John Proctor is the Villain

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Photo by Camilla Greenwell

John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower

Kimberly Belflower’s play premièred in the US in 2022, and has been successfully revived twice already, most recently on Broadway last year directed by Danya Taymor. It’s UK première at the Royal Court is a recast version of her production,. Set in 2018, during the increasingly distant #metoo era, it re-examines the gender politics and in-built prejudice of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, as studied by a high school class of five girls, one of whom is absent for reasons that become apparent. The girls, questioning standard assessments of John Proctor as a hero of American drama, propose the formation of a school feminist club. Their teacher, Mr. Smith, who they admire and, in some cases, fancy deems it too controversial, but suggests bringing in two boys, after which it apparently flies under the local social radar. The relationships between the pupils and their teacher become complex in ways that, although not for revealing in a review, are hardly surprising.

This is the problem with the production. Nothing presented on stage feels unexpected or new, and there is a sense that the audience is having its world view confirmed. The most shocking aspect of the play, to a UK audience, is the idea that feminism is so controversial an idea that a school would stop pupils discussing it for fear of ‘what people might say’ – a truly terrifying bulletin from US conservatism. But the production itself displays a level of conservatism that makes it seem old-fashioned in comparison to the work the Royal Court is staging from British writers at the moment. The characters of the girls seem surprisingly formulaic, like types rather than individuals. There are some highlights among the performers. Sadie Soverall is excellent as the awkward but Shelby, who arrives like a ticking time bomb. Reece Braddock as the sweetly daft Mason is very funny – the two boys are both convincingly written as teenage idiots, but he has the better role. Dónal Finn is strong as the charming, untrustworthy teacher who is the analogue for John Proctor.

However, the heavily realistic classroom set by AMP featuring Teresa L. Williams, and Taymor’s direction, tie the action down, while the writing makes it difficult to believe that many of the characters are real people. The play is well-intentioned, and its John Proctor-cancelling is an intriguing, even exciting ideological position. Despite this, the production and performance-style seem leaden-footed. The climactic moment, with the girls taking over the classroom and dancing to Lorde’s ‘Green Light’, feels manufactured and fails to deliver the catharsis it insistently sells to the audience.

Henry V

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Alfred Enoch – photo by Johan Persson

Henry V by William Shakespeare – Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Following their highly successful 2024 collaboration on Pericles, Joint Artistic Director Tamara Harvey and Alfred Enoch reunite for a Henry V that uses the same language of movement, from Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster and fight director Kate Waters. Lucy Osbourne’s costumes are medieval in inspiration, with a couture edge. Michael Elcock’s Dauphin wears silver trainers, but the foot soldiers on both sides are in dull colours, and one side is indistinguishable from the other. The mass of men suffer and die, regardless of allegiance. The glorification of war is constantly exposed in front of a wooden scaffolding set, also by Osbourne, against which attackers and defenders alike are slaughtered.

The war, which is the singular plot of what is an unusually simple play for Shakespeare, in terms of structure, cannot be escaped. Harvey brings in Henry IV’s deathbed speech to Hal, from Henry IV Part 2, at the start of the play in which the father advises the son “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days.” Alfred Enoch’s Henry V takes him at his word, and displays a messianic focus in pursuing what is revealed to be a tenuous claim to the French throne in the play’s opening exchange. There’s something of Tony Blair in Enoch’s smooth, polite and slightly innocent manner. He gives the impression that he is an entirely reasonable man, and his war is reasonable too, but the glint in his eye grows and, by the time he delivers the St. Crispin’s Day speech, he has morphed into a cult leader. Enoch is excellent, both likeable and unnerving in one of Shakespeare’s strangest roles.

The triumphalism traditionally read into the play seems very hollow in Harvey’s interpretation. Little of what Henry says that can be taken at face value and, when he alone, he gives a bitter, self-pitying pre-battle soliloquy in which he castigates his subjects for their lack of gratitude, bemoaning his position as “subject to the breath of every fool whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing.” At the end, the Chorus reveals the futility of achieved Henry did, explaining how his son will go on to lose it all.

