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
Critics Circle awards
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,
Reportage - January 2010
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.
Theatre in 2009
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 !!!
Forest Fringe scoops the top prize at the 20th Empty Space… PETER BROOK AWARDS
Published Tuesday 3 November 2009 at 16:45 by Lalayn Baluch, The Stage
Forest Fringe, which showcases new theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, has won the top prize at the 20th annual Empty Space…Peter Brook Awards. Announced as the winner during a presentation ceremony at the National Theatre Studio in London, attended by director Peter Brook, Forest Fringe beat off competition from the Minerva at Chichester, Battersea Arts Centre, the Soho Theatre, Bush Theatre, and the Arches in Glasgow.
The company, which received a prize of £2,000, was described as “a novel company instigating programmes at any venue, without sponsorship or money”.
Fuel theatre company picked up the Peter Brook/Equity Ensemble Award, while Che Walker’s works Crazy Love and Burnt-Up Love, at the Oval House, won the Mark Marvin Rent Subsidy Award.
The Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award 2009 went to the Cock Tavern in Kilburn. Stage theatre critic and award judge Mark Shenton said: “The Cock Tavern, with its tiny auditorium of around 40 seats squeezed into three rows, is a quintessentially cramped upstairs pub theatre.
“But it is also, thanks to the boldness of its producing team, a newly-essential one, both for restoring some past fringe glories and also moving it boldly forward with new work.”
This year’s awards did not feature the Established Studio, Up and Coming Studio and Theatre Without Walls categories.
DUBLIN THEATRE FESTIVAL September 24 – October 11/09
****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!
Reportage - July 2009
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.
EVENING STANDARD THEATRE AWARDS - WINNERS
BEST ACTRESS (joint winners) Margaret Tyzack and Penelope Wilton in The Chalk
Garden (Donmar Warehouse)
BEST ACTOR Chiwetel Ejiofor in Othello (Donmar Warehouse
BEST PLAY The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall (Inspired by a book by William
Feaver; Live Theatre and National Theatre co-production
THE NED SHERRIN AWARD FOR BEST MUSICAL Street Scene (The Opera Group, Young Vic
and the Watford Palace Theatre
THE CHARLES WINTOUR AWARD FOR MOST PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT Tarell Alvin McCraney
In the Red and Brown Water/The Brothers Size (Young Vic
BEST DESIGN Neil Murray for Brief Encounter (Kneehigh at Cinema Haymarket
Theatre
THE SYDNEY EDWARDS AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR Michael Grandage Ivanov/The Chalk
Garden/Othello (Donmar & Donmar at Wyndham's)
THE MILTON SHULMAN AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEWCOMER Ella Smith Fat Pig (Trafalgar
Studios and Comedy Theatre)
THE EDITOR'S AWARD Michael Boyd for the History Cycle (RSC at Roundhouse)
SPECIAL AWARD Kevin Spacey for bringing new life to The Old Vic
Peter Brook - Bouffes du Nord
Peter Brook has announced he will withdraw slowly as artistic director from
the Bouffes du Nord Theatre until 2011. It is not an enormous moment in his
long career having started with a dilapidated music hall theatre in 1974, and
since its redecoration with rounded white upholstered benches fitting the shape
of the brick-bare theatre which retains its character in its time-worn way, and
is leaving a theatre in the hands of the two men already working with him.
Olivier Mantei, deputy head of Opéra-Comique and Olivier Poubelle, modern music
expert entrepreneuring in cutting-edge popular venues, have been scheduling the
music at the Bouffes which has fabulous acoustics being originally a music hall
theatre. The theatre is established and will continue in an easy flow from
Peter to the Oliviers. Brook has always been a creator of change and has an
internal barometer as to when to take the next step. More than thirty years at
the Bouffes is a long time to hold administrative responsibilities. Time is now
to fulfil all the creative work intended such as Mozart’s Magic Flute…giving a
freedom of freshness to the new artistic directors to follow their own new
paths. It is not goodbye but hello to fresher fields having reached the
culminating achievement of the Bouffes. It is a wise person who knows when to
move on and this is exactly Peter Brook’s insignia.
