Category Archives: Theatres

Hangmen by Martin Mcdonagh

January 12, 2016Wyndham's TheatreYeside

Hangmen by Martin McDonagh
At the Wyndham’s Theatre
January 7th, 2016

‘They could’ve at least sent Pierrepoint. Hung by a rubbish hangman, oh that’s so me.’
2015 marked the fiftieth anniversary since the abolition of the death penalty in England, and Hangmen acknowledges history through references to Hanratty – one of the last prisoners to be executed in the country. ‘Hangmen’ topical is a dry, black comedy set in the late 1960s. It is about a retired executioner, Harry Wade (played by David Morrissey and presumably named after real-life hangmen Harry Allen and Stephen Wade) who’s embittered by playing second fiddle to chief executioner Albert Pierrepoint. The play opens in 1963 with gallows humour in a brutal arresting scene of Harry’s cold-blooded hanging of a desperate young man protesting his innocence.
We’re whisked forward to a pub in Oldham, two years later, on the day that hanging is abolished. The owner, Harry is now displaced in society and no longer a ‘servant of the crown’, but whose 233 executions just two years previously were deemed by the law as a quick, clean and dignified way to dispose of a murderer – far more proper than using the guillotine, which is ‘messy and French’. The male-dominated pub is patronised by a sycophantic, goonish regulars enjoying Harry’s dark notoriety. Harold Wilson’s government has just abolished capital punishment and the press want Wade to give his verdict, which he does in staggeringly bumptious style. Morrisey, distinctive in his suit and dickie-bow tie, towers over all, simultaneously gives us Wade, the bully and Wade, a coward. Still in the shadows, Wade’s former assistant, the self-effacing Syd (Reece Shearsmith) struggles with his own identity against a barrage of Wade’s mean-spirited gags.

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The Rubenstein Kiss

November 1, 2015Reviews, Yvonne Arnaud, GuildfordYeside

The Rubenstein Kiss by James Phillips
At the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
29th October, 2015

‘The war is inside as well as outside’
James Phillips’ debut play is set in 1953, at the height of the McCarthy witch hunt, when Jewish-American communists, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair, convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, despite protesting their innocence to the last. They were ultimately condemned on the evidence of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, who was himself imprisoned for his part in the alleged conspiracy. Changing the names allows Philips scope for artistic licence. He grafts a fictional element, the framing device, on to the facts, and eventually mixes both plots together.
It is cleverly structured around two generations: the Rubenstein couple in the 50s and Esther Rubenstein’s brother and his wife, alongside the two children of these relationships in the 70s; cousins living with the history of their parents’ controversial lives.

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Our Country’s Good

October 21, 2015National TheatreYeside

Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker
At The Olivier, National Theatre
13th October, 2015

‘The Greeks believed that it was a citizen’s duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgment, patience, all social virtues.’

It was the Australian author Thomas Keneally’s 1987 novel, ‘The Playmaker’ which inspired Timberlake Wertenbaker to dramatise the true story of the convicts’ staging of the Irish writer George Farquar’s 1706 farce, ‘The Recruiting Officer.’ This revival is topical at a time when education in Britain’s overcrowded prisons is at low ebb and people who run drama projects are patronised. Whilst more liberal attitudes prevail today, the debates in the play on finding the right balance between punishment and rehabilitation are still as relevant as at the time when the play is set.
The context for the play is Australia in the late 18th century which was partly a dumping ground for the refuse of Britain’s prisons. The first convict ship arrived in Botany Bay in 1788, crammed with England’s outcasts; most were from the lower end of the criminal scale: petty thieves or pickpockets, including an 87 year old woman who stole a biscuit and a young Irish man who refused to work for nothing.
Peter McIntosh’s bright, colourful backdrop: a cyclorama of red earth and bright sun backdrop is a nod to Aboriginal art and the stereotypical image of a foreign landscape. Enter the ‘Aborigine’ as the politically correct programme describes the almost silent observer. He watches and dances and says the odd word when he foretells his own death from being infected by the foreigners’ disease. It is a strange policy of colour blind casting when the aboriginal is played by a white actor and the Governor, Captain Philip ( Cyril Nri) and Captain Tench ( Jonathan Livingstone) are played by black actors. Perhaps, Nri’s authoritative stage presence is meant to feel like a comment on slavery and Empire.
In contrast, the revolving stage bursts open to reveal prisoners in the bowels of the ship. Their visceral words evoke the sense of rough justice by the military during the journey.
Once in Australia, the idealistic governor maintains that the convicts are there to ‘create a new society’. Their involvement in theatre would act as a humanising force. He therefore supports Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who is looking for some meaning to his own life, in staging the play, even though he knows he risks trouble by offending the more conservative elements of the military. With the objective to celebrate the King’s birthday in 1789, the transported convicts rehearse Farquhar’s classic farce, which thus became the first play ever to be staged in the penal colony. Continue reading Our Country’s Good →

