The Beast's Pen

Imported all the way from Kansas and performed to a morning audience of half a dozen, this play typifies the sort of jewel that Edinburgh can unearth. Writtrn by Jakob Holder, it is a study of two lovers (Amy Kelly and Jordan Fox), delving deep into their inner thoughts, their fears and fantasies, as they struggle to make the complete emotional and physical connection with each other. The writing is richly descriptive and poetic, the acting totally convincing and the direction fluid. It deserves a wider audience.

Covering the same ground as the film “Prick Up Your Ears”, Martin Mulgrove’s one hour play is an account of the last days of playwright Joe Orton (Jack Burns) and his lover Kenneth Halliwell (Stuart Denman). It grips and amuses in parts, but it tells us nothing new. Orton flew in the face of the social norms of the early 1960s both in his plays and his personal life and this play tries to emulate his writing style. However, what may have caused shocked hilarity 50 years ago barely raises an eyebrow today and a couple of Ortonesque scenes in the middle of the play misfire terribly. An unusually large cast of 14 do well and the production is not without merit, but it is all rather patchy.

Glenn Chandler’s new play features three of Britain’s most notorious serial killers: Moors murderer Ian Brady (Edward Cory); Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe (Gareth Morrison); and predator on the gay community Dennis Nilsen (Arron Usher). All are seen sitting at desks in their prisons or asylums, alternately reading out correspondence between themselves and “fans” from the outside world. Brady sees himself as an agony uncle, Sutcliffe as a Casanova and Nilsen as a confidante for young gay men. This rather static production tells us nothing that is not widely known. it scores with occasional dashes of ironic humour, but there are too few of them and, overall, it is rather bleak and tasteless.

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

Continuing her association with the Finborough Theatre, Canadian playwright Colleen Murphy here gives us a sneak preview, in a fully-staged production, of her new one-act play which will get its official World Premiere in Vancouver in October. Corporal Michael Armstrong (Mark Quartley) is a 21 year-old patient in the recuperation wing of an Ottawa hospital, having sustained leg injuries in Afghanistan; but his mental injuries are more serious and we first see him hiding under his hospital bed, talking to a make-believe friend and resisting all contact with outsiders. Halley Armstrong (Jessica Barden), unrelated, is a 12 year-old Pathfinder in the Girl Guides, herself wheelchair-bound following an accident, who is assigned to read from books to the soldier. She aims for a badge which she will earn after six reading sessions and the play is divided into those six meetings. At first the drama seems to be following a well-trodden path – ill-matched pair meet, feud, mellow towards each, form friendship which leads to mutual redemption – but, without an added dimension that is sufficiently different to grab our interest, it seems far too predictable and lacking in real conviction or substance. In the first three meetings, too much time is devoted to reciting passages from a novel (The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane), leaving the characters under-developed and interesting underlying themes unexplored. However, the play really takes off at around the half-way point when the writing becomes much tighter and more focussed, giving two exceptionally talented young actors the opportunity to shine. Both performances are always sensitive and occasionally explosive. What we now see is a study of the fine line between truth and fiction and a celebration of the cathartic power of written words to heal psychological wounds. As more is revealed of the characters’ stories, they come to life and we become absorbed in the different challenges that they both face. Perhaps the apostrophe in the play’s title is wrongly placed, because it is about the battles being fought by two Armstrongs to come to terms with past tragedies and to surmount the obstacles that life has placed in their way. It may be slow to get going, but ultimately it is a rewarding experience.

Seeing this for the first time in the National’s Cottesloe almost exactly a year ago, it came across as an extraordinary work of theatre and left an indelible impression. Now, with a record number of Olivier awards and a sell-out run on Shaftesbury Avenue under its belt, it is well on its way to becoming an all-time landmark production. It has survived the transfer amazingly well; previously performed on a small stage with the audience on all four sides, it is now set in a cube which creates a sense of claustrophobia, reflecting the world of a boy with Asperger Syndrome; it also allows numbers and diagrams to be projected, for characters to climb and walk around walls and it makes the train/tube journey even more realistic and terrifying. There are a few cast changes; Niamh Cusack is still the teacher/narrator, but Johnny Gibbon had taken over from Luke Treadaway at this performance; he and the entire company are all superb. Seeing it again, it is still as thrilling, moving and life-affirming, but what strikes home most is the incredible feat of imagination by director Marianne Elliot in creating such a completely unique theatrical experience.

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

Pitched to a film studio. Oliver Lansley’s one-act comedy could be described as “Rosemary’s Baby meets Mamma Mia”. It tells of six months pregnant Mia who, having been celibate since parting from her boyfriend nine months earlier, is confronted with the possibilities that the father of her child could be God or the Devil; or perhaps there is something she may have forgotten in a drunken haze. This revival of a play premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the first production from newly-formed Thundermaker. By profession, Mia is a dominatrix who aims to pay off her mortgage by working five hours a week; she is accused of being full of sarcastic one-liners, but, as played by Jessica Doherty, she is a dizzy brunette who comes across as rather shallow and tiresome. Equally shallow is her smug, self-obsessed ex-boyfriend (Matthew J Staton) who is now having an affair with her best friend (Amy O’Dwyer, looking panic-stricken), a baby-hating neurotic. They are joined by a nerdy old schoolmate, now an Estate Agent (Phil Featherstone, producing the best comic turn of the evening) who gleefully stakes his tenuous claim to paternity. As Mia grapples with the riddle of what seems to be an immaculate conception, Archangel Gabriel arrives at her door “without warning and without wings” to inform her that she is carrying the son of God. Playing him, Edward Law appears rather like an insurance salesman with a very quick temper. He is followed by Lucifer (Barry Wilson) who claims that the child will be son of the Devil and then, in the play’s funniest speech, turns to the audience to protest that he is not a bad person, rather someone harshly treated by God who did not fall (from grace) but was pushed. Towards the end, as Mia contemplates birth and mortality, she questions the point of it all. At the same time, the audience could well be asking what is the point of this play, which meanders between satirizing religion and modern relationships, often getting side-tracked and seemingly never certain of its targets or its eventual destination. Nonetheless, there are plenty of amusing lines and winning performances, which make it a pleasant enough way to spend 75 minutes.

