Michelle Terry as Richard III. Photo: Marc Brenner
The Globe’s Richard III arrives on a wave of controversy because of the frequently misogynistic criticism of its non-disabled artistic director Michelle Terry taking the lead role. As it turns out, references to the murderous king’s disability have been excised and attention is on his toxic masculinity in Elle While’s nearly all-female production.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Tim Bano in The Independent (4★) described how ‘Michelle Terry takes Richard III and turns him into the kind of swaggering, entitled, entirely self-regarding mop-haired misogynist man that we’ve seen way too much of in positions of power in recent years.’ Claire Allfree in the Telegraph (4★) called her interpretation ‘a textbook reading in imaginative authenticity’. The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (4★) pointed out, ‘Elle While’s direction turns it into a play about toxic masculinity of the highest order.’ ‘the play’s shocks hit in all the right places,’ she said, ‘Ultimately, it is a fast-paced, energised and entertaining production, the humour sometimes overplayed and hammy, but nevertheless a hugely compelling picture of corrupted male power.’
The Observer’s Susannah Clapp (3★) said, ‘Terry’s king is a lethal child. She outshines everyone else in a stimulating, patchy evening.’ Anya Ryan in Time Out (3★) declared, ‘As a Shakespearean actor, Terry really is as good as it gets.’ Her reservation was that ‘There is solid thought behind this production that pushes The Bard’s classic into the modern day. But, this is Terry’s show and hers only.’
The Standard’s Nick Curtis (3★) found her ‘horrifyingly compelling in the lead’ but thought ‘Elle While’s production is shouty and unfocused. It also strains too hard for contemporary relevance.’
Isaac Ouro-Gnao writing for LondonTheatre (3★) said, ‘for the most part, Richard III offers up stinging comedy at the hands of a talented and diverse cast, guaranteeing a laugh even during its darkest moments.’
Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (3★) called the production ‘bold, uneven’. On the whole, he was impressed: ‘Although While’s strikingly modern style feels chaotic at times, this ambitious production offers an intriguing, under-explored angle on Richard’s familiar story.’
According to Alexander Cohen at BroadwayWorld (3★), ‘Richard is the all too human anti-hero of Shakespearean canon. Here he is more concept in a wider societal conversation about gender roles post #MeToo.’
Sarah Hemming at WhatsOnStage (2★) wasn’t impressed: ‘There is some richness to be found in exploring the ways in which misogyny and tyranny almost always walk hand-in-hand, boosted by the use of an almost all-female or gender-fluid cast, but it often has all the subtlety and nuance of a bejewelled codpiece.’ The Times’ Dominic Maxwell (2★) felt the same: ‘Not for the first time here [at The Globe] the bright ideas are ahead of the production’s ability to sell them…It’s a strategically shallow reading that makes one of Shakespeare’s most fascinating villains into a 2D commentary on a certain kind of male.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3
Richard III can be seen at Shakespeare’s Globe until 3 August 2024. Buy tickets directly from shakespearesglobe.com
If you’ve seen Richard III, please add your review and rating below
Following his triumph as King Lear, Danny Sapani is back as another fading patriarch, this time he’s a retired New York cop who had previously been badly injured by a white colleague. As the occupant of a Manhattan apartment, he takes in a variety of misfits while resisting eviction in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times (4★) was full of praise: ‘Director Michael Longhurst revels in the text’s rollercoaster, tragicomic structure and draws rich, believable performances from the cast as a bunch of messy, messed-up people trying to keep their lives on track. Sapani is excellent, switching from warmth to wrath in an instant: infuriating one moment and endearing the next.’ Marianka Swain in the Telegraph (4★) said Danny Sapani is ‘titanic here as this sly, savagely funny, belligerent patriarch whose authority is ebbing away.’
