The Beast's Pen

Since the consignment of “…the Shrew” to the graveyard for the politically incorrect,”Much Ado…” has taken over as the Bard’s most popular rom-com, popping up everywhere at regular intervals. Its most hilarious incarnation in recent years was at the National where the only slight criticism was that Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale may have been a little on the old side playing Beatrice and Benedick. That criticism now pales into insignificance as we see Vanessa Redgrave, 76, and James Earl Jones, 82, taking on those roles; bold casting it would seem, but surely, we thought, with that great Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance directing, the production would be in safe hands. Wrong! Maybe the desire was to showcase the sweetness of post-Autumnal romance, but, if so, this was never going to be the play in which to do so. A second odd choice is to set the play in England in 1944, with American troops mingling in with the locals; this setting does nothing to illuminate the play and serves only to undermine credibility as we witness GIs, in an army seemingly with no retirement age, addressing each other as “Señor” “Don” and “Count”. In general, there is nothing wrong with classic plays being reinvigorated with imaginative interpretations, provided they work within the spirit of the play; in this case, the interpretation always works against the play and diminishes its strengths. Of course there is pleasure in hearing the unmistakeable voices of two legendary actors booming around the Old Vic and they give us occasional glimpses of how wonderful they could have been as these characters 40 years ago, but, sadly, at this performance, the diction of both seemed flawed and too many of Shakespeare’s best lines floated into thin air and remained unheard by many in the audience. Highlights of the evening include an uncle trying to marry-off his septuagenarian niece to a gallant war hero who waddles around the stage looking like a suntanned Captain Mainwaring; this is not funny in the way that Shakespeare intended, it is simply ridiculous. At several other points, ripples of embarrassed laughter run through the audience as the text suggests these characters’ intended ages. There are a few decent performances amongst the supporting cast, but mostly they are ordinary and the two principals should not shoulder all the blame for the entire production being leaden-footed and lifeless. Things are not helped by a dreary all brown stage design. Possibly this is the biggest disservice to Shakespeare seen at the Old Vic since Peter O’Toole played Macbeth here to unprecedented critical derision; on that occasion, the public rushed to see the debacle for themselves and sell-out audiences howled with laughter for the entire run. So there lies a ray of hope for this awful production; it might be better for it not to improve, rather for it to get even worse.

Having loved Alexi Kaye Campbell’s most recent play, “Bracken Moor”, I welcomed the opportunity to see a revival of his first, which won three major awards when premiered at the Royal Court in 2008. I was not disappointed. If “Bracken Moor” paid homage to JB Priestley, half of this play could well have been written by Terrence Rattigan, had he been allowed the freedom to write so frankly. The half in question is set in the 1950s and depicts a love triangle between Sylvia (Hayley Atwell), her husband Philip (Harry Hadden-Patton) and Oliver (Al Weaver), a writer with whom he begins a tortuous affair. “The Deep Blue Sea” with a twist that Rattigan would surely have relished, but there is another half to this play. In alternating scenes, we leap forward by more than half a century and see another Philip ending a long relationship with another Oliver because of the latter’s uncontrollable promiscuity, whilst Sylvia is Oliver’s friend and confidante. Different characters, similar dilemmas, different times and the only link only between the eras is a hinted mystical one. But this bold dramatic structure opens the door for the writer to explore how many things in society have changed, whilst many others have not. It is a structure that would only be attempted by a playwright with supreme confidence and one who has a natural instinct for extending the boundaries of theatre. Whilst making the wider social resonances clear, the play never loses sight of the fact that these are deeply personal and sometimes painful human stories. The three actors are all superb, as is Mathew Horne who plays three minor roles and adds some comic touches. The stage design (dominated by a huge painted mirror) and the lighting are particularly striking, allowing the director, Jamie Lloyd, to accentuate the mystical feel. As the actors take their bows, they carry placards reading “To Russia With Love”, adding volume to the already loud applause. 50 years from now maybe even Russia will have learned the lessons that this great play teaches us.

