PARLOUR SONG by JEZ BUTTERWORTH

Here again is a director of such ingenious sensitivity and alertness to nuance that he could stage the telephone book and one would be captivated. There is nothing new or original in telling us that in the suburbs life is full of surprises, danger and mounting sexual appetites… not nearly as dull as purported. To be told that these newly erected housing estates creating new towns where none existed before, each exactly the same down to the water tapes, is not earth shaking. But Ian Rickson brings on an ominous ambiance of suspense that is combined with humour provided by Toby Jones that makes the evening. There is one scene where Jones lies in bed with earphones trying to follow the instructions of cunnilingual techniques because his sex life is diminishing, screwing his tongue in so many positions, you die with laughter. And then when his wife Joy suddenly enters the room, his pretence of listening to Eric Clapton music is hysterical. Or when he decides to rid himself of his male bosom by weight-lifting making such sounds and groans with a face to match you split with guffaws. He is a chubby demolition expert madly in love with Joy after 11 years of marriage. But the tone shifts when Ned keeps complaining about so many missing objects from his house, even a heavy stone bird bath. It is not till the end that he discovers they are all packed away in a room or attic; and it is only then we begin to recognise his paranoia which is amplified by his fantasy of smothering Joy to death. She on the other hand is bored to tears and has a fling with her well-muscled neighbour Dale, owner of a car-washing company, while Ned is away on his job of blowing up redundant buildings, leading a lonely on-the-road life. Joy plays the seductress who in asking for a lemon slice for her gin and tonic makes it sound like erotic foreplay or playing scrabble on her bed with Dale an explosive climax. She planned to run away and leave Ned, waiting for Dale who never intended joining her, and so she reluctantly returned. The happy marriage simmers with rage underneath but goes on with a slightly unbalanced Ned ever friendly with his threatening Dale. Butterworth’s knack of capturing the lingo of the ordinary bloke, the surface conversations between men and men or men and women hiding a multiple of sin and anguish is his forte and excuses his lack of originality. It’s his portraits rather than a landscape that he sketches leaving us to anticipate a full blown painting. Rickson brings to life every moment possible with exact timing of every scene and punctilious portraiture of the characters. He evolves eerie atmosphere from shadows and substance from text for characters while fluidly moving in perfect rhythm from scene to scene. Though the evening appears incomplete, the quality of professionalism is so intense one ends up with an uplifted feeling of experiencing theatre as an art form. Import no export.

March 19- May 9/09

DUET FOR ONE (1980) by TOM KEMPINSKI

The play has always been a vehicle piece based on the tragedy of Jacqueline du Pré, the brilliant cellist whose life was gradually destroyed by multiple sclerosis. Being a blueprint that needed fleshing out by the actors, it has never stood on its own feet. It has always depended upon the acting and the chemistry between the violinist Stephanie, in this case, and the psychiatrist Dr Feldman. Bound in a wheelchair, Stephanie is sent to see this doctor by her composer-husband. Act I reveals a sharp-tongued humorist in Stephanie with whom the passive doctor attempts to pierce this defence mechanism. Act II explodes into the drama as the doctor attacks with great passion the acerbic pretences of Stephanie who at first responds with anger at being bereft of her art and finally her marriage. Climbing the mountain of fear and anger is as high as Mount Everest, and it is only when Stephanie admits to her suicide thoughts that her journey can begin to accept the loss of ecstasy within an unfulfilled life in art. This production carries with flying colours the exquisite battle between Stephanie and Dr Feldman. To watch this quality of acting with performances of such magnitude is a special experience one yearns for in theatre. Rare and profoundly moving one is held with tension despite knowing du Pré died of her illness. One actually goes through with her the stages of her brooding anger, resentment, and final fear of being stricken by a fatal slow-destroying disease. Juliet Stevenson gives the performance of her life in a part so meaningful to her while Henry Goodman brings illuminating authenticity to the doctor in his absorbed listening despite closed eyes, peppermint popping, or his clenched fists and arched brows guiding his piercing eyes. What he so brilliantly conveys is his own passion despite the outward appearance of professional detachment. The battle of wills between these two strongly defined persons is the very essence of theatre accompanied by the magic of Bach, soft lighting, and a serene set. There is nothing more one could ask of theatre…. a life-time experience, not to be missed. Import and export for Broadway.

January 22-March 14/09

IN A DARK, DARK HOUSE by NEIL LABUTE

This is an in-depth play from LaBute in which he tackles a very painful subject not easy to write about. Attention should be paid to him for writing the play on this delicate matter and to Michael Attenborough for his truthful yet sensitive direction in which he fearlessly focuses on the forcefully real emotions of the actors. I have felt the English critics are always uncomfortably reticent to give credit to real emotions but will praise theatrical intensity instead. It is a courageous act on Michael Attenborough’s part to go for the real thing. LaBute uncovers the process that youngsters go through after sexual abuse. In this piece Terry, the older brother, could only admit to this abuse to his brother Drew many years later as did Drew in his turn of confession. After so much time of denial Terry finally acknowledges (as is with many abused children) the guilt in participating in the sexual contact because of the element of love. The act became his only contact of love and this in itself confused the repulsion of the act with the need for love. Terry unravels his bemused emotions as he finally confesses to his brother that his relationship to their family friend Todd was one of dependency and that he jealously tried to convince his brother of Todd’s evil in order to keep him to himself. He was even resentful of Todd’s attention to his mother. Here was a whole household because of the father’s violent abuse compensating with a warmly sexual friend of the family. Or was this man a cunning pervert? As Terry describes the sadistic violence of his father towards himself, he relives the moment that caused him to attempt his murder, for which he paid four years in a reform institution. That neither his mother nor Drew defended him to the authorities deeply cut into his life. Years later as grown men, Drew calls upon Terry to defend him. Drew, a prosperous lawyer, in a serious car crash because of his drunken driving, is in a rehab hospital before going to trial. He begs Terry to help him face the past and his abuse by Todd in court so that the sentence will be more lenient. The two brothers have been poles apart till now. An unmarried Terry holding a job as a security guard and working with deprived children in sports activities is opposed to the richly married manipulative Drew with a sharp career as lawyer. In a poignant scene, big brother Terry distrustful at first gives in to defend his brother. It is followed by a cleverly conceived section, where Terry having opened the door to his past, is visiting Todd’s gas station with its cheap mini golf course. Todd’s daughter a precociously sexy 15-year old is taunting Terry who plays her game and finally takes her for an innocent ride in his car. Tempted as he was for revenge, he discovers in facing the reality without vengeance, he gains forgiveness with the prize of inner peace. Only in the last scene does Drew own up to his own sexual acts as the two brothers then begin to plant the seeds for a closer brotherly relationship despite the extremes in their social standings and financial status. In a glorious set of grass, trees and bushes we are first located at the rehab hospital which transforms into the mini golf course and then into the posh grounds of Drew’s country home. The perfect casting of Steven Mackintosh as Drew, David Morrissey as Terry, and Kira Sternbach as Jennifer create a haunting picture under the perceptive direction, musically paced and so honestly-open in feelings. David Morrissey is extremely moving as he fearlessly abandons reserve in his breakdown, Kira Sternbach is marvellously natural in her girlish seductiveness, and Steven Mackintosh makes a sympathetic character out of a manipulative man. There may be times when the plotting of this 85-minute play in 3 scenes may seem contrived in order to keep the twists in the tale at propitious moments but underneath is a truthful attempt to discover the tangled web of emotions in sexual abuse. The aura of discovery is constant, gripping the heart and the gut in a hopeful conclusion of forgiveness. Import and export for an all absorbing experience.

Nov 20/08 – Jan 17/09

WASTE (1907) by HARLEY GRANVILLE BARKER

This is a play constantly being rediscovered as relevant…it never ages because it is a classic dramatising the corruption and manipulations of politicians who never change. Originally prevented from production by the Lord Chamberlain, because of its overt sexual relationships and dialogue, its reference to an abortion, it was produced by Peter Hall at the Old Vic in an astonishing version just a few years ago. Now at the Almeida, the main character Henry Trebell, an emotionally repressed man but an ardent minister determined to disestablish the Church of England from the government, is portrayed by Will Keen. He is approached by the powerful Tories to join them in his plan. Just as he is about to reach his triumphant feat he is struck down by an affair he had with a married woman who became pregnant and aborted the child. She died in the process and the scandal undoes Trebell. His sister makes a noble attempt to search for his soul, but it’s too late. Sam West evidently directed it with precision and quality of style, a general reaction. The Edwardian set with its fringed lampshades and luxurious atmosphere of the mighty evoked the mood of the piece. Will Keen as Trebell, it is generally felt, strongly captured the man’s meagre soul but not his potential power. However, the famous scene between himself and his sister played by Phoebe Nicholls caught the pain of a man’s fall from grace and a sister’s sorrow. The most potent scene where the Tory cabal including the sleight-of-hand prime minister gather together in order to cover-up the scandal thus saving their reputations, is so succinctly staged, according Granville-Barker’s stage directions, that the essence of the play comes to full life. Peter Eyre, Hugh Ross, and Richard Cordery are stalwart actors of such stature as to recreate those high-powered politicians and bring a reality of such connivance. A significant play and production for import and for Off Broadway export.

Sept 25 – Nov 15/08

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

ANDROMAQUE (1667) by JEAN RACINE

Racine is one of the truly great French dramatists who not only wrote in the most exquisite French but in enchanting Alexandrine couplets of rhyme and with such powerful intensity of emotions. He captured the depth of tragedy for yesterday and for today. His characterisations of women cannot be matched. Declan Donnellan has filled a huge cavernous stage not with scenery but with the high voltage of emotional acting that is so pure, it devastates the soul. A line of straight-back simple chairs occasionally brought downstage complete this barren space. Here is a company who flourish in the language, creating such beauty, it breaks the heart. The surtitles in no way resemble the French poetry but are in accurate English and succinct enough to follow the outline of the plot without intrusion. The sound effects are hair-raising and immediate while the spot lighting focuses the attention on the action as well as the characters. It is with stark simplicity that Donnellan devours the attention and exposes us to the impact of real feelings that inhabit drama and enter our very being…that is theatre as an art form and cannot be mistaken. Why I must ask when we are given such heights of art must it be seen in a characterless space that echoes the sound of actors’ voices and resembles a cinema house? It deserves much more. I can imagine its devastation at Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord with the dome of destiny above and the rounded worn-brick walls of old elegance surrounded by the curved white upholstered benches. Now there is character and atmosphere. But one has to accept the conditions as they are at the Barbican and be grateful for such moments of greatness. This is Racine’s interpretation of the conclusion of the terrible disaster the Greeks brought down on its destruction of Troy. They burnt an entire city to the ground leaving not a brick of the palaces, not a cottage in the fields, not a field, blade of grass, or tree. Troy was flooded in blood and never rose again. King Priam and all his sons were cruelly murdered while the women made spoils of war. Hector the great Trojan warrior and hero slain by the great Greek Achilles was dragged through the streets of Troy and never buried. His wife Andromaque, daughter of Priam, and his son Astyanax were awarded as slaves to Pyrrthus, son of Achilles and hero in his right. It is Pyrrthus who, instead of killing Astyanaz as the Greeks demand (they fear he will as king, one day, rebuild Troy), is so madly in love with Androaque that he loves the child as his own and will make him King of Epirus when he dies; but only if Andromaque will marry him and be made queen. Andromaque faces the decision to save her son’s life by marrying Pyrrthus or have him killed and herself made slave and concubine. She is still in shock over the horrors of war and her grievous love for dead Hector. To make such a world shaking decision…to marry the son of the man who slew your husband… under such circumstances… is the tragedy. She decides to marry Pyrrthus, be made queen to ensure her son’s safety, and then commit suicide. But ‘best laid schemes of mice and men ganged oft agley’ as Hermione, Helen and Meneleas’s daughter betrothed to Pyrrthus, takes her vengeance on Pyrrthus by sexually manipulating Orestes (obsessively in love with Hermione) into killing Pyrrthus. After he follows her bidding, committing a high crime by doing so, she turns on him denying any part in the murder and denouncing Orestes. She is her mother’s daughter and not so much love as wounded ego rushed her into action. Andromaque becomes Queen and her son will eventually become the King of Epirus building a new Troy in the name of Epirus. The scene of Hermione’s vengeance on Pyrrthus as she tears his hair or the red confetti representing blood falling on Pyrrthus in his white wedding uniform display heightened horrors. But one cannot select single scenes since the force of the entire company is constant throughout the play. Camille Cayol’s Andromaque, Christophe Gregoire’s Pyrrthus, Camille Japy’s Hermione, Xavier Boiffier’s Oreste, are magnificent performances that are unforgettable but so too are the remaining cast. Import! Import! Export world wide!

April 22 – May 2/09

PANIC

Improbable are a unique company in which offbeat material is given offbeat production values. Paper, string, glue, are distorted or originated into shapes for sets and props that are delightful surprises. Video and lighting effects bring life to inanimate objects and one is constantly watching in anticipation of the next unknown. The book content is usually from a play or storyline already set as in Shock Headed Peter. In this production the story though outlined seems to be improvised with no real backbone. The only aspects of this piece that work are the visual effects which have to highly compensate for a banal book. As a result Phelm McDermott gives us his sexual problems as compared to the bawdy goatish sexuality of Pan whom he imitates and then brings, as the apex to the show, a penis gigantically made of reeds that requires the back of a chair to be the recipient…. not very funny for me. The actual contents of McDermott’s dramaturgy is not much better; the cast in describing themselves is dramatically uninteresting; props used as assistance, such as bringing on tons of ‘how to help yourself’ books are repetitive actions. What successfully remains are the immediate images of the brown paper curtains turned into a mysterious forest; paper bags evolving into masked faces of the muses of which one has tears delicately falling from her eyes; the puppet Pan with horns and goateed beard as he is manipulated by the girls over the tumbling books; the shadow play video of the three muses, tiny figures as nymphs increasing in size and then in vast numbers as they descend upon McDermott’s sleeping Pan; the magic of the lighting from golden glows to forest green. The quality of this show is disappointing as compared to their usual range. However, the technical team redeem the loss of substantial material. No import or export.

April 15 – May 16/09

PARADISO/INFERNO/PURGATORIO by ROMEO CASTELLUCCI

This famous Italian director does his best when not dealing with text and so he is at his apex by taking the Divine Comedy and transforming it into visceral theatre where the images are outrageous and the sounds diabolical. You could not guess this is Dante nor would you ever deduce heaven, hell, or purgatory. So allow me to first present the physical pictures and then conclude with my interpretations of the themes. In Paradiso, an installation, you enter into a huge white square box which leads you to a small doorway into which you step cautiously as it opens into an antechamber where a black ramp or bridge guides you into a black space with water slushing down the walls filling the floor with puddles. At first you only hear and feel the water. Then, as the light just slightly increases, you see a semi-circular space with a shadow of a squirming man groaning as he desperately clings against the waterfall wall on high…and that is paradise. It is very disorientating to adjust to the sound of water rushing down the wall in the darkness where you have lost your bearings until a bit of light allows for recovery and you gradually discern a struggling figure moaning as he twists on the waterfall wall. Is this the definition of paradise for our contemporary civilisation? Is this man writhing in pain through life and death in search of paradise? Is it hopeful or catastrophic? Is the slight cast of light in the tunnel enough to lead us to the light of paradise? Is this Castellucci’s answer to no paradise? The haunting atmosphere of agony remains. In Inferno we are suddenly driven from that inner solo involvement of Paradiso into group destruction ….there is no doubt of it being hell. It opens with inferno letters on either side of the stage flashing its neon lights and then onto Castellucci being savagely attacked by three Alsatian dogs as the restrained seven on leashes ferociously bark. You are forced to look at violence whether it’s the dogs or the gorgeous white stallion covered in blood; the man cutting the women’s throats over and over; the suicidal dives of men falling backwards into the abyss (modern icons of Renaissance art); Andy Warhol on his deconstruction of art snapping Polaroids; toddlers squabbling in a Perspex cage stamping on balloons while gigantic black clouds gradually surround them; crowds of people lost and forgotten slowly dying and falling in mass onto the ground; grotesque soundscapes; doom, disaster and despair dressed in bright colours; a basketball passed from life to life as from hand to hand; an old man strangles a young woman who ceaselessly writhes like the worm despite being cut into pieces; a grand piano is set alight into roaring flames while a skelton crawls over it; a car burnt-out and wrecked pondered over then entered by Andy Warhol; all these images and more compound into a definition that is unmistakable…hell on earth. Last to be seen is Purgatorio which bears no visual, no structural relationship to any of the other Dante pieces and I am not sure whether it bears any to Dante himself. Neither sin nor punishment for sin seems to be clearly imagined here despite Castellucci’s explanations in the programme paper. It opens on a massive modern kitchen darkly lit with only one huge window allowing in light. Mother is puttering very quietly; there’s no sound at all, only surtitles reveal the conversations after it happens. Because the stillness is essential as compared to the noise of the Inferno, we hear her cutting the bread as she prepares food for her son. She calls for him and serves him his meal but also warns him to take his medicine. He seems unwell as he holds his robot close to his heart. He asks if his father is coming. A gigantic disc closes the scene upon which the past conversation is projected. This devise is used for each of the scene changes and for the surtitles. Next scene is the boy’s bedroom…also exaggerated in size and in objects. His mother joins him and then leaves. He hides in a large cupboard which seems to be magical as it lights up. So far it is purgatory in the lack of communication, the boring routine, and for the slow pace the audience has to endure. Next scene is the living room where a gigantean robot appears with flashing eyes, the magic of the flashing cupboard is now revealed. Why or how there is a giant robot is never motivated. We are now fully emerged in symbolism. The following scene is the return of the father who is served his dinner in the living room. He is in a warm embrace with his wife when he suddenly asks for his hat….searches and puts on his cowboy hat…and forgets the mother. Then come episodes of father and son, playing on the piano in the living room, fond embraces, the boy led to his bedroom, empty stage…only the sound of the boy heard crying. Following this we see the boy in an epileptic fit which the father controls…no mum around. But it is not clear whether the father is strangling the boy or sexually assaulting him…no mum around. More symbolism? Using floral cinema photography we are given the passage of time and a reversal of roles…father is on the floor with a towering son over him. You can read into all of this as purgatory being routine family life, oedipal and incestuous conflicts, no identity, no communication, etc. etc. Casstelluci defines it as the father being God and the boy being man, his human creation. Original sin arises from the father giving life to his son and must be forgiven for this. The father, having committed the crime or sin, is demolished but the son carries him on his shoulders, saying, ‘don’t despair, it’s all over.’ Castellucci’s explanations seem to me to be a far cry from Dante. But what about that hat? Or the piano playing? I thought that more purgatorial than God crumbling. The sets, technical inventions, lights, massive stagings, images of phenomenal impact, the depth of actors emotions and skills, the music and soundscape are all epically memorable. Genius is at work visually and viscerally but what I question is the depth of intellect. See Castellucci before you die. Import no export necessary.

April 2-9/09

A FOREST by ROBERT PACITTI

This is symbolic theatre once again…not fluid in the continuity of thought and only punctuating images as immediate stories. I have seen this work before and have found it less impressive in this careful structure. Pacitti tells his morality stories in a folktale style as he narrates, Ghelani connects and contacts the audience, and Castagna demonstrates. The centre of the room has a mound of tuppenny pieces in a huge circle which the audience surrounds. Ghelani has a throne containing her props, while opposite her is Pacitti on mike, and on the mound of coins sits, lies and spins Castagna. So we are taken on a journey through the forest…a dark forest of stories...of mind journeys. In this magic circle around the circle of coins we are led into rituals of viewing Ghelani’s breasts plus pig’s trotters, putting tuppence into her coin box, giving her the rag doll we found on our seats, watching her sweep away bread crumbs saying fool, or breathing the incense she has been spraying round the room. Castagna is bounded with red ribbon and mine printed onto his arm as Ghelani shows us or he lies naked on the mound of coins while hot wax is dropped onto his skin as Ghelani builds a mini forest or ties deer’s antlers onto his back. Pacitti tells us stories of Gut meeting Fi Fi Fo Fum or the man who makes a pincushion of his heart just to contact his feelings. Sounds of insects, ravens crowing are added to the eerie woods as Pacitti asks what do we want. And I feel quite like saying not this kind of ritual that plays at magic and images but some depth of thought that brings morality onto a significant level and not just symbols of materialism or loneliness. No import or export possible.

April 7-9/09

TWELFTH NIGHT based on Shakespeare from SHOCHIKU GRAND KABUKI

Having mounted Shakespeare for more than thirty years, Ninagawa is not only an old hand at it but one has come to accept there is only plot and characters of Shakespeare that he takes, mixing east and west, pop and classics, distilling whatever he chooses into images that are extraordinary. He has chosen well in selecting Twelfth Night…a perfect Shakespeare to adapt to Japanese values. In using the Kabuki actors from the Shochiku Kabuki Company, Ninagawa manages to dilute their style into his own. So if you intend to discover the Kabuki theatre style or Shakespeare’s lyrical language forget it. You go to see Ninagawa’s version of mixed metaphors, styles, and cross fertilising and sigh at the exquisite costumes, the gorgeous images, the lively acting, the mischievous Ichikawa Kamejiro as Maria whose comic characterisation is contagious, the realistic boat that edges to the tip of the stage with a Viola close to melodrama whose boat is then tossed by the billowing silk representing the stormy waves, the cliché garden bridge breaching the mountains of white lilies, the night moon and clouds, the sound effects, the original music timed to every move of the actors dramatising scenic effects, and of course the cherry blossoms falling in sad silence while the young chorus sing to Orsino. In addition we have an all male cast of traditional Kabuki actors playing all the parts including the women, just as in Shakespeare’s time. Ninagawa follows the plotline of the twins Viola and Sebastian lost at sea and separated. Viola drifts to shore to Illyria disguised as a boy Cesario and serves Duke Orsino who is madly in love with Olivia. Olivia has a household of her uncle Sir Toby Belch and his idiot friend Sir Andrew Augecheek, her fool Feste, her maid Maria, and her steward named Malvolio. She is in mourning for her brother and rejects Orsino. Fun plus drinking is had by Maria, Feste, Augecheek and Toby Belch who are disdained by Malvolio. They revenge themselves on him through trickery…the famous scene of Malvolio wearing yellow stockings with crossed garters and smiling as a lover to Olivia. There is constant misidentity until it is discovered that Viola’s twin brother Sebastian has come ashore. Meanwhile, Viola has fallen in love with Orsino, Olivia with Viola as a boy. But all is resolved with Sebastian marrying Olivia, Orsino marrying Viola, Augecheek going home, Malvolio leaving Olivia while Feste remains and Sir Toby becomes attached to Maria. A happy-ever-after ending with a version of the Kabuki ending up with a version of Shakespeare. Import not possible and it is constantly exported.

March 24 - 28/09

PIED PIPER

The Hip-hop dance revolution from Stratford East, as they call themselves, is less revolution and more evolution in a project of training a huge collection of multiracial youngsters to hip-hop. When the knife-killings of gangs seem so prevalent what a great enterprise this is for consuming the juvenile energy. The founders of the company dance with the children and though they are very professional dancers, Stratford had a far more extravagant hip-hopper in K. Christian Olozie Sandy's understudy hip-hops the Pied Piper with intensity and keeps the young chorus in line. The discipline of the juniors representing the Hamlin children shows a virtuosity as well and those playing the hooded rats who shimmied and shook in perfect harmony It is a great project for Stratford East but less applicable for the Barbican despite a full and enthusiastic audience. It looks more like a school performance supposedly telling the story of the Pied Piper in dance form. When the rats invaded the town of Hamlin, the burghers hired the Pied Piper to rid the town of them. But the burghers reneged on the payment, and so the Piper played his pipe for the children who all followed him into the mountains. It is lovely to see such joy on stage from the children on stage and from the hip-hoping children in the audience. So maybe the Barbican is right in opening its doors for the fun of the younger generation.

March 5-14/09

SHUN-KIN by COMPLICITE/SIMON McBURNEY

Simon McBurney is one of the great storytellers in the theatre and with Theatre Complicité has brought us the most unusual and original work I have seen. He has dramatised the art of storytelling in the most unsuspecting ways but here he has taken a popular Japanese tale (1933) of sadistic love and developed the story-telling technique of old and new by using props and dramatised moments to express the full impact. Music is so beautifully timed, lights gradually illuminate or softly glow, sounds sharply/ swiftly create space and place, narrow poles are arranged as a roof, a battle, a table suggesting the immediacy of where we are. The puppet child who suddenly becomes a live woman is startling, the actors becoming objects are all part of McBurney’s style. Spoken in Japanese, one follows the surtitles for the details. I only regret that they were not centred so that the eyes could concentrate on the action and not be deterred by looking away at the translation. Tanizaki’s story is based on an old 19th-century Japanese tale of a blind musician Shunkin, a master of the shamisen (a 3-stringed lute) and a merchant’s daughter, who is a beautiful bully in her determination to secure a full rich life. She is adored by her apprenticed servant lover Sasuke whom she will not marry because his station is beneath her. He feeds her, dresses her, and leads her through the city. She calls to him with paper larks that wing their way sky-upwards. One night while asleep, she is violently attacked and scared for life by gangsters. She will not allow her servant to see her so disfigured. He then blinds his eyes, reuniting himself with his mistress as they once were. She died at the age of 58 while he lived on to tell the tale. They are buried in a graveyard close to one another. Sasuke narrates as old man and the shamisen is played by a shadowed musician. There is a second narrator translating this production into another medium which can be ignored. But one cannot forget the haunting quality of this amazing love story that reveals beauty in a lapping wing of paper, a flash of light, the sound of ice, and the soul of music. Import import and export for art centres worldwide!

January 30 – February 21/09

LES SEPT PLANCHES de la RUSE

There’s an interesting correlation between Cirque du Soleil and Les Sept Planches de la Ruse who both deal with acrobatic ballet. The influences stem from entirely different sources yet both derive their skills from the circus. Aurelien Bory is a French circus director whose forté lies in ingenious design and kinetic play. He alters the change of space and scale into shapes and sizes that is unpredictable as he has done here with the ancient game of tangram. The small pieces that are played on a table, made into thousands of patterns, range from geometric forms to fish, flowers, cats, or dogs, are now so gigantically enlarged (24 approximately square feet) for the stage as to be set pieces. They are moved with such agility by the Beijing Opera Ballet Company of 14 acrobats in their group shuffling and gliding as on skates or acrobatic with legs spread as wings ready to fly. They skate between shapes, walk or jump, climb or slip, roll or even tumble, create ledges, seesaws, skyscrapers, or whatever as one critic mentioned a Jacob Epstein Rock Drill bronze. This Chinese puzzle is constantly divided into geometric shapes until the end when all the pieces are assembled into an enormous square. Seven pieces… 5 triangles ( 2 large, 2 medium and 1 small), one small square, and a parallelogram provide an evening of endless forms and a journey along the way as to how they are created. At one point there is singing or chanting as they lounge on the varied blocks. The lulling movement has a curious atmosphere with the easy light changes adjusting to the shapes. Above all, despite this great activity of huge shapes being manoeuvred, it is never belaboured but performed with a quietness effortlessly achieved. The last image of the completed giant square, resembling a fortified wall being pushed by the group behind one man, is ominous. But somehow 75 minutes seems excessive and one feels an hour or less would be enough for this original concept performed so expertly by the company. Import, but export for the Brooklyn Academy only.

January 14-17/09

ROMEO AND JULIET, ON MOTIFS OF SHAKESPEARE

I remember so vividly Morris’ amazing production of Mozart last year and anticipated wonders to behold and hear in the reconstruction of the Prokofiev original score along with the dances of Morris as part of the Dance Umbrella festival. This is the Romeo and Juliet with the happy ending where Friar Lawrence stops Romeo from killing himself and the reunited lovers float into an ambiguous eternal bliss. The pale wooden set with miniature houses and church plus the side screens that open into panels offers a lightness of touch typical of the production. Morris has given us an intimate and clean lined modern dance re-enactment which is basically disappointing. Verona’s rude boys fight constantly in the same patterned choreography enacting the constant rivalry with similar music repeated over and over again. The energy of the dance lies in the street fighting. The lovers are muted without passion and false balletic gestures. The music has some lively passages with the Russian vitality but the endless repetition intrudes on a contrasting score. Though Morris’s choreography with its folksy flavour is alert to the music and moves the ensemble skilfully, the soloists are bland by comparison. He responds to the hostilities rather than the romance. Noah Vinson’s Romeo is passionlessly dull while Maile Okamura’s Juliet has an aura of love. Lauren Grant’s nurse is dynamically potent and saucy, Amber Darragh’s Mercutio is full of life and spirit, Julie Worden’s strutting Tybalt looking for trouble gives a memorable performance. This was to be the feather in the cap of Dance Umbrella but unfortunately it is more fluff than feather…better luck next year. No import or export.

Nov 5 – 8/08

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

SOMEWHERE LA MANCHA

This is a free adaptation moving the adventures of Don Quiote and his servant Sancho into modern times and in free association letting them meet the people of today that share in their experience. Here is a company who have worked together in true ensemble and as a result, pace each other’s lines, reactions, and actions to the exact timing and acknowledgement of each other. They sing, they dance, they leap and prance finding each episode another spin off from yesterday to today. The supermarket trolly carries all the props such as umbrellas, chairs, table cloths …..all emerge from the trolly. Then onto the next adventure we go by a change of light, a new song, another dance or a new character. The jokes are good natured, the children and adults alike find enough amusement to encourage the slapstick antics of the cast or the arguing, joshing or plain sentiments in a casual way that seems seamless…as if it is instantaneous. It is a meeting of audience to the company in that amazing theatre where the intimacy of space is ever present. The rounded contours bring the audience into the stage which heightens the pleasure of the actors with that kind of rapport. It has had a short run at the Bouffes but the company will return once more in another tale with the same enthusiasm.

Touring this summer: 03-04/07/09 in Almagro festival (Spain), 01/08/09: Figeac theatre festival (France), 20/09/09: Yerevan theatre festival (Armenia), in France in 2009: 09/10/09: Chevilly Larue, 15/10/09: Le Seynod, 17/10/09: Le Bouguenais,07/11/09: Bolbec, 24/11/09: YzeYzeure, 26/11/09: Pully (Switzerland), Bo, In France in 2010: 09/02/10: Clichy, 31/03/10: Nevers, 09/04/10: Aubergenville

LOVE IS MY SIN sonnets of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To hear the sonnets spoken by the beautiful voice of Natasha Parry answered by the practical tones of Bruce Myers is to suddenly have life brought to them in the various moods of love coaxing, or love angered, or love engaging but always in different moods to different reactions. Suddenly there are dramatic scenes evolving out of the sonnets creating almost a verse drama. There are deep emotions and feelings that are so alive as the language emerges with the profound meaning of beauty. The sensitive playing of the music, the quiet movement of the actors all add to an occasion of such serenity, such exquisite musical language to the ear that is just a brief moment of joy… too soon over in its hour’s length. It closed today so no import or export.