Women Rule The Roost in Studio Theatre
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
CHICAGO CELEBRATES ITS RAZZLE DAZZLE AFTER TEN YEARS - 8th
Jan 2008
10th anniversary of Chicago was a razzle dazzle of all the performers who
played in any of the parts over the past 10 years coming in from all parts of
the world to celebrate. This dazzling show which has created stars, given stars
a vital vehicle, archived the dances of Bob Fosse and his cynical jazzy era, as
well as catching itself connected with the same current of the nation in the
1920’s as in the western world today….the worshipping of the celebrity whether
they are talented or not, whether a murderer or not, whether a corrupted star
or politician or not. The fact that the celebrity is a brief shot and can
change by the next sensation is as true today as it was then. And of course
Chicago gives it to us with jazz, sex, and irony… with songs and dances that
are phenomenal. So when Henry Goodman makes his appeareance dressed as Tevya
from Fiddler on the Roof just to do his Billy Flynn number and rush back to his
theatre then you know how committed the actors felt. Ruthie Henchall came back
with a Roxie performance that hit the roof…ten years since she played the part
and what strides she has made is electrifying. Bonny Langford and Caroline
O’Connor gave us our hearts delight as the audience cheered and Nigel Planer in
his Mr Cellophane number recreated a nostalgic performance. But just take a
look at this list of those who participated from past performances and you will
see how much the parts they played in a show they loved meant to so many. Anita
Louise Combe, Josefina Gabrielle, Linzi Hateley, Aoife Mulholland, Frances
Ruffelle, Claire Sweeney, Anna Jane Casey, Pia Douwes, Annette Mclauglin,
Amra-Faye Wright, Darius Danesh, Tony Hadley, Ian Kelsey, Terence Maynard, Paul
Rider, George Layton, Paul Baker, Matthew Lloyd Davies, Paul Leonard, Sue
Kelvin, Kelly Osbourne, Gaby Roslin, Duncan James, Brenda Edwards plus the
contemporary cast of Chicago and the original ensemble. Amazing how everyone
who has come back slipped into their parts as if it were yesterday! The
commitment of so many speaks for itself. Starting in 1997 and having won the
Laurence Olivier Award for an Outstanding Musical Production, it has never
stopped winning while grossing over £120 million over 16, 000 performances.
Covering the world…17 million people, in 24 countries have seen the show. After
10 years, it looks certain to go at least another 10.
LONDON THEATRE in 2007 - 4th Jan 2008
What I can remember best in 2007 is the many changes of artistic directors.
Mike Bradwell left the Bush and Josie Rourke has replaced him. Fiona Clarke
also left as executive director. Thea Sharrock of the Gate was replaced by
Carrie Cracknell and Natalie Abrahami. Ellie Jones became artistic director of
Southwark Playhouse and Michael Harris is general manager at the Arcola.
Stephen Levy has joined the Kings Head as producer and Purni Morell is now
artistic director of National Theatre Studios. Dominic Cook is the artistic
director of the Royal Court and Dominic Hill artistic director of the Traverse
Theatre Edinburgh. With all these changes have come different visions. Dominic
Cook has burst upon the scene with the new plays and writers from the Theatre
Upstairs such as Face, Gone Too Far and the Indian Free Outgoing, then
ploughing some of them downstairs to the main house while adding to his gifts
for directing comedy. His Noughts and Crosses for the RSC has been a knockout
and his Winter’s Tale was exquisite. The RSC also gave us Marianne Elliott’s
Much Ado About Nothing with Tamsin Grieg’s Beatrice that won our hearts as she
played a spinster falling in love. Their sell-out King Lear stars Ian McKellen
who is the only best it has to offer since Trevor Nunn missed the boat on this
and on Seagull. Rupert Goold flooded the spotlight and caught the imagination
of the season with his fabulous Macbeth from Chichester to the West End,
directed like a Tarantino film, plus his Faustus on tour as he updated Faust
with the Chapman Brothers. Complicité’s A Disappearing Number directed by Simon
McBurney at the Barbican turned theatre on its head as mathematics became
dramatised. Dealer’s Choice at the Menier Chocolate Factory transferring to
Trafalgar Studio 1 is given a startling production, the best ever by Sam West,
with an unforgettable Malcolm Sinclair playing the father. A great performance
to be long-remembered is Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Othello directed beautifully by
Donmar’s Michael Grandage who also bravely produced Parade with such skill.
