Holding the Man

Big Boots Theatre Company are off to a roaring start with this intimate and emotionally searing production of Tommy Murphy's dramatisation of Timothy Conigrave's memoir. Finished only two weeks before Conigrave's death from an AIDS-related illness in 1994, the work is a monument to the love of his life John Caleo.  The book won the United Nations Human Rights Award for Non-Fiction in 1995. Murphy's dramatisation has itself won numerous awards and has been made into a film. The last production in London was at the Trafalgar Studios in 2010.

At the Jack Studio Theatre, director Sebastian Palka mounts a fluid, fast and smoothly moving production full of imaginative touches and emotional insight. The intelligent and robust direction means the story never becomes confusing, despite the tiny ensemble cast performing multiple roles, changing costumes and making set changes on stage throughout.

The leads are well cast physically: Christopher Hunter as Tim and Paul-Emile Forman (making his professional debut) as John make a handsome couple with striking chemistry. Hunter emanates an easy appeal and charm which holds the audience's sympathy despite his character's sometimes dubious choices, but for me Forman's luminous John is the emotional bedrock of this work. Written knowingly with guilt as an elegy, John is idealised to a degree which could make him remote - it is a huge credit to Forman who finds the human being in this role and so compellingly inhabits him.

There is good work from the ensemble who mesh strongly as a team. A stand-out is Marla-Jane Lynch, very enjoyable in all her characters but especially affecting in her role as John's mother.

Design and sets are wisely kept low-key and minimalist. I thought the musical and sound choices were appropriate and emotionally helpful, but perhaps a touch too loud in this very intimate space.

Jack Studio

at the Brockley Jack

17 Jan- 4  Feb 2017

Photographs courtesy of Nicolas Chinardet 

Spitting Image / King's Head Theatre

Back to the King's Head for this very interesting revival of Colin Spencer's Spitting Image - the first openly gay play performed in the UK back in 1968 after the decriminalisation of homosexuality and (presumably) the relaxation of theatre censorship, and never since revived.

It played for two months to packed houses at the Hampstead Theatre (greeted with much tutting by the Evening Standard), and transferred to the West End. In the disapproving atmosphere of the times however, the play could not find a publisher, and disappeared. It's amazing that Adam Spreadbury-Maher, artistic director of the King's Head, discovered a script in the Oscar Lewenstein theatre archive at the V&A Museum, and hence this revival was possible.

One half of a gay couple falls pregnant and the play explores the consequences both for their relationship and in society. What is amazing is at the time it was written the idea of gay couples bringing up children was totally unthought of - the play uses it as a metaphor for coming out - but now of course in the era of gay marriage it's pretty topical.

Spitting Image's giddy and surreal social satire sits well in the context of Orton and Stoppard. I actually thought the satirical element worked best - the couple squabbling over dirty nappies and relationship issues less so. The huge concern the play demonstrates over crushing state surveillance is sadly right up-to-date. Nothing's changed there.

The acting was all on point and brought out all the fun of the piece. The set design aimed for minimalism but actually was quite tricksy and distracting with actors having to carry props on and off awkwardly all the time. At least in the first half Sally Ambrose entertained us while this was happening with her groovy 60's dance moves. In the second half she became a character in her own right, mooning after Alan Grant's Gary, the gay man struggling against the odds to keep his relationship and child.

Cut Throat / Camden Fringe

Cut Throat by Jean-Philippe Baril Guerard as adapted by Matt Cunningham. – London Irish Centre

I caught this play on the penultimate night a week ago now, so this is a quick late review.

The publicity promised:

"How far can you go in the name of free speech?

Does having the right to speak equal having the right to say everything?

In Cut Throat, the right to speak does not come with a promise that the speech be valid or harmless. 

14 characters speak their minds freely about race, religion, relationships, bodies, sex, money, and the meaning of life, without any filter, walking the thin line between comedy and cruelty. An irreverent play that will make you laugh... and cringe."

This was a relatively short, intense play with 14 characters, so nevertheless quite ambitious as the first production by Trip and Guts Theatre. The play takes the form of a series of monologues or largely one-sided two-or three part scenes (mostly loosely unrelated in terms of 'plot' but clearly related thematically). The audience sits around four sides of a square, and the actors pop out from the audience's ranks to perform their roles.

All the actors played their parts with evident relish and panache, and the very wordy play cracks on at a great pace. Stand outs amongst a strong cast for me were Joseph Rain-Varzaneh as the mugger and Hannah Wilder as the long-suffering Usher - one of the shortest spoken roles but she appears throughout the piece as the long-suffering innocent target of the other characters' nastiness. I can see why this play would appeal to actors - firstly, each character gets a lot to say and is completely central whilst they say it, each character has an internal dramatic tension to reveal as the 'real' inner person breaks through an initial 'polite' or politically-correct outer shell; and there is external drama in each mini situation too.

