The Beast's Pen

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

In a liberal-thinking and increasingly secular modern world, it is common to challenge traditional values and push boundaries. So, in a marriage, could monogamy perhaps become “monogom-ish”? Chicago-based writer Laura Jacqmin poses this question in her 100-minute one-act play, which gets its World Premier here. Living in an unnamed American city, Paul and Allison (Jeremy Legat and Asha Reid) have been married for six years and are seemingly contented with their lifestyle and devoted to each other. However, they decide that they can become even happier if they spice up their sex life together with the introduction of a “third”. Allison meets Jay (Will Alexander) and conducts something like a job interview, her nervousness contrasting with his laconic assuredness; he tells her that he has done it all before. After, the couple’s first liaison with Jay, Paul recruits another “third”, a wary lesbian, Mariella (Lucy Roslyn). Jacqmin begins her play with the recruitment of Jay, without having introduced us to Paul and Allison or having explained the thought processes that led them to taking this step. As a result, we are slow to understand the couple and, more critically, slow to warm to them when they begin to “feel feelings” as their learning curve steepens. The traditional rules of monogamy having been discarded, a new set of rules is devised and adhered to strictly by all four characters, but they are in uncharted territory and none of them can foresee how they will react emotionally to their entanglements. Jacqmin’s messages seem to be that relationships cannot be conducted like business transactions and that the tried and tested old rules may not be quite so bad after all. The use of a set that has been created for another play, running at the Finborough in repertoire, is not helpful to this production. The audience is seated all around a large lounge/dining room which looks more Chelsea, London than Chelsea, New York, although real traffic noise from outside goes some way to compensating for that shortcoming. Intermingling actors and an audience that needs to be shuffled around frequently is distracting as often as it is effective; it works well where scenes are set in crowded places, but it also works against the play at key moments of intimacy. Josh Roche’s low-key and leisurely production brings out the uncertainties besetting all four characters, but long silences occasionally slow things up a little too much. Jacqmin gives us a frank exploration of complex and interesting ideas, but, in this production, her play does not quite have the depth or the cutting edge that it really needs to make a strong impact.

Performance date: 29 June 2015

It seems to have become a new law of theatre that any British film earning the tag “uplifting” has to be turned into a stage musical, paying little regard to the suitability of its subject. So here we go again, this time with a show about football. Being cynical, the success of the 2002 film on which this is based may have owed more to the star power in its title than to anything on-screen (Keira Knightly was an unknown at the time), but a decent sized hit it was and Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinder Chadha now adapt their own screenplay, with Chadha again directing. Their book gives us a show of two halves, both of which have essentially the same narrative arc – will she (Jess) honour her responsibilities to her family or will she dash off to play for her team in a vital football match? Jess is a second generation Indian immigrant who has started to become absorbed into British culture, whilst her parents are traditionalists clinging onto their own family customs. So, even if the core story is very simple, there is plenty of meat here – culture clash, generation gap, girl power, even a gay character thrown in for good measure – and, if nothing else, the show must be welcomed for stimulating diversity both on the stage and in the audience. But does it work as a musical? Well, it could be argued that it only works as a musical, because many of the scenes between songs are so lifeless that watching them feels like trudging through a swamp. Howard Goodall has a fair track record and he gives the show a bouncy score, vastly superior to that which torpedoed the recent flop film-to-musical Made in Dagenham. That said, Goodall’s music is not much better then average Eurovision Song Contest fare, catchy Brit-pop that is only memorable in the sense that it becomes jumbled in the head for days afterwards, difficult to distinguish one song from another. The exceptions are two terrific Bollywood-style numbers which bring the show to instant life. Charles Hart’s lyrics contain more simple rhymes than should be allowed on the grounds of decency, but they serve the tunes well. Natalie Dew is a real find as Jess, combining cuteness and toughness, and Lauren Samuels gives strong support as her footballing mate Jules. Tony Jayawardhena and Natasha Jayetileke play Jess’s parents for comedy whilst preserving the characters’ dignity, Jamie Campbell Bower is an eager team coach and Sophie-Louise Dann (a survivor from Made in Dagenham) provides some of the show’s funniest moments as Jules’ slightly slutty Mum. The orchestra is placed on a balcony at the rear of Miriam Buether’s not-too-inspiring set in which six revolving panels effect scene changes and a lit-up house appears to represent Jess’s family home during the course of traditional Indian festivities. The big success of the show is the choreography and staging of the musical numbers, for which Aletta Collins takes credit. From a Southall street market to an Indian wedding to a football pitch, the show becomes a feast of energy and colour once the dancing starts, climaxing in a final half-hour of irresistible exuberance. This musical may not win many trophies, but it does more than enough for it to dodge a straight red card.

