister Tania brings no comfort in reminding him of his father’s brutal bullying in addition to further village gossip. The fatal gun being left behind, Nicholas lingers on the thought of death but slowly changes his mind. The play is performed with such deeply concerned emotions by the entire cast and particularly moving is Aaron Monaghan as young Evans who caught the intelligence and sensitivity of the boy with such poignancy. The direction concerned itself with those selfless performances but I found the sloppy use of the animals on the video screen as scenic fillers an interruption rather than an enhancement of country life… a small price to pay for a work which profoundly reaches into the human psyche and pays homage to the essence of love. No import possible but export.
****ROBERT LAPAGE & EX MACHINA’s BLUE DRAGON at the O’REILLY THEATRE, BELVEDERE COLLEGE by ROBERT LAPAGE and MARIE MICHAUD translator MICHAEL McKENZIE décor MICHEL GAUTHIER sound JEAN-SEBASTIAN COTÉ lights LOUIS-XAVIER GAGON-LEBRUN projections DAVID LECLERC movement TAI WEI FOO & mistress+painter xiao ling, MARIE MICHAUD ex-wife claire, HENRI CHASSE ex-husband pierre
This is theatre so expertly and electrifyingly executed, so deftly directed, so smoothly transient in morphing from scene to scene with the use of video film handled with such precision and integration into the stage décor and story. It is technical storytelling that leads the theatre into the future. The use of lights and music on a familiar set that has six double-decked compartments as in his other work and whose Dragon Trilogy characters have now grown older are rearranged in the passage of time with the same agility. An airport scene glides into Pierre’s (young artist in Dragon Trilogy) apartment or gallery, to a railway station or bar, to a park with cyclists. The traditional dancing in a firework fizz, against the calligraphy on a background-video interpreted by Pierre or the TV ad of a Confucian scholar appeasing savage warriors with Kentucky Fried Chicken brings instant colouring to the atmosphere of Shanghai, its transition of the traditional to the contemporary world. There are scenes of snow falling or the various views of the Yangtze River that are astonishing. Though the Quebecois theatremaker Lapage gave us the Dragon Trilogy which captured the exotic culture of Canadian Chinatown as it gradually disappeared we now have a much older artist in Pierre exiled in a realistic Shanghai running an art gallery instead of painting. He has a gifted Chinese mistress Xiao Ling whose paintings reveal great talent and whose love life is multiple. Into this environment Pierre’s high powered alcoholic ex-wife Claire arrives from Montreal in hopes of adopting a Chinese baby though unmarried. When Xiao realises she is pregnant, Pierre wants it aborted. Xiao decides firmly to have the baby despite the fact she is allowed only one child in China. The friendship between the two women deepens as Claire in discovering Xiao boringly painting copies of Van Gogh without concern for the baby finds her solution to motherhood. Like the Chinese fable of the baby placed in a cradle by its mother on a river with three gorges down one of which the babe will flow, so is it with the three endings Lapage gives The Blue Dragon when Claire leaves with the baby either alone, or with Pierre, or with Xiao Ling. It can be a choice, but what if it is a sequence of time? Just to add to this unexpected ending is the fact that the dialogue is exactly the same, the staging the same, only the actor changes. Theatre by Lapage is always magic. Import and export world wide.
**THE BIRDS at THE GATE THEATRE writer/director CONOR McPHERSON from DAPHNE du MAURIER’s short story…decor RAE SMITH lights PAUL KEOGAN sound SIMON BAKER, music FIONNUALA NI CHIOSAIN with SINEAD CUSACK diane, CIARAN HINDS nat, DENISE GOUGH julia, OWEN ROWE farmer
Here again is a problem when the author is the director of a fabulously successful Hitchcock film based on a du Maurier short story that suited the film medium to a tee and lost its suspense as a play. McPherson refers to the devastation caused by the invasion of the birds outside but we never see or feel it. He refers to the threat within the house, the suspense, the jealousy, the sexual harassment, the hunger, the desperation of the birds destroying the house the characters have escaped to, but we never feel it because it is all talk and no real dialogue or interplay. It is narrative writing, telling a story about something but never involving us inwardly. It follows the plot of the short story. Middle-aged Diane has found a safe house since the invading birds not only destroyed her home but are scavenging the whole town to its destruction. Nat who also was seeking refuge manages to find the same safe shelter with Diane. He faces the outside terror in searching for food. They manage each day to survive, to live with one another until young and beautiful Julia arrives upsetting the equilibrium. A farmer from over the hill across the lake locates the house and threatens Diane sexually. He offers her food and shelter but he is refused and then intimidated by Nat’s appearance. Somewhere later it is discovered the farmer has been killed. But Julia and her mysterious past is suspiciously reckoned with…she brings tins of food found at that farmhouse. The jealousy between the two women never explodes or climaxes. Diane sends Julia out to look for Nat who is actually asleep upstairs. She has sent Julia to her death by the birds. Nat discovers hundreds of birds’ nests in the attic and so he and Diane pack up and leave to where? But what is puzzling is the fact that there must have been some indication to Nat and Diane that the birds were attacking the house. There are constant crackling sound effects on the house. If they are using the second floor they would know the nesting had begun. It is the ending of the show, the delayed departure of Nat and Diane that seems incredible. Essentially McPherson is telling a story about the characters and never creating live images or a dramatic play. The acting is as hollow as the script because there is no depth to the characters and nothing to develop. They perform the best that is possible, but Owen Rowe in his surprise entrance as the farmer makes the heart beat faster in terror. The production continues outside of the festival and is going to New York and London. Good-luck to import and export.