Harvey’s production uses a coherent, well-cast ensemble, continuing a welcome trend under the new RSC leadership of powerful group dynamics on stage. There a no weak links, and the performers clearly fully understand the production’s direction, and are committed to it. Jamie Ballard plays the Archbishop of Canterbury, King of France and the soldier Williams in a tour de force of flexibility. Catrin Aaron is excellent and completely different as Mistress Quickly and the Queen of France. Micah Balfour’s Exeter is a lynchpin. Gender switched parts worked seamlessly, includoing Sophie McIntosh as the Duchess of Gloucester and Sarah Slimani as Mountjoy. Natalie Kimmerling’s Katherine is a strong presence, fully understanding the politics that sweep her into marriage. Emmanuel Olusanya as Bardolph, Ewan Wardrop as Nym and Tanvi Virmani as ‘The Girl’ (the Boy in the original) make a genuinely funny and seedy grouping with Paul Hunter’s Pistol. The latter is a joy to watch, setting an extremely high baseline for physical comedy, drawing other performers in his wake.

This Henry V is less obviously a response to current events than is sometimes the case in times of international crisis, but it provides a powerful, coherent warning against leaders who never doubt themselves, a lesson with wide application. Harvey continues to direct very high quality Shakespeare, and to build a broad company and a clear, fluid, modern performance style (with excellent verse speaking) which we can look forward to enjoying, all being well, for many years to come.

The Shitheads

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Jacoba Williams and Jonny Khan.

The Shitheads by Jack Nicholls – Royal Court Theatre, London

For starters, Jack Nicholls’ play The Shitheads is set in the Stone Age – specifically, the end of the Stone Age. I can only think of one other play with Stone Age scenes – Alistair McDowall’s The Glow, also staged at the Royal Court. It’s a bold and decisive approach from a writer who sent his work to the Royal Court on spec: they are staging submitted plays as part of their 70th anniversary season. Anna Reid has turned one end of the the Upstairs theatre into the interior of a cave with rock walls that are pretty convincing. It’s hard to make stage rocks that look real. But that’s only part of the setting. The play also uses puppets by Finn Caldwell, beginning with an elk hunting scene. The elk, real size, is operated War Horse style by two people, under puppetry captain Scarlet Wilderink. But this is definitely not War Horse. Nicholls creates a strange and thoroughly disturbing parable about inward-looking societies, fear of outsiders, resistance to change and violence which is entirely current.

The cast are all very watchable and convincing, at ease in their strange, compelling roles. The protagonist Clare is played by Jacoba Williams, a young woman venturing outside the cave where her father Adrian, played by Peter Clements, dictates the world view. Her sister Lisa, played by Annabel Smith, seems innocent but is capable of upending everything. Then a strange arrives – first a hunter, Greg (Jonny Khan), then his wife Danielle (Ami Tredera) who comes looking for him with their baby. The latter is the play’s other puppet, and possibly the most sinister thing in the whole evening. There’s competition for this: the cave is decorated with flesh and bones and the cave dwellers’ deceased mother is in a pit, along with discarded animal carcasses. Cannibalism features. Clare, asked why she lives in a cave, says “Because we’re very lucky” – but things are changing. The people they described as ‘Shitheads’ roam from place to place for better food and climate, and they’re leaving for good as the weather changes. The cave dwellers are doomed, but that may not convince them to change.

Directed by David Byrne, The Shitheads is a riot. The play, written in deliberately contemporary language, is very funny in a Martin MacDonagh, black comedy style. The idea of Stone Age characters called Adrian or Danielle is, in itself, very funny. The scenario also carries echoes of Enda Walsh – plays such as Walworth Road, where a closeted family group creates bizarre rituals to keep the outside world away. Nicholls is a clever and exciting writer, and this collaboration with a Royal Court on a high has all the excitement of the dramas that originally made the theatre’s name. It shows us ourselves in totally unexpected, entirely recognisabel ways, and providing gripping , unclassifiable entertainment while doing so.