We saw this play on the back of Chemsex Monologues, also created (obviously) around monologues. Monologues are an interesting theatrical device, notably introduced by Shakespeare to reveal a character's innermost thoughts. They are at once the most artificial of constructs, breaking any feel of 'realism' on stage but simultaneously the most powerful and direct communication between actor and audience there can be - really harking back to ground zero of narration - speaker to listener. There is a tendency in a monologue for an actor to reach for a kind of declamatory style, which we thought a bit difficult in Chemsex but this works strongly in Cut Throat. I think this is because Chemsex the play has realistic fundamental assumptions - the play is about 'real' characters and plot whereas Cut Throat skews more conceptual. The characters are very far from realistic, are usually quite easily identifiable stock contemporary types  - and each scene and character unfolds in a similar way, repeating the themes of the play almost like an abstract pattern until the climax. My favourite character, the mugger, is completely surreal, made up as he is of bravura flights of literary language and philosophy completely alien I would imagine to any real mugger.

Altogether, a most stimulating evening.

The Chemsex Monologues

It's not often one hears of an actor playing two roles in different plays at the same time - however, for the last week you could catch Denholm Spurr  as Damien/Jean Baptiste in 'The Past is a Tattooed Sailor'  by Simon Blow at the Old Red Lion Theatre (through to 27 August)  and Nameless in 'The Chemsex Monologues' by Patrick Cash at The King's Head Theatre (last performance tonight).

In fact, make that three roles! (Two different ones in the same play.)

One can only applaud Spurr's energy, commitment and enthusiasm in taking his final bows (after a two hours + performance) at the Old Red Lion and then dashing up Upper Street to The King's Head to don his makeup for Nameless. It would have been fun to catch both performances in a marathon night of theatre, but we took things much more sedately, catching Sailor last weekend (review here) and Chemsex last night after a quick dinner at Belanger on Islington Green.

They are both new gay plays by gay authors performed in pub theatres in Islington simultaneously, but that is where the similarities end.

Sailor is an expansive, nostalgic, traditionally-structured piece whereas Chemsex is much more contemporary in focus and experimental in form. Four narrators appear in sequence with monologues from their individual perspectives on their relationship with Nameless and his story. The audience pieces together Nameless's situation from each fragment - each narrative is slightly unreliable due to their tangential relation to Nameless and the plot line and each character is wrapped up in their own concerns.

This structure gives a sense of urban anonymity and alienation, but also creates a considerable amount of suspense as we follow Nameless's story to its climax. The total separation of the actors also serves to heighten the pathos of Nameless's descent.

The acting was all good, which was so important here when you can't talk of an ensemble. Richard Watkins plays the Narrator - an 'Everygay' sort of character who bookends the play - with breezy charm. Charly Flight is Fag Hag Cath - amusing but very warm and human. Matthew Hodson plays Daniel the Sexual Health Worker - again, a lovable doofus doing his innocent best, a very heart-warming performance. Denholm Spurr's Nameless is the heart of the play and he gives it a terrific performance moving smoothly from humour to the emotional depths.

An urgent and well-considered piece of contemporary theatre; I'm really pleased to have caught it.

The Plough and the Stars

Confession time - I have never seen a Sean O'Casey play performed; nor have I read one. I usually tend to avoid overtly political drama.

However, as 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the Easter uprising I decided to honour my Irish ancestry and indulge my literary curiosity by seeing this revival at the National Theatre (itself mounted to mark the occasion, playing until 22 October 2016).

Reviews have been a bit mixed, so I took my seat with some trepidation. However, I was soon sucked into the world of the Clitheroes' Dublin tenement. This is really a full-blooded, lushly romantic and visually very beautiful production of a traditionally-structured drama. The politics of the play are sophisticated and rooted in the frailty of human character - O'Casey pulls no punches with the British army's occupation and artillery bombardment of Dublin but he is equally harsh on the shortcomings of the nationalists and totally mocks the pretensions of the play's socialist. Nevertheless, O'Casey was a socialist himself and demonstrates a sympathy with all the individual characters - even the British Tommies when they appear are decent blokes who would rather have a cup of tea - and instead he shows how they are all individually trapped in unequal and exploitative social conditions.

It is true that the actors do have varied degrees of success and consistency with their accents, and that some words are difficult to hear. The play is very literary and 'wordy' though, and the directors Howard Davies and Jeremy Herrin were probably wise to sacrifice pockets of legibility in favour of pushing the pace and drama overall.

