Antigone, National Theatre, NT, May 2012

The story behind this play is that before he died, Oedipus cursed his sons, and they ended up killing one another in a battle for Thebes. The city is now ruled by Creon, brother to Oedipus’s mother/wife Jocasta.

Antigone and Ismene, all images NT/ Johan Persson

Creon has commanded that one of the two dead brothers — he who ruled the city and exiled his brother — be honoured, while the other lies outside the city walls to be devoured by carrion. Their sisters, Antigone and Ismene appear at the start of Sophocles’ Antigone, outside the walls, with Antigone asking her sister’s support in giving her brother a burial. This yields a clash between familial obligations and the rule of the State, represented by Creon. The theme is timeless, and in Polly Findlay’s production it is staged in modern dress.

The set, with Creon’s office at its centre and various desks in a large common area to the front, can be rotated to show the outside of the city walls. Good designs by Soutra Gilmour, darkly lit by Mark Henderson and with occasional threatening musical crescendos by Dan Jones. But what of the acting?

Jodie Whittaker was a strongly sympathetic Antigone, and Luke Newberry as Creon’s son Haemon, was superb at respectfully, and then less respectfully, countering his father’s arguments. He loves Antigone, is betrothed to her, and the two of them were the heroes, defying the tyrant’s power, but I would have preferred a more nuanced treatment by the director. There are serious issues here about the right of the individual to challenge the power of the state, and Sophocles has given eloquent arguments to both sides.

Antigone bundled away

Christopher Eccleston played Creon as a harsh tyrant, looking like a cross between Vladimir Putin of Russia and Bashir Assad of Syria. Perhaps that was the intention, but his downfall lies not in his initial decision to deny burial to one brother but his stiff-necked refusal to ignore well-meaning advice. As it was he looked like a loser from the start, his eloquence turning to rants. When Jamie Ballard as the blind seer Teiresias enters, he too ends up ranting, which rather spoils the effect. Towards the end, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith held the stage brilliantly as the messenger, delivering news of Antigone’s death and Creon’s final clash with his son.

The mixture of accents, some of which sounded unnatural, did not help, but Antigone is always worth seeing, and I liked the sets, costumes, music and lighting.

Performances continue until July 21 — for details click here.

A Marvellous Year for Plums, Chichester Festival Theatre, May 2012

Following the debacle of the Suez crisis, Anthony Eden resigned as Prime Minister in January 1957, and he and his wife took ship to New Zealand. In this play a young Steward serves him tea, and Eden commends him on winning a boxing competition on board. They get into conversation, and when Eden asks the young man his name he gets the response, “Prescott, Sir”. The audience fell about.

Ian Fleming, Eden, Clarissa and Ann, all images Manuel Harlan

But this clever play by Hugh Whitemore is no comedy. And nor was the meeting between Eden and Prescott mere poetic licence, just a light moment amidst a serious study of political events that went badly wrong in 1956. Yet the grave nature of what was going on is relieved by a love affair, along with brief dancing interludes to excellent musical arrangements from Matthew Scott. The clever set designs by Simon Higlett allow scenes to merge from one to the next as various characters are slowly swept in or out of view by a revolving ring on the stage, aided by subtle lighting from James Whiteside, and this production by Philip Franks has great forward momentum.

Gaitskell and Ann

1956 was of course the year that Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, and this play shows Eden’s extraordinary mishandling of the crisis. Firm in resolve to take military action, then willing to back off under American pressure even when the French told him to sleep on it first. Eden interrupts the French PM at lunch when he is discussing the formation of the European Economic Community with the Germans, and acting as perfidious Albion didn’t help Britain’s case, to say nothing of the lack of moral clarity that surely affected our response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. What a year it was.

