theatre

The Seagull

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Cate Blanchett as Irina Arkadina (c) Marc Brenner

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov – Barbican Theatre, London

The quadbike which Simon Medvedenko (Zachary Hart) rides onto the stage at the start of Thomas Ostermeier’s production of The Seagull makes a statement straight away about the type of evening this will be. Ostermeier, true to form, strips away the play’s morose, stuffy pre-Revolutionary setting and makes it about the here and now. He has a point: this is something directors are reluctant to do with Chekhov, who still inspires the kind of reverence we long ago got past with Shakespeare. It makes for an entertaining but wildly inconsistent evening.

Hart, having got off his bike, pulls out an electric guitar and sings some Billy Bragg. The microphones that stay on stage throughout are used to address the audience directly, on the basis presumably that everyone is giving some kind of performance. Ostermeier’s approach is to underline everything, which is superficially entertaining. but has the tendency to pull the play to pieces. Central to this is Cate Blanchett, who delivers a fully committed performance as Irina Arkadina but gives the impression of being in a different play, encouraged by alienating devices such as the catwalk attached to the front of the stage on which she drapes herself dramatically, separating herself from the intense drama building behind her.

The rest of the cast ranges from brilliant to ineffectual. In the former category, Paul Bazeley’s Dorn is destroys people without meaning to, and Priyanga Burford brings his occasional lover Polina to intense life with limited stage time. Tanya Reynolds is excellent as a willowy, emo Masha, too wise for her years. And Tom Burke as Trigorin has an intensity of disappointment with life and himself that is truly scary. On the other hand, Kodi Smit-McPhee never fires or convinces as Konstantin, and the climactic scene with Emma Corrin’s Nina, a part to which she does not well-suited, does not deliver chemistry or intensity. On the night I attended, Jason Watkins was unfortunately indisposed and not playing Sorin.

The adaptation, by Duncan Macmillan, sets out to bring the play, leaping and shouting, into the 2020s, showing us it has as much to say now as it did in Chekhov’s era. However, this is never a subtle process, albeit full of energy, and when we hear actors raging about how little theatre doesn’t matter to ordinary people, it’s hard not hear a background hum of self-congratulation at just how self-ware everyone is. And Chekhov speaks to people on a human level, communicating political and existential issues in the frustrations we can all identify with. Macmillan and Ostermeier seem intent on making The Seagull something it isn’t.

There are powerful scenes including, surprisingly, the use of ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers to punch home the sadness of a happiness that has entirely gone. Magda Willi’s clever set is simply a dense patch of maize stalks, from which characters emerge, sometimes addjusting their clothing, and into which they vanish again. But the show as a whole seems somewhat misguided, both in terms of concept and cast.

More Life

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Photo (c) Helen Murray.

More Life by Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman – Royal Court Theatre, London

With the tech-enabled delusions of the super rich now the central driving force in global politics, there could not be a more opportune moment to examine the reality behind fantasy bundled as product. Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman, who together are Kandinsky, have devised a chilling and remarkable play for our times. ‘More Life’ imagines what it would actually be like to live forever, and the unequivocal conclusion is… absolutely terrible. Corporate scientist Victor (Marc Elliott) is working to impact the consciousness of dead people, digitally stored half a century earlier, into living bodies – bringing the dead back to life.  After many failed experiments, with people ‘turned off’ when they fail to react positively to the discovery, firstly, that they have died, and then that they have been brought back to life, he succeeds with Bridget, whose new body is played by Alison Halstead. She also appears in her original form as a ghost, played by a Danusia Samal, observing her inexplicable resurrection

‘More Life’ focuses on the emotional impact on Bridget, and her husband (Tim McMullan) and his second wife (Helen Schlesinger), of meeting someone who died 50 years ago. Mooney and Yeatman’s writing teases apart the sheer horror of living in a world where you no longer have a place, and of having your life ripped from its moorings. This is not an advert for AI. A quality cast delivers focused, persuasive performances: McMullan’s blank features crumbling under pressure, Schlesinger’s amenability stretched and torn, and Halstead’s understated performance carrying an emotional heft that builds and builds. Elliott is quixotically driven, while Lewis Mackinnon’s fellow scientist is a counterweight with a conscience.

