Review: The Go-Between (Royal & Derngate Northampton)

Re-visiting a diary kept during one’s adolescence is inevitably a squirmy experience. In this musical adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel (originally workshopped by Perfect Pitch) with music by Richard Taylor and a book by David Wood (both share credit for the lyrics), Leo Colston, a tweedy, repressed bachelor in his sixties declares angrily to the crowd of Victorian ghosts who stifled his emotional development fifty years earlier in 1900, “The past is a foreign country – you do things differently there.” In response, they beg Leo to let them go from the shackles of his memory. There is a sub-aqueous quality to Michael Pavelka’s set comprising of tarnished mirrors at skewed angles and a sepia colour palette  (Leo’s ‘Lincoln green’ suit is the most conspicuous flash of colour), reminiscent of a once-grand stately pile that has been neglected for years.

Warned by his widowed mother that the upper classes live very differently, twelve-year-old Leo arrives to spend the summer at the Norfolk estate of his school chum Marcus’s untitled but certainly entitled family. As one of the only children in a house full of grown ups, he is intoxicated by and becomes the protégé of Marcus’s beautiful elder sister Marian and the ‘postman’ who delivers messages between her and the ‘ladykiller’ tenant farmer Ted Burgess. If Hartley’s writing can be compared to Henry James (in style and themes, charting a child’s loss of innocence and the taboo of sexual relationships across the class divide), it seems apt that Taylor’s beautifully integrated and shimmeringly lovely score with snatches of Gothic menace has echoes of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (as well as Sondheim’s Passion), lavishly scored for a grand piano played onstage by Jonathan Gill. Everything is seen through Leo’s eyes in Wood’s very faithful adaptation, and so there isn’t a love duet as Leo never sees the lovers together.

Roger Haines employs gracefully choreographed movement to create images that, as befits Taylor’s musical style, aren’t quite set pieces but have the same kind of impact. Stuart Ward’s ‘wild’, sinewy Ted, upon whom Leo depends for his sentimental education, bursts in on civilised bathing party; Leo celebrates his heroism as twelfth man in the crucial cricket match between the Hall and the village (to my mind, Hartley was unique in being able to make cricket exciting) and there is an animalistic denouement enacted by phallic umbrellas. Tim Lutkin’s lighting is a key player in the storytelling, evoking the glorious sunshine and the coming storm as well as the shifts in time.

Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is a recurring motif, tying in neatly with the deadly nightshade (belladonna). The idea of a vampiric woman who seduces men and leaves them helpless is all too clear to the audience, while Marian’s upstanding intended Hugh Trimingham (Stephen Carlile), an aristocrat disfigured in the Boer War, clings to a soon-to-be outdated chivalric code in which “Nothing is ever a lady’s fault.” Sophie Bould offers a precise soprano as Marian and the children are just precocious enough with splendid singing and acting abilities: Adam Bradbury makes a sweetly snooty Marcus and William Miles’s wide-eyed and inquisitive Leo ably anchors the show alongside the outstanding James Staddon as his damaged adult counterpart.

The Go-Between entwines adult secrets and lies with the careless cruelty and destruction wreaked by the upper classes’ inborn sense of the world revolving around them (Marcus informs Leo, “Don’t thank the servants – that’s why they’re there”); the rich symbolism of Hartley’s writing is acutely dramatised in an intelligent, heartfelt and delicately realised gem of new British musical theatre writing that very much deserves a further life beyond this world premiere tour.

Written for Exeunt

Review: The House of Bernarda Alba (New Diorama Theatre)

The flagship show of Suspense 2011 with its theme of puppetry and politics, Yas-e-Tamam’s production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba about a manipulative widow and her five daughters living isolation against an impending backdrop of fascism is the company’s British debut, having performed in Spain, France, Lebanon and their native Iran. Iran isn’t known for its theatrical or puppetry tradition (at least not in Britain); the choice of source material with the implicit parallels between 1930s Spain and the contemporary Middle East (Almeida Theatre will also be presenting a Middle Eastern-set production of this play in 2012) combined with an arresting visual style fused together to create a nightmarish world of oppression and brainwashed conformity.

Condensed into an hour and performed to a pre-recorded soundtrack in Farsi without surtitles, the puppeteers (revealed at the end to be two women and a man) are life-sized versions of the puppets, dressed in black robes that resemble both nuns’ habits and burkas. The puppeteers’ faces are covered with white masking material and like the puppets have crudely stitched identical, featureless faces with stitches covering their faces and hands like scars. Reza Mehidizade’s effectively simple set comprises of wooden boxes and suitcases of various sizes and the puppets emerge from a long, narrow box like a coffin during Bernarda Alba’s husband’s funeral, with echoes of the undead as these forbidding rag dolls crowd together accompanied by mournful music.

On the predominately black stage, flashes of colour appear in the form of a red horse and the threads on an embroidery frame from which the ill-fated youngest daughter Adela hangs herself. Sewing, a traditionally female activity, is a recurring motif, a symbol of creativity and a weapon, as Alba threatens one of her daughters by mining sewing up her mouth and therefore taking away her ability to speak.

The storytelling in Zahra Sabri’s production doesn’t transcend language as much as would be ideal and it would benefit from surtitles to make the nuances in the story more comprehensible and to get a clearer sense of individual voices and characters. As it stands, it is daringly radical in itself by charging these blank-faced puppets with political fervour in a world where individual self expression is not something to be encouraged.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Speechless (Arcola Theatre)

 Taking its cue from Marjorie Wallace’s 1986 book The Silent Twins charting the story of the ‘elective mute’ twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, Polly Teale (who also directs) and Linda Brogan’s play Speechless (which premiered at Edinburgh last year) is the ‘other’ play currently in London that opens with a rendition of William Blake’s hymn ‘Jerusalem.’ June and Jennifer were Welsh-born of West Indian parents who, like many others, believed Great Britain to be the promised land. Like Shared Experience’s recent production Brontë, the Gibbons are another troubled set of sisters with literary ambitions (we see them staying up all night ferociously typing their novels) who operate in a fantasy world; they refuse to speak or make eye contact with others, but, when alone, show themselves to be highly perceptive and articulate observers of the world around them.

The love-hate relationship between the sisters is exemplified in the visceral opening montage as they strangle and embrace each other in confinement at Broadmoor. The story is narrated in a flashback: having been asked to leave their secondary modern where they are the only black pupils and the victims of racist bullying at the age of fourteen, they are referred to a specialised support unit where the teachers are addressed by their first names and no uniform is worn (their mother does not approve). Mrs Gibbons (Anita Reynolds) is bemused as to how her ‘twinnies’ who have had a good Christian upbringing could find themselves in such a situation, yet the problem began when they were only four.

There are fearless performances by Natasha Gordon and Demi Oyediran as Jennifer and June, who make remarkably believable teenagers. Their mirrored movements and silent communication out of the furthest corners of their eyes is truly unnerving, but alone in their bedroom, they share the same anxieties as any ‘normal’ teenage girls who are curious about romantic love, dislike their appearance and feel embarrassed of their mother, excluded from the other RAF wives’ coffee mornings and Tupperware parties, making fun of her strong West Indian accent and attempts to be British. The idolisation of royalty, with the peeling images of Lady Diana on the wall and a delightful re-enactment the Queen’s 1977 Silver Jubilee with their (white, blonde) Barbie dolls shows the power of pageantry on their imaginations, though some of the references to 1980s popular culture are rather heavy-handed.

The only male presence in the cast of five, Kennedy (Alex Robertson), is clumsily shoehorned into the narrative. Robertson is far too mature to convince as the troubled American youth to whom the twins lose their virginities in a most unromantic fashion while Mrs Gibbons swoons as Charles and Diana’s fairytale romance culminates on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The disturbing parallel of these sacrificial lambs takes place against a backdrop of rioting that is brought to life by a storm of clutter.

Focusing on the twins’ adolescence and ending with the arson attack on their school that had them committed to Broadmoor, the most bizarre twist in the story – Jennifer died on the day that she and June were discharged – isn’t dramatised. If it was fiction, it would seem too symbolic to be convincing. The separation is hinted at by portraying Jennifer as the more domineering twin with her declarations of “You are Jennifer. You are me “ Unlike many other fact-based plays, there isn’t a projected postscript explaining what happened next, leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions from this somewhat disjointed dramatisation of a story that exemplifies the idea of truth being stranger than fiction.