Touring: Mayence (Shakespeare Festival), Gyula (Shakespeare Festival), Dubrovnik (Dubrovnik Summer Festival), Kilkenny (Kilkenny Arts Festival), Sarasota (Baryshnikov Festival), St Polten, Rome (Teatro Palladium), Naples (San Ferdinando), Genève (Forum Meyrin)

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

CYRANO de BERGERAC by EDMOND ROSTAND

This is a great romantic classic whose flamboyant hero has all the power and dash of all our fantasies. This is the sacrificial lover who may battle with the sword as an amazing soldier but has the heart of a poet and loved but one woman, Roxane, who never recognized it was he whom she loved during all those wasted years of widowhood. Cyrano never felt worthy of a woman because of his ugly appearance, a deformed nose. His famous speech of what you may call his nose is original to this day. However, when Roxane sees the handsome Christian she falls in love. But it is Cyrano who writes the love letters and speaks the poetry of love on behalf of Christian. Roxane mourns Christian’s death until upon Cyrano’s dying she discovers it was always Cyrano who wrote and sent the love letters and who loved her beyond measure. We see the life of the soldiers in battle, the ruthless Count de Guiche who moves Christian to the front and is Cyrano’s foe, the feasting and drinking of the cavaliers, the theatre of the day, the rivalry and passion of an era when life was lived only at the edge but where passions were always indulged. The battle scene of the starving soldiers fed by Roxane is phenomenally jaunty, the death scene of Cyrano and Roxane’s broken heart at only then recognizing his love are theatrical giants of romance and tremulously moving. The fantasy of love is as real as reality in seeing or reading this special play. So how does Chichester fare with it? It is a great hit since it stars Joseph Fiennes as Cyrano who has the tenderness, the audacity, the finesse for love and its poetry to realize Cyrano as the love hero he is. Bravo for his saving the production. But what of the translation that lost the beauty of flowery language, especially in Cyrano’s death scene? What of the constant climaxes made with musical accompaniment usual with Trevor Nunn’s staging? What of Alice Eve’s Roxane that is shrill and unromantic, Stephen Hagan’s Christian hardly noticeable or Scott Handy’s de Guiche who is a frightening as a purring kitten. Paul Grunert’s Ragueneau is fully explored as is Shane Atwooll’s le Brett and Julian Forsyth’s comic Jodelet. How wondrous the audience would feel in seeing a traditional play as well as Joseph Fiennes at Chichester whose productions are usually better than this even without Trevor Nunn’s direction. Import but no export.

May 8 -30/09

THE LAST CIGARETTE by SIMON GRAY /HUGH WHITEMORE

The sensation of this production is the direction of Richard Eyre who has managed to bring fluidity to a fragmented piece put together from Simon Gray’s book The Smoking Diaries plus Coda. He brilliantly integrates the video backgrounds with the staging, streaming lights with romantically melancholic music and extending the performances in a harmonious balance. The set consists of three identical desks with books galore scattered everywhere. In Gray’s book he jumps in and out of time and place which carries a subconscious thought process colouring his character. In the play, more or less structured by Hugh Whitemore, we have it open and close with the ‘grinning man with the knife’…death itself… followed by a first act containing Gray’s comments on his youth in Canada, his unhappy maturity, his family, the fear of his addictive-smoking father, the love of his younger brother who died early from drink and drugs, his eccentric mother. In the second act, it is concentrated on his awareness of his lung-cancer, the doctors, treatment, Pinter, and his practical second wife Victoria. His addiction to writing and drinking is capped by his addiction to 65 cigarettes a day and as he states in his final words of regret that he didn’t smoke more. The fact that the three actors all play Gray is not divided by Gray’s character or his multi-sides. Jasper Britton is mainly the same sardonic man throughout and marvellously true to the character while the one-noted Felicity Kendal botoxed into a pouting face to match the pouting voice plays an indistinctive aspect of Gray plus all the female parts particularly the Bajan nurse with writing aspirations who entraps an agent from Gray after taking his catheter from his penis. It is the fantastic performance of Nicholas le Prevost, sometimes Gray but mostly all the other male parts… his brother, his womanising father, Pinter, and particularly the Welsh doctor who looks like a chip monk… that is so memorably funny or mendacious. Though there is sardonic wit plus compassion and tenderness in the man and in his writing, somehow Gray has never captured my attention as an important author. His Butley and Common Pursuit are the best of his plays for me. One somehow feels his closeness to Pinter was his desire to be as important as Pinter and Pinter’s desire to match Beckett seems a good enough reason for both these men to have a common pursuit in each other. There is humour and characters to linger on but not much of a play to bite into. It will have import in Chichester and presumably interest in the West End when it moves to the Trafalgar Studios for a limited run, but no export beyond the UK.

March 11 – April 11/09

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...

CHERRY ORCHARD by  ANTON CHEKHOV

Once again we have the more modern language adaptation by Mike Poulton which keeps the Chekhov intent and motivations but cuts the subtext so important for the actor. He also edited down the relevant scene where Ranyevskaya  breaks down over the drowning of her son to just a few lines. It is not saved by the director or the casting. This is not the usual standard of the Festival Theatre. The story is well known…The cherry orchard and the house are part of a vast estate owned by Ranveyskaya and her brother Gayev who are not practical people and do not live in the changing world. This is the home of their ancestors as well their own roots. Lopatkin, a peasant born on the estate, has risen in the new world as an entrepreneur and is basically in love with Ranveyskaya and the estate. He begs Gayev and Ranveyskaya to chop down the trees and build saleable cottages on the land to pay for the costs of the house. It is up for auction since taxes are long overdue. Ranveyskaya thinks a distant aunt will send her the money. Gayev follows her escapist way though he lives on the estate with Varya, Ranveyskaya’s older daughter, who holds complete responsibility for the family and the estate. She keeps waiting for Lopatkin to propose marriage. Old Firs, the butler and houseman still takes care of Gayev, their neighbour Simeonov visits regularly and is always in need of money. The young footman Yasha from the estate who ignores his mother and now spoiled by living in Paris fools around with the peasant maid Dunyasha, while the clerk Yepikhodov, with squeaky shoes, keeps courting her. Ranveyskaya, herself, lives in Paris and has a dependent lover plus her young daughter Anya to take care of from her earnings as a known actress. They have come for a visit till the house is resolved. The German governess for Anya in Paris has also joined the party, an odd-ball who is a magician and a hunter providing delightfully comic moments. The auction is held and Lopatkin, being the highest bidder, buys the cherry orchard estate. Ranveyskaya, at first devastated then recovered, leaves for Paris. Lopatkin cannot find his way to proposing to Varya who has found a job in the village along with Gayev. The governess is abandoned but Yasha throws himself at Ranveyskaya’s feet to join her. When they have all gone and locked the door, it is only then that Firs awakes. He has been abandoned and forgotten by all. Chekhov gives us poignant pictures with dashes of comedy in regard to the inter-relationships within a family; the effect the change of times has on the class system; the personal lives of people; and the survivors who are adaptable to the times. We remember these people, the dominant mood, an era filled with deeply-felt emotions. I can never forget Joan Plowright or Judy Dench in their portrayals of Ranyevskaya. The cast and direction are disappointing in that Diana Rigg as Ranyevskaya is too old for the part. This is supposed to be an actress sexually exciting to whom Lopatkin is still attracted. Michael Siberry’s Lopatkin in this production never stops shouting using it as a substitute for energy. Maureen Lipman’s governess Charlotta is enchanting, William Gaunt’s Gayev is endearing, Paul Chahidi’s Yepikhodov is winsome, Frank Finlay’s Firs reveals what great acting is all about, Charlotte Riley’s Anya is moving, Jemma Redgrave’s Varya is effective, and John Nettleton’s Simeonov acts Chekhov as it should be done..in perfect pitch. Import no export.

May 15-June 7/08

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 supporting her sweetheart Valentine played by Mark McGee (who’s been organising the show), turns it all on its heels (should be head but this is a dance show) through her brother, the impresario, who has come to view the melodrama and instead takes on Babes in Arms which includes Baby Rose. The three male dancers Ashley Day, Charles Ruhrmund, Darren Fawthorp are fabulous, the songs are joyous, and the young talent in the show absolute stunners, with set, staging and choreography better than any synthetic Drowsey Chaperone in the West End. Don’t miss it!! Import for the West End and export for Broadway.

May 29 – July 7/07..

MACBETH by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Macbeth is the story of ambition, of a man who murders king, comrades, and subjects in his climb to the crown, only to lose all after his devastating destruction of others. It is primitively set in medieval Scotland where tribal rituals and social structures still remained with supernatural undertones. Goold as director takes this plot and places it in a timeless and nameless country with a law of its own says the programme. Yet the Russia of Stalin is clearly marked in the video newsreels of marching soldiers or masses of Muslim protesters projected on the wall of the kitchen, the cazatska is danced in the halls, the fur hats of Moscow are worn, the uniforms of the French and army fatiques of World War II are used. It is set in a windowless kitchen with a sink dead centre downstage with running water that gushes blood when lady Macbeth washes the spots on her hands. A huge frig is upstage, an ominous lift with imprisoned gates creeks down down down to this floor of hell with human victims. It’s a psychological thriller pre-empting the chilling eerie tragedy and depths of murder, spreading paranoia like butter and threatening the court into frozen fear which besmirches every corner. The kitchen is hell’s kitchen unlike New York where the slums once invaded the streets of the west 40s which bred the gangsters and criminals of notoriety. It is so inventively conceived to produce shock, suspense, excessive violence, rigid dread, and revulsion. In the opening, operating tables or slabs are brought into the kitchen now transformed into a surgical room with dying soldiers being operated upon with the help of three nurses who turn into the witches. It’s an abattoir flooded with the blood of World War II soldiers. It morphs into a train where Banquo is poisoned like the Russian spy of today then shot by the police with silent guns. He pulls the emergency break to allow his son to escape. The banquet is served by the witches who conjure up corpses in body bags as a projection of the future. They’re the forerunners of evil and not supernatural figures from a primeval forest. Banquo’s ghost descends from the lift as he then bestrides the banquet table in one scene but in the repeat of that scene is absent. The combination of using the kitchen as his surreal metaphor of hell in which the epic battles take place sometimes stretches the mind to obliterate the downstage centre sink with running water. But he has deliberately blended the domestic with the worldly murders so as to indicate the danger lurking everywhere. Macbeth and his lady planning the next step in Duncan’s death are interrupted by her bringing out the chocolate cake. Macbeth opens a bottle of wine or eats a sandwich with the hired murderers for Banquo’s end. Macbeth stops Banquo’s son from taking a midnight snack or Macduff shoving his children and wife home after seeing King Duncan as guest. The horror movies of today are the blood and guts of Goold’s approach to the wild terror of the modern world drawn in relationship to the supernatural by surrealistic metaphors. His scope is gigantically epic with an imaginative energy that is phenomenal. Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth progresses cleverly… nervy at first, he’s driven by the iron will of Lady Macbeth into murder. He grows away from his lady and slowly goes mad with the power, brilliantly terrifying the court in the banquet scene as they freeze with forbodings. Macbeth’s famous speech of ‘tomorrow and tomorrow’ is fascinating over the news of Lady Macbeth’s death. Kate Fleetwood’s Lady Macbeth is fierce, frightening, cagily deliberate yet unrelenting; driven mad by the murder and its consequences she cannot wash away the blood spots on her hands in the sleepwalking scene. The design of the show is fabulously sophisticated in advanced use of multimedia, a working lift, and the hell’s kitchen concept. Michael Feast’s Macduff is soul-tearing in his shocked grief over the news of the death of his entire family; the speechless gaze of a man thrown into the dark shadows of hell. Paul Shelley’s Duncan is clearly articulate and Martin Turner magnetic as Banquo. Who can forget the sound and fury signifying nothing of this production. It transfers to the West End in September so import is set. Is it possible export for BAM or Lincoln Center.

May 25 – Sept 1/07...

LAST CONFESSION by ROGER CRANE

How refreshing to see a play of intelligence, an adult story, a murder mystery based on history of a dubious pope’s death with actors of such quality and superb direction. This is what theatre should be able to convey. David Suchet is an actor of such intelligent sincerity that following his truth as an actor allows you to follow his journey wherever it may be. His study of complex characters in authority has amazing resonance. Here he is Cardinal Benelli, the self doubting cardinal, the pope-maker, who ventures into the Curia of infested rivalry and corruption where Bishop Marcinkus, the Chicago mafia-export as banker of the Vatican’s money,i is encouraged in his banditry along with Cardinals Felici and Villot, the reactionary power-mongers of the Vatican, who keep the status quo by ruling the Curia who rule the pope. Into this vicious circle Binelli, backed by Pope Paul VI, politically manoeuvres to place the incorruptible Cardinal Luciani instead of himself as the next pope. Good-natured and eager to reform the Vatican, Luciani, made Pope John Paul, the smiling pope,’ gives notice to Marcinkus of his return to the USA and of ridding the Curia of Felici and Villot by transferring them as cardinals to Italian cities. No one expected the strength of purpose and the courage of the ‘smiling pope’, played so endearingly by Richard O’Callaghan with such wit. But before those papers could be executed Luciani is found dead in his bed, the exit papers having disappeared and replaced by the Imitation of Christ papers, the servant dismissed, after only 33 days of being the pope. Binelli investigates the death interrogating the cardinals. He proves the guilt of Villot (marvellously ferocious Bernard Lloyd) and Felici (precisely arrogant Charles Kay) and gives himself a moment to contemplate being pope. Sacrificing his ambition for the good of the Vatican, he brings in John Paul II, the Polish pope, who becomes his confessor before his death. Binelli gives him the ammunition to rid the Vatican of the two demon cardinals by confessing it all to Pope John Paul II upon his death bed. ‘Everything being confidential and nothing being secret’ within the Vatican, the pope will not act without evidence. But there are many questions regarding church, religion, and power covered in this work which have been carefully researched by the author who is a lawyer with professional knowledge as to how to lay out the facts. Through Luciani we hear that the church is a house of god and not the house of Rothschild, as he calls out to the Vatican gardener. Luciani is sure he can perform Christ’s teaching by using the pope’s power for the people and not as the reactionary cardinals who would preserve the old guard institutions without consideration not only to the morality but also before the salvation of the soul. The play explores the politics as well as the characters of the ambitious men in red robes as clickish as the Klu Klux Klan. ‘Where is the line between divine providence and human intervention?’ is used over and over again but not portrayed dramatically. There is much repetition in the writing, flattened out by legal justifcations. Dramatic music is used to cause the climaxes; Dudley’s inventive design, of iron gates cutting out the living world or prison bars if you prefer with entrance doorways on other side of the gates for the living dead institution or the outside affluent world, with murals of Michael Angelo figures painted on the back wall, is constantly turned to change location breaking the dramatic flow. These are flaws in the production I have briefly mentioned but just as the dialogue goes under, the mystery of the story comes up and that is the dilemma of judging this work which has so much going for it. It will open in the West End at the Royal Haymarket, not to be missed for a wonderful collection of actors rarely seen. Import and export.

April 27 – May 19/07

DEADLOCK by PETER BENEDICT

This is a murder mystery in the Sleuth-like genre, very tightly plotted holding suspense at pulsating pace with enough twists and turns that keep the tension at a peak. Like Sleuth it’s the psychological aspects that are as much a thrill as the unpredictable turn of events. It is the study of power and its corrupting impact. The Rht Hon. Member of Parliament, Robert Marlowe, has all the accoutrements of a good life: wealth, wit, Westminster status, wife of beauty, willing assistant. But that is the public man, underneath the private man seeks a secret sex life that he must protect at any cost not risking exposure to public disgrace. His protective armour is as swift and as deadly as his sarcastic tongue. He has his weekly rent boy for sex hired through the regular agency by his assistant and his studio where he sculpts ceramic figures which he bakes to finish in his kiln installed in the studio. He comes to discover a plot of his murder designed by his assistant and wife (who are in love) with the added help of the rent boy. Marlowe quickly devises a plan of action and murders his wife and the boy disposing of the bodies in the kiln. He keeps his assistant in his job as punishment. Having managed the gruesome burning of the bodies, leaving no trace of murder, he is suddenly confronted with the fact that the boy was his son whom his wife gave up for adoption. The play is pacily directed with climaxes galore and an astounding performance from Simon Ward in a set that carries mood eerie enough to scare a sceptic. The remaining cast …wife, rent boy and assistant are fine support in distinctive profiles. Import and export for West End and Broadway as it is a highly commercial production.

May 11 – 19/07 on national tour and at Richmond July 30 – Aug 4/07

RUSSELL MALIPHANT’S 2:4:10, Critical Mass (1998), Sheer (2001), 2 X 2 (2009), Knot (2001)

As you can see from the heading, this is a programme covering a range of Maliphant’s work which like a retrospective showing in painting gives that kind of insight into his choreography. Firstly, it is important to recognise this creative artist became a choreographer through his evolvement as a dancer. It means his concentration is on the body itself which then becomes the choreography and so scenery and costumes are stripped away. Only lighting effects on the body movement are focused upon. It is the body images that linger; he is the Rodin in choreography and as such he expresses the multiplicity of emotions and human relationships through those body movements which are beautifully composed into sculptured living art. This programme involved fantastic ballet dancers to perform the duets for which Maliphant is famed. Having such calibre of dancers also brings immediacy to Maliphant’s style. He is essentially modernising ballet and not a modern dancer. His dancing bodies are therefore in classical design, delicately patterned or robustly stepped, but always molded. The separation of body parts is fascinating to watch as the back stretches, the arms extend to the exquisite hand gestures. The leg extensions are electric yet subtle, forceful yet expressive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is much beauty here to behold. Sylvie Guillem originally collaborated with Maliphant followed now by a collection of great ballet artists. Ivan Putrov and Daniel Proietto open with Knots(2001) in which two bodies tie up and fold into each other as knots. Marvellously balanced in their physical stature and control of their body movement there is a harmony that is almost serene despite the physicality of arms that form bridges, torsos that glide back and forth. They convert simple movements into emotional as well as physical sensations. We are then led into the second enthralling duet of Sheer (2001) where the two dancers are quite separate as they move in silhouette within the full blazing upstage spotlighting until, with outstretched arms, they slip into amazing lifts and ballroom glides. Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur magnificently project such trust in their passion so thrillingly intense and highlighted so ingeniously by Michael Hulls who not only illuminates their outer movements but seems to be able to radiate their inner lights. Then into the high intensity of 2x2 (2009) which Guillem originated and is now a duet of whirling dervishes as Dana Fouras and Daniel Proietto spin on a darkened stage with spotlights focused on the dancers alone. The result of two physical beings charging off each other in a concentrated light is an enthralling experience…high voltage energy is mesmerising. Too bad the programme did not end here as the second half, Critical Mass (1998) with Russell Maliphant and Adam Cooper, instead of being the highlight of a starry programme turned out to be very disappointing. Neither dancer had the force, energy, control of the style in an awkward study of male intimacy despite Adam’s delicacy and feisty spirit contrasted to Maliphant’s more witty mischievousness. Maliphant’s choreography has progressed so much further than this work…but a retrospective showing has to show it all. It’s an amazing programme to be remembered as a tribute to the ballet dancer. Import, import when it is programmed again and what an extraordinary export for Broadway!!!!!

To April 11/09

DEATH IN VENICE by BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Heaven has been brought to earth in this production whose haunting music is more of an ode to exquisite Venice and less of an opera about Mann’s theme in the denial of one’s sexuality or rather homosexuality. Mann’s search for spiritual, sexual and intellectual truth was close to Britten’s inner struggle. Is it no wonder he wrote his music to this book. When Gustav von Aschenbach feels degraded in saying the words ‘I love you’, it is Britten’s self same suppression. In the opera as in the book, Gustav von Aschenbach denies his nature even when he discovers the beautiful teenager Tadzio as he shines in the crowd of young boys. Ian Bostick’s Gustav cannot say the word love in his disgust as is so sharply focused upon in Warner’s direction which she builds on to further climax. She heightens the tension as time runs out and the danger of death becomes imminent. The ageing queens (gay queens) symbolise death as the chorus’s menacing laughter call out their ridicule. Gardner conducts the orchestra in this scene in vivid colours with majestic nuance. He brings a musical lyricism to the whole production that is enchanting. Into all of this the imagery of Pye as set and Kallman as lighting designers spill their magic. The light shifts to various degrees of shading until darkness when thousands of words appear on the screen as Gustav frantically feels his mind distil the words that will not come out. The darkness disappears as the sea breeze cools the hazy heat drifting in from nowhere or somewhere billowing the wafting curtains into gentle shapes and colours. The sunsets, sunrises, the cool sand and distant waters, the lagoons, the strolling women, the family picnicking on the shore, the boys playing ball are all images blending into the music creating magical moments where movement, music, and colour are woven into a tapestry, never to be forgotten. We see Tadzio and his friends playing innocently as Apollo becomes Tadzio’s image changing the innocence of childhood. But it is the strolling of the strangers that metaphorically are passing life by Gustav which Warner captures with the changing light. Bostick is a singer of power with an intelligence that adds to his acting. He reveals the thoughts in his head but also the pain and the passion. His trial and tribulation in suppressing his emotions is heartrendering as we watch him finally say ‘I love you’ with the effort of Sisofis rolling the gigantic stone up the mountain as he sees the figure of Tadzio in the distance. He has chosen to stay in Venice and die just to be with the boy even at a distance. This production is such an enormous experience the ENO will revive it again next year. It must not be missed. Import Import and Export Export everywhere and every festival!!!

May 24 – June 13/07

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA

The history of this special American piece has been a curious one in receiving such fine reviews and six Tony awards in 2005 yet not capturing audiences on Broadway as it should with only 500performances. One misconception is making it a musical when it is not. It is a modern opera with lush orchestrations. The story is simple but moving and the music is all; Guetell is the rising star, a romantic lyricist/composer. This is its first European production which is overwhelmingly impressive. The orchestra, the subtle sensitive conductor Julian Kelly, the singer/actors are all magnificent as one listens to an occasion of music so exquisitely performed in the most coordinated manner of where the orchestra sensitive to the singers Caroline Sheen (Clara Johnson), Lucy Schaufer (Margaret Johnson), Eliza Lumley (Franca Naccarelli), George Couyas (Giuseppe Naccarelli), Graham Bickley (Signor Naccarelli), Matt Rawle (Fabrizzio Naccarelli), Jasna Ivir (Signora Naccarelli), never overplays the voices. The range of voices, the vocal beauty, the delicate acting, the fascinating musical tracking of set changes from the gigantic marble arches to the live-size statue of David along with the exact playing of the orchestra, the atmospheric lighting effects of sunny Florence, the perfect pacing …all of it made it an experience of a lifetime. It is the best production I have seen of this show. It must not end here in Leicester! It’s a Henry James innocent abroad story set in the 1950s. Clara Johnson is a backward girl of 26 who as a child was kicked by a horse that injured her brain. Clara’s parents in their over-protection, are unaware of her gradual sexual maturity. Her concerned and loving mother Margaret Johnson, a bourgeois Southern belle, tries to open Clara to the cultural world and so takes her on a trip to Italy. They are in Florence when Clara and Frabrizzio. a naïve 20-year old tie-seller, meet and fall in love. The families arrange introductions exchanging their backgrounds. Margaret at first resists the relationship thinking Frabrizzio is interested in the USA dollars. But when Clara puts her foot down and declares her love as does Frabrizzio, marriage plans, without hardened Roy Johnson’s consent, steam ahead. Signor Naccarelli, however, discovers Clara’s age and stops the wedding. It is Margaret, having overcome her own guilt, who meets with the Signor and convinces him of the love match regardless of age differences. The wedding takes place with simple dignity as Margaret, in her own maturation in recognising her loveless marriage, releases her hold on Clara sending her off to a new life on her own in Florence following the course of true love. Paul Kerryson has the Midas touch in artistry and an astute ability to coordinate the technical aspects to such perfection. Caroline Sheen’s Clara, Lucy Schaufer’s Margaret, Matt Rawle’s Fabrizzio cannot be praised strongly enough for such glorious voices sung with such artistic nuance and deep passion in addition to such moving performances that are indelible in time. Eliza Lumley’s Franca, George Couyas’ Giuseppe, Graham Bickley’s Signor Naccarelli, Jasna Ivir’s Signora Naccarelli not only give us the joy of their singing but such reality in their characterisations. A cast made in heaven, with an angelic orchestra and conductor, gorgeous music, along with an amazing set that moves like magic. and smashing costumes…..what more could one ask for? This is better than any London production and the new Curve Theatre has produced it!!! Import not possible but Export!!

April 30 – May 23/09

THE ENGLISH GAME by RICHARD BEAN

The Rose is on a winning streak with two such wonderful shows in a row. I am not acquainted with cricket in any way yet found the play a fascinating study in a varied group of men with nothing else in common but cricket who would otherwise never meet much less become acquainted. It is not unlike The Changing Room of David Storey which centred on the game of rugby. Watching this set of diverse people become a team is the beauty of the piece and yet it is symbolic of the change in England where a national sport is losing its edge as the country loses its traditions and identity. The team called the Nightwatchmen have come to play their weekly game of amateur cricket in a south London park. Their skipper Will, a media pundit, is a strange mixture of liberalism with a detestation for Islam, the match captain Sean is a disturbed journalist with a marriage on the rocks, Thiz is a jesting rock star, Nick a gay young hindu, Clive an Oxbridge actor, Theo a doctor, a black British Council worker Olly, Alan a plumber, and a newcomer Reg who’s a telecom worker with a real racist attitude. What comes out of this motley group is the fractured nature of England today. We never see the game, only onstage comments with the ups and downs of winning and losing but ever onward is the drive to win. Alan builds a new scoreboard which is abandoned because white paint dissolves the score in the sun, Will has brought his father Len along, a dying man who expires before the end of the match but it’s kept secret not to interfere with the game, Alan storms off when the scoreboard is rejected but returns when Sean calls him back. Will and Theo have a spat at Will’s outburst against Islam and Theo is despondent as this is his last game before moving to France. The direction captures the timing differences between the playing of the game and relaxing, between the high tensions and the tolerance, between the toing and froing of hectic playing then rhythmically flowing into gentle moments in an almost musical manner as if orchestrated. Robert East’s Will is curiously winning, Howard Ward’s Theo is redeeming, Tony Bell’s ferocious Sean draws your sympathy, Fred Ridgeway’s Reg catches an exact character. It’s impossible to point out all of the cast but it’s the team work that is striking with just a few individual performances. It’s the reality of the play that hits home with a quiet sadness and is a fine representation of Headlong’s work. Import only, no export.

June 17 -21/08

TARTUFFE by MOLIERE

Tartuffe is one of the great plays satirising the hypocrisy of man in all ways. Moliere has not only profound themes, but eloquence in style and language in addition to a wicked tongue that has no mercy on its characters filled with wit. It is amazing to find his high style has a smattering of low farce and an irresistible appetite to undress the hypocrite with such irony. Roger McGough as a poet in his own right with a delightful sense of humour has adapted the play and what a joyful marriage it is! Moliere ala mode of McGough. His modern touch does not destroy the period, nor alter an ounce of the split timing, nor preclude the current relevancy. Here is a production modern to the ear yet true to the period. The costumes are splendid, the set magnificent in its luxurious colours, windows, doors, and chandelier. The staging catches the pace and the sight-gags, the high emotions, the low comedy. and the cast playing it to the teeth…marvellous cast. What a tribute to the Everyman Theatre for capturing the spirit, the essence, and the joy of Moliere. The design of the set with its curved back wall offers the best design yet seen at the Rose and not only solves the excessive width but completes the circle of the auditorium creating the best acoustics yet heard at the Rose. What a triumph this production is! The plot centres round Orgon who is married to the charming Elmire concerned with the marriage of her daughter Marianne who loves Valere. Organ’s mother is a rigid matriarch who adores the churchman Tartuffe, a fraudulent hypocrite who pretends to be a religious man. Orgon is so taken with Tartuffe and so disapproving of his good-natured son Damis that he disinherits his son in favour of Tartuffe. Meanwhile, his brother Cleante tries to bring truth and clarity to Orgon to no avail. Marianne plays games of rejection with Valere while Dorine the maid scolds the lot of them with her nagging tongue and ceaseless talk. It is constantly in and out through the doors as befits a good farce with deceptions and hiding places to overhear the plottings galore…all timed to a tee. Tartuffe tries to usurp Orgon taking over the house and his money, but is caught out and thrown back onto the street as the family reunites once again with Marianne marrying Valere. Happy endings and happy days for the everyman Theatre. Import and export for festivals and Lincoln Center or BAM.

June 4-14/08

CARMEN JONES by GEORGES BIZET

One has to begin yet again, as with Sweeney Todd, in describing the dreadful acoustics at Festival Hall for singers when performing with an orchestra. When isolated on a high level over stage right or left, upstage or downstage, or when singing directly out front to the audience one can hear the singers and even at times the lyrics. Add insult to injury and you have Jude Kelly’s direction which places the orchestra dead centre stage so that they not only blast over the singers but cut out visually any sense of place other than the Festival Hall and divide the stage into so many areas with the chorus and cast in constant motion that the result is busy busy action turning into messy messy staging. Long narrow strips of upper and lower stage plus small squares on stage right and left allow little room for this huge cast on such a vast stage. What a relief when that wonderful bass-baritone Rodney Clarke playing a wrestler rather than the toreador sings Stan’ Up an’ Fight in rich fullness directly to the audience without moving or Sherry Boone as Cindy Lou (Michaela) singing with deeply-rooted pathos My Joe downstage left and drifting at times centre stage but always to the audience bringing the greatest applause of the evening as she stands forlornly on her own. The great score is still a joy through the fantastic playing of the combined London Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras. Our sexy Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi’s Carmen is a fragile looking mezzo in red cut-down dress whose astonishing voice can be appreciated intermittently but whose diction on the lyrics is questionable. She moves well but is given the same cliché sashaying throughout the show. The tenor Joe (Jose) as sung by Andrew Clarke is lost in the auditorium and his acting ability is not developed enough to compensate for the loss. Brenda Edwards’ Pearl in singing Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum is amazing in her vocal enthusiasm aided by the zestful chorus whose powerful singing throughout the show are such a boost to this production. The idea of bringing a musical version of the opera (or a musical-opera) to popularise South Bank’s classical halls is right thinking but you have to deliver quality as well. The story, which remains constant in all the versions, is centred on the sex obsessive woman, Carmen, who unlike all the other girls in the cigarette factory uses sex to climb socially and then needs to demolish the man like a queen bee. She chooses an army hero, Jose, stealing him from a loving innocent girlfriend, Michaela, and a dying mother, but drops him for the flashy toreador of the bullring. Carmen ends up killing the soldier and herself in the process. She courts destruction and challenges her fatal fate but would rather die than remain a cigarette girl. It is not sex, nor love that motivates Carmen, but to conquer and destroy. The original Carmen Jones was transferred from Spain to the South in the USA amongst the black community where instead of a cigarette factory it’s cars and instead of a bull fighter it’s a wrestler. Carmen is named Carmen, Jose becomes Joe, Michaela is Cindy Lou and the toreador is Husky Miller, the wrestler. The style is jazzy. Kelly has moved it to a Latin American country where she thinks the Spanish quality of the opera works better than in the bluesy South thus influencing the music and dance to a Spanish flavour. It’s turned into a hodge-podge since the names, lyrics, and character relationships represent the black South of the USA. The fact that the set is muffled with the orchestra and the costumes are all super modern with tight trousers on fat ladies doesn’t help in locating the country. Can all of this spoil the show? It depends on how intense you are in just listening to the music and grabbing whatever moments happen along the way. The new look at South Bank and Festival Hall are not the attraction. It’s the glory of the embankment, a glass of wine while overlooking the Thames with the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey at one end and St Paul’s at the other end. It’s old England in twilight on the reflective river that moves the soul. No import or export.