‘More Life’ is partly an updating of ‘Frankenstein’ – it is bookended with the 1802 electrification of a corpse that inspired Mary Shelley – and partly an echo of Caryl Churchill’s hyper-prescient play ‘A Number’, but very distinctly its own self. Kandinsky’s style is low-key and highly inventive, honed over the course of several productions at the New Diorama Theatre, under now-Royal Court director David Byrne. They present complete, enthralling theatre. The orange cubicles of Shankho Chaudhuri’s set conjure a distant future without cliché; lighting from Ryan Joseph Stafford, sound and music from Zac Gvirtman, and sound from Dan Balfour delineate constantly shifting time periods with complete clarity. James Yeatman’s direction takes an apparently setting and uses the cast in multiple ways, as chorus, narrators, physical presence, and participants in a way that appears seamless, and is very difficult to achieve.

There is an entirely unexpected, devastating scene in which the whole cast sings David Byrne’s ‘Glass, Concrete and Stone’ – a sly tribute to the man who brought Kandinsky to the Royal Court perhaps, and a song of social disconnection. The lyric “Everything’s possible when you’re an animal” takes new on new poignancy in the context of the directions we are choosing to take as a species, or that are being chosen for us. ‘More Life’ is an intelligent and troubling critique, with a fabulous cast – a production enthrals from start to finish. It exemplifies the role of drama as a social mirror which shows us the things we would prefer to ignore.

A Knock on the Roof

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Khawla Ibraheem. Photo (c) Alex Brenner.

A Knock on the Roof by Khawla Ibraheem – Royal Court Theatre, London

Published at Plays International

The significance of Khawla Ibraheem’s one-woman play about life in Gaza has only intensified since its runs at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and off-Broadway. A Knock on the Roof is one of the starkest, most politically urgent pieces the Royal Court has staged for some time. The war in Gaza has put UK theatre in the spotlight, and not to its advantage. The cancellation by the Royal Exchange in Manchester of Stef O’Driscoll’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream over what have been described as ‘pro-Palestinian’ messages revealed a cultural fault line. It has fed into disputes involving leading industry figures and the Culture Secretary about theatre’s freedom to make political statements, especially on the Israel-Hamas conflict. The brutal events in Gaza have been notable by their absence from our stages, even as they dominate political discourse. In the midst of this, Khawla Ibraheem delivers a masterclass in political theatre. She communicates, with honesty, commitment, humour and self-awareness, the truth of life under siege in a war zone, where politics is not a choice but an all-consuming, everyday reality.

A Knock on the Roof, is both written and performed by Ibraheem. It is named after the tactic, adopted by the Israeli Defense Forces, of dropping a ‘small’ bomb on residential buildings as a five-minute warning to residents that a rocket is coming. Ibraheem plays Maryam, who has a young son, Noor, an aging mother and a husband studying abroad. Her daily existence includes keeping Noor out of the polluted sea, dealing with her mother’s nagging, and negotiating with an absent partner. It also involves escape drills. Maryam becomes obsessed with how far she can run in five minutes, and who or what she can carry, if the knock comes. She practices in the middle of the night, carrying a weighted bag to represent her son, hoping to get fitter, trying to create a scenario in which her family survives.

The constant, never-ending fear that attends Gazan life is both mesmerising and terrible. The concept of being on the alert 24 hours a day for a signal that death is imminent is a deeply distressing scenario, and also farcical. What would you really bring if you had just one bag? Would you choose clothes, or things that really matter to you? How far do you imagine you can run in 5 minutes? Which way would you go? And what if you miss the ‘knock’? The combination of the ordinary and extraordinary is excruciating, but Ibraheem also makes it funny. Her performance, committed, nuanced and physical, is a real success. She appears relaxed, hugging friends before the play starts, engaging in audience interaction, but she is laser-focused. Her writing is multi-layered, acknowledging absurdity as well as terror. We are entirely convinced as she describes what on the surface seems unrelatable, describing an extreme situation entirely in terms of human experience.

