The Handyman, Richmond Theatre, October 2012

In the mid-late 1990s at my son’s high school in America, the janitor was accused of having been a Ukrainian concentration camp guard in World War II. Most of the students wanted to excuse him, because like the title character in this play, written about the same time, he was a nice guy who wouldn’t harm anyone … and it was all so long ago.

Forgive and forget they say, but forgiveness is the prerogative of victims, and as for forgetting, well the birds finally come home to roost in this clever drama by Ronald Harwood. A much-loved handyman has been with an English family since shortly after the War, and is now suddenly faced with two police officers accusing him of being involved in the genocide of 817 Jews in three villages in the western Ukraine. Timothy West gives a realistic and sympathetic performance of this gentle fellow called Wronka, with Adrian Lukis and Caroline Langrishe portraying Julian and Cressida Field, the couple he works for. They react in different ways. Julian provides some comic relief, and understands guilt, seeing it in Wronka’s calm reactions to his late wife’s outrages, but Cressida adores the lovely man who joined the family before she was born. She cannot cope with the idea he might be guilty, and towards the end Harwood cleverly allows her to show the face of holocaust denial.

The Fields hire a highly intellectual solicitor, beautifully played by Carolyn Backhouse, who expresses some elementary truths about anti-Semitism and responds to the claim that Wronka is not evil by dismissing the concept as it “absolves us of responsibility”. Indeed nice people can participate in some very nasty acts, but even if he is guilty as the police seem to think, how could one possibly prove it more than fifty years later, when it’s one person’s word against another and memories can be unreliable?

The solicitor arrives

The police, well portrayed by James Simmons and Anthony Houghton, are not quite without support, and as the play progresses we hear video testimony by Vanessa Redgrave and Steven Berkoff representing faces from the past. These vignettes suddenly draw us back to the early 1940s, to what actually happened when Jews from three villages were taken into the woods and shot.

She can’t believe it

Can Cressida Field ever truly believe Wronka was involved? I don’t know what Harwood’s original ending was, but he changed it, and in this fine production by Joe Harmston it works brilliantly. The birds do it.

Performances at Richmond continue until October 20 — for details click here — after which it continues on tour to: Malvern Festival Theatre, 22 – 27 Oct; Oxford Playhouse, 29 Oct – 3 Nov.

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.

Quartet, Richmond Theatre, July 2010

What is the point of life? For a performer who can no longer perform — in this case an opera singer who can no longer sing — the lights have already gone out. “I’m not the same person any more,” says Susannah York as she joins three other ex-opera singers at a rest home for have-been musicians, suddenly upsetting the balance of equanimity among them. One of the other three, Michael Jayston, was married to her once, before she moved on to three or four other husbands and had two children. “How long were you married?” Timothy West asks Michael Jayston. It seems an innocuous question, but every time it’s asked something happens and the answer never comes. Jayston is clearly appalled and upset by Susannah York’s sudden appearance, and she tries rather ineffectively to apologise for what she did all those years ago.

Susannah York, photo by Paul Toeman

But the three friends, West, Jayston and a charmingly batty Gwen Taylor have been asked to put on a performance to celebrate Verdi’s birthday in October. With York’s arrival it’s clear she should be included and they should do the quartet in Rigoletto with York as Gilda. She hasn’t sung it for years — in fact she retired early — and won’t cooperate. No way will she perform . . . but Jayston thinks he can persuade her, and after some off-stage antics the costumes arrive and she seems to have agreed. Who will be the accompanist to take them through their paces? No one knows, but they seem supremely confident, and say they are bringing in someone from outside. Costumes on, they look terrific, and amid ribald comments from their audience they prepare to start. I won’t let you into the secret, but in the second part of this play by Ronald Harwood you get to see what the point of life really is — it’s life itself.

Joe Harmston directed this fine production, in which Timothy West is wonderful as the Rabelaisian ex-baritone, perpetually full of wisdom and crudely flirtatious intent towards Gwen Taylor. She in turn is excellent as the motherly, helpful and slightly batty ex-contralto, while Michael Jayston is convincing as the cautious, reliably careful ex-tenor who pays his own way in the home. And then Susannah York is the difficult, insecure ex-soprano, still elegant and proud of her past glories. It’s difficult to admit to failures, but in her chatter with Gwen Taylor we find out what went wrong with her first marriage. Perhaps that admission of failure finally allows her to embrace her situation, live life as it now presents itself, and in the final quartet she performed as if she knew the part backwards — maybe she does.

Quartet plays at Richmond Theatre (12–17 July); Theatre Royal Nottingham (19–24 July); Milton Keynes Theatre (26–31 July); Theatre Royal Norwich (9–14 August); Oxford Playhouse (16–21 August); and Malvern Festival Theatre (23–28 August). The dates and theatre for a planned London season have yet to be announced.

The Winslow Boy, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, May 2009

This new production, which is about to go on tour, gave us a terrific performance of Terence Rattigan’s enthralling play about a teenage boy wrongly accused of stealing a five shilling postal order at Naval College. The case, based on a true story, goes all the way to Parliament. This fine production directed by Stephen Unwin, with costumes by Mark Bouman, and sets by Simon Higlett showing the drawing room in the Winslow’s house, worked very well. The acting was entirely natural and this theatrical play came over with complete conviction. What a very pleasant change from the dreadfully untheatrical play Madame de Sade, which I saw earlier the same week.

The cast all did an excellent job, particularly Claire Cox as the Winslow boy’s big sister Catherine, showing great intelligence and emotional restraint. Timothy West gave a commanding performance as his father, with Diane Fletcher as a sympathetic mother who laments the financial and emotional strain created by her husband’s consuming passion for justice. Adrian Lukis added a terrifyingly professional quality as Sir Robert Morton the famous barrister who is surprisingly willing to take on this seemingly trivial case, and prove the boy’s innocence. As the boy Ronnie, Hugh Wyld acquitted himself well, as did Thomas Howes as his elder, happy-go-lucky brother. Sarah Flind was good as the maid, and John Sackville and Roger May were convincing as the young men who would woo Catherine — the first rejecting her when she refuses to drop her brother’s case, and the second willing to wed even though she can feel no love for him.

This is a well-crafted play that starts slowly, building up to the entrance of the famous barrister Sir Robert who undertakes a ferociously provocative interrogation of young Ronnie. After it’s over his remark, “The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief”, is a real coup de theatre, followed immediately by the fall of the curtain on the first half. The audience responded well to the performance, and choice lines such as, “the House of Commons is a peculiarly exhausting place, with too little ventilation and far too much hot air” caused well deserved laughter, particularly in view of recent events in parliament. Altogether a wonderful evening’s entertainment.

After playing at the Rose in Kingston the play tours: Cambridge Arts Theatre 1st – 6th June, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford 8th – 13th June, Theatre Royal Bath 15th – 20th June, Oxford Playhouse 22nd – 27th June, Malvern Theatres 29th June – 4th July, Milton Keynes Theatre 6th – 11th July, Churchill Theatre Bromley 13th – 18th July, Brighton Theatre Royal 20th – 25th July.