July 25 – September 2/07

SWEENEY TODD the DEMON BARBER of FLEET STREET

The whole experience of hearing the great Terfel singing Sweeney Todd in the newly refurbished Festival Hall was and is the great excitement of the occasion. But the Festival Hall itself is the disappointment. After spending millions of pounds, the acoustics are no better than before. In addition, the orchestra placed downstage at times out-sounds and over-shadows the singing which bounces back in echoes in that expansive hall. The seats and flooring may look new and spotless but the width of that enormous hall is still a trap for singers unless it is Terfel whose powerful voice can be heard over hurricanes or tornadoes. He can withstand all the elements. The lobbies now streamlined like an airport with characterless bars and three new entrances to the building in front, the rear, and the side, reveal the only obvious differences to the building. The view of the embankment was always a nostalgic treat, that special view which Festival Hall brought to the sound of music. There is a kind of popular appeal, somehow, in the name of ‘Canteen’ as the main restaurant and rock players blasting away. However, the exuberant students from the Guilford School of Acting Conservatoire gave such vibrancy to the choral singing and moved with such vivacious energy in this grim Victorian London of Sweeney Todd which this gigantic hall needed. And then, of course, there is the lushly rich baritone tones of Terfel who storms with wild rage, a man broken in spirit and heart, never losing the vocal power while terrifying the audience with his vociferous longing for vengeance. The concert version of operas and musicals is usually quite enjoyable as it gives the music and singing the space you want in listening. Sweeney Todd is a natural for the concert form. David Freeman decided to liven up the concert version by staging the production which was confused and overdone with busy activity calling itself movement thus causing a distraction from the music itself. Fine to have them costumed but improvising sets and props in a mixture of styles is disorientating as demonstrated in Terfel playing Sweeney for real singing in that astonishing range to Maria Friedman’s caricature of Mrs Lovett in her singing, her costume and her contrived mannerisms. Some of the English critics thought Friedman’s interpretation was an imaginative creation, but it was an exact duplication of Angela Lansbury in the original production which turned Sweeney Todd from opera to musical comedy. Her microphone-enhanced voice in duet with Terfel’s fierce baritone is trifling and sometimes inaudible against the great singer. The remaining cast all had appealing operatic voices that brought out the lyricism of Sondheim’s masterpiece which allows the overlapping of opera and musical theatre. Terfel’s entrance immediately sets up Sweeney’s depth of rage, the means of terror. Philip Quast, who could be a disturbing Sweeney with his acting and singing skills, has his important song ‘Mea Culpa’ cut, still he sings so beautifully his duet with Terfel in ‘Pretty Women’. Who else could compose such musical romanticism for a throat-cutting scene but Sondheim. Daniel Boys’ Antony is warmly vocal and especially engaging in singing ‘Joanna’ to the bell-like soprano of Emma Williams’ Joanna. Daniel Evan’s Tobias is Puckish yet moving in ‘Not While I’m Around’, despite a non-operatic voice. Adrian Thompson’s Pirelli with just the right Italian tenor is fun. The orchestral sound is fantastic and that organ which bellows out those cadenzas with the chorus is incredible in that hall under Stephen Barlows’ intensely exhilarating conducting as he colours the imagery of the music with that charismatic London Philharmonic. Because of the acoustics of the hall and the need to mike the singers, there are times when the wondrous lyrics are lost and with it their meaning which is crucial to Sweeney Todd. So much of the lyrics have evolved from Chris Bond’s play upon which the opera is based and which Bond in his dialogue depicted with the society of man eating man. Stephen Sondheim chose this play because Bond had adapted it to a Brechtian style which Sondheim captured in the lyrics. Here is the depth of a society and not just personal feelings which Sondheim has so inventively incorporated into the libretto shall we say and not just lyrics. The event is only for three performances and will be sold out. No need for import or export.

July 5 – 7/07

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Globe is really on the winning side this season. It is wonderful to see Shakespeare in his period with the most fabulous costumes on that magnificent stage with the verse and the language a joy to hear. There is no updating attempted and the humour pours out as a result. It is funnier in period plus easier to follow as the concentration is centred on the characters. It is a delight to the ear, a delight to the eye, with easy staging and finely tuned actors who carry the text. This is not Shakespeare’s greatest play, there are no undercurrents, just fun from beginning to end. Falstaff has ensconced himself in bourgeois Windsor and in order to beef up his purse he decides to woo two rich wives in merry old England who in turn play tricks and jokes that deceive him. This invention of plot was to bring back the character of Falstaff whom Queen Bess adored. The famous scenes of hiding Falstaff in the laundry basket away from jealous Frank Ford’s notice and the wives’ second attempt altered to dress him as an old aunt instead, are hilarious. The comic turns of the women tormenting Falstaff and his good-naturedness as portrayed by Christopher Benjamin are just charismatic. The plot is simple… Anne Page wants to marry her charming young love Fenton while George Page, a proper bourgeois tradesman, wants her to marry the rich Slender who seems gay and quite disinterested in love but willing to marry. Justice Shallow pushes his nephew Slender towards the good match while Mistress Page wants Anne to marry Dr Caius, the Frenchman whose housekeeper Mistress Quickly is friend to Anne. Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, wants to help Slender in his suit and asks Mistress Quickly for help over which Dr Caius rebels and challenges Evans to a duel. Shallow and Evans are upset over Falstaff and his behaviour. He has written love letters to the wives Ford and Page asking Pistol and Nym to deliver them. When they refuse Falstaff dismisses them. In revenge, they tell the husbands about the letters. Page disregards it, but Ford, being of a jealous nature, decides to disguise himself as Master Brook and feed into Falstaff’s stories of his amours. The host of the inn averts the duel of the Doctor and Evans, but the two wives connive to expose Falstaff.  Mistress Quickly carries the messages for all the machinations. Brook tries to illicit Falstaff as messenger for his courting but Falstaff informs him of his appointments. Ford, furious at Falstaff’s news, decides to surprise his wife but the women outsmart Ford by putting Falstaff in the laundry basket where he is then dumped into a ditch near the Thames. Ford is at a loss for his suspicions. There’s a second appointment with Falstaff and an escape, but this time not in the laundry basket, disguised, instead, as an elderly aunt. It is only then the ladies confide in their husbands and they all conspire to punish Falstaff.  They persuade Falstaff to dress as Herne the Hunter and rendezvous with them at night in Windsor Park where they intend to frighten him with everyone dressed as fairies. Page makes plans for Slender to elope with Anne in the midst of the revelries and Mistress Page plans an elopement for Anne with Dr Caius. However, Fenton and Anne have made their own plans of elopement. Falstaff is terrified by the fairies who pinch and burn him with their tapers, the two suitors choose boys disguised as women instead of Anne, Anne and Fenton return married as the Pages accept love over opportunity and the spring solice is celebrated with the Wicker man and all the pagan  dances still celebrated in the countryside with a happy Falstaff recognising the fairies and joining the celebrations. The direction is paced and musically timed with every moment of comedy squeezed out to its fullest, the set is a celebration in its own right as the front portion of the Tudor inn is added to the centre stage doors and a staircase to go up to the second level. In addition a wooden runway surrounds the front of the stage with wooden foot bridges curving round and a fuller projection to the front of stage where the centre flips over for the Pages’ delightful garden with flowers, grass, and a loveseat allowing change of place to flow easily from one to the other. The music is sweetly invectious, and the company pure magic with a Falstaff to be remembered for the charm and the winsome devil he is. The cast listed above are all included in the magic circle. Import, import for a summer’s evening watching twilight rise its lovely head over the day and view the wondrous St Paul’s on the Thames during the interval. No export possible. Don’t miss this summer’s pleasure.

June 8 – October 5/08

A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTS DREAM by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

After the fabulous start to the season with such a glorious King Lear, it’s sad to say that this production is disappointing enough to write as little as possible. It’s a Scottish production in which most of the cast including the two leads Tom Mannion and Siobhan Redmond lose the accent on and off, the fairies being heavy-footed, the beautiful verse misspoken, the verse voices untrained, a none-descript puck, and a set in which a painted blue floor and scrim blue curtain across the upstage doors served as the forest. No magic! The only positive aspects are the long running ramps on either side of the stage into the groundling area, a hilarious Paul Hunter as Bottom, a delightful Peter Quince and Helena in Michael Matus and Laura Rogers.

May 10-October 4/08

KING LEAR by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

One has to truly thank Dominic Dromgoole and David Calder for delivering a great King Lear that is straightforward without all the intrusive interpretations of a director. We are given the story, the characters, the tragedy of Lear and are broken down into sobs at the end that the destruction of a family is caused by an aging old man who believed in the love of his children to any degree of time. There can be no import of the play without the impact of the actor playing Lear in a coordinated performance with the director and they have made history. It is well paced, with fine comic moments in addition to the wit of the fool who is played with simplicity and therefore quite moving. The text is beautifully articulated and richly emotional which reaches down into all the corners of the heart. It is a traditional production in its well matched décor and costumes…giving us Shakespeare as it should be received. The ancient instruments are used as always with period music and Anglo-Saxon poems which have been put to music and sung in that language by a ballad singer. During the storm scenes the Shakespearean use of the thunder-sheets and the hand winding wind machine are used with drums as one suspects at the original Globe. The encore dance-ending of the company is as delectable as ever. But what thrills me beyond belief is that this tragedy is treated as a tragedy and not as a circus catering to the fun of the groundlings. The groundlings stood with concentration for almost four hours absorbing the complete play. The casting of the entire company was just and fulfilling without the performances ever being greater than the character. One has to point out the specifics in David Calder’s Lear. He starts as a jolly king ready to retire to the joys of old age only to gradually discover its terror. Calder gives us the constant progression of Lear going mad and his deep distress as he becomes aware of the reality. In his state of arrived madness it is only Cordelia, his youngest daughter whom he rejected and who has remained true to her father, he recognises. It is in her death that Calder renders us speechless in his pain of recognition. It is the spiritual depth of Calder in which he reveals his vulnerability like an open wound and we are devastated by his grief. Only Robert Stephens, Laurence Olivier on television,. Timothy West, and Donald Sinden have reached such depths and portrayed such humanity as Calder has done and surpassed. Dromgoole has revealed a tragic heart unlike the aborted King Lear of Trevor Nunn. Paul Copley’s Kent, Kellie Bright’s Regan, Peter Hamilton Dyer’s Cornwall, Judie Mcne’s Cordelia, Danny Lee Wynter’s Fool, Joseph Mydell’s Gloucester, Trystan Gravelle’s Edgar, are all to be commended. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime. Import, export not possible.

April 23-Aug 17/08

HOLDING FIRE by JACK SHEPHERD

The first reaction to this production is curiosity as to whether a Victorian quasi melodrama ala Dickens with a political message could work at the Shakespearean Globe. Yes, it does curiously enough and particularly with this piece which allows direct contact with the audience making them participants in the play. The actual literary quality, the storytelling technique involving us in the characters is rather bleak. The structure is not fluid enough to know each of the characters to any degree and when the story gets going, it is interrupted by the political debates. A young flower girl named Lizzie is made into a chambermaid by the do-gooder mistress of a posh upper-class family household Mrs Harrington. Will, the boot boy, falls madly in love with Lizzie and in a sweetly charming scene tries for a kiss. It then moves into the preaching fire of O’Connor or the logical arguments of Lovett both of whom set out to form the Charterists’ movement which was a direct confrontation with the government wherein the working-class and the poor were forced to obey laws they had no say in the making. Nor was there any means of fighting this injustice which caused so much hardship other than by the intellectual men of middle-class means. Between the preaching and the rebelling, we are led into the Victorian way of life with drunken women, conning tricks of dying and begging funeral money, pub life and peasant or weaver or tailor or file-maker eager to voice their injustices while in between we follow Lizzie and Will who has killed the butler in a panic of jealousy because of his attempt at seducing Lizzie. Lizzie and Will on the run end with the army in breaking up the protesters have shot Will in the leg who is then cornered and brought to prison and hanged while Lizzie manages her escape from the ever-searching Mrs Harrington. There are delightful interludes of lovely folk songs or the servants’ playlet of Victoria and Albert in love or the army’s demonstration of how to use a canon. Though there is sadness in the hanging of Will, there is a positive note in Lovett and his assistant becoming the sole signatories on the Six Points of the People’s Charter. The play does not have the genius of Dickens though it covers the same era and similar characters that are only sketched lightly with no distinctions. However, it is well acted and with great charm by Craig Gazey as Will and Louise Callaghn as Lizzi and movingly performed by Peter Hamilton Dyer as Mr Lovett blest with a thrilling castrati tenor voice and Jonathan Moore as the passionate orator Feargus O’Connor. Mark Rosenblatt has a flare for the epic with a fine sense of dynamics and a tremendous inventive drive to utilise the Globe in every imaginable way but he has yet to learn how to safely use all the Globe’s distinctive space. His staging on the stage or in the audiences’ boxes work like a dream, but not so on the groundling space which at times is not visible. Jane Bird’s set is clever and unencumbered as she uses wood for doors and windows, barrels for a pub, an elongated box for a train coach allowing simple and easy changes. The music is a high point plus the whole company so sincerely involved in their characters. The experiment of period plays other than Shakespearean at the Globe has proved itself. Import no export possible.

July 28 – October 5/07

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The best one can say is at least it’s not the Merchant of Venice. And yes, the Globe dictates its productions for the expressive laughter of the groundlings. The story centres on a prince and his court of three friends (one of whom is an intellectual snob named Berowne) who are all sworn to celibacy for three years so that they will spend their time in study. They are challenged by the arrival of the French princess and her entourage of ladies-in-waiting who are housed away from the court but on the plains outside of the palace. Of course, the ladies win hands down as the men fall in love with their chosen partners. In between this serious yet romantic storyline are the comics in the Spanish gentleman who messes about with the English language and mores (the best comedy in the show), the schoolmaster and the cleric dealing with the peasant, the sheriff, and the page Moth (in constant sexual gestures) who are all trying to outwit each other. Having to wend one’s way through cliché and vulgarised pratfalls and gestures with the comic characters, one is then having to follow the comic antics of the prince’s courtiers. The verse so wonderfully fulfilling with the court and the ladies goes for nothing as the whole production is played for laughs, catering to the groundlings instead of actors’ interaction. Berowne is performed by a handsomely devilish Tristan Gravelle and Michelle Terry is an artful French princess who has a way with the verse. The décor is very colourful. The music as always carries the Globe’s authenticity with its ancient instruments and the curtain-call dance has its usual charisma. Import will come of its own from all the tourists who do not listen to the English language but enjoy the frisky humour. No export.

July 7-November 7/07

MERCHANT OF VENICE by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There are no stars for this production because it has set back in time the meaning of The Merchant of Venice including Shakespeare’s original, I am sure. Shakespeare is the genius he is because he took stock characters and humanised them within a third dimension. This director made Shylock a stock villain pre-Shakespeare as in the commedie dell’arte, as in a melodrama, as in a pantomime, where he is booed and laughed at like a joke when punished in losing his faith and being turned Christian. I wonder if this insentive director would interpret a Muslim on such terms. She has directed the whole production to the lowest common denominator with Bassanio, (in love with Portio, or is it her money, while being a loving friend of Antonio) and Gratiano (his servant) acting like six-year-olds, jumping up and down when announcing their marriages. Or Gratiano and Launcelot (clown character servant to Shylock) playing the exact same comic routines to the audience while stooping to please on every line. When the actor playing Gratiano actually became ill and Launcelot took over his part, you wouldn’t know the difference in the characterisation from the performance, only holding a script in hand made any difference. It is customary to play to the groundlings, knowing that the comedies are a hoot at the Globe, but come the tragedies like their Antony and Cleopatra or The Merchant of Venice, they get lost. But never have I seen a more badly performed, tasteless production of The Merchant where Shylock like a barking dog spews and snarls out even that heartfelt speech ’if you prick us do we not bleed? Does not a Jew have eyes,’ a speech that has always brought the heart of the matter in revealing a victim’s motivation. Or when Shylock mourns over his daughter Jessica’s betrayal and the ring he gave to his wife that tears him to shreds. There is no depth of thought or action, no emotions of any sincerity only contrived humour and no verse speaking. The famous speech of Porta in pleading in court, ‘the quality of mercy is not strained’ speech fades in blandness. The scorn thrown upon Shylock as if he has no cause to be avenged upon Antonio who spat at him in other days is almost biased. The story of an alien Jew Shylock in Venice who is a money lender by trade since Jews could neither own land nor be merchants like Antonio has a daughter Jessica who runs away with her lover Lorenzo, a Venetian gentile and friend of Bassanio. Lorenzo and Bassanio, as young men of Venice, are good-tme-johnnies and only in marriage do they become responsible. Bassanio has a somewhat sexual friendship with the more mature Antonio, a rich merchant, who sacrifices 3000 ducats for Bassanio’s marriage to Portia. Antonio, in borrowing the money from Shylock, gives him his bond of a pound of flesh if he withholds payment on the due date. Shylock demands his pound of flesh when Antonio’s ships are lost and his money is past due. Portia who loves Bassanio disguises herself as a young lawyer to defend the case and demands mercy of Shylock in court. He refuses and she then demands the exactness of the law. He must cut only a pound of flesh without bleeding, no more no less. Thus Shylock is undone and punished by the prince who confiscates all his wealth and converts him to Christianity. The lovers are all married sharing Portia’s wealth, but what of Jessica in the land of strangers? There are comic scenes of Launcelot and his blind father, the festivities of masques, the suitors in seeking Portia’s hand in marriage by guessing the right casket, and romantic lyricism in Portia’s Belmont estate with the best of Shakespeare poetry, which make this a play of such variance with profound emotions. How sad there is neither a performance nor any element to redeem this production.

June 2 – Oct 6/07

OTHELLO by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The whole perception at the Globe, of the audience, is to see Shakespeare in action, have fun, inter-react with the actors, and enjoy the extroverted atmosphere. The casting is usually of young inexperienced actors playing with experienced stars in the leading roles. You will not hear too well with the acoustics so unpredictable, nor understand the inarticulate diction of actors, nor look for the great verse speaking in the beauty of Shakespeare’s language. With that in mind seeing Othello with an Othello and Iago who neither grasp the verse nor phrase for the intelligence of a line, you must rely on their emotional capacity and their physical actions. Eamonn Walker cannot project his voice or his lines; Tim McInnerny’s voice substitutes rasping shouts for projection. He has been praised by the English critics for playing his lines to the audience and making them co-conspirators. I fear that is the oldest trick in the book… to forget playing with your fellow actors and play the audience instead, no matter how bad your performance…gives an actor such leeway to win without the talent. He slouches and lurks in corners looking evil like any pantomime villain. Walker rises to the emotional levels of jealousy later in the play but has no command as a general or as a stranger amongst the white army and Venetian politicians. He does maintain vulnerability as he falls apart at the end. It’s the women who carry the show with a young Zoe Tapper’s Desdemona as spirited and as articulate in speaking the verse along with Lorraine Burroughs’ Aemelia who bursts forth in anger to defend Desdemona’s innocence with vocal and emotional impact. The young actor Sam Crane’s Rodorigo is extremely moving and credible as Iago dupes an innocent. His diction is precise as he projects vocally to the top of the gallery. Wilson Milam is a director famed for his violence as staged in Killer Joe, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and the Sam Shepard plays. The choice for him to direct the American television actor Eamonn Walker as the first black Othello at the Globe was an original start though he costumed the play in the Renaissance period. But his reputation in blood and thunder theatre automatically meant the violent scenes such as the army barracks, the duels, and the murder of Desdemona would all be Wilson Milam violence. He keeps action and pace going to the delight of the Globe audience. He also keeps a clear line to plot as demonstrated in his setting up the handkerchief, first its loss and then its purpose to frame Desdemona. Milam’s caring little for the language, the verse, or the images from language, and concentrating on action, may well be your enjoyment at the Globe with £5 groundling tickets to fit the pocket. But if you look towards the poetry and imagery of subtle art forms and acting only Mark Rylance managed that balance at the Globe. There is always the RSC reaching for higher standards, but it doesn’t carry the fun. (I am assuming the story is so well known it needs little telling other than the Moorish general, Othello, marries an aristocratic white Desdemona and leaves Venice with her disturbed father in emotional protest at a marriage without his knowledge or consent. Othello is ordered to Cypress with his battalion along with his officers Cassio, whom he promotes as deputy, and Iago, who swears vengeance for being overlooked. Iago through the loss of Desdemona’s handkerchief frames her in adultery with Cassio. Othello is fed false proof by Iago until Othello in a fit of uncontrolled jealousy smothers Desdemona with a pillow and then kills himself. Iago’s wife Aemelia cries out Desdemona’s innocence and is stabbed by Iago who in turn dies leaving Cassio as general.) Import, no export possible.

May 4 – Aug 19/07...

ANTONY and CLEOPATRA by Shakespeare

It is more important to summarise Dominic Dromgoole’s reign at the Globe, his clean sweep. One can see that he is aiming at the audience that goes to the Globe which is an artistic director’s priority. They come to enjoy themselves, to vie with the actors, to jest and participate in their role as audience, as groundlings paying £5 for a ticket. Each production so far has been paced to keep the show on the road allowing no hold-ups. So Titus Andronicus is bloody and horror-styled with black drapes covering the entire theatre including the open roof, Antony and Cleopatra has a Cleopatra that camps it up. She is ever the star and a feisty fiend. When she’s told of Antony’s new marriage to Octavia, her excessive brutalising of the messenger with kicks, biting, and hair pulling causes guffaws from the audience. She is willful, petulant, seductive, fiery, and childish, but never the queen. The unpredictable mood changes sweep us along, but at the finale of her life she rises to the occasion in a vibrant costume instead of her dress of dull silver and commands her death as a queen of mighty Egypt brought low by her inept strategy. Antony is too old and tired…there’s no chemistry between them. The remaining cast outside of Enobarbus are unimpressive. The earthiness of this production precludes the poetry and the romantic love. Should we care about these uncharismatic ordinary characters? Not even the tragic ending of Antony’s death or Cleopatra’s suicide moves us. Where is the powerful clashing between two world empires of Egypt and Rome? How can the politics so integrated into the script be considered with any significance? Locations of Rome and Egypt are hardly discernable. Where are the battles on the Nile? Where are the palatial grounds or the outdoor forum of Rome? No passion motivates the intensity of this play. There is fast moving dialogue and scenes focused on the minor characters that are amusing and colour the campy queen’s interpretation which carries the show. But what happens when you lose the size of kings and queens… when they become ordinary people…their fall is not very far, their tragedy no longer great. You’d never know from this production these were the renowned lovers of such fame that they brought down empires. However, it is Frances Barber as Cleopatra that saves the day and audiences cheer. Dominic Dromgoole has pleased his clientele so I have given it 3 stars. Import no export.

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COMEDY OF ERRORS by Shakespeare

Keeping up with audience preference, this lovable play, which Shakespeare took from the Roman low brow comedies of Plautus and developed deeper and darker undertones of loss and love, has been stripped back to Plautus by this director and resembles A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum the American slapstick pastiche musical requiring tried and true performers of variety and stand up comedians. The English critics have been polarised in their reactions, some resent the surface low brow comedy /farce without the more serious intents while others, including the audience, roll their way through it with laughter. So fun is to be had, but it needs performers of that specific skill which is lacking in this production. The director has pursued his course with such a hindrance, staging his fast paced edited version on a versatile set, using sight gags such as the answer phone on the door being extended to the size of an elephant’s trunk and sound effects plus brass music (trumpets and trombones) to highlight the gags with its funky accompaniment. It moves with knock about speed, choreographed with emphasis. Poor Richard O’Callaghan as the desperate father searching for his twin sons and facing prison is left little recourse of in-depth emotion. However, the simple plot is made farcical as it centres round two sets of identical twins, masters and servants, though separated from childhood, by accident converge on the city of Ephesus where they connect and disconnect causing endless confusions, misadventures, and misidentities. It obviously allows for a wide berth of broad farce. After much damage, both sets of twins come face to face, romance wins out with their wives, and the father and mother are reunited with their twins. Andrew Havill master twin Antipholus, Simon Wilson master twin Antipholus, Sam Alexander servant twin Dromio, Eliot Giuralarocca servant twin Dromio, Susan Woodward wife Adriana to Simon Wilson play the dominant roles of misunderstandings while Chris Emmett as the goldsmith, who gives the chain to the wrong twin, captures the style and delivery in a Frankie Howard way that is rollicking. Import for the tourists but no export.

July 25 –October 5/06

OTHELLO by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Kathryn Hunter’s revival of Othello for the RSC has many assets of physical theatre which has been her background with Complicité. She is a deeply admirable actress with a tremendous range and great imagination with which she peppers this production using dance and music to add to the physicalisation. Unfortunately, the cast, outside of Othello, Cassio, Emelia, and Bianca, cannot cope with the verse of Shakespeare in addition to lacking the physical prowess. Patrice Naiambana’s Othello is majestic and his beautifully modulated voice of deep tones and colouring are an absolute treat to hear. His passion for Desdemona is emotionally impacted so that his jealousy is easily understood. It’s his intelligence in accepting such an unequal actor playing Iago that one questions. However, he is perfectly matched to a warm and loving Desdemona (Natalia Tena) whose voice, sadly, could not project beyond the sixth row. In Emlia there is a strong woman capable of dealing with her Iago and loyal to her loving mistress played with such credence by Tamzin Griffin. There is fun and lively humour with the sexy Bianca (Cath Whitefield) and a fine portrayal of a soldier who has lost his reputation by Cassio (Alex Hassell). Clive Mendus’ Duke of Venus is quite memorable. The set which is surprising in its agility first gives us a bridge in Venice which is romanticised by the music and dance. It’s a lovely enactment of Othello’s wedding. It is when the bridge separates into arches to become a ship, a port, a military office in Cypress or the bedroom of Desdemona that the set begins to spoil. The handkerchief scene in which the dance with the handkerchiefs becomes a focal point is wonderfully inventive; the scene of Roderigo falling off the bridge is hugely comic. But the mattress serving as Desdemona’s bed in the final scene and the actual murders that take place, all fail in sharpness and definition. The production moves with an even pace despite the continual rearrangement of the arches while the visual impact is constant. It is not a definitive production of Othello since the text is not emphasised in this version but it is certainly active enough to keep the young students involved and vital enough to follow the tragic story of a brilliant general who lost the battle of his marriage through jealousy bringing death and destruction to both.

touring February 10 – 14/09

MOTHER Goose

Who can better the traditional pantomime at the Hackney Empire with extravaganza sets of golden palaces, a circus funfair, houses and places of pure delight with the amazing Clive Rowe as Mother Goose who struts and frets about the stage wooing and warning the children with such aplomb then singing ordinary songs with such relish. What a glorious voice to boot! Billy, Mother Goose’s son is Kat B whose acrobatic and hip-hop dances, his joyous personality, his teasing of the children, are elements of added pleasure. Princess Jill is fine casting for her acting, singing and dancing while the enticing good fairy Charity descending from the flies on a swing of magic and the bad fairy Vanity coax and admonish the children who respond with enthusiastic outspoken reactions. Priscilla Goose is adorable, Jack is the perfect hero, and all the ensembles are warming and familiar to the children. The lively story moves quickly into songs and dances with great scenery and such overt teasing of the children that you watch with awe at their absorption at the serious moments and their readiness for answering ‘oh yes you are, or, oh no you’re not’. The real treat is watching the joy of the children eagerly waiting for their turn to answer back or boo at the villains and moan for the victims. Hackney does the best every year in its casting, productions, singing and dancing, made special for the children. Import no export possible.

Nov 29/08 – Jan 10/09

DICK WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT

There is no place like the Hackney Empire and Clive Rowe’s Dame, around which the action is centred as Sarah the Cook, to catch the wonderful spirit of the Christmas pantomime and bring to the children the excitement of participation. There is in addition to the nimble Clive, a winsome Idle Jack, a tumbling Puss, the villainous King Rat, and the Mary Poppins’ fairy godmother flying in and out. The great fun is to watch and listen to the children’s involvement that utterly absorbs them. Oh yes, it does! Oh yes, we have the thigh-slapping Dick, the principal boy played by a beauteous girl who sings like a dream, a Puss who somersaults at the drop of a hat, an Idle Jack who keeps at the children to wake him, a King Rat who jangles his mighty cloak and snarls with delight, the loveably singing Alice who falls for our Dick despite her difficulty with a strict father. Of course, the show belongs to Rowe our Cook Sarah who throws sweets to the children and asks them to mind her paddy cakes… who in his collection of costumes and hats with fishes, fruit, seagulls all floating on top, sings with a range that raises the roof and is modulated with as many colours as his costumes in addition to his adroit dancing. He has a way with children that envelop them all. King Rat, an aristoc-rat, is certainly no mean figure either as he taunts the children into booing with Jack Idle coming a close second in keeping their voices active. He is a great one for dancing while falling asleep. The children’s sing-along is marvellously enthusiastic, the huge ape on Monkey Island after the ship wreck a wow. We have a ship that sails on the stage, a vision of London and clear name calling at the bending buses, the Gherkin, the Olympics, and even Hackney itself. Sunshine with wild applause fills that vast theatre with Christmas joy! Hats off to the Hackney Empire for bringing us a real Christmas pantomime that makes Christmas seem real. IMPORT! IMPORT! IMPORT!!!

December 1-January 12/08

CINDERELLA

The best pantomime is usually at the Hackney Empire and though this year is not as good as last year, it is still top of the list. They know what makes the pantomime work…dance and lithe movement, send-ups of characters and sex, colourful sets and costumes to the rhythmic movements that are precise and musically exciting. The fun of the ugly step-sisters in over-the-top makeup and dress, the very villainess stepmother in glorious colours played as a countess, the indifferent father to Cinderella who carries the show with his fabulous artistry as a singer, crafty in his sarcastic humour, rhythmic in his every movement, a delightful tease to the children make this production the most vital show in town. Buttons plays his part with the children as he becomes their confidante and they his. Our Cinderella is pretty with a sweet vocal quality and a quickness of approach while the fairy godmother is most effective. Cinderella’s transformation is a great climax. The show moves at a pace while the choreography bursts with joy and is staged with a flowing timelessness. The company enjoy this production and the children’s involvement as we adults lose ourselves into the world of Christmas pantomime.