Anthony Andrews portrayed Eden as a decent man yet inadequate prime minister, with Abigail Cruttenden entirely convincing as Clarissa his devoted (second) wife. Nicholas Le Prevost was excellent as Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the opposition, who is carrying on an affair with the delectable Ann Fleming, elegantly played by Imogen Stubbs. Gaitskell accused Eden of being the captain of a sinking ship that he steered onto the rocks, but the real opposition close at hand was Anthony Nutting, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Fiercely played by Martin Hutson, we see him with David Yelland as an urbane Selwyn Lloyd, successor as Foreign Secretary to Eden himself, but described by Macmillan as “a middle class lawyer from Liverpool”.

Eden and his wife

These were the days when Class counted in a way that it doesn’t now, and three of the characters in this play were Old Etonians: Eden, Nutting, and Ian Fleming, while Gaitskell went to Winchester, and Selwyn Lloyd to Fettes. Fleming appears very much as a man of the world, attractively played by Simon Dutton, and he and his wife Ann are friends of the Edens. They are with them when the telephone call comes through saying the last troops have been withdrawn from Egypt. Eden spills his drink and lets out a yell like a wounded animal. This was a man who lost two brothers in the First World War and a son in the Second. His attempt to be a man of peace brought war, albeit briefly, and humiliation for both himself and Britain.

How would it have been different if they’d pushed on? Selwyn Lloyd muses on these things, and has no answers. But towards the end, Eden’s father, an irascible baronet whose occasional stage appearances lie in Eden’s imagination, has some cutting words to say about how to live your life, “Run straight … don’t play a double game …”. Eden did and he failed. We hear Rab Butler’s gibe that Eden was “half mad baronet, half beautiful woman”, referring to his father and mother, and towards the end we even see them both dancing together.

This play is cleverly constructed, with video images adding a subtle background, and in exposing the British background to the tragedies of 1956 it is hugely effective. As to the title, you have to wait for the words of Selwyn Lloyd’s gardener, for whom international politics holds not the slightest interest. But if you are interested, this is a must-see that should surely go on to the West End.

Performances continue until June 2 — for details click here.

Top Hat, Aldwych Theatre, London’s West End, May 2012

If you like a frothy musical with lots of dancing, and numbers like Cheek to Cheek by Irving Berlin, this is for you.

Tom Chambers and ensemble, all images Brinkhoff and Mogenburg

It’s the early 1930s and an American dancer named Jerry Travers has come to London to star in a show produced by wealthy Horace Hardwick. A tap dance routine he performs in his hotel room awakens the lovely Dale Tremont. She treats him with disdain, but he falls for her and spares no effort to bring her round. All would be well, but a case of mistaken identity carries the affair off to Venice.

Tom Chambers and Summer Strallen

There are funny lines aplenty, often inspired by the ridiculous Horace Hardwick, ”A man is incomplete before he’s married. After that he’s finished”. This may not seem very witty when written down, but delivered in a Bob Hope kind of way by a string-bean version of Henry Higgins, it’s funny. Martin Ball gave a fine performance as Hardwick, and talking of string-beans, Stephen Boswell was wonderful as his man, Bates. Vivien Parry carried off the role of Hardwick’s wife with great panache, delivering some superb lines, but the main plaudits must go to Summer Strallen as Dale Tremont: super stage presence and wonderful dancing — she was great.

Tom Chambers starred as Jerry Travers, giving him great charm, and his playful pas-de-deux with the hat stand in Act I was a delight. Super ensemble dancing by the company to choreography by Bill Deamer, and the sets by Hildegard Bechtler were glorious. Lovely costumes by Jon Morrell and good lighting by Peter Mumford. The story line is a bit thin, but Matthew White has directed a hugely appealing show that never flags for a minute, and left the audience with a sense of euphoria.

Booking available until 26 January 2013 — for details click here.

South Downs/ The Browning Version, Harold Pinter Theatre, London’s West End, May 2012

Terence Rattigan’s excellent short play The Browning Version is set in a boys’ boarding school, and for the first half of the evening a new play by David Hare, commissioned the Rattigan estate, has a similar setting.