Written for Exeunt

Review: The Last of the Duchess (Hampstead Theatre)

Nicholas Wright’s new play directed by Richard Eyre based on Booker Prize shortlisted author Lady Caroline Blackwood’s book of the same name dealing with her attempt to interview a widowed Duchess of Windsor in 1980 has a poetical allusion in its title, accentuated by the Duchess being something of a fantasy figure around whom the ideas of memory and artistic representation revolve.

The impediment to Lady Caroline’s interview is the octogenarian Maitre Suzanne Blum, the Duchess’s lawyer, also a companion cum gaoler. Under Blum’s orders, no one is allowed to see the Duchess; she might be completely senile, she might even be dead. Her jewels are being sold anonymously at auction and the housekeeper is wearing her furs. Denied access to the Duchess, Blackwood re-casts the profile with Blum (only two years younger than the ailing Duchess) as the focus, leading to a battle of wills and egos between two stubborn women, which ultimately comes down to each vowing to outlive the other.

Mrs Simpson herself only appears in a fantasy sequence at the beginning of the play in a youthful guise, the decadent jewellery collecting, ‘vawdka’-addicted socialite of lore. Caroline’s re-imaging of Wallis’s story as a twisted Gothic fairytale is reflected by the way in which it is as if time has stood still in the Windsors’ Bois de Boulogne home, occupied by people who by 1980 are relics and anachronisms. This eighteenth-century salon (designed by Anthony Ward) filled with Ancien Regime objets d’arts is untouched by modernity. The youngest character, Blum’s assistant and an ingratiating collector of influential people Michael Bloch (the excellent John Heffernan), gives the impression of being born in the wrong era, in a striped jacket that makes him look “like something out of The Boy Friend.”

Sheila Hancock employs a superb French accent and regal mannerisms as the indomitable Suzanne Blum, who, the Simpson connection aside, had a remarkable career, being the daughter of a Jewish butcher (the Windsors’ cosying-up to Hitler isn’t mentioned) who qualified as a lawyer in the 1920s. A model of professional discretion only offering sycophantic anecdotes (the Duke and Duchess were apparently renowned for their charity – the Duke would open doors for unimportant people) and adamantly against using her client’s celebrity for self-promotion, she is won over by the glittering prospect of being photographed by Lord Snowdon. Her sparring with Anna Chancellor’s dishevelled, vodka-fuelled journalist (immortalised by her husbands Lucian Freud and Robert Lowell in art and poetry) is splendidly done; it seems quite plausible that she has the willpower to live forever.

I couldn’t help but be rather unsettled by Diana Mosley (a relation of Lady Caroline by marriage and the author of a cut-and-paste biography of the Duchess) and her repellent political views being treated as a comedy turn like a favourite eccentric aunt, receiving gales of delighted laughter (somehow the dialogue automatically becomes funnier when delivered by a Mitford sister). Angela Thorne’s portrayal of Lady Mosley’s breezy anti-Semitism is all too convincing with impressively arched vowels, but the idea of a Nazi that the nation took to its bosom is a deeply troubling one, which strikes me as the real demon in the story, though probably not Wright’s intention.

Wright touches upon the plight of being widowed at any age, the fear of being kept alive like a “breathing cabbage” and journalistic ethics with delicacy but doesn’t explore them to fruition. It’s a play that has the rather smug surface gloss of a beautifully photographed high society magazine, one that is lovely to look at, finely acted and pithily written, but has more to do with namedropping in gilded exile than offering a huge amount of insight.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Britannicus (Wilton's Music Hall)

The enchanting Wilton’s Music Hall resembles many things, including a bath house or forum with its high ceiling and immersive acoustics, making it an ideal setting for the grandeur and ruthlessness of the Roman Empire with its obscenely complicated genealogy. Irina Brown’s stylish modern-dress production of Jean Racine’s 1669 tragedy Britannicus (in a new translation by Timberlake Wertenbaker, co-Artistic Director of Natural Perspective Theatre Company with Brown) offers the opportunity to see the space back to front: the audience sits on the stage and the performance takes place on a tiled floor with the balcony as a backdrop. Only a few upturned transparent plastic chairs adorn the floor and a plastic shower curtain is pulled back to reveal a junk-filled storeroom stuffed with trunks, books and decapitated marble busts (designed by Chloe Lamford), possibly a nod to all the crumbling ambitions mouldering away.

Many a tyrant’s reign begins with optimism: as the play opens, the late Emperor Claudius has been succeeded by Nero, the son of his last wife Agrippina (also his niece, for whom he overturned the laws regarding incest), rather than his own son Britannicus. Britannicus (a fairly minor character in his own tragedy) is in love with Junia (Hara Yannas), the only surviving member of her aristocratic family, who becomes Nero’s own lust object. Nero’s notorious reputation precedes him, yet the underlying implication here is that his fate wasn’t pre-ordained having been given too much power at too young an age (Matthew Needham plays him as a louche and petulant teenager), pushing his authority to the limits, commenting, “I’m tired of being loved – I want to be feared.” If Racine is speculating about what kind of Emperor Britannicus might have been, Alexander Vlahos portrays an idealistic and hot-headed young man, well-meaning and ardent in his love for Junia, but no match for the courtly machinations that conspire to destroy him.

There’s no mother quite like a Roman mother (perhaps the play ought to be called Agrippina) and Sian Thomas’s frostily sensual and conniving matron of impeccable lineage very much dominates the proceedings. It's a gripping portrayal of a relationship between a mother and son in extraordinary circumstances. Agrippina is scornful of the powerful men from whom she is descended, unable to claim power herself as a woman, and schemes to realise her ambitions through her son. When she cannot bear the thought of losing Nero to another woman or to the Empire itself, her jealousy manifests into something almost vampiric.

There is something (to my mind) inherently static about Racine’s style, in which the most exciting moments take place off-stage and are reported second-hand (as in Greek tragedies), though Wertenbaker’s robust use of language lends the story a contemporary resonance. The ending is a beginning in itself that demands a sequel as the real horrors of Nero’s reign have only just begun ­– if ever there was an argument against inherited power (take for instance the Middle Eastern dynasties very much in the news at present), this is it.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Union Theatre)

It’s extraordinary that it took two people (Larry L. King and Peter Masterson) to write the book for Carol Hall’s true-events-based 1978 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as it’s as much of a dramaturgical disaster as the Union’s recent offering The Baker’s Wife. These two flawed 1970s musicals have very different performance histories: The Baker’s Wife understandably flopped, yet The Best Little Whorehouse ran for 1,584 performances on Broadway, where it returned after a national tour with the original leads and was later filmed starring Dolly Parton. It might be a show that doesn’t try to be anything other than light entertainment, but that doesn’t mean that the queasy sexual politics should be accepted with an indulgent shrug as a harmless ‘bit of fun.’

An inaudible introduction charting the history of The Chicken Ranch and how it passed into the hands of Miss Mona narrated by Doatsey-Mae (Lindsay Scigliano), a waitress in the greasy spoon next door and a failed prostitute, is an unpromising start from which Paul Taylor-Mills’s production never really recovers. Miss Mona runs what she believes to be a respectable sort of house where “a certain kind of French” is spoken (‘guests’ rather than ‘customers’ and ‘sample salesmen’, not ‘pimps’), a high level of pastoral care is provided and the local Sheriff (an uncomfortable James Parkes) is an old friend. She and her girls live together like one big happy family; the conflict comes in the form of a campaign led by squealing television anchor and evangelist Melvin P. Thorpe (an immensely grating turn by Leon Craig in a Boris Johnson-style wig) to get the establishment closed down. The second act merely ties up a few loose ends.

There are no romances between whores and clients (it’s unusual to find a musical without a love story), none of the girls try to rebel and the old spark between Miss Mona and the Sheriff isn’t re-lit. A football team promised a field trip to the whorehouse as a special treat get the most memorable choreography with interesting display of male bonding featuring some athletic dancing with towels. Designer Kingsley Hall exploits the versatility of old fold-up beds, which act as shower cubicles and screens behind which the girls provide their services.

As Miss Mona, Sarah Lark is a fine singer and has a nicely approachable manner, but is decades too young and lacks blowsy authority. The youthfulness of the whole cast is something of a problem, particularly the whores who are far too fresh-faced to be convincingly world-weary, though Stephanie Tavernier offers powerful vocals and substantial presence as brothel housekeeper Jewel and it would make more sense if she had the narrator role.

