The Beast's Pen

Photo: The Other Richard

Writer: Marek Horn

Director: Ed Madden

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ethnology, anthropology, romance and David Bowie seem like ingredients for a fairly peculiar concoction, but aren’t most romcoms about opposing forces ultimately coming together to find harmony? Marek Horn’s new one-act play, Octopolis, receiving its World Premiere, dares to offer this mix and the result is a strikingly original and highly entertaining comedy.

George is a recently widowed professor of ethnology, living a reclusive life on a university campus. She shares her quarters with an octopus named Frances, who is part of her research into human and animal behaviour. She asks questions such as whether or not Frances believes in God. George’s solitary life is intruded upon by the arrival of Harry, an ambitious doctor of anthropology, whose mission is to observe both George and Frances and reach conclusions which may not concur with the findings of his hostess.

Typically for scientists, the two protagonists seek logical explanations for everything even where none exist. Both are expert in fathoming the unfathomable, but neither is so hot at dealing with their own emotions. The challenge for Horn is to make both characters credible academics as they voice conflicting theories, while also making the dialogue accessible to audiences who are most likely to perceive it as intellectual gobbledegook. In meeting this challenge, the writer is aided by the verve of director Ed Madden’s production.

The academics confront each other, making humorous asides directly to the audience and, at interval’s, they break for “dad” (and “mom”) dancing to Bowie tracks. Jemma Redgrave’s brittle and defensive George is a figure of comedy living on the cusp of tragedy. Ewan Miller’s geeky and arrogant Harry shows eagerness for discovery and naïveté in comprehending himself. Together these actors, on stage for the play’s entire 100 minutes, light sparks off each other.

Designer Anisha Fields finds a very clever way of suggesting the ever presence of Frances. The audience sits on three sides of the stage and the whole length of the fourth side is taken up by what appears to be a tank full of water. Reflections of the actors can be seen in the glass front of the tank, giving the impression that it is the human characters that are being studied, thereby underlining the point of the play.

Once the intellectual mist has cleared, Octopolis reveals itself to be smart, slightly surreal and quietly touching. This is a romcom that has legs, eight of them ro be precise.

Performance date: 25 September 2023

Photo: Marc Brenner

Writer Lynn Nottage

Director: Miranda  Cromwell

⭐️⭐️⭐️

They say that elephants never forget and Mlima is such an elephant. Even after death, he returns to haunt his killers and those who might profit from his demise. In her new 90-minute one-act play, receiving its United Kingdom premiere here, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Lynn Nottage sets out to investigate the threats to Africa’s dwindling elephant population and the vile international trade in ivory. The play becomes a passionate plea to save a noble species that is being exterminated in order to satisfy the most trivial of mankind’s fads.

Ira Mandela Siobhan gives an extraordinary performance of power and physical agility as Mlima. The elephant is old and majestic, with enormous tusks, which make him the target of poachers, particularly when he roams away from his herd. The play begins with a moving soliloquy from Mlima and them the poachers arrive.

Director Miranda Cromwell’s simulation of the “execution” is vivid and brutal. Long shadows and silhouettes appear on a pale curtain which swishes backwards and forwards across the bare stage. There is no place for sunlight in this dark and disturbing world and so the tone is set for the sorry tale which follows. The production achieves a mystical feel, underlining a belief in African folk lore: “if you not give elephant proper burial, he’ll haunt you forever”.

Nottage and Cromwell set the bar so high with this stunning beginning that they risk making the remainder of the play an anticlimax. And, sadly, so it is. The tale introduces us to corrupt Kenyan officials, powerless conservationists and, as the ivory is shipped from Mombassa to Vietnam en route for China, smugglers, illicit merchants and, eventually, rich clients who treasure freshly-carved statues and ornaments. Mlima’s presence haunts every scene as new characters drift in and out, all played by four actors – Gabrielle Brooks, Brandon Grace, Natey Jones and Pui Fan Lee.

Before the halfway stage, the play takes on the feel of a documentary, loaded by Nottage with sickening facts about the ivory trade, and its dramatic impetus is lost. Flashes of humour are injected, as if in recognition of this problem and the imagination of Cromwell’s staging continues to impress, but these things alone are barely enough to rescue a production that starts on a high and then slowly loses its way.

Performance date: 21 September 2023

Photo: Manuel Harlan

Writer: George Bernard Shaw

Director: Richard Jones

⭐️⭐️⭐️

No singing, no dancing all night and no getting married in the morning; George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 comedy Pygmalion steps out from the shadow of the hit musical My Fair Lady, for which it provided the inspiration, and reveals its own true colours. The play is now performed rarely, but, at the same time, it is highly familiar and living up to audience expectations can present challenges for any revival.

Shaw’s central point, that human beings cannot be judged by their appearance or the accent with which they speak, is, of course, timeless, which director Richard Jones’ production sets out to prove. However, the play’s specific characters and situations are rooted in their own era and this leads to a dichotomy, which is added to by Stewart Laing’s designs, his costumes in period and traditional, his sets plain, even ugly and modern-ish.

In the same way that the humble flower girl Eliza Dolittle asks not to be considered in superficial terms, Jones seems determined to prove that the value of Shaw’s social satire does not need to be judged by a facade of glamour and romance. At times rushed and at other times pedestrian, the uneven flow compound a feeling that all the pieces in Jones’ jigsaw do not quite fit together neatly. All that said, nothing is done to make Shaw’s writing unfunny.