Performance date: 22 June 2015

Not content with providing London’s Savoy Theatre with two musicals in straight succession, Chichester could be pitching unashamedly for the hat trick with a show that is set partly in that very theatre. “Things are looking up” chirps Billie Dore (Sally Ann Triplett) performing the closing number of show-within-a-show Kitty in the City on the Savoy stage, before setting off for a weekend in a castle in Gloucestershire, along with the show’s writer George Bevan (Richard Fleeshman). This is a hybrid musical with songs by George and Ira Gershwin transplanted onto a PG Wodehouse story, set in the 1920s, about a couple of Americans enjoying jolly frolics with the English aristocracy. 90 years ago, this sort of thing may have typified musical theatre, but, nowadays, the story looks pretty feeble. The book by Jeremy Sams and Robert Hudson moves towards the very brink of pantomime and then, in a preposterous finale, walks several steps beyond it. This places a heavy burden on the songs and on director/choreographer Rob Ashford’s staging and, thankfully, both prove to be more than up to the challenge. Of course, the presence of names such as Isla blair, Desmond Barrit and Nicholas Farrell in supporting roles gave a pretty strong clue beforehand that the show would be well above the ordinary and they all shine, as do Fleeshman and Summer Strallen as the romantic leads and Richard Dempsey as a goofy toff, whilst Triplett is as much the star of the real show as of the one within it. The Gershwin songs fuse with the book, if not exactly seamlessly, then pretty well. Nice Work If You Can Get It, Love Walked In and A Foggy Day in London Town are probably the best known amongst them, but the real joy comes from hearing and seeing, fully staged, great songs that are much less familiar, all accompanied by Alan Williams’ orchestra, hidden somewhere above the stage. Christopher Cram’s designs give a fairy tale look to a production which bubbles along nicely up to the interval and then comes to life spectacularly from the start of a second half that would, on its own, make a journey to the south coast worthwhile, even from the Outer Hebrides or beyond. It starts with I Can’t Be Bothered Now, a rousing chorus routine led by Triplett. David Roberts and Chloe Hart, as cook and undercook, get the show’s loudest ovation for French Pastry Walk, which incorporates an Argentine Tango good enough to make even Craig Revel Horwood drool and, to round off a blissful half hour or so, the chorus returns to dazzle us with Fidgety Feet, a sparkling tap dance routine. They set the bar high for Anna Jane Casey, who will be showing us how to tap our troubles away on this same stage in just a few weeks’ time. In Chichester, things are definitely looking up.

Performance date: 20 June 2015

Patrick Marber’s examination of the state of modern football could hardly be more timely. Several rungs down the ladder from corrupt FIFA officials, the clash between the traditional values of the beautiful game and modern day commercialism can be seen at its starkest. Marber’s three-act, three-hander takes place in the home team changing room of a non-league semi-professional club somewhere in the London area, a club that had been formed in 1892 by a group of enthusiastic players in a room above the Red Lion pub. Inspired by love for the game and loyalty to his club is the kit man (Peter Wight), a player and briefly an unsuccessful manager 20 years and more earlier, whose life went on the skids until he got his present job, doing which he regards as “a privilege”. The current manager (Daniel Mays) is a wide boy, broke and with an eye only on taking a bung; when a promising young player (Calvin Demba) joins the club, the manager’s top priority is to get him under contract so that he can get a cut from a huge transfer fee, but he clashes with the kit man who just wants to nurture him to play for his team. The biggest strength of Ian Rickson’s straightforward one-set production is the compelling performances. Wight is overweight, world-weary, playing extra time and almost defeated; Mays suggests a desperate sleaze bag for whom corruption is a way of life; and Demba develops further the cocky youngster persona with which he showed such promise in The Wolf at the Door at the Royal Court recently. All of these characters are, in their own ways, losers and Marber chooses not to show us examples of the game’s winners, of which there are many; the playwright is not quite the British David Mamet, but his dialogue is sharp and realistic. If the play disappoints slightly, it is only because it is a little too low-key, not igniting often enough; also, it leaves a feeling that its scope could have been more expansive and its approach more incisive. Nonetheless, it gives us a good couple of hours of quality drama.

