NOCTURNE by ADAM RAPP

Every once in a while there are theatre moments that linger and haunt the heart…remaining there as a shadow but reappearing in the casting light. ‘When I was 17-years old I killed my 9-year old sister’. It was that death when his car ran over the child and decapitated her, when his breaks were not working, that changed the rest of his life. In their house was a prized family piano upon which he played, having piano practice three hours every day. He had a summer job making sandwiches, studied at school, and enjoyed an ordinary family life.  But all that changed. He moved from the outskirts of Chicago to New York working in a bookshop leading a reclusive life. He tried loving a red-headed girl but he was impotent and so remained a virgin. But as time went by, his mother became senile spending the rest of her years in a old folks home, his father moved from their family house to a small flat in Chicago. As he was dying of cancer, he sent $200 to his son to visit him. It was a final visit. The son stayed to bury his father and inherit the piano which he put into storage. Back to the bookshop and a life of loneliness, a life without family or friends, with only the passing of time. Exquisitely written and directed in the flow of feelings and mood, heartrendingly performed with simple passion while a piano played in intermittent moments, I have never wept as intensely as I did that night. How deeply alone can life be for some? How can an accident kill a family at its roots and bear such bitter fruit? This is theatre that invades the emotions in its enormous tragedy produced, performed, and directed to perfection. It goes to the Edinburgh Festival after the Ameida. Import and export.

July 16-26/08 Traverse Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival: July 31-August 10

ROSMERSHOLM by HENRIK IBSEN

Mike Poulton has been receiving great notices as an adaptor in this Ibsen work and on Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard which I’ve also reviewed. The appreciation is for his knack of updating the language without anachronistic contemporary slang or phraseology. However, I am less impressed because in editing down the plays, as he does, he keeps to the plot and cuts the subtext, the filling in, the putting flesh on the bones, for the actor to give us the full characterisation. The genius of these two writers is the characters they have created within the realisation of the social period. So is it with Rosmersholm where the story is carefully laid out in  suspenseful plotting. Rosmer, a former pastor from an oppressively powerful family, feels guilty over his family’s reputation, his wife’s suicide, and his own loss of faith which has caused him to relinquish his religious position. However, with the help of Rebecca West, a companion for his sick wife originally, he has suddenly regained confidence in finding a new path based on a mystical idealism, a redeeming life by repaying the community through good deeds. This new idealism stands in the way of reactionary Dr Kroll who is determined to control the community. The liberals reject Rosmer because of the scandal brewing regarding Rebecca West living with him and suspicion now being centred on his wife Beata’s suicide. Suddenly the walls begin to cave in on Rosmer and a darkness takes over, the black clouds of deep depression descend as the dream begins to dim from view. It is Dr Kroll who puts the last nails in the coffin when he forces Rebecca to tell the truth of her mature sexual past implying in addition an incestuous relationship with her adopted father Dr West. He also makes her confess that as a companion to his sick sister Beata she helped induce the suicide. Rebecca is about to leave not knowing where to go when a resolved Rosmer clears the way in admitting his love for Rebecca which his wife must have seen before he did and was a prime cause of her suicide. He faces the reality that in losing faith, his wife also was lost. Rosmer accepts that he and Rebecca have both come to the end of the road by the dissolving of the dream of a better world and their love is best served by their mutual suicide.  Ibsen as always gives us profound psychological motivations with a dusting of mysterious mysticism mixed with social issues. Suicide in those days was a mortal sin and not just for Catholics. Tackling such forbidden fruit in his day was significantly courageous. Poulton cuts down the crucial scenes of Rosmer’s black period with a few lines and keeps Rebecca West an enigma until the climactic ending when she confesses her background and her influence upon Beata. It may offer a greater surprise but it undermines the importance of her earlier motivations. The play still holds us breathless along with the detailed direction, the gradual delineation so beautifully timed, and with sterling performances from the entire cast. Paul Hinton and Helen McCrory give powerfully emotional portrayals whilst Malcolm Sinclair offers a steely characterisation of pure evil, Paul Moriarity’s Ulrik a marvellous drunk, Veronica Quilligan’s Mrs Helseth a sympathetic housekeeper, and Peter Sullivan’s Peder Mortensgaard a perfect irate liberal. The pale sea green or pearl grey décor alight with sunlight or darkened by black clouds are in tune with the moods of Rosmer. It's a polished production of quality that is the earmark of the Almeida under Michael Attenborough’s artistic direction. Import and export for Broadway.

May 15 – July 5/08

THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT by STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS

This is one of those productions that captures the headlines and the curiosity of the public because it attempts to be outrageous and spiritual at the same time. There is no doubt as to the energy and vibrancy it has which startles the audience and justifies the Almeida’s drive along with Headlong to bring mind-and-soul-puzzling plays to the theatre. But it is not original…it imitates Angels in America’s style without having its clear focus or the re-creation of a special era. It imitates Jerry Springer…the Opera in its street slang usage for Biblical characters, getting obvious laughs from such deliberate joking about, for the profanity onto the sacred . Yet Guirgis wrote a totally original one act play in Jesus Hopped the ATrain which dealt with deep spiritual questions of fate and free spirit even in a serial killer before his execution. Here in a full length play he is chaotic in his play structure and changes focuses of the whole piece in the last few scenes of the play. The themes are chopped and changed covering several concepts. Was Judas’s betrayal a betrayal? Did not Jesus (saintly Edward Hogg) choose Judas (brilliantly brooding Joseph Mawle) to betray him so that he would at last face his necessary death that he so dreaded, making an accomplice of Judas? Was not Judas willing to carry out Jesus’s bidding because he hoped to further the Jew’s rebellion against the Romans by Jesus declaring himself the Messiah and did he not commit suicide at his miscalculation? Was not Caiaphus, the head rabbi or high priest an accomplice to the death of Jesus in handing him over to the Romans? But then the play ends with Jesus saying, ’I love you,’ to Judas who refuses with pained rage to accept that love even after death. Is not the ultimate sin rejecting love, even greater than the betrayal? The head of the jury ends the play as he describes the ruin of his life by rejecting his love as the tormented Judas filled with self-hate sits frozen with sorrow. The powerful condemnation of Judas’ mother (distressed Amanda Boxer) saying if Judas is sent to Hell then there is no God is yet another side of the coin, for how can a merciful God create Hell without forgiveness. The play takes place in the Courtroom of Hope near ‘downtown Purgatory’ which has its own movie theatre and a little park for walking dogs. This religious courtroom is sparsely furnished with two tables and upright chairs plus a balcony that is also used to flash the video images which are sometimes realistic viewings of the city… or sometimes flashes of colours bursting with the violent music. And yes, there is a trap door that dramatically lifts Satan from the bowels of the Earth and rapaciously returns him to Hell by that electronic lift similar in effect to the lift in Macbeth. The concept of the production, its style, with the use of violent music and sounds to pulsating videos in addition to Satan’s lift resemble the production of Goold’s Macbeth which won him all the prizes as best director. So we now come close to the story which is the trial of Judas whereby a jury will either condemn him to Hell or reward him with Heaven. Corey Johnson as Judge refuses over and over to take the case into his court until God demands it by writ. Judas is defended by Susan Lynch’s passionately-eloquent and deductive-thinking Fabinia and prosecuted by Mark Lockyer’s smarmy caricatured Yusef.  Witnesses are called …. High-spirited Dona Croll as Mother Teresa who proves less spiritual and more practical even in her prayers as she willingly accepts money from anyone to put to good use, Josh Cohen‘s well–played pedantic Freud who diagnosis Judas as clinically insane over his suicide, show-stealing Ron Cephas Jones as a slickly humorous Pontius Pilate in his chic golf-playing outfit taking no responsibility for Jesus and the quarrelling Jews, a marvellously-ferocious and frightening Douglas Henshall as Satan in a black and white Armani suit who calls himself a child of God with his right to deliver Judas, intense John Macmillan as Simon the Zealot hoping for the rebellion against the Romans, and aloofly-dignified Gawn Grainger’s holy Caiaphus who is beautifully subtle in defending his loyalty to God and not to man. The jury’s verdict as to where Judas will go is left to your conclusion. It seems he might have gone to Heaven with Jesus but his refusal of love may exclude him, leaving Judas to dwell in his own hell. There is a mixture of energy, passion, hilarity, anxiety, suspense, unpredictability, jumps from one moment to the next in mercurial changes before absorbing all the signals and messages, so, for some, be prepared for the exhaustion that follows, or elation for others. Import, no export necessary.

March 28- May 10/08

HOMECOMING by HAROLD PINTER

This is Pinter’s most controversial play because of the role of the one woman amongst the company of macho men. She determines to give up her academic-professor husband, a comfortable upper-class American life, and her children to stay with her husband’s working class family of two brothers Lenny and Joey, his father Max, and uncle Sam, living together without the presence of the mother who was cherished but died. The play has usually been directed with a surreal aspect to it so that the dominant armchair which is like a throne upon which Max sits is larger than life and the sitting room exaggerated in dimensions or shape. Attenborough has given it a completely fresh approach in keeping the play realistic in its décor and characterisations as far as the men are concerned. It is only the female Ruth, wife of Teddy the professor, who appears as an enigma. Is she the fantasy female figure of all these men? The allure of her sexuality, living in the household of men who are actually starved of the female essence in their household, reveals their vulnerability despite all the macho speech and activity with the exception of uncle Sam, a gentle chauffeur under constant attack by Max. Max dominates with physical pressure as the ex-butcher over his sons Lenny a pimp/gangster and Joey an amateur boxer. It is possible to accept that Ruth, not being real but fantasised by the men, would stay as a female in power over three men and sexually alive without giving in to any of them, rather than go back to a boring lifeless life on a university campus. Here she is Queen Bee over a nest of yearners. Does she have to become a prostitute to earn her way in living there, as Pinter describes and Lenny suggests? The men think she’s agreed but is it a ploy or is she amused by tampering with the idea? There are a number of females who fantasise over prostituting themselves. Pinter is playing on male and female sexual imaginings. It offends the sense of plausibility for many but it is captivating in its mystery which Attenborough has so astutely stressed. He has such musicality in his pacing of scenes as he orchestrates the tone of one to the contrast of another and thus makes this play work with rapture. There is black humour both dry and vibrant, a show-stealing performance from Kenneth Cranham as Max that is powerful, smooth sexuality from Jenny Jule a black actress who moves her sensuous legs as louchely as Vivian Merchant originally did, the exact touch of macho-ism from Nigel Lindsay’s Lenny and Danny Dyer’s Joey while Neil Dudgeon’s Teddy and Anthony O’donnell’s Sam bring a sense of sane reality and sympathy. For startling theatre that is mesmerising don’t miss The Homecoming. Import import and curious export for Broadway.

