The Beast's Pen

Writer: Tennessee Williams

Director Sam Yates

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Tennessee Williams was a dramatist who had a gift for finding intriguing titles to entice audiences into his plays, but it would seem that inspiration eventually deserted him. The title of this play, which received its World Premiere at Hampstead Theatre in 1967, at very least gives a factually accurate description of what to expect, but, once the action gets underway, basic expectations are defied over and over again.

Director Sam Yates’ revival continues Hampstead’s season of looking back at its landmark productions and it is being performed to socially distanced audiences throughout its run. The Two Character Play is, in fact, a play within a play, being staged when an audience is waiting and only two actors have turned up “due to the eccentricities of the time”. Disruption of theatre for such a reason is something that we can easily relate to right now.

The actors are siblings, Clare (Kate O’Flynn) and Felice (Zubin Varla). Hampstead’s large stage is opened out to its full expanse as the pair arrives, designer Rosanna Vize having littered it with an upright piano, props, part-built scenery and all the inanimate ingredients that go to make theatre. Playfully, Felice dons a wig and, through the characters, Williams begins to explore parallels between life and art, reality and fantasy. The writer seems to be bringing to theatre the mysterious and introspective style associated with Federico Fellini in 1960s cinema; this is emphasised further in Yates’ production, when songs from Italy and other European countries are scattered throughout.

O’Flynn and Varla, thespians playing thespians, throw themselves full-heartedly into their roles, knowing that the structure of the piece gives them licence to overact at will. The fictional actors’ relationship is fragile but mutually dependant, mirroring the relationship between the characters in the play which they perform. For that play, they assume distinct Louisiana accents, playing two people trapped inside a house and incapable of leaving it.

The play within a play is an undisguised parody of Williams’ own greatest successes, building in themes of dysfunctional family ties, confinement and social taboos. Much of the playwright’s early work is thought to reflect his personal frustrations and turmoil, so it is enlightening to learn that, by the mid-60s, he could have been looking back in amusement. However, a thin line separates self-mockery from self-indulgence and Williams crosses it often, allowing scenes to drift off at tangents or drag on for far too long.

Yates’ production is suitably shambolic, but inventive, using tricks of modern theatre to enhance the writer’s themes. For all its many flaws and its often irritating quirkiness, the work possesses a magnetic pull that keeps drawing us back to it and our enduring fascination with Williams himself is the obvious explanation for this. The play is undoubtedly an oddity, but it is an engaging one.

Performance date: 26 July 2021

Writer: Bryony Lavery

Director: Tinuke Craig

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Theatre is always a collaborative effort. To some, it is also a matter of life and death. Bryony Lavery’s comedy Last Easter embraces these ideas and more in a story about a group of theatre folk who join forces as one of them becomes stricken by serious illness and embark on a sort of pilgrimage to Lourdes.

When June, a lighting designer, is diagnosed with stage two cancer, her friends gather round and panic: Leah is a props maker whose alter ego is a garish glove puppet; Gash, is a drag performer with an unsuitable joke for every occasion; and Joy is an actor who over-dramatises everything, particularly after a tipple or two. Their road trip to Southwest France does not come from religious conviction, but more from their desperation to try anything, with the bonus of enjoying a pleasant Easter break.

Naana Agyei-Ampadu’s June is the calm at the eye of a storm, stoically facing mortality, but willing to go along with her friends’ whims on the way. She endorses the writer’s point that those surrounding victims of illness can often be hit harder than the sufferers themselves. Leah (Jodie Jacobs) and Joy (Ellie Piercy) are panicky, while also preoccupied with their own developing relationship.

The main joy of this production is Peter Caulfield’s flamboyant and irrepressibly slutty Gash. With an armoury of dreadful jokes and classic songs from the 1940s, he brightens up scene after scene and keeps the play on course whenever it threatens to hit the rocks.

Just as Gash spits out one-line gags as a defence against hard realities, Lavery uses comedy to sweeten the bitter pills of the weighty themes of terminal illness, faith and euthanasia. Sometimes it feels as if she is buying cheap laughs to prevent the play from sinking and sometimes it feels as if the constant barrage of wisecracks is working contrary to the writer’s wish to draw us in emotionally. However, overall, the tricky balancing act is tackled with confidence.

Director Tinuke Craig gives her simply-stages in-the-round production pace and energy. The performance space at the Orange Tree is condensed even further by socially distanced seating and, for most of the 90-minute (plus interval) running time, the actors have just four swivelling chairs to work with, but Craig puts this to advantage in emphasising the closeness of the characters to each other. The outcome is only mildly challenging and thought-provoking, but consistently entertaining.

Performance date: 7 July 2021