Fresh from her triumphs as sad leading characters in Tennessee Williams dramas, Patsy Ferran revels in the chance to turn her hand to comedy. Her Eliza begins as a squawking wild creature, later transformed by dialect coach, Henry Higgins to become a refined lady who mingles in high society and something of a feminist role model.  Ferran is a delight throughout, but she appears to be far more at ease with her character in the later scenes.

Bertie Carvel last appeared on this stage playing Donald Trump and he tones down his performance only a little to become Higgins. This is less the arrogant toff that we normally see than the nutty professor. Perhaps Carvel is a little too manic at times, but he is successful in bringing out the solitude of a man who is more of a misfit in society than Eliza.

The two leading actors, both Olivier Award winners, take licence to go over the top at times and the same can be said of John Marquez as Alfred Dolittle, Eliza’s rumbustious father, to whom Shaw gives many of his wittiest lines. More subdues are Michael Gould as Pickering, straight man to this madcap Higgins and Sylvestra Le Touzel as the professor’s eminently sensible mother.

Jones’ bold re-imagination of this classic sparks and misfires in just about equal measures. It infuriates as much as it charms, but the key ingredient of Shaw’s wit survives intact and his messages resonate as clearly now as ever.

Performance date: 20 September 2023

Photo: Emilio Madrid

Writer and performer: Mike Birbiglia

Director: Seth Barrish

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Occupying a fertile territory that lies somewhere between a play in monologue form and a stand-up routine, the theatre of comic storytelling opens up endless possibilities. Perhaps Daniel Kitson is the United Kingdom’s best known current practitioner of the art, but now we get a rare chance to enjoy the work of Broadway’s near-equivalent, Mike Birbiglia, for a short run in the heart of London’s West End. “Here for a good time, not a long time” the publicity tells us.

Birbiglia’s show is not, as the title suggests, a downsized version of an Ernest Hemingway novel, rather it is a heartfelt and hilarious account of crossing the threshold into middle age. in 2017, the storyteller, an angst-ridden New Yorker,  recalls reaching the age of 40, going for a routine medical check-up and being diagnosed as in very, very bad shape. His grandfather and father had both suffered heart attacks when 56 and he had already made plans to take a year out when reaching that age.

Averse to any form of physical exercise and dietary restraint, our hero rejects suggestions of daily press-ups and joining a wrestling club, so the doctor urges him to learn to swim. However, he is haunted by a childhood experience and the vision of a wrinkly old man at the pool. Despite this, he heads for the nearest YMCA, slips into his “speedless” and takes the plunge.

The main narrative gives structure to the show, but it is often less important than the digressions, of which there are many. Almost certainly, everything is scripted rigidly, but Birbiglia is supremely gifted at making it look improvised as he develops a rapport with the audience and chastens a latecomer (a plant perhaps?) cruelly. He is also adept at mixing in brief moments of pathos and then springing back to comedy in a flash. Standing alone or sitting on a high stool, the actor/comedian needs no props or sets to tell his story. This is theatre at its purest and arguably its most effective.

Birbiglia smashes to pieces the theory that neither humour nor humor can survive Transatlantic crossings. In a blissful 80 minutes, he delves into his character’s deepest anxieties, thereby making us contemplate our own mortality and then laugh out loud at it. He delivers a good time for sure and, hopefully, he will stay for longer next time.

Performance date: 15 September 2023

Photo: Steve Gregson

Writer: April De Angelis

Director: Michael Oakley

⭐️⭐️⭐️

“infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me” yelled Kenneth Williams in the film Carry on Cleo and, sure enough, throughout history, figures branded as infamous have always drawn widespread fascination. in Georgian England, few could have been more worthy of the label than Lord Nelson’s mistress Emma Hamilton, the subject of April De Angelis’ new play, receiving its World Premiere here.

The play opens in 1798. Napoleon’s fleet has just been defeated by the British at the Battle of the Nile and the victorious Admiral Nelson is about to break his journey home with a stopover in Naples. Waiting there is Emma, wife of the British Ambassador, determined to make herself known to the new national hero. Rose Quentin is a vivacious Emma who begins by writing a fan letter and then continues her pursuit  with a vigour and determination which could be seen to make her the 18th Century equivalent of a modern day WAG.

A cautionary note is sounded by Emma’s mother (a rather glum Caro;ine Quentin), who is herself not of unblemished character. With key characters, most notably Nelson, absent from the stage, the play presents a blinkered view of history and factual details are compressed very awkwardly into a few lines just to provide context. Hovering uncertainly between melodrama and comedy, the play is mostly about mother/daughter relationships, played quite touchingly by a real-life mother and daughter team. Riad Richie adds amusement, skipping in and out as Emma’s Italian servant.

The second part of the play sees an ageing Emma in 1815, penniless and exiled to a barn near Calais a decade after Nelson’s death. She is overweight, swigging wine from the bottle and re-living the perceived glories of the past. As the older Emma, paying a price for her infamy, C Quentin is unleashed to do what she does best, which is to go flat out for laughs. R Quentin takes the rather thankless role of the stuffy Horatia, Nelson’s daughter who is now living in France with Emma. The mother/daughter themes are thus resumed. Richie switches  accents to become the local mayor’s son, destined to be Horatia’s suitor. 

Designer Fotini Demou’s elaborate costunes bring a period flavour to this basement theatre not too far from Trafalgar Square. The play was always likely to look faintly ridiculous and director Michael Oakley is absolutely right to seek out comedy wherever he can find it. Some of De Angelis’ coarser humour would not feel out of place in a Carry on… film, but, as a straightforward historical drama, this play could have been unbearable and it is the humour that saves it.

Performance date: 12 September 2013