Review: A View from the Bridge, Young Vic, 9th April 2014

Ivo Van Hove slams Arthur Miller’s play to the Young Vic stage, a simmering, foreboding take on ‘the American Dream’ which continues to hit home and spurt relevance sixty years after it was written and a few thousand miles away from the city in questions. Recently commenting on this production in the Guardian, Van Hove claimed, “my aim is the ultimate production”, whilst the performances are toe-curlingly brilliant, erupting a bubbling pit of jealousy, hardship, cabin fever and frustration, Van Hove’s excellent production is crushingly relegated to at least the ‘penultimate’ by sadly ill-fitting choices of design and soundtrack.

In light of the passing of the gay marriage bill in the last month, Eddie’s allusions to Rodolfo’s homosexuality and being “not right”, are particularly relevant, evoking more than a few self-conscious titters around the audience, Van Hove adapts these lines beautifully, acknowledging Eddie’s ignorance whilst also implying that his prejudicial views are far from unusual. Van Hove’s direction is flawless (bar a prolonged ‘awkward conversation’ scene that should have stayed in the rehearsal room), and Mark Strong broods onstage as an utterly terrifying Eddie. One half-expected him to leap-frog the stage and unleash a murderous brawl in the front row. A caged animal imprisoned by his own obsession, simmering violence and inner-turmoil; there’s no need to wait until the first punch is thrown an hour or so in, the violence seeps out of Eddie the second the lights come up.

As mentioned initially, objections are from a technical perspective. Whilst the sparse, clean-cut lines are indicative of a community unaccustomed to luxury, scraping by what they can. Miller’s play centres on a cramped, deprived microcosm in flux, where a sheltered ward, to the bubbling, fermenting near-incestuous dismay of her guardian is exposed to the bright lights of the city and the lurid vividness of first love. As said above, the acting, spot on. Whilst simplicity can indeed ensure that style doesn’t deviate from grittier substance, Jan Versweyveld’s clean black and white lines divorce the story from its heady, atmospheric context, depriving the audience of a gritty insight into the collision of grime, sweat and hardship with hope, big-city and bright lights.

Similarly, whilst a drumming motif works throughout to an extent, and a choral soundtrack adds a certain ambience evoking the clash of Italian Catholicism with modern America, it’s all just a bit much. The constant drumming feels too much like a rehearsal technique that’s slipped into the end product whilst the amped up music in the famous ‘chair’ scene, elicited a wave of hearty laughter rather than the loom of foreboding violence which Van Hove presumably intended.

Don’t get me wrong, this was pretty good. However, can the drums and pipe down the music a little and Van Hove could have had the “ultimate production” for which he strived. 3/5

Review: 'Three Birds', Bush Theatre, 23rd March 2013

To be fair, if the play kicked off two minutes ago and a teenage girl has already decapitated a chicken, even before a boy has lurched towards it with a syringe you can make the solid assumption that you’re watching something a little out of the ordinary, be that for better or worse. Fortunately Janice Okoh’s Bruntswood Prize winning play veers towards the former as it continues its run at the Bush Theatre after its premiere last month at Manchester’s Royal Exchange.

The story follows the lives of 16 year old Tiana, 13 year old Tionne and 9 year old Tanika from their sparsely decorated living room on an anonymous Lewisham estate, Mother Jackie is nowhere to be seen. Listening to the delusional aspirations of elder-sister Tiana, one can guess that these young people barely venture far from these four walls and that their lives are inevitably made more difficult by the fact that they were born within them.  There’s no doubt, we’ve returned to the kitchen sink, only this time there’s a little girl taking a dump in it.

Three Birds features an immense performance from Susan Wakoma as 9 year old Tanika, whose incessant childish chatter is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, never once plopping into grating over-exaggeration. Lee Oakes also stands out as the curiously eloquent neighbourhood dealer, though Ms Jenkins (Claire Brown), the manic, politically correct school-teacher idolised by Tanika, is an addition that is perhaps a tad cartoonish at times. Darkly humorous and unsettling, you may see the end coming, but you’ll be waiting on edge for someone to say it out loud. 4/5

Review: 'Love on Trial', Bilimankhwe Arts, Ovalhouse, Sat 23rd February

‘I have never felt sexually attracted to any woman in my life…If a law is designed to suppress freedom, then it is a stupid law that must be scrapped’, speaks Charles, one of many characters embodied by Bailey Patrick in Bilimankhwe Arts’ simple yet thought provoking one-man show, a retelling of Stanley Kenani’s highly acclaimed short story based on the true account of a homosexual partnership between two young Malawian men.

