The Beast's Pen

Writer: Roy Williams

Director: Paulette Randall

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How long does it take for an immigrant community and its new home country to adjust fully to each other? This is the key question asked by Roy Williams in The Fellowship, his newest state of the nation play, receiving its world premiere here. Sisters Marcia and Dawn are descended from the Windrush generation and the play, set in present day London, tells how their lives have followed different courses, while the bond between them has remained strong.

Having stepped in at very short notice to take the pivotal role of Dawn, Cherrelle Skeete emerges in triumph, giving a remarkably assured, almost word perfect performance. Dawn and her partner Tony (Trevor Laird) have had two sons, one of which was murdered in a racially motivated attack. Marcia (Suzette Llewellyn) is a successful barrister who has become involved in a relationship with a high-flying politician and is heading for a fall.

Dawn and Tony’s surviving son, Jermaine (Ethan Hazzard), is now involved in a relationship with a white girl, Simone (Rosie Day). Adding to the family’s woes, the sisters’ mother is upstairs dying, it is revealed that Marcia and Tony were once lovers and both Marcia and Dawn have separate brushes with the law, represented by a black officer, PC Spencer (Yasmin Mwanza). Yes, Williams packs in enough plot, some of it trivial, to fill a whole week’s episodes of Eastenders and the soap-style melodrama frequently threatens to submerge the writer’s cutting and burningly relevant social observations. 

Inserting references to infamous real life event, Williams examines the roles of heritage, identity and family in modern life. He paints a picture of a community which remains ill at ease with its adopted homeland, still harbouring suspicion and mistrust many decades after planting roots there. Marcia is said to be accepted in the corridors of power only because “they” have allowed her to be there and Dawn violently opposes her son’s romance with Simone, because she is white. Williams sees prejudice between minority and majority communities as operating in both direction, but he also expresses hope that barriers are, very gradually, being broken down.

Libby Watson’s set design seems peculiar to say the least. A curved modern staircase embraces the entire stage and a giant overhead halo (representing a much used smart speaker) is mirrored on the floor. Overall, the set resembles the interior of a chic fashion store more than the intimate family living space that it is meant to be and it adds to the muddle of a play which often feels uncertain of its direction.

Director Paulette Randall’s production is at its best when it gives life to the humour in Williams’ writing and at its worst when it substitutes excessive shouting for genuine emotion. The comedy highlight comes with a long speech by Dawn, effectively apologising for becoming immersed in “white” culture. It is delivered by Skeete with total conviction before she dances joyfully to a track by Kylie Minogue.

Part drama and part comedy, part serious social commentary and part soap opera, The Fellowship is, in close to equal measures, entertaining, enlightening and exasperating.

Performance date: 27 June 2022

Writer: Pierre Marivaux

Translator: Martin Crimp

Director: Paul Miller

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In these days, few of us have servants and that is a blessing if judged by the conniving bunch in Pierre Marivaux’s 18th Century anti-romantic comedy, The False Servant. The French writer’s play in this translation by Martin Crimp was seen previously at the National Theatre in 2004 and director Paul Miller’s revival looks well merited.

The first servant to appear and then disappear is Frontin (Uzair Bhatti). He is despatched to Paris by his master, the Chevalier, and he recruits former acquaintance, Trivelin, a once wealthy man who has fallen on hard (and debauched) times, as his temporary replacement. Before leaving, he informs Trivelin that the Chevalier is actually a woman and also a servant, her disguise being part of a plot to stop the forthcoming marriage of heartless nobleman, Lelio (Julian Moore-Cook), to the elegant but gullible Countess (Phoebe Pryce).

Will Brown revels in the seediness of his Trivelin, his every word spiked with impudence. He alone appears as a dishevelled down-and-out, while all around him are attired in smart, modern day outfits. Lizzy Watts is a not so masculine but ruthless Chevalier, flirting with the Countess sweetly and thwarting the dastardly Lelio without mercy. Many playwrights, Shakespeare included, would allow their cross-dressing heroines to show a softer side, but Marivaux does not go there. Affairs of the heart take a distant second place to affairs of the bank balance in this play’s relentlessly cynical humour.

