theatre

London Tide

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Ami Tredrea and Bella Mclean. Image by Marc Brenner.

London Tide by Ben Power, music by PJ Harvey – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

Ian Rickson’s production of London Tide is both a delight to watch, and a significant achievement. The challenge of adapting Charles Dickens’ weird, labyrinthine novel for the stage is enough in itself, but turning it into a musical to boot, seems like a risky venture. Fortunately, the adaptation is by Ben Power and the music by PJ Harvey, an inspired pairing. Together, they have conjured up coherent, direct and involving theatre, judiciously updated, with songs that are on a whole different level of quality to standard music theatre fare.

Rickson’s staging, with sets by Bunny Christie, is sparse but effective and original. A void at the front of the stage is the Thames, which shapes the lives of Dickens’ characters. The entire cast climbs out of it at curtain up, and characters are cast in, pulled out sometimes dead, sometimes alive. The stage is a huge dark space edged with giant river piles, with a watery, translucent sheet at the rear used for some impressive silhouette scenes. What makes this something different is the way that the stage floor moves, rising and tilting like the river, and so does the lighting rig, which hangs low enough for it to lift one character into the air, has he grabs it with both hands. The gantries move rhythmically up and down, like in ripples like water, the first time I have ever seen a theatre’s fittings used almost as an extra character.

The story, stripped back expertly by Power, who also gives the gender roles a carefully judged 21st century boost, is pure London noir. Dicken’s novel is pretty absurd but its strength, and that of the stage show, is the filthy London atmosphere – a city of mud and shadows, poverty and fate, to which its inhabitants are, nevertheless, fiercely devoted. PJ Harvey’s songs, backed by a three-piece band on stage, underscore the noir themes rather than reiterating the story. With lyrics by Power, they are properly impressive, written in styles that range across Harvey’s fine career. At times songs sound like ‘Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea’, at others like ‘White Chalk’, or ‘Let England Shake’. When the cast lines up at the front of the stage, singing directly to the audience “This is a story about London and death and resurrection”, it sounds like a number from ‘The Threepenny Opera’.

London Tide is worth it for the music alone, but there’s a lot more. Dickens’ characters offer some excellent roles, which are grabbed with both hands by a young cast. Bella Mclean as the entitled Bella Wilfer, makes a convincing transition to self-awareness, and has a particularly excellent voice. Ami Tredea’s Limehouse girl, Lizzie Hexam, is full of character and determination. Jake Wood, as Gaffer Hexam who fishes bodies from the Thames for a living, has real menace. Ellie-May Sheridan makes a great deal of the small part of doll’s dressmaker, Jenny Wren. Tom Mothersdale is suitable distracted as heir-in-disguise, John Rokesmith. Peter Wight, always hard to beat in any role, makes Noddy Boffin clumsy and likeable. As principle baddie Bradley Headstone, Scott Karim is lugubrious and frightening. And Crystal Condie, as Miss Potterson, plays an important role as a landlady standing up the depredations of the men who strew damaged people in their wake.

London Tide is a seriously high quality evening. Ben Power, PJ Harvey and Ian Rickson make the show seem simple, and logical, but it really is nothing of the kind. Epic Dickens adaptations like the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby were once era defining. Now they sneak into the National Theatre’s repertoire, and it is a credit to the current management that shows of this quality can, to some extent, be taken for granted.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare – Wilton’s Music Hall, London

Henry Maynard’s Flabbergast Theatre is an unapologetically physical theatre company, building a reputation for staging Shakespeare in a style that owes a lot more to Grotowsky than it does to the Globe. Flabbergast’s Macbeth, seen last year at the Southwark Playhouse, delivered energy and imagery at the expense of the text. They have followed it up with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged in the much-loved Wilton’s Music Hall. The result is the same, only more so.

