All posts by Yeside

Coriolanus NT Live

March 23, 2014NT Live, ReviewsYeside

NT Live Coriolanus at Chichester New Park, Cinema

4th March, 2014

‘We can’t trust any politician to tell us the truth. Faith, there have been many great men that have flatter’d the people, who ne’er loved them.’

Coriolanus is a political drama whose themes are a reminder that Shakespeare’s plays still resonate over time. Here, we have a Roman military hero’s bid for public office but it turns to tragedy after his enemies make use of his fatal inability to relate to the common people. It’s a study of hubris versus politics. Coriolanus is a successful leader on the battle field and a skilled warrior. Any humility he displays when he returns to Rome victorious after defeating the Volscian army is short-lived when old prejudices and grievances with the plebeians surface. Continue reading Coriolanus NT Live →

Dogdays

March 13, 2014Reviews, Theatre 503Yeside

‘Dog Days’ by Annie Hulley at Theatre 503

11th March, 2014

‘We all play by basic rules, only some are born with a different basic set of rules…’

‘Dog days’ is an aptly titled, referring to a period of relationship stagnation as two couples lay themselves bare in Annie Hulley’s ninety minutes of dark comedy and edgy unreality.

Our home is the most intimate, secure space we can inhabit, yet the scene opens to a literally beige existence of Cate and John. They are locked into a Daily Mail, Middle England routine and empty Pinteresque exchanges. Using just one set, Sophia Simensky reinforces what has been shared for many years; patterns of territory, privacy, and memories of the past enshrined in objects such as owl ornaments and a photograph of their only son. Hoping to get a buyer for Cate and John’s home is a temporary solution to domestic friction. Continue reading Dogdays →

La Traviata

February 23, 2014Reviews, Yvonne Arnaud, GuildfordYeside

‘La Traviata’ by Guiseppe Verdi at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

22nd February, 2014

‘One day I’m going to make the world do her (La Traviata) honour. But not a Naples where your priests would be terrified of seeing on stage the sort of things they do themselves at night on the quiet.’ Giuseppe Verdi

To understand the full impact of Verdi’s words, we can appreciate initially that the literal translation of the title of the opera is ‘the woman led astray’. There are two sources of inspiration here: one is from Verdi’s relationship with his own wife (formerly an unmarried mother and opera singer);the other is that the role of Violetta was originally based on the real-life courtesan Marie Duplessis, who, as Marguerite Gautier, was the subject of Alexandre Dumas’novel and play, La Dame aux Camélias. The significance of the name ‘Camille’ and the flower itself, relates to the white camellia which the original Marguerite Gautier would wear to show her availability and also to the red camellia worn on those days when she was unavailable. Each of these reinterpretations of La traviata figuratively adds to the sense of Violetta as a ‘fallen woman’.

Now all this would predicate an emotionally calibrated evening. Certainly, the original title, ‘Amore e morte’ suggests this, even more since it had to be changed and the time set back to the 1700s rather than the 1900s. Verdi strongly objected, but the patriarchal/Christian censors did not want the lascivious goings-on in the story to be seen as a reflection of contemporary life. That a courtesan with questionable morals might be a likeable operatic heroine was a radical notion for its time. Continue reading La Traviata →

Kindertransport

February 8, 2014Reviews, Richmond TheatreYeside

Kindertransport by Diane Samuels at the Richmond Theatre

7th February, 2014

‘How could I swim ashore with so much heaviness on me? I was drowning in leagues and leagues of salty water…. .I had to let go to float.’ Eva

Diane Samuels’s splendid play was revived last year for the 75th anniversary year to commemorate the dramatic decision of desperate Jewish parents to get their children out of the growing Nazi territory , mainly to Britain; the vast majority never to see their parents again. The exodus became known as Kindertransport which literally translates as ‘the transportation of children’. Nine year old, Eva Schlesinger(Gabrielle Dempsey) becomes the fictional composite of those kinder- survivors the playwright interviewed.

To add to the narrative, light falls on a pair of shoes is to prepare us for the themes of isolation and dislocation and displacement. Continue reading Kindertransport →

Protest Song

January 4, 2014National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘Protest Song’ by Tim Price at the Shed

3rd January 2014

‘On the first day of Christmas, the system gave to me… a vote in a demo-cra-cy’

A protest song is nothing new. As far back as medieval times, folk songs were used to reflect social dissent, upheaval and inequality. ‘Protest Song’ by Tim Price is a visceral monologue, superbly delivered by the aptly chosen Rhys Ifans who I haven’t seen since his rendering of the blundering Spike in the film, ‘Notting Hill’. It is the homeless Danny’s 70 minute monologue which literally engages the audience from start to finish. His script is inspired by the London Occupy movement that grew in the autum and winter of 2011-12.

At first, Danny shambles on stage, targeting unsuspecting members of the audience for money to pay for one night in a hostel; and for their phone numbers to prove to some off-stage social worker that he is properly ‘engaging’ with his mobile phone. Each hesitates, conflicted about how to respond. It is all too human to be uncomfortable with what we fear and what we don’t know. ‘Would you touch a rough sleeper?’ Awkward mumblings or silence ensue. Full lighting makes Danny’s raw interaction with the audience all the more invasive.

The intimate nature of the staging space underlines Danny’s need for territorial ownership; he needs his own comfort space and he destroys our fourth wall by forcing us to discuss disparity of wealth and humanity in general. Danny recalls his routine of years of sleeping rough on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral disrupted by Occupy. Yet, he finds a sense of community, belonging and purpose in volunteering in the kitchen finding a new impetus in his life, and reluctantly becoming more politicised: ‘everything – every fucking thing – is connected’. Continue reading Protest Song →

Drawing the Line

December 21, 2013Hampstead Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘Drawing the Line’ by Howard Brenton at the Hampstead Theatre

4th December, 2013

‘You British make this mistake, every time you colonise. You move into a huge area of the globe and call it a country, when it is not. You have done so all over Africa, in Arab countries, in Iraq.’

