The Beast's Pen

Photo: Misan Harriman

Writer: William Shakespeare

Director: Lyndsey Turner

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At a time when populist movements are gaining ground in many western democracies, the topical relevance of Coriolanus could not be clearer. William Shakespeare’s political thriller, set in Ancient Rom, follows the progress of the titular character from victorious warrior to popular hero and then to enemy of the State, advocating radical reforms which infuriate the ruling elite.

Director Lindsey Turner’s revival forsakes togas for modern dress, with video images and Zoom meetings emphasising the connection to the 21st Century. Es Devlin’s set designs are timeless, serving mainly to expand and contract the vast Olivier Theatre stage, which opens out fully for the early battle scene. The thrilling staging of the combat owes much to the lighting, designed by Tim Lutkin. However, after the ectio, words replace warfare to capture our imagination, 

When first appearing, David Oyelowo’s Coriolanus falls short on displaying the powerful presence of a triumphant conqueror, but the actor grows into the role and comes close to exuding the charisma and inner strength that explain the character’s actions. The visceral performance for which we had sought is not completely there yet, but, hopefully, it will develop.

The trajectory of the narrative is established firmly in the first half of the play and does not change in a second half which feels like an anticlimax as it moves predictably towards its inevitable conclusion.  The chief highlights in these later stages are impassioned speeches by Coriolanus\ mother, Volumnia (Pamela Nomvete) and the arbiter between him and the ruling Tribune, Menenius (Peter Forbes). Both are delivered with fire.

Supprting roles are shared among the relatively small company, doubling-up to an extent that is perhaps unusual for the National Theatre. The effect of this is to diminish the minor characters and sharpen the focus on the principals. However, Shakespeare gives little help in getting inside the head of Coriolanus and understanding his emotional drive. Turner keeps him at a distance from his mother, wife and son, revealing nothing of his connection to them and his inner feelings.

Turner’s production has many flourishes and creates striking, if occasionally puzzling images, but nothing quite as spectacular as the physical destruction of Elsinore in her 2015 production of Hamlet. After its stirring start, the production rarely achieves an epic feel, but, in many ways, this is commendable in that it places the emphasis on the political manoeuvring which forms the heart of the story.

This is a flawed revival of a flawed play, but, nonetheless, much of it remains intriguing.

Performance date: 24 September 2024

Photo: Ross Kernahan

Writers: Mark Stanfield, Richard Short and Barry Sloane

Director: Scott Williams

It will have escaped the notice of very few that the Gallagher brothers recently patched up their differences to re-form the pop band Oasis. Yet, with much less publicity, almost half a century ago, an even more momentous reunion seemed, briefly, on the cards. Two of Us is an account of a real-life meeting that took place between Jon Lennon and Paul McCartney in New York City in 1976, six years after the Beatles had split up.

Mark Stanfield’s screenplay has been adapted for the stage by himself, Richard Short and Barry Sloane. Sloane also plays the reclusive John Lennon, first seen pacing restlessly around his Manhattan penthouse apartment. He is isolated and bored, while the apartment, as envisioned in Amy Jane Cook’s set design, is neat, stylish and sterile. A ring on the entrance bell augers the arrival of an unexpected visitor.

Paul McCartney (Jay Johnson) is in town for gigs at Madison Square Garden with his new band, Wings. He is tired of journalists asking him if the Beatles will ever get back together and being unable to give an answer. So he goes in search of that answer. At first, the atmosphere is frosty as creative and personal differences surface. John insists that music should be born out of pain and mocks Paul’s lightweight style, as typified by Wings’ current hit, Silly Love Songs. There are also hints that, as in one of his solo songs, John is a jealous guy, resentful of Paul’s commercial success and the fact that Paul’s Yesterday had been names the Beatles’ most popular song.

A two-hander on a large stage, director Scott Williams does well to keep the production consistently engaging, assisted by the script’s liberal scatterings of name-dropping and frivolous jokes (John: “Yoko’s away”; Paul: “Oh! No”). Once the ice between the pair melts, with a little help from “friends”, what is revealed is two old buddies who had been best mates since the age of nine, going back over good and bad times and re-kindling a flame. Two working class Liverpudlians, they had reached a pinnacle of fame, probably unequalled before or since, and their different ways of dealing with the massive pressures are revealing.

The writers seem to reach the conclusion that John’s wife Yoko and, to a lesser extent, Paul’s wife Linda  were the wedges that came between the music legends, but they are less interested in the divisions than in the bonds. The play’s biggest success comes in cutting through the well-publicised friction and finding a simple bromance that yielded, arguably, the most significant pairing in the history of popular music, In this, Two of Us feels truthful and very touching.

Performance date: 17 September 2024

Photo: Charles Flint

Writer: Carey Crim

Director: Katharine Farmer

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We hear much about criminals and their victims, but little about the collateral damage which crimes cause to families and friends of alleged offenders. Award-winning American playwright Carey Crim enters this sensitive area with 23.5 Hours, an examination of how a small group living in America’s mid-West responds when one of them, allegedly, commits a sex crime.

The play opens with two married couples – Tom and Leigh, Bruce and Jayne – celebrating after a successful school production of Romeo and Juliet, which Tom, a drama teacher, has directed. Bruce is aghast that the show ran for two hours and 48 minutes, but the mood is convivial and we get a picture of a wholesome All-American community in which everyone lives in perfect harmony with everyone else. And then the telephone rings.

The lights dim, followed by loud bangs and bright flashes as, for the first time, we see that understatement will not be a prominent feature of this production. Does the play’s title mean that the characters are half an hour away from the end of the world? Well not exactly. Scene two sees the same four gathered to welcome home Tom upon his release from prison, having served time for, allegedly, behaving inappropriately with his Juliet.