There are things to like about the production. The setting, designed by Maynard who also directs, is dominated by a hay wain, a cart used like the York Mystery Plays waggons as both stage and set. It fits the play beautifully, with Titania and Bottom nestled above the action watching the lovers in the woods. Costumes, also Maynard’s work, are striking, with the Mechanicals wearing half masks, and an exciting profusion of tartan trousers, dressing gowns, periwigs and golden ram’s horns in evidence (although Oberon’s gold mankini very much outstays its welcome). However, although the physicality of the performances and the commitment to clowning is unquestionable, the result is to make the show less rather than more accessible.

Performances ratchet up to 11 from the first lines, and stay there for two and half hours. There is no departure from full-on mania, from every character in the play. In the opening scene Hermia’s father, Egeus, in crazed 18th century dresses, lurches, bounds and leers around the stage, a grotesque parody of… what? The connection between the characters and any recognisable reality is instantly severed, and from then on the audience struggles to understand what it is seeing, or why. There is no value in picking out performers, but the entire company performs in a way that is mannered in the extreme. Almost every single line is illustrated by the performer acting it out in capering dumbshow. Combined with the masks and the exaggerated accents on display, it makes much of the text inaudible and the rest incomprehensible. It really is impossible to follow what is going on, as characters set fire to the best know poetry in the language and push it over a cliff. It is an exhausting watch.

Flabbergast Theatre are not about the text, that is understood. Their physical style promises much, and anyone who takes a different approach to Shakespeare deserves respect. Unfortunately though, A Midsummer Night’s Dream really does not work. The lack of variation in tone, and the absence of character or nuance, rapidly diminishes the effect of the full octane clowning. Physical theatre is a subtle, powerful tool but, in one of the most atmospheric plays ever written, Maynard’s show has no room for mood. That really is a mistake.

Player Kings

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Player Kings by William Shakespeare, adapated by Robert Icke – New Wimbledon Theatre, London

Warming up for the West End, Sir Ian McKellen’s appearance as Falstaff in Robert Icke’s compressed Henry IVs created real excitement on a Wimbledon Friday night. Some actors seem fated to play the fat knight, Michael Gambon or Desmond Barritt for example, while for others, notably Antony Sher, the role comes as a surprise to both actor and audience. McKellen is in the latter category. As they await his first entrance, everyone is silently wondering whether such a lean, vulpine actor can really carry off a fat suit. Of course he can. McKellen is the UK’s greatest living actor, and his decision to take on a demanding role at a stage in his life and career when he can do what he pleases, is a gift to us all.

McKellen’s decision to work with Robert Icke is a canny one. Icke is in demand as a reimaginer of the classic, and he has taken the radical, but entirely logical, decision to combine Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 into a single play. Althought it’s the kind of thing John Barton used to get up to at the RSC, this type of heavey editing has fallen out of fashion. But anyone who has seen the two plays in full will have experienced a slump in Part 2, when repetition seems to set in. Icke’s edits strip the plays back, to largely good effect, keeping all the best bits but cutting back on scenes such as Northumberland’s follow-up rebellion, and Pistol’s lengthy rants. The downside is a four-hour running time, but the production is very well-paced and the evening speeds by, a real achievement with the first half alone 2 hours long.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set is simple – two curtains that pull across the width of the stage – but good for switching between echoing court and cosy tavern. Other than the text changes, Icke’s production is clear and direct, giving text and performers room to breathe. The exception is an amusing staging of Falstaff’s confrontation with the Lord Chief Justice (Joseph Mydell) following the Battle of Shrewsbury. Falstaff, in a wheelchair and looking like Captain Tom, is accosted at a drinks reception in his honour, from which he methodically steals all the booze. McKellen is backed by a strong cast, including the dignified Mydell. Richard Coyle’s King Henry is a troubled man who is clearly ill from the start, and knows how little he has achieved. Toheeb Jimoh is a posh boy Hal, who seems motivated by cynical self-entertainment. The play is driven by his parade of schemes to humiliate Falstaff, but we see a glimpse of his real self in his alarming intense reaction to trying on his father’s crown.

