The Beast's Pen

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

This is the second show by the diminutive Hollywood character actor turned raconteur/stand-up comic, Leslie Jordan, following My Trip Down the Pink Carpet a couple of years ago. The evening begins with a 30-minute “warm-up” by The Supreme Fabulettes, a drag trio who treat the audience to renditions of 60s Motown classics with a little Amy Winehouse and Adele thrown in. This is passable and a drag routine is entirely compatible with what is to follow, but it is difficult to see why a supporting act was deemed necessary when Jordan’s 90 minutes on stage gives full value for money. The central character in this routine is Jordan’s mother (“do gay men really become their mothers?” he asks), as he tells of his early life in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the outrageous excesses of his teenage years in the Deep South of America. An effeminate child and an openly gay young man, he was always at odds with the traditional values of the Bible Belt, but this is never a story of repression and discrimination. Jordan does not question or regret who he is, he simply accepts it, which makes the overall message totally positive and optimistic. It is also very, very funny. Jordan’s style is relaxed and self-deprecating, he strides from one side of the stage to the other, rarely standing still, a small bundle of mischief, naughty but nice. Using old family photographs as points of reference, he sometimes appears uncertain as to the extent to which he has embellished his stories, but it becomes clear that this is an actor who has learned his lines well and any apparent lapses in concentration are in fact well rehearsed. The show is full of the expected camp one-liners and acid observations, but what sets it apart from and above most others of its kind is that it has real heart and warmth. A treat.

This small scale one act play is a dialogue between just two actors in a tiny studio space. Nothing matters apart from the words and the performances. The twist is that all the action takes place in the couple’s bathroom. This is an established relationship but not one under threat, the couple have suffered a traumatic experience but neither wants it to tear them apart. What the play demonstrates is how people can talk about everything except the things that really matter, the things that they really want and need to talk about. They discuss whatever mundane trivia enters their heads until their inner tension builds up and explodes with shocking consequences. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Keir Charles give relaxed, confident and utterly convincing performance, the chemistry between the two is never in doubt. Jack Thorne’s script is beautifully written, taut and carefully nuanced. A riveting 70 minutes.

There are times when an evening at the theatre needs to be about nothing more than sheer enjoyment. Subleties and subtexts have their place, but so do the simpler pleasures of gentle humour and nostalgia. Arthur Wing Pinero’s 1898 play, here revised by Patrick Marber and directed by Joe Wright, is an unashamed love letter to the world of theatre and the people who inhabit it. The stage is littered with Victorian theatrical props, bathed in soft, warm lighting and a company of the finest character actors all contribute comic turns to further illuminate the subject that must be closest to their hearts. Ron Cook deserves special mention for playing both a theatrical landlady and a pompous knight, once in the same scene, and another veteran, Maggie Steed, is a delight in her two roles. The play is no masterpiece and sometimes the pace of the production is too slow, but detailed analysis would be pointless. At the end, one of the characters looks in awe at what is unfolding on stage and says “it’s almost like real life”; another replies with the play’s final line “no, it’s better”. The perfect summation!

This is not a translation from Strinberg, but a loose adaptation and nothing about this production feels remotely Scandanavian, there being enough heat generated to melt an iceberg. Set in modern South Africa, Julie (Hilda Cronje) is the daughter of a white landowner and John (Bongile Mantsai) is the black farm worker with whom she begins a torrid affair. Clearly this version is meant as an allegory reflecting post-Apartheid social and politcal issues and to a point this is fine as it adds texture and substance to the story; however, in the later stages, the allegory takes over and the personal drama recedes, leaving the characters’ words and actions difficult to comprehend or to empathise with. The fault here lies in a script that is prosaic, repetitive  and often unconvincing. Fortunately, this is a production of extraordinary physicality that is able to transcend shortcomings in the script. At times, it resembles a ballet, danced not to music but to spoken words, charged with passion, eroticism and rage. The two central performances are breathtaking and overall, the production provides a stunning visual spectacle that will linger long in the memory.

Anyone seeing this production through to the end (which, at this performance, was far fewer than took their seats at the start) could be forgiven for ranking Stockport second only to the Black Hole of Calcutta as the bleakest location in the history of civilisation. Repeated explicitly throughout, this is the play’s sole message as it follows a small group through 14 years (1988-2002) of their teenage and young adult lives. No doubt this message is as welcome to the Greater Manchester Tourism Board as it is of interest to theatre audiences on London’s South Bank. This is an evening of almost unbroken gloom and tedium, defamatory to what is probably a very decent town and, still worse, to the great drink that shares the play’s name. The characters are stereotypes, human themes are under-developed, and the dialogue is completely lifeless. To be fair, a great deal of dialogue in some scenes is indecipherable from halfway back in the stalls, highlighting the question as to why the National decided to put this small play onto the Lyttelton’s huge stage. In playing teenagers, some of the actors seem to be mimicking Catherine Tate and Matt Lucas, but, unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing in the play that is intentionally funny. Any positives? Well Kate O’Flynn is on stage throughout, ageing from 11 to 24 and it is her stamina and some slick staging that earn the production its solitary star. Otherwise, this is a resounding dud.