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

Getting bored with salads, sandwiches and sushi? Maybe it’s time to invigorate lunch breaks with a little Chekhov. Not an obvious choice, as the great chronicler of the declining days of the privileged classes in pre-Revolutionary Russia may well be thought to have become something of a bore himself, with just five plays being revived perennially on our main stages. So it comes as a pleasant surprise to be reminded that he wrote other things and that a Chekhov comedy can actually be very funny. Presented by the Butterfly Theatre Company, this short production, targeting workers in their lunch hours, brings together two battle of the sexes comedies lasting around 20 minutes each. The Proposal sees a young landowner (Matthew McPherson) calling upon the daughter of another (Nadia Hynes), very nervously, to propose marriage, only to get tangled up in disputes about a worthless piece of land and the relative merits of their family dogs. In The Bear, another landowner (Gary Sefton) visits a grieving young widow (Caroline Colomel) to collect an overdue debt and, when prompt payment is refused, he finds himself forming an attraction to the lady. Jestyn Phillips provides admirable support in both plays. The comedies are performed in a boisterous style, not normally associated with the melancholic mood of Chekhov’s more famous plays. In both, the male leads give physically comic performances, bordering on slapstick, whilst their female opposites are feisty and shrewish. The format of these snappy plays could well be regarded as a prototype for some episodes of superior American television sitcoms. They are small, perfectly formed and not a second too long.

After a successful debut run at the Park Theatre, actor Oliver Cotton’s play is now touring and could well have the legs to take it to the West End. Dancing lightly around serious issues without ever tackling them head on or becoming too heavy, it has a formula that often produces commercial successes. Set in 1986 in the New York apartment of Elli (Maureen Lipman) and Joe (Harry Shearer), an elderly Jewish married couple, it starts in Neil Simon territory; however, with the arrival of Joe’s brother Billy (John Bowe), events take a dark turn and the spectre of the past looms; it transpires that the trio had been held in a German concentration camp and the play asks the question whether it is better to leave past events behind or to confront them. The switches of mood between comedy and drama are handled deftly and the performances are excellent. In both halves the play labours at times due to overlong speeches which, although beautifully written, sound more like descriptive extracts from a novel than dialogue in a play. Overall, not particularly profound, but, as an evening of undemanding entertainment, it passes the test.

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

Spanning around 30 years in the lives of two women, Carol Vine’s two act play is about characters “in exile”, living false lives and struggling to find their true identities. It examines the emotional cost of their misjudged choices both to themselves and to others around them. The story intercuts between showing the two firstly as adolescents and then as women in their mid-40s, reunited after a nine year separation. The young Suzy (Lorena Vila) is straight-laced and conventional when she befriends Lan (Nellie McQuinn) who is naturally non-conformist and suffering violent bullying at school. Lan is always aware of her lesbian tendencies and, although Suzy resists at first, the two eventually become lovers. In these scenes, the two young actresses give sensitive and convincing performances. In later life, Lan, now played by Anita Parry, is is an abrasive and unsympathetic character who shows few signs of the fragility of her younger self. She is openly gay, has become a successful businesswoman and yearns to resurrect her relationship with Suzy (Melanie Ramsey), who is married and has settled for a dreary suburban life. Suzy’s seriously disturbed teenage son Lewis (slightly over-played by Pierro Niel Mee) is portrayed as collateral damage from her dishonest marriage. The writing is humourless, but, commendably, avoids excessive sentimentality and the bare stage design, using just five tea crates to serve multiple functions, also belies any feeling of romance. At times there are lyrical qualities in the script, but it is patchy and sometimes lacks complete authenticity. The play is structured so that almost every scene centres on a heated argument in which self-interested characters talk at cross-purposes with each other. Eventually this becomes very tiring for the audience and it undermines our efforts to empathise with the characters; we are left with a need to explore inside these people more deeply, which is never satisfied when the focus is always on the differences between them. The core theme, which is the cost of adhering to social norms instead of following the dictates of the heart, is well presented, but some interesting sub-themes are only partially explored. For example, a natural affinity between Lan and Lewis is suggested but not developed. Writing in the programme, Carol Vine states that she “simply wanted to write a love story”. Ultimately, she may have achieved this, even though the confrontational nature of much of the play works against her objective, as does her reluctance to allow any of her characters more than fleeting happiness. However, in the closing scenes, when past and present are reconciled, she gives us a genuine insight into the nature of love and thereby brings the play to a touching conclusion.