The Browning Version is about one of the masters, and Hare’s counterpoint focusses on one of the boys. In both plays an act of kindness is the fulcrum lifting the main protagonist out of the tramlines of his sad, yet very scholarly, existence.

Alex Lawther as the clever boy, all images Johan Persson

In Hare’s South Downs a pedantic English master, beautifully played by Andrew Woodall, extols the genius of Alexander Pope, saying ”only within a cage do we find freedom”. Indeed a firm foundation and attention to detail provides a basis for true creativity, something that began going awry in the 70s after Hare left school. We still suffer the consequences, and although intellectual rigour is now making a comeback, it has a long way to go.

Tea and cake for Blakemore

Yet here in class is a very clever boy, Blakemore, brilliantly played by young Alex Lawther, who challenges the master in order to protect a boy he wants as his friend. Blakemore is disturbed, but finds it impossible to talk to his housemaster, Rev Eric Dewley, a man of the Church of England who believes in consubstantiation rather than trans-substantiation, but isn’t really sure about that. It’s a clever play, with Dewley very well portrayed by Nicholas Farrell, himself the focus of Rattigan’s play in the second half of the evening. Something needs to happen to Blakemore, and Anna Chancellor as the actress mother of one of the prefects gives him tea and sympathy, faulting him for being unable to dissemble. This is something Rattigan himself was extremely good at when he was at school at Harrow, yet in the end Blakemore manages a transformation, and we move on to Rattigan’s play.

The term Browning Version refers to a translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon by Robert Browning, and the dry-as-dust Classics master, Crocker-Harris is a brilliant scholar who is teaching the boys to read it, in the original of course. This is pretty tough stuff. Yet it’s not the boys who are suffering, but Crocker-Harris himself, superbly portrayed by Nicholas Farrell. He is recovering from a heart attack caused by the chronic stress of an apparently charming but deceptive wife who hates him, a headmaster who is happy to see the back of him, and his own despair at casting scholarly pearls before swine.

Nicholas Farrell as Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version

He’s on track to leave the school — without even a pension — and go to work at a crammer. Could anything be more absurd? Here is a man who should be teaching classical texts at university level, yet to the lower fifth he’s simply the Crock, a beast to beware of. Oh, he understands his position all right. A ‘hen-pecked husband’ to an ‘unsatisfied wife’, the butt of contempt or fear by others. But what can he do about it?

Anna Chancellor as the wife

“Rules are rules” he responds when the disturbingly disappointing news comes down from the trustees about his pension. The pompous fraud of a headmaster, played with carefree abandon by Andrew Woodall, almost seems to relish giving him the bad news, coupled with a request that he diminish himself by allowing someone else to speak last at the end of year celebrations. His dry speech with a hyper-scholarly joke or two is all prepared, and he accedes to the headmaster’s proposal.

Yet suddenly an act of kindness by one of the boys turns everything on its head. This is vintage Rattigan, and I was longing to know what his new speech might be — we never do, of course.

But we do know that precision and attention to detail by a clever scholar can work wonders, as long as he can divest himself of the psychological baggage weighing him down. What might Crocker-Harris have achieved with a less spiteful wife? And how much better might this performance have been if Anna Chancellor as the wife had delivered the main line in the play facing the audience rather than stage rear? In this fascinating and moving portrayal of the dry scholar by Nicholas Farrell we find hope that the precision of Greek translation can once again give huge pleasure and revitalise his life.

These two plays together yield a wonderful evening of theatre. Performances continue until July 21 — for details click here.

Barefoot in the Park, Richmond Theatre, May 2012

This Neil Simon comedy was co-directed by Maureen Lipman who also played the part of the mother, Mrs Banks. As in all comedies, timing is of the essence, and Lipman was superb, as was Oliver Cotton as Victor Velasco, the engagingly impecunious Hungarian neighbour of her newlywed daughter Corrie.

