The Beast's Pen

Photo: Konrad Bartelski

Music and lyrics: Stephen Sondheim

Book: George Furth

Director: Kathrine Hare

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Chronologically, Merrily We Roll Along falls between two masterpieces in the canon of Stephen Sondheim. It emerged at a time when the legendary composer/lyricist had reached his absolute peak, yet the 1981 musical achieved none of the initial Broadway success of Sweeney Todd…, which preceded it and Sunday in the Park With George, which followed it. Acclaimed London productions at the Donmar Warehouse in 2000 and the Menier Chocolate Factory (later West End) in 2012 helped to restore the show’s reputation and get it back to be re-evaluated in New York.

Chronologically, the narrative of Merrily… rolls along in reverse gear, possibly a reason why some audiences have struggled to grapple with it, and it presents many challenges to a company reviving it, not least to an amateur one, as is the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT), performing here. Poignantly, friendships are fragmented and then formed, the disappointments and disillusion of middle age melt into the joyful optimism of youth.

George Furth’s book is adapted from a 1934 play of the same name by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, but it is believed that Sondheim saw the show as partly autobiographical. The story centres around the friendship of Franklin, Charley and Mary, formed when they are all in their early 20s. Franklin (Toby Owers) is a brilliant composer and he is a magnetic force, but he wallows in the trappings of his success and is careless with his personal relationships. Charley (Thomas Oxley), a lyricist who collaborates with Franklin to create hit musicals, is much more down-to-earth and Mary (Madeline Morgan) is a struggling writer.

Beginning in 1976, when success has brought its rewards and taken its tolls, the show traces the friendship back to 1960, when the Kennedys are newly elected to the White House and, in a similar fashion, the trio see themselves as “the movers…the shapers…the names in tomorrow’s papers”. Foreknowledge of outcomes drapes scene after scene with ironies which Sondheim exploits masterfully.

In the early stages, this production tends to become sluggish between songs and director Katherine Hare does not find the big performances needed to lift it; however, quite naturally, these young actor/singers grow in confidence as the show progresses. With a company of 27 accompanied by a superb orchestra of 11 players, Hare’s revival would be judged lavish by modern West End standards.

Numbers such as Old Friends and Our Time hare become standards in the Sondheim songbook and the former will lend its title to a tribute show in honour of the great man, coming to the West End in Autumn 2023. Most importantly, the singing here is flawless, showing full appreciation of the exquisite lyrics. In addition to the three leads, Matilda Shapland and Sophie Lagden have particularly striking solos.

One big regret is that NYMT’s production is here for five shows only. The consolation is that most of these rising stars should be around to entertain us for many years to come.

Performance date: 24 August 2023

Photo: Geraint Lewis

Writer: Ian Hallard

Director: Mark Gatiss

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Almost 50 years after Abba exploded onto the stage of the Eurovision Song Contest, the popularity of the Swedish band shows no signs of diminishing. Sharing its title with that of an Abba song, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s production of Ian Hallard’s comedy The Way Old Friends Do arrives for a limited rub in London’s West End. Telling the story of the rise and fall of a gender reversed Abba tribute band, the play harks back to the glittering days of floral shirts, kipper ties, flared trousers and platform shoes.

In 2015, when Mamma Mia! was in only the 17th year of its West End run, up in the West Midlands Peter (Hallard) and Edward (Anton Tweedale) hook up on Grindr and then realise that they are old friends from school 20 years or so earlier. Edward was planning to be unfaithful to his husband, while Peter, an Abba fanatic, is worried about revealing his bisexuality to his Nan, whose voice, heard over the telephone, is unmistakably that of Miriam Margolyes, even with a thick Brummie accent. Equally unmistakeable is the voice of the late Paul O’Grady, heard as a radio presenter. He could have taught these aspiring dancing queens a few things about performing in drag.

Encouraged by Peter’s close friend Sally (Donna Berlin), the old friends develop the idea of forming an Abba tribute band, with Peter becoming Agnetha and Edward Anni-Frid. Delightful cameos from Rose Shalloo as Jodie/Björn and Sara Crowe as Mrs Campbell/Benny boost the laughs as quick fire gags and camp clichés are rolled out. The jokes may be predictable, but they contribute to a boisterous first act of solid warm-hearted fun.