Alun Hood at WhatsOnStage (4★) was impressed by ‘Michael Longhurst’s sizzling, thrillingly acted production’. It was, he said, ‘a warm, intriguing play, as wise as it is outrageous, as funny as it is grim, and in this UK premiere, it looks like a modern American classic.’ Franco Milazzo At BroadwayWorld (4★) described it as an ‘intelligent, intimate and ultimately optimistic study’
Andrzej Lukowski at Time Out (3★) experienced ‘a meaty watch, a pungent, spikey mix of laughs, tears and doomed defiance that centres on a multiracial group of misfits.’ Matt Wolf writing for LondonTheatre (3★) said, ‘Michael Longhurst’s production courses with the empathy found in the writing, not to mention a characteristic alertness to the storytelling swerves.’ For Arifa Albar in The Guardian (3★) it didn’t deliver as much as it promised, ‘In a production snappily directed by Michael Longhurst, there is much half said about institutionalised racism’ Nevertheless, ‘The performances are so strong, especially Sapani’s, that they propel the drama with lively, jibing humour’
The Times’ Clive Davis (3★) was another who felt the play fell short. While describing Danny Sapani as ‘a brooding central presence’, he also observed ‘too many underdeveloped characters’ are jostling for attention’ and ‘a nagging sense of implausibility.’ He said, ‘There are two or three plays crammed in here; for all the jokes, Guirgis never makes us care enough about any of them.’
Nick Curtis in The Standard (3★) had many reservations but came through the evening feeling positive: ‘This is a tricksy, rigged piece of drama, with a distended denouement. It’s still headily enjoyable, though.’ Dave Fargnoli writing for The Stage (3★) said the ‘knotty dramedy is overstuffed and tonally inconsistent – yet still gripping.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3.4★
Between Riverside and Crazy can be seen at Hampstead Theatre until 15 June 2024. Buy tickets from hampsteadtheatre.com
If you’ve seen Between Riverside and Crazy, please add your review and rating below
The Cherry Orchard at The Donmar. Photo: Johan Persson
Benedict Andrews has pulled apart Chekhov’s story of an aristocratic family blind to change and reassembled it as a modern take on resistance to climate change, with the production spilling over into the audience. The excitement of three 5-star and three 4-star reviews of The Cherry Orchard was offset by a couple of 3-star reviews and one 2-star. It seems one critic’s modern interpretation is another’s gimmick. All were agreed on the quality of the cast, in particular Nina Hoss and Adeel Akthar.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Arifa Akbar in The Guardian (5★) explained the update: ‘It is still a story about masters, peasants and the legacy of serfdom, but the anxiety over wealth, class and dispossession is powerfully felt to be ours too.’ She loved the acting, ‘Hoss and Akhtar, both better known for their screen work, are tremendous’ as well as the interpretation, ‘It is not so much tragicomic as comedy and then absolute tragedy.’ The Standard‘s Nick Curtis (5★) was similarly enraptured, calling the production ‘revelatory’. It ‘hits the play’s poles of tragedy and comedy with devastating accuracy,’ he said, ‘Yet it all feels entirely true to the spirit of the original.’ He too was impressed by the acting: ‘German stage star Nina Hoss is heartbreaking and exasperating…Adeel Akhtar, so often cast in downtrodden roles, is astonishing.’ He continued: ‘I’ve never seen an audience laugh so hard at this play, nor seen the closing scene with servant Firs performed as movingly’.
Andrzej Lukowski of Time Out (5★) described the design: ‘Magda Willa has created something equally memorable. In an in-the-round configuration in which cast members sit amongst the audience when not performing, every inch of floor and the entire back hall is covered in geometrically patterned rugs, a mix of ‘70s palette and ‘80s design that feels curiously out of time.’ He explained: ‘What Andrews is just plain astonishing at is character and casting…it’s a wonder to spend time with these people’ He concluded: ‘It builds to a queasily brilliant climax, But it’s the journey that’s the joy.’
Dave Fargnoli The Stage (4★) appeared relieved to be confronted by a modern take: ‘this lively, irreverent version brings tremendous immediacy to the piece. Replacing Chekhov’s stultifying tension with raw, feverish anxiety.’ He too praised the cast: ‘In an appealingly playful ensemble, Adeel Akhtar stands out.’ For Greg Stewart at Theatre Weekly (4★) it was ‘a captivating and visionary take on the Russian playwright’s final work…Benedict Andrews’ The Cherry Orchard transposes the societal upheaval of early 20th century Russia to modern day societal shifts, and amplifies Chekhov’s themes of change and progress in a profound way.’
Claire Allfree in the Telegraph (4★) said the production ‘ratchets up the characters’ psychological fracturing to such an extent the play fizzes from the get-go with a dangerous off-kilter threat.’ She described how ‘Andrews’ production is ultimately almost entirely an exercise in tonal dissonance. The mood can switch from comedy to horror in a second. He has the ability to turn a moment inside out so that feeling is revealed by its opposite emotion.’ But she ended with a reservation: ‘You miss, despite everything, the ineffable music of Chekhov; that keening inner poetry that can pounce just as bitterly as any directorial gimmick.’