Christmas Show

AMONGST FRIENDS by APRIL de ANGELIS

Journalist Lara and her ex-MP + crime writer husband Richard are happily married, and have just moved to a fashionable ‘gated community’. They have invited their old neighbours Caitlin and Joe for dinner. Though the security is solid in this building, somehow, it is broken by a Cockney stranger named Shelly who changes the entire chemistry of the relationships by her blackmailing demands over the death of her son Leigh whom each of the dinner guests have evidently harmed in some way. The fact that Leigh never existed, the marriage of Caitlin and Joe break up, and then Lara and Richard, plus the plunging to death of Joe from the balcony make this poor man’s imitation of Priestley’s An Inspector Calls seem a chaotic mess of incredible characters, bad storytelling, and a waste of good actors on a fabulous set where the brick walls of a converted warehouse make an elegant new flat. The attempt at class warfare of middle-class verses working-class is another non-working appendage. No import or export.

May 21 – June 13/09

BERLIN HANOVER EXPRESS by IAN KENNEDY MARTIN

There have been endless plays on World War II but not many on Ireland’s neutrality which raises some controversial points. It is a tricky debut for Ian Kennedy Martin known for his television plays rather than theatre. Unfortunately, the good intentions and the absorbing theme are not structured in a dramatic form and so the characters once again talk and talk over and over again on the same subject and as a result carry no weight. Two foreign office diplomats, Mallin and O’Kane, man the Irish legation in 1942 in Berlin by mostly dealing with passports. They have a secretive housekeeper Christe whom you immediately guess must be Jewish as she keeps a low profile in what she thinks is a safe place. A German official, Kollvitz, is allowed to be fed after hours by Christe because he brings the rationed food to the Irish office. But he too has a hidden agenda…he is tracking the history of Christe and her radical brother. Mallin refuses to accept the horrors of German concentration camps or any of Hitler’s atrocities or even the Allies’ bombing of the Reichstag while O’Kane, aware of and repelled by the realities, is trapped by his gambling debts. He antagonises Mallin beyond control over his bragging (lies) of de Valera getting him his Berlin post. These two men represent the range of Irish mentalities. When Kollvitz makes his leap of entrapping Christe, Mallin refuses to face any involvement and O’Kane, guilty in his feelings, still escapes his own debts by leaving Berlin, knowing the brutal end for Christe. So in personal terms we are given the role of neutrality as it abuses the sense of morality. Too bad the strength of such revelations is marred by the repetitious chatting between the foreign officers and by the lack of place despite showing video shots, between time and scenic changes, of Germany at war. The direction is smoothly timed but uninspired, the acting sensitively portrayed, but alas and alack we lack a dramatic form to carry the day.No import or export.

March 3 – April 4/09

PRIVATE LIVES by NOEL COWARD

Hampstead is celebrating its 50thanniversary which includes the work in the original makeshift building one loved so well. It was the first theatre to very successfully revive Noel Coward who had gone out of fashion. It seems quite appropriate to revive Coward during this celebration instead of producing another new play in its history of non-successes within the new building. The sophisticated style of 1920s Coward with clipt staccato speech and nasal drone accentuated by peacock strutting is avoided; not playing the style but rather the actual characters makes it vital and modern. Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman in their very down to earth pleasurable interpretation broke that stylised mould and created credible characters. So here instead of the 1920 stylisation, Lucy Bailey heightens the characters…. a couple who are very au current, loving each other but not able to live with one another. We may lose some of the rhythmical repartee of Coward but we do gain real people. By rediscovering their passion on their coincidental honeymoons in Deauville, Elyot and Amanda abandon their respective mates and escape to Paris deciding to ‘live in the moment’. But as soon as they do live the moment, the bickering starts, the ugly face of jealousy surfaces as they accuse each other of old lovers and infidelities, after which the physical attack erupts. How bohemian are they really? But when their current partners arrive to sort out their relationships, Sybil and Victor end up in violent discord. It is only then Elyot and Amanda objectively realise that marriage is not an easy target and quietly slip out together leaving a battling Sybil and Victor to work out their lives. Jasper Britton’s Elyot captures the little boy mercurially changing to the sophisticate with his silver cigarette case, the indifferent lover diving into sudden passion. There is an obsessive quality about him that strains at being neurotically bullish in his demands and commands while Claire Price’s Amanda in her casual laissez faire behaviour contradicts his every precision. She does not carry that sophisticated air but is rather uneven in her moodiness and sexuality which provokes his temper. They are very much the scrapping modern couple we laugh at as we identify with their frustrations. The fights scenes are marvellously choreographed and cause enormous hilarity at the aggression so sincerely employed. The tearful Sybil of Lucy Briggs-Owen turning to violent temper and the pompous Victor of Rufus Wright throwing his punches about in vindictive wrath are added fun. The balcony of the Deauville hotel and the grey set of a Parisian attic that is barely furnished but with bohemian flavour including a loo and spare room visible on either side gives the piece its perfect sense of contemporary décor. The music of Noel Coward songs is very well suggested but to give us Parisian jazz sets it in the wrong period. Still the sum of its parts is blessed with such good humour. with actors that are a delight, a set that is imaginative, and the staging in constant flow. Hampstead have finally come up with a winner. Import no export.

January 22-February 28/09

MINE writer/ director by POLLY TEALE

Set in a post-modern design with grey walls used as entrances and exits and as a video screen for the various locations in the present and past, a post-modern couple, he, called Man, is an architect and she, called Woman, is a media executive who begin the process of adopting a child. The baby is that of a drug-addicted prostitute, Rose, who demonstrates more maternal instinct than the Woman. If Rose can reform in rehab she is eligible for the return of her daughter. This sets all kinds of emotional wheels going in the Woman. She re-examines her childhood, her career, and the world she inhabits. Her sister has three children and a happy normal life, why not Woman? She accuses her mother of forcing high expectations upon her from early on. In between all this is the character of Woman as a child haunting her throughout the play, in and out of a doll’s house which represents the joys and terrors of her childhood. This concept of past and present within a character was so astutely applied in Jane Eyre but becomes repetitive in this production. There are exceptional moments of physical theatre such as the messing up of the cardboard boxes eliminated stage by stage reflecting the chaos within the Woman or the various episodes with the doll’s house. The precision of movement and timing is always masterly with Teale, the acting especially of Lorraine Stanley’s Rose, is first rate, but there is something sterile almost hollow emotionally in this production which leaves us unsatisfied with a worthwhile concept. Import but no export. 

October 7 – 25/08

FAST LABOUR by STEVE WATERS

This is the big hit of West Yorkshire Playhouse which arrived in London on a very important theme of immigrant labour. The first act clearly reveals the story of Victor an illegal labourer who by watching his master Grimmer, rises to financial heights after starting lowly in a fish factory in Scotland. In the second act, the structure of the play falls apart. Victor’s wife Tanya suddenly appears, with no warning or set up, and his great assistant /lover Anita who has helped him rise to power just casually walks away with a line, ‘i didn’t know you were married.’ It is the act where everything falls apart and Victor will either go to jail or return home with his wife before they catch him. A fire in the farmhouse where he billeted his foreign labourers is the cause of his downfall. There  is a major problem in the speeches. When they speak English without accents it means they are speaking Russian but when they speak with accents its English. Since Anita speaks in a thick Scottish accent difficult to follow, and the wife Tanya, Andris and Alexie, lose their Russian accent constantly, you really have to keep a sharp ear as to who is speaking in what language. The concept of the play is important, the showing in London of the regional work is to be commended and a cast of actors dedicated to the play must be recognised. Better to have seen the play and know what other cities are feeling than not to have seen it at all. No import or export.

May 30-June 21/08

WAR AND PEACE PART I/ II from LEO TOLSTOY novel

The remake of this production from the version at the National in 1996 is quite amazing. Not only is there a more in depth expansion of the characters in this gigantic novel of 1441 pages but the actual staging which was clumsy in its war sequences has become so carefully integrated and choreographed. The serious fault in this adaptation is the glossing over of Sonya and her love for Nikolai who exchanges his heart for Maria and the enormous impact of Pierre’s fortune in becoming a huge landowner with an army of serfs. However, the important climax of the book after the luxury of the peaceful lives of the noble Rostovs and the Bolkonskys followed by the destruction of the war to their wealth, land, and deaths, is fully realised in this production in the adjustment to a new era and the marriages between the two families which is crucial to the structure of the novel and play. Telling the story of Count Rostov’s family with Natasha and Nicolai and their cousin Sonya shows the children in their innocence and how the war matured them into different human beings. How their aspirations of humanity become altered with their aging and suffering. Natasha Rostov falls in love with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a widower, and is deceived by a vagabond. Not until Andrei returns from the war wounded do Natasha and Andrei declare their love and reunite until Andrei dies. Her brother Nikolai madly in love with Sonya matures into a landowner and forgoes his youthful love to marry the forgiving and selfless Maria Bolkonsky, Andrei’s sister, who has raised Andrei’s son from his first marriage and been carer of her wilful irascible father Prince Bolkonsky. Pierre Bezuhov, the close friend of Andrei, Maria and the Rostovs, has been isolated without the roots of family and despairingly searches for a raison d’etre for life. His marriage to an adulterous woman is pitifully without any love. He is haunted by Napoleon (lyrically played as a living mirage), having admired at first his social and political innovations which he distrusts in time. He staggers through the wars as Andrei and Nikolai easily find their allegiance to the Czar. The older noble fathers die but the next generation take over as Pierre, in searching cynically at first for a meaning to his life, finds it with his love for Natasha. As both have loved Andrei, they find consolation in each other and their child, healing past wounds. The novel unravels the love stories as it is woven into the lifestyles of a changing world from the luxury of peace to the devastation of war. The human heart and the love of God is the saving grace of man as Tolstoy sees it and as the play emulates. The staging of the wars by Liz Ranken, with boxes turned into destruction, and sounds of guns and smoke with soldiers using white handkerchiefs for peace bring the images of battles, just as the empire chairs and golden picture frames used with characters in peacetime relate to the once-elegant life with balls and hunting sequences. The production is swift in moving from episode to episode especially in Part I where we are discovering the characters. Part II becomes more repetitious in its war sequences and resolution of the love stories. The epic size of this production is quite an achievement for Shared Experience whose style of theatre is always so inventive as actors become objects and props convert into curiosities. Barnaby Kay’s Pierre is an absorbing part which is played too hunched-back in his withdrawal to be the completely warm-hearted friend demolished by loneliness or the morphing of the times. But Louise Ford’s Natasha, the adorable dancing/singing girl whose love of life fills the hearts of many, is beautifully performed as is the soulful Maria acted by a subtly sensitive Kate Wimpenny. But the scene-stealing actor in his exquisite irritability is Jeffery Kissoon as the prince, while contrasting him is Geoffrey Beever as the sweetly endearing count and the softly regal Marion Bailey as countess. The bitchy wife of Pierre, Vinette Robinson, also playing the kindly French companion to the prince is delightfully versatile. The set of mirrored walls, golden picture frames, elegant chairs and doorways or boxed levels for war are adaptably imaginative with the direction of Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale masterfully capturing a massive book that seemed impossible to stage. Special thanks to the ingenious Helen Edmundson who has managed to keep Shared Experience’s scripts on a level of excellence. Don’t miss this. No import or export possible.

April 10-May 11/08

THREE SISTERS ON HOPE STREET by DIANE SAMUELS /TRACY-ANN OBERMAN

The very idea of adapting Chekhov to another culture is a difficult task and is usually never matched to the original Chekhov. Instead of the revelation of the times through the evolvement of the characters which is Chekhov’s genius, we get his plotline without the depth of his subtext or his evolving characters. So here we have the play set in immediate post-war Liverpool without any indication or observation of its culture as relating to this specific Jewish family despite following the exact plotting of Chekhov. Three sisters Gertie, May, and Rita live in an upper middle-class house on Hope Street with their brother Arnold and Auntie Bell who is a nanny to them all. The old doctor (now non-practicing) and friend of the family Nate lives in the house as well. The American army is being dismantled and their soldiers discharged. Three army officers in particular have been daily visitors to the Lasky household and will soon  depart for the USA, much to the unhappiness of the sisters. There is Vince who loves the forlornly-married May, Tush who adores Rita and Solly, the sullen neurotic, who is passionate over Rita as well. Only Gertie remains the spinster as head of the family. May is desperately despairing about Vince’s departure, the love of her life, while Rita decides to marry Tush who worships her more than she can love him. Solly has vowed to shoot Tush if he marries Rita. Arnold courts and marries Debbie, a common girl, who destroys Arnold and the Lasky family. She takes over the house through her own deviousness, has a running affair with the city councillor, and manages to manipulate the sisters out of the house along with Aunt Bell leaving a completely destroyed Arnold to live with Debbie and his baby son. The soldiers have gone. Tush being shot to death by Solly, causes Rita’s lone journey to the USA, Gertie and Auntie Bell move to the centre of town, May goes on living with Mordy and Nate drinking again also sets sail. The three sisters’ cry for New York is a hollow sound (Liverpool is a colourful city), their tragedy of a wasted life is unnecessary since these sisters have other alternatives of change not given to the restriction of the Chekhov girls. The direction is sensitive and adeptly paced, the set is beautifully inventive as the revolve gives us different perspectives of the tasteful sitting room with the dining room alcove, the entire cast is composed of highly skilful players (with the exception of an understated and unromantic Vince), but what remains unconvincing is the script itself. Import but no export.

February 21-March 29/08

THE GIANT by ANTHONY SHER

The subject of art, artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, their social/ political placement in the climate of their time, the power of the church and religion, the personalities of the artists, the sexual mores and sodomy in Medici Florence, etc, etc, are all the concepts touched upon in this sprawling script which cried out for the discipline of a Da Vinci. But can one ever forget the visual moment when a colossal block of marble is heisted in slow heavy movement of disbelief from horizontal to vertical position or when that colossal giant became the statue of David. This alone is a theatrical feat…in a play which is essentially about the creation of the statue of David, one of the great Michelangelo creations. Making  the public aware of the interplay of art to politics and religion or the price paid to be an artist, or the responsibility to one’s culture are attributes that should be acknowledged….the nobility of its failure to succeed should colour the criticism. The actual structure of the play and part of the writing are the weak links, there is little argument over that. Following the thought patterns become a complex journey because they are not consecutive in addition to being repetitious. What Sher needed was a director who understood text in relationship to structure. Gregory Doran’s great strength lies in his ability to emotionally stage and create epic images with a precise sense of timing. What he lacks is how to edit and shape new plays that are yet untried. The combination of both director and author working on this production may have been suitable for a workshop situation but not quite ready for its presentation to the public despite being tried out in a smaller theatre. One hopes the play will be rewritten and properly shaped. The plotline is simple; the concentration is on the character relationships in order to recreate an era. Michelangelo is a small, surly, furtive man in this interpretation who denies and suppresses his homosexuality as he timidly stands against the divine Da Vinci in a competition over the commission from the church to sculpt the statue of David. We know, of course, the conclusion but we are given the sophisticated Da Vinci playing with the church, obsessed with the concept of flying, using actors in a staged masque to perform as eagles in flight and songs sung to the disguised dancing creatures.  Michelangelo instead of cementing relationships with the church is dominated by the Savonarola acolytes who haunt the stone-masonry workshop and torment his soul. We are made to believe that Catholicism in Florence was mocked by its reputation for sodomy. Lost is the famous Florentine chocolate-and-nut-sweet biscuit while sodomy in that period was synonymous instead.  We see the Archbishop Gonfoloniere (a joyous Philip Voss) delight in the art of David but we also see the ruling arm of Machiavelli (suave villain meticulously played by Stephen Noonan), the political strong-man of Florence. Enter the quarryman from Carrara, the gorgeous young man Vito (charismatic Stephen Hagan) looking for work and ending up as the model for David over whom the two artists contend. It may be Michelangelo who wins Vito but Da Vinci who eventually shows him the beauty of Florence despite the jealous temper tantrums of his man-servant, the gay Salai. Vito, home-sick for his mountains, returns to his family after completion of the statue and is heard of no more. However, Da Vinci having escaped the law on his sodomy is now a cautious adventurer advising the city councillors how to salvage the problems of Florence by changing the course of the river. As the great engineer he is, the flow of a river can be altered as he demonstrates through the blueprints of his charts. There is never any size to Michelangelo in this version, only fear of Florence and the sophistry of Da Vinci. As to Da Vinci, Allam is so indifferent about himself and art that one wonders over his interest in inhabiting the part. We are given the alluring full frontal and rear of Vito, the model, to admire and also the nudity of Richard Moore as the old Vito. But the real pleasure is seeing that great statue of David which makes pygmies of the men who created it though what we should be able to deduce is the greatness of both men despite the Machiavellis, Archbishops, Acholytes, or mores of the times which may have impeded but also contributed to its creation. Anthony Sher, please try again and hammer away as Michelangelo did on the great marble to carve a major work that intoxicated you in the first place.

November 1 – December 1/07

LIFE AFTER SCANDAL by ROBIN SOANS

The choice of characters in what may be called a scandal is part of the problem in this verbatim play, a form, which Soans excels in. He includes Jonathan Aitkin (perjury), Neil and Christine Hamilton (MP bribery in ‘cash for questions’), Edwina Currie(kiss-and-tell on John Major), Duncan Roy (gay film director in credit card fraud), Major Charles and Diana Ingram (cheated on winnings of Who Wants to be a Millionaire) as compared to John Profumo (lied in House of Commons and resigned from all politics), Robin and Margaret Cook (gossip-mongered over his affair by Blair when Cook tried to move on ethics in foreign policy), Abi Titmus (whistle blowing on Iraq), Lord Montagu (jailed for mutual gay affair when homosexuality was illegal), Craig Murray (deliberately disgraced by Blair because he disclosed the tortures in Uzbekistan), just to mention the major players. The serious scandals are put together with the dilettantes and that weakens the theme of scandals today creating celebrities who earn goodly sums and attract further scandal in a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, the tragic scandals that ruined lives are placed next to the celebrity seekers. Soans is very diligent in his material and quite expert at interviewing with detailed stories. But the waters are muddied with the focus switching from the serious to the trivia. There may be fun listening to the endless chatter of Christine Hamilton but not to the hypocritical verbosity of Jonathan Aiken or the self-seeking Edwina Currie. Can you begin to be involved in such trifles when someone like Craig Murray or Robin Cook are destroyed? There are no climaxes in the writing and as a result no dramatic impact. It’s all talk. Scandal has been the spice of life for centuries so that one has to bring in 21st-cenntury insight in order to create interest or discover new evidence. Despite the cast of excellent actors who are all extremely versatile in their multi-range of characters (of whom Geraldine Fitzgerald as Edwina Currie and Caroline Quentin as Christine Hamilton are difficult to follow in their fast-speaking un-projected voices), the attention lags behind the performances. The elaborate set of huge marble-like columns with a back screen for video may be impressive production detail but does not camouflage the stilted direction of actors moving in and out, sitting or standing. Even adding songs to perk up the show seems extraneous. The ornate design does not suit the style of direct verbatim theatre. It’s a noble attempt that has not succeeded. No import or export.

September 20 - October 20/07

IN THE CLUB by RICHARD BEAN

Here again is another attempt at farce, not Feydeau but the English Ray Cooney-kind. Cooney is a master of timing a situation while keeping his characters with their feet on the ground so that in heightening the situations you laugh at the exaggerations based on real people. They are usually innocent ones who become involved in circumstances beyond their ability to cope. So what have we here from such a fine sensitive writer as Richard Bean whose plays like Harvest gave us lucid insight into the lives of a farming family or Honeymoon Suite which reminisced with poignancy or Under the Whaleback another moving tale of fishermen in the past brought to the present? It was with happy anticipation one came to this farce written by a favourite playwright and staged by an extremely skilled director whose version of Journey’s End is still a highlight. Once again the letdown is always worse when anticipation is high. What is disturbing is the lack of credibility in the send up of the European Union and all its surrounding politics of corruption in this piece, something one counted on with such an author, and the lack of belief in the characters he created…not people but cardboard cut-outs. It takes a specific aptitude to write, direct or act in farce with precise and immaculate timing that is missing in all those areas in this production. One could easily call it, ‘a lame duck’, if anything. An English MEP or member of the European Parliament, Philip Wardrobe, has been nominated for president of the Commission and keen to move ahead in his political career. In his function suite at a posh hotel in Strasbourg he is reassuring, on the phone, his partner Nicola, whom he really loves, that he is not having an affair when his secretary comes out of his bedroom in a bathrobe with towel-tucked headgear. She is crucial to the details in his professional life and quite content to move with him under any peculiar circumstances. She is not sexually involved as it first appears. His suite is being financed, amongst many other perks, by the Turks while he’s on the Turkish Committee who are pushing for Turkey to be accepted into the European Union. It is also the day that Nicola is to arrive for their sexual contact, ‘Ovarian Monday’, the HMV schedule/treatment for potential parenthood. To complete the cast and their activities, there is the Turk Mehmet whom Philip has to please, plus win the women’s vote via Beatrice who heads the Women’s Committee and who is after our hero’s sperm, and finally Eddie the Yorkshire pig-farmer who is his accomplice as a fellow MEP. In addition there is the Archbishop whose hand is shaken by Philip when wearing a feminine masturbating hand as a way of hiding it, but ends up shaking the Archbishop at a very rapid speed (the funniest farcical moment in the show). Needless to say there are two bedroom doors, a door to a cupboard, and an entrance door, all of which according to farce are constantly used as Beatrice has to be hidden from Mehmet, an arch enemy, and from Nicola as a sexual rival. In-and-out the doorways goes on forever along with Frau Flugelhammerlein who gets Philip his presidency and a plumber who is really a Belgian spy hidden in the cupboard recording all the goings-on. Nicola being a successful career lady is not easily deceived by all these people and creates enough reasons to open and close the doors as does Beatrice and Mehmet. But it all ends happily ever after with Philip marrying Nicola through the Archbishop and quitting the corruptive business of the European Union, Sasha getting a career break and going home loaded with money, Eddie loyal to the end in rescuing Philip, Andre the Belgian spy weeps over all the mishaps, and lord knows where Mehmet ends at this point. The play reads better than its production and proves that farce should be left to the experts or you fall flat on your face. No import or export.

July 25 – August 25/07

GLASS EELS by NELL LEYSHON

Neil Leyshon is a Somerset dramatist whose play Comfort Me With Apples brought a whole essence of a family apple farm or orchard in its smell, its abundance, its dropping apples, the gathering of the fruit, the picking of cider apples from the eating ones, the three generations of farmers, and the heaviness of life and death for the men, women, and children. Here she is again bringing the environment of a rural family in three generations who live by the river and fish. Symbolically the river gradually invades the cottage. This time the mother has died leaving a husband and daughter behind. There is also the old grandfather, fed by the daughter because he no longer can fish or work. All that is left for him is hunger, only the bread and jam have to suffice. As to the daughter, she looks like her mum, wears her dress, and lingers on her haunted memory. No one will talk about the dead woman though the daughter starves for her love, nor will the father make contact with his child. She chases after a young farmer who has been orphaned but who avoids her passion being ten years older than the girl. She succeeds in seducing him until the father beats upon the young farmer whom he won’t accept. It is the girl’s insistence that she is no longer a child, but is sexually awakening that is the core of the play. Only when the daughter accepts the father’s woman and rebels against his suppression is there a contact between father and daughter. It is slow moving as the daily ritual repeats itself over and over again revealing the aimlessness of their lives. The repetition is evident in the restlessness of the audience who were finally subdued into slumber on press night. It is well cast and staged with a feeling of authenticity in its pastoral but eerie mood. Diane Beck’s Julie the father’s mistress is absolutely cogent in capturing the essence of the woman, Tom Burk’s Kenneth conveys the solitude of the young man fishing eels in the mud of the river, Laura Elphinstone’s Lily has the exact awkwardness in body and soul of the teenager breaking out of the shell of adolescence into womanhood, Tom Georgeson’s Harold is an amazingly accurate grumpy grandfather whose only action now is eating but is almost poetic in his description of the journey of the eels from salt water to their burial in the river’s mud till Spring, and Phillip Joseph’s Mervyn the stone-faced silent father is a perfect portrait of the isolated rustic. Lucy Bailey and Nell Leyshon are close collaborators but somehow this play did not make it despite its poetic imagery in the writing and the Pinter pauses in the direction. The set of the cottage slowly drowning in water with a symbolic backdrop of a river and the scene where they finally catch an eel, club it to death, and skin it for dinner, is very thin in exposing us to the boring lives of this rural family and is exhaustive in its symbolism. No import or export.

July 5-21/07

TAKING CARE OF BABY by DENNIS KELLY

The season goes in pairs on similar themes. First there was Aalst at the Soho and now Taking Care of Baby. This play differs from Aalst in that the mother accused pleads innocence. It’s, of course, about the whole issue of sudden cot deaths of babies where the mothers have been accused of murder because of the theory by Professor Roy Meadow who has finally been discredited. Sally Clark and Trupti Patel were released from jail but until then great damage was done to them and their families. So the relevance of this play’s theme is important. The use of verbatim theatre as its style is slightly deceptive since it’s a theatrical piece and not based on a specific authentic case. It’s the study of Donna, a young mother, accused of murdering her two children. She protests the murder insisting they died of natural causes. Dr Millard claims she killed the babies because of a mental disorder, a psychological syndrome he has established. Is Donna lying? Is Dr Millard, who is being brought up on charges of testifying in court using his theories without full research, pushing his own career or is he genuine? Can his theories be convincing without proper back up which even his wife sees through? And then there is Donna’s former husband still overwhelmingly distressed, decrying the entertainment made from such tragedy. Donna’s mother Lynn, a local politician for New Labour, has used the media coverage to promote her career as the sensationalising of the trial and the case has filled the public with scandalous titillation she can use. She is far from the protective mother which has caused the disturbed mental condition of Donna. There is no real concern about the babies except for Donna’s husband. Interestingly enough, the shutter through the audience when Donna announces she’s pregnant on a television interview revealed the concern of the theatre audience. The play exposes the lies behind the reportage of events, the misrepresentations, the deliberate mendacities. How and where do we find truth? Whose truth do we find? A journalist who believed Donna to be guilty describes how he commercialised the story into a tear-jerking elegy. Clark’s production is satiric and brutal in its revelation of the inhumanity of exploiting human suffering. The style and structure of the play seem to be as hokumed as a case study and yet it is mesmerising. The verbatim style slowly dissolves into dramatised scenes which become repetitive but make comment on the authenticity of the characters’ direct interviews. The performance of Abigail Davies’ Donna is magnetic, tearing at the heartstrings. Ellie Haddington as her mother is marvellously comic at times and seriously disturbing at other times, fleshing out a less credible character. The rest of the cast in their various parts are versatile and highly skilled. The set is unique in a huge lighted sign as backdrop which keeps informing us that the lines spoken are authentic until the end when they tell us it’s an artifice. Only a few scattered chairs complete the setting. Clark keeps the storyline in its fragmented form moving in a steady stream. It’s a gripping production that holds the attention with active tension. Import! And export for Off Broadway.

May 31 – June 23/07

KINDERTRANSPORT by DIANE SAMUEL

This revival again is of survival after a Holocaust and has to be measured against the original. Does it hold up to it? My own reaction is that I preferred the original which I’ll discuss later. How does Evelyn live as a Jew after the Holocaust, having been born in Germany in the 1930s? Her parents decide to send her to England at the age of nine so that she can escape the oncoming slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis. A trainload of children were evacuated to the UK. As a frightened outsider in a strange land where she knew no English she had to learn quickly the way of the English world. Haunted by the stories of the Ratcatcher, who robbed the town of all its children, she identifies him with her plight and shutters at his shadow which follows her. The whole process of assimilation for a nine-year-old is the basic theme. Evelyn changed her name from Eva to Evelyn and in her adult life could only maintain her normalcy by avoiding her past. Even at the age of 17, so many years after her exile from her roots, she could not leave England to make yet another journey of assimilation in New York with her real mother. It was yet another break away from another mother who had fostered her all those years. Evelyn’s deep guilt was rejecting her mother as well as her past. Not until Evelyn’s daughter confronts her with her connection to Evelyn’s past does she face the truth and confess she never wanted to leave her parents and would have preferred dying with them. This production has the Ratcatcher in realistic terms frightening Eva which cuts off the fantasy of the imagination. In the original he was a huge shadow against the window that pursued her which had a closer feeling to the nightmare. The play in double time with the young Eva and the adult Evelyn on stage at the same time was in that period a discovery in style which today is cliché compared to the in and out of jumbled time sequences we follow at present. The impact originally, when the adult Evelyn finally embraced the child, was her triumph in shooing away the Ratcatcher. We knew she had come to terms with her past. Somehow our Evelyn was more sympathetic then and less irritable as in this production. Even little Eva is petulant rather than vulnerable. The scene in the original of her arrival in England waiting for a late foster mother was hair-raising at the child’s terror of abandonment. Not so in this production. Polly Teale is usually so vibrant and though there are scenes similarly directed as in Jane Eyre, they work in Jane Eyre, but not in Kindertransport. The disappointment lies in the script and its execution. It is also in the terror of today where if only we could salvage the children from the horrors of their homeland that are far more devastating than whether they can adjust to new roots. The whole world is being uprooted by wars, fires, floods, and disasters on such a scale that the priority is to save the children by any means. The attempt of this production though is noble with a strong cast and set with music to match. No import or export.

April 24 – May 26/07

KING OF HEARTS by ALISTAIR BEATON

Beaton has been the great political satirist but successful only so far in his play Feelgood, a farce on Tony Blair and his new labour government. This play is intended to look into the multicultural society this government keeps praising while under-publicising publicly the obvious setbacks in policing the Muslim younger generation who plan and perform the suicide bombs. How hidden are the prejudices and resentments towards the Muslim community? How confident can one be about the Blair government? There is also so much publicity about Prince Charles, his sons, and the chances of whether William would ever want to be King. These are the underlying themes of this futuristic play. We have a very serious and intelligent prince called Arthur (represents William) who falls in love and then makes positively clear he will marry Nesreen a very bright Muslim girl with great determination. The prime minister and the opposition leader are in the palace trying to persuade the archbishop that the King (represents Prince Charles), who has been in an accident which has caused brain damage to such a decree of being brain dead, should have his life-supporting machine turned off. When Arthur/William takes his stand on a Muslim marriage and one faces the possibility of young druggy/drunken Richard (represents Harry) being next in line as King, the prime minister changes his mind about turning off the machine. The dithery archbishop is the only one logical in his arguments of divorcing the church from the state and then there is nothing unconstitutional about a Muslim queen. He is delighted to save the church from so many other headaches of homosexual and female bishops by such an act. We see a prime minister who blows with the wind, and some tasteless behaviour as written for the leader of the opposition in his bisexuality. At any rate, the King/Prince Charles dies of his own accord. Harry/Richard is annointed King while playing with the crown and William/Arthur marries his true love. There should be humour and tension in all these shades of emotion but the piece is directed as a comedy and not as its intended farce. As a result, the production is without humour and in fact the slow pace, the lack of overall timing makes for a tedious time. The cast may be called adequate but the fabulous Roddy Maude-Roxby as the archbishop saves himself and his scenes with his funny fey antics while the ironic Alister Cameron as Sir Terence, secretary to King, stands his ground with absolute poise and stature that make a perfect mockery of the government. No import or export.