The prostitute has a rich history in musical theatre, often idealised, but rarely sentimentalised in such a sickly manner (though it is the first musical I've ever seen that alludes to menstruation). When the gauche new girl Shy (Nancy Sullivan) takes to her new profession like a duck to water, the others congratulate her ‘Girl, You’re a Woman’ without irony as if it’s a wonderful act of empowerment. Along with an abrupt ending in which the leading lady accepts defeat (a strange way to end a romp), all of this is as hard to swallow as a Hard Candy Christmas.

Written for Exeunt

Review: The Queen of Spades (Arcola Theatre)

Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 hallucinatory prose novella is immensely theatrical and it comes as a surprise that Max Hoehn’s staging is the first time it has been imagined  on an intimate scale. This tale of German military engineer Hermann, who becomes obsessed with extracting the secret of the key to unlimited wealth held by a decrepit 87-year-old Countess, combines social satire, Gothic set pieces and a warning about the dangers of attempting to create one’s own destiny. A woman wearing a scarlet coat and a hat with a veil covering her face circles the stage like a circus ringmaster and twirls a cane; a younger woman emerges from the swathes of white fabric that act as a backdrop, and a young man, clad in only his long-johns, is clearly disturbed by the spectacle.

Fusebox Productions’ strikingly theatrical and stylised approach focuses on the three characters (like the three cards) who lead the story. Some of Raymond Blankenhorn’s rhyming couplets lapse into doggerel, but the form lends the wit and irony that drives the story a rhythmically agitated feel. Having asked Hoehn about the production’s operatic qualities, it seems more appropriate to describe it as balletic. Daniel Saleeb’s music and sound design is a key player alongside Hoehn’s emphasis on mime, integrating Russian folk tunes, the tinkling of a child’s music box and the roar of the traffic that Hermann rushes through with the Countess’s secret ringing in his ears.

After a somewhat lengthy prologue narrated by Hermann in his troubled state, we enter the story in style as a masked youthful Countess visits the ‘Wandering Jew’ Saint Germain, a strange kind of confidante with the power to make wishes come true. Hermann’s scheme to gain access to the Countess by sending love letters to her companion Liza, is played out like a silent film with jaunty piano music and exaggerated romantic gestures, the charming innocence undercut by Pushkin’s irony. The ultimate game of cards is dealt on a rocking table in what appears to be a seedy modern casino rather than a high society gathering; shifts in mood and time conveyed by Saleeb’s sound and Edmund Sutton’s lighting rather than any elaborate props.

Hoehn evokes an ambiguous sense of period with the timeless costumes, some modern turns of phrase and Liza incurs the Countess’s disdain for miserable Russian novels by reading from Anna Karenina (written 40 years after The Queen of Spades). The diminutive Norma Cohen is more eccentric than tyrannical as the Countess. There’s an unexpected moment of warmth between the Countess and Liza when the Countess brushes Liza’s hair and tells her about how women were less naïve about marriage in her day, the kind of advice a mother would give a daughter and would never appear in Pushkin.

Benjamin Way doesn’t capture the Napoleonic allure that mesmerises Liza and scares the Countess to death, but he offers a convincing portrayal of an outsider excluded by the privileged elite who have money to burn. He seems repelled by the idea of physical intimacy when the long-suffering but eager Liza, played with appealing openness by Jen Holt, throws herself at him.

Hoehn’s vision of The Queen of Spades is a bold one that’s filled with ambition (my companion commented that an adaptation she saw in Russia was much more traditional). If the production’s trump card is somewhat elusive with individual ideas more effective than the piece as a united whole, it’s an interesting and aesthetically and aurally invigorating take on one of the greatest short stories ever written.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Mixed Marriage (Finborough Theatre)

Sam Yates’s very fine revival of Irish Protestant playwright St John Ervine’s 1911 ‘Belfast tragedy’ Mixed Marriage (the first London revival in 90 years), set in pre-partisan Ireland, arrives at the same time as the BBC’s Mixed Britannia series of documentaries dealing with a very similar matter. Marriages between different religions can be fraught with difficulties, signifying a breaking away from tradition and potential children caught in the middle of two cultures. Polemic-heavy plays can be something of a chore, but this piece, despite not being particularly subtle and undeniably mouthpiece-heavy, combines an agonising domestic tragedy and a contemporary resonance that’s tragically all too recognisable in an urgent 80 minutes.

The drama takes place in the kitchen of the working-class Protestant Rainey family led by bullish patriarch John Rainey (a defiant Daragh O’Malley) and his kindly wife, where a portrait of the Protestant hero William of Orange takes pride of place. Their Catholic neighbours Michael O’Hara and Nora Murray are regular guests for tea. Being friendly with Catholics and uniting in a workers’ strike against the corrupt bosses (based on a real-life strike led by dockyard workers in 1907) is one thing for Mr Rainey, but the idea of elder son Hugh (Christopher Brandon) marrying the steadfast Nora (Nora-Jane Noone) is something else entirely, leading to familial warfare and a tirade of anti-Catholic sentiment.

Ervine’s writing has some lovely domestic details and he’s particularly good at highlighting the conflict between the microcosm and macrocosm, and the personal and the political. To Mrs Rainey, Hugh and Nora’s love is the ultimate symbol of a united Ireland, but to her husband, it’s a selfish act between two incompatible factions putting their personal desires before their faith. The idealistic but equally headstrong younger generation is represented by Michael (Damien Hannaway), who is supportive of Hugh and Nora’s romance, but is always in pursuit of the bigger picture, admitting that he would sacrifice his own family for Ireland.

The cast of six are all impressive, particularly Fiona Victory, who gives a performance to treasure as Mrs Rainey (Ervine’s own mouthpiece, perhaps?), a warm-hearted and outwardly conventional matriarch with a sharp mind of her own. This devoted wife and mother is unafraid to stand up to her husband and articulate her acute sense of what really matters, the running joke about the different roles of men and women in regard to the strike turning into something more profound.

Yates makes excellent use of the Finborough’s compact space, evoking a close sense of claustrophobia and shabbiness assisted by Richard Kent’s sepia-tinted design and David Plater’s lighting. Alex Baranowski’s immersive sound design echoes from all corners, heightening the sense of entrapment and the outside world beyond the Raineys’ kitchen, with Mr Rainey’s pre-recorded speeches effectively covering the transitions between scenes.

Inevitably, things don’t end well for the lovers caught up in forces beyond their control. Nora, having been cast as a temptress by her prospective father-in-law, takes the blame by casting herself as the sacrificial lamb. It’s hard to tell whether this act is supposed to be seen as noble or misguided. Ervine’s play remains a plaintive cry for understanding and compassion. It is a bleak picture of the premature judgement day that explodes into the kitchen when bitter, irrational grievances prevent two people in love from choosing their own lives.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: The Zoo/Trial By Jury (Rosemary Branch Theatre)

Playing alongside The Mikado as part of a three-week Gilbert and Sullivan festival at the Rosemary Branch, Charles Court Opera present two one-act entertainments: the rarely-performed collaboration between Sullivan and D.C. Stephenson The Zoo (Charles Court is the only professional company in the country to have the piece in its repertoire) and Gilbert and Sullivan’s first work together Trial By Jury, often presented as an appertif to their full-length works. These are miniature gems that take zaniness to a new level under John Savournin’s direction.

The Zoo is a perfectly bonkers tale of botched suicide attempts, too much cake and love across the class divide taking place amongst the wild animals of London Zoo. When a courtship conducted via prescriptions goes wrong, humble apothecary Æsculapius Carboy (David Menezes), clad in an anorak and socks with sandals, plans to commit suicide in the bear pit having been denied permission to marry the wheezing, runny-nosed wealthy grocer’s daughter Laetitia (Catrine Kirkman).

Alongside this awkward, inexperienced couple is the disguised do-gooding Duke of Islington (aptly played by Savournin) and his love Eliza (Rosie Strobel), a refreshment seller with a busy social calendar who is rewarded for ensuring that everyone is well fed by becoming Duchess of Islington. It seems something of a pity that the riotously earthy Strobel wasn’t born in the Victorian era as she could have been a music hall sensation.

