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