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

76 plays and still going strong. Just how strong is the most pleasant surprise of Alan Ayckbourn’s new romantic comedy. Not for the first time, he delves into the world of the future, but his characters and his dialogue remain very much rooted in his familiar territory of Middle England. The playwright describes it as science fiction used as an allegory to reflect what is happening today. He sees a future which will include inter-planetary journeys, time travel, delayed ageing, longer life expectancy, androids and a host of new gadgets. His point is that the impact of these things is not really different from that of the trappings and paraphernalia that surround present day lives and that, ultimately, they are insignificant in relation to people and to genuine human emotions. The play is in three acts, each focussing on different characters, but with linked story lines, which are fanciful and just about strong enough to carry us with them at the time, even if they do not stand up well to analysis after the curtain falls. The middle act is easily the strongest. Here the dalliance between Sarah Parks as a high-flying but emotionally fragile lawyer and Richard Stacey as a malfunctioning android is both hilarious and touching; she always needing to be right, he always simply right. This act also introduces us to Laura Doddington as a panic-stricken Personal Assistant, who seems destined to be eternally single. The other actors making up an excellent cast are Ayesha Antoine, Bill Champion and Ben Porter, all the cast doubling up for the minor roles. Michael Holt’s sets are futuristic without being bleak, endorsing the point that the future is not such a giant leap from the present. A minor criticism is that the pace becomes too slow in sections of the first and last acts where some careful editing could have been beneficial; maybe it is not always best for a writer to direct his own work. However, overall, this is amusing, thought-provoking and moving. Having started (as with almost all Ayckbourn’s work) in Scarborough and then moved to Chichester and a number of other locations, a final surprise is that Surprises has not yet found a home in the West End. London producers remain as keen as ever to revive the writer’s plays from decades ago, some of which are now looking rather tired, and they need to take note that he is still alive and still turning out entertaining and relevant works.

First performed in London over a decade ago, this David Hare play shows the downfall of Oscar Wilde; Act I is set in a London hotel room during the hours before his arrest and Act II is set in Naples shortly after his release from prison. In the original production, the two halves did not gel and it was difficult to engage with the play or to understand its point. Liam Neeson played Wilde then and had the Irish accent right, but, with the benefit of hindsight, he may have got just about everything else wrong. In this production, Rupert Everett as Wilde doesn’t bother with the accent but, in every important respect, he is magnificent, a wounded beast still spitting out witticisms but gradually sinking to the defeat that he knows is inevitable. It is a towering performance and it gives the play a depth and meaning that eluded it before. Freddie Fox and Cal Macaninch also give superb performances as Wilde’s current and former lovers, protagonists urging him to take different paths. A play that was previously very easy to forget now turns out to be a revelation.

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews: http://www.thepublicreviews.com

Describing herself as a third-gendered fallen Catholic, La JohnJoseph here performs her own autobiographical near-monologue (albeit with two supporting performances) interspersed with a few melancholic songs. Born on the day of Pope Jean Paul II’s visit to Liverpool, she tells of her life as a boy and adolescence in that city and then the discovery of her spiritual home in New York. Living with her mother and several step-fathers and indoctrinated by a faith out of sync with her inner self, her life was that of an outsider struggling to find her place in the World. Essentially, this show is a display of defiance combined with a plea for tolerance and acceptance. The story is not punctuated by particularly dramatic incidents, pivotal events or even anecdotes that are more than mildly amusing, it is simply a statement of who the writer/performer is and what made her so. And this is the main problem, because there is nothing new on offer. 50 years ago, Quentin Crisp, for example, could have startled us all with similar material, but the World (or at least the Western World) has now moved on and has already embraced the messages contained here. If this show seems dated, it is for all the right reasons. In view of these reservations about the material, the show stands or falls as an entertainment on La JohnJoseph’s performance. On a set that looks like a second hand furniture showroom, littered with bric-a-brac, she talks, sings, strips, observes and philosophises. She is not a terrific singer, her voice grates but she can sell a song. And she is not a terrific raconteuse, but she has charisma which, although faltering at the start, grows as the show progresses. Her story is about overcoming adversity and, so art imitates life and she just about wins over the audience. Just.

Not for the faint hearted nor possibly for Shakespeare traditionalists, this is a full on assault on the senses that barely lets up from start to finish. Performed in the round on a set that looks vaguely like a disused Glasgow warehouse, lights flash and thunderclaps echo, blood drenches the characters and covers the floor of the stage; there would be more peace and love at a Celtic/Rangers match. It is a bleak, dystopian vison that is not time specific, nor, despite a predominance of Scottish accents, is it place specific. 11th or 22nd century, Scotland or Syria, the human cost of tyrany is the same. James McAvoy plays Macbeth like a hyperactive brat, but is very strong in the second half when insanity begins to set in and he comes to realise the full cost of his murderous deeds. Claire Foy is a Lady Macbeth stripped of all regality, earthy and manipulative. There are many chilling scenes that will live long in the memory; in particular, the murder of MacDuff’s family is worthy of Hitchcock. In all, a striking interpretation of the play, but there is nothing wrong with exploring different takes on a classic provided the text is well served by them and they add clarity to the core themes. This production achieves those objectives emphatically.

Seen in preview, so still a little rough around the edges, this new musical tells the true story of the rise and fall of William Haines, a Hollywood star of the 1920s/30s whose private life failed to meet the expectations of the studios and particularly those of Louis B Mayer. This is a low budget, small scale effort, but it is packed with interesting ideas and winning performances. The three leads, Dylan Turner, Bradley Clarkson and Faye Tozer (as Marion Davies, girlfriend of William Randolph Hurst) all bring their characters touchingly to life, Mike McShane is an ogreish Mayer and Kay Murphy gives a knockout cameo as Pola Negri. The dialogue is peppered with bitchy showbiz one-liners and there are also some clever lyrics and melodic tunes, although occasionally the songs do not seem to fit in comfortably with the narrative. The story is told in flashback, an unnecessary device that gives the show a slow start, interrupts its flow and leads to a very flat ending. Overall it is an entertaining show which, with a little tidying up, could well improve considerably once it get fully into its stride.