January 31-March 22/08

MARIANNE DREAMS by CATHERINE STORR

This is a delightful book with which I happen to have had an original association. I represented Anne Tilbey a unique artist who drew the pictures that Marianne drew which we then made it into a film. The essence of the piece is the pictures and when in this stage version the pictures become significant it has impact on the audience. All the critics referred to the eyes on the stones near the lighthouse which had a nightmarish effect on them. If the production had concentrated on the drawings the whole effect would have been even stronger. But one settles for the version presented and must applaud the interpretation of Marianne’s fantasies or dreams that are choreographed thus separating her lively imagination from the reality of the sick ten-year-old in bed. The story is that of a ten-year-old girl who becomes seriously ill and has to remain in bed. Her mother and doctor tend to her but only when her mother gives her a drawing pencil from grandma’s workbox as a tool to pass the time does Marianne find escape. She draws a house where Mark is imprisoned because she did not draw any stairs. She begins to live her imaginings. Mark is trapped inside the house until Marianne chases him along the beach near the lighthouse and the stones with eyes follow them. The reality is that Mark has polio and is crippled. Somehow Marianne made contact with him. When Marianne recovers and finally meets him, Mark scoffs at her for sending him her drawing pencil. He is bitter and feels he can never walk again without his crutches and though he is negative at first, there is a ray of hope as he ponders over the pencil and begins to feel that maybe Marianne helped to save his life. The overlapping of the fantasy and reality is an element that children immediately identify with and go through the experiences along with Marianne. It is the kind of theatre that captures children. It is beautifully designed as we see the house, the lighthouse, the eyeing stones, and the dancing joy of a young girl free of all inhibitions. It is simple but precise so well acted by the whole company and directed along with the décor and choreography.

December 14-January 19/08

CLOUD NINE by CARYL CHURCHILL

This play when it first opened at the Royal Court in 1976 was an absolute revelation into gender-trading and role playing, a most sexually explicit experiment and a  curiously droll one as well. Where the concept of male and female are mixed in the role-playing and if one changed the gender to the role-playing, how different would that person be? It was so original, so mind–blowing. I have seen it since several times and brought it to New York in 1981 where Tommy Tune the Texan choreographer directed it in a constant flow of movement and as a result the changes in gender and changes from Act I to Act II, were freer in dance movement than in staged drama. Choreography actually helped to abstract the piece into a more recognisable form. Act I was never earthshaking in its mix and mate but rather contrasting as Bette the wife is played by a man with Edward as a child played by a girl while all the others are in their accepted right genders with only their ages or race counter to themselves. Act I is the Victorian Empire period in Africa slightly spoofed where such stereotypes as the Colonel is madly in lust with Mrs Saunders the bold army wife; his submissive wife Bette relinquishes her love of Harry the hero, the devious black servant Joshua (played by a white man) is ready for rebellion though imitating his master, young hero Harry is out in the bush-land sacrificing his love for Bette, Maud is a disciplined Victorian mother of Bette, young Edward wants to play with dolls and not guns, and to add a dash of colour the lesbian nanny is in love with the Bette who keeps the home fires burning. But is it home fires or the Empire burning with unfulfilled expectations? Act II takes us into the modern life of England in the 1970’s on a serious tone and evolves those stereotypes into the types of today. Actors are required to inhabit their roles by not only switching their sex but also switching mannerisms in two separate eras. Here we have the gender-benders such as the Colonel playing Cathy a spoilt child of the lesbian nanny now a married lesbian Lin, Bette is a sophisticated but neurotic homes-county matron back from Africa called Betty marvellously controlled by Nicola Walker, Joshua is now a passively depressive Gerry, and Harry is a cynical Romeo, Martin, whose escapades are boring to his wife Victoria a natural evolvement of mother Maud. They interact within their own spheres of influence but do not connect with one another. This production has simplified the storyline by an abstract frontal cut-out of a child’s doll’s house as the set, used in both periods of Act I and II. It makes it easier to identify the evolvement of the characters. The only disbelief is the tall lanky Colonel playing the child Cathy… he alone colours a tone of mockery. Sharrock keeps the differences of the period but carries through on the continuity of the stereotypes. This is a safe production…no risks taken and as a result there is a feeling of comprehension which the audience enjoys because of those established differences. Extremely well cast and technically smooth in its lighting and design, James Fleet as the Colonel is a delight in his lightness of touch, Tobias Menzies’ Harry/Martin is a beautifully delineated performance, Mark Letheren’s Joshua/Gerry is very convincing, Bo Poraj’s Bette/grown Edward is appealing when audible, Joanna Scanlan’s Maud/Victoria has a sweet charm, Sophie Stanton’s Ellen/Mrs Sauders/Lin are all so well defined with a feisty spirit, and Nicola Walker’s child Edward/Betty is so accomplished in its diversity. It’s a solid production that has been extremely well received by the English critics and a fine addition to the Almeida schedule. Import no export.    Sponsored by Coutts.

October 25-December 8/07

AWAKE AND SING by CLIFFORD ODETS

The difference of appreciation on this American play between the English critics and someone like myself, who is a New Yorker steeped in this kind of theatre and seen enough productions to react to its specific detail, has a wide gap. The core of the play is the mother Bessie who holds her family together with the strength of her will. It reaps rewards and sows sorrows. It is also so astute a work as it pin points the divisions between the second and third generation in the USA. England is just beginning to face this evolving problem since it is buried in so many levels of generations. The third generation of Hennie and Ralph, Bessie’s children, trying to escape the restrictions and repressions of their lower middle class background which might have been a step up for Bessie and Myron does not satisfy Hennie and Ralph who see the successful life that money can buy and are no longer content to remain on the bottom of the ladder. It is Bessie who will hang on to the family who want to escape…it is she who manages to be the centre core of her father, brother, and her own family of husband and children. This is the Jewish mama of the second generation where survival is primary with sharp claws to sustain it, especially in the 1930’s depression where social and economic mobility were impossible. What we have in Stockard Channing’s Bessie is an upper-class waspish woman who’s just dropped in to social service an uncouth family. She knows how to dress and to time her comic punch lines while looking sophisticatedly young for a mama role. Bessie is a part of a lifetime played by the rightly cast actress. It was acted to the hilt by Zoe Wanamaker on Broadway last year to ultimate perfection. How does that make the play stand at the Almeida? An English audience will be charmed by the dialectic dialogue where each character speaks so distinctly from one another and where the poetry of the lines creates exquisite images. Odets wrote a Jewish Juno and the Paycock using the language of the people in lyrical terms like O’Casey with his Irish folk. The play is about family life and the how the glue can dissolve in holding a family together. When being poor is like mire you sink into. And that alone is enough to hold an audience. Attenborough grabs the lyricism of language and reflects in its beauty. His choice of plays always pursues imagery while balancing his delicate touch on profound emotions. The story centres on Ralph, trapped in a lowly clerical job while in love with an orphaned girl whom Bessie doesn’t approve of, and Hennie, trapped into marriage by mama, with an immigrant worker, because she’s pregnant. Ineffectual Myron is ruled by Bessie and her brother Mort who helps support the family by his garment business. But he too is affected by the depression as he clings to his business despite the losses. Though Hennie and Ralph are defiant they are controlled by circumstances and mama. How will they ever escape? Grandpa is a dreamer, a Marxist with a philosophical heart whom Bessie supports ungraciously enough for him to commit suicide and leave his insurance to Ralph. His great wish is to free Ralph. But when the time comes for the insurance money to be paid, Uncle Mort arranges for it to go to Bessie and the family’s needs. It is through Moe, the boarder in love with Hennie but bitter over his leg being shot off in the war, who tricks Mort into the truth over the money. It is Ralph who urges Hennie to leave her husband and baby to run off with Moe and make a life together because they love each other while he gives Bessie the money to support the family and take care of the baby. Ralph loses his girl but gains strength in planning his future freedom. As to Bessie…she will have a grandchild to raise and a son to care for. But will Ralph allow Hennie’s child to be held back by their grey existence? The striking acting comes from Nigel Lindsay’s cynical Moe, Trevor Cooper’s zestful Uncle Mort, Jodie Whittaker’s fiery Hennie, followed by Ben Turner’s striving Ralph. The authentic set of the dining room/sitting room leading to bedrooms offstage with washlines hanging over the front of the stage brought to a reality the drabness of living in the tenements. The days of the depression in the USA are caught so vividly by Odets as it grips in gut reaction. Import no export.

August 31 – October 20/07

CRITICAL MASS

Fragments of songs have been collected from Streetwise singers during their workshops in four homeless centres and composed by Orlando Gough who has created the choral style of Shout. Both companies came together to rehearse and coordinate their individual styles. Many of those contributors are the singers on stage. Quotes from speeches of famous statesmen like Nehru are used, known and unknown, deconstructed and kept to bare minimum. Characters have been constructed by those singers who play and sing. And sing they do with voices that are a joy to hear. The group movement has been staged from ordinary behaviour. The Mass is a collection of folk songs varied in Estonian, Italian, Hebrew, American, Gaelic, Bulgarian, or German languages, made powerful through emotional, playful or political means. Here are singers with a cause that can move mountains. The individual singer begins each song and the chorus joins in with a upsurge of political or social catchwords and phrasings…. standing or sitting, marching or forming circles, singing as they rise or fall, crescendo-ing vocally to climaxes…always struggling, always there. They may fall down or through the net, they may be left behind, but always fighting, fighting to keep going. It’s about singing to survive and the audience goes with them as the sound of their harmonising pierces the gut.