Performance date: 19 June 2015

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

Food offers up a metaphor for everything in life as viewed by Sabrina Mahfouz in her one- woman play. The chain which sees it move from source to kitchen, its careful preparation and its final consumption are all shown to correspond with twists and turns of fate. The central character, known simply as “Chef” and played here by Jade Anouka, is obsessed with food. She would only accept an invitation to a meal on the condition that she could take her own gravy. We see her firstly in the kitchen of a restaurant, gently mocking chic dining trends and later in a prison preparing meals for her fellow inmates. Her journey is charted in a non-linear narrative and each “chapter” is headed by an appetising dish. For her, food is a constant love in a life filled with hatred and violence, a provider of joy and fulfilment and a route for escaping pain. A gangster boyfriend and a suicidal prison friend feature in Chef’s story, but the overriding presence in her life is that of her bullying, abusive father, absent as a salmon farmer for much of the time, but returning when he is sick and needy. Chef speaks of him with revulsion – “even the fish thought he was a ****, didn’t want to be around him…” – but it is he who provides her with the moral dilemma that would change the course of her life. Mahfouz’s writing is vividly descriptive, sometimes brutal, yet seasoned with humour and irony. The story simmers nicely before coming to the boil in the later stages once the play’s central theme has been revealed. At this point, the playwright tackles difficult issues with considerable sensitivity and insight. Dressed in all white with a chequered headband. Anouka’s animated, often excitable Chef always has the audience rooting for her and makes her passion for food clear for all to see. Anouka looks slightly uncomfortable when affecting street slang in the light opening section, but her performance becomes heartfelt when the scale of the ill fortune and injustice inflicted on her character becomes apparent. The ingredients here are well-mixed and Chef emerges as a 50-minute course of theatre that is tasty and satisfying.

Performance date: 17 June 2015

Photo: Richard Davenport

How thoughtful – a show that awards some of its own stars. 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play shows us the messed-up lives of a group of New Yorkers and includes enough raucous comedy to make the recently seen Bad Jews seem placid plus enough ripe language to make The Book of Mormon seem like a vicar’s tea party. Jackie (Ricardo Chavira) is on parole and in rehab, returning to live with his girlfriend since childhood, volatile and crack-addicted Veronica (Flor De Liz Perez). Their relationship begins to fall apart when Jackie discovers that the gentleman of the play’s title has left his headgear and several telling odours in their apartment. Jackie’s rehab sponsor is the self-absorbed and duplicitous Ralph (Alec Newman), who lives comfortably with his neurotic wife Victoria (Nathalie Armin). The entanglements of this four suggest a polarised city where an uneducated, drug/alcohol dependent underclass contrasts with pseudo intellectuals who consume health foods, practice yoga and learn to speak French. We are asked to compare the differences and to recognise the similarities. A series of clashes spark rich comedy, spurred by razor-sharp dialogue and top-notch performances. The icing on the cake is provided by Yul Vazquez as Julio, Jackie’s gay cousin, his droll, mannered delivery being never less than hilarious. Whether there is very much substance behind the laughs is questionable and the play as a whole feels as if it comes to less than the sum total of its many excellent parts. Director Indhu Rubasingham’s production flags only occasionally, when relentless belligerence become monotonous, but a climactic fight scene must rank as one of the least convincing in recent memory. Robert Jones’ sets consist of three nicely detailed apartments, with sections sliding in from all directions at changes and fire escape ladders hovering in mid-air throughout. Maybe this is all too much and, with only around half the width of the Lyttelton stage being used at any one time, it is possible that this is a play that could have been seen to better effect in the smaller Dorfman, with minimal sets. The staging feels not quite right, but then this play that dares not speak its full name may always have been just too American, too New York to ever settle comfortably in this theatre or indeed in this city.