Bare, sparse and remote, two washing lines cross a near-empty stage, from which performer Bailey Patrick suspends numerous newspaper dolls throughout. The image is enchantingly child-like yet simultaneously looming and sinister, an eerie evocation of the dire fate which continues to hover over practicing homosexuals in certain nations. The mounting accumulation of paper figures provides a striking visual depiction of the extent to which a private relationship becomes a public issue when a society has deemed that partnership ‘unnatural’.

Patrick immediately welcomes the audience to his home, angling his behind towards an audience member and quipping ‘best view in the house’, he sabotages any suspicious lingering of a fourth wall, fostering a good-natured, jesting tone. The atmosphere is transformed from cosy intimacy to uncomfortable intrusion, the initially comfortable immediacy now becomes more uncertain territory. On one occasion Patrick poses a seemingly rhetorical query “what does lewd mean?”, yet refuses to continue until at least one of his unwitting audience members has provided a response. Less aggressive, more provoking, this is a thoughtful device by Lane, recreating a very real scenario in which articulating your convictions becomes an uncertain and public event.

Director Lane fuses Kenani’s tale with references to the media furore which erupted from George Michael’s infamous encounter in an LA public toilet, with poignant, provocative results. Despite these interludes this is far from an all-singing all-dancing extravaganza, and Lane skillfully diverts both cliché and political lecture in this in turn hilarious and haunting piece.  What we have is one actor, standing on a tiny stage with two chairs and a suitcase. The story-telling element is enchanting, and a faithful preservation of Kenani’s narrative tone, yet more poignant is that ensuing sense of cruel isolation, the loneliness of one despised and ostracized by their community.

The sole criticism is that at 45 minutes, I was left wanting more, though perhaps this is director Lane’s point, providing a brief snapshot into a journey that is far off completion, a pause for thought on the continuing instances of forcefully curtailed dialogues; a point brought home particularly uncomfortably every time Patrick effortlessly destroys one of those fragile figures hanging above his head. 4/5

A comment on a recent review of 'Julius Caesar' at the Donmar Warehouse

Today I divert slightly from the usual format of this blog to instead comment on Charles Spencer’s review of Julius Caesar currently playing at the Donmar Warehouse. (Without prejudicing any immediate response…I would fully advise reading aloud in a smug condescending tone to get the full effect).  

“For as long as I can remember, actresses have complained that there aren’t nearly enough decent parts for women… I was rather hoping that the wives of Brutus and Caesar would be played by men in drag but this is a feminist closed shop and chaps aren’t allowed.”

(Read the rest here if you fancy getting riled up http://bit.ly/VlP9xG)

So one can assume that Spencer has a problem with gender-blind or single-gender productions? Admittedly they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, fair enough, you don’t like musicals? I’m not going to drag you into ‘Wicked’ kicking and screaming.

Yet, it’s worth noting that Spencer’s 4* review of Twelfth Night/Richard III, comments on the all-male casting only once to applaud that “all the female characters are played, superbly, by men” (http://bit.ly/VPHO9t). Similarly his 5* acclaim of Propeller’s Comedy of Errors/Richard III at the Hampstead Theatre last year, he claims was his “privilege to witness”. Clearly Spencer has no issue with lauding all-male productions, which makes his following quote that little bit more repulsive than it would be if taken in isolation, “I vowed that I wouldn’t resort to Dr Johnson’s notorious line in which he compared a woman’s preaching to a “dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all””.

This is of course not to say that Phyllida Lloyd’s production should be immune to criticism simply for being all-female. That idea is (almost) equally as offensive as Spencer’s misogynistic drawl. Yet Spencer’s waffle illuminates the reasons why this production is brave in concept, his evident tone of surprise in his admission that “in fact some of the acting is excellent” advances what I assume is Lloyd’s aim, to assert the fact that Harriet Walter and Cush Jumbo are as capable of bringing Brutus and Cassius to the stage as Mark Rylance and Johnny Flynn are of giving us Olivia and Viola. Whilst there are elements of Lloyd’s production that could be subject to criticism, the gender of the actors, in my opinion, is a valid response to a swelling trend in all-male productions amid an industry that is already largely dominated by opportunities for male actors.

I normally use this space to write my own reviews yet I will spare your ears any further bashing. I encourage you to go to this production (if you can get hold of a ticket) so that you can form your own opinion of what is undoubtedly an important piece of theatre. In the meantime, I’d encourage all to stop reading the reviews of ‘certain individuals’ charged with influencing public opinion with the view that eventually column inches will be bestowed on someone with less embittered and antiquated sentiment.