Lost Atoms

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Anna Sinclair Robinson and Joe Layton. Photo by Tristram Kenton

Lost Atoms by Anna Jordan – Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Published at Plays International

Lost Atoms, written by Anna Jordan, is the 30th anniversary production for Frantic Assembly, who are a staple of the UK’s 21st century touring scene. Led throughout by Scott Graham, the company is known for making movement the core of their expression, and devising their own method entwining the text and the physical. The Frantic Method has been very influential, shaping a performance style that is very distinctively of our time. Frantic have achieved a great deal, applying their approach to classic text and new writing with equal success. It is all the more impressive that their world is smaller touring venues rather than the big commercial or subsidised theatres, where experimental work that challenges audiences is needed most. It is entirely appropriate that Lost Atoms is a co-production between the Lyric Hammersmith, the Curve in Leicester and the Mayflower, Southampton.

For their anniversary tour they have chosen a new play by Jordan who, since her last play in 2018, has been working on television series such as One Day for Netflix. Lost Atoms is about ordinary living, and what that really entails. A couple meet, get together and go through experiences related to pregnancy which are both common, and unforgettably traumatic. There is a cast of just two: Joe Layton plays Robbie, and Anna Sinclair Robinson plays Jess. Their meeting involves coffee shop wifi, and they get together through a series of chances, gradually working out how much they like each other. They encounter each other’s families, and all they bring – cleverly staged through one-sided conversations. Then Jess gets pregnant. It is impossible to discuss the plot without giving too much away, but what follows tests their relationship to the limits.

There are remarkable similarities with Luke Norris’ play Guess How Much I Love You?, currently playing at the Royal Court, which also has a cast of two, and concerns a relationship beset by pregnancy trauma. However, under Scott Graham’s direction the style of Lost Atoms is very different. Layton and Sinclair Robinson use Andrezj Goulding’s set – a bank of filing cabinets – like a climbing wall. Drawers pull out to become seats, steps, even a toilet, but they also act as drawers, containing props but also memories. A massive slab, looking disturbingly like the door to an ancient tomb, flips up to form a bed, angling the couple towards the audience in mid-air. The physicality of the performers is, at times, mesmerising. They are frequently performing while horizontal, or suspended at gravity-defying angles. They move in relation to one another throughout, expressing the closeness and distance of an intimate relationship through their bodies as much as their words.

The story is told in flashback, as Jess and Robbie explain what happened to them for the benefit, it seems, of the audience. It takes time to get going and the first half, which shows us their developing relationship, tells us less than the second. The performers become more convincing as the stress mounts, and they move away from the sometimes exaggerated naivety of their initial personas. Lost Atoms truly draws the audience in when it starts to explore what happens to people behind closed doors, in cold NHS consulting rooms and tiny flats. We think we know what life is about, but human drama is at its most extreme in everyday settings, just out of sight. Frantic Assembly’s production showcases the strengths of their work, with complete physical commitment to storytelling. Actors do things you may never have seen on a stage before, but which seem strangely natural. Conventional theatre can seem static in comparison.

Guess How Much I Love You?

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Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo. Photo by Johan Persson.

Guess How Much I Love You? by Luke Norris – Royal Court Theatre

The first show in the Royal Court’s much-anticipated 70th anniversary season sets high standards. Luke Norris’s new play is a two-hander, with a brief appearance by a third performer, set in cramped interior spaces, but it fills the main stage effortlessly. It concerns a couple, played by Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo, going through the emotional pressures that come with trying to have a baby. It is difficult to write about the plot of ‘Guess How Much I Love You?’ without giving key events away, but it is fair to say that things do not go as they had planned. The play has an intensity to it with is rarely seen on stage. Played in the corners of a series of rooms – their flat, a hospital room, a doctor’s examination room – there is both a claustrophobia and an ordinariness to their experiences, especially as Grace Smart’s sets make these corners just a little tighter than ninety degrees. The walls are closing in on them.