This is a lighter form of comedy than that most commonly associated with director Mark Gatiss, but the tone and the pacing of his production are just about perfect until the play hits the buffers in the middle of the second act. Snippets from Abba tracks are heard at scene changes throughout, but we are denied the chance to see the tribute act performing until a glitzy finale and this leaves a gaping hole which is felt most acutely when the play starts to take things too seriously. 

Christian (Andrew Horton), an over-enthusiastic young fan, arrives and begins to drive a wedge between Peter and Edward. Famously, members of Abba themselves underwent difficulties in their personal lives which were reflected in the lyrics of their songs and the writer seems to enjoy the irony of a tribute band suffering a similar fate. Unfortunately, while the play dwells for too long on the band’s demise, it is neither convincing nor amusing.

Hallard manges to pull the play back near the end by reminding us of the fun of these super troupers. It is frustrating that the laughs quota is not sustained consistently throughout the evening, but, in these gloomy days, we need to be grateful for all the cheer we can get.

Performance date: 18 August 2023

Writer: Makoto Shinkai

Adaptors: Susan Momoko Hingley and Alexandra Rutter

Director: Alexandra Rutter

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

With the hugely successful My Neighbour Totoro returning to the Barbican Theatre in November 2023 and Spirited Away due to arrive at the London Coliseum in 2024, Japanese anime is rapidly becoming all the rage in providing source material for stage productions. Following the trend, this version of Makoto Shinkai’s 2013 film The Garden of Words plants itself in North London, where it is receiving its Worth Premiere.

Defying the Disney traditions that animated films are based on fantasy and aimed primarily at children, Shinkai tells a human story with dark, adult undertones and, in its account of isolation inside a vast, densely populated city, it is more reminiscent of a live action film, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, also set in Tokyo. The first question hanging over this adaption concerns how a 46-minute film can be extended to 105 minutes on stage, even accepting that 20 minutes of the excess can be attributed to what feels like an intrusive and totally unnecessary interval. Thankfully, the increased running time does not mean that the garden grow a surfeit of words.

Director Alexandra Rutter’s production relies heavily on highlighting cultural divisions, making aspects of Japanese life seem strange, almost mystical to a United Kingdom viewer. The strangeness leads to enchantment and, when it is applied to reality rather that fantasy, even the grubbiest details of flawed human lives become more enthralling. Coordinated movement by the company of seven expresses emotions and daily activities, piano music composed by Mark Chol plays incessantly and a sinister black bird swoops and soars around the garden.

Cindy Lin’s set design is dominated by a large impressionist backdrop depicting urban greenery in front of high rise buildings. It is in this garden that Takao, a 15-year-old boy meets Yukari, a 27-year-old woman on a rainy morning rainy and, on every subsequent morning when it rains, they meet again, unarranged, exchanging food and poetry. Hiroki Berrecloth gives a remarkably assured performance as Takao, combining naiveté and maturity, while Aki Nakagawa’s Yukari has the air of a lost soul who is deeply disillusioned and is planning an escape from the city.

Takao skips school and is caught up in a dysfunctional family life. His mother (Susan Momoko Hingley) is frequently absent from the home and his older brother (James Bradwell) is planning to move in with his actress girlfriend (Iniki Maricano). Takao dreams of becoming a shoemaker. Yukari, a school teacher, is the subject of ugly rumours involving also her head teacher (Mark Takeshi Ota) and a provocative pupil (Shoko Ito).

Just as the platonic friendship between Takao and Yukari is slow to develop, so this production takes its time to flower, not coming into full bloom until the final third. When the stories and the imagery eventually coalesce, the emotional kick is powerful. It is all strangely beguiling and strangely beautiful.

Performance dare: 15 August 2023

Photo: Carla Joy Evans

Writers: Gertrude Robins and HM Harwood

Director: Melissa Dunne

Three for the price of one!  Director Melissa Dunne’s production brings together Makeshifts and Realities, two short plays by Gertrude Robins, with Honour Thy Father by HM Harwood. All three were written and are set in the early years of the 20th Century and their common theme is the struggles by women to lead independent lives.