July 21 – 22/07

THE SILENT TWINS

The real story of the twins was made into a novel. June and Jennifer were the tragic Welsh twins who isolated themselves from the outside world by not speaking and communicated with each other in code. They committed petty crimes which moved them in1982 to Broadmoor, as the youngest criminals. On the day of their release, Jennifer suddenly died leaving a broken hearted June with her loving bonds broken forever. This is heavy going material just for reading much less as an opera which the team have followed verbatim. It begins at Broadmoor where Jennifer hears frightening outside voices from other cells which scares her. June, however, tries to signal the inmate but Jennifer stops her. Jennifer is clearly the disturbed but dominant one. They fight over who will eat both dinners so that one will be thinner and more beautiful. Jennifer makes the decision and later regrets her bossiness. They reminisce the past at home when not speaking to mama or the speech therapist; or playing with dolls; or when writing their novels which were rejected. Time switches back to prison where they do not answer the prison doctor about their sexual life but recall on their own their first experience in a church with Lance and Carl who abandoned them. In the cell they fight and try to destroy each other’s identity, the curse of their twinship. When separated they long for one another and are reunited. Mum visits in prison to give them hope for a future. Jennifer’s boyfriend Henry visits but fails to make contact. The twins remember their despair on the farm where they worked and why they burnt down the tractor shed. Using fire to purify and separate themselves, the judge, instead, sentenced them to goal. They are freed after ten years, but on the day of release Jennifer just dies leaving a broken June to go on. The time jumps are easy to follow as the music enhances the change from childhood to prison. There is comedy mixed with tragedy which the score makes accessible with a conversational libretto and a chamber orchestra of percussion and strings plus a colourful eerie clarinet for a distracting Jennifer. The comedy in the psychiatrist who asks them to ’Call Me Tim,’ or their invented characters who are very vocal, or their imaginings from cliché magazines in jazzy clips of music, are counterpointed by the tragic core of the piece in the twins’ transition from secret code to their private kind of interrelationship plus the ‘scratchy’ strings portraying a creepy Jennifer dominating over a passive June. There is a distinct fault in not having the twins’ differences emphasised vocally. However their performances as singers and actors are exceptional. Their mother is marvellously sung and what a stunning switch she makes to a dramatic diva. All the others double up as wardens, whore, boyfriends, etc and are extremely flexible. The libretto is lively keeping to distinct characters while the variation in the music reaches heights of distinction to non-descript similarities. The chamber orchestra is a joy to listen to and on the whole it is an exciting piece showing great possibilities. Import for a long run.

July 5,8,14 and 16/07

LORCA AND MUSIC

This was an exploration of Lorca’s sense of imagery as his words related to music not only in the voice but in the instruments that carried such a range of emotions. Lorca’s insight into music is revealed clearly now in his plays…. his language so musical in its own right. Sally Burgess, a mezzo soprano, was so ingeniously directed in dramatic movement to highlight each song in subdued and eerie light which brought out the melancholia and then contrasted it by the ebullience. That marvellously dramatic colouring she gave to each song with movement to enhance it was a joy to behold along with the Almeida Ensemble conducted so intensely by Richard Bernas. The pleasure of listening to the instruments as they almost projected human feelings accompanying music that touches the soul is an evening closer to religion than any church. The Almeida Opera Season has given us a season that has been so all embracing….one of its best… in the selections, the creations and the executions. Import and export for a longer time!

July 17/07

BIG WHITE FOG (1937) by THEODORE WALD

This is very much a play of the late 30s portraying life in the black community of the south side of Chicago. A play which never reached Broadway as with all of Ward’s fringe theatre plays. His plays of social realism could never be part of the main stream. But they were performed in the theatres in Harlem, in suburban ghettos of Philadelphia, Chicago and such Midwestern cities. The play includes an important negro (negro was the term used then) movement of that time (in addition to the usual alternatives)...that of the black man building a black country in North Africa which would be self sufficient enough to give the golden opportunities denied to them in the States. This was the Garvey movement that brought disaster to so many blacks. The play also reveals the alternatives of playing the white man’s capitalist game or fighting politically through the socialists and communists joining together with the other ethnic minorities who felt oppressed. So revealing is his portrait that the whole period comes to life. It is clear that the advancement of the black African American today would call this play dated and would prefer to have socio-political plays uncovering the contemporary situations where the poverty class no longer shifts but is so imbedded that most of the drug addicts and jails are filled with blacks. The trauma of the New Orlean’s flood opened the eyes of the world on the treatment of the blacks today…leaving the poor behind to die. The problems are so dense it is more relevant to show the state of the black nation play as of today. But we live in such an ironic world that this play should be an enormous revelation for the rest of the world. Michael Attenborough, following his profound underlying theme in the plays he has chosen…of the horrendous pain of family suffering… continues with that same emotional intensity and passion which is beginning to influence the emotionally suppressed British audiences. He will win even further battle grounds as one goes to the Almeida to witness brilliantly produced adult plays which are intelligent as well as relevant and meaningful. Covering ten years from 1922 – 1932, Ward uses a black lower middle class Chicago family to explore the separate ways, the alternatives, open to the black population. Patriarchal Victor, a college educated man working on jobs beneath his qualifications but living in a well kept rented house with his family of four children, helped financially by his brother Percy, endorses Garvey’s separatist’s Back to Africa movement with all his savings. His brother-in-law Dan travels the white’s man road to capitalism, his son Lester after being turned down for a scholarship to university turns to socialism. Garvey is jailed for fraud, bankrupting Victor and Dan’s property owning business is bankrupted by the depression. Lester’s attempt at picketing against the police and being evicted from their house, Wanda prostituting herself with a white man to bring in the money, makes Ella turn with a vengeance against Victor wishing him dead. When the police shoot Victor causing his death, the house may be lost but the family is not destroyed. The fall of these earnest folk trying to maintain a decent family life is a huge tragedy. It does not need the fall of a king. The interrelationships are also clearly defined. Ella’s mother a New Orlean’s Creole keeps to her French name, to her snobbery so common amongst the blacks. The black black as compared to the high yeller has its back broken by the depression. Wanda is closest to the black reality as she describes Victor, ’he was educated to be a farmer, but where is his farm?’ However, it is deeper than that….the pride of Victor dropping his work clothes and stepping into his Garvey uniform paints a picture of naiveté matched by Dan in his American dream that is smashed. Ella’s sense of following the rules and code of behaviour is cynically questioned by the realistic Wanda. But it is Lester, willing to fight the political battles with the blacks and the whites under socialism that is closer to Ward’s resolutions. The set pattern of the play’s structure is too sharply measured by today’s standards. Whatever the flaws in the play may be, the direction so beautifully timed and fluid; the high quality and naturalism of the acting, compensating for the melodrama in the writing; the illumination of the life in 1920-30s southside Chicago for a black family and all its interrelationships made so familiar to us; redeem not only the play but feed our minds and hearts to an absorbing experience. Danny Sapani as Victor, Jenny Jules as Ella his wife, Tunji Kasim as Lester the eldest son, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Wanda, Tony Armatrading as Daniel the brother-in-law, Susan Salmon as Juanita Daniel’s wife, Novella Nelson as Martha, mother to Ella and Juanita, and Clint Dyer as Percy, Victor’s brother, are all such finely perceived actors making their characters come to life and announcing to the British public the plethora of black actors that has developed these last years. What courage at the Almeida to cast 21 actors in a show and carry such a responsibility. Import, import, even export to BAM in the USA.

May 11 – June 30/07

DYING FOR IT by NIKOLAI ERDMAN from THE SUICIDE

The play was banned in Russia and had an intermittent life expectancy because it derided the insupportable living conditions a government imposed upon its poverty class which included the educated along with the workers. It is Erdman’s comment on Stalin’s communist state which also caused his exile to Siberia. The play was revived 50 years later but ran for only 6 performances. It is truly a black comedy where young unemployed Semyon can’t commit suicide because of the overcrowding even in the toilet of the boarding house. This aspect which is in the original play is hardly stressed in this adaptation. However, if one disregards the updating of the language with English slang thrown in everywhere as indicated in the ill-advised title, Buffini, on the whole, included the best of the original structure and characters. The set spawns a decayed mansion of former glory crumbling with an opulent staircase swirling round as it fans out to the third level and down to the first while the main action is on the second floor in the bedroom of Semyon with the toilet upstairs. The mood of the piece is immediately defined. Semyon’s greatest moments of despair cause him to attempt ending it all, unpersuaded by his neighbour’s ‘life is beautiful,’ when pointing outside the window where the rubbish is heaped or after trying to learn how to play the tuba with potential work in mind, only to discover he needs the expense of a piano to tune it. When his decision is made to die, the world gathers at his feet to die for their cause. There’s the dandy intellectual that needs to vilify the government over the working class, the romantic Kleopatra who wants someone to die for true love, or the people’s poet who would immortalise himself with such a consequential obituary. The next build-up is a party to celebrate the suicide where everyone is invited even the snooping postman Yegor. The manic dancing, the vodka-drinking priest, the jollity where everyone serves his or her own interest and gallows humour goes into full swing mocking the government, the harshness of life, the depredations and desolations… all are coloured with black laughter. The fact that Semyon has to go out into the fields to shoot himself despite his change of mind leads into the next faze of buffoonery when he returns quite alive having missed the shot to his head. He then plays out the act of being dead in and out of the coffin until it is discovered he is alive, and so life must go on. This is a high energy production moving swiftly with the comedy underlining the ravagement. The set is fabulous as it opens up the whole stage and allows playing areas for crowds of people in an atmosphere shaping all the performances. But it is Tom Brooke who deserves all the kudos as he captures the passion, the desperation, the agony and the comedy in a time-remembered performance. His wife Masha and her mother offer solid foundations to the play while Kleopatra adds glamour and sexuality; the dandy intellectual’s intense jeering and the kooky vodka-loving priest provoke a belly full of hypocritical laughs as the postman whose envy and nosy interferences resolves itself into the suicide that was to happen. The acting is superb, the essence of Erdman is uncovered in a hit show after all these years. Allow me at this point to register the fact that 30 years ago I edited this play to an hour and had it directed and performed by the RSC at my lunchtime theatre the Rock Garden in Covent Garden with a cast playing at the Aldwych. We brought it to the attention of the RSC who then staged a very successful epic production. It is also important to note the list of Russian or foreign plays discovered by Michael Attenborough that have opened the doors to exciting world theatre, works such as this play and Maxim Gorki’s Enemies. Import and export for Lincoln or Kennedy Centers.