***FREEFALL from CORN EXCHANGE COMPANY at PROJECT SPACE by MICHAEL WEST director ANNIE RYAN décor KRIS STONE lights MATT FREY sound/music CONOR LINEHAN with ANDREW BENNETT husband john, DAMIAN KEARNEY dry-rot man/priest, LOUIS LOVETT his cousin denis, RUTH McGILL his girlfriend, JANET MORAN john’s wife Corn Exchange is an avant-garde company that experiments in play structures, in concepts, in acting, in improvisations. They have abandoned their Commedia del’ Arte style for a simple kind of surrealism where you think the leading character John is an ordinary, mild-mannered man who is paralysed from a stroke from which he is dying. He reflects upon his life in ordinary terms despite the surrealism or in a surrealistic refrain if you choose where the fantasies are confused with the realities. Metaphors are used to show his story as the symbol of Irish society today, its freefall and the passive reaction to catastrophe. Our dying character in his pyjamas fantasises about his wife being his haunting sister or the dry-rot man who investigates the dry rot in the house that has been there for years and might bring down the whole structure which he has just noticed. We randomly go back and forth in time from his childhood where his sister disappears, his cousin Denis bullies him, his parents die, and a mentoring priest advances him to university, then later into adulthood where his marriage falls apart, his response to his son is a great awakening, his examination at hospital is done as if he were an automobile, and where he stands outside his body and looks at the dying figure on the bed. There is a very moving scene when his wife weeps over his dying and the pain he has endured throughout his life. He, in turn, in reviewing his life whether he survives or not is never struck by self-pity nor involved within the experience. The space is open with prop furniture to provide a delicate kind of atmosphere…a bed, chairs and table, plastic curtains, only lights to reflect the changes in time and place. There’s no make-up on the actors and all movements are in natural gestures. The director is obviously close to her actors, dissecting and using the improvisations in setting her casual staging. The actors are truthful in bringing a source of reality even to the surrealism. Janet Moran as John’s wife is the strongest and the most absorbing performer in this production along with Andrew Bennett as John. It is only Ruth McGill whose ability I question and whose audibility should be checked. But this is a contemporary Irish company indicative of the striving for universal exploration in a contemporary world. Interesting to see how the acting companies can keep up with the great Irish writers. No import or export since the company has its home base.
CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL DUBLIN is a great discovery for me especially the crypt built in 1042 still existing as it was with its mural carvings and a choir that sang like heaven itself in hymns arranged by John Dove in the choral setting of the Eucharist plus a brilliant sermon given on the acceptance of Darwinism and a metaphorical interpretation of the Bible by Rev Canon Dr John Bartlett.
TRINITY UNIVERSITY LIBRARY in its long ballroom palatial ambience with carved wooden ceiling that required minute dexterity along with books in bookshelves from floor to ceiling lining the whole room that declared the achievement of man. How to express the awe of such knowledge, the inspiration for James Joyce! And still adding to it all is the exploration of the Icons of Kell, the Byzantine combined with the Celtic!