The second piece moves from Regent’s Park to the bear baiting of reality TV, ‘Charles Court on Camera’, the realm of the likes of Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle where it shouldn’t come as a surprise if the participants behave like animals if they’re treated as such. The audience is introduced by Martin Lamb’s floor manager to a familiar parade of grotesques in Kirkman’s blinged-up, knocked-up ‘Am I bovvered?’ bride Angelina, a struggle for her lawyer to present her as a delicate flower, Menezes as the groom, Edwin, who’s taken up with another woman and Strobel as her pink shell-suited mate, nudging her to “Show him what he’s missing, Ange.” A most unreal surprise is the leggy Savournin as Judge Judy in a power suit and Jenni Murray-style spectacles, more interested in powdering her nose than the nuances of the case.

This is English eccentricity with a surreal twist that would surely be unanimously declared by this jury as a triumph – all the original material in tact performed by wonderful singers with a few hip-hop moves added for good measure.

Review: The Mikado (Rosemary Branch Theatre)

A Charles Court Opera production at the Rosemary Branch is always a treat; this chamber opera company specialising in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan has premiered almost all of their 20-plus productions at the Rosie since their inception six years ago, returning with a mini-festival of works to commemorate the centenary of Gilbert’s death. This production of The Mikado featuring a cast of nine is minimalist in terms of set, but is quite the contrary in relation to the exuberance on display, the very high musical standards and the detailed characterisation.

The idea of exotic Japanoiserie (fans, kimonos, etc.) that so captivated nineteenth-century Europeans is stripped away, with a stylised red and black colour scheme in a possible nod to the comic bloodthirstiness that leads the plot. The costumes are 1920s-style with a twist; the very proper ‘gentlemen of Japan’ (more like ex-pats than locals) have their cravats and pocket handkerchiefs, while the travelling trombonist hero Nanki-poo is a floppy-haired beatnik in jeans and the ‘three little maids from school’ are dressed in gymslips that are actually cropped dungarees and matching black bobs.

Finding a volunteer willing to lose his head is rarely a simple matter. When ‘cheap tailor’ promoted to Lord High Executioner of Titipu Ko-Ko discovers that the position isn’t merely ceremonial, he comes across the conveniently suicidal Nanki-poo who agrees to take the chop in return for a month-long marriage to his lady love Yum-Yum, Ko-Ko’s own fiancée (as well as his ward). This arrangement isn’t quite as straightforward as it might seem, such as the law dictating that his widow be buried alive, but in true British stiff-upper-lip-style, they resolve to make the best of things. After a number of mishaps and double bluffs, bloodshed is averted – this is comic opera after all.

His Majesty The Mikado makes a relatively late entrance into the proceedings, portrayed by a munificent Simon Masterton-Smith who lends the character a hint of sadistic curiosity. Philip Lee is thoroughly entertaining as the flustered Ko-Ko, reminiscent of Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins with a tape measure draped around his neck. There’s a really rather sultry Katisha, the hag to whom Nanki-poo accidentally got engaged, in the vigorously energetic Rosie Strobel. She makes her entrance like Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty in a puff of scarlet chiffon, with Pitti-sing and Peep-bo gathering around like the good fairies as she curses Yum-Yum. A very appealing pair of young lovers can be seen in Kevin Kyle’s easy-going Nanki-poo and Catrine Kirkman’s lovely Yum-Yum, an ingénue who doesn’t believe in false modesty.

The multi-talented John Savournin (the show’s director and choreographer) is also remarkably deft comic actor as the over-employed “born sneering” Lord High of Everything Else Pooh-bah of “pre-Adamite ancestral descent”, who gets many of the wittiest lines exposing the contorted logic of this topsy-turvy world where “every judge is own executioner.” Animated support also comes from Ian Bealdle’s arch Pish-tush, along with Caroline Kennedy’s spirited Peep-bo and the wonderful Susan Moore as a hilariously hearty Pitti-sing.

The cast are supported by David Eaton’s fizzing piano accompaniment. No punishments need be doled out on this delightful production delivered by a troupe of splendid singers whose high spirits have a contagious effect on the audience.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Noel and Gertie (Cockpit Theatre)

When I told a friend that I was going to see Noel and Gertie, he seemed surprised that it was being revived as it was very much aimed at audience members of a certain age when he saw it in the 1980s. There can’t be many people today who remember Gertrude Lawrence’s stage appearances first-hand; she never became a film star and died in 1953, shortly after creating the role of Anna in The King and I. Noel Coward outlived her by 20 years and his most popular plays are still frequently revived, but he’s possibly best known for achieving mythical status alongside Lawrence as symbols of a bygone age of gilded glamour. The first musical staged at central London fringe venue the Cockpit in many years, it’s a gently affecting testament to friendship respectfully directed by the ubiquitous Thom Southerland.

With a script by the late Sheridan Morley (biographer of Coward and Lawrence) comprising Coward’s songs, excerpts from his plays, and personal letters and telegrams in the style of the revues that he was renowned for, the show takes place through a wistful haze of memory and sheet music after Lawrence’s death, framed by their greatest success together, Private Lives. While Elyot and Amanda’s love brings out the worst in each other, the disciplined Coward’s influence on the capricious Lawrence was one of the most constant aspects in their lives. Morley is rather coy about Coward’s sexuality; he admits not to liking women in ‘that’ way, but regarded them as the most exciting part of theatre. Despite their real-life relationship being entirely platonic, it seems that conveying a sexual chemistry was crucial to their onstage allure.

The leads don’t quite sizzle together: Ben Stock plays the piano well, but is too boyish to convince as a jaded, middle-aged Coward. Helena Blackman (the most talented How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? contestant), a much better singer than the real Lawrence, is every inch the 1920s starlet with her elegant composure, a touch of haughtiness and humble origins that weren’t quite as humble as she liked to make out. Their “tremendous transatlantic bickering” via telegrams could do with more zing, and the scene from Still Life (filmed as Brief Encounter) doesn’t wholly convince, but their moments together at the piano are lovely, with Blackman’s renditions of ‘Sail Away’ and ‘Why Must the Show Go On?’ showing remarkable control and empathy.

Biographical plays ought to give an insight into the real people behind the myth. Morley’s script offers human, if idealised, portraits of two people who lived for the theatre –  when it came to balancing nine plays in Tonight at 8:30, “the strain didn’t bear thinking about; so we didn’t”.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: My City (Almeida Theatre)

The idea of school assemblies being many children’s first experience of theatre is crucial to writer and director Stephen Poliakoff’s first stage play in 12 years.

A haunting, distinctive and mordantly witty piece of writing, My City explores the many hidden depths beneath the surface of London and the equally mysterious lives of teachers outside the classroom.

The past and present come together when city yuppie Richard (Tom Riley) discovers his primary school headmistress Miss Lambert, whose patience and flair for storytelling helped him to overcome his learning difficulties, sprawled on a bench outside St Paul’s Cathedral. This elegant woman is no vagrant, but a compulsive night-time wanderer of London’s streets.

This chance meeting leads to Richard and Julie (an endearingly blunt Siân Brooke), his former partner in special needs, being inducted into a bizarre coven led by retired teachers in a subterranean wine bar.
In these surroundings, Miss Lambert’s stories take a macabre turn, with historical flights of fancy replaced by urban legends of ghosts and teenage killers.

The eerie nocturnal world is wonderfully realised: Lez Brotherston’s designs evoke grandeur and dinginess, accompanied by creative sound design and splendidly murky lighting. It takes a few minutes to re-acclimatise to the house lights afterwards.

Tracey Ullman is fascinatingly serene with a touch of witchiness as the mystifying Miss Lambert. As her fellow teachers Sorcha Cusack shows touching devotion and David Troughton as suitcase-clutching Mr Minken delivers an extraordinary piece of storytelling at its most powerful and heartbreaking in recounting his Jewish father’s escape from Nazi-occupied Austria.

Written for Islington Gazette

Review: The Baker's Wife (Union Theatre)

What makes a cult musical? For fans, is it the longing to restore a misunderstood work by a favourite composer to its rightful place in their canon? For a director, is it the desire to achieve a ‘By George, she’s got it’ moment where others have failed? At the very least, one would expect it to have something really startling about it. While Michael Strassen’s staging is perfectly charming, I’m bemused as to why The Baker’s Wife inspires such devotion with its lack of anything special. It’s obvious why Stephen Schwartz’s 1976 musical based on Marcel Pagnol’s film never made it to Broadway and flopped in the West End – above all, it has a hopeless book by Joseph Stein (most renowned for his work on Fiddler on the Roof) that’s devoid of character development, making every role a thankless one.