March 8 - April 28/07

THERE CAME A GYPSY RIDING by Frank MCGuinness

The hills in the background leading down to the sea set-up the location of a bungalow which opens up the whole stage with its wooden beams leading from the kitchen to the bedrooms upstairs. Is it just to celebrate Sunday dinner that the food is being prepared and cooked? Here is a middle-class Irish family spending their weekend together until we discover why. The 21st birthday of the son Gene who slit his wrists on the beach below after stuffing himself with drugs and drink is the cause for celebration. It’s the crazy spinster cousin Bridget down the road watching over the house who pours the salt into the open wounds by describing how she found Gene. The battle lines become clear between Margaret, Gene’s mother, and Bridget. The grieving Margaret feels for her first born and cannot be comforted. Her stoic stance is her only way of contending with it. She challenges Bridget who never bore any children that she can never become mother to Gene even in his death. It is the discovery of her envy of Margaret that finally frightens Bridget. Margaret comes from a peasant family having worked her way up through education and heads an English literature department in university. Leo is a rich pub owner now, having started from scratch and built the business for his children, Louise and Simon who want none of it, having sought pathways far from home. Margaret saw the signs of the drug taking but closed her eyes to it even when Gene kept stealing her money. She knew she could not help him but why should he be so determined to escape life when she and Leo spent their lives in climbing up the security ladder. Bridget has saved the final blow for the celebration when she reveals the secret suicide note which only contains all their names with birthdates and Gene’s death date. Margaret resorts to peasant roots and declares it’s a curse which Louise and Simon, typical of their enlightened generation, dismiss. Bridget has almost crossed the line with the note but in the end Margaret forgives because she needs the house to be guarded. The family leaves but is it to be a family that returns? The play is a natural choice for Michael Attenborough who tragically lost his beloved sister and his niece in the Tsunami. His sensitivity in handling the delicacy of the subject is evident and if this production has helped him to express mourning then it is a gift he has given to the audience. He never pushes on the heartstring but gives us the true depth of emotions most directors never dare. Imelda Staunton paints a portrait of grief with such honesty and integrity and opens her soul to its fullest. How can she not help grieving parents to mourn? Eileen Atkins’ comic portrayal as the ‘bride of Satan’ or ‘confused fairy’ does a vaudevillian turn that is all embracing. Her constant mutterings are full of Gaelic humour and then suddenly turn to frightening truth. Her cruelty is carefully schemed, saving her skin by a hairs breath which Atkins spins like gold. This is a show-stopping performance of exquisite timing. The remaining cast are skilfully honest and fulfil their characters with substantial emotions. The play itself has touches of being Irish but is more concerned with the universal process of loss and provides a memorable character in Bridget which will become a standard character in the Irish repertory. No import or export possible.

January 18 – March 3/07

THE LIGHTNING PLAY by Charlotte Jones

Famous for In Flame and then onto Humble Boy, we now have arrived at another derivative play which is a jumble of Macbeth, Alan Ayckbourn or Mike Leigh in its comedy with a touch of Albee’s mysterious/fearful of the unknown A Delicate Balance plus the unhappy couple of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff, set at Halloween, when witches and dark materials materialise, in the Villiers’ Islington avant-garde house. The television set, a new £3000 purchase, programmes itself with Max Villier’s daughter’s trip to the dangerous Middle East which only he can see or it goes dysfunctional like the family. In addition there’s a pot-pourie of misfits who arrive at caustic-tongued Max’s home for cocktails, Max being a ghost-writer (pun) for rubbishy celebrities. There are moments of reality as when Harriet his suicidal-depressed wife and shopaholic distracts herself over an oriental carpet for the sitting room and finally beds the Turkish shop-owner after buying and returning the damn object. Then through a series of flashbacks we see the kooks in action with Max and why they have been invited…a pregnant girlfriend of the daughter played by the deliriously witty Katherine Parkinson whose water breaks simultaneously with the opening of a bottle of claret, a lonely old pagan hippie (delightfully croaked-voiced Adie Allen) who thinks she’s found her soul-mate in a defrocked monk (winsome Lloyd Hutchinson), Max’s solid best friend. The taboo subject of the Villiers’ dead son, another ghost hidden in the closet, is somehow brought up and then there’s a sudden change in the wind when the cocktail party becomes lethal as the visitors reveal their own stories. The sudden flashes of lightning and the magic of Halloween are to suggest mysterious, superstitious and mythical eeriness when dark things happen. Lightning strikes the house, the tree collapses with the roof of the house! Is this a cry of VENGEANCE? There is no structure or shape to Jones’ writing and the schematic elements are disturbing being so far fetched. However, if you follow her chaos you can enjoy her one-liners and her kooky humour forgetting the meaning of play structure which the director has done and just go from moment to roguish moment. No import or export possible.

November 17/06 – January 6/07

TOM AND VIV by Michael Hastings

This bio-drama was always moving and disturbing in the story of TS (Tom) Elliot’s marriage to Viv. The crucial aspect of the play is its casting of Viv and Tom which is suitably done here but Anna Carteret as Viv’s mother brilliantly portrayed for me the reality of an upper-class mother and carried with her the whole era of those days as well as the heartbreak of having a disturbed daughter along with the dim-witted brother Maurice as wonderfully played by Robert Portal and the perfectly cast detached Benjamin Whitrow as Viv’s father. The Haigh-Wood family transported me back in time and made me feel the pain of a family who conspired to certify a daughter under locked conditions the last 12 years of her life. No one knows whether Viv was that mentally ill or just unbalanced in her hormones which caused eccentric behaviour. Tom did convince the family to certify Viv where he could safely divorce her yet keep dispensing her money after her mother’s death. However, he always remained close to Maurice who advised him, ‘one slip with a wonky squaw – big stab in back’. Tom was a sexually repressed and uprooted man taken under the wing of Viv’s family and loosened up by a volatile capricious Viv. As he grew in stature and confidence his dependency on the family became less and less. In this production we are steered to sympathise with both Viv and Tom. Essentially this was a tragic mismatch…an upper-class sexually free English girl falling in love with a socially backward and uptight American export. She married him to escape her family and he married her to adopt it. There is some re-working of the text which is now clearly narrative reminiscences based on Maurice’s interviews with Hastings in addition to the flashback scenes following the stringent treatment of a deeply-suffering Viv via Tom and her parents. Viv’s mixture of the flirtatious enchantress with a manic energy suddenly switching into a paranoia and into flights of spitefulness as when she poured chocolate through Tom’s office letter box when he did not return her telephone calls is treated fully. She is made calmer and more philosophical in this version after her hospitalisation. Tom’s need to turn to religion (formal Catholicism) seemed another compensation for his guilt and his insecurity of identity. It fortified his belief that culture came from the family which the church substituted for his family marriage.Hastings avoids resolving Viv’s assertions of being part of Tom’s creativity. And though Tom cut her out of his marriage he could not cut her out of his life until she died. The tragedy lies in Viv who upsetting as she might have been in her eccentricity, loved Tom deeply, freeing his body and soul while she became incarcerated. There is a stark structure to this chamber work on a bare stage with a few chairs and only lights for the change of time and place. O’Connor catches the mercurial behaviour of Viv and without manipulating us, breaks our heart at her tragedy. Will Keen though physically wrong in size compensates by his rigidity, his conventional formality of tailored immaculate suits and plastered hair, revealing his opportunism with the Haigh-Wood family by occasional tenderness to Viv. His own agony of guilt over Viv becomes apparent by his insecurity regarding the English upper-classes. His characterisation is on the button. The direction kept the story going fluidly without the fragmentation of time and in its naturalistic approach mesmerised us into feeling part of the story. No import or export possible.

September 22 – November 4/06

BLACK WATCH by GREGORY BURKE

Once in a lifetime you see a show which is a majestic masterpiece and unlike any other you have seen in 50 years. Not only is the content hair-raising but its execution of the historical events is so vividly dramatic, using movement, music, dialogue, and images that are unforgettable. Songs like The Black Watch Pipes and Drums from The Ladies from Hell album, Military Tattoo, Snow Patrol from Final Straw album, Cliff Martinez in First Sleep from Solaris Soundtrack album, Gallant Forty Four, traditional Forfar Sodgar, Officer’s Email, traditional Twa Recruiting Sergeants, Suicide, Parade a compiled piece, give you the range and use of the music. The rave reviews from Edinburgh festival are more than matched. It has taken two years to finally open at the Barbican who have to be congratulated for their persistence. To witness a company acting in an ensemble not only as actors but as the very essence of what made the Black Watch so brilliant…its ensemble fighting…is a rare privilege.  Almost two hours without an interval passes in minutes…stunning in its demand of concentration. The theatre has been once again transformed into a traverse setting with side walls of doors and little else for scenery but the conversion of the pool table into an army vehicle is just one of the many images that are striking in imagination and virtuosity. The venerated Black Watch are revealed under fire in Iraq, and under threat in Edinburgh. In 2004, the 300 year old Black Watch was seconded to deploy the USA-controlled northern Iraq despite it being knowingly unsafe and despite Geoffrey Hoon’s plans to merge this highly unique regiment of fierce fighters. Burke gathered his material from interviews with the ex-squaddies, including their actual fighting, their camaraderie, their grief over loss of army mates, their intimate gossip on sex and drink. There are more four-letter words in this play than in the dictionary and spoken in Scottish lilts which carry an urgency. The history of the regiment is woven into the action with pacey enactments choreographed with minute precision. The fighting action is at times choreographed and that unbelievable ending where the squaddies are on parade in formations that decelerate when the dead bodies of their mates hang over them. It is the sergeant who packs them into body bags…even though his officer advises it’s not his job. It is that devastating image which is haunting and the words of his officer…’it took 300 years to build this regiment and 2 years to demolish it.’ The great tragedy is  destruction of a brilliant independent regiment for a political ploy in suiting the USA president to win his election. The songs integrated into the action, the violence choreographed without blood, the sign language, the humour, the bereavements, the fierce independence and final disillusionment is breath-taking. The reckless use of the Black Watch in the Iraq war which soiled its reputation and wasted so many lives is a lasting refrain. It is to be noted that these were young boys brought up in a tradition where soldiering was not only traditional but also their birthright. They resented the notion that they were soldiers because they were incapable of getting a job. You see the reality of these young men, hostile, boorish, excessive in their bravura, belligerent to the media, but fiercely brave. You witness all sides from valour and loyalty to boorish aggression. It’s a true picture without sentimentality. Their tragedy becomes the destruction of honour. The direction, production, music and movement combined with the script and the cast of 10-brilliantly drilled actors who move and sing in absolute authenticity has brought us the story, the heartache and the majesty of the Black Watch. Not to be missed!!! Import and export as it has toured the world and will be going to the USA once again.