What charmed me immediately was O'Casey's dexterity in the dramatic arts of foreshadowing, parallelism and contrasting. We first see Nora, the wife of a bricklaying Commandant in the Irish Citizen Army setting a table for tea; in the last act she sets it again in hugely different circumstances with a tragic outcome. In the second act there is a massive contrast between a political meeting outside a pub and the comic antics of a prostitute inside (this caused a riot at the play's premiere in Dublin). The third act, set in the street outside the tenement, starts off emphasising the poignancy of the characters' extreme poverty (Little Mollser clearly on the point of death from Tuberculosis); moves into the broad comedy of everyone looting when the British start to shell the city; followed ominously by the Irish Nationalist fighters with a severely wounded comrade escaping the inexorable British advance; and ending with the crisis between Nora and her husband, with the British soldiers very near. British soldiers make their physical entrance in the fourth act, and despite the horror of British military action the individuals themselves are ordinary guys just doing their job.

From today's perspective one could probably accuse the play of a kind of poverty porn (much played up by designer Vicky Mortimer's exquisite sets) - but on the other hand this is a function of the time it was written in. And surely it is so much more preferable to the Chav-bashing "Benefits Street"-style propaganda of today.

There are excellent performances from the female leads in particular - Justine Mitchell as Bessie Burgess and Judith Roddy as Nora Clitheroe are beautiful, poetic and tragic. Josie Walker as Mrs Grogan is funny and heart-warming; and Gráinne Keenan (Rosie Redmond) and Róisín O'Neill (Little Mollser) shine in smaller roles.

The Past is a Tattooed Sailor

It’s always pretty exciting to see new work, and a first play by a neophyte playwright.

Joshua, a posh but poor aspirant writer (Jojo Macari), seeks to create a closer relationship with his great-uncle Napier,  a bed-ridden ex-social butterfly and fading beauty shut up in his country mansion and living only through reminiscences of his past success amongst the social and artistic elite, as well as his raunchy liaisons with French sailors in Marseilles. Napier’s penchant for rough trade is shared with Joshua, who has a builder’s mate boyfriend Damien (Denholm Spurr) - shared quite literally as the bed-ridden Napier nevertheless craftily manages to put the moves on Damien.

There is good material in Tattooed Sailor, and an intriguing premise, but I felt the writing could have benefitted from further work editing and refining purpose and dramatic direction. I sense a number of unresolved issues in the writer’s emotional responses to these autobiographical events, which sadly accrue around the leading character Joshua, the cornerstone of the entire play:  weaknesses in the construction of this character impact the whole piece. Macari struggles manfully with this underwritten and confused role.

Bernard O’Sullivan and Nick Finegan are evocative, stylish and affecting as the older and younger Napiers - Finegan especially evokes the authentic note of a 1930s Bohemian dandy and rake and contrasts pleasingly with the more contemporary Joshua and Damien. Denholm Spurr exudes an effortless animal sensuality and displays rampant sexual chemistry with all three of the other leads - in French too as the titular tattooed sailor in a tryst with the younger Napier.

Overall, this play held my attention and I did enjoy the experience, with the caveat that I ended with feeling a much stronger play is hidden deep within.

The Winter's Tale

An ‘authentic’ performance in an historically-correct as-we-can-make-it Renaissance theatre could perhaps be a dry, academic affair but I emerged last night from the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse reeling. The visceral drama caused me to question if our contemporary theatre, whether with proscenia or without, with its powerful electric lighting and with all the artifice that modern technology can conjure, is not a waxwork effigy of what REAL drama can be. I’ve emerged confusedly pondering that drama does not depend on faultless sight lines and the most comfortable seats to experience the actors’ art. I had a great seat for Cymbeline in the same space - but I realised then conventional understanding of what a great seat is does not really apply to this space, so I was happy to try a very poor seat this time right up in the gods for The Winter’s Tale.

At first, I was disappointed. I was right at the back on a diagonal to the stage - so I had a seat with a back rest (bench seating otherwise pretty much throughout). I knew the pillar advertised to hamper sight lines was a small slender thing which wouldn’t bother me much but what I hadn’t realised was that the two rows of back-rest-free people sitting in front of me would lean forward. If you are unlucky enough to have a lady with a big hair do in front, that’s half the stage gone, and the pillar takes maybe another 10%. You are up at a very vertiginous rake to the stage, and peering down on top of the actors’ heads through glaring chandeliers. It is surprising just how much light 6 large chandeliers emit - however, even so, its quite dim on stage and even though this is a tiny space and the actors are relatively close you won’t really see their every facial expression very clearly in the golden glow.

However, you will hear even their whispers crystal clear. This space has an amazingly intimate acoustic (all that wood). And although there is a distinct stage area, it feels seamlessly part of the entire space - the audience very much feels physically and emotionally included in the actors’ world. This was particularly true of the trial scene, where Leontes appealed to us as the judges.

