The Beast's Pen

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

When heading out to the wild, wild west of London, where the M4 is the fastest road out of town (sometimes), why not mosey into the Tabard saloon to take in a performance of, yes, a western? Leaving aside a few musicals, westerns on stage are virtually unknown these days, so, on grounds of rarity alone, this production should be welcomed into town. Greg Freeman’s play is a comic allegory about ownership and greed. Dogstar is a drifter who turns up with nothing, not even enough money to pay for a glass of bottled water in the saloon. Its owner, Clay, is the local big wig who also owns everything else and everyone else around. The town ain’t big enough for both of them. Ben Warwick has a brooding presence and weathered look as the enigmatic Dogstar and he is the only character to sound even vaguely American. Rhys King plays Clay as a spiv more like a nasty Arthur Daley than a figure from the old west. Jaymes Sygrove gives an amusing performance as Jed, a dim-witted barman and the alluring Laura Pradelska as Violet makes it seem very unlikely that her character is the town’s only virgin. On his way into town, the anti-capitalist Dogstar protected Violet’s virtue by killing seven of the dastardly Lehman brothers (most of the jokes are less obvious) and the quartet now waits nervously in the saloon for the arrival of the remaining Lehmans seeking their revenge. The play is all undemanding fun, cleverly written with short, snappy lines that give it the feel of a long (rather too long at 85 minutes?) comedy sketch. Many of the jokes are very inventive and their droll delivery by a strong cast makes them even funnier. Director and designer Ken McClymont keeps things moving at a brisk pace on his saloon bar set, which makes good use of the limited space. There is enough originality and good humour here to brighten a dark November evening and allow us to saddle up and hit the trail home in a happy mood.

If you want to see a great musical, go to Southwark. For the third time in just a few months, a major Broadway show makes its London debut in a relatively small venue in the borough, a few miles from the West End which might have been its home in past times. The subject is a notorious miscarriage of justice which took place in Alabama in the 1930s when nine young black men were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of raping two white women. Ostensibly, not much cheer here, but, in an extraordinary juxtaposition of theatrical styles, it is performed as a minstrel show and played for laughs for almost its entirety. The cast of 13 includes one white man (Julian Glover as several interlocutors) and one woman (Dawn Hope as a witness to events whose purpose remains unclear until the very last moment), but all other parts are played by black men, including white law officers and the boys’ female accusers. Possibly this blurring of reality helps to make a very unpleasant story more palatable, but the downside is that it sometimes becomes difficult for us to be moved by the tragedy that is unfolding when we are too busy laughing. Sadly, this is one of the last shows we will see from the Kander and Ebb team, as Fred Ebb died in 2004 whilst still working on this and other shows. The team’s work lacks the subtlety of Sondheim or the lovely melodies of Rodgers but their trademark of blending razzle-dazzle tunes with deeply cynical lyrics is unique and in plentiful evidence here, just as in their biggest triumphs “Cabaret” and “Chicago”. There is no better example of this than a rousing tap dance routine performed to a song about the glories of the electric chair. Overall, the songs here are a mixed bag, a few are ordinary, but several are beauties. The performances are uniformly superb. Kyle Scatliffe has the prominent role amongst the boys, but it seems unfair to single him or anyone else out. Susan Stroman directs with great imagination and her choreography is often stunning. This is not a flawless show, there are dull patches when the story goes nowhere and the contrasting elements are sometimes conflicting ones. However, it all comes together in a truly breathtaking chorus finale which leads to a brilliant coup de theatre in which the historical perspective of the events depicted is put into clear focus. Maybe the show is not perfect, but the glorious ending leaves us thinking that it is.

Performance date: 13 November 2013

Dating from 1992, Philip Ridley’s very black comedy satirises a society obsessed with staying young, but it gets under the skin in ways very different from Botox. Cougar (Joshua Blake) is a sort of Dorian Gray figure and we meet him on the day that he is celebrating his 19th Birthday for the 11th time. He sits under a sun lamp, forages for unwelcome grey hairs and stares endlessly into a mirror. He adds new dimensions to narcissism, uses people ruthlessly for his own ends and is mercilessly cruel to his long-time partner (Ian Houghton); his big weakness is that he cannot bear any allusion to his true age and becomes extremely menacing if anyone approaches the subject. The guest of honour at the Birthday party is to be a 15-year old boy who is, a little like meat being thrown to a hungry lion, the current target for Cougar’s lust. Things start to go badly wrong when the boy turns up with his pregnant girlfriend. As the girlfriend, Nancy Sullivan gives a brilliant comic turn, making the character so irritating that every member of the audience may have wanted to throttle her. This is a well-acted production and the small space of the Old Red Lion is perfectly suited to the setting of a shabby flat above a disused fur factory. The writing is taut and edgy, always holding the attention and conjuring up several vivid and very unpleasant images that it will take a while to rid from the mind.