Tom (David Sturzaker) faces a mixed reception. His wife Leigh (Lisa Dwan) believes in his innocence for 23.5 hours every day and defends him resolutely, even though banishing him to sleep on the sofa. Bruce (Jonathan Nyati), a fellow teacher, defends him unreservedly, but Jayne (Allyson Ava-Brown) is convinced of his guilt. Tom’s teenage son Nicholas (Jem Matthews) takes to drugs and staying out all night. His relationships strained, his career and reputation in tatters, Tom soldiers on.

The writer always seems more interested in detailing the problems faving the characters, rather than exploring in-depth their inner emotion and their relationships.The story’s central perspective needs to be that of Leigh, the wife left with just a smidgeon of doubt, but, as played by Dwan, she is volatile and foul-tempered, thereby repelling empathy. More generally, director Katharine Farmer favours hysterics where subtlety may have yielded a stronger impact. Her approach does not serve the play well. Although Crim makes many intelligent points about the dilemmas being faced, the characters and their situations are not made to be wholly convincing and some lines of dialogue become unexpectedly risible.

The play should have been a thoughtful and revealing study of human behaviour under stress, but, in this production, it ends up as just a trite drams, overblown, overwrought and overlong.

Performance date: 9 September 2024

Photo: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

Music: Richard Rodgers

Lyrics: Lorenz Hart

Book: George Abbott

Director: Mark Giesser

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“If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for you” declares the chorus to the audience in the opening scene of The Boys From Syracuse. But is it good enough? Adapted from The Comedy of Errors, possibly the Bard’s silliest play, this 1938  show is possibly the silliest musical in the history of Broadway.

The boys are the noble Antipholus (John Faal) and his manservant Dromio (played in very camp style by Brendan Matthew). The pair sail from Syracuse to the rival state of Ephesus where they have identical twin brothers from whom they were separated at birth. The brothers are also named Antipholus and Dromio. What follows is a couple of hours of madcap comedy based on mistaken identities.

The chief problem facing any director of this musical or the original play is finding a way to keep the audience aware of which twin is appearing in any given scene. Mark Giesser opts for the same two actors, dressed in the same garish costumes, playing both twins. Also, other actors in the exuberant company of eight double up supporting roles. The result of this is that we are constantly questioning “who’s who?” and, frequently, the confusion drains the comedy of its life.

The songs, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, include several that were established as standards before most of us were born. Falling in Love With Love, etc should have the audience singing along, but even the lesser-known songs prove that Rodgers could certainly knock out a tune. The singing is hit and miss, but the five-piece band, under the direction of Benjamin Levy, is consistently excellent, particularly when bringing out the jazzy elements in the score.

The show belongs to en era when musical theatre on Broadway was still evolving. Judged by modern standards most of the songs seem separate from George Abbott’s book, there to be inserted every 10 minutes or so in the style of a Vaudeville revue and doing little to propel the narrative. Thus the show feels disjointed, book and songs not fully integrated as in later musicals which Rodgers himself was to pioneer in his partnership with Oscar Hammerstein III.

So, many reservations, but, as a jolly nigh out in a pub theatre, this is a gallant effort. Alice McNicholas’ outrageous costume designs fill the space with colour and the actors give it their all. Finally, Giesser finds a splendid solution to the identification problem in a climactic scene which brings the evenings biggest laughs, uplifts the audience and send us away feeling much more generous towards what has gone before.

Performance date: 6 September 2024

Photo: Carla Joy Evans

Writer: Sidney Howard

Director: Joe Harmston

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It is almost 100 years since American writer Sidney Howard’s play The Silver Cord was last seen in London, but its themes remain familiar even when its style feels a little dated. Howard, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote the screenplay for the epic Gone with the Wind, but here his attention are drawn to a much more intimate subject, the struggles of a possessive mother to keep control over her grown children.

It is Boston in 1925, where Mrs Phelps (Sophie Ward), a widow for 24 years, heads a wealthy family. Her younger son, Robert (George Watkins) still lives with her but he is engaged to marry a lower class local girl, Hester (Jemma Carlton). Her older son, David (Dario Coates) is returning from travelling around Europe, where he has met and married Christina (Alix Dunmore), a highly educated biologist who is set upon building a life in New York in which she will pursue her career goals alongside being a wife and a mother.

Howard sees the huge generational change which brought the rise of now liberated women in the professions and he taps into the inevitable clashes with their foremothers. Mrs Phelps makes much of her belief that motherhood is a profession in itself and bemoans the sacrifices which she has been forced to make. Her conflict with the confident Christina is given wider significance than being simply a tussle for the affections of David.

Dressed in drab colours, Ward gives early warning that Mrs Phelps is an insufferable woman and Dunmore’s Christina is a formidable opponent.  The in-the-round staging suits the drama well and it is enhanced by set designer Alex Marker’s ingenious use of the tiny space; in two scene changes over the play’s three acts, a window transforms into a bed, while glass doors at the entrances let us see the sinister figure of Mrs Phelps hiding as she eavesdrops on private conversations. 

Five strongly focussed performance do much to smooth over the unevenness of the play and of director Joe Harmston’s  production. By modern standards, the drama is far too long and several scenes which needed trimming are allowed to get bogged down. On the other hand, the key clashes are written sharply and stages beautifully as melodrama that is palatable and wholly enjoyable.

Undoubtedly, The Silver Cord shows its age and creaks quite a lot in places, but this solid revival is very welcome for giving us the chance to appreciate its many qualities.

Performance date: 5 September 2024