June 20-July 26/08

HYSTERIA from GRUPO XIX de TEATRO BRAZIL

The news release sounded exciting to see four mad women of the 19th-century in a mental institution at St Barts, a site-specific production. It is in the Grand Hall to which you climb the exquisite staircase and view the famous Renaissance murals… You enter into the courtyard of St Barts, aware of the surrounding square buildings… It is beholding history and in a site-specific production that might be worthy of its location. The men enter first and are seated on the side. The women are given the prime positions whether on chairs or on the floor. The four patients are committed to the madhouse for such reasons as: promiscuity while she waits for her never-to-arrive husband to collect her before sunset; another is obsessed with Jesus and stows away notes attached to babies who’ve been left at the hospital door; a third one speaks with glorious love for her children though she murdered her wandering husband; the fourth is enraged to such a pitch she scribbles with no words on the wall with her finger, her political stance on femininity. The matron or nurse watches the women and massages our heads, checking there are no lice. The patients mingle with the women in the audience, talk to them, woo them, but there is no play, no drama despite the strong sensuality that envelops the hall. Questions like ‘are you an onanist?’ are asked of the women in the audience… for a laugh... but which also indicates the madwoman’s desire for masturbation. There is a lead into a dance again with members of the audience and a moment of communal Catholic prayer, ’even for ugly women’…. another laugh. The echo chamber of the hall and the difficult accents make it almost impossible to hear most of the dialogue and we’re never given a clue as to the separation of the men from the wome, nor is the concept of bonding the women in that time to now very relevant. A wonderful opportunity to see St Barts, so sad the occasion is so disappointing. No import or export.

June 4 -14/08

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The play has always been difficult to categorise as it is neither a tragedy nor a comedy but a rather distasteful analysis of betrayal in young love and in war. The story centres about the Greek revenge on Troy for Paris, young prince of King Priam of Troy, stealing Helen, the wife of King Meneleus of Sparta, who is the Greek brother of King Agememnon of Athens. It is the great warrior Agememnon who goes to war on Troy to salvage their honour. The Greeks according to Shakespeare are the nasty deceivers, the Trojans the probable heroes. The Trojan defeat via the vile deception of the wooden horse brought into Troy after the Greeks destroyed their camp and looked as if they had returned home is a classic story told and retold. But mixed into the intricacies of war are the love stories which reflect the sickness of the times so that there are no real heroes. It is this deep cynicism that makes the play so unpleasant to watch and to hear. Cressida’s father, a high Trojan priest has connived with the Greeks by offering his young daughter to them as an exchange for peace. She has been left in the care of her uncle, Pandarus, who arranges a love match with the youngest prince, Troilus. They meet, fall in love and pledge themselves to one another. Cressida is wrenched from home and placed in the Greek army camp where the soldiers of high position toy with her sexually though pledged to Diomedes. Cressida is used as a foil because of Helen who is safe with Paris. Whatever may have passed through Cressida’s mind, certainly it must have been how to survive under her new circumstances where there is no protection. Despite Troilus’s tearful rage and promise to rescue her, Cressida is confronted with the immediacy of rape. It is better to declare herself singly to Diomedes and be protected. And so innocence is destroyed through the need of survival. Some may call it betrayal. She responds to the sexual seduction of Diomedes which Troilus witnesses. And so innocence is destroyed through not grasping the need of survival. Hector the great Trojan hero goes into battle, Achilles the great Greek warrior opposes him. Hector dies. Achilles slays his gay partner Theristes who mocks him beyond reason and also slays Troilus when he refuses his sexual advances. There are wholesale murders and deaths of heroes like giant Ajax. We watch the machinations of the Greek generals who win. Paris is killed and Helen turns on Troy to return home. Troy is burnt to the ground forever and the women shipped throughout the Greek kingdoms as slaves and concubines. The after effects of war are made horrible as humanity becomes so distorted in its process and in the aftermath. Donnellan has used the same traverse setting as with Boris Godunov in stark outline which worked magnificently with Boris because one must have actors of such a size and skill to hold the stage. Unfortunately, the English company here is no match for the great Russians and as a result this modern dress approach with mediocre actors diminishes the whole play and we no longer are involved with such petty people. The Greeks in black postmen-like or old-British-army-like uniforms, the Trojans in white American football-looking outfits, make a mockery of war. There are further choices which seem pointless such as trivialising the philosophical thinking Ulysses, the sudden transvestite turn of Thersites as a cabaret singer, the jive scene between the Trojans and the Greeks after the exchange of Cressida which slides between macho sword play and a homoerotic display, but worst of all, the dumbing-down of the love between Cressida and Troilus as child’s play. The pluses are the revelations of Helen and Paris eroticism, the disdain for the macho male heroes who worshipped nonsensical violence, the conniving Greeks, the design of the huge scrolls that formed the side panels and floor of the stage, the music used so distinctly, the animated staging of battles, the use of movement and overlapping of scenes. The physical staging, the actual images over-shadow the emotional content which is in the court of the actors as well. The work of Declan Donnellan is always distinguished by its style of simplicity and bare bones, all the more reason for the need of great  acting. Import but no export.

May 22-June 14/08

MOLORA (ASH)

This is a dilemma production to review. Most of the English reviews were in reverence because of the emotional statements regarding the tragedy of South Africa symbolised by the adapted interpretation of the Orestes Trilogy  using both Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ versions. The Orestes Trilogy’s essence is to show the fall of a house or family (Atreus) because of the patricide and matricide. Klytemnestra has killed Agememnon upon his return from the wars for his sacrificing her firstborn, Iphiginia, and bringing home the Trojan mistress Cassandra; Electra, her daughter, will not forgive her mother for her father’s murder  and when her long-lost brother Orestes returns secretly, she conspires with him to kill Klytemnestra. Orestes is then pursued by the Furies who represented justice through revenge. Goddess Athena revolutionises the concept of justice, a step in the maturation of civilisation. Revenge can no longer be in the hands of the individual nor can it be the sole means of justice, the law must now provide the answers. In weighing up Orestes’ murder of his mother, Athena, intervenes first with bringing in 12 jurors’ having Apollo defend Orestes and the Furies defend Klytemnestra. The verdict is equally split and so Athena legislates for reconciliation and forgiveness. Thus Athens rids itself of the Furies into the justice of the law. Yes, South Africa did go for reconciliation even after the tortures of wet-bagging, burning cigarettes into the skin, whipping, all of which is used by Klytemnestra upon Electra in this show. Yes, there is a chorus that can be interpreted as the jury. But there is only the jury here, and not an Athena, that stop Electra, in this version, from killing Klytemnestra which is a confusion of the symbolism. Here Klytemnestra represents the white rulers who imposed apartheid and used the wet-bag to silence speech from its victims. But the new justice was not through Orestes or the jury according to the legend,…he is judged and saved by the reconciliation of Athena. The white man in South Africa was not murdered like Klytemnestra was supposed to have been according to the legend. He still exists. Even Klytemnestra’s final speech in this production contradicts her death, ‘we who made the sons and daughters of this land servants in the halls of their forefathers, we know, we are only here by grace. Where is the reconciliation in this version? It is with such bemused metaphors that one has to forget the symbolism and go with the violence and tragedy within pieces of the Orestian trilogy here and there. The setting has the grave of Agememnon centre stage under a pile of sand (ashes) two tables with microphones representing the courtroom where the trials of victims and their oppressors who testified at the reconciliation are held. So we have Klytemnestra and Electra testifying at the microphones at times and then diving into bloody violence. And there lies another rub. Electra is inarticulate to a point where it is best to watch her being tortured than to listen to her indistinguishable speech with no vocal projection. Klytemnestra is only audible on the mike but clear in her speech when heard. Orestes made only sounds and spoke in his native tongue of Sesoth, big, beautiful and passionate. The actual text (when understood) is an awkwardly confused mixture from the Bible, Shakespeare, Soseth street slang, moving in and out of each moment without any clear focus. With the tapping of feet, clapping of hands, the playing of the instruments of drum, Jew’s harp, calabash and bow, the Xhosa tribe of people from rural Transkei provide the real absorbing aspects of the production as the jury-chorus of six women and one man with a range of sounds and singing of beast, bird, god, and man creating harmonies that carry the meaning of this production. The heartbeat of South Africa keeps emerging in its theatre, songs, dances, art, and literature that one forgives much to join in the compassion one feels for a people who have longed for a life for so long. Import no export.

April 9-19/08

THE HARDER THEY COME by PERRY HENZELL/co author TREVOR RHONE

This was the great home-grown Jamaican feature film based on the life of Ivanhoe ‘Rhygin’ Martin, a self-styled ghetto Robin Hood from Kingston who died in a shoot-out with the police in 1948…..  a film which internationalised Reggae music through its soundtrack album and put it into the groove along with the famous swivelling-rotating–snakelike-hip movements which the audience recognised and cheered. The film originally took the world by storm. In 2006, Stratford East decided to put it into a musical and here we are in its pinnacle at the Barbican celebrating ‘do something different’ with Caribbean culture capping it all. But before arriving at the Barbican, take a good look at what Kerry Michael’s has achieved by a slow and steady process. The Stratford East of Joan Littlewood was dedicated to the Cockney audience of Stratford. Her belief was to put into theatre what you take from the people and return it to them in an art form. But times change and Michael picked up where the people were coming from. He has followed Littlewood’s words and as the Cockneys disappeared to Hornchurch, the Caribbeans moved in. Michael has worked and developed the black audiences at Stratford East that are as much of an entertainment as what is on stage. And follow they have to the Barbican! This production has moved the black audiences into their next category and what a triumph that is. But Kerry Michael also developed the talent of writers, composers, dancers, choreographers, designers, singers, actors, and even the technicians that help stage the shows. The Harder They Come may have opened the world as a film but so has the musical from Stratford East. The production bursts with talent in the singing, dancing, and acting. The film gave a more realistic background to the poverty of Jamaica and one saw how the people were lifted out of their despair through their cultural arts, through the music, the dancing, the loving. One caught the tragedy of the hero, Ivan ‘Rhigian’ Martin, who rebelled against the establishment to record his own music and distribute it to the people. He peddled drugs to move upwards and took what he could from where he could. He loved and married Elsa who unwittingly betrayed him when he escaped the police despite his gun-shot body to his hideout where they found and killed him. The theatre format is not like the film and does not follow a realistic structure. We get the great songs from the film… The Harder They Come, You Can Get It If You Really Want (Ivan’s philosophy), the poignancy of Many Rivers to Cross, and the superb Sitting in Limbo. What the stage version projects is the great art of storytelling indicative of the Jamaican culture. We have the narrative format using the relevant bits that are dramatised in fragmented series while the famous songs of Ivan are song in solos or by the chorus and danced to by the company. There is the big moment when Ivan wearing the famous dark sunglasses, striped tight trousers, black leather vest, snake skin boots and shirt, with that famous cap, has the audience bursting with cheers and clapping madly. We got the story, we got the storytelling, we got the songs, we got the dances, we got the characters of Pinky and Precious (the epitome of the sex), we even got the villain Ray Pierre who taunts the audience directly as house lights are turned on and he threatens us as he does Kingston. But the crescendo is the curtain call when the audience at the Barbican stand up and dance in their seats singing the songs along with the cast. Yes, Kerry Michaels take your bow…. you brought life and a new era that has made history with an entire fabulous cast as listed above and a Rolan Bell that sings, dances, and acts as the new discovery of the musical. His charisma takes the stage. You got the picture! Import, import but no export!!!