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

Inspired by Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax, written in the 5th Century BC, and developed using interviews with armed forces personnel, Timberlake Wertenbaker sets her new play amongst British forces fighting in a modern day Asian desert war zone. Lt Col Ajax has been passed over for promotion to Brigadier in favour of his hated rival Odysseus and, engulfed by rage, he goes out into the night to slaughter sheep, goats, dogs and a cow, imagining each one to be Odysseus. He makes his first entrance drenched in blood, dragging a mutilated carcass in his wake. Ajax is a legendary hero and a charismatic leader of his unit who commands unquestioning loyalty, but, like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, he is spiralling out of control, turning into a renegade. As played by Joe Dixon, he is a giant figure, exuding authority that is, at the same time, visceral and calculated. Nothing could break him except injustice. Ajax’s actions and his motives pose questions of morality and legality that underlie news headlines even as this play is being performed. He is war weary to the point that “dust seeps into the mind, blood spatters the retina” and he is now engaged in a war in which objectives are ill-defined, enemies cannot be clearly identified and chains of command are muddled. The soldiers under him recognise his mental illness, but acknowledge that their army is incapable of responding to it. This is strong stuff, played out in the central part of the play, with great intensity. However, Wertenbaker’s decision to retain the characters’ Greek names impairs authenticity and appearances by the Goddess Athena (Gemma Chan) are diversions that serve only to stall the drama. The playwright’s point is that warfare is timeless and continuous – Troy, Flanders, Basra, Helmand, etc – but this is stated in the text and it did not need to be further emphasised. This play and the anti-war messages contained in it could have been much more potent if she had simply taken and updated just the core story and severed all other links to Sophocles’ original play. Amongst the supporting players, Frances Ashman is particularly affecting as Tecmessa, a lower ranking soldier and mother of Ajax’s illegitimate son. Adam Riches, better known as a stand-up comedian, plays Odysseus, a character that, as written, is rather dull. Riches does not make him more interesting or offer any insight into the qualities that made the army hierarchy prefer him to Ajax. For the most part, the writing is sharp and engrossing. In typical Wertenbaker style, it is also infused with mischievous humour. Ajax retreats to his tent not to sleep but to avoid being filmed for You Tube. A preening American General (John Schwab) orders that the man who killed the goats be handed over to the men with goatees and, taking pride in his pun, proclaims “God, I’m so powerful and so smart”. David Mercatali’s direction ensures a brisk pace and draws the audience, seated on 3 sides of a sand pit, into the heart of a drama that should provoke much thought and discussion. Maybe the overall impact of the production feels less than the sum of its strongest parts, but, in its best moments, it lands some powerful punches.

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

With its title taken from a line in a popular song, recorded by Elvis Presley among many others, here we have a show, presented by the theatre makers Uninvited Guests and Fuel, which, unashamedly, promotes romance and challenges the very heart of traditional British reserve. We are handed a glass of Cava on arrival and then seated around a large oblong table, draped in bright red and adorned with vases of deep red roses and party poppers. The presenters, Richard Dufty and Jessica Hoffmann, are seated at either end of the table, controlling proceedings. At first sight, they look more like office workers than performers, but they loosen up as the evening proceeds. We then hear a medley of romantic songs, starting with Lionel Bart’s Where is Love? The answer to that question is that it is all around us, all over the world, in the past, present and future. It is shared, unrequited, forever, fleeting, found, lost, true and tainted. The medley culminates with Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (in a version by Johnny Cash), for the duration of which each audience member is asked to look directly into the eyes of the person opposite. Audience members were asked in advance to send in dedications to loved ones, with requests for specific tracks and the reading of the dedications is at the centre of the evening. Some or all of the dedicators may indeed have been present at this performance, but the quality and poignancy of the writing casts suspicion over this. We hear missives to lovers, mothers, brothers; Adam to Lucy, Simon to Ruth, Amy to Oscar. We are told of love transcending personality clashes, geographical separation and language barriers. Finally, we hear from Karen of a lifelong unrequited love, read to the accompaniment of Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You by Glenn Medeiros. Memo to Karen: if you were really in the audience at this performance, your beautiful words cannot be allowed to die after just one reading – please get your dedication published. After this, things get rowdier, with Jess haring around the room to the sound of Kate Bush, Richard contributing a drunken dad dance to Florence and the Machine, more Cava and group dance. This show has been going around for quite a while and long may it continue to re-surface. It has a lovely simplicity and never gets bogged down with cliches or becomes too sugary. It moves effortlessly between the heartwarming and the heartbreaking and it is ultimately a life-affirming triumph.