The whole aspect of sight-specific theatre keeps growing. It’a special form or style very appropo for today as dramatic events or stagings take place in environments which are either real such as in a taxi, a lavatory, a derelict building, a hotel, a warehouse or supermarket basement, where several locations are set up and the audience mostly has to promenade or walk from space to space. Illusion is not created as in a theatre but reality, three dimensions not sets, serve the purpose of real places. The use of video in theatre design also grows and grows so that such projections when used further the reality. Graeme Miller’s Bassline @ Barbican took place in Barbican’s Car Park 5 from where one walked through the area discovering streets, people and venues and the general psychogeography of the City’s landscape. It was not possible to always distinguish thespian from pedestrian as the Barbican territory was explored along with the unravelling of the local population. Adrian Jackson’s & Farhana Sheikh’s Mincemeat by Cardboard Citizens took place in a warehouse called Cordy House recreating the various locations within the story. The Cardboard players are a company concerned with homelessness using dislocations and stories of identity to dramatise the living conditions of vagrant people. In Mincemeat a coffin is roughly deposited from which Ewen Montagu, a Royal Navy Intelligence officer, is questioned over his mastermind plan of deception in which the corpse of a dead marine was washed up on a beach in Spain in 1943, handcuffed to a briefcase containing top-secret documents outlining the Allies’ plan to invade Greece and Sardinia, rather than Sicily, their planned invasion. The Germans fell for the fraudulent plan and diverted their troops which opened the pathway to an Allied invasion via Sicily saving thousands of lives. The walk is through a mortuary, a bomb site, an air raid shelter. What is explored is the identity of this corpse. Who was Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, given this name by the government, whose body was found on the Spanish beach? The true identity of the major remained nameless without a recognised burial, after his saving thousands of lives. Mincemeat, as the operation was called, becomes focused on the dead man’s identity in a foul-decaying night shelter. In 1997 it came to be known that a vagrant Welshman committed suicide with rat poison whose corpse was used as a decoy. The Cardboard Citizens were paying tribute to this hero at the same time shaming society in its treatment of the unidentified, the nameless, the dispossessed. Kursk & The Container @Young Vic are both true events captured in docu-drama in very specific environments. Bryony Lavery’s Kursk is the submarine in which the Russian submariners were asphyxiated in 2000 as produced by Sound &Fury in their duplication of the submarine on patrol in the icy waters of the Arctic. The actual claustrophobic environment of underwater life is recreated for the audience to share and observe in the daily life plus the activity of the submarine shadowing their target in warfare exposing the command and control, the secrecy and codes, the fear and close camaraderie. The shattering of these men is portrayed. The event becomes an direct experience for the audience inventively staged by Dan Jones, Tom And Mark Espiner. The Container by Clare Bayley is an Amnesty award play telling the story of immigrants trying to smuggle into the UK inside a sealed container in order to start a freer life. It takes place, for actors and audience alike, inside a container lorry parked outside the theatre… the audience packed together on benches with the actors. The script is centred on the actual experiences of illegal immigrants. Tom Wright directs the piece as the doors shut tight leaving everyone in pitch blackness and the lorry’s engine starts roaring. Though remaining motionless, the soundscape and Waterloo Road traffic make you feel you are motoring through the streets of the unknown cities. Gradually the illegals emerge from their hiding places a torch slightly beams through a glimmer of light, two Somalis, one being a traumatised teenage girl; a prosperous looking businessman and pregnant woman from Afghanistan; a frisky Turkish Kurd making his third attempt after deportation. The ruthless agents, the personal betrayals, the desperations causing deceptions, the human kindness, the courage are all mixed together. The sounds of urinating and defecating people, the violence in your face, all make the experience real, leaving the script just a blueprint.
Last Seen @ the Almeida is from the company Slung Low and another promenade piece turned into promenading the streets of Islington.through a leagy park, a church, a library, lead by joy a lively lady telling stories of angel (location as well in Islington) a baby of miracle survival, a lonely love affair. The theme is centered on missing people…manifested by joy frantically looking for a gate, a doorway leading to the possibility of her missing daughter. Atmosphere is created by a couple smooching in a golden phone box, an abandoned golden teddy bear. Hooded yobs in masks follow or a nurse rushes away from a house, childhood fairytales are performed with figures in trees, are they actors or passerbys? Wearing earphones makes the footsteps audible like a throbbing heart beat. Illusive but alluring experience. There are so many that I cannot recount but the constant flow is worth following in unique experiences.
24-Hour Plays are another method of madness whereby writers with directors and actors create short plays for potential development. At the Old Vic there is New Voices which produced 20 playlets cheered by the actors’ mates and pulling in paid audiences for the Old Vic. It will be interesting to follow the plays and their future development. Everything Must Go @Soho had more finished productions whereby 10 short plays were given a two-week period to be written and fully produced, performed by 5 actors on the theme of the crushing blow of banks and big business falling apart, the fall of capitalism. Deal or No Deal, a television programme, had a winner of honeybees; out-of-work father and son try to understand why low-paid Mexicans are taking all their low-paid mining jobs; bankrupt couples with babies sleep rough; mortgage-themed magic tricks are performed; creating cinema-verité in Nigeria is comic relief. It proved a lively programme for Soho and a focal point for their writers’ workshops. The Bush had a go on embarrassing moments, suddenlossofdignity.com written by a series of new young writers and a team of actors, which was lighthearted summer wear.
