All posts by Yeside

The Ferryman

November 25, 2017Gieguld Theatre, ReviewsYeside

The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth

at The Gielguld Theatre

November 24th, 2017

“This isn’t history. This is now.’ Everyone living in Northern Ireland will become part of this story; this history, whether they want to or not.”

Uncle Pat: “Let’s not be teaching the wean that being English makes you wicked.”

Aunt Pat: “As a rule of thumb, it’s proved uncannily accurate.”

It’s five years since I saw Jez Butterworth’s powerful Jerusalem. Similarly, The Ferryman is a layered and edgy production.

Nothing as it seems. Quinn,( William Houston) who we meet at home in one of the opening scenes, dancing wildly in the wee hours to the Rolling Stones with a woman we assume, is his wife or a lover. She’s not. Caitlin Carney (Catherine McCormack) is Quinn’s sister-in-law and the wife of the dead man. Laura Donnelly, the original Caitlin, was just a child when her uncle was taken away by the IRA, shot dead, and his body dumped in a bog: the core that Butterworth retells here. There’s a clue in the title, as in mythology Charon ferries souls from this world to the next. McCormack plays a woman whose husband’s body is accidentally uncovered a decade after he was secretly buried, sparking a wave of violence and stirring up almost forgotten memories. When I saw the play the role was played by Catherine McCormack. The play is set in the same year in rural Northern Ireland in 1981. A lot of old history resurfaces with him and so the family is entangled in Ireland’s bloodstained legacy of violence. Continue reading The Ferryman →

Quiz

November 21, 2017ChichesterYeside

“Quiz” at The Minerva Theatre, Chichester

November 13th,2017

“Do we choose a more entertaining lie over a less extraordinary truth?”

Well, this is the third new play by the prolific James Graham I’ve seen in four months. “Quiz” reimagines what may have happened behind the scenes during a now infamous moment in television history, when, in 2001, a contestant on ITV quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire was accused of gaming the system to win the million pound prize. The contestant is the “Coughing Major” or Charles Ingram, a former army officer who in 2001 who successfully answered all of Chris Tarrant’s questions to win the jackpot. Suspicions were quickly raised and two years later he was found guilty of deception, a jury believing the charge that he used an accomplice to cough when an answer was correct.

In the years that have passed James Graham finds there’s something brilliantly enduring about their story. But we don’t want to give you that….yet!

First, we are free-wheeled, with a revue-like approach, to learn about the history of popular ITV quizzes and their connection to the commercial nature of the channel. We are reminded that ITV from the outset was built around game-shows such as Take Your Pick, Bullseye and The Price is Right, where the coveted prize was a vacuum cleaner. For the latter, audience members are invited onstage as contestants, and, yes, we, that was me, my husband, and a friend, amongst others, were asked to value a 1951 vacuum cleaner. The correct answer- £39 – the prize: an ice cream voucher!

Continue reading Quiz →

Labour of Love

November 5, 2017Noel Coward Theatre, ReviewsYeside

“Labour of Love” by James Graham

at The Noel Coward Theatre

5th November, 2017

“What’s happening is if you’re Northern, you’re getting butchered, it’s like Game of f—ing Thrones.”

Continuing my James Graham fest, “Labour of Love” did not fail to disappoint despite the formulaic and predictable narrative.

Admittedly, I hesitated booking for what seemed to be a comedy about the Labour Party, but faced with a dish of a co-production between the Michael Grandage Company and Headlong, and directed byJeremy Herrin, together with a Tamsin Grieg topping, I looked forward to a feast.