The play is also about more than the war, or the many previous wars – even Noor has already lived through two. Ibraheem writes about the frustration of being a woman in Gaza, with a child and husband neither of whom she really wanted, her studies and future curtailed. Her mother reinforces the social expectations that weigh her down, insisting she showers in a dress so she is not pulled naked from the rubble if the building is bombed. The focus is entirely on her performance. The stage is bare apart from a single chair, and settings are shown through light-touch back projections on the bare brick of the back wall – set designs by Frank J Oliva, and projection design by Hana S Kim. Director Oliver Butler developed the piece with Ibraheem, and together they conjure a place we find hard to comprehend from nothing with enormous skill. Ibraheem uses her body to communicate the sheer physical demands of survival in a war zone.

A Knock on the Roof is a significant show for a number of reasons. Staging such a stripped-back piece in the Royal Court’s main auditorium is a big and bold statement. Khawla Ibraheem is not only a significant talent, but a performer we need to hear from right now. And she blows away the fog of political argument and disinformation by showing what it is like to live in Gaza – something that, despite many months of press coverage, we still do not really know. The message she communicates is undeniable, that what happens to people is the only thing that matters. Away from slogans, this is surely the most meaningful lesson we can learn from disastrous conflict. If theatre cannot communicate this, it has no role; but by staging this show Artistic Director, David Byrne, makes it clear that he understands where the Royal Court’s power lies.

Macbeth

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Cush Jumbo and David Tennant. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Donmar Warehouse (in cinema)

Max Webster’s production of Macbeth, screened in cinemas from the Donmar Warehouse, has a set by Rosanna Vize which places much of the action on a raised white square that looks like a sacrificial table. It is kept clean from blood until the very last moments of the show, when David Tennant’s Macbeths lies slain, finally staining the pristine surface with a lake of blood. The exposed stage is countered by a balcony, behind glass, where events outside Macbeth’s consciousness take places – the slaughter of the Macduffs for example, and where a Celtic folk band both play haunting music and transform into the witches and other characters, banging frantically on the transparent barrier. The spotlight arena emphasises the Macbeths’ terrifying internal world, which is clearly a toxic marriage. Cush Jumbo’s Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband in a way that is clearly the basis of their relationship while Macbeth himself responds habitually. passive-aggressively – until the murder of Duncan releases his own inner darkness. He rapidly transforms into something that scares even his wife, and there is no way back.

The intensity of the production is heightened by movement techniques by Shelley Maxwell which are reminiscent of Japanese horror films, with sinister walks that parody the human body and reveal the unnatural world into which the play descends. Tennant is a sociable, likeable Macbeth who performs his place in the Scottish aristocracy until he is no longer able to keep up the pretence. His performance is sophisticated and multi-layered, up there with the best of recent times. Cush Jumbo is force to be reckoned with, but her vulnerability is never far from the surface and she spends more of the play terrified than in charge. Other strong performances come include Cal MacIninch’s Banquo, one step ahead of his friend even as he becomes king. Rona Morison’s Lady MacDuff is justifiably angry at her abandonment, while Ros Wat plays Malcolm against type, physically small but fully equipped to root out evil. Jatinder Singh Randawa gives a good account of The Porter, with genuine laughs from his updated dialogue and audience interaction.

The production is known for its sound world which, in the theatre, is delivered through headphones. Although some of the intimacy is lost in the cinema, Gareth Fry’s sound design is still the defining feature. Alongside snatches of live music, it takes us into Macbeth’s head where the witches who, more often than not are invisible, make their presence known with layered, genuinely disturbing whispered and gasped dialogue. The sound complements the bleak interior world of the design with aural hallucinations which are more alarming than anything visible could ever be.

This is an intellectually rigorous Macbeth, stripping away distractions to focus on the unstoppable descent of its main character. Its simplicity and impact makes the play’s difficult reputation seem hard to fathom. Max Webster, whose concurrent production of The Importance of Being Earnest could not be more different, is revealing himself to be a director with a rare talent to bring out the value in plays we already think we know.

A Good House

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Photo by Camilla Greenwell

A Good House by Amy Jephta – Royal Court Theatre, London

Published at Plays International

The set for A Good House starts empty, a bare stage surrounded by a strip of light which looks like an arena designed for combat. The set, by Ultz, transforms into a series of interiors over the course of the evening, as the living rooms of three different homes. Each scene is changed by the cast as they build their own interiors, carefully constructed to build or hide racial and social identity. These houses, it turns out, are battlegrounds.