People, Places, Things

October 5, 2015National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘People, Places, Things’
At the Dorfman Theatre
2nd October, 2015

‘If you’re really lucky, you get to be onstage and say things that are absolutely true, even if they’re made-up.’
‘There are substances I can put into my bloodstream that make the world perfect.’

Having previously enjoyed Jeremy Herrin’s the spell-binding ‘The Nether’ (Royal Court, Duke of York’s theatre) , 1984,and the RSC’s versions of Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’/ ‘Bringing up the Bodies’, the motivation to see another Headlong production was strong.
The title comes from the AA creed that alcoholics are powerless over the ‘people, places and things’ that cue their desire for drink or drugs so the prescription is a 12-step recovery i.e. the avoidance of People with whom you use drugs, the Places where you score and use and the Things that act as a trigger to use.

From the outset, it is clear that Duncan Macmillan’s play is about reality and how we make our own reality. It opens with a scene from Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ with the actress, ‘Emma’, playing the forlorn Nina at breaking point. Thus the message of disintegrated hopes is enacted at the start, introducing us to Emma’s thespian ‘other-life’ , referencing troubled themes in plays by Ibsen and Chekhov.

There’s a reason for the blurring of identity: Emma is an alcoholic, suffering from multiple substance abuse, which has led to blackouts and one suicide attempt. Soon she checks herself into a rehab centre to undergo the detox regime but she doesn’t buy into her perceived bogus beliefs of the AA-style journey to recovery. From the start, the self-absorbed, self-pitying and deceitful Emma lies constantly and admits to telling lies and thus prevents us from surrendering our sympathy to her. Her risk assessment involves not being resistant to the clinic’s culture of sharing and honesty, but by the second act, she gives herself to it.

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Lela & Co

September 29, 2015Jerwood Upstairs, Reviews, Royal Court TheatreYeside

Lela & Co at the Jerwood Upstairs, The Royal Court

22nd September, 2015

‘As for what came next, things unspoken and untold until now, it happened like this…’

Once upon a time fairy tales weren’t meant just for children and neither is Cordelia Lynn’s Royal Court debut play, ‘Lela & Co’. It’s like a subversive 90 minutes take on a traditional fairy story. We join Lela (Katie West) in her mind; a surreal world of neon lights, leather furniture, plush red curtains and black and white floor. Lela is dressed in a tutu, swings in her rattan chair, speaking in a thick Yorkshire accent.
At first, Lela’s monologue is lyrical and excitable as she introduces us to her childhood, when she lived with sisters, Em and Elle, together with her parents and grandmother. Lela warns us, she will be telling ‘the whole truth’ and as she does, her narrative darkens. When her sister Elle marries a man called Jay, the 15-year-old Lela is ‘married’ off on one of his ‘business associates’, and taken abroad to an unnamed country. Lela is abused by her husband, and then in her innocence, she is `passed on’ from hand to hand passed onto his friends as a sex slave, finally sold to anyone willing to pay. Her world contracts rapidly until it is the size of a dirty mattress. In one moment of the darkest humour, their marital relationship is presented as if it was a business: Lela & Co. Concurrent with this are ethnic tensions which result in armed struggle, bombings, shootings and invasions. War might be bad for business, but Lela’s husband has learnt to exploit the needs of soldiers, prostituting his wife and making money.

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Red Lion

September 29, 2015National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘Red Lion’ at The Dorfman Theatre

19th September, 2015

This isn’t a church; it’s a ‘business!