Samuel Edward-Cook makes Hotspur a shaven-headed force of nature, and then channels a similar energy as Pistol, a clever piece of double casting. Justice Shallow is delightfully played by Robin Soans, while James Garnon is both a trouble-making Worcester and Shallow’s cousin Silence, who turns out to have a remarkable drunken singing voice. Clare Perkins makes Mistress Quickly London, and very real. Annette McLaughlin’s Warwick has hints of Theresa May, Mark Monero’s Peto is a real chancer, with no choice but to live on his wits, and Geoffrey Freshwater was born to play Bardolph.

The cast is strong, and the evening is not all about Falstaff, but he provides the plays with a deep, complex centre. McKellen, in flat cap, cravat and leather jacket, is dressed for a different era, which offers a key to his interpretation. His Falstaff is a seasoned villain, used to being top of the heap – but he has become lazy and, above all, old. Falstaff is losing his powers, and as the play progresses starts to realise that he is past it, and his time is coming. Each of Hal’s humiliations, which he shrugs off to amuse his followers, cuts deeper. He keeps being found out, and his life of sitting in the pub being deferred to is coming to and end. McKellen makes it clear that Falstaff is an aristocrat slumming it, like Hal, but far past the point of return. He is vicious and doesn’t hesitate to exploit weakness, but he is also loveable and, his physical weakness – trying and failing to rise from his tavern seat, as Mistress Quickly rushes to support him – is a heart-stopping moment, as is the final rejection scene, when he choses continued self-delusion over facing the truth. Icke incorporates his death scene from Henry V, just as Orson Welles did in ‘Chimes at Midnight’, which works well.

McKellen’s performance is a triumph – both physically menacing and vulnerable, charming and nasty – a multi-layered interpretation certainly as good as anyone who has played the role in recent memory. Icke’s production doesn’t reinvent the play with the brilliance of his Hamlet, but provides much more than a vehicle for McKellen, spawning a world that allows his performance to flourish. It’s an evening to cherish.

Dear Octopus

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Photo by Marc Brenner.

Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

While ‘I Capture the Castle’ remains much-loved, Dodie Smith’s stage work is rarely revived. Emily Burns’ production at the Lyttleton demonstrates why, but also shows the value in revisiting a play that is very old-fashioned, but is also dominated by excellent parts for women. The play, set during a weekend reunion of the Randolph family for the golden wedding of Dora (Lindsay Duncan) and Charles (Malcolm Sinclair), is on many levels very uneventful. People resolve sometimes fraught relationships, with the shadow of the First World War, and the death of eldest son Peter, in the background, and the subsequent, unexplained death of Nora, one of twins. The play was written in 1938, but only the cccasional radio broadcasts hints at the war to come. It is all about personal relationships, and about social ones too – although, Smith was not really concerned with the power balance in an upper-middle class household enabled by servants.

Frankie Bradshaw’s set flies in huge chunks of wall and staircase to create hall, dining room and nursery in a house that is substantial in every respect. There are also real fire burning in grates, a very impressive effect. Also substantial is Lindsay Duncan’s performance as the matriarch, a proper tour-de-force. Early in the play, she is domineering, constantly ordering everyone off to do jobs for her, but her charm and sincerity is never in doubt either, lending full credibility to her reconciliation scenes with her daughter Cynthia, a troubled Bethan Cullinane. The cast is the show’s strongest suite, with a host of excellent performances. Malcolm Sinclair is tender, and very convincingly devoted to his wife, as Charles. However, here are no weak cast members. The ensemble relationship is what makes the show. The family relationships require a diagram to unpick, but Bessie Carter as ‘companion’ Fenny, Kate Fahy as reprobate elder aunty, Belle, Billy Howle as brother Nicholas and Amy Morgan as sister Margery are all highly watchable.