February 28 – March 31/07

SWEENEY TODD DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

Chris Bond has directed his own play upon which Stephen Sondheim based the musical of Sweeney Todd. And though the musical heightens so much of the script with its songs, Chris Bond has brought to the forefront the authentic drama of the melodrama and by its sincerity validated the style the Victorians loved. You discover how cleverly Bond has updated the melodrama which is hardly noticeable yet reflecting the Brechtian theme of man eating man. You follow far more easily the storyline in this version and with a marvellously designed set you get the feel of Fleet Street indoors and outdoors, the barbershop upstairs, the barber’s chair as it despatches the corpses so efficiently, the cellar with the oven and meat grinder, the pie shop or parlour, the locked door leading to Bedlam or Judge Turpin’s house or courtroom….all so easily accessed with an added change of light. The fluid flow of this multi-located play accompanied by the sad violin and piano creates the eerie mood of this bloody melodrama and reveals how much of the musical’s lyrics are in this text. The cast, each and every one in the company, are on the mark with a strong sense of ensemble in the production. It is beautifully detailed and is worthy of a long run with as much notice it so justly deserves. This is a gem signifying a style of theatre rarely seen under such genuine circumstances. Hats off to Chris Bond for the script and his sensitive hand in directing it! Import, import and export!!!! P.S. The story is that of an innocent barber sent off to Australia as a criminal by a judge who raped his wife, destroyed his life and that of his family. In managing to escape and return home, he seeks his family, but above all, the revenge on the judge and his beatle. He is caught up with Mrs Lovett, the pie maker, who tells him his wife Lucy is dead and the judge has adopted his daughter Joanna. Interwoven into the horror is the innocent love of Joanna and Anthony, the sailor who saved Sweeney Todd plus the apprentice Toby who comes to live and work at the pie shop. Todd does revenge himself on the judge and the beatle and kills Mrs Lovett for lying about Lucy whom Todd has murdered not recognising that she is the beggar woman. He is killed by a Toby gone mad, having been locked in the cellar with all the dead bodies used as the meat in the famous meat pies. However, Joanna and Anthony leave London together in love forever after.

March 6 -28/09

DIDO QUEEN OF CARTHAGE by CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

There are times when sight-specific productions are so exciting because of the sight suiting the play so specifically as with this production where the hand of the play fits into the glove of the place or should I say palace. This is not the best of Marlowe as was seen at the Globe because there is a slight plot in this love story. The great hero Aeneas has been shipwrecked onto the shores of Carthage where the powerful Queen Dido reigns. She shelters Aeneas and his crew, and then falls deeply in love with him. In order to keep Aeneas in Carthage, Dido offers him the crown. Her desperation in love is deeply moving and indeed tragic when Aeneas leaves her to sail home as soon as his ships are mended. To see this story of a queen in a palace like Kensington, the former home of the tragic Princess Di, and to sup with Dido in a banquet room, or watch her change dress in the exquisite bedroom, or see Aeneas’s farewell in the astronomy room with the clocks, compasses, and barometers, or walk from room to room through corridors of wondrous paintings and marble staircases, is to understand what luxury Aeneas gave up for going home, and to make a picture book of the play that dazzles the imagination. The producer and star actress Sara Thorn gave us a deeply emotional Dido with an underscoring remaining cast except for Cassandra Friend’s Venus, a powerhouse actress in the wrong contemporary suit instead of a diaphanous gown. The direction kept the pacing and high tension whilst the producers organised a most delicious evening at the palace. Import but no export possible.

February 1 – 23/08

CARRIE'S WAR by Nina Bawden

Some of the reviews were critical of the production but I found it a polished one plus a credible adaptation in which one could follow a complex plot and passage of time in addition to the staging which kept an even flow from scene to scene and location to location. The set divides the two Welsh households..the Evans economic middle class peasantry as compared to the richness of the Gotobed mansion. The Willow evacuees from London (Carrie and her brother Nick) find their Welsh Evans family quite harsh with the exception of the much put-upon daughter Louise. But Carrie and Nick also manage to make close friendships with Johnny Gotobed, Hepzibah the warm hearted housekeeper and shy Albert, another London evacuee. It is a story about the children growing up during the war and their deprivations, followed by their maturity when we can see the outcome of their lives. There is a subtle use of dramatic music while the actors very convincingly play the characters so as to make them real people. The suitability of this work is for the 10-year olds and up produced with adult perspective…a fine work for the USA.

Christmas Show

HANG ON

The concept of this designed circus is very enticing but its execution is not as exciting. The programme succeeds for small children. Adults will find the repetition slightly irritating especially since the acrobats are not that accomplished nor are their acts that challenging. The designs created with balls and steel poles into all sorts of triangular shapes which are used for the acrobats remain the most original aspect in the production. The playing of the varied drums in varied sizes but matching the triangles is also very fetching. The constant chatter of the misguided fellow who is not acrobatically inclined is a character particularly suited for the children but rather unnecessary for the adults. However, the colours, the simplicity of the storyline, the pleasure of the company, are a joyful experience for youngsters. I brought a deaf couple to check it out as a programme for the deaf but the lack of acute virtuoso acrobatics is uninteresting for the visual expertise of the deaf. Still, it’s good programming to bring the rudiments of circus into a designed genre and expose such experimentation to children. Import for youngsters, no export.

April 15-25/09

SPRING AWAKENING

It is quite amazing how well this play about adolescents awakening sexually under repressed conditions lends itself so easily to the musical format. What makes this production work is the concert style. The chorus consisting of the school children carry the background and the place while the individual story of Moritz, Wendla and Melchior portray the specifics. We get a peek at the individual lives of the German schoolchildren. All the adults…mother father, doctor, judge or teachers are played by Sian Thomas and Robert Cordery. The identity of the children never changes and always remains crystal clear. Kept in its period because of the rigid social mores of that time which caused the tragedy of the three children, the music is rock-pop containing plot and ballad numbers. The beat gives it an overall sameness. One does not walk away with music remembered but it serves the musical in its balance of dramatic actions and emotional levels. The set is a general mid European late19th-century embodiment that surrounds the stage with an audience sitting on either side. Chairs on the wall are climbed via ladders; lights change location on the open stage. The musicians are on stage. Dressed in their period costumes, they rip out mikes from under their jackets to enter the 21st –century in song. Back go the mikes and into the 19th-century we return. Songs like ‘Mama Who Bore Me’ are sung by the girls. The boys sing out,’ The Bitch Of Living’. Blue Wind is a mood piece all on its own. Ahha….the children are awakening to their sexual urges which lead to beatings, Wenlda’s abortion and death, Moritz’s suicide and the brilliantly aware Melchior’s removal to a reform school. Wendla and Melchior fall in love but Wendla does not realise that intercourse could result in pregnancy. When she does become pregnant, to her mother’s shame, she is taken to a back street abortionist where she dies. Melchior is sent to reform school interrupting a brilliantly academic life while poor Moritz unable to cope with academic learning commits suicide in his failure to pass his tests. There is nothing original in this musical except for the attack of these youthful actor/singers whose freshness is so refreshing and whose emotional sincerity showers the audience. It has been the great hit in New York running against the tide of all those closing shows. It has already sold out at the Lyric and will be transferring to the West End. Charlotte Wakefield’s Wendla, Iwan Rheon’s Moritz, Aneurin’s Barnard Melchior sing and act with startling skill at this young age and carry our sympathy with enormous depth. The chorus of children are wonderfully exact in their characterisations which distinguishes their acting and singing. Sian Thomas and Robert Cordery are highly polished actors who characterise instantly as they assume all the adult roles. The choreography and direction are fluid moving from song to song, from mood to mood, from scene to scene. The set is colourful without clutter and the music is precisely integrated into the plot. Here is a beautifully produced work so intricately woven and a special treat to see Wedekind translated within his time into the 21st-century. Not to be missed. Import, import, no export possible for USA but for Europe and Japan.

January 23 – March 14/09

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Told by an Idiot is a company that tries to be original in their narrative storytelling style similar to Kneehigh which varies in its success. Theirs is a simple non-epic approach to this moralistic fairytale as set pieces descend or rise from nowhere and each scene unfolds as in a picture book. We have two delightful ugly sisters Brioche and Bridget and a brother Boris who are not very happy with their younger sister Belle (played by the dwarf-sized Lisa Hammond) best loved by their father. They blame her for their mother’s death with good reason and just wish she wouldn’t be so self-sacrificing to win their father. Of course, when father loses his money in business by the ship sinking carrying his gherkins, the family having only one gherkin to eat, and then the house burning down, it’s enough disaster for one family. But when father is lost in the forest where he is trapped in the Beast’s palace and is released only if he sacrifices his daughter, Belle, she goes to live with the Beast. He roars at an unafraid Belle who shows her usual kindness even to a beast. When her father becomes ill she is allowed to return home to help him recover. However, the Beast pines away for Belle and when she returns he too recovers. She loves the Beast who adores her and in her willingness to marry him, he returns to his normal self as a handsome prince. Belle is rewarded by happiness for loving for love’s sake. The Beast is not very frightening nor is his transition from beast to beauty very dramatic but there is such delight in the ugly sisters, such mockery in Kronenbourg the gangling devoted dog who chides the audience in constant humour, such sweetness in Belle as she balances her pain with a joie de vivre dealing with tragedy with such compassion, and such tenderness in the Beast that the production proves to be an unspectacular but winsome  experience which the children enjoyed laughing at the machinations of the ugly sisters and chuckling with Kronenbourg whom they loved. The imagination dominates over the spectacle here and a sustained energy is ever joyous. Import but no export.

November 29- January 5/08

WATER

Filter is a company I have watched from its start and Faster, its first production, was about the relationships of young people in love and out of love integrated with music. It had such immediacy. Here, with Water, it is being compared to Complicité or Lapage but it is actually closer to Katie Mitchell’s experiment with Virginia Wolff’s The Waves at the National where it went from radio to stage to TV keeping open all the technical stage movements and devises to be witnessed by the audience including the video which was coordinated with stage actions. There are similarities to Complicite’ and Lepage in the structure of the writing with narrative speeches diving into dynamic energies of symbolism on profound subjects. This approach or style is an area constantly being explored and requires great concentration on the part of the audience because there are several threads to the story being woven. What becomes interesting in this production is not the style but the threads. It weaves the concept of water as to the personal as well as the political. The personal relationships are clearly developed and understood, but its weak spot is in the political. This is kept in narrative form either by reading a letter or on the telephone. It is not fully dramatised. However, it need not have been quite as difficult if one could have understood the muffled speech of Ferdy Roberts when playing the political parts on the mike which he held too close to his mouth causing the distortion. Even so, Filter is so adept at the personal relationships. It is amazing how concentrated the audience reaction was. The story here covers 26 years plus two generations and continents. Set in 1981 an English academic and expert delivers a prophetic speech in Canada about the dangers of global warming with rising temperatures and sea levels from carbon emissions. He suggests humans must learn cooperation, the survival element of the earth, and like water become, ‘a sociable molecule that loves to mingle.’ Water bonds with opposites as well. Will mankind cooperate for the good of all humanity? Yet who will forget the terror of the water so powerful in its destruction during the tsunami which hit Southeast Asia and the islands or the horror of the flooding of New Orleans. Is this lecture of Peter Johnson projecting such disasters?  Into the present and we are in Norwich England where his son Graham, a depressed loner too terrified to mingle with anyone, receives a letter from his half-brother in Canada that their father has died and would he attend the funeral. His father abandoned him and his mother to remain in Canada as a professor of marine biology at a Vancouver University making a new life with a new family. He also sacrificed his principles on global warming for the lucrative lifestyle the university afforded. Running parallel is the other water related story of a New Labour government negotiator trying  to create a legally binding agreement on carbon emissions at a G8 summit meeting while her ex-boyfriend, with whom she has just broken, is attempting to break the world record on cave-diving descending to 1500 feet to beat the American in Mexico. (Sorry not to be more specific in the detail of the summit meeting since I couldn’t follow Ferdy Roberts. However, I’m told the negotiator was supposedly at Blair’s final summit and she is warned not to make any final commitments that could become ‘Blair’s legacy’ because of the incoming Brown regime.) The fact that the negotiations are thwarted, that her love-life is terminated, and her ex-boyfriend dies as he descended further and further below 1500 feet into the bowls of the ocean’s depth, is not a very happy mingling of water. But is it because she never mingled herself in a commitment to love that she is punished by water? Will the lady be able to renegotiate on a new agreement bringing success with water? Returning to the other story… Graham, the son of Peter, cannot believe the figure his father became and despite his antagonism (not mingling) to the Canadian family and its wealth his depression lifts. Will he begin to mingle with people and life when returning home? There is an overlap in the stories when both Graham and the negotiator meet in the same hotel in Canada, thus tying up loose ends. Don’t think these threads of time are wearying…there is wit and wisdom, emotional pull, fear and disturbance but with a sense of ultimate recovery both personally and politically. We may damage ourselves and the world, but we are also capable of being reborn. The three actors are quick silver in their change of character, their immediate identity, going with the flow of Farr’s direction. It is a tribute to David Farr that he searches for new dimensions in style and content unafraid to experiment with failure and thus succeeds in his imagination. Tim Phillips adeptly mixes soundscapes on stage, skilfully using music for dramatic climaxes. The mechanics of the show are in front of our eyes along with the screen which moves its video images timed to the action and all at a minimal of props or equipment so the stage remains uncluttered and the audience easily relocates from one place to another. A hotel neon sign signals Canada and just where we are. So with an intoxicating concept, people to care about, and an honest style, it is quite an accomplishment for Filter and David Farr. Don’t miss a unique experience.

October 16 – November 03/07

OTHELLO by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Frantic Assembly is a dance theatre company experimenting with detailed text that is acted to music and dance moments. Sometimes text and dance are interwoven, sometimes overlapping, sometimes separated, but always staged in stylised movement. Scott Graham/Steven Hoggett are old hands (that are strong) at this and know exactly where they are going with their version of Othello. The dancing with this company is indeed powerful, the acting truthful but the verse speaking of Shakespeare without skill. The direction and choreography are full of savagery enforcing the violence in the dance which the company capture to perfection. If the lack of verse speaking does not offend your ears then this interpretation of Othello will be exciting. The actors are passionate and clear in their speech, full of the macho swagger and fierce lust. The focus is non-racial, even non political, but a modern love story interspersed with gang warfare…of a black Othello, leader of the street gang, fed poisonous innuendos by Iago who knows he can arouse Othello’s jealousy (his Achille’s heel) and thus rid the gang of Othello making himself the leader. Following the plotline, Iago eliminates Cassio (his competition as leader), succeeds in rousing Othello’s jealousy to a pitch where he murders Desdemona and then himself. But Iago, himself, is finally killed along with his wife Emelia. Here is an adaptation emerged in tribal action, danger, and an anger of such depth as to be fatal. Its aggression makes a battleground of the Yorkshire working-class pub with a slot-machine and a pool table used for playing pool or as Desdemona’s bed. The extremely clever design moves its diagonal walls into open space for the outdoor scenes of rivalry and bloody bedevilment or reveals the ladies loo where Desdemona confesses her concerns to her mate Emelia. These latter actor/dancers perform their roles with such confidence, such emotional intensity, and such physical violence, that convey their characters to audiences of all ages and education. The company have been touring this show culminating in London at the Lyric Hammersmith where young audiences are being cultivated. Great programming! Import no export.

Nov 4 – 22/08

ROUGH CROSSING

Having been exposed to the chilling horror of Macbeth one expects theatrical flair from Goold and that we do get from this production. But the first Act is a panoramic view of slavery as if it were on television and not a theatre piece. The history and characters are manifold so to follow all those characters in fleeting moments is quite a chore. Act I should have been rewritten into a better theatre format since the hand of Goold though bold with the context of the piece, told in magnificent images, is a hard Act I to follow. You have to let go and not follow characters but allow the images to wash over you. Schama wrote an in-depth history book about Slavery, the USA War of Independence, and the founding of Freetown in Sierra Leone. It covers three continents, oceans, western and African cultures, over a time span that makes the piece epic yet with some very personal stories all having been conveyed in a television series now condensed to play form that is badly structured for the theatre. The task of adapting may be enormous but following it is just as much of an effort. The physical production is fabulous with a set that has a sail and a huge wooden deck that tilts to give an underneath level as a playing area. It tilts in a slant down- stage, upstage, as well as opening to the lower level. This set, of course, works for all the rough crossings but also with the sail as a video screen which projects the turbulent seas and land. There are so many fascinating images in constant flow. Below deck we see the slaves chained and tormented by the journey, Granville Sharp studying his arguments for abolition by candlelight, the mother giving birth, moving from picture to picture. Ropes are used for the sea and for bondage, songs are sung with hymns to swell the heart. In all of this we are told of the battle of the slaves to found their city of Freetown in Africa… these slaves who fought for the British and who were promised their own land by the government. They were betrayed by both government and the abolitionists.Though key characters are concentrated upon it is a vast history to follow and in Act II, we watch the cruel exchanges between Thomas Peters, the former slave, who fought for his black people and John Clarkson who fought to keep Freetown for them. We watch the white British settlers who are not willing to subject themselves to the government of the former slaves. It is this act that finally has a dramatic shape to follow as John Clarkson the abolitionist and former slaves Thomas Peters and David George confront each other. The piece is so gigantic, the effort so great, the achievement so bold, the flaws so apparent, it is a huge job on the part of the audience to absorb. The work does illuminate the terrible wrongs done to these former slaves promised a basic right of freedom at price not worth paying. Import for those who have the stamina to concentrate on a most stirring and original production with all its many flaws. No export.

September 25 – October 13/07

THE BACCHAE by EURIPEDES

This is lively Euripedes filled with exaggerated celebrations and ultra violence adapted by David Grieg with anachronistic language that supposedly updates the piece. The violence resembles today’s approach and needs no updating. It opens with the body of Dionysus descending upside down exposing his backside, thus setting up the playful satire of Alan Cumming’s Dionysus. His return to the stage after his Hollywood film stint is quite an entrance. Along with him are the Bacchae, his ten female black followers dressed in garish red gowns singing their pop songs instead of dialogue which is pronounced on one occasion. These jazzy female creatures are sexy as they reinforce Dionysus power to be accepted as a God in Thebes. This was an exercise Euripedes gave the ancient Athenians after their defeat in war…a comedy and tragedy of extremism. Dionysus fathered by Zeus and mothered by the mortal Semele returns home to Thebes demanding his recognition as a god. When King Pentheus denies him that right, it releases in Dionysus a vengeance that is catastrophic. The barbarous Bacchae led by Pentheus’s now mad mother Agave tear his limbs apart and severe his head. Agave being the sister of Semele never believed Zeus to be Dionysus’s father so he has succeeded in his revenge on her most horrendously. Agave comes to her senses and realises what she has done to her horror. So the jovial Dionysus turns the comedy to stark tragedy. The fanatical Bacchae following this vicious god is a comment on the fanatics of today. Have they captured the spirit of ancient Athens as terror now exists? Yes indeed. Cumming in his wig and gold garment is half god and half pop-star singing with relish and astounding style. The choral singing of the Bacchae varies to the exotic spell of each singer, some superb others shrill. There is a climatic ending whereby the fire that engulfs the stage is stifled before destruction is wrought and startles the audience with vocal outcries. The performance of Paola Dionisotti is astounding from madness to grief moving in epic size while Tony Curran also displays a vast range from tyrant to drag with such ease. Ewan Hooper and Ralph Riach bring on a engaging vaudeville tap act to their touching tragic ending of distress at Pentheus’s death. Allan Cumming displays his usual explosive talent to perfect pitch while John Tiffany conducts the piece like a musical director. The Edinburgh Festival heralded it as its special event; its run at the Lyric should be a sell-out. Import no export.

September 5 – 22/07

ANGELS IN AMERICA by TONY KUSHNER

This totally original piece of seven hours will always remain in deep memory for its first impact in 1993 when it startled the entire theatre by the blending of the divine with the political and then adding personal love stories into the mixture. It was incredible in its mercurial changes from guffaws to the gush of tears while crusading against the epidemic of Aids and the state of denial by governments. Would this epic conglomeration be dated in 2007 where the world has been changing at such a rapid pace? It has not dated, the terror of the nuclear bombs of that time have been substituted with suicide bombs, Aids is still being denied in South Africa and eastern Africa where whole tribes and villages are being wiped out. So the Aids that devastated the character of Prior in this work would no longer carry for us the same intensity. But he could be symbolic of Aids in Africa. Let us begin at the beginning. The epic opens with a rabbi philosophising over the death of an old lady who is Louis’ grandmother which speeds into the vilely aggressive Roy Cohn’s office busy swearing on the phone at all the power heads while Joe his protégé lawyer, who is a Mormon married to Harper, sits quietly by trying to hold a conversation that does not materialise. Roy offers Joe a chance to climb the ladder of success by going to Washington DC. Joe must first check with Harper, Roy has a fit as he vociferously pronounces love being destructive. Louis is at home with his gay partner Prior who reveals the first pus-filled scab of Aids and is desperate. At the office in the men’s room Louis and Joe meet both disturbed by the sudden intrusion of dilemma and angst into their lives. Those are the three sets of storylines surrounding the lives of three participants, one solo and two who have partners. The director has cleverly speeded up the storylines which overlap in the telling and thus overlap in their lives. The Mormon marriage is shaky with an emotionally disturbed Harper knowing the sexual side of the marriage is not functional while Joe is more involved with his work and Roy Cohn who is a macho gay. Harper tells Joe to go to Washington on his own. Louis can’t cope with Prior’s deterioration and oncoming death. He abandons Prior to survive on his own but Belize, a campy queen and competent nurse, never leaves his side. Roy Cohn discovers he has Aids and will die….eventually ends up in hospital with Belize as his nurse. He is haunted by Ethel Rosenberg whom he had electrocuted for espionage, something so shocking in America where death was never used as punishment for being a traitor. She has her revenge by announcing Roy’s death. Joe comes to recognise he is gay and falls in love with Louis leaving Harper to shift on her own. Joe’s mother sells her house in Salt Lake to move to New York and finds she is caring for Harper without seeing her son. Louis and Joe break up, Roy dies thinking he’ll start a new career in hell, Harper breaks her tie with Joe who tries to re-establish the marriage and a very stubborn Prior surviving Aids and blessed by the angels, reluctantly accepts a humble Louis. In between all this is the descent of the Angel who howls and violently upholds goodness as she threatens torment for the evil doers. Prior becomes more and more of a prophet while Cohn struggles for life with the best medicine before facing death; Harper, Louis, and Joe go into deeper turmoil and confusion. The first part of Angels in America in the National Theatre production was extraordinary in meeting all the characters in full emotional blast while the political America poured into every life and where also the Angel’s descent brought such violence with a vengeance in the resolutions offering justice, as the upstage crashed open dropping a huge white feathered creature which shattered the National audience. This current version holds no such aura with an easy descent of a black angel. In 1993, the characters of Roy and Harper were quite real as one felt pity for Harper and chuckled at the evil Cohn and his come-uppance. Here are only caricatures where no involvement pulls at the emotional strings and the high pitched fast talk becomes boring in its repetition. The second part is called Perestroika filling out the lives of the characters and the Angels which repeat themselves over and over again taking 3 1/2 hours instead of 1. Kushner was after something far more important which the National projected and this excessive hysterical version with no breathing space for subdued moments ever touches upon because the focus is on the surfaced plot and not the underlying theme. In death we are all equal…Roy Cohn exits with Ethel Rosenberg whom he had killed as a traitor. Death comes to us all as we turn to dust, life alone allows us individuality. This brilliant epic still holds and is compelling to watch despite so much being thrown at us with little time to absorb, making the need of cutting and editing obvious. The loss of character in Cohn and Harper is restorable as it exists in the play; the direction lacks emotional and intellectual depth but gains in momentum; the set economical but unspectacular; Ann Mitchell is a world wonder in her playing the rabbi, the Russian and Ethel Rosenberg with warmth and wit that captivates; and Mark Emerson as Prior, particularly in the first half, suffers pain with passion and becomes the prophet with charm leading us with him on his journey to salvation with engaging humour. Import especially if you have never seen this masterpiece, but no export.

June 20- July 22/07

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS based on COLIN MacINNES’ book

It is always difficult when a play has been adapted from a book or film to match the original and in Absolute Beginners we have a cult book that illuminated the 50s and early 60s when various cultures were bursting forth, the blooming of the teenage /pop culture and the side effect of the teddy boys, a category never before alive or kicking in the UK. On top of that was the immigration of the black Caribbean’s with their enormous energy and cultural explosions in Notting Hill Gate which in those days was the slum-boarding house district for the black Caribbean’s with Rackman charging over-the-top rents. The chic Notting Hill with millionaire houses of today was in no way the Notting Hill of the 50s. The clash of cultures soon rose to such a pitch that the riots in Notting Hill had to be submerged by legions of police. The Caribbeans came to their mother country and had fought the war for England. Not to find work, respect, or decent homes became a revolutionary cause. The white teenage generation, sowing their wild oats, were not about to have their territory invaded. It was a dangerous time and a totally untravelled road to be tread in London. To come upon a production that has the most fantastic abstracted-geometric set like the Leger murals in a children’s playground with tall towers representing a city all in white and pastel colours with sharp clean lines where walls open up into a boarding house of three bed sitting rooms, or offices, or Photo Boy’s home and dark room, or a restaurant, or television studio, etc, is entering a fairytale of once upon a time with fabulous imagination for the Lyric stage, better than any set design ever in this exceptional theatre. But where is 1950s Notting Hill? The horrific race riots of the 50s are choreographed with five actors in an almost romanticised spirit. Even the whores, pimps, and the teddy boys are sterilised. But does it pertain to the Notting Hill of the 50s with its dangerous corners of filth and corruption, of slums and poverty? We see before us a whiter than white, cleaner than clean, anaesthetised city of no place and no time. I can accept the fairytale and not a correlation to the book if there was anything absorbing in the production. But the characters are all so distanced from us and so unreal that we remain untouched. The actors are without charisma. The direction has no sense of rhythm or pacing because moving the towers and opening up to the next place takes up the timing while the cast are dwarfed by the startling set. The writing has no structural focus and jumps from character to character and scene to scene, preventing any character development, only plot action. The music by the jazz composer gives us the hard bop, the choice of the mods and the rockers of that period. But where did they find those wigs for mum which looked like a Dame Edna 50-year-old throwaway and for the teddy boys as if they had water heads. The story is about Photo Boy our hero, a teenager growing up, neutral in his racial feelings and distanced from class as well as phoney patriotism. He hangs out in Notting Hill snapping pictures for a living including porno photos, trying to earn £500 that will allow him to marry his sweetheart, the promiscuous Suze whose sexual appetite is never satisfied for the one-night-stand. Photo Boy is our revolutionary declaring ‘teen-agers…we are the future’. Suze has her promiscuity paying off but also has an obsession about coupling with black men, including Cool his best friend. Cool has his bedsit in Photo Boy’s boarding house where he discovers Suze and Cool together. He beats Cool to a pulp but is ready to take on Suze with the £500 he inherited from his father’s death. She pushes him off at the realisation of his beating Cool. Photo Boy has been rejected by his mum who humps all the lodgers and by his father’s passivity. Upon his father’s death and break from Suze, Photo Boy goes into exile, but when seeing the new immigrant, the African blackman, he returns to welcome him to England. And on that high note the play ends with wishful thinking. No import or export.

April 26 – May 26/07

FUNNY GIRL

The show has been rarely done….. who could possibly take on the comparison with Barbara Streisand who made her name in the stage version and fame in the film. But this is the stage version with those stage songs not in the film. People and Don’t Rain on My Parade are classic winners which Streisand still sings. There are enough songs that work within the show and need not be single hits. As Yip Harburg (great lyricist in songs like Paper Moon, Brother Can You Spare a Dime, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Wizard of Oz, How Are Things in Glacamoora, etc) always said, ‘all you need is one hit song to make it.’ So what have the Minerva done? They have done miracles not only with Samantha Spiro playing Fanny Brice, the great American comedian who was famous for her comedy and pathos, for her belting voice which turned songs on their ear, and for her funny face which was funny-ugly because of her big nose. The nose identifies Fanny Brice like Cyrano de Bergerac, and only this is missing from Samantha Spiro who brings to life the portrait of Fanny. She has the emotional range to tear the heart and tickle you with laughter. She sings the songs with a marvellously full-throated richness bringing zestful humour or heart-rending tears, every song is dramatised. She’s a tiny thing dancing and comically singing an army routine in Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat with these gorgeous long-legged beauties who are the fabulous choral dancers in the show. Nick Ornstein, the man Fanny loved and lost, was the tragedy of her life, loving a gangster-conman who was younger, more sophisticated, and a charmer. The musical gives us the life-story of Fanny from her east side lower-class vaudeville days performing at the age of eleven and living with a doting mother. Gradually she became famous through Florence Zeigfeld’s Follies, being a rare phenomenon…a female comic. The show gives us her rise to fame, her love for Nick, and her life as a performer on stage. It is the ending when Fanny, always taking life on the chin, joking her way through pain, says goodbye to Nick, never letting him know he has broken her heart, that one is really moved to tears. It is then she sings Don’t Rain On My Parade with ultimate sadness after the joy of when she first met him. The chorus of show girls are beautiful dancers and have such a delightful freshness, Mark Umbers gives us a heart-throbbing Nick and sings with the most colourful texture. Sheila Steafel is perfect in her understated mother to Fanny, Sebastien Torkia as Eddie, the good friend who loves Fanny is an exuberant dancer with such great timing and a charismatic persona. The orchestra is wondrous along with the staging, direction and choreography…all so refreshing, so joyous, so musically timed and paced, so intimately staged at the Minerva, and all so talented. I could happily see this yet again. If you want a lift to your life don’t miss Funny Girl at the Minerva. 

