All posts by Yeside

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’

Oppenheimer

April 7, 2015Guest Reviews, RSC, Swan Theatre - Stratford upon AvonYeside

‘Oppenheimer’ by Tom Morton-Smith at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

March, 2015

A guest review by Derek Linney

Oppenheimer provided us with the motivation to take a trip to Stratford and our first visit to the Swan Theatre. Apart from the appeal of the play’s subject we were attracted to see John Heffernan whose career we have followed with interest for a number of years. The Swan Theatre was a perfect setting for the play; the thrust stage enabling a closeness to the performance and an engaging experience. Tom Morton-Smith, the playwright, combines the personal story of Oppenheimer and the other physicists, the political context, especially that of the communist affiliations or sympathy of many of those scientists and the challenge of the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb at Los Alamos during WW2.

Although it touches upon the moral dilemmas of creating the first weapon of mass destruction this aspect is relatively briefly covered in comparison to the personal and political pressures of the Manhattan Project. This is justifiable in the context of the development of the bomb as the moral debate was primarily a later, post-war one; at the time the challenge was to develop the bomb before Nazi Germany could develop one. This context is especially critical given that many of the scientists involved were European émigrés who had first-hand knowledge of the horrors of totalitarian Germany. Continue reading Oppenheimer →

Taken at Midnight

March 6, 2015Reviews, Theatre RoyalYeside

Taken at Midnight – a debut play by Mark Hayhurst at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket
27th February, 2015

‘I knew right then I was going to be tested in some way and I knew I was going to fail.’

Usually I am resistant to phrases like: ‘following critical acclaim’ and ‘a sold-out season’. Such were the words following Jonathan Church’s world premiere production of ‘Taken at Midnight’ by Mark Hayhurst* after a sell-out season at Chichester Theatre. Reviews and some local positive feedback encouraged me to book.
Very simply, the source of the play was promising, referring to the little-known arrest and imprisonment of Hans Litten, a Jewish lawyer who had the audacity to summon Adolf Hitler as a witness at the trial of four militant Brownshirts (of the Sturm Abteilung or Storm Department) who stood accused of murder in the early days of Nazi Germany. The SA was a nasty brutish organisation, which Hitler later abandoned, murdering many of their principal commanders, though when he came to power in 1933 he still needed them. Litten humiliate the Hitler, only to be later persecuted and seized in a midnight raid after the Nazis sweep to power in 1933. The drama centres on Litten’s formidable mother’s campaign to get him released after he is taken into ‘protective custody’- all in the face of incredible personal risk. Spoiler alert: After five years of beatings and torture Litten hangs himself in Dachau in 1938.

Continue reading Taken at Midnight →

Muscovado

March 5, 2015Theatre 503Yeside

Muscovado by Matilda Ibini at Theatre 503
March 1st, 2015

‘Did you know that negroes have smaller brains than animals’

To see Matilda Ibini’s new play,‘Muscovado’ on first day of spring at Theatre 503 was such a good choice. It is a bitter sweet interconnected story of life on the Fairbranch sugar plantation in Barbados at the start of the 19th Century. As Jane Austen did in ‘Mansfield Park’, the play serves to remind us of British involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
With the slave-owners’ way of life under threat from abolitionists in the old country and the possibility of rebellion closer to home, various tensions abound throughout: that between slaves and owner, the unseen Captain, owner of the plantation, and everyone’s tormenter; the latter’s role as husband and his trapped wife, Miss Kitty (Clemmie Reynolds); and Parson Lucy (Adam Morris), is unsettlingly convincing as an abhorrent, self-righteous pantomime villain who exploits his clerical position for power and greed. Even though the characters slip at times into caricatures of the period, there is an emotional reality which remains credible throughout.

Continue reading Muscovado →

Der Fliegende Holländer

March 5, 2015Reviews, Royal Opera HouseYeside

‘Der Fliegende Holländer ’ or ‘The Flying Dutchman’ at the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden
Monday 9th February, 2015

‘My longing is for release:
O that it might come about through an angel like this!’