Candlelight itself creates an intimate atmosphere which enhances the emotional effect of the performance. This is what weirded me out - I realise our contemporary way of presenting theatre privileges the visual senses of the audience - and in fact bludgeons the eyes by maybe making things too easy to see. The visual restrictions of Renaissance theatre and its candle lighting force one perhaps to use one’s other senses and imagination more and encourage an active emotional participation.

The scene opens in Leontes’ court in Sicilia - as bright as can be, with all the courtiers dressed in white, and with Leontes himself in a gorgeous white doublet with metallic embroidery sparkling in the candlelight. I really admired John Light’s frighteningly rapid descent into psychotic violent jealousy. Rachael Stirling’s graciously statuesque Hermione at first is oblivious to her husband’s suspicions, then is falsely accused and piteously ends up in the trial scene in chains and dirty rags.

By this stage Leontes’s jealous madness has destroyed his entire family: he has broken with his life-long best friend, his son is dead of grief for his mother, Hermione herself has been humiliated in a show trial and has died, and her new-born baby is sent by the king to be exposed in a barren place. All his courtiers fear the king as a tyrant: only the feisty Paulina (brilliantly played by Niamh Cusack) bravely speaks truth to power.

The prison and trial scenes bring the first coups de théâtre. The lights at the opening are all gracious twinkling chandeliers. In the prison scene the chandeliers are all raised high (darkening the stage) and gaolers and prison visitors use braziers and lanterns. The braziers in particular feel rough and crude - visually echoing the King’s madness and the tragic turn of events. Characters are in dark cloaks now, and clever choreography with cloaks and hand-held lanterns throw up stunning effects of light and dark - strongly expressive faces and arms are lit up like a Caravaggio brought to life. Paulina’s and Leontes’ disputes in these scenes are particularly well emphasised.

And then, after the emotional storm of the trial, the chandeliers are all extinguished and the smoking stubs raised swiftly up high - the swinging, eerily smoking chandeliers , together with sound effects, marvellously evoke a storm at sea and on the dangerous coast of Bohemia.

This scene is played in the most complete darkness I have ever experienced in a theatre. We all know what happens next - “exit pursued by a bear” - and this production very nicely extends the tension to its maximum. Antigonus’s wildly swinging lantern is now the only source of light in the entire theatre, and throws careering, pitch black shadows everywhere.

And then after the descent into compete darkness and “the gap of time”, we open up into the light again. Extra chandeliers are lowered onto the shepherds’ festival celebrations, and even a fully blazing fire is carried on stage. Perdita, now fully grown, dances in her dazzling robes and veils with her prince Florizel to the minstrel’s music as if there was no fire hazard. I liked the music, singing and dancing in Bohemia very much: natural and fresh, it is completely organic with the environment and play. Prop’s to Steffan Donnelly’s Florizel - a capering, enthusuastic, slightly immature but very honourable and genial sort of chap. Also one must mention the extraordinary dance of the satyrs. Pagan, oddly disturbing and erotic. The comedic antics of the old shepherd, the clown and Autolycis also lighten the mood and prepare for the reconciliation scene ahead.

John Light pitches Leonte’s remorse just right in the final scene. It’s strange how odd this play reads as text with the king’s rapid emotional reverses but performed well the emotions work perfectly as drama and are believably human. Hermione is restored to us as the gracious queen we saw in Act 1. The play ends, as it opened, with the king kissing the queen.

This is a stunning, fresh and powerful reading of the play in an extraordinary and unique environment. I would urge you to see it if you can get tickets.

The Winter's Tale
Sam Wannamaker Playhouse
Shakespeare's Globe, London
October 2015 - April 2016

Sex with a Stranger

Stefan Golaszewski’s new play Sex with a Stranger running at the Trafalgar Studios this February is cut from unpromising cloth: a plot so slight it is barely there - a mundane tale of squalid infidelity - and a cast of three (as in “there are three in this marriage”). Out of these elements he manages to weave a totally engrossing and thrilling evening of theatre, hugely aided by stunning performances from Russell Tovey, Jaime Winstone and, making her West End debut, Naomi Sheldon.

The theatre is tiny, with the audience on the same level as the actors - they are literally close enough to touch; the audience exits treading over Ruth’s (Naomi Sheldon’s) shoes and mobile phone. This intimacy allows a naturalistic and detailed mode of acting: every tiny flicker of an expression registers; the actors are almost in close-up - yet Golaszewski undercuts this by presenting the story in broken fragments of scenes, jump-cutting backwards and forwards in the story, making the audience piece it all together.

The technique is cinematic but perversely, as Golaszewski pushes it to extremes even television wouldn’t pursue, it becomes highly theatrical. The anti-chronological development scrambles the emotional flow for the actors as they have to present widely varying emotions and interactions within split second changes. This clearly also presents challenges for the technical team, which they rise to with aplomb (as do the actors - there are lots of clothing changes: Mr Tovey is memorably down to his pants in one scene. I think “theatrical viagra” is the term I’m searching for).