We know that we’re in France because we’re told so by the narrator, café proprietress and abused wife Denise (Ricky Butt), but the time period is uncertain: the costumes are vaguely 1930s-style, but it could just as easily be set in medieval Martin Guerre territory as a brief reference to a bus is the only concession to the twentieth century. The wall is covered with a striking chalk mural (by Robyn Wilson-Owen) featuring haunted Munch-esque female figures, indicating a dark sense of sexual mania that never transpires on stage. There’s nothing authentically Gallic about Schwartz’s music, but it’s lively enough and he deserves credit for rhyming ‘listless’ with ‘kissed less.’

The chattering, bread-deprived inhabitants of an isolated rural village are excited about the arrival of a new baker, Aimable, who turns up newly married to a beautiful young wife, Genevieve, who agreed to marry him when an affair with a married man ended. Aimable’s baking is a huge hit (with hints of suggestive baguette action), as is the virtuous Genevieve with the male residents. Initially resisting the local Marquis’s hunky manservant Dominique’s attentions, she submits and the pair plan to elope to Paris. In the meantime, her teetotal husband gets drunk and the villagers gossip some more. After a night of passion in a barn with her lover, she discovers that lust and a well-toned torso is no substitute for the warmth of her Baker’s oven, returns home and all is well. Madame Bovary, this is not.

Lisa Stokke is very sweet in the title role (something that’s impossible to imagine Patti LuPone, the original Genevieve, being) but remains on the same dramatic level throughout. Her rendition of the show’s stand-alone song ‘Meadowlark’ doesn’t convey the nervous euphoria of a woman about to embark on an affair with a “beautiful young man.” If the tactless villagers weren’t so obsessed with the age difference, she and the hardly decrepit Michael Matus wouldn’t seem mismatched at all. Matus brings an appealing vulnerability and palpable sense of adoration towards his wife. As the fancy man, Matthew Goodgame, who was a dead ringer for Clark Gable in Chichester Festival Theatre’s enchanting production of She Loves Me, here resembles a young Hugh Jackman, his warm voice and persuasive masculinity setting several audience members’ hearts aflutter.

While The Baker’s Wife itself is fated to be half-baked, Strasssen’s production (he also recently revived Schwartz’s Godspell at the Union) is engagingly staged, enjoyable to watch and captures the Union’s characteristic warmth – the cupcakes and petits fours on press night were a lovely touch.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Street Scene (Young Vic Theatre)

This revival of The Opera Group’s production of Kurt Weill, Langston Hughes and Elmer Rice’s 1947 ‘Broadway opera’ Street Scene, returning to the Young Vic before a tour, shows John Fulljames’s staging to have been richly deserving of its Evening Standard Award for Best Musical in 2008. Street Scene is a piece that straddles boundaries of musical theatre and opera; Weill’s pulsating and agitated score employs operatic arias, Broadway show tunes, jazz and blues, interspersed with spoken dialogue, building up to one of the most visceral and heart-rendering denouements in either genre.

Taking place over a 24-hour period in sweltering heat on the dilapidated, overcrowded tenement block 346, the home of Jewish, German, Swedish, Italian and Irish immigrants, this adaptation of Rice’s own 1929 play is a tragedy of ordinary folk, in contrast to the satirical grotesques found in Weill’s collaborations with Brecht. While children play hopscotch and draw chalk pictures, the matrons assemble in their faded floral dresses to catch a little fresh air and share gossip and grievances: Mrs Hildebrand’s daughter graduates from high school on the same day that the family faces eviction, the birth of the Buchanans’ first baby is nigh and tempers are running high. A radical elderly Jew speaks fervently about a new conception of society, while the brutish Mr Maurrant (a menacing turn by Geof Dolton) wants everything back to “the way it used to be.”

With Hughes’s lyrics rather swamped by the orchestra (the BBC Concert Orchestra until press night and Southbank Sinfonia Touring thereafter), I was nervous during the opening numbers as to how this would impede the drama (surtitles might have been beneficial). While the acoustics aren’t ideal, it's fortunate that the emotion conveyed transcends words. It comes together when the lynchpin of the piece Anna Maurrant (played with heartbreaking straightforwardness by Elena Ferrari) pours her heart out about her high hopes for a happy marriage destroyed by her violent alcoholic husband and the sense of abandonment experienced when her much-loved children no longer need her in the aria ‘Somehow I Never Could Believe.’ As soon as Mrs Maurrant’s back is turned, she is torn to pieces by her neighbours, particularly the sanctimonious Mrs Jones (Charlotte Page), her affair with the milkman Mr Sankey being common knowledge and a ticking time bomb until her husband finds out.

Also navigating matters of love are an outstanding pair of juvenile leads: Susanna Hurrell gives a delicately wistful and beautifully sung performance as the belle of the tenement Rose Maurrant, negotiating the advances of her sleazy married boss (James McCoran-Campbell) with his flashy promises of putting her on Broadway and the earnest attentions of Sam Kaplan, the studious nice Jewish boy next door (perfectly portrayed by Paul Curievici), who intends to escape from poverty by becoming a lawyer. Their plan to flee from the prejudices and unfriendliness of New York (strongly echoing and pre-dating West Side Story’s ‘Somewhere’) is expressed with poignant sincerity, made as transient as the chalk pictures that illustrate it by reality. Curievici’s rendition of ‘Lonely House’ is also a vocal and dramatic high point, an all-too-true contemplation of how isolation can be even more potent when surrounded by other people.

Arthur Pita’s choreography shines in a jive number performed with consummate precision by Kate Nelson and John Moabi, bringing a seedy glamour to block 346 (represented by Dick Bird’s iron-laddered set, which accommodates the orchestra) and an ode to the refreshing qualities of ice cream led by flamboyant Italian Mr Fiorentino (Joseph Shovelton). While Street Scene is a piece that is infrequently performed due to its episodic structure and uncertain genre classification, Fulljames’s full-bodied production demonstrates the timeless potency of this tragedy of everyday life and that to quibble about its categorisation is beyond the point.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Perchance to Dream (Finborough Theatre)

Perchance to Dream, like most of Ivor Novello’s musicals, was something of an anachronism in its own time, celebrating a fairytale kind of Englishness (even though Novello himself was Welsh). Being immensely popular with audiences in the aftermath of World War II in 1945, it ran for 1,022 performances starring the non-singing Novello himself as the lead, but despite the evergreen appeal of its most famous song ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’, Novello has been less than fashionable for years.

Spanning three generations in Huntersmoon, a crumbling ancestral manse filled with “Old Masters and young mistresses”, the tale begins during the Regency era in 1818, moving 25 years ahead into the Victorian period,  andfinally jumps a century forward to 1943, when air raid sirens are wailing but the ghosts that haunt the house are laid to rest. Rather than adhering to happy-ever-after conventions usually found in novelette-ish plots, Novello offers something more bittersweet, the lashings of romanticism tinged with the shadow of death – one can detect shades of a less coarse The Beggar’s Opera, with echoes of the unquiet sleepers found in Wuthering Heights. 

Director Max Pappenheim (who also played the piano at the performance I attended) resists the temptation to put an ironic spin on the proceedings, allowing Novello’s enchanting music and witty libretto to work its own magic, delivered by a very winning ensemble. Novello’s integration of the music and book is a delight, with songs arising from choir practice, an impromptu concert around the fire, and the joy of a wedding day. The only exception is a rather gratuitous ballet celebrating the seasons.

It’s amusing to see James Russell and Claire Redcliffe from the Finborough’s Christmas production of J.M. Barrie’s Quality Street reunited as another pair of Regency lovers: Russell (playing another Valentine in the Victorian act) lacks finesse as an actor, but he cuts a dashing figure as Regency buck and closet highwayman Sir Graham Rodney. Redcliffe’s delicate physique suits wide-eyed ingénue Melinda perfectly, turning her daintiness to a very different advantage as ‘glo-glo’ dancing home-wrecker Melanie. It’s hard to tell whether we’re supposed to be on her side just because fate has ordained that she and Valentine are meant to be together as my sympathies remained firmly with his wife. As the obligatory battleaxe, Annabel Leventon’s caustic Aunt Chatty, whom we see mellow over the years, relishes most of the best lines and could hold her own against many a grande dame with her flawless delivery.