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

Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella Death in Venice is perhaps best known because of Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film adaptation, which is regarded by many as a masterpiece of European cinema. It also inspired a Benjamin Britten opera, first performed in 1973. The story was set at Venice Lido where an ageing writer (composer in the film) Gustav von Aschenbach was convalescing after illness and became obsessed with a teenage boy called Tadzio, whilst cholera raged in the city across the water. The soundtrack of the film featured prominently the mournful Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, leading to the supposition that Aschenbach was based on Mahler. In fact, the basis for the story was a real life encounter between Mann himself and an aristocratic Polish boy at the Lido in 1911. Mahler’s music plays as we enter the theatre, but Martin Foreman’s monologue draws less from the film than from Mann’s original novella. The old man and the boy did not speak to each other, leaving unanswered questions as to how the boy perceived his admirer. Foreman expands upon Mann’s work by telling the story from the viewpoint of Tadzio, as remembered 40 years later. Played by Christopher Peacock, Tadzio is dressed in a crumpled cream linen suit, still blond and handsome in middle age, but slightly world weary. Aschenbach regarded the boy as the epitome of youthful beauty, but Tadzio describes himself as a capricious adolescent, at one moment having adult thoughts that he was not yet ready to embrace, then, at the next, boyishly building sand castles. At first, he saw amazement and fear in the old man’s expressions, but, as his understanding grew, he recognised excitement behind the “quieter gaze” of his eyes. He tells us that he began to see Aschenbach as the “gatekeeper” to an adult world full of limitless possibilities and he even describes sexual fantasies involving him. Sadly, we learn that the intervening 40 years have been ones of disappointment and disillusionment and that he now thinks of the old man as his “jailer”, having been unable to fulfil expectations inspired by him or to escape memories left by him. It seems somewhat inconsistent with Mann’s story that the passive intrusion into the boy’s life described therein should have had such a profound affect on the man that he became. As we are offered very little specific detail of Tadzio’s adult life or the exact nature of his failures, it is difficult to understand why he shows bitterness towards Aschenbach, so that, in rounding off the original work, this play is not completely satisfying. Nonetheless, hearing Foreman’s eloquent and descriptive prose, here done full justice by Peacock’s performance, must be worth 45 minutes of anyone’s time.

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

If walls had ears, so they say, and maybe eyes too, what stories would they have to tell? The walls of few buildings in the World can hold as many juicy secrets as those of Manhattan’s iconic Chelsea Hotel, home at various times to writers, musicians, artists and actors. Delving into this rich source of material, Earthfall Dance Company here sets about revealing some of those secrets and bringing to life the hotel’s inspirational effect, through dance, music, poetry and film. Two men and two woman are seen on a large screen at the rear of the stage, ascending in the hotel’s elevator. They are entering an artistic melting pot, where genius is fuelled by kindred spirits from past and present generations, mind-altering substances and free love. They have soon forgotten what “normal” looks like as they become immersed in a Bohemian lifestyle, accepting that, if they are, as artists, to represent the values of life, they firstly have to live. Images of the hotel are projected on the screen throughout, the scenes spanning more than a century. On stage, we see two girls from the 19th Century, dressed in frilly petticoats, dancing provocatively and flirting with what would then have been unthinkable. Perhaps they met Mark Twain at breakfast. They make way for a modern day gay couple fighting, followed by a pair practising sadomasochism, another pair involved in an intense and violent relationship and then two people coping with the after effects of drug abuse. Although spanning eras, the predominant feel, both visually and musically, is of the 1960s when Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin or Tennessee Williams would have walked these corridors. Or perhaps Bob Dylan – he took his surname from Dylan Thomas who died in a room here in 1953. The four performers are Ros Haf Brooks, Jessica Haener, Sebastian Langueneur and Alex Marshall Parsons. Occasionally, they speak in verse to a camera, when their faces are projected on the screen in close-up, but mostly they rely on movement and dance to convey images of the hotel and of the people living in it. They are all superb, whether dancing freestyle or coming together, precisely choreographed. Lara Ward and the entire company, take credit for the choreography and the text. The original rock score is also outstanding, being performed by the three composers, using electric guitars, a synthesiser and percussion. The only criticism is that it is not easy to make out the lyrics in the few sung sections. In the course of 70 absorbing and, at times, breathtaking minutes of physical theatre, the performers are able to suggest to us many things: that defiance of social norms can be integral to achieving artistic greatness; that the creation of art is a continuing process crossing generations; and that spirits from bygone ages can become embedded in a building. This show is as intoxicating as the place that inspired it.