Amy Jeptha’s tense, funny satire is set on a new-build estate called Stillwater, somewhere in South Africa. In an echo of Harold Pinter’s ‘A Slight Ache’, a mute but menacing presence is enough to explode the conventions holding a fragile social consensus together. With Pinter it was a matchseller in the street outside; in ‘A Good House’ it is a shack, erected overnight on waste ground by unseen hands. It is visible from the sitting room belonging to young couple Chris (Scott Sparrow) and Jess (Robyn Rainsford), and seems to them to jeopardise their entire way of life. Attempts to form a ‘neighbourhood watch’ to deal with the perceived threat strips the covers off everyone’s assumptions about race, threat and social status – and about their most intimate relationships.

Jeptha’s writing is highly skilled and very funny, even as it lays middle-class South African society open. The young couple and the shack become a catalyst for an excruciatingly polite war of words between white couple Andrew (Kair Luke Brummer) and Lynette (Olivia Darnley) and black couple Bonolo (Mimî M Khayisa) and Sihle (Sifiso Mazibuko). The cast give highly entertainingly, finely calibrated performances. Brummer is hilariously tense as he tries to avoid saying the wrong thing, while sounding like a racist every time he opens his mouth. Darnley is equally amusing as a social manipulator not nearly as clever as she imagines. Jeptha mercilessly caricatures white hypocrisy, but also insecurity: Rainsford’s Jess quivers with the effort of maintaining her place on the social ladder, and Sparrow, as her partner Chris, descends into meltdown over his perceived social inferiority. 

However, the focus of the play in on Bonolo and Sihle. A financially successful black couple, they find themselves forced to choose between defending middle-class privilege, or the rights of the unseen shack dwellers. This opens up rifts in their relationship. Bonolo openly questions Andrew and Lynette’s motives, while besuited executive Sihle tries to keep the peace, and not make trouble: yet it is Sihle who grew up in poverty while, as he puts it, the activist Bonolo was always ‘bouji as fuck’. Khayisa and Mazibuko give excellent performances as a couple who love one another, but whose personal lives cannot be separated from the political choices engulfing them. There are a couple of remarkable cut-away scenes, as the tensely polite living room chat pauses and the pair give way to their real feelings about their neighbours, rolling around on the carpet helpless with laughter.

‘A Good House’ is a quality drama, directed with vision and control by Nancy Medina. Jeptha’s writing is honed and precise, exposing the tensions of a society where everything that matters goes unsaid. Her drama involves an intruder disrupting a supposedly cosy social setting, a classic theatrical scenario, but the play feels right up to the minute. The cosiness is superficial, and the self-interest entirely transparent, with characters such as Andrew principally concerned about ‘optics’. Everything and everybody feels closer to the edge than ever before, but ‘A Good House’ is also riotously funny. It is a fine production on every level.

The Invention of Love

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Alan Williams and Simon Russell Beale. Photo by Helen Murray.

The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard – Hampstead Theatre, London

Director Blanche McIntyre’s programme notes reveal an infectious enthusiasm for ‘The Invention of Love’, a play which inspired her when she saw its National Theatre premiere in 1997. It is certainly time Tom Stoppard’s most esoteric play, which has not been seen on a major stage since, was revived. The original production, directed by Richard Eyre, was notable for the performances of John Wood as the older A.E. Housman, and Paul Rhys as the younger. When McIntyre secured Simon Russell Beale for the former role, she couldn’t really lose. Whatever the long-term merits of the play he can fill the theatre on his own, and it is hard to imagine how watching him could ever be a waste of time.

Morgan Large’s low-key set is a series of dark backgrounds, reminiscent of a giant blackboard containing the cast of academics and their worlds. A vortex is chalked in the centre, which fits the fantastical structure of a play which begins in the Underworld. Russell Beale is being ferried across the Styx by Charon (Alan Williams), who has the manner and earthy sarcasm of a London cab driver. From the brink he reviews his life, as a renowned classical scholar who also became a successful poet. He is, of course, remembered only as the latter. Stoppard’s play, the result of three years researching the Oxford of the 1870s, is a full immersion in the intellectual movements and academic rivalries of the era. This is the sort of material only Stoppard, with his one-off ability to make the esoteric amusing, would contemplate. But it is not a complete success. Chunks of the play involve key figures – Walter Pater, Benjamin Jowett, John Ruskin, Mark Pattison – making pronouncements to one another while playing invisible games of croquet or billiards. There is a lot of fun to be had for the performers, and an excellent cast – Stephen Boxer as Jowett, Jonnie Broadbent as Pater, Dominic Rowan as Ruskin, Peter Landi as Pattison – take full advantage. But, while these scenes are amusing, Stoppard never convinces us we are watching real people rather than animated historical personages.