Then, of course, there is Charles Dance in the most moving performance in
Shadowlands with Janie Dee a second best. Robert Lindsay as the music hall
failure in The Entertainer and David Suchet as the doubting cardinal in The
Last Confession were additional charismatic performances. As to the musicals
Hairspray rings bells galore with Michael Ball charming the fat world and the
lean. Fiddler on the Roof is another winner with Henry Goodman stealing the
show. Lord of the Ring despite its doomed reviews had huge impact as an event
and has carried on with its spectacular sets. The comedies are really fabulous
this year with Moonlight and Magnolias, at the Tricycle transferring to the
West End, in its rehashing of how Gone with the Wind was written in five days
which had one rolling in the aisles as did Boeing-Boeing with its air-hostesses
along with Mark Rylance and Francis de la Tour. Elling, starting at the Bush
and moving to Trafalgar Studio 1 in the West End was another terrifically comic
feat of two psychotics helping each other as they are released into public
consumption. Dysfunctional, also from the Bush, had its bizarre humour from
punk musicians who actually play as a band with zest. Hothouse at the National
was the funniest version of Pinter you can imagine offering side-splitting
performances from Stephen Moore and Paul Ritter. But the National has had a
stupendous season with an original premiere of The Enchantment by Victoria
Benedictsson, a woman who influenced Ibsen and Strinberg in her story of a
woman from a small town in Denmark who commits suicide when abandoned by her
lover. The Philistines was another discovered play by Gorki that opened our
eyes to his visions of the middle-class in Russia. Then the creation of such a
moving production of War Horse which tells of the killing of horses in World
War I as performed by full sized puppets is another magnificent original at the
National to be followed by a Much Ado About Nothing that stars Zoe Wanamaker
and Simon Russell Beale as middle-aged lovers at their last chance played with
incredible comic and heart-stealing warmth. Peter Hall has managed to reinvent
himself yet again in Kingston in addition to his wonderful plays emanating from
Bath produced in a summer festival. Pygmalion and How the Other Half Loves were
funny, charming, and polished, the success of the festival. Pygmalion is coming
to the Old Vic. But Hall has also triumphed in opening the Rose Theatre in
Kingston with Uncle Vanya. Sweet William, a one man show written and performed
by Michael Pennington, who discovered new concepts on Shakespeare, is an
enlightening evening scheduled for the Rose on its tour. The Young Vic also
made an indelible mark in a very exciting year with its Brecht Season, Peter
Brook’s Fragments from Beckett, and the USA The Brothers Size staged like a
dance piece but exposing a side of black America and its black prisoners, all
in the studios. Its Christmas showing of the South African Christmas Carol with
the glorious Pauline Malefane as Scrooge set with gold miners and their magic
lamps in a dazzling dance plus a Magic Flute that is out of this world in its
exhilarating opening overture on the marimbas, bring fantastic energy to the
main house. Magic Flute, so marvellously sung, is transferring to the Duke of
York’s in the West End. The Lyric Hammersmith had Fuel’s production of Water
that was an amazing derivative from Complicité. The Old Vic, aside from its
fabulous study by Robert Lindsay in The Entertainer had its dreary productions
interrupted by a smutty pantomime of Stephen Fry’s Cinderella which appealed to
the gay audience, but it also held its yearly 24 hour plays’ session that is
stimulating. Doubt at the Tricycle was given a much better production than on
Broadway by Nicholas Kent. The Orange Tree has continued with its discoveries
of old classics and this year it dug up the female writers such as Daphne du
Maurier and Fanny Burney. Their highly polished productions with such fine
actors reflect constant quality. BAC became the place where the Masque of the
Red Death has activated the hottest ticket in town. The whole building, the
former Town Hall of Battersea, has been converted into a house of horrors as
the Poe tales are dramatised within a building where each room is designed to
the tiniest detail in an eerie atmosphere beyond words. Southwark Playhouse
opened its doors to new premises in the London Bridge vaults where Fassbinder’s
The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant has been given an uncanny production in its
tunnelled caverns. Their Abelard and Eloise saga was staged as a promenade
through the various tunnels… a sight specific occurrence. Trafalgar Studio 2
(Trafalgar Studio 1 is a main house in the West End) has been extremely
creative in its scheduling of fascinating one act plays with Vincent Rivers a
tragedy about a gay boy murdered by a gang while his friend hid from view or
the one woman show of A Kind of Bliss in which Lucy Briers beamed light upon a
journey along the Embankment to Greenwich in order to interview a pop star. The
Hampstead Theatre has been unfortunate in its scheduling and that alone has
brought it notoriety even Antony Sher’s The Giant, a tormentuous rendering of
Michael Angelo’s David and its rivalry with Leonardo di Vinci, could not save
the season. The Union Theatre has managed to keep its musicals as its prime
winners. The new Rose Theatre, the new Southwark Playhouse are the interesting
dynamics in theatre while the Bristol Vic closes its doors. The threat that the
Olympics has caused to the funding of the arts is the biggest calamity that
will continue for several years. Yet with it all London is the world’s centre
when it comes to the theatre and so it will continue. Happy New Year.