Review: 'Every Man for Herself', The Courtyard Theatre, 17th January 2013

It has got to be said, the cabaret scene in Mussolini’s Italy isn’t a topic that’s likely to pop up on Family Fortunes any time soon. Dario Polmanari’s ‘Every Man for Herself’ intriguingly illuminates the plight of this otherwise overlooked group, telling their story whilst cleverly steering clear of wartime cliché. Nestled into the Courtyard’s studio theatre, the choice to bypass glamour and overdone glitz in their costume and staging gives an appropriate image of decayed flambuoyance and extravagance amid a cruel fascist regime.

It’s a tricky business to successfully pull off performing a ‘performance’, and the audience is thrown straight into the ‘show’ from the off. Unfortunately the company just misses the mark. The backstage scenes where the performers, which include a Jew and a homosexual, reveal their fear of being arrested by troops who have charged into the show, falls somewhat flat where it could easily be heart-rending. It would be nice to see an observable contrast between the extravagant onstage personas and the shrivelled, fearful reality backstage. Unfortunately I didn’t.  The performers’ themselves aren’t quite sharp or energetic enough to suggest that they do this on a daily basis, whilst the ‘real life’ personas don’t display enough humanity for an audience to engage with.

The underlying problem is one of execution rather than content (aside from a slightly whimsical ending which I think could be cut). Polmanari’s writing is innovative and thought provoking, given a little more development and tighter direction, this play’s potential could be fully realised. 2/5 

Review: 'Top Story', Old Vic Tunnels, 9th January 2013

Excitingly billed as a ‘darkly hilarious and poignant new comedy’, ‘Top Story’ documents a nation’s countdown to the apocalypse from the perspective of two largely nonplussed men in a flat, falls far short of the mark in admirably dull fashion.

The first ten minutes are somewhat promising. Friends Gus and Tarflyn, having evaluated their non-existent travel options, make the choice to spend the apocalypse together. Seconds later, they break into unrestrained panic upon realising they haven’t enough booze to carry them through to the end of the world. After a swift trip to the shop, calm is restored. Unfortunately however, this is where ‘Top Story’ peaks, and at the interval I found myself wishing that there had been some miscalculation and the meteor would obliterate the possibility of a second act.

In fairness, the two lead actors do what they can with a flat, spark-free script, which infuriatingly seems to feel that the key to ‘lad’ talk lies in sticking ‘mate’ on the end of every other sentence.  Their scenes are spliced with action from a TV studio providing apocalyptic updates. These revolve around a central theme of fittie newsreader ‘Chrissy’ being sexually propositioned by various male news reporters, funnyish at first, but after an hour or so it wears pretty thin. Additional cast members include two white-clad and entirely superfluous ‘angels’ who occasionally drift onstage to observe Gus and Tarflyn whilst musing over vague philosophical points.

The person who had the misfortune to be dragged along with me requested fairly early on that we leave. Wanting to know how ‘the end’ was going to be performed, I stayed. Probably an error. Exceeding my reasonably low expectations the final minutes can only be accurately described as a cop-out.SPOILER ALERT. Meteor doesn’t hit. The end. 2/5

Review: 'In the Republic of Happiness', Royal Court, 10th December 2012

Crimp’s latest offering opens with a promise of traditional festive fare. The dysfunctional family, porn guzzling Grandpa, two daughters, one pregnant, one volatile, deaf father and harrassed mother; have all united to bicker incessantly over their Christmas Dinner. This is until all is swiftly overturned by the arrival of the toe-curlingly unsettling ‘Uncle Bob’ (Paul Ready). Events turn progressively sinister as conversation nauseatingly begins to hint that this new visitor may be both Uncle and Father to the new addition to the family. 

For Crimp’s next bombshell, Miriam Beuther’s (incredible) set blasts open to make way for what appears to be the set of Jeremy Kyle. ‘The Five Essential Freedoms of the Individual’ is on a screened backdrop as all the cast members take a seat and proceed to talk over each other…for about 45mins, with musical interludes sung by the cast members

Needless to say, Crimp has no intention of breaking out Christmas Pudding and The Snowman in the Royal Court this year. However, chaotic, music-infused ‘Happiness’ somewhat loses momentum after the first 15 minutes of ‘Jeremy K’ time. Whilst one can see the merit in throwing an audience into an uncomfortable endurance test, I found myself disenchanted and bored with characters that had held such promise in the first half hour. Admittedly, given Crimp’s unabashed comment on the relentless, hollow pursuit of ‘individuality’, removing the characters’ quirks is probably the point.

Whilst I think I ‘got it’, the most telling comment I can make is that my only thought at the curtain call was deciding whether I needed a wee or not. Considering Crimp’s incredible preceding work, I was disappointed not to feel a mite challenged or unsettled as I left. 2/5