The Beast's Pen

Photo: Helen Murray

Writer: Ava Pickett

Director: Lindsey Turner

⭐️⭐️😂⭐️

From the drama and intrigue of the Wolf Hall trilogy and A Man for All Seasons to the musical frivolities of Six, the reign of King Henry VIII continues to grip theatregoers. Playwright Ava Pickett follows this trend with 1536, the title referring to the year in which Anne Boleyn was executed. The play looks at historic events from a very different perspective; it is new writing, tackling age-old issues.

The place is a field in rural Essex, which, in Max Jones’ set design, is overgrown and dominated by the remains of a dead tree. This gives the production a bleak and unforgiving look. Before social media, television, radio and even newspapers, gossip spread far and wide and lowly folk were fascinated by the private affairs of the rich and famous, relating news to their own simper lives. Perhaps little has changed in almost 500 years. As word of Anne Boleyn’s imprisonment in the the Tower of London filters through, women talk of Henry’s Queen as a hapless victim, while men speak of “the great whore”, thereby highlighting the gender divide which Pickett sets out to explore thoroughly and thoughtfully.

Siena Kelly excels as the free-spirited and unapologetically promiscuous Anna. She is unable to resist the sexual advances of the duplicitous Richard (Adam Hugill), even though he is about to marry her best friend, the much more sedate Jane (Liv Hill). These two women meet in the field, along with community midwife Mariella (Tanya Reynolds), who is bitter after being  spurned by William (Angus Cooper). The women gossip and catch up on the latest news from London, all of it grim for Queen Anne.

From here, Pickett allows a soap-style plot to drive the play to its dramatic conclusion, leaving herself ample room to expose the cruel injustices of a male dominated society. Her focus is entirely on the three women and her writing includes no sympathy for the men whose actions are inspired by the behaviour of their role model, the King.

Kelly, Hill and Reynolds all give passionate performances, bringing out the individual plights of three very different personalities. They style themselves as modern day Essex girl stereotypes, encouraged by dialogue that is embellished by over-generpus sprinklings of the “f” word. In the play’s early stages, some of their banter is very funny on the level of a sitcom such as Blackadder, but, overall, this proves to be a minor distraction from the writer’s main purpose.

There is more than enough meat to sustain the drama for its 110-minute running time and performing it without an interval helps greatly in building up intensity. Under the assured direction of Lindsey Turner, 1536 moves effortlessly from inconsequential comedy to high drama, leading up to a climax that is memorably powerful.

Performance date: 13 May 2025

Photo: Manuel Harlan

Writer and director: Conor McPherson

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Taking its title from a poem by WB Yeats, Conor McPherson’s new play is here receiving its world premiere in a production directed by the writer himself. The Brightening Air fills the Old Vic with a distinct scent of Ireland and it feels something like becoming re-acquainted with old friends.

The setting is Sligo on the north-western Irish coast, the time is the 1980s. Stephen (Brian Gleeson) and his sister Billie (Rosie Sheehy) live together in what has always been their family home, a run-down farmhouse. Their wayward, dissolute brother Dermot (Chris O’Dowd) has long since flown the nest and is scornful of his siblings’ inertia. He turns up displaying his new 19-year-old girlfriend Freya (Aisling Kearns) in front of his still doting estranged wife Lydia (Hannah Morrish) and their children. 

Into the mix is thrown Uncle Pierre (a show-stealing turn by Seàn McGinley), a former priest who has big ideas for the house of which he claims part ownership by inheritance. From then on, there is minimal  plot in an inaction-packed piece that becomes almost entirely character driven. Drawing humour from the characters’ quirkiness, the writer explores how home means different things to different people and how the pursuit of personal goals can impact on others.

The absence of a formal set robs the drams of some of its flavour. Furniture is scattered around an often crowded open stage, against a darkened background, with characters wandering on and off, unhindered by doors. There is no sense of this being a family home and sometimes the action looks static, actors lined up like in a doctor’s waiting room. It is as if McPherson is trying too hard to dodge visual clichés that could have added  to the unavoidable ones in his play; his approach has created a production that may have been much better suited to an in-the-round staging.

McPherson and some other contemporary dramatists seem to see Chekhovian themes as linked inexorably to Irish life.  Here again we have unrequited passion, unfulfilled potential, yearning to break free and the unstoppable force of change. Characters loathe each other and resent their mutual dependence, filling the comedy-drama with rancour that is fuelled by the writer’s brittle humour. However, is any of this new, particularly in a rural Irish setting? McPherson’s play may promise breaths of fresh air, but it delivers too many gusts of déjà vu. 

Notwithstanding these reservations, there is much to savour. McPherson’s writing blends spiky wit with lyrical reflections and the characters are brought to life vividly by uniformly superb performances. We may have seen it all before, but we can feel content to experience it again.

Performance date: 24 April 2025

Photo: Manuel Harlan

Writer: Oliver Cotton

Director: Trevor Nunn

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Prepare to be transported back to the 18th Century. Having begun life in the Regency splendour of Bath’s Theatre Royal, Oliver Cotton’s 1747-set play, The Score, now finds a seemingly natural new home at the London equivalent, the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The question is whether or not the production, with veteran director Trevor Nunn at the helm, is destined to feel more than a couple of hundred years past its sell-by dare.

Contrasting the Earthly with the Heavenly, Cotton’s play revisits many of the themes of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. On this occasion, the composer is Johann Sebastian Bach, a 62-year-old with failing eyesight. He lives in Leipzig, a city recently overrun by Prussia, whose KIng, Frederick II, summons him to his court. Bach is devoutly religious and loathes warfare, while Frederick is an atheist  who, instinctively, leads armies into battle. They are opposites drawn together by a common love of music.

Brian Cox’s Bach barks loudly and often. The Scottish actor who  once played Hannibal Lecter seems born for this role and his commanding performance, inevitably, fights off all comers to grab centre stage and hold onto it. Stephen Hagan’s slightly effete Frederick is not the warrior King that the early dialogue leads us to expect, but his nonchalant air makes him a fascinating foil for Cox’s bellowing Bach.

Bach leaves behind his doting wife Anna (Nicole Ansari-Cox) in Leipzig and answers the KIng’s call to his court in Potsdam. There he is greeted by his young son Carl (Jamie Wilkes), who holds a position there, and by the friendly maid Emilia (Juliet Garricks), who recounts stories from Frederick’s past. The King’s constant companion is the French philosopher Voltaire, played in flamboyant style by Peter De Jersey. Nunn’s production is mounted handsomely, with Robert Jones’ unfussy set designs transitioning effortlessly between Bach’s humble home and the Royal Palace.

The play’s big flaw is a slow-paced first act in which it takes the two main protagonists four scenes and almost an hour to come face-to-face. The result is all talk and hardly any dramatic tension. Happily, things improve immeasurably after the interval when the writing becomes more eloquent and focussed and the acting more powerful. Frederick and his sycophantic courtiers bet against Carl that “old” Bach will not be able to improvise on a theme composed by the King; this brings a refreshing dash of fun to scenes that could have, otherwise, become too dry.

Bach argues that music emerges from divine intervention, even when it comes into the head of a non-believer such as Frederick. This belief provides the play with one of its central theses, the other being the morality of war and oppression. In this, Frederick can be seen as an arrogant autocrat who compares with certain modern day figures, but, otherwise, the play is little more than a dip into history, imperfect yet nonetheless entertaining.

Performance date: 28 February 2025

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

⭐️⭐️

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