How timely is this production in the light of the attributed corruption of the FIFA scandal! We know how elite football operates these days. ‘Red Lion’ forces us to reassess the beautiful game through the backstage politics of the game and the darker side of England’s most popular sport.
Partick Marber’s play inhabits Anthony Ward’s plausible set – a grimy changing room of a struggling semi-professional club who have been on a recent winning streak but have just had their best player poached by a rival team. Ironically, the club’s pitch is located over a plague pit – a perfect verbal playground for betrayal. Here we have three of life’s male casualties who find support and stability in the beleaguered club and each other: the unscrupulous, motor-mouthed manager, Kidd (Daniel Mays) is excited about a talented new recruit, Jordan (Calvin Demba) who wants to play for the team. The kit man and ex-Manager, Yates (Peter Wight) enthuses, too, but has a fatherly concern for Jordan and wants to make sure he is nurtured properly. All wrestle over the future of the club.

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And Then Came The Nightjars

September 18, 2015Theatre 503Yeside

‘And Then Come The Nightjars’
At Theatre 503

15th, September, 2015

‘You hardly ever see ’em, only hear them. They fly silent.
It’s bad luck is Nightjars. It’s a bird o’ death.’

Ironically, I have been recently listening to ‘The Reunion’ during which Sue MacGregor interviews five people whose lives and livelihoods were dramatically changed by the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2001. The devastating effects of the pandemic which saw the slaughter of four million animals, the virtual closure of the countryside and the postponement of a general election provide a backdrop for Bea Roberts’ extraordinarily moving picture of male friendship over twelve years and a British tragedy.
The play’s unusual and aptly chosen title serves as a metaphor for doom. Nightjars are short-billed birds known for their distinctive ‘chirring’ call, and considered unlucky. In some parts of Britain they have traditionally had the nickname ‘goatsuckers’, thanks to the belief that they drink livestock dry, and they’re also reputed to infect calves with a deadly disease. So Roberts’ play is a raw reminder of just how devastating the disease was. For a farmer such as Michael, a man who has invested his life in the welfare of his animals, rendered helpless before a faceless government bureaucracy that declares that even apparently healthy cattle must be killed, it is so heart-breaking.
The immediate impact as the audience awaits the start of the play is designer, Max Dorey’s set – a meticulously conceived barn in Devonshire, light spilling through the slatted ceiling; he has such a precise eye for detail, for weathering and decay; Sally Ferguson’s lighting marks time with a subtle cycle through days and nights and seasons.
Following the death of his wife Sheila, Michael devotes himself to his prize-winning herd of cows, each named after members of the Royal Family, and eventually has to lose them: ‘we lost Camilla to the bloat in February’. Friend and local vet, Jeff is a shadowed reminder of the disease recently discovered on a neighbouring farm: foot and mouth; a whole herd slaughtered and set to burn. Paul Robinson sensitively directs the friendship between Michael (David Fielder) and Jeff (Nigel Hastings) is savagely funny and sad. The humour derives from various sources: a lament for a vanishing countryside, a tradition of farming challenged by conglomerates, second-homers, Grand Design barn conversions

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Everyman

May 30, 2015National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

Chiwetel Ejiofor in Everyman, adapted by Carol Ann Duffy at the Olivier. ‘Everyman’ at the National (Olivier)Theatre

9th May, 2015

‘Welcome to hell, SE’

Wow! This is Rufus Norris’s first production as artistic director of the National Theatre and he is starting inventive in every sense from the drug-fuelled raves to a seductive Donna Summer soundtrack. The production design pulses with energy, even in the moments of quiet reflection. Much of the original’s theological substance has been stripped away. Poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy’s writing is characteristically edgy with lines such as ‘Religion is a man-made thing. It too will pass.’ At times, however, the predictable rhyming and the lame humour from contemporary references to loyalty cards and Beckham and even Cliff’s colostomy bag seem disappointingly puerile.

The play opens with a weary-looking cleaner (Kate Duchêne) mopping the stage. Contrary to expectation, she is God. None of this is particularly apparent from an audacious, wordless opening scene, in which Everyman, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a big star who’s never forgotten the stage, descends on a wire from the Olivier’s ceiling. He then runs vertically, in slow motion, down through the pit in the middle of the stage, before re-emerging into the hedonistic raunchy excesses of his 40th birthday party.