Labour of Love tells the story of Blairite Labour MP, David Lyons (Martin Freeman) and his politically idealistic agent Jean ( Tamsin Greig). The conceit is that we begin on election night 2017and work backwards past the Coalition years and expenses scandal, the 2001 election and the 1994 Labour leadership campaign, to Thatcher’s resignation in 1990. Right now, it looks as though Lyons may lose his North Nottinghamshire constituency seat, once regarded as safe – seat, evidently modelled on Mansfield, which saw a shock swing to the Tories this summer for the first time in its parliamentary history. Continue reading Labour of Love →

THe Young Marx

October 30, 2017Reviews, The Bridge TheatreYeside

The Young Marx by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman

at The Bridge Theatre

28th October, 2017

“I write down what I see. I’m a beta-plus. You’re an alpha, a bona fide genius, you prick.”

“I am the opposite of King Midas – everything I touch turns to debts”

Firstly, what a treat to come to a first new commercial playhouse, especially one conceived by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr. It is a splendid addition to the London scene: a flexible, impressive 900 seater auditorium designed by architects Steve Tompkins and Roger Watts,that manages to feel both spacious and cozy. The seating is surprisingly egalitarian, with the £15 bottom price getting you a very decent view. It will, as Hytner hopes, house a program of crowd-pulling new plays. For us the dram plays out the man behind the Manifesto, but that sits at odds with the comic-strip tone – no matter how snappily Hytner directs. It leaves the play caught between humanising Marx and lampooning him.

We meet the Young Marx (Rory Kinnear) soon after he arrives as a penniless political refugee in Victorian Soho. From the start, he is a walking disaster, totally reliant on the continued goodwill of his wife Jenny von Westphalen (Nancy Carroll) and best friend, Friedrich Engels (Oliver Chris).

Marx struggles to feed his children, nearly loses his wife (Nancy Carroll) and finds comfort in drink instead of in work. His penury means that the Peelers are always after him. In pantomime ritual, he’s shinnying up among the chim-ineys to make his escape, thereafter often found inside a cupboard whenever there’s a knock at the door. Marx thinks so much about money and its perniciousness, but has none himself but also realises that he badly needs it. Ironically, he can’t escape the system he loathes, because he has a wife and a child to support. So he’s bankrolled by Engels. So, it is capitalism that lifts the poverty that blighted his life. Engels and Marx present themselves like a music-hall double act, trading with insults and singing inappropriate songs. Continue reading THe Young Marx →

Girl From The North Country

September 10, 2017Old Vic, ReviewsYeside

Girl from the North Country by Conor Mcpherson

At The Old Vic

2^nd September, 2017

‘We ain’t got no net to catch us’

Bob Dylan’s team approached Conor McPherson to see if he would be interested in basing a production around the songbook. At first he wasn’t keen then as always, an idea germinated. Dylan liked the concept and 40 of his albums were sent to McPherson saying that he could use any of the songs he liked. It is, says McPherson in a programme note, a ‘conversation between the songs and the story’ and what a conversation it is! Just spellbinding and haunting. It is an unusual musical which functions as the soul of the characters.

There is a Steinbeckian overtone to Conor Mcpherson’s play set in the Dustbowl at the height of the Great Depression. We find ourselves in a guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan’s hometown) in 1934. There’s a boxer on the run from trouble, a dodgy bible salesman, a widow waiting for her inheritance, a couple whose simple-minded son is more than they can handle, a kindly doctor, an elderly shoe-shop owner, and so on. Ciaran Hinds), and his wife Elizabeth, who is succumbing to dementia, though in Shirley Henderson’s hands, it’s the sexiest, cheekiest dementia you’ll ever come across. Henderson’s Elizabeth is very edgy. She pulls at her shirt and whirls vaguely about the stage. It is only when Elizabeth sings that she is fully alive and in control. Petit as Henderson is, she commands our attention. When Elizabeth stands on a chair and booms with all her might. “Forever Young” we share her husband and her hopeless future. Continue reading Girl From The North Country →

Mosquitoes

August 7, 2017ReviewsYeside

Mosquitoes by Lucy Kirkwood

At the Dorfman Theatre(NT)

29^th July, 2017

Lucy Kirkwood and Rufus Norris – What’s not to like!