Makeshifts sees two sisters considering their options for the future. Sharp-tongued Dolly (Poppy Allen-Quarmby) is a teaching assistant at an infants’ school and the quieter Caroline (Philippa Quinn) is a domestic servant. Two potential suitors come into their lives: Henry (Akshay Sharan) is meek and brings the sisters sweets, while Albert (Joe Eyre) is brash, boastful and seen as a much more exciting catch. However, Albert’s visit proves teasing when he eventually announces his betrothal to a better connected woman, Rose. So, should the sisters remain independent or should one of them grasp the makeshift option of marrying Henry?

Moving forwards two years, Realities begins with Caroline and Henry married and parents to a baby son. Caroline receives a visit from Rose (Beth Lilly) who turns out to be a sneering social climber, obsessed with material possessions, She gives the first hint that her marriage to Albert may not be going well and this is confirmed later when Albert himself calls on the couple, very drunk. Maybe Henry was not second best after all.

The ironically titled Honour Th Father is set in Bruges, the city in which a bankrupt upper class English family is effectively exiled. The patriarch,  Edward (Andrew Hawkins) is a pompous hypocrite who is addicted to gambling. His long suffering wife, Jane (Suzan Sylvester) struggles as best she can to manage finances, but the family depends on support from older daughter Claire (Allen-Quarmby), who had stayed behind in London to earn her own living. 

The fact that this play was banned from being performed in public for many years after it was written gives a strong clue as to the source of Claire’s earnings, a shocker indeed for post-Edwardian England. In exposing the double standards of well-to-do society, Harwood enters territory explored around a decade earlier by George Bernard Shaw in Mrs Warren’s Profession, but the play makes its own points about the sacrifices that women make in order to forge independent lives.

Dunne’s staging is carefully paced, finely detailed and beautifully acted. The production is enriched by Carla Joy Evans’ period costume designs and sets designs by Alex Marker, which make imaginative use of a space that can often be difficult. if understanding the past helps us to understand the present, these three plays, seen together, provide an absorbing and eye-opening account of our social history.

Performance date: 10 August 2023

Writer: Abigail Hood

Director: Kevin Tomlinson

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sometimes, people can cling on to things, even though common sense dictates that they should let go. Perhaps this could include clinging to the forlorn hope that a person who has gone missing will return or to the wreckage of a relationship that is doomed. In linked storylines, Abigail Hood’s play Spiral, first performed at London’s Park Theatre in 2018, explores both these scenarios.

Gill (Rebecca Cranshaw) and Tom (Jasper Jacob) are a middle-aged married couple whose 15-year-old daughter had gone missing on her way to school several months earlier. The Police assume that she is either dead or has run away from home as her own choice. Gill deals with the situation by turning to religion and drink. Tom, a school teacher, is facing disciplinary proceedings for allegedly behaving inappropriately with a female student and he compensates for the absence of his daughter by hiring a young escort to wear school uniform and act out domestic scenes. Inevitably, Gill and Tom drift apart.

The writer herself plays the escort, Leah. Her boyfriend, Mark is played by Kevin Tomlinson, who also directs this production. Mark, unemployed, acts as Leah’s pimp, but is overcome by fits of extreme jealousy of the clients with whom she is spending time. His behaviour becomes controlling, aggressive and physically violent, made worse when Leah’s relationship with Tom turns into a platonic friendship in which Tom sees himself as Leah’s protector. Here, the writer tackles the burning modern issue of domestic abuse  head on, demonstrating the horror of Leah’s plight with great clarity.

Tantalisingly, Hood sets up the elements for a taut psychological thriller, but never commits fully to taking the play in that direction, opting instead for a straightforward emotional drama which succeeds only in patches. The problem is that the characters are not given sufficient depth for them and their dilemmas to become completely believable, the writer resorting too often to bland clichés when sharper insights are what is needed.

Undoubtedly, the scenes which wield the most power are those in which Tomlinson’s volatile and menacing Mark collides sickeningly with Hood’s confused and vulnerable Leah. Perhaps these characters merit their own play, but, for now, they reveal Hood to be a young writer of some potential and promise better work to come.

Performance dare: 4 August 2023