Silas Wyatt-Barke chips in as Arlequin, Lelio’s scheming, heavy drinking servant. During Miller’s tenure as Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre, shortly coming to an end, many of his own productions have been distinguished by memorably strong ensemble playing. That happy tradition continues here. The play’s ridiculous plot may be too convoluted to follow, but the dexterous wit of Marivaux/Crimp’s dialogue enlivens it and bang-on performances carry it along at a breezy pace.

Marivaux could not have known 21st Century attitudes towards gender and relationships, but Crimp and Miller certainly do and they squeeze every drop of innuendo out of the characters’ antics. The False Servant’s promise of a couple of hours of non-stop fun is not a deception; in that respect, the play is the genuine article.

Performance date: 13 June 2022

Writer: Tennessee Williams

Director: Jeremy Herrin

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Last seen in the West End as recently as 2017 at this same theatre, Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical play, The Glass Menagerie seems to have become elevated to a place alongside the writer’s better known and most frequently performed works. A study of how family ties draw in and repel, the play embraces themes that resonate widely and it includes a larger-than-life central female character who is equally as fascinating as other Williams creations, such as Maggie “the cat” and Blanche DuBois.

The play, Williams’ first success, premiered in 1944 and is set in 1930s depression era America. The Wingfields, abandoned by their patriarch 16 years earlier, have an impoverished lifestyle and Amanda, now in middle age, yearns for bygone days while still nurturing her two grown children, Laura and the younger Tom, who is forced to work in a menial job to support the family.

Director Jeremy Herrin breaks with custom by casting two actors to play Tom, a character who we take to be based on Williams himself, at different ages. Paul Hilton is the older version, narrating the play as he looks back on his family life with perhaps faltering memory, torn between feelings of relief and guilt for his escape. Tom Glynn-Carney is the rebellious Tom in his early 20s, suffocated by natural affection and his duty as the breadwinner, while finding nightly refuge in trips to the movies and longing to become a poet. This separation of the character enhances a sense of distance between past and present, without obscuring the writer’s essential point that none of us can ever break free completely from our roots.

Amy Adams is a memorable Amanda, defiantly proud and still sprightly as she dons a ball gown, saved from her glory days as a Southern belle, in readiness for the arrival of a now rare gentleman caller. “I know all about the tyranny of women” she declares and, showing no trace of malevolence, she becomes a monster, crossing the line between caring for her offspring and controlling them. Amanda refuses to let go of the past, recalling that she once attracted 17 gentleman callers in a single day, thereby demeaning her daughter who has none in any normal day. Adams brings out the strength and the sadness of a woman who is in denial about  the present and deluded about her children’s futures, specifically the prospects of marrying off crippled and introverted Laura and keeping restless Tom on his leash.

Lizzie Annis is a childlike 24-year-old Laura, her shyness reinforced by her mother’s domination. She is overwhelmed by the gentleman caller, Tom’s work friend Jim O’Connor (a smooth talking Victor Alli). Their scene together, taking place during a power failure, should be pivotal, but it feels slightly overlong and laboured in this production.

Laura’s treasured glass menagerie becomes Williams’ metaphors for family and illusion, both of them fragile and inanimate. It gains prominence in Vicki Mortimer’s set design of the Wingfield’s shabby St Louis apartment; unfortunately, the writer’s direction that a memory play should be dimly lit is at times taken a little too literally by lighting designer Paule Constable.

A reflective and melancholy piece, The Glass Menagerie has no fireworks and contains none of the salacious themes that would become a Williams trademark in his later masterpieces. Herrin’s unspectacular yet beautifully acted revival captures the play’s tone fittingly throughout and its status as a classic of American theatre remains undiminished.

Performance date: 31 May 2022