Performance date: 16 June 2015

The discovery of an unperformed script by Tennessee Williams is the theatrical equivalent to finding a Van Gogh in the attic and, for that reason alone, this production is richly intriguing. One Arm, which tells of Ollie, a young Boxing champion who loses a limb in a car accident and then descends into a life of degradation, first appeared as a short story in 1948 when, as it dealt explicitly with prostitution, homosexuality and pornography, dramatisation for stage or screen would have been unthinkable. However, 20 years later, Midnight Cowboy had won the Best Picture Oscar and Williams attempted, sadly in vain, to get his screenplay made into a film. Being a narrative driven piece, Williams probably saw it as more suitable for cinema than theatre and it is a brave move by Moises Kaufman to bring it to the stage. In opening his play with a clear statement that what is to follow was intended to be a film, Kaufman is perhaps acknowledging its unsuitability for theatre, but he does a good job in overcoming the difficulties and director Josh Seymour gives the play a thoroughly modern production – studio space, thrust stage and minimal furnishings with full-length mirrors the only permanent feature. All the Williams trademark images of beauty, brutality and eroticism are in the mix, but here he deals openly with themes that could only be alluded to in his major works, leaving us to wonder what he might have written had he lived in another era. The story is told in flashback with Ollie in a cell on Death Row, recalling how he got there and making the discovery that he meant more as a human being to the “tricks” that he encountered than any of them ever meant to him or he ever meant to himself. Williams’ vision of the values of self respect and respect for humanity is at the play’s heart and Ollie’s belated attempts at reparation become profoundly moving. The biggest flaw is Williams’ failure to make Ollie more sympathetic and thereby explain why he is held in high regard, but the young actor Tom Varey makes valiant efforts to conquer these shortcomings, giving a commanding performance. Peter Hannah, Joe Jameson, Georgia Kerr and James Tucker are also excellent, sharing all the other roles. The initial attraction to this production is its curiosity value, but One Arm is engrossing and haunting and what emerges is a significant work in its own right.

Performance date: 13 June 2015

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

Cab drivers sometimes appear to us as if they are glued inside their vehicles, but this revival of Simon Block’s 1995 one-act comedy serves to remind us that they also have social lives. The play takes place in a Table Tennis club, where a drivers’ team is playing a key relegation match and the King’s Head’s thrust staging means that we get a chance to see the cabbies’ faces as well as the backs of their heads. Team captain Eric (Bobby Davro) and Oscar (Alan Drake) are in their 50s and have been swinging their bats for the club for 30 years. Eric regards relegation as unthinkable, but Oscar realises that the game is now for, if not exactly boys, younger men (and indeed women). Tony (Oliver Joel) is 29 and the team’s star player, but he is so beset with personal problems that his contribution to the vital match becomes doubtful. The sense that an era may be coming to an end had been spurred by the sudden mid- match death a week earlier of “Fat Derek”, a teammate. “The breeze as he went down rustled my Evening Standard” recalls Oscar, who now sees a future of Bridge and Bowls. He is a single man and his acute awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of independence comes through strikingly in Drake’s performance. His policy is never to get involved in the problems of the others just because “it’s policy”, but he always manages to do so anyway. Eric fusses around like a mother hen, using the club to grab time for himself, away from his cab and a family that includes a mother with dementia. Tony is torn between settling down with his girlfriend and sowing more wild oats, dalliances with a lady in the back of his cab in the Aldwych (not in broad daylight surely!) making his choice more difficult. Fine performances bring out the comedy and the pathos in these characters. The three actors play well off each other and get the banter of working class Londoners precisely right in Jason Lawson’s fast paced production. Much of Block’s dialogue is very funny, but it is underpinned with essential truths about the need to escape from the pressures of everyday life, if only to be faced with more pressure. Not A Game For Boys is 75 minutes of lightweight fare, but, in this skilful production, it is always entertaining and occasionally moving.