Along with a leading man who doesn’t sing, the piece is also unusual in having two heroines. The more interesting of the two is Lydia Lyddington, a seasoned lady of the theatre who finds giving up her lover more difficult than anticipated and whose daughter, Veronica, makes the seemingly perfect wife for composer Valentine (both played by Kelly Price). Price’s renditions of ‘Love Is My Reason, ‘A Woman’s Heart’ and particularly ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ (with Natalie Langston) are things of beauty. While she might lose the hero, getting to break the audience’s hearts and having the best songs seems ample compensation.

Despite appearing in the Finborough’s Sunday and Monday window for a modest eight performances, Pappenheim’s production would be deserving of the main slot. If one can leave all cynicism in the bar, this is a delicious wallow in nostalgia, love and loss, the kind that so captivated post-war audiences.

Written for Exeunt

Review: The Belle's Stratagem (Southwark Playhouse)

The Belle’s Stratagem is a play that even the most notoriously cross-referential critic would have trouble comparing to another version, as ‘lady playwright’ Hannah Cowley’s 1780 play hasn’t graced the stage since a regional production in 1888.

While Hannah Cowley was unusually well-educated for a woman of her time and The Belle’s Stratagem was a big hit in its day, it disappeared rapidly when Richard Brinsley Sheridan became manager of Drury Lane and removed this exhibition of cunning, outspoken females from the repertoire. If kind readers will forgive me for cross-referencing, I found the modern elements of Jessica Swale’s concept reminiscent of Deborah Warner’s recent production of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal at the Barbican, but the execution couldn’t be more different. In contrast to Warner’s aggressive method, Swale’s fluid and warm-hearted production establishes a convivial relationship between the cast and audience, releasing the mischievousness of the eighteenth century that is often suppressed under staid artificiality, accentuated by Simon Kenny’s vibrant design and a parade of brightly coloured gowns.

The Westminster Chimes and Lily Allen’s ‘Why Would I Wanna Be Anywhere Else’ sung in counterpoint sets the scene for Swale’s playful approach with unexpected touches that are charming rather than jarring (including a lace capped rendition of the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’). The frothy plot belies Cowley’s forward-thinking ideas: Miss Letitia Hardy and Mr Doricourt have been betrothed from birth but haven’t seen each other since childhood. Letitia, disappointed by her intended’s lack of enthusiasm about marrying her, is determined not to marry without mutual love (even – heaven forbid – preferring to remain single) and hatches a surprising plan to tease him, to appal him and to eventually win his passion at a masquerade ball. Meanwhile, Lady Frances Touchwood, a young wife kept in solitary confinement by her jealous husband, is taken under the wing of Mrs Racket and Miss Ogle who contrive to turn her into a ‘fine lady’, “A creature for whom nature has done much, but education more,” the very kind that her husband finds so threatening.

Amongst the capable ensemble, Gina Beck (who leads the songs with her lovely voice) is enchanting as ingénue Letitia, a true lady of spirit who exposes the double standards of women who enter marriage straight from finishing school, while men are free to roam. Michael Lindall’s lithe Doricourt provides an impressive display of feigned madness, improvising at one point with my wine glass. As the secondary couple, Hannah Spearritt’s sheltered Lady Frances makes a stand by refusing to let her husband continue treating her like a child, with Joseph MacNab blustering effusively as the insecure Sir George, a husband with an interest in choosing his wife’s gowns. The more mature ladies are represented by Jackie Clune as the acerbic spinster Miss Ogle and the wonderful Maggie Steed as Mrs Racket, a widow dressed in scarlet who refuses to conform to conventional norms, a subversive influence on the young ladies under her guidance. Christopher Logan’s bitchy rumourmonger Flutter manages to stay on the right side of grotesque and Robin Soans is a highly entertaining presence as Letitia’s cross-dressing father.

While it’s perplexing that The Belle’s Stratagem has remained in mothballs for so long, its obscure status heightens the sense of what a treat this production is. Swale and her cast have created a triumphant spectacle of Georgian girl power that’s accompanied by the most delightful programme I’ve ever received – an exquisite piece of craftsmanship in itself.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: Ragtime (Landor Theatre)

 

 Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and Terrence McNally’s musical Ragtime (which premiered on Broadway in 1998 and in the West End in 2003) is about the energy and modernity embodied in the ‘real’ music of African American culture that was beginning to cross boundaries at the turn of the twentieth century. Robert McWhir’s astonishing production exploits every nook and cranny of the Landor Theatre, evoking the teeming American melting pot in 1906 through illusions and imagination. This fast-moving, pared-down staging, which can’t rely on the spectacle of fireworks and a real motorcar that the original production enjoyed, restores the piece’s somewhat Brechtian roots, making a truly immersive experience in which one is placed right in the midst of the turbulence.

Taking place in the bustling metropolis of New York City and the leafy, all-white suburb of New Rochelle, by way of Atlantic City, the three strands of the story (mixing fact and fiction) are held together by Mother (a sensitively modulated performance by Louisa Lydell), a privileged housewife who has thus far lived the “too safe” life expected of a woman of her social standing, given an opportunity to do something different when her firework manufacturer husband leaves to go exploring for a year. Upon discovering an abandoned black baby, she takes the child and his washerwoman mother, Sarah, into her comfortable home. Also crisscrossing in the microcosm is Tateh, a Latvian Jew with a young daughter, disillusioned by the way in which the Land of Opportunity offers the same deprivations and prejudices as the Old World and strikes up an unlikely rapport with Mother.

As the tragic Sarah, Rosalind James, with her gorgeous voice and clear-eyed innocence, makes a deeply heartfelt sacrificial lamb. Her baby’s estranged father, ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker, renounces his womanising past and tracks them down in order to win her back. In the process, he befriends Sarah’s benefactress and her Little Boy and Younger Brother (David McMullan), motivating the latter’s development from a dandy to a political activist. Kurt Kansley has charisma to burn, compellingly charting Coalhouse’s journey from a carefree musician to a vengeful arsonist, driven by injustice. There is a performance of outstanding empathy by John Barr as Tateh (reprising the role he understudied in the original London production), struggling to make enough money to feed himself and his daughter by selling silhouettes on the streets, imbued with the canny business sense to his little “movie books” into something profitable, and has a warm bond with Lydell’s Mother.

Amongst the supporting cast, Judith Paris exudes zealous energy as anarchist Emma Goldman; Alexander Evans’s Father embodies the narrow-minded attitudes and casual racism of his time and Hollie O’Donoghue sparkles as scandalous entertainer Evelyn Nesbit. One of the greatest joys of the production is the way in which every member of the cast of 21 is sharply defined an individual (something that you wouldn’t get in a cast of 60), and collectively make up a force to be reckoned with.

Choreographer Philip Conley adeptly manoeuvres these groups of people who don’t know how to interact with each other, jostling for space in an overcrowded city, as well as the intricate theatricality of a very Chicago-esque courtroom number, a rowdy baseball game and a silent film shoot. In a nod to Tateh’s silhouettes, the cityscape and waves of the ocean are evoked by projected shadows (designed by Martin Thomas), with transitions between settings aided by Howard Hudson’s creative lighting.

The five-piece band led by George Dyer play Flaherty’s complex score with ferocious commitment. This important musical feels uncannily timely in light of recent events in London – angry, ardent and limitless in compassion, this is a tremendous achievement that brims with infectious fervour.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Le nozze di Figaro (British Youth Opera at Peacock Theatre)

William Kerley’s staging of Mozart’s 1786 opera Le nozze di Figaro is the fifth time that British Youth Opera have produced this much-loved piece since their second summer season in 1988. One can see why it’s such an appealing choice for a youthful cast, with its dazzling music, balance of wit and pathos and, as Peter Robinson explains in the programme notes, Mozart, who died at the early age of 35, often wrote music with his favourite young singers in mind. Many of the ridiculously talented and accomplished cast members have at least one degree under their belts, offering a very high level of professionalism combined with youthful ebullience. Despite usually being an avid note taker, this was one occasion in which I had to put my notebook and pen away and immerse myself in the music.