The play works much better when it brings characters together to talk about what really matters. It takes until the second half for it to become clear the play is about disappointed love. Gay relationships were idolised in theory at Oxford as ‘Greek love’, despised by society in practice. Russell Beale observes the progress of his younger self, played by Matthew Tennyson, at Oxford as he falls in love with the resoundingly heterosexual Moses Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes). This unrequited passion haunted him for the rest of his life. Oscar Wilde (a brilliantly tough performance from Dickie Beau) appears, making the case for standing up for what you believe. Housman, who took the opposite approach, suffered as Wilde did but in an entirely different, private way. The scenes in which he talks to Tennyson, who gives a very confident portrayal, are fascinating and moving, personal feelings coded in metaphors about the classical texts that were Housman’s life. There are also affecting scenes with Jackson, who is played with great subtlety by Lloyd-Hughes – particularly the moment when he tells Housman he understands how he feels, and that he doesn’t mind.

The star of the show, however, is undoubtedly Simon Russell Beale. There is no actor better at simply talking to the audience, immediately making everyone forget that he is speaking lines. In every role he plays he talks directly to us, which is an incredibly rare thing to achieve as a performer and harder still when the lines are, on the surface, wilfully oblique. Russell Beale is completely at ease from start to finish, and he can take the audience wherever he pleases. ‘The Invention of Love’ is a flawed play which, as Stoppard acknowledges, would not be written now – not least because of its almost entirely male case, which feels like a relic from the last century. However, it is a highly intelligent and humane work, written with all the right intentions, and noone who enjoys supreme stagecraft will want to miss the great Russell Beale at work.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Andrew Richardson and Sirine Saba. Photo by Pamela Raith.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare – Barbican Theatre, London

Eleanor Rhode’s production for the RSC brings a wave of enjoyment to the Barbican on its transfer to the Barbican. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has darker aspects – at least those that appears so to 21st century audiences – but this is the not the production to reveal those. Instead, we are presented with a high calibre, high spectacle Dream which fits consciously into an RSC lineage. The show’s design by Lucy Osborne takes a gleefully 1980s approach to costumes, and a fanastical approach to the fairy scenes in the woods. The costumes are particularly well-observed, with echoes of John Caird’s punkish 1989 RSC production, and of the recent tv adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s ‘Rivals’. Demetrius (Nicholas Armfield) is in full Barbour, while Lysander (Ryan Hutton) is a working class upstart in red braces, tight slacks and brogues. Meanwhile, Helena (Boadicea Ricketts) roams the woods in a pierrot top. The detail is very enjoyable, and wandering lovers even have a 1980s sleeping bag and an Eveready torch.

The transition from the mortal to the fairy realm is managed in a delightful fashion, as Snug (Laurie Jamieson) enters a changing cubicle in her tailor’s shop and vanishes, replaces by Puck (Katherine Pearce) who picks up a ringing desk phone to find a fairy on the other end. All the fairies, in a unusual move, are voices represented by flitting, Tinkerbell-style lights, caught and held by the actors. This works remarkably well, and fits into a world of light, with the woods becoming a forest of dangling paper lanterns. Oberon (Andrew Richardson) also inhabits a dramatic forest of ladders, which rise from under the stage. The 1994 Adrian Noble production, with its dangling light bulbs and umbrellas designed by Anthony Ward, feels like an inspiration.