Performance date: 12 June 2015

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

It is difficult for most of us to imagine what it must be like to live with severe neurological difficulties, disconnected from the rest of the World. Dancer Sandrine Buring created d(ARE) to express her interpretation of the feelings of patients in a French children’s hospital where she worked alongside theatre maker Stephane Olry, who responded with a text which is presented here as a piece of immersive theatre. d(ARE) is performed by Burring in the Print Room’s studio space. She enters to dance playfully with a large, suspended bell jar which is swinging like a pendulum. When she enters the jar, two spotlights pick out her pale, semi-naked body as she writhes, claws at the glass, peers out and then sleeps. She becomes a stark and unsettling embodiment of isolation and despair. There is no sound accompaniment to the 25 minute dance, save for pitiable noises coming from within the jar. For the performance of Here Be Lions, the audience is ushered into the theatre’s main space, being used for the first time since the Print Room moved into what was the Coronet Cinema. We are asked to sit on deck chairs, laid out in a circle, amidst a thick theatre fog, which persists for the entire performance. This is something like sitting on an English beach in the middle of Winter and, although blankets are provided, it is extremely cold. The intent is to replicate the insular existence of patients at the hospital, but, once initial curiosity has passed, what should be an experience that is emotionally disturbing becomes no more than uncomfortable in a physical sense. There is one change in lighting, but, otherwise, we are asked to spend more than an hour staring at almost nothing. Olry’s writing, as translated by Neil Bartlett, is beautifully literate, but it is merely descriptive, telling no continuous story and developing no distinct characters. Repetition of points, also makes the piece longer than it needs to be. Hayley Carmichael, unseen throughout, interprets the text superbly and Phil Minton provides startling sound effects, but, nonetheless, interest wanes several times during the performance. It is questionable whether the fog yields much that could not have been achieved by dimmed lighting, in which case, maybe the effectiveness of both components of this production could have been heightened by combining them together in the same space without a break. As it is, a worthy project which has many strong qualities, suffers from a shortage of dramatic impact.

Performance date: 10 June 2015

It’s rockin’ and rollin’ down at the Elephant and Castle with this trip back to the days of Teds and Judys, Brylcreem and Brillo, times when Camp was just a brand of coffee. Tristan Bernays’ lively piece, more a long poem than a play, takes place in 1950’s London, still blighted by bomb sites and post-War austerity, but with a new dance and a new style of music drifting across the Atlantic, bringing with it a glimmer of light for youngsters longing to escape to a better life. Teddy and Josie are two such youngsters and they narrate the story of their chaotic night on the town directly to the audience, only occasionally interacting with each other. The star attraction for them is the American singer Johnny Valentine (Will Payne), who is appearing at a local club with his band. Bernays captures the feeling from films of the era like Jailhouse Rock that Rock’n’Roll was somehow a forbidden fruit and that teenagers tempted by it could get into serious trouble. It was as if the establishment was using forms of entertainment to warn rebellious youth to conform or else and, sure enough, our couple drift into crime as the evening starts to go wrong and what begins as an ebullient celebration of a bygone era becomes progressively more downbeat. Joseph Prowen and Jennifer Kirby are absolutely terrific in the lead roles, both cocky Cockneys, jiving their way around a derelict church, the “flicks” and finally the music club. They both master the rhymes and metre of Bernays’ intricate verse superbly. Their tentative steps into the world outside their drab and oppressive homes are a joy to behold – a scene in which they have to stop jiving and dance to a slow number is particularly hilarious. Eleanor Rhode’s direction, with choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves, keeps the piece moving at a bouncy pace, but Bernays’ use of narration, rather than having scenes played out fully, results in several points where the production flags just a little. Dougal Irvine’s original songs are a pastiche of Rock’n’Roll, a musical form which may not have worn particularly well, with even Elvis himself now being better remembered for middle-of-the-road material. Teddy is an interesting and unusual work of theatre, most notable for Prowen and Kirby both of whom must be going places.

Performance date: 8 June 2013