March 6-April 5/08

MICHAEL CLARK’S STRAVINSKY PROJECT: O, Mmm, I DO 

Having followed this project since its inception it has been a tremendous journey from sheer chaos at the beginning with dancers in all sorts of freakish movement, outrageous costumes, bare bottoms and buttocks, buttocks all the way, that I cannot begin to describe how this monumental work of art so serenely composed with fluid movements has unfolded into such specific moods of storytelling. It is in 3 parts. The first is called O as a white clad Apollo in a mirrored box is first enclosed which then opens into screens as he solos then partners male and female dancers and out-distances the dark night in black. The tranquillity of movement with emphasis on the design of the legs, evolving into rolling back choreography as supple bodies bend with the wind and interplay with both male and female is the overall  impact of these highly disciplined dancers so precise in each movement. The panels reverse and become panels with doors for entrances and exits as the constant ebb and flow of the dances imbed their images. In Mmm, using the flexible panels which dissolve into various colours by the special effects of the lights, set to the Rights of Spring music, accompanied by two pianists, it is almost impossible to describe the effect of the fluid movement, the white leotards with red or rust straight skirts on the dancers, the patterns of the overall design in addition to the body design of arms and legs in ever-changing positions that are so vital and full of dynamic versatility. The music unbelievably blends with the dance. And then to the apex of the evening I DO, set to Les Noces with the fantastic orchestra Britten Sinfonia, the magnificently mammoth-sized New London Chamber Choir with soloists that are overwhelming, particularly the bass Julian Close, singing in Russian, with a full company of 12 dancers coordinating with the choir and the orchestra in its music and dramatic effects. That same sure-footed dance movement dominates the stage where the white leotards outline the buttocks to visualise the body moving as a whole unit. An outlandish white enscounced costumed dancer stamps the Michael Clark signature. The massive scale of the chorus along with the dancers and the full bodied orchestral sound had the audience on its feet cheering bravos to the rooftops. We have reached Mount Everest’s peak with Michael Clark and the three year journey is a triumph beyond belief. Import, import and export to every dance festival possible.

October 30 – November 10/07

A DISAPPEARING NUMBER

The genius of the 21st-century theatre is Simon McBurney with his abstract concepts of such profundity that are dramatised in unbelievable ways. In the Elephant Vanishes he had a concept that captured us all with how could the size of an elephant disappear and what of the zookeeper who was so attached to him? Onto that easy line of plot he added seeing the town and the various people caught up in the episode one way or another via the amazing technology. We travelled winding routes that led in many directions but always from the same base. It was a journey one could follow. In Mnemonic he explored the internalisation of memory and carried it through time… again a single pathway upon which to travel. But in this A Disappearing Number he has taken the concept of mathematics and explored the mystery of more than one infinity, more than one universe, through an Indian civil servant, Ramanujin. This is not the ingenious piece of Mnemonic or The Elephant Vanishes and in that sense it is not as formidable as the others…The storylines here are not as well woven into the abstract as in the previous productions because the dialogue relies on the shifting images and not from a writer’s pen. The play structure is weak but the concepts are incredible. One may not be able to follow all the detail, but don’t be trapped by that. Take whatever you pick up and do not worry over what you have missed. Your own mind will begin to free flow. A Disappearing Number begins with Ramanujin’s discovery of prime numbers 1+2+3+4+5+… =-1/12 which was the great mystery in mathematics. In tracing his life we discover this Brahmin broke the rules by coming to Trinity College Cambridge to work with the mathematics professor GH HARDY and together they worked out during World War I their discoveries. Ramanujin died in his early thirties in India. We become more complex when tracing the mathematical people of today with a pure mathematician married to a man dealing in futures, where he used mathematics for buying and selling shares. To carry a double story in order to show how mathematics grew from the university to the market place is a mental exercise but to share the early deaths of both Ramanujin and the female mathematician is emotionally involving. It is a constant interruption in the flow of events. In addition, we are absorbed in the exploration of maths as it develops patterns used in dance, music, poetry, painting…those combinations that 5+5=10, 4+6=10, 3 +7=10, 8+2=10, 1+9=10, make balances in patterns that are mathematical and therefore can create the infinities or universes. Numbers were only numbers to me, but this piece of theatre has turned my head into the geometrics of life whether its hormones or chromosomes or triangular shapes or circles or 1+ to 10+ or 1000+…. I am in the midst of identifying patterns which excite the imagination, similar to Saskia Reeves’ female mathematician in making 1+1=3 to announce her pregnancy. Fragmented as the numbers are we have to form the patterns or understand those already shaped. The actual images move with such dexterity, equations on blackboards float round and round, a line of chairs with swaying actors composes a picture of travel on airplane or train against exquisite sunsets, blackboards rotate to become screens for scenes of India or doorways to pass under, equations are worked into the staging of past and present with Ramanujin in the past in an airlines hotel room which is later occupied in the present by the futures dealer. These are two equations gliding into one another without breaking…. McBurney’s secret of staging fragmentation into flowing sequence. The music matches the mathematical theme in fractions, additions and subtractions humanising mathematics along with the staging. The poignant ending in the death of Saskia Reeves as her disembodied voice in a voiceover warmly relating that her bones will one day be buried with her husband and so will end their separation is moving beyond words. I am only halfway there but you may go much further than I. The mind boggles at McBurney’s genius to even make an attempt at dramatising the mysteries of mathematics.

Sept 5 – Oct 6/07

A FLOWERING TREE by JOHN ADAMS

This is a staged concert performance of an old Indian legend where the story is sung by the storyteller, danced by the three dancers as sung by the two characters of the Prince and Kumudha. Kumudha lives with her impoverished mother and sister. She discovers, one day by chance, the magic of turning into a flowering tree by being washed and when washed again reverting back to human. She and her sister gather its flowers and weave them into garlands to sell. It is because of her magic that the prince marries this poor peasant. He does not love her until she reveals herself as a tree. The prince’s cruel sister turns her into a tree, breaks her branches, tears off her flowers, and does not wash her back into a human. Trapped in not being a human or a tree she is rescued by a band of minstrels where she sings with ultimate beauty. The Prince, meanwhile, is so distraught over losing Kumudha that he searches the kingdom disguised as a beggar. The minstrel troupe is invited to the cruel sister’s palace to sing for the beggar-prince. The tree-woman with the exquisite voice sings for the Prince who recognises her voice and restores his wife to woman by the ritual of pouring water from a jug. He has learned humility and she has proved her trusting love. The music is delicate in contrast to the strength of the singers whose fullness of tone and colour bring such fertile impressions as the dances create the visual transformations. It is uniquely staged as a reading which suits the style of the mystical story performed on a raised stage above the orchestra balancing the singing to the playing of the orchestra. The lighting creates the change of location with immediacy to the music and the story while this simple staging, warmth of music, lithesome dance, and fully blossomed vocals realise the essence of this special work. No import or export necessary.

August 10 and 12/07

MOZART DANCES

The New Crowned Hope is a festival inspired by Mozart but not exclusive to his work alone. To see the joyous passion of Mozart, its human touch put to dance is a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Have you ever experienced this must be what heaven feels like? Well, this is just what one felt in hearing Mozart in the Barbican Theatre where the acoustics were magic, the orchestra sonorous, the conductor exhilarating, the pianists superb, the dancers delightfully agile and precisely drilled and skilled, the magnetic choreography matched to perfection to the rhythm and rondos of the music, the absolute coordination between dancers and orchestra with equal joy in unobtrusive décor and luminous lighting. What more could one ask for? This trio of Mozart’s works to the immaculate dances by the American dance company of Mark Morris in white and black costumes against simple brushstrokes on a painted backcloth are heavenly harmony. The three dances are designed as one piece and must be danced in the order of concerto 11, sonata, and concerto 27 because the gender differences gradually evolve from the first concerto into a serene unity by the last. The phrasing of the music lifts with the dance in sublime oneness while so gently and lyrically touched. The first piece 11 is for the women, fluid and formal with an individual sense of each dancer. Morris introduces the men and in a humorous jest, he eliminates them as if to confirm the independence of the women. They are unearthly images except for the feisty Lauren Grant. In the sonata with two pianos it becomes the men’s turn to be macho yet tender, strong yet vulnerable. Their circle dance couldn’t express their communal spirit more openly. In the final piece all 18 dancers, in white, dance together creating heights of musicality with such wit and charm with romantic movements that are as clear as glass yet eloquent in style as the men and women couple in love. Yet by the finale the men take to one side, the women to the other as if love is not all consuming…resonating the wondrous joy of Mozart in the dance and music! Import whenever it is scheduled again!!! Export not necessary

July 4 – 7/07

SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD by ATHOL FUGARD/JOHN KANI/ WINSTON NTSHONA