We can wait months, even years for a new American musical to arrive in London, so two in three days have made this a week that is truly blessed! Like “Titanic”, this show won awards and had a long Broadway run and, similarly, the production has been scaled down for a small space, but comparisons end there. “Titanic” had a traditional Broadway score; music in “The Color Purple” is blues/gospel inspired and, even if some of the lyrics and tunes are slightly bland, their overall freshness carries them through. Based on Alice Walker’s novel set amongst the black community in America’s Deep South between 1914 and 1945, this is a story of various forms of slavery after the end of actual slavery, self-empowerment and redemption. It is a huge novel and the first half of the show crams in too much plot with characters appearing briefly before disappearing and everything seeming to move much too quickly; however, by the interval, the main characters have established themselves and the second half moves at a steadier pace with many more fully-developed scenes that are both powerful and moving.  Nicola Highes, Christopher Colquhoun and Sophia Nomvete stand out amongst a uniformly excellent company, but this production belongs to Cynthia Erivo in the central role of Celie. Ageing from young girl to middle-aged woman, displaying desperation, defiance and joy to equal effect, diminutive but with a voice to lift the roof, she gives what is likely to be seen as the performance of the year and it is she who clinches the elevation of this show to five-star status. The Menier is configured as never before, with a stunningly-lit  plain wooden stage, the audience on three sides and only chairs and a white sheet are used as props. The contribution which this small theatre is making to enhancing the quality of musical theatre in London (and beyond) is now more than astounding, it is bordering on phenomenal.

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

Producer Danielle Tarento and Director Thom Southerland have joined forces with Southwark Playhouse on three recent occasions and gained great acclaim for breathing fresh life into what were thought to have been problem American musicals. Now, with this fourth effort, they have surpassed themselves. The original 1997 Broadway production earned five Tonys and a long run, but the problem which could have delayed the UK opening of the show until now is likely to have been connected less with its quality and audience appeal, more with the cost of staging it. The solution offered here is to do away with all the grand sets and special effects and replace them with imagination, thereby putting the focus firmly on the characters, the performances and the music. There can be few who do not know that the Titanic, an ocean liner described here as “a floating city”, hit an iceberg during its maiden voyage in 1912, causing 1,517 fatalities. The ships’s owner, builder and captain (Simon Green, Greg Castiglioni and Philip Rham, all convincing) are seen arguing as the sailing speed is increased and a riskier course is steered, in pursuit of a record Atlantic crossing time, and then bellowing at each other to point the finger of blame for the resulting catastrophe. As with all of the many dramatisations of these events, the interest lies in the individual human stories and this version is based on actual characters. The class structure of the age is highlighted strongly, the passengers’ status being defined by their breeding if they were British or their wealth if they were American. The aristocracy and the super rich occupied the upper decks, closest to the lifeboats, whilst, at the point of disaster, the lowest class were locked in far below them, closest to the rising waters. On the lower decks, we see immigrants to the US dream of a new life, joining together to voice their aspirations in the song Lady’s Maid and a pair of young lovers, endearingly played by Victoria Serra and Shane McDaid, plan their future together. On the middle decks, an eloping couple (Nadim Naaman and Clare Marlowe, both with crystal-clear voices) duet on the lovely I Give You My Hand and a social climber (Celia Graham) plots her way upwards, deck by deck. At the very top, the passengers dine at the Captain’s table, dance to Doing The Latest Rag and, in the most touching of scenes, an elderly couple (Dudley Rogers and Judith Street) proclaim their undying love, singing Still. Unifying them all, James Hume is excellent as an omnipresent steward. Maury Yeston’s varied and vibrant score includes many memorable, lush melodies and rousing choruses, all perfectly orchestrated by Ian Weinberger. Peter Stone’s book is, in turns, witty, truthful and poignant, blending naturally with Yeston’s equally fine lyrics. This is exemplified in a splendid scene in which a lowly engineer (an earnest James Austen-Murray) exchanges humorous banter with the ship’s telegraphist (Matthew Crowe, glowing with self-importance) pleading with him to send a proposal of marriage to his girlfriend at home. The banter turns seamlessly into song as one chants The Proposal, the other The Night Was Alive, each in complete harmony with the other. Simply staged, with a 20-strong company and a six-piece band, the show flows, seemingly effortlessly, being beautifully acted, sung and choreographed throughout. At the end, the audience leaves the theatre by walking across the stage, onto which a list of the names of all the dead is being projected, reaffirming the reality of the tragedy which has just been dramatised. However, on this occasion, it is only the ship that sinks, because this is a musical that floats blissfully on air and often soars.