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