As this is Dodie Smith, there is also a clutch of clever and amusing children – three of them, played by a rotating cast of young actors. These are very demanding parts, requiring performers who can really mix it with the adults and, along with the size of the cast, presumably one of the reasons this play is rarely seen. Smith’s ability to charm, and to conjure up the kind of family which, despite their troubles, you want to be part of, is unrivalled. Her social milieu is a lost world, which dominated the inter-war stage and now often seems unrecognisable. However, ‘Dear Octopus’, despite being sometimes preachy on the subject, shows family dynamics in a way that still speaks to us. And Smith writes about women with a skill that is entirely natural, yet highly unusual. This is very much the kind of play that the National Theatre exists to re-examine – technically demanding, unfashionable, but with qualities missed before that we can now value .

Nachtland

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Angus Wright, John Heffernan and Dorothea Myer-Bennett. Photo by Ellie Kurtz.

Nachtland by Marius von Mayenberg – Young Vic, London

Translated by Maja Zade, Marius von Mayenberg’s play is a brutal satire on the hypocrisy and racism of the contemporary German middle-classes. Brother and sister Philipp (John Heffernan) and Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), who have a difficult relationship, come together to clear their recently deceased father’s house. In the attic, they find a painting, wrapped in brown paper which, on examination, appears to by Adolf Hitler. This provides a more than sufficient catalyst to strip away the pair’s principles and dignity, as they attempt to cash in.

Nachtland (an invented German word meaning something like ‘night-land’) is a broad, bitter comedy drawn with cartoonish strokes. Most of the cast have a lot of fun with their absurd characters. Myer-Bennett is extremely aggressive, particularly towards her brother, self-righteous and openly racist. Heffernan is patronising, passively aggressive, and racist in a more insidious way. The two performances complement each other very well, culminating in a jaw-dropping brother-sister masturbation scene, as their excitement about the money they can make from the painting boils over. They play off against their partners, Gunnar Cauthery as Fabian and Judith, played by Jenna Augen. The latter is Jewish, and the only remotely normal character in the play, who whips the rug from under everyone without blinking. The events take place in an aging house, set designed by Anna Fleische, where the past has clearly been shoved in the attic and left unexamined for too long.

The absurdity of Nachtland, managed beautifully by director Patrick Marber, is its strength. Jane Horrocks is restrained, and funnier because of it, as Hitler art expert Annamaria. Angus Wright puts in the most eye-catching performance as wealthy Hitler collector, Kahl. First appearing in a cut scene, dancing to techo in a jockstrap, he re-emerges in furs and coloured chinos to appraise the painting for sale. Wright rings every drop of potential out of Kahl’s quivering ecstasy at the sight of a ‘Hitler’, but also delivers the collector’s dismissal of morality and art with fine disdain, launching into a list of those we prefer to forget were anti-semitic.

It is a little hard to judge Nachtland from outside Germany. Its satire, which feels unrestrained and to some extent shocking, is clearly aimed at Germans themselves. Whether this is familiar territory, or an essential reality check is not obvious to us in the UK. The play is too obvious at times in its humour, and struggles to get off the ground until Wright’s entrance. Von Mayenburg also gives the Devil, in a long tradition, the best lines. But it an entertaining and disconcerting evening in equal parts, with some very memorable moments. And the overall suggestion, of deep-lying, unapologetic prejudice among those who should know better for all sorts of reasons, is highly disturbing and an urgent matter for the stage to address.

King Lear

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Clarke Peters and Danny Sapani. Photo by Marc Brennan.

King Lear by William Shakespeare – Almeida Theatre, London

Yaël Farber’s directs King Lear on simple but very effective set by Merle Hensel – a round, black circle backed by a curtain of chains. With dramatic lighting by Lee Curran, it is the perfect space for a hard-edged, menacing production that brings out the violence that courses through the play. Danny Sapani’s Lead is a big, intimidating man. His anger cows those around him, and he rules through physical presence. But Farber suggests that this is also the basis of his relationship with his daughters. For the first time I saw Lear’s actions as those of an abuser: controlling, threatening and micro-managing his children’s lives. The opening scene leaves the impression that Goneril (Akiya Henry) and Regan (Faith Omole) are equally uncomfortably with their father’s egotistical antics, but it is Cordelia (Gloria Obianyo) who has been driven to the point of resistance. Later, in a supremely uncomfortable moment, Sapani forces Regan, his adult daughter, to sit on his knee in front of her husband. Whatever has happened before the play begins, the father-daughter relationship is undoubtedly dark and destructive.