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A View from the Bridge

April 7, 2015Reviews, Young VicYeside

NT Live – A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller at the Young Vic

7th April, 2015

Alfieri: ‘I saw it was only a passion that had moved into his body, like a stranger.’
Marco: ‘In my country [Eddie] would be dead now.’

The play’s title is the perspective of most self-styled and indifferent New Yorkers, for whom the Italian immigrant community in the 1950s slum of Red Hook is merely a view from the Brooklyn Bridge. The tragedy of the protagonist plays out: Eddie Carbone (Mark Strong) – a respected Brooklyn longshoreman with a questionable love for his niece Catherine (Phoebe Fox. Here ‘the gullet of New York is swallowing the tonnage of the world.’ Our guide /Chorus is the philosophical lawyer Alfieri (beautifully played by Michael Gould ) sets a tone of tragic inevitability from the outset. Alfieri introduces Eddie: ‘This one’s name was Eddie Carbone,’ speaking about him in the past tense shows that his fate has already come to an end and gives an indication that Eddie will die at the end of the play, so the audience are left wondering not what will happen to him but how it will happen. The experimental Belgian director, Ivo van Hove describes the play as ‘witnessing a car accident that you see a hundred metres before it happens.’

Many of the huge Italian community are supporting and hiding immigrants from their homeland who are fleeing the destruction and poverty of post-war Italy for a new life in America. Yet, when Eddie’s wife, Beatrice (Nicola Walker), volunteers to shelter her distant cousins, Marco (Emun Elliott) and Rodolfo (Luke Norris) who have just arrived secretly on the ships, Eddie’s control of his household is destroyed. The catalyst is Rudolfo who gains the affections of Catherine. The decision not to have Rodolpho and Marco speak with heavy Italian accents (they sound just as American as the other cast members) seems odd at first given that some of their lines obviously call for it. But it restores to the characters some extra dignity, levelling the playing field between the immigrants and the rest of Brooklyn. Tensions bubble and wry humour derives from Eddie’s fixation on Rodolpho’s sexuality, constantly telling Beatrice and Alfieri that Rodolpho ‘ain’t right,’ and in a (misguided) attempt to prove this, he forcefully kisses Rodolpho in front of Catherine.
From the outset, Eddie’s tactile relationship with his niece is perfectly pitched: once innocuous, now inappropriate. She’s an overgrown daddy’s girl, basically, jumping into his arms and wrapping her legs round his waist. Catherine’s short skirt sexualises our perceptions of a boundary which may have been crossed. Our suspicions are further fuelled when Beatrice further hints something is awry as she remonstrates that Eddie has neglected their sexual relationship. Nicola Walker conveys her repressed anger, jealousy and fear very convincingly. Yet, like many Miller tragic heroes, Eddie is a good-hearted man and proxy father with a fatal flaw.

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The Ruling Class

April 7, 2015Reviews, Trafalgar StudiosYeside

The Ruling Class by Peter Barnes at The Trafalgar Studios

April 2nd, 2015

‘Dr Herder: Then, of course, he never forgot being brutally rejected by his mother and father at the age of eleven. They sent him away, alone, into a primitive community of licensed bullies and pederasts.
Sir Charles: You mean he went to public school.’
This bawdy political farce about class, wealth and arisocratic power left me cold, despite the tour de force of James McAvoy playing the role of the 13th Earl of Gurney. The Earl is a paranoid schizophrenic aristocrat who believes he is god. It’s the kind of manic, hammed-up performance attributed to pantomime, punctuated with laboured punclines. The rest of the performances conform to my expectations of a school production. Even though, we left at the interval, Barnes play had nothing profound to say.
Yes, in 1968, ‘The Ruling Class’ must have been shocking in some ways and startlingly provocative in others. It is vitriolic about the Upper Classes in England, including the Church and the medical profession. To me the play seemed to be celebrating the very class it claims to chastise. Barnes’s play betrays its age. At worst it feels like a clownish period piece.
I left recalling Peter Cook’s observation in the sixties:
‘Britain is in danger of sinking, giggling into the sea’

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