April 28- June 14/08

MRS AFFLECK by SAMUEL ADAMSON

The question here is how vane is Adamson to take a master classical writer such as Ibsen whose play is universal enough to be staged on its own without being updated or adapted in its text, to have rewritten it and then to expostulate its transference to the Kent coast of the1950s. Why the 1950s? Because Adamson has a fascination for it, but does the play? He decorates the piece with 1950s artificial flowers using such gimmicks as Hancock on the radio, referring to Diana Dors and Dan Dare, or Lucky Jim and Journey into Space, or Hopalong Cassidy, or quoting words of Churchill and Eden while throwing in a bit of Princess Margaret. We do have a kitchen converted probably from a large bedroom which has been modernised with all the newest gadgets so new to the 50s, a rat-boy with an Elvis quiff, and a dominating modern wife reading Lucky Jim. But with all these superficial attempts at updating, the play has no bearing to that period. Elliott and Adamson did very successfully collaborate on Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community updating the physical production in which Tony Blair was made the protagonist or the main character. It was Ibsen’s play and the shoe fit the characters. However, here they are going a step further by the author crediting himself on Ibsen’s play. Ibsen’s Eyolf is calling out to the responsibility of love and to looking deep within oneself for the truth of it. Set in the fjords near the sea, Alfred the father of the family has just returned from the mountains having decided to focus upon raising his crippled son Eyolf rather than to work on his book, Human Responsibility. Eyolf eyes are beautiful intelligent eyes. He craves to live a normal life, but Alfred knows it’s not possible and so he will turn him towards higher pursuits. Rita, his wife, is demanding and wants all of Alfred’s attention. She is even jealous of Eyolf and wishes he had never been born. Alfred‘s sister Asta is visiting while being courted by Borghejm, an engineer. The rat-wife, a strange villager, comes calling to charm the rats away to the sea where they drown. She is not needed and leaves but is followed by Eyolf unbeknownst to his parents. Is she the symbol of death? For suddenly the family hear shouts from the sea which reveal that Eyolf has drowned. By the seaside, Alfred mourns his son’s death and is comforted by Asta. Rita and Borghejm follow and yet again Borghejm takes Asta away from the family conflict. In their battle, Rita demands more of Alfred than ever while he admits he married rich Rita to support Asta, his half sister, whose imaginary being impassioned his lovemaking to Rita. They blame each other for Eyolf’s injury as they made love ignoring the baby. Asta again refuses marriage to Borghejm until Alfred and Rita try to make her stay in order to take Eyolf’s place and ease their guilt. She then decides to follow Borghejm to the north in his road building. With Alfred unwilling to be husband to Rita, she shares her new direction of bettering the lives of the poorer children who live by the sea. Alfred agrees to join her and decides to stay to atone for their mistakes. What has Adamson changed or added besides destroying a fine play? He has George as Eyolf’s playmate who witnessed the drowning and finally tells the Afflicks that Eyolf had his eyes opened. The rat-wife who is part of village life is made into the teddy-boy rat-boy who comes from out of nowhere displaying magic tricks from nowhere and is not overtly followed by Eyolf. The rest of Ibsen’s story is told. The traverse grey set of the converted kitchen opening into the spacious esplanade trimmed with stones as by the sea is a perfect set for Ibsen and the high powered direction just suited to Eyolf. The entire cast are splendid except for Claire Skinner whose shrill voice, which may have represented the female rebellion, became a monotonous disturbance. Her sexuality seemed obvious while the intense but controlled Naomi Frederick captured the school mistress Asta and Angus Wright’s grief-stricken Alfred illuminated the conflict between love and guilt. Young Wesley Nelson’s Oliver Affleck in this version is a finely chiselled portrait of a happy child who followed an adventure that led to his death. Why one wonders did they not do Ibsen? No import or export.

January 20 - April 29/09

THE WALWORTH FARCE by ENDA WALSH

When the company of Edna Walsh’s The Walworth Farce takes its final bow you’ll realize that the real farce is the show’s title. Directed by Mikel Murfi at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe stage, this Irish folk tale about three men living in a fantasy will have you laughing at the slapstick absurdity, but, ultimately, leave you terrified and feeling as much a prisoner as the characters themselves. Walsh’s Farce is a play-within-a-play, the frame narrative exploring the idea that myth can be a form of escapism and atonement. Irish patriarch Dinny concocts a false dramatization of his last day in Cork, a fantasy that we learn he and his two sons, Blake and Sean, ritualistically act out on a daily basis. The show is initially absurdist fun, but eventually spirals toward an inevitable and haunting conclusion. The male cast members brilliantly handle the humour and the horror of this nightmare in comedy’s clothing. Denis Conway’s fantasist Dinny can be as dangerous as he is sentimental. Garrett Lombard, who can transform into various drag roles in seconds, is marvelous as the overtly twisted Blake. But it is Tadhg Murphy who is truly excellent. As the submissive younger brother that suffers the greatest mental devastation from their terrible reality, Murphy will both break your heart and induce fits of laughter. Mercy Ojelade as Hayley, the unsuspecting Tesco cashier that is dragged into the trio’s theatrical Charybdis, is given little to do but aptly conveys sheer terror. Some theatregoers will surely find that the play-within-the-play goes on for far too long, but this judgment misses the point of Walsh’s drama. The characters are prisoners of theatre, forced to endure a farce they no longer find amusing but must see through to the end. Similarly for the audience, the farce loses its appeal long before it reaches its conclusion but they too must be imprisoned. Dinny is a contemporary Sisyphus doomed to endlessly repeat the same action as punishment for his sins, a lot he condemns his sons to share. In making this play as long as the play proper, the theatregoer joins Hayley in the role of the unwilling viewer. Only then can the feelings of helplessness and entrapment truly be understood. This is a story about stories. Though Walsh takes the concept to an extreme, every theatregoer can relate to the characters’ altering of accounts to suit their own needs. We lie to save face in front of others. We lie to seem less responsible for a wrongdoing. And, eventually, we come to believe those lies we tell ourselves because they are preferable to reality. The Walworth Farce is not a show that can be easily forgotten. Walsh has woven a twisted fairy tale that Murfi effectively translates into a compelling and manic production; the cast command the attention of the audience. Any theatregoer not affected by the show’s lasting images is also refusing to face reality. Import No Export

Sept 18 -Nov 29/08

GETHSEMANE by DAVID HARE

The National Theatre has to be praised for its constant efforts in keeping abreast with the political times and being the voice of the people. To a certain degree, it does not matter the success or failure of the piece as long as a voice is heard which will arouse enough interest and polarisation within the National’s usual production standard of such fantastic quality in its technical achievements with sets, lights, music, video, sound plus actors and directors. The standard is so superb for Gethsemane, it camouflages the disappointing work of David Hare. This play was anticipated with such high hopes on a specific protest against the government’s buying-of-honours scandal that escaped punishment for Tony Blair…a blast regarding the disillusionment the public felt at Labour’s corruption and Tony Blair’s lack of morality. This is the third political play of Hare’s which started with the verbatim rail privatisation piece, Permanent Way, followed by the fictionalised Bush/Blair scenario prior to the Iraq war in Stuff Happens. Why is this play named Gethsemane? One thought because it was themed at betrayal… 30 pieces of silver…but here it is millions in sterling. However, despite the scandal, political history has past the timing of this work and in addition our disillusionment now remains with the play. It is so fractured between undeveloped characters that are based on real politicians, slightly altered so as not to be libellous whom we can still identify, and the political issues. The character of Meredith may be based on Tessa Jowell who left her husband in order to save her career, but is different here since she stands by her man (charged by the court with a dicey overseas investment portfolio) while maintaining her career. A former hairdresser now mogul-fundraiser, Otto, a former pop impresario, could be imitating the live fundraiser Levy (mixed a bit with Peter Mandelson and John Prescott) in Tony Blair’s entourage, who not only pulls in rich donors by arranged drinks with the top politicians, but also salvages Meridith’s scandalous daughter Suzette. Then juxtapose the only moral symbol, the teacher Lori who became a busker and Suzette’s saviour. She is the idealistic wife of Mike an ardent Labourite recruited to Otto’s team. We can identify Lori with the Sermon on the Mount…there is a time to sow and a time to reap. Mandelson and Campbell are mixed into some of the characters to colour the corruption of power while a scant picture of the slick PM Blair beating his drums in suave Armani is painted. What we actually have are characters that are mouth-pieces for the author’s concepts with no emotional development integrated into the fabric of the political side of the plotting.  As a result it is so fractured and undramatised in play structure that it is closer to a caricatured essay, a good-guy/bad-guy article, a linear piece of pantomime storytelling, but not a play. All this becomes hard work in following the episodes, putting pieces together if you have not read the play. The ending is indicative of all I have criticised. It concludes with Suzette, evidently saved from drugs and a sex scandal by Otto, planted with Lori in Sicily as Lori mimes playing the piano on the table to the sound of classical Beethoven, a metaphor as to her return to music and thus morality being the winner. But is she and Suzette the main focus as to end the play and how do we know they are in Sicily? The previous scene gives us the finality to the politicians and the central focus: the Tony Blair character goes with Otto, his financial future, rather than concern himself over the government; Meredith stands fighting for her man and  her career, evidently relieved the problem of Suzette is far and away; Otto, the man ‘from Hendon to Hampstead’ goes on being the big-wig in the labour party, fundraising as usual, saving Meredith’s skin by being governor of Suzette’s school and squashing the story of the slimy but Oxford educated journalist, Geoff Benzine, who was about to spill the beans on the orgy three journalists (including himself) had with druggie Suzette; Otto’s flippantly spivvy Frank continues as his axe-man while Mike is so conscious-stricken over Labour’s lies, deceits and corruption, he quits his job with Otto who pays him off and gives him tickets to Sicily to prevent any tattling tales. Hence we guess that Lori is in Sicily with Suzette. But where is Mike? The contrivances within the story are abundant. There is no truth to the relationships, only getting the punches in politically without concern for characterisation. What a difference in seeing Harley Graville-Barkers Waste where the weaving of real people into the methods of governmental corruption is so expertly done. We are emotionally involved while discovering the machinations of government. I cannot describe a smooth storyline here, only fragmentations. You can judge for yourself if this production is enough to satisfy your expectations of theatre in that it is some form of protest ….but is it Gethsemame or the Sermon on the Mount that Hare has invoked? Relative import, no export.

Nov 4/08 – Feb 24/09

PITMEN  PAINTERS from LIVE THEATRE writer LEE HALL

The times are so seldom when you walk out of the theatre in a state of elation! This play imported from the Live Theatre in Newcastle is the raison d’etre for theatre. It’s an enormously fertile rendering of the growth of a group of Ashington miners who develop into fantastic painters without any training in the years 1934 to 1947. In addition to hearing their discussions on art, their criticisms on what they painted, we also hear about their politics, their work lives, and a basic understanding of what makes culture or art which is at the root of all people. Dumbing down to the lowest common denominator is not what the people want or need. The play is inspired by William Feaver’s book which describes the facts about these men, a band of pitmen joining an art appreciation class because they failed to be able to find a lecturer in architecture. Their tutor Robert Lyon soon discovers showing slides of the Renaissance period is pointless to men who have no background in the art world. Instead he gets them to work, first on linocuts and then actually painting about their own experiences, lives, and work. Their paintings as a group soon begin to reflect their community which in fact is their culture. They have fiery arguments and reactions to their paintings and to the meaning of art. Their collective work takes a sudden turn when Robert Lyon shows it to a shipping heiress, Helen Sutherland, whose interest in regional interest is well known. We see a quarrelsome band of miners: the follow-the-line Marxist Harry Wilson, the petty bureaucratic WEA official George Brown, profound artist Oliver Kibourn, the decorative painter Jimmy Floyd, only as representative of the entire collection of pitmen. They do not feel vaguely about being artists but call it a specialist’s gift. When Helen Sutherland tries to subsidise Oliver in order to paint full time and leave the mine, we are given the full impact of the meaning of art. Oliver turns down her offer because he is unwilling to go into that abstract world of artists as she has done. His identity comes from being a miner. It’s his daily life, his culture that gives him a source from which to paint. Giving up being a pitman will mean losing his identity, his source of creativity. And so the story of the pitmen painters broadens into the whole issue of what is art and where are its roots. The play ends on the eve of nationalising the mines with the beautiful Gresford miners' anthem sung by the cast, but nationalisation terminated their meeting place and funds for painting. The Ashington University never was founded. Art did not change the world, they discovered, but would have to be changed politically as Harry kept preaching. What happened to these men? Some are still alive and painting. What happened to the paintings now finally housed at the Woodham Colliery Museum in their own gallery after world wide tours and exhibitions? What happened to Lyon? He left the group to become a professor at Edinburgh University on the basis of his work with the Ashington miners. Looking at these fabulous paintings enlarged on screen in the theatre one sees that art is not allocated to the educated or commercially acknowledged painters alone, but to the inner drive of the person. So art and theatre are brought under the same umbrella. Max Roberts has directed and staged the play to perfection, the whole company of actors are the pitmen and draw us into their most intimate souls, the set and videos of the paintings are extraordinary, but most of all there is Lee Hall who brought us Billy Elliot and now this earth-shaking Pitmen Painters. Thank you Nick Hytner for scheduling this gem at the National Theatre! IMPORT IMPORT AND EXPORT TO THE USA AND EUROPE!

May 19 – June 25/08

HARPER REGAN by SIMON STEEPHENS

What seems apparent in this play is its similarity to Happy Now? where the wives are career women married to men they question, raise a family, have longings for their father while resenting their mothers, and try casual sex in a hotel room. The storyline is familiar and despite both plays at the National lacking originality, they do reflect the current times. There are many plays from Mamet to Howard Korder where the protagonist explores the meaning of his/her life by a strange series of searches as in these plays. Somehow the theme, analysis of family ties and identity of self, highlighting the contemporary marriage where the woman is the main breadwinner, reoccurs at the National in its selection of new plays. This then means the journey of each of these women has to be different. Is this suitable as popular theatre?  It certainly is. The play structure in Happy Now? is far more cohesive. In Harper Regan the actual play structure defeats itself. The first act is a mere outline of scenes so insubstantial, leaving out the basic theme which motivates the play. The author has written in the programme that one questions the belief in a god and also goes into great descriptions of Uxbridge. The play carries no impact or impression of god and who would know we are in Uxbridge except for Harper saying so. Peter Gill gave us Wales without a set but through the language and the characters. By the second act we are finally into the play. Harper, without telling her weird boss or her immediate family, leaves her job, her family and Uxbridge to visit her dying father in Manchester but arrives too late. She is obviously now running away from her life. In a pub, she shares a drink with an anti-Semitic journalist in whose neck she crushes her wine glass, walking off with his avant-garde jacket. She sleeps with a kind stranger picked up on the internet, has a raging battle with her mother after two years of not speaking and discovers it was her father and not her mother who disapproved of her husband, who, it turns out, is on the sex offenders register having taken pictures of little girls in the park. The journey ends with Harper returning home, facing the truth in her life. She confesses her escapades to her husband, realistically accepting his failure but still loving him. She also has a series of clashes with her daughter but again persists in the truth of their relationship. No dark corners to hide away thoughts even though we can’t get into someone else’s brain. There are powerful scenes between Harper and her daughter and then with her mother. But what saves the day is the radiant performance of Lesley Sharp, mercurially switching in tenderness to toughness, from challenging to absorbing, from rage to fear. Susan Brown is brilliantly real in a highly charged performance, Jessica Raine is a vibrant newcomer to be followed. Michael Mears’ Elwood Barnes, Harper’s boss; Troy Glasgow’s Tobias Rich, the student; Brian Capron’s James, the hotel pick-up via the internet; and Jack Deam’s Mickey, the anti-Semite are all superb. Though the box set on a revolve seemed dead and without specific locations, Marianne Elliot’s direction, as usual, is highly sensitive to mood, style and atmosphere embellishing the script with a dreamlike haze, almost a memory journey for Harper. Import but no export.

April 16 – August 9/08

BABY GIRL by ROY WILLIAMS, DNA by DENNIS KELLY, THE MIRACLE by LIN COGHLAN

The National has its yearly commission of plays for teenagers written by current important new writers especially for the Connections season scheduled over a three-week period at NT in which performers from schools and colleges all over the UK aged 11-19 have the chance to perform in 10 new plays a year. The best of those one act plays is restaged and given this regular booking at NT as the best of the past year; its programme is here listed. Paul Miller has cleverly staged all three plays and cast with diligent talent 20 professional young actors. The plays are diverse though aimed towards the problems of teenagers….in Baby Girl a sophisticated virgin of 13 named Kelle (Candassaie Liburd), gets pregnant by her classmate Nathan (Winston Sarpong) whom she dislikes. Samantha (Petra Letang), her mother, is only 26 herself and has to cope with Kelle accepting the child as she did with Kelle. It is the mother /daughter relationships that are stressed along with teenage acceptance of responsibility. There’s humour in William’s perspective on the teenagers but not much originality. Dennis Kelly’s DNA is far more appealing in its familiar subject of adolescent cruelty confused with fantasy and reality. It’s no Lord of the Flies but a group of school boys and girls accidentally kill one of the students or think they did. The cool calculating Phil (Sam Crane) figures out the exact strategy to cover up the unintentional death with such easy calm and then keeps to utter silence like a Buddha. There is a carefully studied understanding of group dependency when in panic. The chatterbox girl Lea (Ruby Bentall), who has a crush on the silent hero, is absolutely adorable and steals the show in her delectable character of Lea. In Lyn Coghlin’s The Miracle a 12-year-old Veronica or Ron (Ruby Bentall) miraculously has  a holy statue come up through the floor near her bunk bed which changes her whole life in giving her powers of healing that becomes the miracle of the community. She manages to use her gifts and then grows up becoming less the weirdo and more acceptable with its loss. The act of faith or redemption is triggered by a belief in a miracle which people need to exult their lives enough to create change. It is not specific in its setting or in the structure of the play with vague inter-reactions of the adolescents. Last year was better…look forward to next year.

February 16 – March 12/08

HAPPY NOW? by LUCINDA COXON

The Arts Council blundered to such a pitch and only by bringing out the big guns did it make any impact. So praise the lord and pass the ammunition that Nick Hytner made such a vocal protest and those foolish journalists who queried why he should protest when he is well covered should understand issues before they speak. Thank you Nick Hytner for remaining as a voice of the people whether it is against our government in your programming of plays or against official bodies like the Arts Council. How well you pursue the concept of a national theatre by being national and not just a closed-in higher echelon acting as an island unto itself! Now into the review of a new writer’s play…a female writer staged by a female director bringing a female point of view of the thirty-somethings middle-class marriage of today. You could call it a romantic comedy with a bitter edge. It opens with a happy-go-lucky Irishman making a genial pass during a business conference at a good-looking career woman knowing she’s as married as he is. His offer of sex with no strings attached is a spring awakening to this top executive Kitty and a realisation how much she is being taken for granted in her marriage by her husband Johnny. What unfolds within her marriage and that of her husband’s male friend Miles is the casual inferior treatment of women in this supposedly post-modern world of female emancipation. Where lies romance or happy family life giving firm roots in this uprooted world? Kitty is well paid in her executive job at a cancer charity while Johnny is a teacher at a comprehensive school where he feels he is dealing with his social responsibility. We see Olivia Williams’ Kitty, now being the housewife, after children are put to bed, and Jonathan Collom’s Johnny give and attend dinner parties where danger lies more flagrant than on the streets. Miles, an alcoholic, insults his wife Bea incessantly as she in turn loses herself in decorating the flat while keeping her distance until she finally throws him out. Where else is he to go except to Johnny without Kitty’s consent. The third friend is gay…Carl whom they all feel is freer than air in his promiscuous sexual relationships. But is he? His young lover has left him. Kitty visits her self centred mother who will not answer the phone because she says it’s Kitty’s father phoning. Kitty’s father walked out on her mother years ago and is now dying in hospital. How could he possibly be phoning? Mother is perfectly groomed …nails polished, hair set. And what of Kitty? Her mother carries on over a tooth ache ignoring the bursting of the father’s aorta. And yet this woman wants to hang on to her husband wishing he was on the phone but never admitting to it. The cleverly disguised attack on Kitty from Johnny, Carl and Miles is an unnecessary compilation of passive aggression she could have done without but when finally Johnny looks at her with longing and asks to kiss her…maybe, just maybe, the Irishman questioning her about a husband’s kiss has finally taken root. The scipt is structured in awkward fragments with an unexpected sentimental ending which weakens the arguments of the play. It is not exactly original in its concepts but her lively dialogue and wit, her precise detail of behaviour, the naturalism of the acting with a special sense of timing and vulnerability from Olivia Williams, and the harsh bite of director Thea Sharrock make this modern romantic comedy work. Import no export.

January 16 – March 15/08 in repertory

STATEMENT OF REGRET by KWAME KWEI-ARMAH

This is the third play in a triptych of Kwami Kwei-Armah’s view of the black community in London. The first, Elmina’s Kitchen, was the best of the lot as each one seems to become less and less of a play and more debate taken out of books and put into characters’ mouths. The problem here is the existence of two plays…Act 1 argues over an important issue of reparations for slavery by the industrial companies which Kwaku applies as a way of pitting the Caribbean blacks against the African blacks. This debate used as a means of plot demeans the issue of reparations which is completely dropped in Act II and never seriously analyzed. There is also a picture given of how the office functions amongst each of the team as per example the minister for race offers them ‘tanks for the memory’ after Kwaku’s team has helped him win and which the press hardly covered except for a blurb in the Mail. Act II, since all the political issues are dropped and never developed, is entirely based on the downfall of charismatic Kwaku, head of the policy unit and founder of this organisation. The problem with Kwami is that he does not weave the political with the personal and thus divides his play into two.  All the other disappointments and confusions of Kwaku pile up in Act II…. his office affair with a young promiscuous researcher, the disappointment in his less educated son Junior doing the press and public relations, the rage of his wife over his illegitimate son Adrian office presence, Kwaku’s attacks on his loyal colleagues, his decline in his racial beliefs, his drunken television appearance in which he argues reparation money going to the poor Caribbean blacks and not to the Africans which divides his staff and the whole community, in addition to an already divided staff in wanting to work on the black–against black violence. Kwami covers the whole waterfront with so many issues that are touched upon without direct focus. Kwaku’s wife is of African descent, his mistress is Caribbean. Junior considers himself English, practical though under-educated, and unappreciated whilst Adrian feels his Caribbean as well as English rooting along with a sense of his own Oxford snobbery. Junior works intricately with Michael, Idressa, and Val, the brains behind the team. Adrian is the outsider yet to prove his worth to them. Kwaku, no longer interested in fighting for civil rights, depresses deeper and deeper into an alcoholic stupor grieving over the death of his immigrant Caribbean father with delusions of his father’s ghost which finally causes the office to collapse. All that is left are his sons. But will they remain?  Kwami’s usual theme of father and son in their relationship to responsibility underlines this play as well. Roy Williams in Joe Guy managed to give us the personal and political conflict between the African and the Caribbean through his simple story of real people without the division or melodrama which Kwami seems to need in order to climax his plays. The ultra chic office, the careful costuming never add to the play which the director pasted together without innovation, nor are the performances memorable especially from such fine actors as Colin McFarlane as Michael, Chu Omambala as Idrissa, Trevor Laird as Val, Clifford Samuel as Adrian. Sorry for such disappointment, better luck next time. No import or export.

November 7/07 – January 10/08

THE FIVE WIVES OF MAURICE PINDER by MATT CHARIMAN

There are times when one questions how could a play be produced anywhere by anyone. You think, oh, this must have appealed to someone’s imagination because it is a supposition with no reality and a ‘what if’ hypothesis of a play. It has to be a male author since it is a western world male fantasy ….polygamy in Lewisham… five wives living in the same house like a harem with children to boot. Where would any western man today take on such responsibility? Not to mention any female accepting such conditions such as taking turns during the week for their lovemaking night. So it is with this play where a middle-aged man, Larry Lamb, earning his living from scaffolding and building decides to scaffold his life by marrying then divorcing but keeping all the wives together in the same house having communal meals and each taking turns at bedding him. Clare Holman is the promiscuous bar-crawling one with a grown son by Maurice who lets rip in rebelling against the family ritual when drunk. Her son Adam Gillen is a sensitive sad one who keeps baby names under his bed and goes off to university against his will to please dad but quits to return home. Sorcha Cusack is the mother earth who embraces them all but underneath feels she was the first and only wife. Martina Laird is a dynamic homeopathic physiotherapist with the young baby who breaks away without tears or angst. Carla Henry is a twenty-something pregnant girl escaping an abusive boyfriend and Irene is the bossy organiser of home and office who destroys the serial wives communal living. The premise is to give the women security of family life along with their independence which in turn gives him a family, sexual pleasure, and the variety of five personalities rather than one which becomes boring in time. The acting is top-rate, they hold the credibility with their acting skill, the direction is tight, the set clever, but the script remains dubious. I can appreciate Nick Hytner’s commitment to continue with new young writers and the director representing the regions (Manchester Exchange) having a place at the National. You win some such as last year and lose some such as this year. No import or export.

June 13 – August 27/07

LANDSCAPE WITH WEAPON by JOE PENHALL

The theme is relevant, the plot is unoriginal. It starts with a first act that is riveting in the dramatic story of two brothers diametrically opposed in their character and beliefs yet tied to each other by a blood knot. If only the play ended on the first act with the emotional dilemma and not gone into a second act which becomes an uneven political debate and only ends with the relationship of the brothers in the final scene. Penhall’s strength as a writer lies in his human touch, in his creation of wonderful characters, in his sense of humour with buoyant dialogue, and in his highlighting the social dilemmas of our age. He includes all of these points in this play but loses its combination in the second act. A weapons engineer, Ned, has his conscience aroused when discovering he can’t control his own invention which the government has sponsored as a weapon of destruction, maybe mass destruction. Ned has advanced the concept of a drone (pilot-less plane piloted with a stick from a computer by an expert) by inventing one needing no steerage from a computer thus making possible indoor as well as outdoor usage. His vision came from a poetic moment in seeing groups of hundreds of starlings changing formations resembling Islamic geometric art, all at the same time, via a mysterious signal. His dilemma becomes a moral maze when his brother Dan opens his eyes to the possible consequences of the invention. Penhall when leading us into that sealed world of Ned is fascinating turning it round to a threatening one with Dan. Ned is left bereft and drifting while Dan realises his responsibility to a brother who may not recover. The design of the set is unique as the grey walls of the flat turn into glass brick walls of the factory office, the carpeted floor becomes a painted one with drones, a chandelier is lowered for the flat and raised high for the factory office. The flat with its exits to the entrance hallway or kitchen become the armoured walls of offices. Hollander as Ned gives the most authentic portrait of an obsessed rumpled boy rather than a grown-up who cannot pull his life together in understanding the material world. Rhind-Tutt as Dan is the more sophisticated of the two, a dentist engagingly light in his approach to life as he figures deals to be made with patients in botox. He is married with two children; Ned is separated with no family. In opening Ned’s eyes to the possibilities of demolition from his invention, Dan has unstrung his brother. It is this finely tooled relationship and the destruction of Ned that makes this drama, performed with devastating brilliance. The direction is compelling, sensitive to each nuance while the set is as inventive as the drone itself. The flaws in the play still do not diminish the intelligence of the work. Import and export.

March 29 – July 03/07 in rep

THE REPORTER by NICHOLAS WRIGHT

There seems to be a development of bio-dramas as an exciting style of theatre where life and art are equal in their measure producing insights into life through art and holding our suspenseful attention because it is real. Frost/ Nixon, trial transcripts at the Tricycle, and now the story of James Mossman, the BBC foreign correspondent who brought the 1960s Vietnam War onto television and then headed the famous news programme of Panorama until his aggressive way, pre-Jeremy Paxman, of questioning Harold Wilson on Vietnam almost finished his career. The BBC moved him sideways into an arts programme and out of the news. Mossman left behind a legacy of mystery as to why he committed suicide in 1971. This play does not resolve that mystery but what it does do is recreate the period and events of history reflected in the atmosphere of the BBC and its changing times. The highlight of the production belongs to Richard Eyre who through a grey barren set, grey sliding curtains for rear projections, a camera, table and chairs, duplicates the atmosphere of the BBC television studio to such a degree that we are transported in time and place and involved with each event. Eyre is master of the meticulous/ naturalistic theatre…no one in this world can match his integrity, sincerity and creativity in this area. There is a haunting quality through the writing, direction and superb cast of actors. Tailor-suited, smooth-haired Mossman is our narrator telling us about his life yet quite detached almost ghostlike as he conjures up the memories, particularly of his final note: ‘I can’t bear it anymore, though I don’t know what ‘it is’. He steps out of a darkened recording studio into the spotlight with a face pallid enough to look like a death mask and subtly grieved…he is stepping out of time into the memory zone where he tells the story and also participates in the unfolding scenes. He describes the burning monk in political protest against Vietnam as if happening now instead 1963.. burning embers. We discover his MI6 affiliation, his days on Panorama and his crossed egos with Robin Day so explicitly brilliant and funny as portrayed by Paul Ritter. His demotion into arts programming spins a downward spiral where he falls for a highly neurotic, pill-popping ceramic-potter Louis whom he unfortunately includes in his documentary-film making career. Is it Louis’ suicide which starts Mossman’s suicide process and the shame of a near public scandal? Back and forth we go from narration into the next scene and a jump in time…some fact, some fiction. The fulfilling relationship to the older Rosamund Lehmann due to her spiritual journey postpones Mossman’s final act. How beautifully convincing they both are. But still Lehmann’s belief in seeing her dead daughter never reaches Mossman as we watch his bereavement and his depression at the loss of love and real purpose of a career now shattered. He could no longer pursue truth as his badge of honour via his work in television. All these may be reasons for suicide but at what point is all hope lost? Paul Ritman’s smoking cigar rendition of Robin Day is hilarious, Ben Chaplin’s repressed and subdued Mossman is fascinatingly disturbing as he hovers in pain and turmoil, a lost cause. Angela Thorne catches the aura of Lehmann and the soul which obviously enchanted Mossman. Moving performances with precise detail in every movement adds to this highly professional production despite its flaws. Import and Export for Broadway.

February 15 – June 02/07

THE SEAFARER by CONOR McPHERSON

A folk tale told by many…many cultures and many versions… about the devil playing for a man's life in a card game and losing by the trick of fate or by accident. Taking this tale McPherson sets it in rural Ireland and achieves a delightful comedy through character and situation as only he can. He keeps to modern day where two brothers live together under argumentative circumstances, sharing their drinking with two friends, one of whom has misplaced his glasses. It is the myopic friend, marvellously portrayed by Conleth Hill, who in finding his glasses fools the card-playing devil, as sharply played by Ron Cook. The twist in the tale of fooling the devil at cards climaxes the piece in a very funny episode. Extremely well acted in ensemble and meticulously directed by a defined theatre talent, this work is a must to see. Import and export for Off Broadway.

September 20/06 – January 30/07

WAVES from VIRGINIA WOLFF novel

The Virginia Woolf internalised book following the years of a group of friends is a risky way-out production dominated by Katie Mitchell. The first half hour is bewildering as the style of the piece is set up first and then later the characters are concentrated upon. It is the style...a narrator played by the various actors who also switch the characters they are playing which captures the overlapping of the characters in the book and gives us the linear aspect of a concert reading. While listening to the richness of the reading of the text on microphones, we watch the actors creating sound effects as if in a radio studio which then can be translated into a television studio as we witness the actions on a large screen carefully placed upstage. Some of the images are breathtaking and some mundane. There are times when the images contradict the live action or reaction. But in a strange way we become interested in the characters and what happens to them while discovering a new style of how one can present a complex book which is not the best of Woolf's work. What is absolutely fascinating is the use of space and the combination of media in storytelling. The risk taken by this experiment must be attributed to Nick Hytner who put NT at the disposal of the company. Whether it has failed or succeeded...it's the experiment that counts and the use of space. The audience is well rewarded by working hard and what kudos NT deserves for its courage. Import but no export.