The violence Lear demonstrates when he still has power – smashing news conference microphones to ground in his rage – is visited on him in turn by children brought up in his image. Henry and Omole are superb are Goneril and Regan, taking destruction of others and themselves as the only way out of the situation they can imagine. Obianyo’s Cordelia is detached and angry, her recourse to violence taking the form of a full-scale invasion with a foreign power’s army, which makes her embrace of love and forgiveness all the more dramatic and moving when it comes. It is impossible to sympathise with Sapani’s Lear in the first half, as he rages in the heath scene, but his transformation, which comes only through the complete disintegration of his ego, is startling. His Lear is entirely compelling, and he is a huge stage presence, an actor coming to the part as though made for it.

Farber production is both well-paced – 3 and a half hours feel like much less – and well cast. Michael Gould’s Gloucester is a reasonable man in a mad world, and his scenes with Lear are a high point. Matthew Tennyson’s Edgar is an ingenue from another world, much more at home as Poor Tom than himself. Fra Fee’s Northern Irish Edmund is the opposite – a lifelong charmer whose over-confidence will always be his downfall. Alec Newman’s Kent, likewise, channels his inner, fight squaddie with suspicious ease. Hugo Bolton’s uptight Oswald and Edward Davis’ louche Cornwall are also highly watchable.

The most controversial element of the show is Clarke Peters’ Fool, played as a manifestation of Lear’s inner voice, who no-one else can see. While theoretically interesting, this approach tends to sterilise the action by removing social context, and Peters’ style seems to belong to a different production. His singing talent is put to good use though, and the use of music, composed by Matthew Perryman and making use of an on-stage piano and repeated snatches of ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’, is seriously eerie. This Lear is of the highest class, and brings new insight to one of the world’s most pored-over plays.

Macbeth

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma. Photo by Matt Humphrey.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Dock X, London

Simon Godwin’s production of Macbeth, starring Ralph Fiennes, touring non-traditional venues, is reminiscent of the Almeida’s double-header of Richard II and Coriolanus, staged in the pre-conversion Gainsborough Studios, with Fiennes playing both leads. That was in 2000, and Fiennes is still bringing in the crowds, burnishing his reputation as one of the great actors of his generation. This record includes, but does not depend upon, his Shakespearian work, with Mark Antony in both Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Richard III, and Coriolanus (in the 2011 film) all performances of the highest calibre. His Macbeth is another major achievement, a portrayal that offers a persuasive account of a man veering rapidly into evil.

The show’s London venue is the Surrey Quays warehouse, Dock X, which provides a very successful auditorium with a large capacity, but excellent sight lines all the way to the back row. There is a gesture at immersiveness, with the audience entering through a miniature war zone with burned out car, but the production is surprisingly traditional in the right ways. Frankie Bradshaw’s concrete stepped set is simple but entirely effective, adapting with minimal fuss while creating the impression of Scotland as a militarised landscape. Soldiers wear battle fatigues so, when different costumes appear, they make a big visual impression: Lady Macbeth in a vivid green gown, Macbeth in a purple robe. The witches hover between ordinary and scary, three young women in dungarees and puffa jackets who might be hanging around on any street corner – a strong approach that normalises the extreme.

Fiennes himself is evidently an efficient soldier partly because he is single-minded to the point of lacking social skills. He is awkward and abrupt in the opening scenes, while Indira Varma plays Lady Macbeth as an influencer, who knows how to present people in their best light. It makes sense that these two are together, and that Lady Macbeth is in control. She can shape and direct her husband to make the most of his opportunities. But the production makes the tipping point clear, when her plans start to spin out of control. As soon as she tells her husband he is ‘lily-livered’, having declared that Duncan’s murder would make him a man, their pact is broken. After this betrayal, Macbeth is unleashed to live his worst life.