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

In 1945, a soldier returns home from the War to find everything changed; his parents dead, his wife unfaithful, the infant he never saw buried under the rubble of a bombed building. There have been many dramas illustrating the human costs of the two World Wars, most that are seen in this country being told from an allied perspective. However, this one centres on Sergeant Beckmann, a soldier who had been fighting for the German army on the Eastern front in World War II and it leads us to ponder how the sense of the futility of it all must have been magnified still further in a defeated country. It is a brave move by the young company, Invertigo, to take on a rarely performed play that is so seemingly cheerless, but they have enlivened it by bringing to the fore the surreal humour in the script and have even added songs, composed by Blair Mowat. Wolfgang Borchert wrote this play in just six days after escaping from a prisoner of war camp and walking 370 miles back to Hamburg. If the story is not autobiographical as such, the writing is heartfelt and clearly draws deep from Borchert’s emotional turmoil at that terrible time. After a month in Edinburgh, the performances are finely tuned. The five strong all male cast, four of them taking on multiple roles, interact perfectly, giving the production the pace, energy and physicality that are crucial for the play to hold its grip on the audience. The language in this translation by Tom Fisher is very modern and, as played by Paapa Essiedu, Beckmann is a very modern, laddish character. In striking a balance between despair and sardonic humour, this is a beautifully pitched performance. Running for just an hour, Outside On The Street is a challenging piece. However, at a time when our forces are withdrawing from Afghanistan and other conflicts loom on the horizon, it is still as relevant today as when it was written and all involved with this production are to be congratulated for bringing it to the stage and interpreting it in a way that makes it accessible for audiences in 2013.

Early in Nick Payne’s new play a character begins to tell a tantalising joke and gets interrupted so that we never hear the end; this really sums up the whole play – full of promise but lacking that crucial punchline. Centring on a fairly shady law firm, specialising in no win no fee personal injury claims, the story contains nothing that will surprise anyone who has become accustomed to exorbitant motor insurance premiums. There are plenty of laughs but they come mostly from a very condescending view of the Precariat class which is depicted stereotypically as foul-mouthed, uncouth and avaricious. This presents an easy target, but, in the much more difficult task of delving into and satirising modern compensation culture, the play lacks bite and its cutting edge is diminished further by a superfluous romantic sub plot. The actors, led by Daniel Mays, are all good and the production is never less than entertaining, but, as it should have delivered a lot more, it has to be regarded as a disappointment.

With the audience seated on (very uncomfortable) makeshift benches inside a cramped bunker supposedly on the front line during World War I,  these two plays by Jamie Wilkes interweave stories from Arthurian legend and Greek tragedy with accounts of soldiers fighting in the War. “Morgana” is a rites of passage tale featuring three officers and a young woman who taunts them; it starts with absurdist comic banter, feeling rather like “Blackadder Goes Forth”, then becomes lyrical and finally tragic. “Agamemnon” is bleaker in tone throughout and, intercutting with domestic scenes from home, it tells of a mortally wounded soldier from the lower ranks who faces up to his failings as a husband. The realistic setting and close proximity of the actors contribute to making this an engrossing experience, but the production’s  key attributes are solid writing and excellent performances from Sam Donnelly, Serena Manteghi, James Marlowe and Dan Wood.

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

On 7 July 2005, the day after London’s triumph in being chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the City was rocked by a devastating terrorist attack instigated by Islamic extremists. This one act play sets out to show how the aftermath of that attack continues to haunt our society long after the Games have become history. The opening scene sees an ambitious politician (Cameron Harris) arguing with his Muslim partner (Avita Jay) over his reluctance to associate himself with her brother (Omar Ibrahim) who is to stand trial for killing an intruder into his home; the intruder had already murdered his wife for reasons believed to be connected with the 7/7 atrocity. The point of this scene appears to be to demonstrate that politicians are weasels, too eager to turn their backs on moral obligations if their actions could cost them votes. Unfortunately, none of this convinces because the actors are struggling to cope with banal and stilted dialogue throughout. We then move back in time and to Warde Street in Manchester, the scene of the two killings, and the play gathers some momentum. The intruder, Eddie, a drunken Irishman and old friend of the Muslim couple, had lost his pregnant partner at Kings Cross on 7/7 and, whether through drunkenness or warped logic, attributes blame not just to the extremist bombers but to the Muslim community as a whole; this notwithstanding that he had first arrived in Manchester shortly after the IRA bombings there and had himself been the victim of similar irrational prejudice. Playing Eddie, Shane Noone gives the production’s only really commendable performance. He transcends the colourless writing and makes us feel the acute pain of a man whose entire life had been torn from him in a split second of random madness. Warde Street sets out to tackle important issues, but does not dig deep enough below the surface and offers no new insights. The play’s structure confuses its themes and its messages become muddled by over-elaborate plotting. If it works in parts as a human drama, this is thanks largely to one outstanding performance, but, in providing a serious commentary on fractures in our society, it falls well short.