November 8/06-February 8/07

EXILES by James Joyce

We have here Joyce’s only play written in 1914 and produced/directed by Harold Pinter in 1970 with a sophisticated Vivien Merchant and an profoundly brooding John Wood. Strange that this unique piece on marriage should have been left on the shelf all these years. This production is so sensitively handled here with an authenticity of period and atmosphere, performed to perfection by a warm, earthy, and loving Dervla Kirwan. The play is poetic in language with a stillness that envelops yet moves the characters in their conversations. It becomes the quintessence of romanticism in a wholly unsentimental aura. Richard as a now published writer of artistry has come back to Dublin with his wife Bertha after eight years and meets with his old friend Robert, who once fancied Bertha, now a literary journalist. It is the contest between the three, the ordinary triangle, that Pinter used in Betrayal and Stoppard in The Real Thing, with which Joyce surprises us. It is far from the conventional treatment and rather a wonderment. The intensity of Bertha, Robert and Richard is consuming. There are various interpretations as to why Richard encourages his wife Bertha to have an affair with his best friend Robert, provided she gives him details of each meeting. Richard, being the writer Joyce, encouraged his wife into relationships in order for him to have dramatic material for his novels. A loving woman causes no unpredictable passages. There is also a personal searching in Richard to discover the substituting of love in exchange for faith. Can real love overcome the loss of faith? But what is fascinating in this piece is Richard unknowingly becoming a game player with two persons who are not game players. As the experiment advances Richard is destroyed by his friendship to Robert and insecurely demanding of his wife. Robert starts as a womanising man of bravado and ends up genuinely in unrequited love with Bertha, taking as compensation Richard and Bertha’s son under his wing. It is Bertha who remains strong and lovingly secure with Richard. We never discover whether Bertha actually consummated the affair. It is not important. What we do see is the progression and changes in the game that Richard set up and the great price he has paid for the search of the unknown power of love. The writing matches the profundity of content, the acting of Kirwan and McDonald are totally absorbing, the green scrim panels illuminated by rear lighting so that acting areas of upstage and downstage are simultaneously possible plus double levels of bedroom upstairs and study in addition to the salon downstairs allowing easy mobility of locations while sustaining the darkened mood of the play, makes for a magnificent set. It is an experience so rare in theatre that one should treasure this production. Import and export for Broadway!!!

July 26 - Oct 26/06

BURNT BY THE SUN from NIKITA MIKHALKOV/RUSTAM IBBRAGIMBEKOV

What a challenging job it is to adapt this fantastic award-winning film set in the countryside of Russia in 1936 on the eve of Stalin’s Great Terror in which General Kotov, a Red Army hero of the revolution has the tables turned on him to his utter horror. The film caught in such exquisite detail the lay of the land, the dacha on a warm summer’s day, the lazy luxury of time, the languid lives, the security of Kotov’s life as a devoted communist and friend of Stalin along with his family, slowly feeding into the underlying terrors of the Young Pioneer’s Band flying Stalin’s image, the tanks over the wheat fields. The Russian company of actors were so close to the reality. How could this be duplicated within the physical limitation of theatre? Well, it is and magnificently so by Peter Flannery. The fact that the scale of the Great Terror is now being revealed is what makes it relevant. Strange that the French revolution as well as the Russian both had such horrendous reigns of terror where the revolutionaries who made it possible were then murdered. Maroussia’s family of eccentric bourgeoisies could survive the revolution only under the protection of General Kotov. He is so much in love with Maroussia his young wife and adores their daughter Nadia that he patiently puts up with these intellectuals who do not relate to him nor he to them. When the tanks try to destroy the wheat fields or when Vsevolod becomes disturbed over the purges based on rumours and not on evidence, or the planes zoom over the open fields then is this Chekhovian summer in rural Russia disturbed, giving way to the darker undercurrents. But even more than Stalin’s military tyranny is the arrival of Mitia, the long-lost lover of Maroussia, the jester of the family, the poet, the singer, who disappeared 12 years ago without word in all these years. Why has Mitia come home? He causes deep disturbance to Maroussia and her marriage as well as bringing vitality to this dying breed. There is something that is happening between Kotov and Mitia as they cat and mouse each other. By the end we see Kotov who trapped Mitia into the army and to spying in order to rid himself of a rival for Maroussia trying to once again rid himself of Mitia through his military connections. Only this time, he is shocked by the tables being turned as the clowning Mitia becomes the monster spymaster building false evidence against Kotov. It is Mitia who now leads Kotov to certain death and will never return to Maroussia or the family again. Ciaran Hinds looks like Stalin and plays the uncouth peasant who worked his way up through the army with immaculate accuracy. Rory Kinnear has the magic and the charisma for Mitia and shocks us beyond measure at his Janus turn-about, yet projecting the profound hurt of losing the man he once was. Michelle Dockery is so tenderly fragile as the wounded Maroussia. The entire cast whether it’s the maid, the uncles, aunts, parents or grandparents are beautifully cast with epic bands and parades and a summer house on a revolve to expose the inside and outside of the dacha. The tensions and fears, the songs and delights, are deeply imbedded in the production, and above all, the destruction of human relationships when terror is the underlay of a society is devastatingly revealed. It weaves the political into the personal so brilliantly that through the personal love story we are exposed to the political which was so deeply rooted into the private life of the people. The sweep of the story, the ensemble acting, and the epic production are not to be missed. Import and export if such a large cast could be afforded.

March 3 – April 21 /09

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY by TRACY LETTS

Walking in the shadow of greatness is immediately identifiable with Steppenwolf’s production of Lett’s play with a startling ensemble of actors that weaves the whole production into a perfect tapestry of the USA way of life and its current culture. Family life is always at the base of the American tragic classics. Unlike the UK where lineage is the significant factor in the family or its kitchen-sink working- class renditions, the USA has mainly second and third generation Americans who do not have the deep roots of history and so family has a different perspective. It becomes the launching pad for a better future and a metaphor for USA culture. It is the small representative of the bigger picture. So in this masterpiece, which follows closely the Eugene O’Neill spectrum of tragedy, its realness of characters, its dysfunctional family destroying itself by the most excruciatingly painful extremes, Letts revives the American tragedy of the 21st-century in that tradition. O’Neill had his influences in Ibsen plays like Ghosts, and Letts may have plotted a bit of Chekhov’s Three Sisters or Shakespeare’s King Lear but his tragedy is that of the epic size and emotional depth of O’Neill. Strangely enough, a series of tragic family plays has opened this season starting as far back as with Sophocles’ Oedipus, Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests, TS Elliott’s Family Reunion, Lett’s August: Osage County, Labute’s In a Dark Dark House, etc, etc. The family reunion for the father’s funeral is a frequently used devise where it exposes the hidden secrets and then the falling apart when the delusions are broken and the truth is laid bare. However, this successful Broadway play is not just abundant in tears but also in laughter. Daughter Barbara, played so superbly by Amy Morton, with her sharp tongue has a sharp wit that is at times side-splitting as she searches for the truth standing up to her tormenting mother Violet. There’s slapstick, farce, one-liners, black comedy, blended in with cruelty and intense emotional upheaval. Daddy Beverly Weston, a once famous poet in his seventies, drinks heavily and Violet his wife is a drug pill-popper for her mouth cancer. He disappears and after three days is found dead…suicide by drowning. In this elaborate three story house majestically designed, the family reassembles for the funeral. There is the funeral dinner and its preparation where we discover each of the characters in full bloom. Violet harangues Karen her youngest daughter to wear an outlandish dress but Karen refuses to change from her black suit. She is the only daughter still at home enduring the tumultuous marriage of her parents. A kindly native American, as the American Indian is now called, is hired as housekeeper who efficiently cooks and cleans despite the chaos. Violet’s sister the vulgar Mattie, an overbearing dominatrix, rules her husband Charlie, until he finally threatens her with an ultimatum of separation, and crucifies her backward son little Charlie who loves his cousin Karen. They plan to run off together to New York until Violet viciously spews out the secret that Karen and little Charlie are half brother and sister thus destroying Karen’s escape. Mattie never told anyone that Beverly and she had an affair but both spouses knew without ever acknowledging it. Mattie only unveiled the family skeleton to Barbara after Charlie’s ultimatum and to prevent little Charlie’s love of Karen ending in yet another family ruination. Barbara, in her dilemma over her fragile marriage to professorial Bill which comes to an end, her daughter Jean’s grass smoking entrance into her sexual puberty, is additionally burdened by Karen’s potential disaster and her mother’s psychotic condition through all the excessive pill-popping. She tries solving all this plus her sister Ivy’s marriage to Steve a pot smoking paedophile (he attempts seducing a willing 14 year-old Jean). All that Barbara ends up with is: Jean and Bill departing together while her potential childhood boyfriend now sheriff remains a stranger; her sisters Ivy and Karen accusing her of malice; and Violet finally outwitting her. Ivy quickly leaves with Steve knowing this dead end is all she will get, Karen will leave home on her own, Mattie and the Charlies will stay neurotically tied together, and a desperate Violet, who has torturously driven her family away, weeps her last years in the lap of the kindly Cheyenne (American native) housekeeper. But the image of that vengeful funeral dinner where the dominance of Violet like a vulture devours each member of her family chewing first the vulnerable parts, hidden or apparent, is hair-raising as it destroys the famous American dream and pronounces the era of the blackest nightmare. It is agony digging deeply into the secret corners which is so soul-destroying to watch. Yet the ensemble acting of each accurately performed character is so breathtaking that one endures the agony with a strange sense of being uplifted by their utter commitment. You cannot leave the theatre without being overwhelmed by the entire production and input of every completely convicted member of this Chicago-based Steppenwolf company. It is the raison d’etre of theatre and a reinforcement of it as an art form….a rare experience. Import import, no export necessary.

Nov 21/08 – Jan 21/09

TO BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU by LLOYD NEWSON

Lloyd Newson's exploration of tolerance, religion and sexuality based on audio interviews throughout the UK is verbatim theatre in dance revealing the deep hatred towards gay people as it is to be straight with you. The reaction to this work has been overwhelmingly responsive by everyone. DV8 Physical Theatre Company are a special dance theatre company equivalent to the famous Pina Bausch and perform yearly at the National. They are extremely avant-garde in keeping apace with all the current trends so picking up on verbatim theatre for a dance company is indeed innovative. Their music is always distinctive to the programme thus seductive orchestrations, shocking reggae songs and malicious dance numbers are basic to the choreography in this dynamic 70 minute horror- piece which is acted as powerfully as it’s danced by nine brilliant dancer-actors. First-hand interviews of gay people attacked physically and verbally by mainly Muslim fundamentalists or by queer-bashing supporters, violently wishing their death, are performed dexterously in simulated shadows or occult lighting. Though Muslim fundamentalists are recorded as the main threat so too are Christian fundamentalists. Dance hall and reggae music from Christian Jamaica, had sounds of “stamping out gay men and putting them on fire”. British tolerance is being pushed to a dangerous edge by these factions. Feelings in the reviews seemed universal that Lloyd Newson should have contrasted the picture by some positive actions from parliamentarians, academics, doctors, or liberal religious figures. It needed some form of retaliation. Sardonic humour is interspersed with the menace as when a gay Muslim teenager, skipping-rope with exhilarating speed jests about his parents’ violence towards him. An older gay man claims Islam is full of married men who meet boyfriends in public baths. But far more disturbing is the testimony of an Iraqi doctor, who in seeking UK asylum described how he was kicked in front of a vicious crowd while his male lover was dragged off to be tortured and killed. A Muslim preacher suggesting that gay people should be driven out of Britain to live in some other country reminds one of the Nazi leaders who suggested Madagascar for the rejected Jews of Europe. Is it a Homosexual Holocaust which Muslim imans are preaching in their mosques? Dark corridors are invaded in this frightening programme so brilliantly executed. Import and export

Oct 29 – Nov 15/08

A SLIGHT ACHE by HAROLD PINTER

This is an early Pinter play performed on a raised circular revolve giving us the garden and the indoor study of Edward within the set of the ongoing play at the Lyttelton. It is centred on a long-married couple, the irritable and sadistic Edward and his frustrated wife Flora. A statuesquely-silent stranger, selling unusable matches, constantly stands at their gate. Edward is furious at the beggar’s intrusion while Flora takes pity and invites him in. Edward tries to converse in desperation but only antagonises the situation further as Flora gently leads the stranger into their home splintering in half the loveless marriage. Beautifully acted in multi-shadings and colourful tones by Beale and Higgins and intricately staged by Khan, it is the familiar ground of Pinter where the stranger intrudes and causes disaster. But what is illuminating is observing the beginnings of Pinter’s usual contest with the unknown now expanded with much greater mystery and developed so originally in its humour and style. No import or export.

June/08

AFTERLIFE by MICHAEL FRAYN

To begin with one should start with the title….Afterlife in the theatre, as far as I am concerned, simply means to be remembered…One’s immortality is the legend or the works left behind but not forgotten. Some have interpreted it as art imitating life and the art is the afterlife, I presume…it’s too intellectualised for such obvious feelings… the desire for immortality. But if this script of Michael Frayn is meant to be remembered both for Frayn and the legendary Max Reinhardt, whose work and life is the subject of the play, never was anything more misnamed. This is one production that should never have been produced for the sake of both men. It is a long long exposition of the life and work of Reinhardt which Frayn has succinctly written in the programme with better clarity than in the play. The spectacular set of epic size opening with marble stairs to which is added the chandeliers and glass dormant windows hugely revealing the forest and trees surrounding the palace of Leopoldskron which Reinhardt bought for a song during the great inflationary period in Germany, spending a lifetime refurbishing a dilapidated building into the grand palace it once was and which his family now keeps open as a museum. This is Reinhardt’s first afterlife. Having created the set, the remaining format of the piece is to perform Everyman, a morality play, written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal for Reinhardt in establishing the Salzburg Festival, still functioning yearly today in the Domplatz, making Everyman his second afterlife. Itis used as the metaphor for Reinhardt interchanging him with the character of Everyman. And that’s where the problem lies… we are constantly given patches of the play within the play interlaced with the fact that Reinhardt was an immaculately detailed director, unconcerned with money, but lived as sensationally lavish as his productions which had thousands of people on the stage. His mistress and leading lady Helene Thimig took care of him and finally became his second wife after the first eventually divorced him. His secretary Gusti lived for him, Katie Kommer had the headache of keeping the finances going after Reinhardt’s brother died and then with Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938 came his exile to the USA where he made films and produced his epic plays. The symbolic figure of Death claims Everyman but did not claim Reinhardt till years later in the USA, only his fame died. Everyman found Redemption as Reinhardt felt he would by his theatrical concepts of bringing reality and not illusion onto the stage. The only drama on stage in this production were the scenes, one, where Gusti and Helene compete over their influence of Reinhardt and two, his production number of the footmen and serving maids made to serve in rhythmic steps and gestures to minuet timing as he instructed/directed them for one of his famous dinner parties or epicurean balls held for the entertainment of the Rothschilds who were his patrons. This last scene illustrated his life style, his technique as a director, and the epic-size production for even serving dinner. My sympathy goes out to Michael Blakemore and Roger Allam who have always teamed with Frayn on his plays since they did what they could do within the limits of the play. Everyone struggled to do their best in attempting to breathe life into an outline of a work that is still an embryo and yet to be born. No import or export. 

June 3-August 14/08

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING book/play JOAN DIDION

The expectation on this subject of how one deals with the loss and grief over a loved one is universal. Aren’t we all mortal and is death not a certainty for us all? There is nothing more universal than life and death…it comes to all in every corner of the earth …they are eternal truths that need no proving. So the anticipation of this production especially starring Vanessa Redgrave, whose emotional depths cannot be touched by any actor, in addition to Joan Didion’s memorable book being made into a play by her, which added the death of her daughter Quintana to her husband John Gregory Dunne’s sudden death through a heart attack, covered a subject of such serious content that all of us waited for. The critics were careful and kind in their reviews but the disappointment was quite general. The lighting, the sound of bees humming, the painted seascapes that dropped from the back wall, as each memory of Didion’s husband returning was stripped stage by stage, were immensely moving and effective but Redgrave was performing, entertaining the audience with the idiosyncrasies of life. Yes there were moments of enormous hollow grief, when she gave away all of John Gregory Dunne’s clothes except for his shoes because she still believed he would be returning. She wanted the autopsy of her husband to search further life in him. But when she lost hold of her ‘magical thinking’ which allowed her the primeval feelings of the soul’s return, she cried out, ‘Why didn’t he come back? I need him back. I need him.’That was a breathtaking moment in a 100 minute non-interval work. She thought she would be able to keep safe her daughter Quintana, the daughter so young, newly married and the love of her father…this she would be able to do. But within months of her husband’s death came Quintana’s, and then death was at her door to be faced. This is a stoical woman of great strength who carefully controlled her life but found out she had no control over death. Her salvation was to write her book and continue her obsessive involvement in journalism. What she began to discover, unlike most women who do not have a committed work life or career in which to bury themselves, was how tremendous an emotional climb uphill to the path in healing oneself from loss. Redgrave never gave us that journey of progression from the magical thinking to the facing of reality. She was storytelling with only moments of pain in a large formal theatre instead of an intimate space. I can recognise real grief first hand in the loss of my husband Mark Marvin whose spiritual presence never leaves me and this without magical thinking. I still wear his fedora hat and his initialled ring. He never leaves me. Limited import but no export since it has been performed on Broadway.

April 30 – July 15/08

NEVER SO GOOD by HOWARD BRENTON

Time plays games with perspectives and circumstances. David Mamet, the great socialist, has rejected his past liberalism and now realises he lives more by conservative principles. Here we have Howard Brenton, the great socialist, writing a sympathetic play about a Tory prime minister. Political categories no longer are that defined. Why choose Macmillan to write about? This tragic minister was undone by the Suez catastrophe as well as the scandal of his foreign minister Profumo lying in the houses of Parliament. Is there not a similarity to Tony Blair being undone by the Iraq war? And once again it is the National Theatre still leading with political drama keeping abreast of the times as the voice of the people. Jeremy Irons breathes life into his portrait of Macmillan with great subtlety capturing, spot on, his understatement of pain and tragedy. Brenton writes clichés in Act I of this linear play, so slow in its expositional descriptions, using Macmillan as the narrator with a younger Macmillan played by Pip Carter. He touches upon Macmillan’s powerfully ambitious mother, his slight brush with Catholicism and homosexuality with Ronald Knox, his being a soldier in two wars, wounded several times but never killed. He saved himself in World War I by rolling into a ditch, injecting himself with morphine and reading Greek drama till he was rescued. It is implied that Macmillan never recovered from the guilt of his survival. He also stayed married to Dorothy despite her open adultery with Bob Boothby a hedonist bisexual whom Macmillan promoted into the House of Lords eventually. It is in Act II that the play takes off and we are given a detailed picture of Eden and the Suez crisis. We are also made aware of Macmillan’s playing second best to Churchill and finally arriving as prime minister only to be undone before he could create the changes in society he believed in. He was a radical conservative and instigated many of the projects Labour picked up on. He pre-thought the nationalising of the coal mines thus bringing security to the miners. He came very close to creating a welfare state in public services and, of course, made famous to the people, ’you never had it so good’. The general sweep of this epic piece has elaborate staging reminding one of Journey’s End during the war scenes yet great intimacy in the political board meetings or the marital moments. Huge bookcases with files and files are used as a series of stage legs on one side while huge doors dominate the other side. Chandeliers drop, music is played attuned to each period as couples dance according to the era capturing that specific time. Howard Davies seems to make the same mistake whenever using the Lyttelton theatre. He always fills the entire stage with sets and never frames or curtails its size. Every play is epic with his productions. He expands the blueprint of this play but has cast it with perfection in every part. All the performances whether cameo or leading characters are superb. There is majesty in the second half of the play which brings home history we have lived through or made live for the awareness of the younger generation. The physical productions at the National are incomparable. Import, import but no export.

March 17 – May 24/08

THE HOUR WE KNEW NOTHING OF EACH OTHER by PETER HANDKE

This is avant-garde theatre that has the lasting power of half an hour to make its obvious point and should have been done in a traverse setting in the Cottesloe. There is no talking but a good deal of sound effects with thunder storms, gusty winds, gunfire, explosions, alarm signals, sounds of howling, groaning, elation, bursts of music, barking dogs, bells, traffic, helicopters and 27 actors taking on 437 roles of old women wheeling trolleys, old biblical characters such as Moses and his stone tablet of commandments, or Abraham and Issac, or ancient Greek heroes, soldiers old and young, bird-catching Papagano from Magic Flute, policemen, air pilots and stewardess with their wheeling suitcases copied by a mimist for fun, a black circus master with whip in hand for a lion, women in burqas looking like nuns, tourists, transvestites, active lovers, boy with skate board that knives him in the groin, joggers, business men and women preoccupied or distressed, hippies, street cleaners, hikers, joggers, bag lady, giggling school girls, wedding party, firemen, a man running out in underpants, a woman hit on the head with a handbag then her handbag grabbed by a mugger, old men with medals, soldiers with machine guns, a madman drops dead and is carted off by paramedics, Tarzan, Chaplin, a mythical Greek character suddenly kicks a girl in her bottom, and so and so on. From ordinary street characters to fictional and mythical ones, from individual accidentals to group terror, the story of a city is told, filled with mixed identities and culture on a set that looks like a ghost town of whitish-grey towers and churches, buildings with no windows, mutilated in a strange way as if the buildings are dead and its people merely puppets. The point is so quickly established that one hour and forty five minutes is an eternity. To those who enjoyed themselves, I can only say they much prefer silence to the live language of people. As for me, fifteen minutes sufficed. The credit of adapter given to Meredith Oakes for a non-verbal script is an enigma. As for the direction, it was magnificent to keep the timing, the pace and change of pace, the storytelling within the characters, going….it takes enormous imagination. The cast were fantastic in immediate characterisations and change of clothes, makeup, and movement. God knows the chaos of the instant backstage changing. It may be your cup of tea or not…but you have been given a full premeditated picture.

February 6-March 5/08

WOMEN OF TROY by EURIPEDES

The Greek anti-war tragedy as seen through Euripedes’ eyes is somewhat maintained in this version and though the décor and costumes are updated the text of Don Taylor remains classical enough to sound contemporary without anachronisms to jar the ear. But it is Katie Mitchell in its style, immediately identified through her use of dance in every one of her Greek tragedy productions. Here they are constantly dancing to heighten tensions, to keep a sense of continual movement, to highlight sexual contact, to change mood, and so on and so on. The accompanying music varies from jazz to blues to ballads. She has chewed up much of the text in the movement and at times it just disappears. She has also cut, in her update, the prologue of the Gods Athena and Poseidon who project the fall of the Greeks. In the storytelling, Cassandra strips in tantalising movement after setting fire to her wedding bouquet and waste baskets in her mad scene of rebellion before being shipped away to Agamemnon as his concubine. Each of the members of the royal family are transported as slaves to foreign lands quite separately. Troy has been destroyed and is set alight at the end of the play but its women have been pulverised. Hecuba, queen of Troy and mother of all, tries to maintain command in keeping the women from falling apart. She has to ritualise the murder of Andromache’s baby as solace involving all the women and to give the infant a burial. An innocent child cannot become a conqueror, Hecuba cries out. But a broken Andromache is dragged away and put onto another ship. The most haunting scene is her ghostly reappearance pregnant with child as she drifts in opposite direction from the moving women and gradually disappears. Each time a ship sails the horns blow in a haunting sound of doom. The setting is a huge industrial docking pier where the battle ships are launched and the women held prisoners in a sinister concrete building that predicts their destiny. Helen dances desperately on the second floor separated from the other women for her protection as she tries to escape or seduce Menelaus once again. Despite her sensual dances with him, she too is shipped out. But will Menelaus change his mind at a later point? The remaining women are taken on board as Hecuba is left to the last, stripped of her home, her land, her kingdom and finally of all her children. It never fails in all the versions I have seen to tear the heart in experiencing such loss on such a scale. Does Katie Mitchell bring that much more to it? It is still Euripedes that is taunting and not Katie Mitchell. The emotional strength of Kate Duchene’s Hecuba, Sinead Matthews’ Cassandra, Anastassia Hille’s Andromache, Susie Trayling’s Helen carries the piece far more than any of the staging. The body movement of the women is mesmerising and combines with their cries of anguish. It is the terrifying cry of such profound pain from these actresses that makes the event of the evening despite the interruptions of the constant dancing which is the source of Katie Mitchell’s style. I have had to add extra thoughts to this review as it is a basic debate as to whether a director has the right to gut an author’s play to such a degree that his/her intent is lost in the process and in updating a classic where the point of that period is gone. Euripedes’ Women of Troy is the greatest Greek tragedy on the aftermath of war and is actually a sequence to Katie Mitchell’s earlier production of Euripedes’ Iphigenia at Aulis the great pre-war tragedy. Her consistent vision of the huge grey official building in Iphigenia is matched here by the huge and menacing industrial docking pier. The dances follow the style in Iphingenia and the whole application of her staging joins these two plays in their sequence. This is great imagination on a conceptual level which Mitchell extends in staging these plays on a similar base. But her actual style follows Pin Bausch in her movement and dances and that is a basic error. Bausch is dance theatre and does not use text. Mitchell destroys text. Bausch takes ordinary every day people under ordinary circumstances and uses movement as conversation. Mitchell takes epic theatre and destroys the great fall by making it contemporary and ordinary like Pina Bausch. It is Martha Graham that Mitchell should have recreated in Graham’s grand classical epics. Mitchell would have been much closer to Euripedes’ intent. The point in showing Euripedes’s period of 3000 years ago makes us aware that nothing changes. That we can project Darfur or Iraq under the same circumstances today strengthens the point even more than by updating the tragedy. Are we to see Katie Mitchell and not Euripedes? There is no doubt there are very disturbing scenes in Mitchell’s interpretation: the funeral ritual of the baby, the finding of Polyxena’s evening purse after her death as Hecuba poignantly removes her youngest daughter’s compact and tenderly empties the contents, the ghost of a pregnant Andromache, Menelaus’s kiss of revenge on Hecuba. But why the ball gowns on the women who constantly groom themselves as if for sale to the highest bidder? Mitchell claims they were elegant women at a ball the night of the siege. She never sets up any of her premises but jumps into the middle of a scene like Chekhov. This is not naturalistic theatre that eventually explains itself but rather surrealistic subconsciousness running into reality in a constant juxtaposition. It needs the setting up for us to follow the concept. The women dolling up for gaining a better man is what we can see. Why would they be at a ball when Troy is being beseiged? Duchene’s Hecuba is neither regal nor motherly enough to found a house of Priam’s lineage. She moves with high-charged emotions but her speech is unfeeling. There is a dilemma in not being as disturbed or moved by the women as we should, yet there are scenes that are so memorable. In the end, it is Euripedes who has clasped the universal and it is his pain that we eventually feel. The director wanting to be an auteur should create original material or say inspired by Euripedes. This is a difficult production to recommend for audiences to follow or understand. NO import for Greek lovers, no export.

November 21/07 – January 12/08

PRESENT LAUGHTER by NOEL COWARD

The play is not the best of Coward and its leading character not the most sympathetic of men so if there is any lifeline to this production, all the bouquets must go to Alex Jennings who makes Gary Essendine a real person with all the pluses and minuses. He gives us Gary’s overacting and dramatising of himself but lets us know when the real Gary is present and when he is acting. We actually begin to like this egotist when played by Jennings who captures truth and not just timing to every joke. Who makes us feel he is the only honest person surrounded by parasites including the girlish fans. There is a naturalism we enjoy compared to all the hangers-on that surround him as carefully focused by Howard Davies. The story centres on a theatre matinee idol Gary Essendine who maintains a loyal household of secretary, char and butler in addition to a separated wife Liz and his two business partners Henry and Morris. He is embarking on an extended tour of Africa and trying to organise his life before leaving. However, life is constantly interrupted by debutant fans who sleep in the spare room, a neurotic avant-garde writer, an understanding wife, and the destructive Joanna, wife of Henry who is sleeping partner to all three men. She attempts to break the magic circle but only succeeds in eliminating herself. The two men and Liz lean on Gary and their precious circle for their livelihood. And so they all live dependently ever after. Davies at best of times has little humour despite his Private Lives success which worked because playing the reality worked. Present Laughter hasn’t the depth of Private Lives and leans heavily upon its humour. As far as Davies is concerned he’s had a heavy hand here by keeping the style from the door and thinking he could make the play more serious by having it set during the outbreak of the war with World War II announced on the radio while all the characters do not even react to such an enormous event going blithely to Africa on a tour. It seems incredible that Davies would not see such a daft decision that every critic pointed out. Did he think that because the play written (1939) before the war with no reference to war could take war announcements just because the play was postponed till 1942 for production? It’s a vast blunder. Unforgivably he has under-cast the rest of the show with the exception of the accomplished Sarah Woodward as Essendine’s disapproving secretary who can deliver a quick witted line with a down beat that hits a bull’s eye. The lack of style and panache in the delivery of the lines so necessary to Coward plus the lack of exact timing by the rest of the cast in addition to an un-sexy Joanna who is supposed to demolish Essendine’s professional coterie, under-power the show. There is a set that has the original mirrored walls and side lamps of palatial opulence with a leaky ceiling and vertiginous perspective of walls and ceiling causing slanted doors and windows that seem to have deteriorated into sloppy bohemianism… something quite opposite to the sophisticated Essendine who keeps up appearances. The last act is slow enough but Davies prolongs the agony by introducing songs on the record machine and slowly pacing the climax whereby Essendine confronts his producers Henry and Morris and the vicious Joanna with Joanna’s sleeping with everyone to upset the apple cart. Not succeeding in that action, the vile Joanna exits. They are off to Africa in one piece. The production may not be sea worthy but, oh my, the captain of the ship Alex Jennings is worth the sailing!!! Import no export.