As the play progresses we begin to understand this is about a relationship in crisis but in denial - what is unsaid becomes more important than what is said. The play delivers some magnificent pregnant pauses - Ruth’s silent entrance with an iron and ironing board is a stunner (as is the ending of the play). Golaszewski’s trademark off-kilter humour shines throughout.

I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark On Sundays

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great American playwright Tennessee Williams.

Some of the most famous post-war plays were written by Williams, largely in the 1950s. Some great actors made breakthrough, iconic performances in the plays on stage and on screen: Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman amongst them. Williams won the Pulitzer prize twice and achieved many other awards, and yet his reputation has perhaps dimmed over the years - the view is his later work in particular was disappointing.

This late play was never performed in his lifetime, or indeed ever published. The Cock Tavern Theatre in Kilburne certainly is to be congratulated for putting it on the stage for the very first time, in such an enchanting production. As it was the world premiere I thought I had to attend: something to add to my collection of theatrical experiences: the world premiere of one of a great dramatist’s plays - actually on his 100th birthday, no less. They don’t make them like this any more.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to enjoy myself so much - I saw Rose Tattoo at the NT a few years back and really hated all the simmering poetic sentimentality (and that was an early work!)

And INGDTADOS has all the classic Williams’ hallmarks - a potent, virile, sensual yet feckless and inert male in a doomed yet compelling relationship with a downwardly mobile idealistic female unable to maintain traction on reality and clearly fated never to achieve her ambitions. Seedy glamorous New Orleans surroundings, self-delusion, sex, the threat of violence, over-the-top melodramatic backstory, poetry, terminal illness - it’s all there. However, the new element in all of this is that it forms part of a play within a play.

This is all brilliantly staged, with the play’s director and author suddenly emerging from the actual audience to argue over the lines - we are witnessing the final read-through before previews start. The actors complain about their lines - “Who talks like this?” - Tennessee is clearly relishing getting back at his theatrical foes.

By highlighting the theatricality of the piece Williams cleverly creates a space which privileges the drama; to some extent protecting it from the critics. It’s allowed to be a conflation of hackneyed old tropes, seeking to shock only by upping the ante (the male lead is practically nude for virtually the entire play; there is quite a lot of sex -the actors complain about the sex scene; the director argues with the playwright about it - “it will scare off backers”)

As a commentary on his own work it’s completely fascinating and it has the contrary effect of making the melodrama more emotionally affecting. I only wish he developed this strand of the play some more - there are slight, tentative hints of Williams’s identification with his heroines, especially towards the end, which are really evocative and promising. However, as it stands the dramatic framing is not thematically developed and only tangentally touches the play-within-a-play: all too easily, one can imagine the drama existing without the framing elements. And one of the stand-out set-pieces - an incompetent stage-manager’s hissy fit right after missing a crucial cue - threatens to completely derail the action. As amusing as it is, and as much as the audience absolutely loved Graham Dickson’s performance as Hilary the stage-manager, Williams the playwright should either have cut this completely or integrated it more organically into the action of the piece. I think it’s worth comparing this to Michael Frayn’s meta-theatre play Noises Off, where the back stage / on stage action is completely seamless and forms an organic whole, something this Tennessee Williams play doesn’t quite achieve, even as it tantalisingly hints at what could have been.

Which is not to say it is unworthy - I loved this production. The intimate, low-key space and delicate design tremendously enhanced the experience of the play. All the acting was superb: Lewis Hayes was suitably Brandoesque physically and was very natural emotionally as Tye. Shelley Lang as Jane was also magnificently cast, in the tradition of Vivienne Leigh and Elisabeth Taylor. And Keith Myers as the author gave an authoritative Tennessee Williams.

All in all, a terrific birthday present for Tennessee Williams.

Idomeneo

Katie Mitchell’s production for the ENO grew on me as the evening went on, but the thought did arise watching the grand beige minimalist mid-century modern hotel lobby that masquerades as the Palace of King Idomeneo that updating opera productions to weird and wonderful times and locations (the Dr Who approach, if you like) has become too easy a default setting for modern producers.

Set designers Vicki Mortimer and Alex Eales do it well, but the minimalism is skin deep - the production presents multiple complicated sets (there’s an airport with executive and cattle class lounges; the palace garden becomes a screening room), with ambitious set changes for the backstage crew in between. Loud clunks and bangs from behind the fire curtain heralded the arrival of the final scene.

It would almost be more original going back to basics and doing an Idomeneo with authentic 18th-century costumes. The original Idomeneo Anton Graaf had a fantastic rococo fantasy of a costume. Can you imagine the sea monster? It can’t be right to do a production where the traditional (and let’s face it, scripted) sea monster does not appear. But alas, exact mid-century modern equivalents for sea monsters were not available to the designers, and the monster was cut (the interval crowd at the ice cream stall was highly indignant). In mitigation, the ENO does a truly memorable storm scene.