Mosquitoes is set in Switzerland among the scientific community who have come to work at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in order to find the Higgs Boson, the infinitesimal particle believed to be the elusive thing binding all matter together, indeed holding everything together in the universe. This event acts as backdrop against which we see a personification of magnetised particles. On the one side, staunch belief in scientific facts and logic, and on the other, an emotional resilience, gut feelings and the internet – as they repel, fight and yet are still drawn to each other.

The title works on several levels: the force of a proton collision is described as being like two mosquitoes flying into each other, and Alice’s boyfriend is a World Health Organization entomologist trying to combat insect-borne diseases.

So on one level, the play is the story of sisters Alice (Olivia Williams) and Jenny (Olivia Colman). Alice and Jenny could not be more different, with one invested in hard science and the other a horoscope-reading, gullible woman. Alice is a brilliant scientist who has been working at CERN in Geneva for eleven years. In 2008, she is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime: to work on the Large Hadron Collider to search for the Higgs Boson. Alice also has a son, Luke, who is critical of the environmental impacts of his mother’s work and believes his Aunt to be stupid. Jenny, Alice’s sister, lives in Luton where she sells medical insurance to women with vaginal cancer and looks after their ailing mother (Amanda Boxer), and has lost her baby because of following some advice she found online against vaccination. In addition to carrying the guilt, Jenny is also underhandedly reminded of her stupidity by her mother, who calls Alice “the clever one. Alice flies to Geneva for an impromptu holiday with her mother, who we are reminded is a retired scientist who missed out on the Nobel Prize because their father took the credit. Continue reading Mosquitoes →

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

August 7, 2017Reviews, Wyndham's TheatreYeside

“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill ” at The Wyndham’s Theatre.

July 29^th, 2017

“Bein’ arrested in this country,”….that’s a coloured folks’ tradition”

As I enter, Christopher Oram’s bar designs transform Wyndham theatre. The front rows of the stalls have been taken out and replaced with cabaret tables, and there is a bar onstage, with seating for more of the audience.

The play’s conceit is that we are watching Holiday perform in a north Philadelphia dive in 1959, a few months before her death at the age of only 44. Lanie Robertson’s play is essentially a one woman show. I was spellbound from the moment Audra McDonald arrives as the troubled jazz and blues singer, Billie Holiday on stage, cocooned in white, stumbling, whether tipsy or drug induced. In role, she drinks, she swears and she rambles, occasionally monitored and cajoled gently to sing by the pianist, Jimmy (Shelton Becton). Macdonald inhabits Holliday’s posture, the tilt of the head and the delicious, sumptuous, smoky voice which is spellbinding. At one stage, she re-enters, clutching a tumbler of booze or her beloved Chihuahua, Pepi, then stumbles about the platform and, in one heart-stopping moment, slips off it.

Amongst a full repertoire, we are given Halliday’s signature song, “ God Bless the Child” which was written for her mother who she call The Duchess; “Ain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do”, a grim justification of her right to self-destruct; and for me that heart-stopping lament for black victims of lynchings, “Strange Fruit” is particularly haunting. Continue reading Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill →

Ink

August 6, 2017AlmeidaYeside

Ink at The Almeida Theatre,

July 22nd, 2017

” Law to the Left, God to the Right”

I loved James Graham’s last work, “This House”, which explored the hung parliament of the 70s, but loved “Ink” even more. The drama traces the transition from The Sun as a failing broadsheet (Never knew that! before!) to a populist-driven tabloid.

The stage is set with positioned “Five ‘W’s”: “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where,” and “Why.” Referring back to the Five “W”s helps journalists address the fundamental questions that every story should be able to answer. Here, their answers in the present instance: Who? Publisher Rupert Murdoch and Editor Larry Lamb. What? Murdoch’s takeover, and Lamb’s reinvention, of The Sun newspaper. When? 1969-70. Where? Fleet Street, London, when it was still so deeply identified with the press that in this play it’s simply referred to by locals as “the street”. Why? Ah, now, that’s the interesting one.