The newlyweds at home

Corrie schemes to get her mother out to dinner with Velasco, along with herself and her husband, and the resulting four inebriated people somehow manage to make it through to a new day. Dominic Tighe was wonderfully natural as the young lawyer husband who eventually walks barefoot in the park, causing Faye Castelow as his wife to feel sudden sympathy for him and vow to make the marriage work. But it’s her mother who sets her up to be reasonable, and the comic character of Mrs Banks has a serious purpose to play.

Excellent designs by Tim Goodchild, appropriately nineteen sixties, were well lit by Nick Richings, and the brief but beautifully appropriate musical interludes during scene changes were the work of Matthew Bugg. This was Neil Simon’s first big Broadway hit, and the theme of two newlyweds coming to grief as they set up in their own flat after a week’s honeymoon is timeless.

Oliver Cotton and Maureen Lipman

The drunken scene, with Maureen Lipman sliding her heels uselessly on the carpet as she tries to stand up, was beautifully done. After sleeping it off she recovers her effervescent charm and can finally give her daughter a bit of very sound advice, “Give up a little of yourself for him . . . Take care of him. Make him feel important. Then you’ll have a wonderful marriage, like two out of every ten couples”. Well said, well played and well directed.

Performances at Richmond continue until May 5 — for details click here — and on May 7 it moves to the Arts Theatre, Cambridge.

Long Day’s Journey into Night, Apollo Theatre, London West End, April 2012

Had Eugene O’Neill’s written wishes been respected this autobiographical play would not be staged: “[It] is to be published twenty five years after my death — but never produced as a play”. As it was, unforeseen circumstances persuaded his widow to have the play published and performed, knowing the anguish he had gone through in writing it.

Suchet and Metcalf as father and mother, all images Johan Persson

The essentials involve a father, mother and two sons, the younger one appearing likely to die of tuberculosis. Yet despite this grim set-up, where the father and sons drink liberal amounts of whiskey, and the mother is a neurotic addicted to drugs, there is hope. And amidst the arguments, the shouting, the put-downs, and the face slapping there is truth. At the start of part two when evening has drawn in, David Suchet as the father James Tyrone, is alone in the sitting room. He is joined by his younger son Edmund, whose criticism of his miserliness gets the response, “You’re no great shakes as a son”. This is mild compared to some of the invective, but then there is the glorious moment when Edmund talks about his time at sea, being at one with the forces of nature, and Kyle Soller handles it beautifully. As his father tells him facts from long ago, there is something more than just anger and argument. There is sympathy, and understanding that our problems stem from the depths of experiences long past.

White, Suchet, Soller as father and sons

Eugene O’Neill’s own father, the model for James Tyrone, was a matinee idol, and though devoted to Shakespeare he became typecast in a stage version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Despite the financial success and security this brought him he had reason to feel dissatisfied with himself, yet seems to be surrounded by wastrel sons and a morphine addicted wife, who’s eventually away with the fairies. She was beautifully played by American actress Laurie Metcalf as a gentle, yet neurotic and self-pitying woman. It was a remarkable performance, and her eldest son James Jr was robustly portrayed by Trevor White, whose drunkenness in part two was pitch perfect. Very high quality acting from the whole cast, led by David Suchet’s sympathetic and convincing portrayal of the father, and with a lovely cameo by Rosie Sansom as the maid.

It may not be a comfortable evening in the theatre for those of us who have seen family problems at first hand, but I left with a sense of optimism knowing that Eugene O’Neill as the younger son survived the tuberculosis. He then went on to survive the other three who all died within three years of one another.  Direction by Anthony Page brought this disturbing drama to life, helped by the excellent designs and lighting of Lez Brotherston and Mark Henderson.

This is theatre at its best, and performances continue until August 18 — for details click here.

Uncle Vanya, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, April 2012

For mockery and a self-deprecating sense of humour, Roger Allam’s Vanya is hard to beat.