The pair, unnamed, are ordinary too, but Norris’s writing pulls apart what ordinary means. The initial tensions in their relationship – for example over whether porn is exploitative or not – hint at Sheehy’s resentment of the role she is already playing, as she waits, pregnant, mid-ultrasound. As events spiral, the pair are faced with impossible moral choices and the way they treat each other becomes brutal in a deeply uncomfortable way. There is more than a hint of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ about the deep levels of love/hate played out on stage in scenes which seem too private for us to be watching. However, there is more emotional truth in the play than in Edward Albee. Although they say the most appalling things, it is entirely believable that people in their situation would react the way they do. The horror of living has rarely been exposed so honestly.

Jeremy Herrin’s direction brings out two very powerful pieces acting from Aramayo and Sheehy. He is patient, defensive, desperate and unable to cope. She is a ball of grief and pure anger. Rosie Sheehy will surely be in the running for awards for her performance, which is simply extraordinary. She is incredibly vulnerable in her deep distress, and there are a couple of moments when she completely lets go, with speeches that are difficult to hear and impossible to turn away from. Her commitment is total.

‘Guess How Much I Love You?’ is a lean and brilliant play, with an unwavering focus on the nature of love, what happens when it goes wrong, and how people really behave in a crisis. Norris also weaves in themes of religion and gender roles in a way that feels natural. There is a particular moment in the play that makes the audience’s hearts drop as though they were an express lift, but the entire evening is an unrelentingly intense experience. A play which pushes the capacity of theatre to communicate to its limits is the perfect start to the year for the Royal Court.

The Dead

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Photo by Kathleen Holman.

The Dead by James Joyce, presented by the Fourth Choir – Wilton’s Music Hall, London

The combination of Justine Mitchell, reading an abridged version of James Joyce’s peerless story ‘The Dead’, and the Fourth Choir singing pieces interspersed into the text, is a remarkable success. This is partly because the singers are exceptionally good. Led by James Powe, they are a queer choir consisting partly of trained singers, partly amateurs. They must be as good as a choir with an amateur element can get. With around thirty singers performing in the intimate Wilton’s Music Hall – which is perfect for the piece – there is absolutely nowhere to hide, and they are flawless.

The singing is beautiful, and successfully connected to Joyce’s writing. ‘The Dead’ is underpinned by music, including discussions of choir politics and of the folk song ‘The Lass of Aughrim’, one of the pieces performed, and one of several arranged by Powe. These also include ‘Bid Adieu’, the only song written by Joyce – both words and tune. Christmas pieces are included, ‘The Dead’ being set at a Twelfth Night party. Justine Mitchell does an excellent job as the narrator, wearing a dark green period dress and looking thoroughly Edwardian.

However, the evening only works because its elements are so expertly stitched together by the director, Séamus Rea, who has also adapted the text. He creates small but effective interactions between the choir and Mitchell. They hand her the pages she reads from, and form an attentive party crowd. They occupy the stage in shifting patterns that create visual interest, and even their phone-lit entrance has a surprising impact. The whole evening, being concerned with continuing presence of the dead in the lives of the living, is unsurprisingly moving – and performed to a very high standard. As Mitchell and the choir cast their pages into the air, to fall like the snow that is general across Ireland, few dry eyes are left dry.

Playboy of the Western World

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Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge – National Theatre: Lyttleton

Caitríona McLoughlin’s production J.M. Synge’s masterpiece seems to be the first at the National Theatre since 1976, which is extraordinary. The play, once a staple of amateur dramatics, has perhaps become a little forgotten in the UK, although not in Ireland. McLoughlin is the artistic director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and brings an all-Irish cast to London to familiarise new audiences with a play that once caused riots.