‘Drawing the Line’ was inspired by conversations Brenton had during a visit to India in 2009, and continues his theme of political upheaval seen in other plays he has written.

In 1947, finding empire morally insupportable, and short of post war funds, the ruthless Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, decides to dismantle 200 years of rule of India in just five or six weeks. ‘Drawing the Line’ concentrates on the role played by one man, Cyril Radcliffe, played by Tom Beard. He travels to India, a country he has never visited and of which he has almost no knowledge, and with limited survey information, no expert support and no knowledge of cartography, aims to draw the border to divide the Indian sub-continent into two new Sovereign Dominions: India and Pakistan.

The scenario unravels like a Snakes and Ladders board game. Radcliffe is flung into a maelstrom of Indian politics, religion, culture, languages and opposing beliefs. Ironically, it was the same incident that preoccupied WH Auden in 1966 which sums up the play’s chronology of events:

He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot. Continue reading Drawing the Line →

This House

October 30, 2013National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘This House’ by James Graham at the Cottesloe

16^th October, 2012

‘A Conservative government always eventually falls because they believe themselves entitled to power, and Labour governments always fall because they don’t.’

Can one make a satirical play centred on the fragile coalition politics of the 1970s? These were the years of industrial unrest, spiralling inflation, but an absence of spin doctors and 24 hour news. James Graham’s drama emerges as a result of a National Theatre commission soon after the 2010 election delivered a hung Parliament. At just 30 years old, Graham wasn’t born until three years after the events of the play, yet with thorough research he creates his own version of the political playground tribalism.

Most of the action takes place in the Labour and Conservative Whips’ offices, where much of the wheeling and dealing goes on – the dark arts of politics. This is a time when the Labour government’s precarious ability to survive a hung parliament and a wafer-thin majority creates most of the play’s dynamics. The Labour Party whips have to fight for every single vote to pass legislation and win over as many as they can, including those MPs from minority parties. Eventually, every MP is required to be present in Parliament for every division to avoid losing a vote of No Confidence. The absurd lengths to which Whips go to ensure that their party members appear on the floor to vote is a fault line of our parliamentary system.

So, Philip Glenister as the formidable Labour Deputy Chief Whip, Walter Harrison, needs a controversial pairing of MPs, to save the Labour majority. For the uninitiated, pairing simply means that if, for example, a Tory MP is known to be unable to appear for a vote on a given day, a Labour member agrees by gentleman’s agreement not to attend the session and therefore sit out the vote. Continue reading This House →

Jerusalem

October 29, 2013Reviews, Royal Court TheatreYeside

‘Jerusalem’ by Jez Butterworth at the Royal Court Theatre

July 2009

‘And did those feet in ancient time,

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?’

The play’s title, of course, is a nod to Blake’s 1808 poem but it becomes a hymn of identity and nationhood and belonging, set in a fictional Wiltshire village on St George’s Day. The tune is the most chosen in Britain at both weddings and funeral.

On one level, the plot is simple: the story of Johnny Byron’s last stand against the philistines who would evict him from his home is set largely within a period of 24 hours.

The start is explosive. A solo rendering of William Blake’s Jerusalem by Phaedra (a missing 15 year old) front of curtain crashes into the noise of the rave at Johnny’s the night before the story starts. Continue reading Jerusalem →

1984

October 27, 2013Headlong, Reviews, Richmond TheatreYeside

1984 :a Headlong Company adaptation of George Orwell’s novel at Richmond Theatre

24th October, 2013

‘The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been.’

(Arthur Koestler, ‘Darkness at Noon’)

Most people have heard of Big Brother, Newspeak, Room 101 and Thought Crime, but how they fit together in Orwell’s 1984 eludes many. Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s ambitious adaptation of the dystopian masterpiece, opens in 2050 after the autocratic Party has fallen. We are eavesdroppers on a book club from the distant future discussing a document from the past – Winston’s diary. They believe, as the Party would have wanted, that Winston Smith never existed.

Our perceptions of reality are never stable, for the year 1984 initially runs concurrently with the book club discussions. Winston is seen struggling to write a diary ‘for the unborn’ – a ‘thought-crime’ punishable by death. As he writes the audience watches a close-up of the words on a big multi-media screen above the stage – we are inside Winston’s head. Continue reading 1984 →

Another Country

October 23, 2013Chichester, ReviewsYeside

‘Another Country’ by Julian Mitchell at The Minerva Theatre, Chichester

17^th October, 2013

‘The love that never falters
The love that pays the price
The love that makes undaunted
The final sacrifice’

In 1980, months after Anthony Blunt’s exposure as the dubbed fourth man in the Cambridge spy ring, Julian Mitchell sat down to write Another Country and explore the possible origins of their national betrayal. As Mitchell writes: ‘People usually become traitors for one of three reasons: money, ideological conviction or revenge.’ He settles on revenge for the institutionalised and hypocritical homophobia. In our current climate, there is an irony in the idea of oppressive attitudes towards homosexuality in Britain driving someone towards Russia where homosexuality is portrayed as a danger to children and the family.

Set in an unnamed 1930s, public school, the investigation focuses on the young privileged elite such as Guy Burgess (Bennett in the play). Burgess was an Eton-educated Foreign Office official, who passed secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War as part of the Cambridge Five spy ring – eventually defecting to Moscow in 1951. The play’s revival is timely with the publication of ‘In Spies We Trust ‘By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones. Here, class is paramount, rank reigns. Continue reading Another Country →

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