Revues: Forbidden Broadway @ Menier Chocolate Factory directed by Phillip George has been a huge success following its usual send-ups of musicals, La Cage Aux Folles and A Little Night Music from the Menier was not excused as well as Les Mis in its thousands of replacements, one-noted Lisa Minelli, burlesqued mouths of puppets from Avenue Q, a noisy physical awakening from Spring Awakening, and real fun at Daniel Radliffes’ willy in Equus. Fun is poked at West End theatre prices and the influx of video scenery. It ends with a jolly sing-along. Good summer fun.
Plays:Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album @ NT Cottesloe was a fabulous book with a prescient theme on the onslaught of Muslim fundamentalism in 1989. He recreated the era with the fall of the Berlin Wall with the fatwa on Salman Rushdie; the fall of communism with the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. In the book the student Shahid, arriving at a London college, is torn between the intellectual liberalism of his tutor and the ideology of his Muslim friends, Riaz in particular. It is beautifully written and conceived as Shahid searches for his identity. What Kureishi explored, with humour aimed at everyone, is the stress between religious fundamentalism and secular intellectual liberalism that is now dominating our age. Shahid can find easy identity through the Muslim radicals and their response to racism who also enjoy Western luxuries. His tutor maybe be preaching intellectual freedom but she goes with spliffs and wine. However, the richness is lost in the play and importance lessened as a result. NT has produced the work because of its serious relevancy and despite a bad production it is significant scheduling. NT is absolutely aware of the issues of today…too bad Jatinder Verma has flattened an important novel between its naturalism and stylisation.

The new year of 2009 is upon us and one looks back on the events of the year. In the studio theatres the women are showing their strength and increasing in numbers. Josie Roerke, artistic director at the bush, was greeted in her new job with the Art’s Council’s appalling decision to cut their grant…the battle was on and won…the plays that followed were risky but inventive. The theatre space in constant variations and on themes as variable…. whether it’s 2000 Feet Away sensitively treating the bias on paedophilia to Orwellian folktales such as The Tinderbox or fun in 50 Ways To Win Your Lover. Then the next catastrophe had to be overcome…. the leaking roof affected the electricity for the stage lights. Undeterred Josie commissioned plays for a darkened room. With fascinating one-act plays as a result. The theatre is in constant need of repair but look to the decorated hallway that is designed for each new show. Tramp from west to east and find the new artistic director Ellie Jones at London Bridge vaults in the new Southwark Playhouse. Here is a new director in a new environment finding her feet in her choice of plays and a new identity. It has been hit or miss until the right path is taken. It is a big space with tons of atmosphere and despite its bareness it is a formal space. Finding good acoustics and scripts that are suitable is a detailed pursuit. But it will be a London base for the touring companies and regional studies. Jones hopes to be able to reflect the avant-garde on a national basis. Onto the Union where Sasha Regan is concentrating on producing and directing big musicals on their small scale. Sweeney Todd at present is successfully running. At the King’s Head Danielle Tarento is about to turn the tables with a new scheduling of plays and Helen Divine at the Old Red Lion has been successfully producing and booking new writers for several seasons. On the male side we have Tim Roseman and Paul Robinson as new artistic directors spreading their name beyond the boundaries of Theatre 503 with productions and Philip Wilson at Salisbury is starting to revive the studio theatre. Sean Holmes has been a very inventive director with Filter Company’s 12th night and his revival of Loot starring David Haig at the Tricycle and who will become the new artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith. The best shows of this year are manifold: Studio: 2000Feet Away and One-Acters in the Dark at the Bush; 12th night at the Tricycle; How to Disappear Completely and Not Be Found at Southwark; Sweeney Todd at Union; The Pride at Royal Court Upstairs; Hangover Square at Finborough; The White Devils and Little Night Music at Menier Chocolate Factory; On Emotion at Soho. Subsidised: August:Osage County, Pitman Painters and War Horse at NT; In A Dark Dark House at the Almeida; RSC’s Hamlet, Love’s Labours Lost, Midsummer’s Nights Dream at Novello and Stratford; Othello and Chalk Garden at the Donmar, Ivanov at Donmar’s Wyndham; No Man’s Land at the Duke of York’s; Rain Man at the Apollo; Carousel at the Savoy; and La Clique at the Hippodrome