Synge’s writing is remarkable – both deeply lyrical, with a powerful ear for speech patterns in the west of Ireland, and blackly comic. Both must have been revelatory for 1907, when the play premiered in Dublin. The play is populated entirely with people of no social consequence living in a poor, even despised part of the country, but Synge makes their language a thing of beauty. It’s set in a pub, where characters talk in a way they might not elsewhere. At the same time, he punctuates the play with the kind of comic violence – Old Mahon, who just won’t die – which seems remarkably modern. Playboy could be seen as the origin play for the subsequent century of Irish drama, from Friel and to McPherson to McDonagh.

McLoughlin, on a widescreen set by Katie Davenport, gives the production life and movement, if not always consistency. The cast is fascinating, but offers a range of peformance styles that do not always gel. At one end of the scale is Siobhán McSweeney’s urbane Widow Quin, giving it her all when trying her luck with Christy Mahon, but experienced enough to let it go and change tack too. At the other end is Lorcan Cranitch’s Michael Flaherty. Cranitch gives a performance that threatens to steal the entire play. In a very thick Mayo accent, he builds up to a dramatically drunken entrance on his return from a wake where “You’d never see the match of it for flows of drink.” He plays an entire scene while in a highly unbalanced state, constantly threatening to topple over, and the audience cannot look away. It is a complete tour de force. However, the contrasting performances do illustrate the production’s inconsistent tone.

Elsewhere, Éanna Hardwicke is extremely unnerving as Christy, gurning and almost slithering around the set. He leaves the audience unsure whether he’s a fool or a cunning chancer, or whether he’s sincere. Nicola Coughlan is fierce and charming as Pegeen Mike, but perhaps lacks the presence the part demands, to dominate a barroom full of people. However, her final scene, howling on her knees as Christy departs, is chilling. Marty Rea’s Shawn Keogh exudes weakness from his apologetic frame, while Declan Conlon is excellent as a domineering, physically threatening Old Mahon. The supporting cast are strong, especially the gaggle of local girls led by Marty Breen as Sara Tansey and Fionnuala Gygax as Honor Blake.

Despite some reservations, however, the play is fascinating and entertaining and very much reconfirming its classic status. The themes around easy celebrity and fickle popular opinion seem extremely current, while Pegeen Mike’s sexual independence, and the unashamed interest of women in sex, which triggered the 1907 riots, is refreshing and seems well ahead of its time. And Synge’s language remains a thing of wonder. Its dense wordplay makes no compromise whatsoever for the watching, listening public and, as a result, draws them deep into a parallel world. Playboy remains thrilling after all these years.

Twelfth Night

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Michael Grady-Hall, Gwyneth Keyworth and Samuel West. Photos by Helen Murray.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare – Barbican Theatre, London

Prasanna Puwanarajah’s production of Twelfth Night is a fascinating combination of genuinely funny comedy, and the underlying darkness that hangs over the play. There’s greater emphasis on the comedy though than in many productions, driven by the central figure of Feste, played with great presence by Michael Grady-Hall. He opens the evening, descending on a wire playing a guitar and singing, and takes a prominent role as intermediary between the stage and the audience. His post-interval audience interaction – an extended game of catch – goes on much longer than most performers could get away with, but no-one resents it. Dressed like a bumble bee in one of James Cotterill’s entertaining costumes, he performs a number of impressive physical turns but also spans the melancholy elements of the play, bringing tears to the eye with his performance of the play’s songs.

The production has a strong cast, offering distinctive interpretations. Gwyneth Keyworth’s Viola is no-nonsense, but rapidly flustered at the idea of dressing as a boy. Daniel Monks brings a certain incel quality to an Orsino with an edge. Joplin Sibtain’s Toby Belch is a tragic figure destroyed by alcohol, tall and lurching like a 1970s French House drunk. Danielle Henry makes Maria the character in the play you would actually want to spend time with, sharp and human. Freema Agyeman was off the night I saw the play and, annoyingly, her excellent understudy as Olivia was not identified, either in the theatre or through my subsequent enquiry to the RSC press office.