Hot on the heels of Peter Morgan’s “The Audience”, Moira Buffini’s highly amusing new comedy takes another look at the relationship between The Queen and her Prime Minister; in this case, it is one specific Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher, chronicling her period in office from May 1979 to November 1990; in those years, HM is played by Clare Holman and PM by Fenella Woolgar, but Buffini uses the very effective device of having an older HM (Marion Bailey) and PM (Stella Gonet) providing a commentary and distinguishing their versions of the truth from popular myths. All four are on stage for almost the entire play. Mention should also be made of Neet Mohan and Jeff Rawle who share all the male roles (plus that of Nancy Reagan) between them. If the humour in “The Audience” was gentle and respectful, this is much more political and veers towards hard-edged satire, with the two protagonists caricatured rather than being represented realistically. The underlying sentiments in the text have more than faint hints of leftish sympathising, but Thatcher is at least allowed to state her case and she is never reviled in the way that was so distasteful immediately after her death. As often with broad satire, the jokes sometimes dry up, but director Indhu Rubasingham keeps things moving at a brisk pace and adds several inventive touches. This limited run is already a sell out, so a West End transfer seems highly likely and well deserved it will be.

A hectoring battle-axe of a mother and a mild-mannered subservient son, the title characters of Martyn Hesford’s likeable comedy come across like figures from a Donald McGill postcard. She is bed-ridden (although possibly more from choice than because of ill-health), humiliated by the fact that her late husband’s indebtedness has forced the family to move into a working class area, thereby downgrading her social status. He works as a rent collector and devotes all his spare time to painting in the attic. She begs him to take up a useful hobby “such as darts or bowls” and, if he must paint, to focus on fruit or flowers rather than ugly industrial landscapes. Much of the humour derives from the obvious joke of the mother rubishing the son’s talent, relying on the certainty of the audience knowing the status that LS Lowry was destined to achieve, and repetition of the joke in various forms becomes rather tiresome as the play progresses. Nonetheless, Hesford has a keen ear for the language of ordinary Northerners, his dialogue delivering a steady flow of laughs. June Watson is perfect as the mother, but it is Michael Begley as Lowry who steals the show, frequently adopting a deadpan expression as he resigns himself to his mother badgering him and then turning his head to the audience to smirk and make knowing glances. Together, they are a formidable comic double act. Underpinning the comedy is a realistic depiction of a mutually dependent family relationship which is at times quite touching. It all adds up to a very enjoyable way of spending just under 90 minutes.

Arnold Wesker’s snapshot of life in 1950s Britain, during a period of whirlwind social change, is fascinating as a history lesson and, if somewhat dated in its dramatic structure, surprisingly full of modern relevance. Beattie Bryant (Jessica Raine) returns from London to visit her family who are Norfolk farm labourers. She is full of progressive ideas, all learned from her boyfriend who she is constantly quoting, causing great irritation amongst her relatives. Her chief protagonist is her stubborn, old-fashioned mother (Linda Bassett) and the gradual realisation by the pair that they are essentially the same woman, thrown into different eras, lies at the heart of the drama. The period detail is beautifully realised in James MacDonald’s slowly paced production and the two leading actresses are both superb. Unlike his contemporary, John Osborne, Wesker shows an interest in feminism as well as socialism. This is exemplified in a moment late in the play when Beattie suddenly realises that she is speaking with her own voice and not that of her boyfriend. The expression of sheer joy on Raine’s face at this moment provides what will be one of the most enduring images from 2013 theatre. Beattie then begins a tirade against popular culture which is amazing in it’s prescience and surely a fitting condemnation of much that is wrong in society today.