From the outset, The Murdoch Sun is a byword for “fun” and, above all, sales and never claims to be investigative. Murdoch’s ambition was for it to overtake the Daily Mirror within a year of his buying The Sun from IPC, owner of the Mirror. The first half of the play, at least, shows liberalism as a contrast to the increasingly stuffy preachiness of the Mirror under Hugh Cudlipp (David Schofield). Cudlipp is a believer in the duty of newspapers to guide and educate the working class. S, its two warring philosophies – holding up a mirror to who we are versus showing who we might be and, when judged solely by the market, the former wins out. It is with this mind set that Murdoch is able to persuade Lamb to take on his former employers, whispering, tactically that he never got to edit the Mirror because he wasn’t part of the old boys’ network.

Continue reading Ink →

Oslo

April 19, 2017ReviewsYeside

“Oslo” at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Centre,

New York 7th April, 2017

“I can’t give up the idea that suddenly everything will change and my stomach will be my friend.”

I have only dim memories of the 1993 agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis which had been secretly arranged by a Norwegian couple, who had spent from April 1992 until September of the following year coercing, negotiating, plotting and planning to bring this agreement to life.

The play imagines the events leading up to the accord. Yes,it is long, wordy and jam-packed with names, dates and historical exposition, but also well-crafted and nuanced, with interesting characters injected with humour. The subject matter seems increasingly vital at this time of heightened instability throughout the Middle East.

First we meet Terje Rød-Larsen (Jefferson Mays) and his wife Mona Juul (Jennifer Ehle). From April 1992 to September 1993, the time span of the play, he was director of the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Sciences, and she was an official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, working for Johan Jorgen Holst, then-Norway’s foreign minister, who was married to Marianne Heiberg (Henny Russell), an executive at the Fafo Institute working for Rød-Larsen.

The story of how on earth this ambitious and likeable diplomatic couple became such vital power-players is sketched quickly, with the aid of a panoramic screen behind the stage, flashing images up of key, mostly tragic, moments in the Middle East conflict. They are complicated beings in a less-than-perfect marriage with a sometimes faltering grasp of the international time bomb they have set ticking. Continue reading Oslo →

The Verdict

March 24, 2017Yvonne Arnaud, GuildfordYeside

The Verdict: Margaret May Hobbs’s stage adaptation of Barry Reed’s crime novel

At the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

24^th March, 2017

‘There is a time for living and a time for dying……It was not her time to die’

I have fond memories of the 1982 Oscar nominated Sidney Lumet film version of David Mamet’s play, ‘The Verdict’ with my childhood throb, Paul Newman in the lead role of the role of the Frank Galvin. In light of this, the Middle Ground Theatre Company set itself a tough act to follow so I make no apolodgies for this lack-lustre review.

Even before the play starts, the scene is being set with Galvin (Clive Mantle), lying on the stage floor and waking up from a boozy night as the audience fill their seats. Galvin is a Boston lawyer who has had his problems over the years – a lost job, a messy divorce, a disbarment hearing, all of them traceable in one way or another to his alcoholism.

Galvin bravely takes on a malpractice suit against a Catholic hospital in Boston where a young woman was carelessly turned into a vegetable because of a medical oversight. Nuala Walsh is the mother who is looking for reparation for her bereft daughter and grandchildren. It is the ethics of the questionable medical malpractice by the hospital hung over the heads of all involved that creates the emotional weight to the performances as the audience followed the twists and turns of the story began to unravel. Sadly, the plot grinds along and at times accents slip.

From a state of inebriated depression to the rather unlikely sexual liaison with a young waitress (Cassie Bancroft) and on to his commanding presence in court, Clive Mantle nails facets of Galvin’s character. Alongside is Jack Shepherd, as Galvin’s mentor, Moe Katz, adding to the moral crusade for the truth. Continue reading The Verdict →

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