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead is the second play as part of three Statement Plays to be considered the ‘Township Plays’ based on the ordinary life of the South African in the black townships during the apartheid period. It was in New Brighton, not far from Port Elizabeth that The Island, Sizwe Banzi and Statements After the Arrest Under the Immorality Act were first performed during the apartheid period. The three plays were then brought to London where the European and American world would be so emotionally exposed to the hardships of the black community in South Africa. This play was originally performed by the authors Kani and Ntshona at the Royal Court in1972 and was just revived by the same duet at the National Theatre. ’Why?’ you may ask would a play about the black population needing papers to move from one town to another be required of native citizens and why should it be revived currently when that act of apartheid is gone? The performance at the National was no longer about the play but to see these two actors re-enact their performances of 34 years ago. The welcome of Kani and Ntshona was one of the most moving moments where theatre proved its raison d’etre. These two men endured apartheid and were here to tell us their lasting story. Then as if the fates decreed Peter Brook came with his current production cast with two new actors and proved that the play has lived on, without changing the dialogue, only clarifying a smoother flow of the story in its French translation. Brook has given us the full meaning of the play …a timeless play about identity…and made it into a classic by revealing its universal theme. We must change constantly with the times in order to survive…we must re-invent ourselves. Sizwe Banzi in losing his identity and taking on one of a dead man through his papers first cries out at his loss and the stealing of another man’s identity. ‘What’s happening in this world, good people? Who cares for who in this world?’ But Buntu gradually tells him that he’s a number, not a name. It is Buntu who first describes his work at the Ford factory and the unnecessary preparations made for the visit of Henry Ford Junior himself who just peeped into the factory and looked at nothing and noone. He then decided to search for a new identity and set up a photographic shop calling himself Styles, taking pictures of people at all occasions. And when Sizwe comes in for a picture to send his wife and children, Buntu discovers Sizwe’s passbook has expired. As a result he cannot stay in Port Elizabeth, but must go home where there is no work. Buntu finds, by accident, a dead man’s papers and persuades Sizwe to take them in order to remain. Bantu who has already re-invented himself, shows Sizwe the path to his survival. ‘How long will the false identity work?’ questions Sizwe. ‘As long as you stay out of trouble,’ is Buntu’s answer… trouble with the police and then fingerprints. ‘Our skin is trouble,’ Sizwe replies. Played by actors whose souls are exposed to us, can we even mention acting? And what of the décor and direction? We are given the depths of emotions within fluid pacing without the intrusion of a director’s hand, so sensitive and subtle is his skill. In a spartan space filled with cardboard boxes, photos on a board, and doorway frames, we enter the timeless zone from where the spirit of the heart is making an appeal to the world and not from protest. Thus we enter the classical time zone of now and forever. Import, import! Export is already operative on its worldwide tour.

MAY 9 -26/07... @ Warwick Arts Centre May 29-June 2/07

THREE SISTERS by ANTON CHEKHOV

It is always special to witness Chekhov in Russian with Russian actors plus the addition of Declan Donnellan’s direction. The stylistic décor of chairs and tables arranged to locate the specific rooms inside or outside the house is yet another innovation to witness. How does the naturalism of Chekhov in the writing and acting go with surreal stylisation? The English critics have praised the whole production from the acting, the interpretation and the stylisation. It doesn’t jell for me… one has to be honest rather than polite. The production is curiously undefined certainly in its interpretation and in its acting. What is the plotline? Chekhov’s forte is the subplot, one never goes by the plot alone. After all his theme is usually the same…how hopeless are the hopes of people. He uses subplot for the melancholia which is surfaced with humour. The three Prozorov sisters educated in Moscow with an intelligence and awareness of a cosmopolitan life under exciting social circumstances have moved to a small town where the battalion (or battery) of soldiers are as unworldly as the town. Instead of challenging men, Masha has married a provincial schoolmaster Kuligin, Olga is forced into spinsterhood and Irina after her youthful optimism is willing to make a compromised marriage with the baron who gives up the army for civilian life. Their brother Andrey, the creative Andrey has married a conniving shrew Natasha who manipulates the sisters out of their house and drives Andrey to gambling and a provincial status. The battalion constantly meet at the Prozorovs’ house and are the main companions for the Prozorovs. Into this boring and worthless life comes an intelligent urban army officer, Vershinin, a man of worldly living and sophistication….a breath of fresh air, of Moscow, with whom Masha falls in love. He has a neurotic wife who constantly attempts suicide leaving his two daughters unprotected. The battalion is given orders to move, leaving an emptiness so hollow it can never be filled. The baron is killed in a duel by the mad Solyony and Vershinin has to depart with his battalion as their commander, losing a desperately despairing Masha. The hopes of the sisters returning to Moscow and a stimulating life disappear and only the hope of change through the next generation is left. Vershinin is the key catalyst whom we hardly discern in this version. He has no specific line to his character other than being older, no charisma. Andrey should grow progressively more provincial and fat, but he does not. As for the three sisters Olga is the most interesting interpretation by the best actress… rather than the usual frumpy female, a buoyant delightful creature is turned into a spinster. Irina is a joy in her gaiety on her namesake’s day while the scene round the dining table is crystal clear. She slowly loses that fresh blossomly quality into a repressed faceless woman. As to Masha, we see her anger in rather irritable, unpleasant ways leaving little room for sympathy. It is the drunken doctor who gives us Chekhov and the vicious Natasha who emerges from the provincial girl into the mature grotesquery. There are inventive scenes of laughter and tears, such as Masha’s imitation of bossy Natasha rushing with a candle through the attic counter-pointed by the attempted rape of young Irina by the mad officer Solyony who eventually kills the baron. The unusually interpreted Kolygin, the schoolmaster, is manic at the opening, falling by the wayside at the end as he willingly accepts Masha’s love for Vershinin. All of the characters are self centred egotists with the exception of Olga whom we care about. But there is sadness at the waste of precious lives who could have contributed to the next generation. Hearing the Russian language is a huge bonus despite not understanding Russian. Seeing Chekhov and his characters are always deeply fulfilling despite any interpretation or version. No import or export possible.

May 15 –19/07

PLATONOV

The Maly Theatre of St Petersburg brought over their ingenious production of PLATONOV several years ago and was so overwhelming that it is back by special request. The lake in front of the dacha where scenes are played, the jazz actor/musicians not only adding a hazy mood but expertise, playing solos or duets mournfully or in rage, the ensemble acting, the passionate but tormented Platonov, the emotional involvement, the feeling that this is what theatre is all about as an art form, the sense of melancholic beauty in this chaotic world, all of this is what Lev Dodin’s Maly Theatre has given to us. The most compelling image where candles fill the stage as night lights float on water, surrounding the set while fireworks erupt on this halcyon summer night is made melancholy by the characters’ laughter soon to succumb to the loss awaiting them. Between the laughter and tears, the attempted suicides and lovemaking, sustained throughout this subtly nuanced production, we absorb the Russian spirit. This early work of Chekhov, in which the masochistic Platonov is characterised, becomes a familiar figure in Chekhov’s later plays. This adaptation is very selective as the work is six hours longer than the three hours chosen by Dodin who has woven it together with the jazz music and the water scenes where actors dive in, accentuating moments of intensity and sexuality. Anna Petrovna, a widow in debt, is auctioning her estate despite the celebration of a summer party where an atmosphere of apprehension permeates the air. Four women are competing for the disillusioned teacher’s affection, including the dignified Anna while Platonov’s wife stands by the humiliation. His hesitations injure all the women and life slips away with his hope of any happiness as he sinks further into an irrecoverable despair. The company has received rave notices and will hopefully return again with this intoxicating production. Import Import Import!

March 12 - 18/07

DICK WHITTINGTON and HIS CAT by Mark Ravenhill

The names and talent just load the credits and yet with all of that talent it is the most unappealing and miscast show for Christmas. So many songs composed by so many composers add up to no style or consistency while fragmenting the whole as songs are sung to the moment whether it’s love, adventure, danger or villainy. Such a musical giant as Travis is wasted, the direction is heavy handed, most of the actors are wooden and move like stumps while the croaking voices project their songs. Roger Lloyd Pack can’t sing, dance, time a joke, or convey a wicked sense of sexual fun which is basic for playing the dame in a pantomime. The essence of a pantomime is the dame. Ravenhill is the master of in-yer-face theatre and though surprisedly he has written a very conventional script because he loves the pantomime tradition, one expected some kind of brutal insight, some original thinking, which never happened. Dear Nickolas Grace was a saving grace and did his best to play the villain by baiting the children while Danny Worters as Lazy Jack enticed them very endearingly to be his friend. Summer Strollen is also a boon to the production with a clear as a bell voice, an easy acting style, and a beauty to match the gifts of nature. A big spectacle set with ships afloat and busy street markets give theatrical effects but never compensate for a miscast cliché show. Talking scenery does not a pantomime make…but fun does. Better luck next year.

Christmas Show

WOYZECK by Georg Buchner

This is the same quasi-circus production playing last year at the Barbican where most of the energy is in the encased pool, part of the platformed set, in which the best moments are the love scene between Woyzeck and Marie and her death. The music vibrates, the trapeze and ropes swing daringly, but where is Buchner or text of any quality. It is a great hit as popular theatre but unrelated to any literary text or acting of any standard.

July 5-15/06

EN ATTENDANT LE SONGE (until the dream)

How to describe Irina Brook’s version of Midsummers Night’s Dream as compared to her father Peter Brook’s revolutionary romantic Dream? It is the difference in their generations and what exists cultural today as compared to the 1970 days of Peter Brook where the poetry of the language was spellbinding. Irina’s interpretation, condensed in French to 90 minutes, is a comic, unromantic, down-to-earth unpretentious version in which six workers or builders from the theatre, in order to please an audience, decide to put on the show as they see it because the actors are being delayed at the airport in Athens. Not being actors and only selecting what appeals to them from their point of view we are given the play concentrating on its fun from the Mechanicals (tradesmen) to the two couples of lovers where the young men are given doses of magic by Puck to confuse their memory in identifying the girls they love. The builders not only act out the play of Pyramus and Thisbe as the Mechanicals (tradesmen) performed in the full version of the Dream, but as the builders, they play all the parts including women and fairies and the lovers in their misidentities leading to fist fights. There is utter chaos in this knockabout farce. They fill an empty stage by their own hilarious antics using scarves or ribbons, an umbrella or bicycle from which to draw their change of character. When the builder, who is a plumber by his trade, playing Bottom, has to become an ass, he uses his plumber’s tools to make horns and a tail. When they appear as fairies blowing bubbles and skipping about on their toes, one‘s side split with laughter. Fast and furious they go from one scene to the next telling the story in French which needs no translation as the action of movement, rubber faces, and farce tell it all. Shakespeare’s tale is that of Hippolyta and Theseus, Duke of Athens, who have informed the lovers Hermia and Lysander that Demetrius must be engaged to Hermia as her father wishes. The lovers decide to runaway, telling a tearful Helena who loves Demetrius to join them. She in turn tells Demetrius. They all escape through the forest on a midsummer night when the fairies commanded by King Oberon and Queen Titania play their magical tricks. It is the mischievous Puck whom Oberon commands to give the magic powder to the young men so that Demetrius will not chase Hermia but Helena. However, Puck gives the potion to Lysander who then chases Helena which leads to the girls into their skirmish. Oberon asks Puck to drop a potion onto Titania in order to steal the young Indian boy. She falls in love with Bottom who has been made into an ass. The Mechanicals (tradesmen) have come into the forest to rehearse the play of Pyramus and Thisbe. It is Bottom who is caught by Puck and drugged. It all ends happily ever after as Titania and Oberon, Hippolyta and Theseus, Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius are all wedded and joyously watch the entertainment of the Mechanicals performing their play. It is directed with a simplicity that clearly relates to children and adults paced and timed with such accuracy so that the speed never interferes with comprehension. The actors work as an ensemble with precise detail of interplay enjoying the play and the audience who are charmed by the company and their delectable skill. The lights are marvellously magical…the Christmas joy was never merrier. It will be touring after the run at the Bouffes du Nord and hopefully will spread its wings of glee internationally. Like love you don’t need to know the language. IMPORT AND EXPORT INTERNATIONALLY!!