September 25 – November 23/07

THE HOTHOUSE by HAROLD PINTER

Ian Rickson left the Royal Court as artistic director after directing Pinter himself in Krapps Last Tape. It is no surprise that he is directing another Pinter play as his initiation at the National Theatre. The surprise is choosing this particular play which I saw at Hampstead Theatre in 1980 (played 1995 at Chichester starring Pinter) and felt it such an ugly piece of menacing suspense despite its social attack on the foul power play of institutions abstractly written so that the ‘rest home’ in his play is the metaphor for any institution per say. And now with Ian Rickson’s version there is an amazing interpretation. Rickson is a special director in creating mood whether its horror or celebration. He has a gift in precisely timing suspense knowing when to build and when to let go, an instinctive sense of drama in the theatre with a knack for getting performances from actors on a scale which excels their expectations. He knows how to create an ensemble with actors so that the polish of the production seems permanent and like a conductor blend the performances with his musicality. He has converted this piece into stark comedy, suddenly turning the ugly duckling into a swan. The ‘rest home’ for unseen inmates or unknown patients who are unnamed but numbered are governed by a staff of: director Mr Roote who is an alcoholic short on sight and memory but a clinger to his power, along with underlings Gibbs a power-crazed assistant, Lush who calls a spade a shovel, Miss Cutts the mistress of Roote and of anyone else to move up on the power ladder, and Lamb, the eager beaver led to the slaughter of his mind. Patient 6457 has been mindlessly murdered and patient 6459 has given birth probably impregnated through rape. Was it by Roote himself? The only good soul on the side of the patients, Lamb, has been driven mad by noise experimentation through electric shock. And where does all this lead but to Roote’s office where they drink to the finish except for Gibbs who sinisterly yeses Roote but carries on in his hidden agenda. Roote, whenever threatened, fights his assailants with drunken lines such as ,’you think I’m slow? I’m as quick as a python.’ This scene is one of the funniest to witness where scotch in the eye or spritzing soda into a glass or an exploding cigar are masterfully timed by Paul Ritter who never loses character while delivering the most hilarious gestures with his lines. The routines between Stephen Moore and Paul Ritter are in comparable. Deadpan Finbar Lynch is absolutelyn gripping as the murderous Gibbs. Add to this the death-like sounds of the patients travelling through the brick corridors up and down stairways and you feel the menace of the building itself, the walls seem to reverberate with the blood of the patients and project the essence of an imprisoned institution, a hothouse indeed. The political implications run through every vein, the cruelty and fear manipulated in order to dominate underline every gesture, and life is dangerous. Who wins? Well Gibbs walks away as the director while the others have been killed in the riot at the ‘rest home’. But who killed them? Rickson conducts a constant balance between the comedy and tragedy of the hothouse where jungle law rules and Gibbs then takes over. The National Theatre has cornered the market on drama this season what with The Philistines, St Joan, and The Hothouse. Import and export for BAM or Lincoln Center any of these productions, they are all not to be missed.

July 11 – Sept 4/07

PHILISTINES by MAXIM GORKY

Reaching the peaks of perfection one has to see this production to reinforce the belief that theatre as an art form still exists. Produced only by the RSC under David Jones’ direction many years ago, it has been scarcely acknowledged till now. Resembling very much Chekhov’s influence in play structure and use of characters Gorky is far more explicit than Chekhov, more political, and more intense. In Cherry Orchard, Gayev describes the bookcase that embarrasses everyone as he extols its age. In The Philistines a disillusioned student talks to a cupboard in anger at the failure for it to move with the times remaining rigid in this year of 1901. Chekhov is ironic with a gentle hint at the lack of awareness of the reality of the changing times. Gorky is bitter and overt in his fury. The opening of the play reveals the front of the house where we see through the windows the wasted time of the occupants. The front curtain rises to reveal a small-town family flat in which the father Vassilly as a successful decorator has educated his children so that they will rise on the social ladder. Instead they have outclassed him. He concerns himself with money and not politics. He is mean and petty in addition to his outlandish anti-Semitism. Pyotr, his son, is at home because he has been banned from university for his active politics and is waiting out time until the local council helps him return. Bored to death with his life at home, he falls for the widow Elena who is a lodger in their flat and whose open-heartedness he appreciates. Tanya, his sister, over-educated and desperately lonely, attempts suicide when Nil, her foster brother and confidante, decides to marry Polya, the servant. Tanya knows she will have to face a loveless and unfulfilled life as a spinster school teacher from hereon. Then there is Nil, the foster son, who is disgusted with the whole family of narcissists who appreciate none of the joys of life and look only to their own needs. He has paid his way without gaining any sense of generosity either in their emotions, education, or finances. His marriage means freedom from this family. He is insensitive to Tanya’s love and feels justified in his choice of wife since he never courted Tanya. Is he the character we are to believe in? He seeks no answers to the changing world and offers no social contributions. We witness the drunken lodger Teterev who has given up any attempts at living. He is the sole and soul closest to Tanya but not her saviour. There are the friends that visit, drinking and dancing out of boredom. The fact that Pytor leaves with Elena who proposes the marriage and Nil with Polya means the door to freedom from this oppressive house has been opened. The mother Akulina is the most devastated character, bereft of her children, she has only the irascible husband and a suicidal daughter left behind. Tanya is obviously trapped as she stands by the window looking into nowhere when stones are thrown, breaking the glass. It’s the warnings of the revolution yet to come. Will she join them? The cast, as listed above, are all fantastic with bravos to each member for such engrossing characters they have created. Howard Davies catches the mood, the pace, the colour of household in its time and place. We are in that flat living with those people. He achieves performances from every actor that are vital and alive. There is only one misgiving that I have with Howard Davies which he has repeated in every production at the Lyttelton. He always uses the entire stage for his sets thus misrepresenting in each play the claustrophobic space required. The room in The Philistines is so immense it looks like a mansion house and not a flat. In The House of Bernarda Alba he opened the house to such an expansive size there was no indication of living on top of one another. In Morning Becomes Electra he created a Gone with the Wind plantation instead of the New England manor house. Yet in All My Sons at the Cottesloe he recreated the exact environment. Please, Howard Davies, don’t distract us with set designs that speak only for themselves. Your studies in social realism are too important. Import! Import! Import! Wish BAM would transfer this production!

May 23 – August 18/07

RAFTA, RAFTA (slowly, slowly)…by AYUB KHAN-DIN based on ALL IN GOOD TIME (1963) by BILL NAUGHTON

Why would the National Theatre put on a boulevard play whose genre was taken over by the television soap operas where they belong? It not only covers that cliché but the Bollywood film genre making this adaptation a double-barrelled cliché. There is the star of the show Harish Patel playing Eeshwar who is one of the most skilled comic actors of great subtlety who uses his hands to express every emotion possible and dances on light feet with a roving belly that is enchanting. He has deep conviction in every effusive gesture withstanding the effect of being funny. I can see the temptation for Nicholas Hytner to bring this actor to the National, but why in this play which belongs in the West End? Maybe it’s the writer that also enticed Nicholas Hytner whose play East Is East was a great success but it had much greater depth in a family of seven children with an English mother and Indian father trying to find cultural roots. The audience laughs at the hilarity of Rafta, Rafta, there is no doubt, and the huge Indian population in London will be delighted with such entertainment, but is it the kind of work one expects at the National? I leave that as an open question, as a personal decision for each of us. So on with this buoyant play now taking place in Bolton’s Indian community which is a comedy about an anxious newly-wed young couple, Atul and Vina, who after six weeks have not consummated their marriage. They have to live with his parents in a room next to the communal bathroom, with a father who suggests they knock on the wall if they need anything but who also farts loud enough to disturb the little possible privacy the couple try to sustain. There are problems Atul has with a dominating father who humiliates his manhood in every way, even in his love of classical music. But Eeshwar is not simply a monster. He is a jovial man full of himself and his achievement to come from a small Indian village to the point where he is in a respectful job, owns a beautiful terraced house, and raised a family. Even the BNP (fascist organisation) voters like Eeshwar. Despite all the social bravado, Eeshwar at home is a bully to a wife who calls him to task and to his children who can only distance themselves. This is a man strangely haunted by his best friend whom he took on his honeymoon to share his joy as they shared their loneliness in their youth in adjusting to a new country and customs. He tries to mean well to his wife and children and therein lays the dilemma. But these undertones are not the centre of the play; nor are the solutions of the happy ending so pat with the couple sexually making it and so easily acquiring a house of their own. The comedy lies in the dialogue of one liners when Eeshwar and his best friend on his honeymoon in Blackpool went on ‘the tunnel of love ride’ together leaving a disinterested bride behind, he quickly explains, ‘we thought they were speedboats.’ His naivety and vanity are so intermingled that his natural personality dominates every scene. Meera Syal’s Lopa, Eeshwar’s wife, is a perfect foil as straight man for Harish Patel in her tolerance and impatience as she holds the family together. They are the stars who carry the show. The set is rightly cluttered with realistic furnishings of Indian lower middle-class taste but instead of the claustrophobic feeling of such houses the expansive stage of the Lyttelton distorts such intentions. Nicholas Hytner’s vivacious production of exact detail engagingly enhances Khan-Din’s folk-comedy with an authentic ring to Indian family life in north England.

April 18 – June 23/07 in rep

SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD

It’s been 34 years since a young John Kani and Winston Ntshona performed at the Royal Court their renowned co-devised piece with Athol Fugard. This is the most impressive rendering of the past apartheid in South Africa but 34 years later it is still frightening to see the loss of identity growing today by giant steps through creeping bureaucracy on the premise of attacking terrorism. The play is far from dated as the universal theme of identity changes its colour but not its bite. It opens with a monologue by a highly animated Kani playing a Port Elizabeth photographer named Styles. He retells his days at the Ford Factory floor and the preparations being made for the USA owner’s visit. He deliciously recounts the frustration of the slow assembly line rather than the false smiles expected to be given to the outside world by the black worker and how his white bosses, obsequious to the USA boss, are doing the black workers bit by ‘playing our part today’. In the second half Styles has a client, a Bantu, wearing an oversized white suit and a big-brimmed brown hat turned up at the edge who wants his picture taken smoking a pipe. He is a farm worker seeking work in Port Elizabeth. Styles discovers his passbook has expired for his visit to Port Elizabeth and insists he must leave immediately. The Bantu is unfazed by the discovery. Styles is overtaken by his need to pee and goes outside where he finds a dead man. By chance he takes his passbook which allows the corpse the right to stay in Port Elizabeth with a specific job. Sizwe Banzi has to exchange his identity with the corpse which he is defiant to do. The humour is warming as the argument increases. But Style’s answer to Sizwe Banzi regarding identity is your number is more important than your name. School, hospital, church, or work consider your native identity number more important than your name. Without a number you do not exist. Sizwe gives in and allows Sizwe Banzi to be dead. He has not taken on a new name but a new number. Despite all the repression, there is still a joie de vivre that makes the miracle of life joyous. The direction of this gallant work on a bare stage with the exception of two chairs and table is beautifully fulfilled. Koni as the effervescent photographer moves his oversized body one moment with delicate agility then easily switches to the practical business man. Ntshona portrays the country bumpkin, who is defiant of the pass laws and slow in losing his identity, with sweet charm…holding onto his humanity and not a number. But what a special state of euphoria to see these two surviving actors still filled with a light that lights up the stage and our spirits and that time has not diminished. IMPORT AND EXPORT on the Travelex £10 ticket for a sell-out production. Broadway should open its arms for a revival.

March 19 – April 4/07

ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE by MARTIN CRIMP

This play was originally done on MARCH 7,1997 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs with a group of actors sitting round a table describing a character mostly called Anne or Anna who evolved into becoming and doing so many things including being a spy and later attempts at suicide which become the subject of her art. Each actor built on Anne or Anna their vision and changed or added to her life as the vision changed from actor to actor. We never saw Anne on stage but only through our imaginations as described by the actors. As the words came to life through various interpretations, we absorbed them. The mind game in the end created a fictitious person whose details were to be remembered through our own imagination. There is no need to give the details in the creation of Anne since she was clay being moulded and remoulded into changing shapes, a porn star, terrorist, modern artist, refugee, even a car named ’new anny’. It was an unpretentious narrative stream of consciousness in 17 scenes of the social, political and cultural decadence of the early 90s with no plot or even the character of changing Anne to hold on to. The enigmatic fragmentation is diagnosed by one of the actors, ‘ theatre itself has died’. It covers the ravages of war, rape, globalising capitalism, genocide, terrorism, consumerism, celebrity worship, etc. Katie Mitchell directed and adapted with her company Waves which I just reviewed. It was challenging watching the technical use of camera and microphone in relationship to stage acting and action where the balance was held to support each of the media. But here in Attempts on Her Life, Katie Mitchell is outdoing Katie Mitchell by extending the technology to such a point that the actors who are not assigned any specific characters on this open text, spend more time pushing cameras, setting up scenes, moving mikes, playing instruments, singing songs, mostly in the dark, so that one has to follow what is being acted not on stage but on the screen. We are watching pastiche unfoldings of the story on the screen, in varied styles from realistic close-ups of feet, to film-noirish murder, to police videos. This highly pretentious production kills a simple experimental piece of theatre and the cleverness of the writing which in a way negates Mitchell’s first attempt in Waves. I think an attempt on her life may well be on Katie Mitchell and not Anne. Sorry no import or export on this first Travelex £10 ticket at the Lyttelton.

March 14 – May 10/07

HAPPY DAYS by SAMUEL BECKETT

The first thing to notice is the size of the erupted soil on the large Lyttleton stage which is meant to give off the size of corrosion from the global warming finishing off the planet. To see Winnie buried to her waist yet trying to function pleasantly and with dignity, using the routines of daily life as a ritual to keep going, is the aim of the play perfectly conveyed by Fiona Shaw. Though she is made a phony middle-class woman with a dropped Irish accent, obviously intentional to give contrast to the second half where buried up to the neck she has fallen back to the Irish peasant she really is, the first half loses the wonderful Irish rhythms of Beckett. That loss is crucial, it’s the poetry of the piece, the imagery of language against the bleak image of the world. Shaw is marvellously funny but in the second half with blackened teeth and no pretence we are fulfilled with the imagery of language and character. She still tries to maintain a form of normal life to the very end with a sense of humour to keep her alive. Warner uses Willie and the desperate cries for him by Winnie to great effect. The need for Winnie to never stop talking and with some response from Willie is the only way Winnie can sustain her balance of mind. With the huge screens in the background and foreground, the closing in of the world is timed to the essence of Beckett’s dialogue and the vision of the dying woman. The team of Warner and Shaw are a gigantic combination and carry off the essentials of Beckett. Import and export for Broadway.

January 18 – March 1/07

THÉRÈSE RAQUIN from EMIL ZOLA

The gifted director Ms Eliott who staged Pillars of the Community so brilliantly at the National and Much Ado About Nothing for the RSC has struck out on this one. You can’t win them all. But the reason for the misadventure of this production is her attempt to make a Gothic piece out of this social murder. The haberdasher shop where the family spent most of their time was petty-bourgeois and claustrophobic, the relationship of Therese to her spoiled husband Camille was that of tolerance, and to her mother-in-law bitter acceptance of her domination, so that her passion for the painter Laurent was understandable. What we are given in this production is a huge flat above the shop with frightening corners and ghostly shadows lit in blues and a glimmer of red..all to create a mood of danger. The characters are submerged into this dimension except for the splendid Judy Parfitt who plays Madame Raquin with the iron fist in a velvet glove and the hilarious performance of Mark Hatfield who comes on Thursday nights to play domino. The murder of Camille by the lovers who then can’t enjoy their love or marriage out of guilty consciences never builds to any climax nor is their any chemistry between them. The famous scene where Madame Raquin, mute from a stroke, plays out the crime of the lovers with the domino is also lost. That scene has always been one of high suspense. So for the sake of an imposed style the play of social significance is destroyed. The poor painter Laurent trying to raise himself above poverty and the indebted position from servant then mother-in-law-dominated wife to freedom for Therese are never realised….only their own ambitious needs are driven home. The high emotions of passion and murder are sacrificed in the script and direction with only the performances of Judy Parfitt and Mark Hatfield to compensate for the evening. No import or export.

November 4/06 – February 21/07

CAROLINE OR CHANGE

Where does one begin to describe this American masterpiece which has opened up a whole new era on contemporary opera. The combined use of pop, jazz, klezmer, and classic music yet blended together into its dramatic application is a stroke of genius. The story is simple based on a domestic situation yet it embraces a whole cultural aspect of the economic survival of the Afro-black community in the USA. Most of the black families are single parented by the mother who works as a domestic to support her children. Caroline lives and works in Lake Charles, Louisiana for the Jewish Gellman family who has one child named Noah. Caroline is usually in the basement doing the laundry where Noah joins her. Abstract characters play the washing machine/dryer and the radio, Caroline’s true companions. The Motown Dreamgirls are the radio and the wondrous Clive Rowe is the dryer providing the divine singing. But it is Tonya Pinkins who dazzles us with her artistry, nuances, and gorgeous vocal qualities. Her voice is spellbinding and her acting superb. I know of no UK artist to equal this woman. Noah constantly leaves bits and bobs and change in pockets which Caroline has to empty. Step-mum is trying to discipline him and so tells Caroline any change in his pockets are for her to keep. She hesitates being used under such circumstances and so leaves the change for the laundry until one day she finds a $20 bill which she decides to pocket. Noah’s uncle gave him a $20 note for his birthday which was a huge sum in the 1963. In Caroline claiming the change, Noah rebels. A battle ensues which causes Caroline to go on sabbatical. She looks at the meaning of the money to her family compared to the luxury of Noah’s family and then for the first time begins to question the social changes taking place under her nose but which she has refused to acknowledge. So through the symbol of the money change, Caroline eventually alerts herself to the social change of the black community. Going to church and working as a domestic was not the only answer. As for Noah he could never resume his old relationship to Caroline who came back to work under modified circumstances. What has been created by this production (whether autobiographical or not) is a theatrical world with such profound content that it is an eye-opener to a whole historical picture conveyed by brilliant writing, fabulous music and musical arrangements in addition to incredible acting, singing and staging. This is a once in a lifetime experience where originality is at the peak of the mountain top..you can go no higher. The import is over and export has been done.

October 10/06-January 4/07

THE SEAGULL by Chekhov

The specially brilliant Katie Mitchell always directs Katie Mitchell with mood and atmosphere, music and dance/movements, storms and locale, removed feelings in characters so that one is distanced from them emotionally. It can be Euripides or Chekhov who are never produced but always Katie Mitchell. So is it with The Seagull adapted or rather rewritten by a writer of such inferiority to the master as he takes the plot of the play without the deeply subtexted development of character. Chekhov was never so shallow. So if you want to observe the work of Katie Mitchell then don’t miss her latest production. But do not expect to see Chekhov. The resetting in time (1940’s) also kills the intent of Chekhov who underscores that the revolution and change in Russia will come. No mention of the revolution or Stalin is mentioned or established. We witness the self-centred Arkadina, actress passé, in her family home where her neurotic avant-garde writer son Konstantin is left penniless and unacknowledged as is her still adored invalid brother Sorin. Trigorin, lover of Arkadina and renowned writer falls for young Nina (Konstantin’s love) who lives across the lake and flies like the seagull, a scavanger out of necessity. She wants to be an actress, leaving home to live with Trigorin and ending up a provincial actress with no roots, no home and still not committing herself to Konstantin. He commits suicide as he fails in the love of his mother and Nina plus not marking a distinctive place as a writer. Mitchell gives us such minute detail as to the running of the household with servants constantly interrupting the privacy. She does give Arkadina specific moments where she grasps Trigorin’s attraction to Nina. Her sense of survival is emphasised. But the famous scene where she recaptures Trigorin’s sexual interest is not climaxed or dramatically focused. Stevenson never fully captures in depth the actressy aspects of the woman Arkadina nor does Whishaw develop the haunting despair of Konstantin. What Mitchell does achieve is the family household of a once elegant home now allowed to disintegrate. The waste of the lives of all those attached to the household (including Masha’s unrequited love of Konstantin) because of each ones self interest (Chekhov’s intent of the play) becomes secondary. Outside of the true Chekhovian interpretation of Gawn Grainger as Sorin, the style of naturalism serves no purpose in its lack of authenticity in the writing of the period. Import no export.

July 24 – September 23/06

THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE by Harley Granville Barker

The production and cast received such enthusiastic reviews that the show is in its return engagement. The relevancy of the plotline is so amazing that without the added emphasis and features of Peter Gill in making it into an Edwardian period of its origins, it could be staged as of today. The father of the family of six grown children is a substantial lawyer, living luxuriously in Chislehurst and handling the estates of his clients by investing their money in the stock market and keeping most of the interest gained for himself while his clients receive their regular income from their capital. They do not know what is happening because their income is unaffected and have gained by the lawyer’s cleverness in investing. His second son Edward has been taken into the law firm as a partner and thereby discovers his father’s deceit. He is a sensitive educated man who is appalled by his father’s immorality. Hasn’t papa given the best life and education to his children, haven’t his clients enjoyed a secure life? Why should his son object? It’s Edward’s dilemma as to whether to reveal the deception and ruin his family or continue on the committed path. We see the life style and meet the family in their lavish home at dinnertime. We observe the family friend George Booth who enjoys the company of the Voyseys, but when informed about his capital, calls in all his money, breaking their bank as it were. Edward takes over upon his father’s death and the suspense rises as to which road he will pursue. He goes for the path of truth and only with his fiancée’s help does he face the decision to inform all the clients thereby giving him a chance to retrieve their money or leave with half their capital. Each of the two daughters and four sons plus their wives are fully explored in their roles to the family in addition to the machinations of papa and his law office. The play gives you the full involvement and experience of this family. It’s the kind of theatre one yearns for. The first time I saw it, the play was edited into two acts and not kept to four, one maid sufficed instead of four whom we now watch in setting the table and all their other domestic chores. The set reveals the street of both buildings inhabited by people outside of the play that now runs three hours with every scene at snail’s pace. The suspense is so extended it is no longer suspense and the brilliant authentic setting timed to the slowness of those days only makes for repetition. There is no doubt to the quality of the play or the production plus the strength of the cast particularly Julian Glover as the father, Claudia Renton as the the youngest doting daughter, Claire Cox as Edward’s fiancée, Dominic West as Edward, John Nettleton as George Booth, Martin Hutson as Hugh the youngest bohemian son. Audiences are flooding to the show but be prepared for a long endurance course. Import no export.

August 10 – September 30/06

DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN (1975) by WOLE SOYINKA

This is the great Nobel Prize-winning African writer whose play was written in 1975 on an event in the 1940s which may be outdated on the political level, but produces a current culture shock to us Westerners in revealing the religious, spiritual, and moral traditions of Nigeria’s Yoruba people. The colonialism was still strong in 1943, the time setting of the play, but the cultural clash it encompassed is still valid. Soyinka insisted the play went beyond just a clash of cultures as it celebrates the folk aspects of the Yoruba in high comedy even though it may end in Greek tragedy. Simon Pilkings was the upper-class district officer who applied his Christian inculcations to the Yoruba people without understanding or respecting their rituals. When King Oyo died his horseman, Elesin, was honour-bound to commit ritual suicide to accompany his master into the darkness of his ancestor’s spiritual after-life. Not understanding this deeply engrained Yoruba ritual for the dead…the living and the unborn being closely related to the dead… Pilkings prevented the horseman’s suicide. Elesin’s highly-educated son from English University, Olunde, attempted to defend that cultural right. But Pilking’s intransigence in refusing to listen had Elesin arrested which was then followed by his catastrophic and misjudged death. However, the tragedy comes only at the end and not before the comedy of only black actors in the company whiting up and using the clipped upper class English accents to play the whites as caricatures plus the Yoruba girls in the market crossing and uncrossing their legs in mimicking the posh white ladies. Life bursts upon the stage in the celebrations before the ritual death with their vitality and colourful costumes, with unique headdresses such as wicker streaming baskets worn as masks, the tribal dancing brilliantly choreographed by Javier de Frutos with a vibrant sense of the native idiom oozing luscious joy, the richness of the Yoruba language, the drums beating out the ecstasy or danger or funeral dirges, communicating the mood of the town of Oyo. The blacking up may be comic but it is also illuminating as in Genet’s The Blacks because it brings out the blacks’ perspective on the white man’s culture. Nonso Anozie in his crimson robes, a giant of a man…massive, expansive in size and personality, a Goliath with dancing feet fills the part to the brim. His zest for life, pursuing the pretty girls and marrying one the day before his death is not the picture of a man ready for death. He moves to his tragic ending with a certain grace. Claire Benedict, mother of the market, in making her glorious speech of shame on the white man’s arrogance and the rivalry of traditions, holds the stage at the end with breathtaking power. Rufus Norris’s staging is totally original and courageous beyond words in keeping the story moving including the singing and dancing that may bring out one side of the culture while maintaining the tragic morality. Lucian Msamati’s Simon Pilkings, the District Officer, and Jenny Jules’ Jane, his wife, are an absolute delight. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s Olunde captures the nub of the theme with deeply-felt passion. The whole cast light up the stage. Katrina Lindsay’s fabulous stage designs with three dimensional trimmings of raffia, clothes lines, poles, etc; the lighting effect of Paule Constable; the sound scape of Ian Dickson along with that fantastic band; the puppets of David Cauchi; all add up to the making of this vivacious production. The play abounds in the life force of identity and tradition and yet deals with the voyage of death into an after life. It is forceful in its comedy and in its tragedy, and totally surprising in its range of colour, all on the Travelex £10 ticket. Import, import but no export.

April 1- 23/09

ENGLAND PEOPLE VERY NICE by RICHARD BEAN

Bravo to Nicholas Hytner for having the guts to attack honestly the problems of migration and the specific contemporary one of the Muslims without camouflaging the facts because of political correctness!!!! The debate is now called multiculturalism but Bean calls a spade a spade and it is about immigration. He does this epic piece with flamboyant chutzpah inspired by the city comedies of Jacobean days and similar to the political agit prop revues of the depression period in the USA like The Cradle Will Rock. It sparks off an energy that is spontaneously alighted at the moment. It does not look for historical authenticity or carefully structured plotting in its episodic chaos…It runs away on its own steam overlapping time. It doesn’t matter whether the barmaid in her f…g language goes with the lace-making Huguenots, the Irish escaping the potato famine, the Jews from the pogroms, or the current Bengalis fleeing from floods and poverty, she is always there. Songs are sung, dances danced and who cares about where or when if it catches the moment of truth and evokes such hilarious insight into the everlasting bigotry that goes with immigration. The added chemistry that everyone fears to admit to, the growth of the Muslim terrorists who do not integrate into the English culture but who want the culture to integrate into theirs, is openly explored in this extravaganza. They hold themselves within their own laws thus less of a British citizen and more of a Muslim one which is worldwide. Bethnel Green, being the first landing of the immigrants where the Huguenot church became a synagogue and now a mosque, is symbolic of the waves of immigrants that have merged and altered in the East End. What mostly comes across loud and clear is the so called English race is such a mixture of races who after all the bigotry eventually become absorbed even within the rigid class system. This is all done with gusty, lusty humour with a vitality that newcomers bring and also with an outstanding company of actors, particularly Sophie Stanton as the Cockney barmaid, plus Michelle Terry and Sacha Dhawan as the timeless lovers. The animation joins in the jolly exploits with the same wit and energy, the set is smoothly flexible in its range with lighting and sound effects that are amazingly timed to the chaos. The parody on the folk songs is a spontaneous delight and the exuberance of the evening is contagious. Enjoy the state of the current nation and ask all the races to join in the fun…it makes for a much happier world. Import, import, import!!

February 4- April 30/09

EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR by TOM STOPPARD

Combining the full 40-piece orchestra with this one act play of the Russian torture given to dissidents in their forced medication and in sharing their cells with the lunatics in psychiatric hospitals is the most original concept especially when the orchestra is part of Ivanov’s mental illness….his belief that he hears in his head the orchestra as he conducts it. The fact that Previn’s music is not particularly distinctive and at times abstractly absurd is perfect for Ivanov’s madness. The dissonance also adds to the lunacy. We could do without the abrupt dancing which comes from nowhere and is not an hallucination of Ivanov. A sane dissident, also named Alexander Ivanov, because he refused to sing from a Soviet songsheet, is brought in to share Ivanov’s cell. Far from being mad, Alexander protests against the state by going on a hunger strike. As Ivanov chimes his triangle to begin to conduct the musical session and in addition incessantly talks about the quality of the various musicians, Alexander is being slowly tortured. In a schoolroom Alexander Ivanov’s son Sacha cannot absorb the rules of geometry nor can he play the musical instrument in the school orchestra with any comprehension. He is too filled with anxiety over his father and the realities of life without having to cope with abstractions. He visits his father and is devastated by his deterioration. Alexander tries to persuade the doctor to help his release without having to lie about conditions in the hospital which is more a prison than a hospital as even Sacha figures out. When the Colonel comes to sort out releases he asks Ivanov if he has been treated well to which Ivanov answers yes. He asks Alexander if he hears an orchestra to which he answers no. As a result of the mix-up, both men have answered correctly to the state’s need and are released. Tackling the search for sustaining one’s individuality against the will of the state, or the use of insanity for bending the people’s will to the state’s ideology are serious issues which Stoppard handles quite deftly. He does manage to bring in the comedy of insanity with word play and daft situations. The acting of Joseph Millson as he disintegrates from starvation is deeply moving while Toby Jones brings out the preciseness of Ivanov’s lunacy with concentrated inner thoughts and hearing. He is truthful in his exacting the humour. Dan Stevens as the doctor reveals the serious frustration through comic actions. The orchestra performs extremely well and in key with the actors and action. Both Tom Morris and Felix Barrett (Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red Death at BAC) are less prone to directing textual theatre and more attuned to physical and designed theatre. They manage to coordinate the action between actors and orchestra but do not story-tell the text to our advantage. However, it is an experiment in theatre on serious material which is worth the effort and enticing enough to educate adults. One should give the National the praise it deserves for keeping the £10 Travelex ticket going to the enjoyment of widespread audiences witnessing such quality productions. Import but no export.

January 12 – 30/09

OEDIPUS by SOPHOCLES

The stunning epic in the Olivier Theatre, using a revolving circular stage which exaggerates the effect of an amphitheatre and enhances the sense of participating in a Greek tragedy despite the modern dress, is omnipotent. The stark simplicity of the huge palatial bronze doors splattered with vertigris, the panels opening to a vast chilling emptiness, a tilted stone floor, and a long wooden table with benches keeps the accuracy of the play in its time. The actors sustain the Greek classic style of performing to the audience and only in the heightened emotional scenes do they react to each other with the depth of emotional turmoil that exposes the highest vulnerability as when water is poured upon a flame and the fire bursts high into the air before extinguishing itself. The chorus who react to the tragedy representing the people are brilliantly operatic sometimes in solo singing, sometimes in chants. The sound of a male chorus carries such gravitas in a score that reflects moving musicality and crescendos so much of Kent’s gift for larger than life direction. Ralph Fiennes performs the title role which is the focal point of the play in his unravelling why Thebes is so plagued, so cursed by the gods. He is advised by Apollo that a son has killed his father and married his mother. Until the doer of this unforgivable sin is discovered and punished by leaving Thebes, the plague will continue and Thebes will be destroyed. The discovery is a matter of life or death. Slowly Oedipus digs out piece by piece his own identity. An old shepherd, when forced to confess, reveals that instead of leaving the regal infant to die in the mountains as commanded, he saved Jocasta’s baby whom the gods predicted would kill her husband the king and marry her. The seer Teiresias prophesises Oedipus’ downfall as the secret identity of Oedipus is gradually exposed. Upon the discovery of Oedipus’ unrealised sin, the live son of Jocasta, she hangs herself and Oedipus tears out his eyes upon seeing her dead body. Blinded and tortured Oedipus leaves behind his children in th