The orchestra led by Edward Gardner and the chorus were absolutely superb. I enjoyed all the leads too, with special honours to Emma Bell as the spoiled, seductive and insane Princess Electra.

Idomeneo
English National Opera
Coliseum 18 June - 19 July 2010

A New Life at the Globe

A New Life is about the life of Thomas Paine and is by  politically radical English playwright Trevor Griffiths, whose stage work peaked in the 70s but who has since been working as a screenwriter. His biopic of Thomas Paine fell through, so the Globe offered him the chance of reworking it for the stage. (2009 is the 200th anniversary of Paine's death.)


John, Caroline and I went on the last night when the Globe offered groundling places for £5 each. It was my first time at the Globe as a groundling! - Exhausting! - standing was hard on my hips - one really has to fight to keep one's sightline free, and the actors jostle you frequently (this production used the pit to the fullest extent for crowd scenes)

The playwright and a few celebrity actor guests were there, also politicos and lefties, school groups and tourists. An interesting audience. We thoroughly enjoyed the play, despite its faults.  Knowing next to nothing about Thomas Paine, it was interesting to learn more (Griffiths wove in many quotes from Paine's works).

The structure though was exhausting. Three hours on your feet is quite tiring - the first half told the whole story of the American Revolution, so it had a self-contained story arc - at the break one could assume the play was finished. But no - the second half took us to France for the French Revolution (another virtually completely self-contained story arc, with different characters). John seriously suggested leaving at the interval, but Caro and I were keen to stay to the end.

It was all fascinating, and the production and acting were wonderful (Dominic Dromgoole directed), and the audience was terrifically engaged, but the structure of the play let it down as a drama. It was very 'biopic' - just so much raw chronology on display. For me, not really a major problem as it was interesting to learn about the character but this certainly was no A Man for All Seasons or even Amadeus, let alone Shakespearian history. However, individual scenes and the dialogue were highly entertaining, and the production was energetic, imaginative and flowing. The entire cast deserves high praise (the majority play several characters each) but special mentions have to go to Keith Bartlett as the narrator (Benjamin Franklin) and John Light as Thomas Paine himself - in the thick of the action for a full three hours.


The play proposed Paine as a naive idealist whose radicalism was betrayed by both revolutions he helped inspire - the American Revolution compromised by wealthy individuals and corporations (Paine was very anti-slavery and a total egalitarian) and the French ignored his message of non-violence (he voted against the execution of Louis XVI). Finally he returned to America, where he was completely sidelined by puritanical society (he was an aggressive atheist). His funeral was attended by only 6 people, two of whom were freed slaves.

speaking in tongues - review

“A missing person. A mysterious stiletto. Relationships in crisis. In SPEAKING IN TONGUES, the seemingly random confessions of a group of strangers are pieced together into a powerful study of infidelity and interwoven lives, as Detective Leon Zat (John Simm) investigates the disappearance of a leading psychiatrist (Lucy Cohu).” 


One of the most exciting (and to me unexpected) features of blogging/twittering/flickring/general web 2.0-ing is actually meeting cyber friends in person. So I was thrilled when the charming and talented Zefrog of (newly renamed) blog Pink Sauce invited me to a preview of Speaking in Tongues. It was a great evening out. His review appears in Londonist. This is my take.

The production features some beautiful, supple ensemble acting from the cast of 4 (John Simm, Lucy Cohu, Ian Hart and Kerry Fox), who play 9 different characters in total. I can see why this text (by Andrew Bovell) would appeal to actors and directors - although the individual lines are simple and naturalistic, the writer patterns them largely in intercutting, almost mosaicized soliloquies, creating steep technical challenges. Meaning emerges haltingly through cross-jumps, cuts, and temporal distortions. The effect is frequently astonishing, really quite jaw-dropping - and it depends critically on perfect timing and interaction between the actors and the production team, which they pull off magnificently well.

At other times, however, Bovell’s technique can tend to slow things down and things get tangled up in lengthy, repetitious backstory. Concentration is critical. As the audience attempts to piece the story together clues can emerge from anywhere. If your concentration momentarily fails, you’ve lost it as the plot moves on.

The sombre, slightly seedy set works powerfully in the first act (largely bars and bedrooms) and opens out in the second, where back projection of a forest helps to create an ominous atmosphere. Lighting and music create flashes of beauty throughout.

Speaking in Tongues is playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 12 December 2009.

Russian Constructivism

Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism is on at Tate Modern until the 17th May. I have been twice but it’s been a challenge to review.