Although the show delivers spectacle in spades, it is subservient to the performances – an impressive achievement from Rhode. Matthew Baynton is effortlessly funny as Bottom, all long, prancing legs and physical presence. He is a more sympathetic Bottom than is often the case, less of a bombastic bully and more of a hero to his fellow mechanicals. His final death scene as Pyramus, in which he knifing himself in the heart, then proceeds to dramatically disembowel himself, ending the job by stabbing a knife into his head, is a tour de force. The Mechanicals are strong, but Helen Monks’ excitable, Midlands Rita Quince is particularly good. The lovers are a strong foursome, with Dawn Sievewright’s Hermia delivering frantic physicality, contrasting nicely with the elegant, angry Ricketts. Ryan Hutton’s Lysander stands out with a notably leggy, wild interpretation – going further over the top than seems reasonable with excellent results.

Sirine Saba’s performance as Titania / Hippolyta has shades of Clare Higgins 1989 performance. She is fired with energy, but of a different kind to Andrew Richardson’s Oberon / Theseus, who is dressed in full dandy highwayman gear and is willowy and volatile. The only interpretation that perhaps falls short is Katherine Pearce’s Puck. Usually the coolest character in the play, which sets up their failure, this Puck is out of their depth, out of breath from rushing to serve her master, mugging to the audience for laughs. It seems a missed opportunity. However, the production is a undoubted success: a thoroughly entertaining evening, deploying the RSC’s impressive resources – including the skills of illusionist John Bulleid – to bring the play’s strange, impossible world to life and to suspend our collective disbelief through traditional theatricality and spectacle.

The Legends of Them

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Sutara Gayle. Photo by Harry Elletson

The Legends of Them by Sutara Gayle AKA Lorna Gee – Royal Court Theatre, London

Published at Plays International

Sutara Gayle has had quite the life. Her one woman show expresses remarkable experiences through powerful, focused theatre. Gayle, born in Brixton, is a musician, singer, DJ and British reggae pioneer. She has lived in New York, opened for Shabba Ranks, spent time in Holloway Prison, and changed her name during a spiritual retreat in India. Her brother Mooji is a Hindu guru. Her sister Cherry’s shooting by police triggered the 1985 Brixton Riots. The Legends of Them combines music, film (projections by Tyler Forward and Daniel Batters) and a swirling array of characters, all played by Gayle, into a journey of awakening and discovery.

Gayle is also an actor, with a long career on stage and in film and television. This is the one aspect of her life she does not mention, and there is no need because it is obvious. Legends of Them is a performance tour de force. Gayle plays a long list of people she meets across eras and places – from Linton Kwesi Johnson to school friends, taxi drivers, dominoes players and policemen – who pass across the stage and through her life in sometimes dream-like fragments. She conveys each scene with minimum fuss and the maximum skill, using a vocal intonation, a tilt of the head, or a flick of the wrist. Gayle makes it look easy, but her performance is a masterclass in storytelling, from which other, far less subtle one-person shows could learn at lot.

The Legends of Them conjures up lost eras and events, knotting them loosely together as the bigger picture emerges, piece by piece. Although Gayle is the connecting presence, the show is explicitly about four legends in her life: her mother Euphemia, sister Cherry, brother Mooji, and the 17th century Jamaican freedom fighter, Nanny of the Maroons. Euphemia, who came to Brixton from Jamaica, brought up eight children, and pounded out living from her sewing machine. Cherry, who died in 2011, found herself thrust into the national news in disastrous circumstances, which she handled with great dignity. Her older brother Mooji is her guiding light, imparting Buddhist wisdom that helps Gayle see beyond tragedy and turmoil in her life. And Nanny is part of a suppressed history of resistance to empire, fighting the 17th century British occupation of Jamaica, and giving identity to those fighting the same battles today.

She threads together their stories expertly, never over-explaining but giving the audience enough to understand what is happening and why it matters. It is a high-wire act completed with supreme confidence, co-created with director Jo McInnes and dramaturg Nina Lyndon. Then there is the music. Gayle is a highly versatile writer and singer, and she sings at key moments. The set is dominated by a vast speaker stack covered in disco lights, which flash a backdrop to the action. Gayle strides on stage and immediately shows us what she’s capable of with her trademark reggae MC delivery, immediately raising excitement levels to eleven. Having established her formidable skills, she uses her full range, singing charming numbers influenced by pop and gospel, written with composer and musical director Christella Litras. She expresses herself directly and truthfully through music, which is clearly an essential part of her existence, and drives the show.