Based on the second play in Beaumarchais’s Figaro trilogy, the Count and Countess Almaviva’s honeymoon is long over and the skirt-chasing Count, overcome with lust for his valet Figaro’s fiancée Susanna, wants to reinstate the barbaric feudal practice of a master having the right to ravish his female servants before their wedding. Meanwhile, the domineering Marcellina regards Figaro has her own property, and, aided by her henchman Dr Bartolo, plans to force him into marrying her by using incomprehensible legal jargon. Matters become fearfully complicated until, after much confusion, hiding behind furniture and a number of white lies, everyone is united with the right partner.

Taking place against a traditional pre-revolutionary, eighteenth century setting, the production is lovely to look at and the costumes are the stuff of costume drama dreams. The set (by Matthew Wright) comprising a series of linked window frames is cleverly assembled, with David Howe’s lighting creating a beautifully sun-dappled effect – which could be a metaphor for the entire production.

Matthew Stiff is a rich-voiced and likable Figaro, paired with Ellie Laugharne, who sparkles as the clever and mischievous Susanna. Eleanor Dennis gives a touching and sumptuously sung portrayal of the Countess, worn down by the thankless task of being a devoted and faithful wife, and strengthened by her capacity to love. There’s a natural and easy rapport between the two sopranos, creating a warm mistress-servant relationship and their voices blend together beautifully. Rather than being overtly lecherous, John Savournin effectively communicates the Count’s oily sense of entitlement, with a persuasive and somewhat menacing baritone. Katie Bray charmingly conveys household pet Cherubino’s adolescent love-struck confusion, dressed up as a solider with a bucket for a helmet and broom for a sword. There’s also strong support from Sioned Gwen Davies’s ample Marcellina, a villainess who becomes a benefactress, and Thomas Faulkner as her loyal sidekick.

It isn’t a short evening at three and a half hours (including interval), but it fizzes along under Alexander Ingram’s conducting and Southbank Sinfonia’s playing. Kerley’s direction is perhaps a little coy in regard to the opera’s subversive aspects, eschewing revolutionary zeal in favour of sunshine, but complements the buoyant and playful approach. As the Almaviva household enjoy the spectacle of a firework display, ending this day of madness on an entirely joyous note seems completely apt, as all the young people involved in the production deserve to have many more ahead of them.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: Pandora's Boxes (Rosemary Branch Theatre)

The neighbour who encourages the eponymous Pandora’s husband to open the mysterious box remarks, “Without curiosity, where would we be?” As an inquisitive person, a life without curiosity would be unbearable. Taking its cue from the Greek myth, Pandora’s Boxes, which Denise O’Leary originally wrote as a radio play, is given a stylish theatrical transposition by Dimitry Devdariani, offering a quirky and engaging fable exploring what it means to ‘have it all’.

Pandora, her Husband and Baby Son live modestly and contentedly in a rural Eastern European state, uninterested in any kind of change until a “real life box” (a television set) opens up a world of obsessive consumerism. It’s somewhat reminiscent of a comic strip in regard to the broadly drawn characters (only Pandora has a name) and the predictable yet surreal path that they take. O’Leary has an acute ear for the absurd, her gently satirical tone exemplified in the advertisements promoting luxury food, cigarettes and cosmetics that Pandora suddenly can’t live without. Some of the scenes do feel rather choppy, though I wouldn’t want it to be much longer as the 50-minute running time prevents the joke from becoming stale.

The most startling revelation for Pandora (a poignant performance by Margarita Nazarenko) is the idea that a woman can be something other than a housewife and mother. Seduced by the idea of being ‘modern’ like her sister, she sells her long hair in favour of a low-maintenance bob and takes a job selling ‘boxes’ of all different kinds under the guidance of a slippery boss (Richard Holt) who wants something other than hard work in return. The patient Husband (Charles Church) is ultimately more unworldly than chauvinistic, having never had any reason to think outside accepted norms. Victoria Johnston plays the antithetical roles of Pandora’s sister, the perfect model of a ‘modern’ woman whose idea of living life to the full is to make as much money as possible and spend it on designer goods, and a childminder scathing about mothers who don’t bother to look after their own children and treat them as fashion accessories. The cast also deserve credit for Slavic accents that don’t lapse into caricature. The sentimental ending befits a morality tale, but feels simplistic following the questions that precede it.

This would be a good show for a first date – short, light and easy to watch, but also provides plenty to talk about over a delicious home-cooked Rosemary Branch meal afterwards.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: The Wolf (Network Theatre)

The big bad wolf is perhaps the most Freudian of fairytale characters, a figure of corruption and carnal sexuality. The Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár’s (probably best known to English speaking audiences for Liliom, which inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel) 1912 bourgeois marital comedy The Wolf is a fairly unknown beast, receiving its first British airing since 1973 in a production by Sturdy Beggars (a young ensemble of Poor School graduates) at the elusive Network Theatre, a perfectly proportioned black box tucked away under the arches of Waterloo station. Molnár’s interest in Freud is evident in his portrayal of repressed desires that surface in dreams, which become different with time and reality (and makes the act two twist more interesting than an old cliché). It’s a farce with a bleak edge; rather than domestic harmony being restored at the end when the wolf turns out to be a gauche middle manager, the husband and wife both break down in tears.

Eugene and Vilma Kelemen are having an early dinner out before returning home to prepare for a high society soirée hosted by a countess, at which Eugene intends to seal an important business deal that should earn a million kronen for Vilma’s future happiness. Kelemen, who is not handsome, witty, nor dashing, is madly jealous with an inferiority complex, unable to come to terms with his luck in marrying her. He feels as if he needs to pay her off in order to prove his love. As they bicker, a mysterious stranger, recognised by the prattling cavalry officers at the neighbouring table, enters the restaurant. Kelemen recognises him from an old photograph as Vilma’s former suitor George Szabo, who seven years previously vowed to win her back, leading to a series of interrogations and fantasies that become increasingly nightmarish.

Brendan Jones’s neurotic Kelemen isn’t exactly endearing, but he makes his character’s obsessive paranoia plausible. Katherine French, while a tad shrill, is a good foil for Jones with her portrayal of “an honest, upstanding woman without an ounce of romanticism”, a model of self-denial dressed in virginal white who also harbours fantasies for something more exciting. Alexander Andreou makes light work of portraying five different versions of the same character: a world-weary military hero (who enslaved a small Balkan nation for his beloved), a dashing attaché, a broadly comic baritone (in Rigoletto costume), a humble servant and finally the anticlimactic reality. Andrew Mudie and Dan Addis make a very amusing double act and Josie Martin milks some of the broadest comedy as the fainting countess.

Jamie Harper’s light-handed staging benefits from pleasing production values (a nicely homey design by Charlotte Randell, with cleverly dismantling furniture to create different settings), atmospheric lighting (by Dan Addis) and neatly choreographed transitions between scenes (though the prancing with the furniture is a little excessive). While it does take rather a long time to wrap everything up, it’s an accomplished and spirited production of an intriguing play, offering a welcome glimpse into the richness of turn-of-the-century European theatre.

Written for Exeunt

Review: Crazy for You (Open Air Theatre)

 

The Open Air Theatre never cancels a performance due to bad weather before the starting time and, true to form, the show certainly went on in the face of civil unrest on a deceptively beautifully clear evening. Regent’s Park provides a cocoon of tranquillity for this George and Ira Gershwin musical comedy that was devised in 1993 as a ‘trunk’ musical using Girl Crazy (1930) with its East Coast–Wild West clash as a starting point. It’s filled with songs from the Gershwin catalogue and features an original book by Ken Ludwig (who wrote Lend Me A Tenor) in the spirit of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland “Let’s put on a show!” extravaganzas, which relies rather too heavily on post-modern nudge-nudge-wink-wink jibes. It’s a perfectly preposterous bit of hokum with wonderful music and Timothy Sheader directs with great flair, but it does feel somewhat less satisfying than recent Regent’s Park offerings Into The Woods and Hello, Dolly! due to the lack of a really well-written book.

The hero, Bobby, is a young man who works in a bank but longs to be a dancer in the Zangler Follies. Dominated by his bossy mother and a disapproving fiancée, he’s sent to Deadrock, Nevada, a depressed mining town in the “armpit of the American West” to repossess a disused theatre and (literally) falls head over heels for the feisty Polly, the daughter of the theatre’s owner. When Polly doesn’t want anything to do with him after discovering that he’s from the bank, Bobby decides to impersonate the impresario Bela Zangler in order to put on a benefit show to save the theatre. His gaggle of lady friends from the follies (all wonderful dancers) turn the ranchers into dancers, but an audience fails to materialise. As soon as morale is re-established, the real Zangler turns up and confusion ensues.