Constructivism’s tragedy was that the artists subsumed themselves totally in the bright hopeful dawn of the Russian Revolution - truly, they believed and strived for a better world for all, and their efforts were betrayed by Lenin and Stalin in favour of the aesthetic death of Soviet Realism. And Constructivism was then harshly suppressed. Artworks and artists were smuggled out to the west or hidden, or destroyed by Soviet apparatchiks.

However, like many revolutionaries the Constructivists lacked a sense of humour. Satire or playful social comment was beyond them; also, they consciously disowned as bourgeois the romantic notion of the artist as a revealer of deeper truths about the human condition. Instead, they explored industrial and theatrical design in the service of the Revolution.

Ironically, in that respect, they were pretty on message with Soviet Realism; they just expressed it in a thoroughly avant-garde style.

And their style has been profoundly influential - for example, London Underground’s fabric patterns are indebted to Constructivist examples. Also, contemporary typography and graphic design is built on Constructivist ideas.

The Tate has some excellent Constructivist theatrical set models. Exciting, as the magnificent stage in the Moscow 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, designed by the American John Casey, was based around the theme of the Russian avant-garde. (Ha! Bet you didn’t see where this was heading, did you?)

“He explained that "even before [he] worked with the Russians on the TEFI Awards in Moscow in 1998, [he] was inspired by and drawn to art from the Russian Avant Garde period, especially the constructivists... [He] tried to come up with a theatrical design for the contest that incorporates Russian avant-garde art into a contemporary setting, almost entirely made up of different types of LED screens." Casey explained that together, the various LED shapes which together form the finished product. Furthermore, large sections of the stage have the ability to move, including the circular central portion of curved LED screens which can be moved to effect and allows for each song to have a different feel.”

It’s great seeing Russia re-engage with its fantastic artistic heritage. I’m sure those pioneers would be gobsmacked by the magnificence of the set, if bemused and even appalled by its ideology.







The above two photos come from Ola Melzig's indispensable behind the scenes blog, Eurovisiondiary

theatrical experience of the year

A good year for me. Very memorable was the London premiere of Damon Albarn’s/ Jamie Hewlett’s Journey to the West at Covent Garden - a spectacular and joyous production in a house feverish with anticipation. I didn’t enjoy the CD nearly as much, though.

Peter Hall’s production of Pygmalion at the Old Vic was a complete delight; however my most memorable theatrical night night this last year has to be the NT’s mind-blowing Revenger’s Tragedy.

Round and Round the Garden

I finally saw the third part of Alan Ayckbourne’s The Norman Conquests trilogy early in December. Despite my reservations about the first episode, and despite reports that Round and Round the Garden was the weakest segment, I loved it. in the timeline of all three plays, RRG starts earliest and finishes last. Therefore, strictly speaking, I think one should see this one last, as it gives the final perspective on Norman’s shenanigans - although the plays convincingly demonstrate that humans are not susceptible to “final” analyses.

Appropriately for its outside setting, there is far more physical comedy in this play; but also some of the funniest lines. The audience was in raptures - the night I went had the most tumultuous applause of all three evenings.

Table Manners
Living Together

Living Together

I enjoyed the second part of Alan Ayckbourne’s Norman Conquests trilogy much more than the first, partly because I was better fed, and partly because I was in a better mood. The acting and production was as excellent as it was for the first play, and I was cunningly seated at an angle which got quite good views of the actors this time.

The same characters perform the same events – a horrific 1970’s country house weekend – but this time from the perspective of the living room. Conversations and events in this room expand and alter what we have already seen unfolding in the dining room (or vice versa, depending on which play you’ve seen first: it’s not supposed to matter).

The experience is quite flattering for the audience: one almost feels like God, knowing what is happening/going to happen/has just happened in the dining room. It creates a different dimension to one’s responses, which left me looking forward to the last segment. I have a bit of a waits ahead of me, though – we couldn’t get the date we wanted.

Table Manners
Round and Round the Garden

The Old Vic

Table Manners

What I learned on Friday night:

1) Let memories be. The teachers at my school performed a version of Alan Ayckbourne’s The Norman Conquests which had us all rolling on the floor. I realize now that Mr Hills had skillfully distilled 6 hours of drama into one half-hour of riotous hilarity. And anything done by teachers is intrinsically funny.

2) Don’t be a martyr! Felt awful Friday evening – nervous exhaustion from a frazzled week at work and a straight week of insomnia took its toll. I arrived at Waterloo unable to focus on buying a sandwich at M&S. Eventually I enjoyed a pre-theatre snack of a mini-prawn cocktail dip and an oatmeal, banana and apple juice smoothy. Yum. However it did the trick and kept me together for the play.

3) There are very funny bits in the play, but also extremely discomforting bits. It left me depressed.