Roger Allam as Vanya, all images Johan Persson

From his first clumsy entrance onto stage, to his bumbled expostulation, “I could have been a Dostoevsky”, and his failure to shoot the brother-in-law he’s learned to detest, this was a Vanya fated to manage the estate as an also-ran. The brother-in-law, Professor Serebryakov is a clever narcissist, attractive to the ladies, and as portrayed by Timothy West an endearingly frail old fool.

Timothy West as Serebryakov

Both Vanya and Dr. Astrov, very engagingly portrayed here by Alexander Hanson, are enamoured of Serebryakov’s young (second) wife Yelena, played by Lara Pulver, but she lacked allure, and seemed overly neurotic. By contrast, Vanya’s niece, Sonya is supposed to be very plain, and Dervla Kirwan managed to make herself a rather dull fish, without being tiresome like Yelena. Maggie McCarthy and Anthony O’Donnell were a delight as the homely consciences of the house, providing earthy background against which Vanya could lose his head and his heart, and Astrov and Sonya just their hearts. But in this production by Jeremy Herrin, in a colloquial translation by Michael Frayn, the youthful anima of Yelena never gave them a reason to become so besotted.

I liked the sets by Peter McKintosh with the windows at the rear of the stage through which we see the outside world as in a mist, with rain dripping down when the storm comes exactly on cue with Vanya’s prediction. I liked the lighting by Chahine Yavroyan that gave that mistiness to the outer world, and I loved the two musicians setting the scene by playing wind and strings behind the windows.

Sonya and Uncle Vanya

This Chekhov play is a wonderful vehicle for taking an irreverent sweep at those nit-picking academics, in their fake-ivory hovels, who dissect the work of other more creative people. And Vanya’s pamphlet-reading mother, trying to understand the work of second-rate minds, is a harbinger of the later nonsense that was to engulf Russia, less than two decades after the author’s death. Yet the irritating narcissism of Vanya’s mother and the Professor were subdued in this production, and I wonder whether some of her lines were cut. The most irritating presence was the young wife Yelena, but in the end as she and her husband leave, Roger Allam’s Vanya is the focus of our attention in the slow dénouement. Will he blow his brains out, or accept his niece’s emotional support in doing the numbers and seeing that the point of life is life itself, as Dr. Chekhov well knew.

Performances continue until May 5 — for details click here.

Sweeney Todd, Adelphi Theatre, London’s West End, March 2012

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, yet it’s a dictate usually unheeded, and like Verdi’s Rigoletto, Sweeney Todd’s actions lead to the death of the woman he holds most dear.

The last time I saw this musical drama by Stephen Sondheim was in Chicago with Bryn Terfel as the eponymous character. It was performed at the Lyric Opera House, a vast auditorium seating over three and a half thousand, and Terfel was brilliant of course, but the smaller space at the Adelphi suits this musical work very well, providing a more intense experience. The curved rear of the set made me feel part of the action in this dark staging that uses the full space and height available.

This fine production by Jonathan Kent, with designs by Anthony Ward, was seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre last summer, and transfers the action from the Victorian era to 1930s London. The darkly atmospheric lighting by Mark Henderson cleverly portrays Sweeney in a different glow from other characters, and provides an air of mystery to the ovens and meat processing area in the basement.

Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball, image Tristram Kenton

Before the prologue we see a darkish stage with cleaners wiping the floors, and clattering and banging going on, when suddenly … the ballad breaks forth. In the end we are back to the same scene, having witnessed an extraordinary story of vengeance, with Michael Ball as a grippingly effective Sweeney, and Imelda Staunton as a plain, homely, yet secretly spooky Mrs Lovett, her dream of a place by the sea beautifully sung.

The supporting roles were all well cast, with tenor Robert Burt as the Italian barber and Dr. Dulcamara-like character Pirelli, and John Bowe and Peter Polycarpou very fine in the villainous pairing of Judge Turpin and the Beadle. James McConville was a wonderfully scraggy yet forceful Tobias, and the other characters all looked and acted their parts as if born to the roles. My only complaint is a few times when the chorus sang together the sound could be deafening, but as a gripping tale, well told, this is hard to beat. The visual effects are excellent yet never get in the way of the story.