Sam West’s masterful Malvolio adds complete assurance to the production. He is one of those performers whose presence makes the audience relax, ready to sit back and enjoy his skills. He takes the character from chippy to hilarious – a ludicrous cross-gartered scene – to alarmingly vengeful, as though it was a natural character arc. Played against James Cotterill’s surreal giant church organ set, Puwanarajah delivers a show that fully understands of the humour and complexity of this strange but irresistible play.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

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Arinzé Kene and Kathryn Hunter. Photos by Ellie Kurttz .

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph – Young Vic, London

Published at Plays International

Rajiv Joseph’s play, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2009, is revived by Young Vic artistic director Nadia Fall as part of her first season. It deals with a world at war, physically and culturally, but the context is the US invasion of Iraq, now more than 20 years ago. It is obvious why Fall, and director Omar Elerian, think ‘A Bengal Tiger at Baghdad Zoo’’ may have something to tell us, nearly a generation on, helping us reflect on how little we seem to have learned from the mistakes of the past.

The show opens in the ruins of Baghdad Zoo, illuminated by the scope torches of two US soldiers, Tom (Patrick Gibson) and Kev (Arinzé Kene), as they discover a tiger still prowling its concrete enclosure. The tiger, played by Kathryn Hunter, has a better perspective on humans and war than any soldier, or indeed the lions of whose intelligence she takes a very dim view. Soon, Kev has shot her dead after she takes off Tom’s hand, and she begins an afterlife, inhabiting the play as a ghost. ‘A Bengal Tiger…’ is a reflection on war and conflict, with hefty doses of both brutality and absurdity. In some ways it is an old-fashioned play, reminiscent of non-naturalistic post-war dramas such as John Arden’s ‘Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance’. Its characters are types, rather than individuals, representing different aspects of a conflict which, deeply controversial at the time, has come to seem less forgivable with each passing year.

The two soldiers are at the heart of the play. Patrick Gibson plays Tom with obnoxious conviction as shallow, aggressive and avaricious, coveting a gold gun and a gold toilet seat looted from the palace of Uday Hussain, Saddam’s son. Arinzé Kene has the better part as Kev, who is staggeringly naïve and child-like, and he inhabits the role in a way that seems almost eerie at times. The play is very episodic, moving between set pieces. Uday himself makes several appearances as a ghost, having been gunned down by US troops, and is played with triumphant glee by Sayid Akki, whose stage presence is remarkable for an actor with only two previous credits in his CV. Ama Haj Ahmad, as Uday’s gardener Moussa, now working as translator for the US military, brings humour and despair to his role in equal measure.

The titular tiger was to have been played by David Threlfall, who had to temporarily withdraw with illness. Kathryn Hunter stepped in at the very last moment, to the extent her lines are provided on monitors in the auditorium, but you would never know it. In a cast that is uniformly excellent, her charisma stands out in a way that captivates the audience. She uses her physicality with apparent ease to embody a tiger, casually twitching her tail, while conducting an annoying existential debate with the audience about moral responsibility. She has real star power.

While the cast give their all, and director Omar Elerian powers the play along, it is nevertheless flawed. Some grim scenes that illustrate the horrifying impact of the conflict, and the brutal Hussain regime, on everyone from teenage girls to soldiers, leave us in no doubt about the war. Joseph is scathing about the arrogance and venality of the US troops, and the sinister love of torture exhibited by Uday. However, the philosophical commentary offered by the tiger, and the metaphysical elements of the play seem overblown and lacking in depth, while the episodic nature of the narrative reduces it to a set of show pieces. Hunter’s late casting is fortunate, because the play would otherwise feature just two women in bit parts, as a sex worker (Sara Masry) and a mysterious leper (Hala Omran). The appearance of the latter, singing an atmospheric but untranslated Arabic lament, seems like superficial cultural exoticism.

Rajha Shakiry’s broken concrete set and Jackie Shemesh’s lighting, with night scopes and ceiling fan shadows, are imaginative and effective. The Young Vic has given ‘A Bengal Tiger…’ an excellent production, but it does not make a convincing case that this is a play that stands up to scrutiny many years on, or tells us anything new about a time we risk forgetting.