4) The acting was good, and the old Vic has cunningly turned itself into a theatre-in-the-round: at huge cost and inconvenience, I’m sure, and to such little effect. I’m not that convinced the round brings the actors any closer, and it’s annoying to cope with actors’ backs. In fact, this aspect spoils the play quite a lot because one is constantly aware of the director arranging the actors so that everyone has an equal chance to see their faces. So it’s not natural; it’s every bit as contrived as a proscenium and at least with a proscenium you can see all the action!

5) I’ve bought a season ticket to the full three plays in the trilogy. On the basis of Table Manners, I’m not sure I would have bothered with the others. The acting and production is perfectly ok, and the plays haven’t dated, really, at all (cf Peter Shaffer) – it’s just the bleakness of the playwright’s vision really that turns me off.

Living Together

Round and Round the Garden

The Old Vic

The Revenger's Tragedy

I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat and avoid violence in entertainment, so the National Theatre’s Revenger’s Tragedy was not for me, so I thought. I only booked to go after the disappointment of Afterlife (all the Revenger’s reviews I read were brilliant – typically my luck to go for the dud instead). I finally saw it last night.

Wow! Interval saw me hurtling forth, highly discombobulated, in search of strong drink – but in a good way. This production is simply sensational. Absolutely fantastically designed and acted, with sublime use of the NT’s revolving stage. The sound and lighting was especially good too.

This is a very louche 80’s Versace sort-of Renaissance Italian court – sharp sexy club clothes; maximalist interiors featuring massive blow-ups of the most salacious bits out of Titian and Veronese. Gender-bending minions and principals in search of perverted sex. Murder and necrophilia. Huge animated skulls. The end of the first act sees the revolve go hyper-drive, with the duke savagely murdered by the protagonist to pounding underground club beats while watching his duchess having very noisy athletic sex with his bastard son. Phew! How very unlike the home life our own esteemed monarchy.

Absolutely wonderfully directed (and co-designed) by Melly Still. It ends this month, so catch it fast!

Journey to the West

This classic Chinese text’s title is pretty confusing to Westerners – the tale tells of a journey from China to India, both countries very far to the east of us. Calling India ‘the west’ just feels wrong, but of course to the Chinese it is quite simple fact.

Personally, I blame Diocletian’s division of the Roman Empire into “East” and “West” in AD285. To us Europeans, the East will always begin in the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
Heavens it’s been a while since I was last at the Royal Opera – to my shame, my last visit was pre-rebuild/extension, which puts it at least 8 years ago!

- But I was there last night for the London premiere of Damon Albarn’s, Jamie Hewlett’s and Chen Shi-Zheng’s opera Monkey: Journey to the West. It’s fabulous – the Floral Hall is a fantastic ‘see and be seen’ sort of space, and the terrace overlooking Covent Garden piazza and central London’s roofscape is just lovely for a snack or drink pre-performance, especially in the evening sun; the terrace catches soothing evening breezes. The Opera house was decorated monkey-style for the event, and was serving monkey cocktails. The capacity crowd was really buzzing with anticipation.

The opera itself is visually spectacular and very beautiful; brilliantly conceived by Jamie Hewlett. Chen Shi-Zheng directs the cast of thousands with amazing control – the focus on the story is sharp despite a cast of thousands doing absolutely stunning things – awesome acrobatics, aerial ballet, exciting kung-fu fights etc etc. It’s actually so complicated it’s remarkable the whole thing went off without a single apparent mistake.

Damon Albarn’s music is gorgeous; individually the numbers are very beautiful. However, as opera one can’t compare it to Verdi or Wagner – it’s fairly episodic, and there isn’t an arc of musical development over the full piece. However, I’m still looking forward to the CD being released.

I have to mention Fey Yang as the Monkey King – he was absolutely magnificent; endearingly cheeky, yet acrobatic and superb at the fighting (in character). An incredible performance, giving out 100% energy from beginning to end.

The three co-creators came on stage at the end of a well-deserved standing ovation.

Pygmalion

The West End Whingers were slightly premature in their praise for the apparently newly-oiled seats at the Old Vic. My seat last night was as squeaky as an annoyed bat – however, Peter Hall’s production of Pygmalion was so good this minor irritation evaporated. And the seat itself was in the distinctly posh part of the auditorium – the poshest I’ve ever been at the Old Vic (6th row central, stalls, no less).

I’m glad I shelled out, because the production and performances were so beautifully detailed it was wonderful to be able to appreciate them all close-up, as it were. The “Not bloody likely” scene was side-splittingly funny: Eliza’s (Michelle Dockery) partially-transformed accent got spontaneous applause mid-way through.

This was a belt-and-braces properly traditional production – down to real rain and a real taxi on stage. However, so intelligently done it was a tremendous pleasure. My doubts about Shaw were quite quelled.