December 14-January 5/08 and then touring France

FRAGMENTS

Brook exceeds his own dimensions and definitions of space in his choice of three fragmented pieces of Beckett at the Bouffes du Nord with its barren rounded stage lit in reds, the dominant dome in the auditorium, plus the stage-doors, all of which embrace the atmosphere of the whole theatre creating a vision of the universe. Two and at times three characters in precise mimic movements staged to their action and words are miniatures in the size of this universe into which the whole of this rounded theatre and dome metaphysicalised. There is humour on a universal scale within an internal examination by the Flemish Houben and the Italian Magni exploring in French as they manoeuvre in and out of white sacks changing size and shapes ad infinitum. These two performers have worked so well together in their Complicité experience. In Fragments they rise out of alternate plastic bags and somehow manage to assume the same set of clothes and daily rituals with the great clownish effect of the exuberant Houben to the petulant Magni in his deliberate efforts to steal the attention with his pouting mouth, popping up out of the bag with that churlish expression just to make sure his tetchy face is the lasting image. The sadness of the woman played so poignantly yet proudly by Mnich as she rocked her life away in her mother’s chair, reflecting the human condition between laughter and tears, pulled at the psyche and the heart maintaining Beckett’s melancholia coloured by his wit which reaches the mystical. She does not perform this piece in the usual manner of an incantation but with gallows humour of one who mockingly stands outside of herself. She also makes a strong impact in Neither One Nor The Other as she uses both stage-doors in expressing the non-expressible between two kinds of non-existence. Brook’ interpretation of Beckett captures with wit, in the simplest of staging, deep feelings which give one the spiritual experience of a holy shrine. The programme will be coming to the Young Vic in May and is not to be missed as it will be performed in English.

October 5 - 28/06

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR (1921) by LUIGI PIRANDELLO

The rubic cube allows you to shape and reshape the cube but you must follow patterns to succeed. So is it with Pirandello in this cubic play where he poses reality against fantasy and fantasy against reality until you find it difficult to follow which is which and which is real. This was a breakthrough in early 20th-century theatre where the style of melodrama was being supplanted by naturalism affecting the actor as so distinguishly perfected by Eleanora Dusa. There is enough to deal with Pirandello who has six characters of a father, mother, older and younger sons, older and younger daughters intrude upon a company of actors and a director in the midst of their rehearsal, thus imposing upon them their tragedy which they contend is far greater theatre. The actors never understand the characters who portray their story more accurately and dramatically. The father has evicted the mother with her lover making her abandon her son. She takes up residency in another town and has three children with her lover who dies leaving the family impoverished. They return to their old hometown where the mother sews for a milliner and sends her 13-year-old daughter to deliver the work. But upstairs above the shop is a bordello which the owner forces upon the innocent girl. Meanwhile, the father sees the destitution of the family and invites them to live with him. His son is angered by the intrusion refusing to recognise his mother or the sisters and brother. All the while, the 13 year-old step-daughter is seduced by the pervy step-father who is unaware of the girl’s identity until the mother, by accident, comes upon them. There begins the accumulated shocks that follow. The step-daughter has neglected her younger brother and sister who in their unhappiness of rejection and hostility commit suicide in the garden, the girl by drowning, the boy by shooting himself upon his sister’s death, leaving a ravished mother and destroyed sister. Only the hate of revenge on the father causes the need to find an author for their play. What the highly imaginative adapters have done is updated the story and created the making of a docu-drama with two actors instead of a theatre rehearsal with actors. This adaptation has a prologue and epilogue to Pirandello’s drama. In the prologue the docu-drama is being produced and directed by a a woman concerned with the assisted suicide of a young boy dying of a disease. Since the film crew were not allowed to conduct a direct interview, the executive producer questions the validity of the documentary. And now comes the added reality-fantasy of Goold and Powers in introducing the question of truth in documentaries that reconstruct the events as close to the reality that existed. Is it the truth? To complicate Pirandello with the truth in docu-dramas may be related to the play but extends it into another dimension. We are given, for example, the doctor on the video in the prologue who looks as if she is about to cry. Why is she crying? Ironically, it is because she is losing her plastic eye lense. Should the director use it out of its context and have her crying over the boy? It is all well and good to use an assisted suicide in the prologue of a young boy in comparison to the two children of Pirandello. But the adapters go overboard in the second act, which becomes an extended epilogue, creating another  play when the director, live and on video, gets caught up in Pirandello’s play, chasing about with Pirandello’s dead boy into Chichester’s theatre of Music Man and then commits suicide herself. Well, that’s really egging the concept way beyond the acceptable perimeters. We are now in the territory of Six Characters In Search of an Editor. In addition to all of this we have the fun of the documentary technicians mockingly axing to death the executives of the Chichester theatre. Act II becomes such a melange of fantasy confused with the reality of another story that the audience cannot figure out the whole and just enjoys the first half enormously while intermittently appreciating here and there, in the second half, the vast imagination of Goold and Powers. There is an operatic display of the mother’s dirge upon discovering the daughter’s profession and with her husband that goes into another saga on its own while the drowning of the young daughter in the pond is breathtaking. Ian McDiarmid reveals an amazing range of pathos, anger, and cold bloodedness as the father. His scene of debauchery with the step-daughter is shattering. Denise Gough’s step-daughter is a tribute to this young actress who captured the hate with a sense of justice yet maintained the innocence of the young. Docu-drama producer/ director Noma Dumezweni carries the burden of the show with enormous energy and profound feelings. This production may not make it further than Chichester as did their Dr Faustus which brilliantly wedded Marlowe’s script with the shock-artists Chapman  Brothers or their Stalinist Macbeth with a No Exit colouringwhich ended up in the West End and Broadway, but it is not to be missed at Chichester, nor can there be any doubts about Rupert Goold’s genuine rise to fame as one of the most ingenious new directors. Import and export when re-edited.

June 27-August 23/8...

I AM SHAKESPEARE WEBCAM DAYTIME CHAT-ROOM SHOW

Rylance is magic on stage wooing an audience from the stalls to stage like no other actor. He plays an obsessive presenter of an internet chat-room set up in his garage determined to prove Shakespeare wasn’t the writer of the works we give credit to. He plays an ex-schoolmaster sending himself up as one knows he believes in Sir Francis Bacon. Here is Rylance in his comic guise which I find too deliberate at times; but not nearly as irritating as Sean Foley, the other half of the team of Right Size which is not one of my favourite comic teams. Foley plays an ex-pop-star now turned hippy philosopher in music. His function is to run back and forth querying the arrival of all these ghosts that have come to life which becomes so repetitious that it loses the quick witted humour. Rylance begs, borrows and steals, manically hysterical or manipulatively consoling to prove his point. What we are getting is a debate decorated in script form. Into the arena he brings Shakespeare, an endearing performance, Francis Bacon a rambunctious rendering, Edward de Vere a stolid rogue, and a delightfully precious Mary Sdney, all contenders to the authorship of the Shakespeare plays. I’m not sure just why he left out Christopher Marlowe. However, it is outrageous in its courage to perform this didactic piece made tolerable through its humour and climaxed with an ending equalling Spartacus when he coaxes the whole audience to stand up and say, ‘I am Shakespeare’. In essence when voted they believed in Shakespeare being Shakespeare except for one lonely voice calling out ‘Mark Rylance’. It’s a kooky evening in which we are given the details of the contestants for Shakespeare but it requires great spontaneity to follow so much information. Chichester is being quite daring in this choice of programme. Import no export.

August 14 – September 8/07

BABES IN ARMS by RODGERS and HART

Here’s theatre history with one of the best productions of this cliché musical with a book that is zilch as to adult intelligence but with songs like Where Or When, The Lady Is A Tramp and My Funny Valentine (performed delightfully by Donna Steele the free-flighted spirit of a girl), Johnny One Note, Babes In Arms (wonderful company number), I Wish I Were In Love Again (performed with winning wit by the tall cocky Kay Murphy and all-thumbs Matthew Hart) that are still sung with Hart’s lyrics that are still highly inventive in their multiple rhymes and their punny wordplay (when love congeals/ it soon reveals/ the double-crossing of a pair of heels). The choreographer is one of England’s great finds, Bill Deamer, who doesn’t do dance numbers but choreography as created in the American musicals. Choreography means dance that is dramatised and here is choreography full of fun and characters, bouncing with energy, zestful in individual movements, with dancers enjoying themselves at high intensity that is contagious. Deamer uses tap as Balachine used ballet in his original Dream Ballet. How fulfilling it is to see so dearly missed innocence on stage. The young talent who will make it to stardom is another element in the delicious sense of discovery. The film altered the book and dropped most of the score. Oppenheimer in the ‘50s picked up the original stage piece and rewrote the book and now Martin O’Connor has reworked it in his staging. This is a fresh start in recreating the musical with the added number of You Took Advantage Of Me sung with the gusty lungs of Lorna Luft (Judy Garland’s daughter) in the best performance she has ever given. The book centres on a group of teenage apprentices, children of old vaudevillians, in a Cape Cod Summer Theatre where producer Seymour has booked in a melodrama about oil prospecting in Alaska starring Baby Rose (sweetly devilish Sophia Ragavelis), child film-star, whose domineering mother (Lorna Luft who sends herself up with the lightest of touches) is determined to make her a serious actress. But the apprentices decide to do their own show in the barn if they can’t use the theatre, reinventing a new vaudeville tradition while their parents cling to a dying entertainment. Donna Steele’s Billie, an independent spirit supp