Posts Tagged ‘reviews’

The Maids (Donmar Warehouse)

Posted: October 26, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Marc Brenner

Writer: Jean Genet

Adaptor and director: Kip Williams

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“Everybody ought to have a maid” asserted Stephen Sondheim famously in song, but the great lyricist could well have had second thoughts after seeing French writer Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids, which is revived here. The tale of two mischievous, murderous chambermaids was originally seen as a parable about a crumbling class system, but adaptor and director Kip Williams packs it with up-to-date references and transforms it into a satire on the cult of celebrity worship.

When we first encounter the sisters Claire and Solange, they are stepping aside from their daily duties in the boudoir of their employer, “Madame”. They take turns to impersonate Madame, they wear her expensive clothes, they scheme to undermine her latest boyfriend, who  is facing trial on fraud charges, and they plot her murder. Madame is expected home soon and her fans are congregating on the street below; like them, the sisters adore Madame, but they also loathe her in equal measure.

Madame eventually arrives, frantically worried about the fate of her boyfriend, and she is every bit as ghastly as the sisters’ impersonations have warned us, cruelly taunting each of her maids in turn. The point is made that all three characters are essentially the same and confrontations continue in a similar vein, whichever two of the three are on stage. Herein lies the play’s chief problem – repetition. Almost every scene begins to feel like a re-run of the one that preceded it.

Williams never asks the audience to invest in the characters emotionally, sustaining a surreal feel to the drama throughout. Exceptionally forceful performances by Yerin Ha, Phia Shaban and Lydia Wilson energise the production and lift it out of the play’s most sticky patches. Together, the three young actors resemble a group of lovestruck schoolgirls forming a fan club for, say, a pop star, although it is always clear that evil lies on the horizon.

This is a very grand production of a very small play. one that, arguably, could have been staged just as effectively at a small fringe venue with no formal set. As it is, set designer Rosanna Vize pulls out all the stops with a stunning boudoir bedecked with all things beige. The opening scene is performed entirely behind net curtains, thereby mystifying (and irritating) the audience and giant mirrors double as video screens, playing their part in Williams’ assault on our senses. However, there are concerns that gimmicks are being used to divert attention from the play’s shortcomings and paper over obvious cracks.

There is much to enjoy in Williams’ radical re-working of Genet’s obscure classic, but 100 minutes of this weird and often anarchic spectacle is more than enough.  Nonetheless, the points that it makes about the dangers of modern celebrity culture hit home strongly.

Performance date: 22 October 2025

The Land of the Living (National Theatre, Dorfman)

Posted: September 22, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Manuel Harlan

Writer: David Lan

Director: Stephen Daldry

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The alleged removal of children from their family homes in Ukraine to Russia has been one of the most horrific features of the current war in Eastern Europe and it gives topicality to The Land off the Living, David Lan’s new play which tells of events during and after World War II.

In 1945, Ruth is a 20-year-old United Nations aid worker in a devastated German city. Thomas, a 10-year-old  Polish boy, comes under her care. He is one of thousands of children who had been taken from their homes in German occupied territories to be tested for “pure blood” and, if deemed suitable, to be re-homed with Nazi supporters. Ruth leads Thomas on a perilous journey across Europe, avoiding the grasp of the Soviets, and eventually to a new home in the United States. Thomas finds safety and prosperity, but he loses his sense of belonging, his language, his culture and his heritage. The play asks where Ruth was right to consign Thomas to this fate rather than to help him in finding his own birth family.

Lan tells the story in flashback from the perspective of a reunion in 1990 between Ruth (Juliet Stevenson) and Thomas (Tom Wlaschiha). Events are acted out on Miriam Buether’s extraordinary set, which runs the entire length of the Dorfman Theatre’s auditorium. At one end there is a domestic living area and at the other there is a grand library, the two separated by a polished wood walkway which appears to be mounted on a multitude of filing cabinets. It may not be entirely clear how any of this connects to the play, but Buether gives director Stephen Daldry what he needs most – the space to stage a production on an epic scale – albeit at the expense of this theatre’s most precious asset, its intimacy.

Daldry’s staging is, at many times, thrilling. The chaos of post-war Germany and the race across a hostile continent are realised vividly and imaginatively with a company of 15 adults and children. However, there are moments when it feels as if the production is at odds with the play, overwhelming it. Lan has realised that events pf such magnitude can only be dramatised by condensing them into the lives of individuals, but Daldry chooses to paint the bigger picture. It is significant that the play’s most moving and memorable scenes come when fewer numbers occupy the stage. Specially, Stevenson and Wlaschiha give astonishingly powerful performances that shine through all the spectacle that surrounds them.

A fractured narrative structure does little to add clarity to the storytelling and the production could be viewed as overblown, but The Land of the Living deals with issues of profound importance, both historically and still today.

Performance date: 18 September 2025

The Code (Southwark Playhouse Elephant)

Posted: September 21, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Photo: Danny Kaan

Writer: Michael McKeever

Director: Christopher Renshaw

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Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock have established link between south-east London and Hollywood, so perhaps Elephant & Castle is as good a place as any to stage The Code, Michael McKeever’s new one-act play exposing the dark side of the American film industry. 

It is 1950. We are in what many describe as the “golden age“ of movies, during which the big studios and the executives who run them reign supreme. The “Hollywoodlamd” sign towers above Ethan Cheek’s smart set design, representing  a cocktail lounge where Tallulah Bankhead (Tracie Bennett) is already slightly tipsy. She had been one of the biggest names in the early days of movies, but her star is now fading rapidly. She still works both in Hollywood and on Broadway, but she is overlooked repeatedly for the plum roles and she remains bitter over having missed out on Scarlett O’Hara more than a decade earlier. The difficulty, she tells us, is that studio bosses regard her as too risky, because of her known promiscuity with both men and women and her willingness to talk openly about sex. The studios demand that their stars adhere to a strict moral “code” which dictates how they behave in private as well as in public.

Tallulah is joined by Billy Haines, possibly the biggest male movie star on the planet during the 1920s and early 1930s until his career had been wrecked by his refusal to comply with his studio boss’s demands for him to get married and end his long-term homosexual relationship. Billy had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of his film career to establish himself as a prominent interior designer with a long list of A-lust clients. He believes that he now stands as living proof that there are more important things in life than film stardom.

Happily, Bennett herself is nowhere near to becoming a fading star. She gives Tallulah similar swagger to that of her West End performance as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, inebriated and fragile, yet unashamedly flamboyant and gleefully vulgar. It is great credit to Partridge that he is never overshadowed by this tor de force; his proud, dignified Billy gives the play emotional depth and heart. Together, these actors make a glittering pair of code breakers.

In its opening stages, director Christopher Renshaw;s production feels sluggish in places; it is merely a conversation piece, all back stories and no front story. This all changes with the arrival of sleazy agent Henry Willson (Nick Blakeley) and his latest protege, naive young actor Chad Manford (Solomon Davy). Pressure is mounting on Chad to sacrifice his gay relationship in pursuit of fame and fortune, but will he succumb or will he follow Billy’s example and be true to himself? The play now finds the dramatic tension that it had needed from the beginning.

Written crisply and performed with flair, The Code trades heavily in showbiz gossip, most of which should by now be well known. However, there may be some who still buy into Hollywood myths and this is certainly a play to open their eyes.

Performance date: 17 September 2005