In true Regent’s Park style, the staging is delightful: Peter McKintosh’s wooden set nimbly revolves between the flashing lights of Broadway and the barrenness of Nevada. Stephen Mear’s choreography is vibrant as always, with lots of elegant Fred-and-Ginger style soft-shoe and it particularly shines in the quirkier moments that integrate homespun props with the Broadway glitz. There’s excellent work from musical director Gareth Valentine. providing an exuberant sound throughout . Credit is also due to the pigeon cleverly circling above during ‘Someone to Watch Over Me.’

American performer Sean Palmer is a true triple threat, brimming with natural charm and elegance, as well as being an excellent mimic. His leading lady Clare Foster is full of pep and also has an affecting wistfulness underneath her fierce façade. Kim Medcalf gets to explore her vampy side when her prim and proper New Yorker, antagonised by Michael McKell’s bit of rough, discovers her inner ‘Naughty Baby’ and David Burt has fun as the volatile Hungarian impresario. Harriet Thorpe and Samuel Holmes are also highly entertaining as a pair of jolly hockey-sticks British explorers clad in safari khakis. Their solution of a ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ and a nice cup of tea in the threat of adversity seemed remarkably prescient.

It’s very lively and glittery, a world away from any real-life troubles. The anti-materialist sentiment of ‘I Got Rhythm’ is a heartening one – an inspirational message to bear in mind

Written for Exeunt

Review: Dames at Sea (Union Theatre)

Dames at Sea is an affectionate homage to frothy ‘a star is born’ 1930s musicals, a cross between 42^nd Street, Anything Goes and On The Town. It premiered off-Broadway in 1966 starring a very young Bernadette Peters (who was herself a last-minute replacement). Jim Wise’s score is sprightly and tuneful, while George Haimsohn and Robin Miller’s lyrics and book are playfully knowing and referential, without being in the least bit cynical. The story of an unknown dancer, who goes out on the poop deck a chorus girl and comes back a star and the new sweetheart to the US Navy, is presented with exquisite style and humour in Kirk Jameson’s production at the Union Theatre, with a sweetness rarely equalled by West End extravaganzas.

Our plucky heroine Ruby (named after 42^nd Street’s star Ruby Keeler) arrives in New York from Utah with only a worn pair of tap shoes to her name; she lands a chorus line spot replacing a girl who has eloped with a rich patron, and promptly faints in the arms of song writing sailor Dick, who happens to be from the same tiny town in Utah. To Ruby’s jealousy, Dick finds himself preyed upon by the star of the show Mona Kent, the legendary “Lady Macbeth of 42^nd Street”. When the theatre is bulldozed to make way for a roller skating rink during the dress rehearsal, the show is relocated to the battleship where Dick is stationed, and it transpires that Mona isn’t a good sailor. No setback is too intimidating for this team – when the chorus boys sink, the sailors line up to audition.

The entire cast is a joy: Gemma Sutton is kittenish and apple-cheeked as Ruby, with a delightful voice, touching vulnerability and the wholesome sensuality of a Betty Grable or Alice Faye. She’s well paired with the sweet Daniel Bartlett (in his professional debut) as her love interest. Catriana Sandison displays great verve and powerful pipes as Ruby’s more worldly friend Joan, and has an engaging rapport with Alan Hunter as her on-off sailor boyfriend, Lucky. The Phantom of the Opera’s original Carlotta Rosemary Ashe is a hybrid of Ethel Merman and Bette Davis, making an indomitable diva who stops at nothing to stay the top. There’s fun character work from Anthony Wise as the show’s harassed director and Ian Mowat as Mona’s old flame Captain ‘Kewpie Doll’ Courageous, and the ensemble are charming.

Drew McOnie’s choreography is a witty delight, including a wistful dream sequence for Ruby, a dramatic Latin-flavoured number as Mona and the Captain renew their acquaintance and even a bit of synchronised swimming in the Union’s confines. The chaotic backstage area is characterised by an array of trunks and crates and a curtain of $100 bills (by Kingsley Hall, who also provides the vibrant costumes – his first design credit). Steve Miller’s lighting is amongst the most creative I’ve ever seen in a fringe show and the twin pianos (MD Richard Bates) are jauntily played.

This is perfect summer feel-good theatre that made me smile and laugh throughout (though the ‘Oriental’ ‘Singapore Sue’ number could be eliminated…). Pastiche can often pale in comparison to the real thing, but this production is an irresistible slice of fun that showcases everything that is good about fringe musicals.

Written for A Younger Theatre

Review: Pericles (Open Air Theatre)

Review: Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare's Globe)

 

Howard Brenton’s salty, irreverent and post-modern take on the life and influence of Henry VIII’s second wife (returning for a second run after garnering great acclaim last season) very much belongs to the Globe. The sociable, inclusive atmosphere where characters take the audience into their confidence and the certain excesses in performances and direction wouldn’t be the same in any other venue.

In linking Anne Boleyn’s story with that of her daughter Elizabeth’s successor, James I of England/VI of Scotland, it’s the ghost of the ‘Boleyn whore,’ an advocate of the ‘heretic’ William Tyndale, whose 1520s translation of the Bible would lay the foundation for James’s own project, the King James Bible, several years later.

The newly crowned James I (James Garnon) is ill at ease in England and full of (rather overstated) nervous tics and twitches. This is an eccentric figure with ideas about extending tolerance to Catholics and who dons Anne’s coronation gown to perform a dance full of ambitious lifts with his handsome favourite George Villiers (Ben Deery), an outsider who probably would have been more comfortable as a scholar than a king. Anne, however, has been dead long enough to relish her notoriety, and walks on stage clad in a white nightgown and carrying a blood- stained bag. She teases the audience about its contents before proudly displaying her severed head. Miranda Raison makes a radiant and delightfully mischievous and personable Anne, who can wrap her spectators around her little finger. After a harrowing recollection of her execution, she proclaims, “And now I’m with Jesus!” with childlike glee.

As with most historical fiction, Brenton takes certain liberties with the facts – there’s no historical evidence that Anne Boleyn and William Tyndale (a charismatically rustic Peter Hamilton Dyer, living a furtive existence with his band of outcasts in the forest) ever met. Rather than being a victim of an aspirational family (who are absent from the play, as is Catherine of Aragon) or a heartless schemer, Brenton presents Anne as a deeply religious figure being motivated by the idea of becoming the first Protestant queen and introducing religious reform to England than by self interest (though a cynic could argue that both are interlinked).

Contrary to the popular image of an obese monster, Anthony Howell portrays a slim, refined and loving Henry (Anne maintains that he was “a good husband” – apparentlyit’s different amongst royals). He and Raison evoke a palpable sense of a man and a woman passionately in love. The idea that a king, used to having his way in all matters, would sustain a five-year chaste relationship, as forcing himself upon his beloved would lead to his own emasculation, is the stuff of courtly romances. The audience is dismissed with an interval when Anne, certain of marriage, finally agrees to sleep with him.

Julius D’Silva is superb as a thoroughly chilling Thomas Cromwell, a workaholic whose influence extends everywhere. The fact that he and Anne are allies on matters of religion doesn’t lend her any protection. No nonsense to the end, following Anne’s arrest, he barks at his minions to get on with the paperwork. There is also fine support from Sophie Duval as Anne’s nervy sister-in-law Lady Rochford, not willingly treacherous but a victim of Cromwell’s bullying, and Colin Hurley as a gluttonous Cardinal Wolsey.

Anne’s downfall is underplayed, perhaps because the accusations of incest and witchcraft are too ridiculous to rebuff. In a parallel scene to the community and hymn singing of the first act, we see Tyndale and his followers receive her less than cordially, but we don’t get to see Henry turn against her, denying us the full arc of a love that became as poisonous as it once was ardent. While not a perfectly constructed play with a rather weak conclusion, much of that can be forgiven.

John Dove’s exuberant direction with its rich detail (he previously directed Brenton’s In Extremis at the Globe) makes full use of the Globe’s innate sense of pageantry, filling the stage with luxurious velvets and satins. The fact that Brenton seems rather smitten with Anne Boleyn is hardly surprising – this was a formidably well-educated, intelligent and principled woman living in extraordinary times, who made the most of every opportunity that came her way.

Written for Exeunt