Godwin’s production is based around notably clear verse speaking, that makes the text sound fresh in a way that only the best productions can pull off. Fiennes leads the way in this, making all the great moments, especially the ‘brief candle’ speech, revelations. He is mesmerising, the best and most believable Macbeth I’ve had the good fortune to see, and Indira Varma is a match for his performance, making Lady Macbeth a great deal more comprehensible than is often the case, a woman who will give all in exchange for the rewards she confidently anticipates, only to disastrously miscalculated the cost.

The production also gives the wider cast weight and presence. Making the unusual, but understandable, decision to cut the Porter scene pays off through enhanced narrative drive. Another of Godwin’s achievements is to make the Macduff/Malcolm scene in England, often dismissed as an aberration, actually work. Malcolm (Ewan Black) is genuinely wrestling with self-doubt about his fitness to rule, not playing games, but it is swept away by the terrible revelation that Macduff’s (Ben Turner) family has been murdered. This moment is centre of the play’s second half, balanced against the murder of Duncan in the first, and showing how it can be played makes it complete.

A strong cast also features Steffan Rhodri as a poetically Welsh Macduff, Rebecca Scroggs as a justifiably furious Lady Macduff, and Jake Neads and Michael Hodgson as the two murderers. The ungainly presence of the latter, is used cleverly as the witches (Lucy Mangan, Daniella Fiamanya and Lola Shalam) channel their visions of the future through Hodgson’s twitching body. Christopher Shutt’s sound design creates an eerie backdrop to the action, with hints of The Exorcist that make this production not so much bewitched, as possessed. The combination of characters destroyed by their own personalities, excitingly portrayed by Fiennes and Varma, and a war-ravaged setting in which people are not what they seem, makes this a production to savour.

Ghosts

/ vanishedcity / Leave a comment

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London

Joe Hill-Gibbins production of Ghosts is the first Ibsen to be staged in the candelit glow of the Sam Wanamaker Theatre, and it looks remarkable. Set and costumes, designed by Rosanna Vise, are from a decadent mid-20th century society. The back wall consists of mirrors and the floor a cocoon of blood red, deep pile carpet. It is alluring and disturbing like the costumes – the upper class characters in velvet dresses and satin waistcoats, enfolding iron gloves. From the upper levels, the production takes place beneath a bank of six chandeliers which, while offering more of a glimpsed view than a theatre audience would expect, show the action in soft focus. The whole production looks like Visconti’s 1963 film, ‘The Leopard’, in its low light designed to reveal only costly surfaces. Osvald, infected with syphilis, compares his softening brain to “cherry-coloured velvet”, and the setting depicts suffocating interiors from which there is no escape.

It remains hard to imagine how Ibsen’s play, still direct and shocking, would have seemed to its original audience. Hill-Gibbins deploys the high end cast at his disposal with relish, and they make the most of Ibsen’s brutal exposé of hypocrisy. Paul Hilton’s Parson Manders is a canting fool, a man whose only show of strength lies in his moral convictions, which are thoroughly mistaken. It is hard to imagine why Hattie Morahan’s Helene Alving loved him, but the fact she did makes the poverty of her existence plain. She gives a riveting performance, quivering with a lifetime’s suppressed rage then collapsing with absolute despair. Stuart Thompson as her son, Osvald, conveys the character’s conflicting emotions and failure to escape his social constraints very well indeed. Sarah Slimani’s Regene is blunt and unsentimental, the only character with any hope of achieving freedom. And Greg Hicks is brilliant as the wheedling, deceitful Engstram who has Manders in the palm of his hand. He creeps around the stage with his bad leg like Richard III without the social position. Yet we feel a residual sympathy for a man whose class limit his opportunities to opening a brothel and getting others to fund his drinking.

Hill-Gibbins, consistently one of the most interesting British directors of the classics, pulls off a sophisticated, layered account. He has also adapted the play, and the version is crisp and startling. This production shows the quality of productions that the Globe Theatre, frustratingly inconsistent in the past, can and should be staging. It also reconfirms the reputation of Ghosts as one of the plays that made modern theatre.