The time is the 17th century and the place is the Norwegian coast. ‘The Flying Dutchman’ tells the tale of the legendary, accursed phantom ship doomed to sail the oceans forever. The sole chance of salvation for the sea captain, the Dutchman, comes every seven years when the cruel gods allow him to go ashore to search for a woman who can be forever faithful to him, but any straying will condemn her to eternal damnation. His chance comes, however, when he meets Daland, ( Peter Rose), a sea captain; who is remarkably willing to offer his daughter Senta in exchange for the Dutchman’s riches.

The Dutchman is powerfully sung by the dark bass-baritone- brooding Bryn Terfel, though I have to admit I found the Dutchman’s moody complaints a bit wearisome. Continue reading Der Fliegende Holländer →

3 Winters

February 2, 2015National TheatreYeside

3 Winters at the Lyttleton Theatre
14th December, 2014

‘My great-grandmother was a barely literate working-class woman who had no voice in society to express whatever thoughts and desires she had. So I’m writing about what happened to female voices over a century’. Tena Stivicic

‘3 Winters’ continues the international vein of the National Theatre ended 2014. As the title intimates,Croatian writer Tena Stivicic’s ambitious new play spans 1945, 1990 and 2011 in Zagreb with the interplay of seminal events for the Kos family: a homecoming, a funeral and a wedding. All of which made me wish I had done some background reading of Croatian history.

The drama is a slow burn of a Chekhovian nature. An opening scene in 1945 provides the narrative springboard. The year is the birth of Communist Yugoslavia Rose King (Jo Herbert), her husband Alexander (Alex Price) and baby, Masha, together with her mother Monika (Josie Walker) are assigned by Tito’s new government a portion of the prosperous townhouse in which Rose’s mother had been a servant. 1990 reveals the first serious fractures in the Yugoslav federation that would lead to war in the Balkans. Masha (Siobhan Finneran) and her younger sister Dunya are both married. Masha has two daughters of her own, Lucia (Charlotte Beaumont) and Alisa (Bebe Sanders). By 2011, Croatia is on the brink of joining the EU, the family assemble for the wedding of Lucia (Sophie Rundle). Alisa learns that her absent, nouveau-riche brother-in-law has bought the once nationalised house. For the bride this is progress, for her sister it is capitalist greed as he is willing to purchase the house at the expense of other tenants who are forcibly evicted. Continue reading 3 Winters →

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

December 2, 2014National Theatre, ReviewsYeside

‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ at The National Theatre

22nd November, 2014

‘Everything around us is roses,
And we’re the shit in between’

In ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’, the lives of the poor are disposable. This is India, a country where the per capita annual income is only about £800; 70% live in slums, and have limited access to electricity, clean water, food, and educational opportunities. Slum children work as rag pickers, sewage cleaners and other unhealthy and dangerous jobs all around Mumbai, earning a few rupees a day in order to stave off their families’ hunger: the need is beyond understanding.
My only modern media image of slums in India is through films such as’ Slumdog Millionaire’ and ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, but ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ reminds me more of novels such as ‘A Fine Balance’ or ‘White Tiger’. The energetic script is an adaptation by David Hare of the Pulitzer prizewinning , Jennifer Boo ‘s non-fictional account of more than three years spent investigating and documenting life in the settlement of Annawadi by the main runway at Mumbai airport.
So, we have the setting: a city of contrasts, where immense wealth and extreme poverty are seldom apart.

Strangely though, optimism lies with the nearby airport; a source of some options for success – in waste and recyclable scavenging, in metal thievery, and, for a lucky few, regular service jobs in the hotels. A wall plastered with the words of an Italian tile company (beautiful forever … beautiful forever) provides the irony of recyclable trash. Schemes are fragile and global recession threatens the garbage trade. Continue reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers →

Inala

October 8, 2014Reviews, The Anvil, Theatre CompaniesThe AnvilYeside

‘Inala’ at the Anvil, Basingstoke October 1st, 2014

‘Home is beautiful. I will now go back home, because they love me there.’

