The Beast's Pen

Photo: Tristan Kenton

Writer: Howard Brenton

Director: Tom Littler

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There has been no shortage of dramas recounting the activities of Winston Churchill during World War II, but, until now, little has been known about the British Prime Minister’s trip to Moscow to meet Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Howard Brenton puts that right with a new play that starts out as a factual account of the visit and then develops into a biting and frequently hilarious satire of all international diplomacy.

It is the Summer of 1942. The planned invasion of Northern France has been delayed, the shipment of arms to the Soviet Union has stopped and Churchill’s priority has become attacking Southern Europe from North Africa. It has become rather useful to the British tat Hitler is deploying troops on the Eastern front, but Stalingrad is about to fall and Stalin is desperate for help. The background to the leaders’ meeting could hardly be more awkward.

Director Tom Littler’s in-the-round production is blessed with glorious performances from Roger Allam as Churchill and Peter Forbes as Stalin. They enter into a gladiatorial combat that shakes the roots and branches of the Orange Tree, bringing out the vast differences between a son of the English aristocracy and a Georgian peasant. Churchill sees Stalin as “a yokel” and, amusingly, Forbes plays him with an English West Country accent.

Churchill is backed up by the sturdy British Ambassador, Archie Clark Kerr (Alan Cox) and Stalin by the hawkish General Molotov (Julius D’Silva), who had previously led a collaboration with the Nazis. Much of the humour in the play arises from mistaken translations, some deliberate and the action focuses on the roles of two translators (Jo Herbert and Elizabeth Snegir), both officers in their respective armies. A fascinating figure hovering in the background is Stalin’s young daughter, Svetlana, played endearingly by Tamara Greatrex. She is doted on by her father who gives her the job of being hostess at a dinner party for their guest, taking over from her late mother.

Churchill is accommodated in Stalin’s private marble-built dacha, bugged throughout. Doubts and suspicions abound as each man challenges the other over past misdeeds. “We don’t murder our enemies, we send them to the House of Lords” asserts Britain’s leader, while his Soviet counterpart retaliates with  accusations about atrocities committed under British Imperial rule. Ultimately, the men meet face-to-face, alone and without translators, for a late night vodka-fuelled summit, They yell at each other, neither understanding a single word of what the other is saying and they reach an accord. The playwright has made his point emphatically.

Brenton does not allow us to forget that, along with the Americans, these two guys would go on to carve up Europe and lay the foundations for 45 years of cold war. A sobering epilogue by Svetlana sums up what happened after the joke diplomacy and brings us back to reality, but it is the riotous satire that has gone before that will linger long in the memory.

Performance date: 11 February 2025

Photo: Helen Murray

Writer: Sophokles

Translator: Anne Carson

Director: Daniel Fish

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Ancient Greek tragedies with Oscar-winning Hollywood stars taking title roles seem to be flavour of the week in London. Elektra, a bloody tale of revenge, follows the trend. The play was written in c400 BC by Sophokles and it arrives in the West End in a prosaic translation by Anne Carson, with Daniel Fish, a Broadway director who has earned a reputation for reimagining classics, at the helm, So , what could go wrong?

Stripped of Captain Marvel’s super powers, Brie Larson is impressive  in conveying the tortured anguish of Elektra, a woman obsessed with avenging the murder of her father, Agamemnon.  She wails and moans impeccably and conducts her exchanges with the Chorus as if she is addressing a Trump rally, but she finds little else in the character to absorb us.

Larson is supported by a big name cast. Stockard Channing is Clytemnestra, Elektra’s mother and unrepentant murderer of her father alongside her new lover, Aegisthus (Greg Hicks). Marième Die is Chrysothemis, Elektra’s sister and Patrick Vaill is Orestes, their brother who is expected to return home to commit the vengeful act. All are strong, but Fish’s production does not leave room for their characters to become more than one-dimensional. Often, the lead actors are upstaged by the six members of the Chorus, choreographed by Annie-B Parson, singing all their lines a cappella and creating soothing harmonies to contrast with the mayhem around them,

This is a spartan production with plain costumes, designed by Doey Lüthi and a minimalist, often revolving, set designed by Jeremy Herbert. A glaring spotlight which blinds sections of the audience on every revolve is an irritant, as is uneven sound projection caused by some actors speaking into microphones and others not.

Fish seems uncertain about what he wants to achieve. Is he looking to recreate the form of the original staging? Or does he want the play to speaks with relevance to modern audiences? The outcome is a production that occupies a no man’s land somewhere between Ancient Greece and 21st Century America. A running time of little more than 70 minutes (no interval) is achieved partly by racing through some pages of dialogue at breakneck speed. Audience members sitting in top-price seats may flinch at the thought of having paid around two pounds per minute for the privilege of watching this.

When focussing firmly on the characters and the storytelling, this is a play that can defy its age and still be a riveting watch, The 2014 production at London’s Old Vic Theatre lingers in the memory. Unfortunately, Fish’s revival is overladen with misfiring gimmicks, while it neglects key elements of the drama. This Elektra is low voltage and its chief asset is its brevity.

PERFORMANCE DATE: 5 FEBRUARY 2025

Photo: Rich Southgate

Writer: Dave Florez

Director: Adam Meggido

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We all know that friendships and family relationships can be fragile things, capable of being disrupted by even the slightest  of upsets. Dave Florez’s new play, a one-joke comedy, puts this to the test when the arrival of an unexpected gift shocks three characters who are gathered in a flat in Crouch End, just along the road from the Park Theatre. Perhaps the play’s producers imagined that local interest could draw in audiences when all else fails. Sadly, all else does fail.

The occupant of the flat and recipient of the gift is Colin (Nicholas Burns), a 43-year-old single man. Calling round to view the gift are his sister Lisa (Laura Haddock) and her partner Brian (Alex Price). It had arrived that morning by Royal Mail Special Delivery from a nearby patisserie. The object is a cake box, but what is in it? At first the trio speculates that it could be a chocolate éclair, but further examination reveals that it is in fact a deposit of human excrement.

The discovery prompts Colin to develop a spreadsheet of his potential enemies. Briefly, an unfunny comedy promises to turn into an enthralling whodunnit. For reasons that are not altogether clear, all three  characters become obsessed by the gift and they begin to re-evaluate their lives. Flores scratches away at the surface, looking for deeper meanings, but genuine emotions need to be filtered through believable character in credible situations. In this play, neither the people nor their dilemmas are ever made to feel real.

The play starts out as if it has parked in a cul-de-sac. It has nowhere to go and, over a tedious journey of just over two hours (including interval), nowhere is precisely where Florez takes it. The trip is padded out with juvenile lavatorial humour and, in seeming desperation, some crude slapstick is thrown in, but it feels as if there is nothing that director Adam Meggido can come up with to make the comedy work.

For brief spells, the three actors make their characters amiable and the play becomes bearable, but, repeatedly, The Gift invites comparisons with the contents of the cake box, an unwelcome gift indeed.

Performance date: 28 January 2025