Performances continue until September 22 — for details click here, and for cheap tickets here.

The Lady from the Sea, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, February 2012

Moving inland from the sea can create a residual yearning for freedom, the wish to escape from a marriage, and this play by Ibsen has a feeling of impending tragedy. Yet given the freedom you desire, you may decide to stay on land, and tragedy can turn in a moment to a promise of stability and happiness.

Joely Richardson as the lady from the sea

Malcolm Storry as Dr. Wangel

As the husband, Dr. Wangel, Malcolm Storry portrayed an engaging, wise and sensitive man, with Joely Richardson as his troubled wife Ellida, the lady from the sea, tense and charming, yet hiding tides of emotion. They headed a superb cast, including Sam Crane as the irritatingly delusional wannabe Hans Lyngstrand, whose conceited theories of women and matrimony were hilarious. In fact this is really a comedy, and Robert Goodale as the versatile Ballested, who can do many things but always stutters on the same word, was a delight. Madeleine Worrall and Alexandra Moen were perfect as the doctor’s daughters, Richard Dillane was charmingly sincere as the Arnholm, the ex-tutor, and Gudmundur Thorvaldsson with his Icelandic accent was a threatening presence as The Stranger.

“That man is like the sea”, says Ellida at the very end of part I, and then like the tide he returns towards the end of part II saying, “From now on you are nothing more to me than — a ship in the night”. This is all in the new translation by Stephen Unwin, who also created this production, with its wonderful costumes by Mark Bouman, simple yet effective sets by Simon Higlett, beautifully lit by Malcolm Rippeth.

Ballested and Lyngstrand

Stephen Unwin is artistic director of the Rose, and is working through more of Ibsen’s naturalistic plays. His translation and direction make this home-grown production a huge success, and I look forward to more Ibsen at the Rose.

Performances continue until March 17 — for details click here.

Muswell Hill, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, February 2012

Losers. In and out of the kitchen at a dinner party in Muswell Hill, talking about their personal concerns, while the Haiti earthquake stands as a background to keep things in perspective.

Karen, Simon, Jess, Tony/ all photos Robert Day

The losers occasionally lose it, but the hostess Jess, brilliantly portrayed by Jasmine Hyde, is a winner who can keep everything in perspective. And while the losers exhibit their weaknesses, Torben Betts’ play makes us laugh out loud. The text gives the actors space to interact, in a way superbly directed by Sam Walters — this is a play written by an actor, and it flows beautifully.

Katie Hayes enters as the first guest, a tedious chatterbox named Karen in a purple crochet dress, but she is soon sidelined by Dan Starkey as a pint-sized, leftie intellectual conspiracy theorist named Simon, who seems to have answers aplenty until he loses it. He’s lonely and funny and needs a girlfriend, and when he sees a picture of Jess’s younger sister Annie on the fridge he purloins it.

Mat and Annie

She walks in later, gorgeous and confident, until you realise why her big sister has said she is very low on self-esteem. Tala Gouveia gives a perfect representation of this damaged young woman, so very determined to introduce her new sixty-year-old Shakespearean director boyfriend, Tony engagingly played by Timothy Block. She says he’s her fiancé, but he’s not as naïve as some of the others, and our hostess Jess sees through him right away.

Simon, Jess, and Karen

It all starts with Mat, short for Matthew, but spelled like doormat, the engagingly superficial partner for Jess. His charming insecurity was beautifully portrayed by Leon Ockenden. And it ends … well, go and see for yourself. There is love and destruction in the air, along with a mixture of verbal clumsiness and defiant accuracy, and the wit is both spoken and unspoken, as when Simon replaces the picture of Annie that he stole from the fridge.

Six wonderful actors, with superb direction, made for an unmissable evening. Performances continue until March 10 — for details click here.