‘Inala’ translates as ‘the abundance of goodwill’ and ‘harvest to reap’ in Zulu. This ambitious project is the brain child of composer, Ella Spira and Royal Ballet dancer, Pietra Mello-Pittman (aka Sisters Grimm) creating a new language of dance. South African choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo (LBM) , in particular, Joseph Shabalala collaborate on this dance-theatre production with Ella Spira and choreographed by Rambert Dance Company artistic director, Mark Baldwin.
On stage, the nine singers and 11 dancers, some from Rambert and the Royal Ballet, are all performers together. The dancers don’t sing, but the choir do dance.
Unless you speak Zulu, it’s impossible to know what the choir are singing as there are no surtitles to the eighteen songs – but it doesn’t really matter. There is no obvious narrative line. Instead, for the most part, we are given fleeting glimpses into the lives of ordinary people, going about their work, living their lives. Continue reading Inala →

Wonderland

August 20, 2014NT LiveYeside

Wonderland by Beth Steel
At Hampstead Theatre
28th July, 2014

‘I’m the son of a son of a son of a collier’s son, the last in a long line’

Unfortunately, I was unable to see this live in the theatre but couldn’t believe my luck when the drama was live-streamed. Fortunately, Hampstead Theatre believes in accessible theatre to all, wherever they may be.

The last play I saw about a group of miners was ‘The Pitman Painters’: miners in Ashington, Northumberland, who became respected painters after seeking art tuition in the 1930s. ‘Wonderland’ is no cultural, romanticised venture, though; here Beth Steel focuses on a Nottinghamshire coalmine to mark the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike. It is the mid- 80s when Britain still had a coal industry. The National Union of Mineworkers strike against a programme of colliery closures – which their leader, Arthur Scargill, argued was politically motivated and would involve far more shut-downs than the official list state. Seizing on the NUM’s refusal to hold a national ballot to endorse local strikes that were escalating through Britain’s coalfields, the majority of traditionally moderate Nottingham miners continued to work, overturned the local NUM executive and formed a breakaway union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. The split made the Nottinghamshire coalfield the focal point of an often-violent dispute amongst co-workers, communities and friends. The miner was also at the centre of a never-ending class war.
The narrative follows two young recruits who are about to learn what it is to be a miner, to be accepted into the close camaraderie and initiated into volatile workplace conditions. At times, Steel lapses into caricature and the bawdy humour becomes wearing but what is achieved is a convincing compassionate drama of the miners’ plight during the strike. Continue reading Wonderland →

The Nether

August 6, 2014Reviews, Royal Court TheatreYeside

‘The Nether’ by Jennifer Haley

At the Royal Court Theatre, Jerwood Downstairs

26th July, 2014

‘Just because it is virtual doesn’t mean it isn’t real’

‘The Nether’ by American playwright, Jennifer Haley is one of the most exciting plays I have seen this year, not only for its uncomfortable dystopic exploration of its subject matter, but also for its visually stunning set design.

Haley’s world is a future where anyone can live through an avatar and experience anything imaginable. My hesitation in seeing this production came when I learned of the topic to focus the play’s discussion: Haley bravely uses the premise of paedophilia to polarise and challenge our moral perspective.

Aside, I remember my daughter being once addicted to ‘Myst’, an immersive computer game experience. Although the ostensible objective is the solution of the puzzles, the actual purpose for playing ‘Myst’ is the exploration of a seemingly real world that the creators of the game have made. The next generation of this game is the idea reworked to play ‘Sims’, where the way to achieve happiness is to satisfy your Sims’ needs. In order to do this, it is possible to create, direct and manage the lives of SimCity’s residents.

I recalled the game as the audience learns of the Hideaway, a vitual Darknet of The Nether; a paedophile’s paradise created by, ironically, a Mr Sims (a superb, sugar daddy performance from Stanley Townsend) who provides his guests with the perfect getaway to explore every part of these darkest fantasies – the abuse and murder of children. Yet, those involved are prisoners of their own desires. Continue reading The Nether →

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