Gayle, with her collaborators, conjures an evening which is subtle, carefully woven, and at times exhilarating theatre, but it is more than that. The Legends of Them is a big success for the still-relatively-new Brixton House theatre, where it was first performed before moving the Royal Court – taking a show which is Brixton through and through into Belgravia. But it is more than a theatre production. Sutara Gayle’s life tracks the Black experience in Britain, through the terrible personal impact of racism and sexism, to personal fulfilment and self-knowledge. She is a local heroine, but her voice reaches far beyond SW9. She speaks from long, tough experience, and The Legends of Them sends a message which is proud, loud and clear.

The Importance of Being Earnest

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Photo by Marc Brenner

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

In Max Webster’s new production intentions clear are from the opening moments. The play begins with a dance sequence. Ncuti Gatwa, playing Algernon, drapes himself over a grand piano wearing a shocking pink ballgown, split to reveal boxer shorts underneath. It sends an unambiguous message that this will not be The Importance of Being Earnest we have become familiar with, but a high camp, high glitter entertainment… and much more beside. Webster opens the play up to a much-need re-examination. One of the best known and loved – and overquoted – plays in the repertoire is reclaimed as the brutal social critique it has been all along.

For the National Theatre to stage Oscar Wilde’s best known play is a balancing act. It’s a sure audience pleaser, which is why every amateur group in the country has done it at some point, but there needs to be a reason to give it a major new production. Webster delivers this triumphantly, and his show is a revelation. The play has an excellent, highly entertainingly and disruptive cast. Gatwa is suave, shameless and very funny, with a commanding stage presence and a knack for comedy. He is matched with Hugh Skinner’s apparently more vulnerable Jack Worthing, constantly struggling to match his mental self image. The ingenue Cecily Cardew is played by Eliza Scanlen who channels Miranda Richardson to fine effect. And the excellent Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ is very funny as Gwendolen, teetering throughout between comic social propriety and crotch-grabbing sexual meltdown. Richard Cant and Amanda Lawrence, as Canon Chasuble and Miss Prism, deliver supporting performances of an exceptionally high calibre, while Julian Bleach has fun as two butlers: the scary Merriman and his derelict country counterpart, Lane.

However, every production of ‘…Earnest’ pivots on its Lady Bracknell. The part has become an old-fashioned star turn, somewhat divorced from the play itself. It is mystifying that Wilde has become so cosy, as though his annihilation by the society who had fêted him happened to someone else. ‘…Earnest’ is packed with bitter social recrimination fed to the audience in sugared pills. Sharon D Clarke’s Lady Bracknell undoes all that. Casting actors of colour in the key roles challenges some assumptions, and Clarke’s forbidding, stereotypical Caribbean matriarch works perfectly for the part. Wearing dramatic costumes combining western and Afro-Caribbean styles, by Rae Smith, she puts up a fierce resistance to her daughter’s wishes, but we gradually realise that this a façade relates directly to her origins. The key moments in the play are when she reveals that she had no money before she married Lord Bracknell; and when she discovers that Jack is very wealthy, and becomes suddenly supportive of his marriage to Gwendolen. She knows what it means to have nothing, and what it takes to stay afloat when you don’t belong. She can compete with any of the great Lady Bracknells, but her performance reinvents the part.

The entire play is explicitly about dissembling and façades. Nobody says what they mean, while revealing what they really think. We see clearly from Webster’s production that no-one can afford to be who they actually are. Wilde certainly couldn’t. But he devised a way to say things in a way that allowed his plays to become accepted and mainstream, all the while presenting an unequivocal condemnation of the British social order. Gatwa’s Algernon is certainly not a straightforwardly heterosexual character, but neither is anyone else. Algernon and Jack seem as interested in each other as their fiancees, and so do Celia and Gwendolen. Webster stages a spectacular pile-on in which they all seem on the brink of engaging in a foursome. On Rae Smith’s slightly psychedelic sets, reality is heightened and pushed to the brink of absurdity, which is where the truth lies. The show is as funny and entertaining as any production of the play, but it shows us what’s been lying in plain sight. Wilde deserves to be fully understood, and his work given the freedom of interpretation it could never receive at the time, and that has eluded it since. The evening ends with a masque dance, with all the characters in feathers and frills. It is a moment of joy, releasing us from the terrifying constraints of a world that forces everyone to pretend in order to survive.