Susannah Clapp in The Observer (4★) was particularly impressed by the performance of June Watson as the old servant Firs which she said, ‘takes your breath away’. She described the production as ‘choppy and fierce’ and concluded, ‘There are plenty of gleams and flares here: they do not add up to a revelation.’
Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage 3 had mixed feelings. ‘It’s like hearing a Puccini aria played by Slipknot. The melody survives but struggles to be heard,’ she said. ‘What makes the production shine, in fact, is the performances.’ She concluded, ‘It’s an enjoyable evening, but Chekhov is barely left standing at the close.’ Tim Bano in The Independent (3★) was struck by the appearance of the production: ‘the most obvious thing is the rug (Magda Willi’s design). It’s massive. All over the stage, covering the back wall, the coppery colour of dried blood or cherry stains.’ He found ‘it’s a production that’s made by particular moments, rather than working as a whole’. In fact, for him, it was ‘ alienating and a bit confusing. The way Andrews keeps pulling us toward the contemporary has worked in his previous shows. It gets us closer to the heart of the play. Here it gets in the way.’
For Dominic Maxwell at The Sunday Times (2★), ‘the clever details hig the attention and impede the dramatic flow.’ For him, ‘the almost three hours moved painfully slowly.’ Clive Davis in The Times (2★) was another who couldn’t get on with it at all. ‘What adds to the frustration is that this modern adaptation contains decent performances….(Andrews) is so determined to scatter directorial flourishes in all directions that it’s impossible to focus on the human tragedy unfurling in front of us.’ It ‘dissolves into confusion,’ he said. ‘…as the orchard faces destruction, the actors tear up the rugs. If only they could have done the same to the script.’ Ouch!
Average critics’ rating 3.7★ Value Rating 67 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price. In theory, this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60.)
If you’ve seen The Cherry Orchard, please add your review and rating below
Bijan Sheibani‘s new play The Cord, which he also directs, is about the early days of parenthood. It concentrates on the father Ash’s experience, although some critics would have liked to have known more about the mother Anya’s and Ash’s mother Jane’s stories. The play is set in the round on a bare stage with lighting and a cellist providing much atmosphere.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Theo Bosanquet at WhatsOnStage (4★) was impressed: ‘Sheibani…has crafted something that feels both universal and deeply personal, highlighting a rarely-spoken truth of parenting: children have a way of finding us out.’ ‘the dialogue feels like it’s been recorded and spoken verbatim’ he said, and ‘Shamji and O’Higgins are excellent in the central roles’.
Claire Allfree in the Telegraph (3★) praised ‘Irfan Shamji who imbues Ash with a blundering bewilderment that feels instantly recognisable and true’ but felt ‘the play is self-limiting, never finding a sufficient universal imperative beyond the bubble of new parenthood that is all consuming for those involved, but considerably less so for everyone else.’ Holly O”Mahoney reporting for The Stage (3★) ‘Sheibani’s thoughtful writing and attentive direction validate Ash’s experience – his are tricky emotions to explore with sympathy – while retaining self-awareness.’ Her criticism was that ‘The focus is on Ash, the action pivoting between his interactions with Anya and Jane, and some conversations – which play out in real time – grow tedious.’
Caroline McGinn at Time Out (3★) felt the play was a ‘missed opportunity’. She acknowledged: ‘It nails the exhaustion, the rows, the anxiety, the joy’. She would like to have known more about Ash’s mother and ‘I wanted more humour, more tension, more drama really.”Every aspect of the production is meticulous,’ said Susannah Clapp in The Observer (3★) but she didn’t think it was good enough as a stand alone play, suggesting it ‘would be an interesting interlude in a larger event’.
Ryan Gilbey writing for The Guardian (2★) had a similar thought: ‘there is a nagging feeling that the drama hasn’t reached full-term.’ As did Anya Ryan in The Times (2★) : ‘There are stories to be told about what happens to couples and families after childbirth, but this one isn’t quite grown yet.‘ She added, ‘much like the sleepless, tear-filled nights of the early years of parenthood, it feels like an endless slog to get through.’
Average critics’ rating 2.9★ Value Rating 58 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating moderated by the typical ticket price. In theory, this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60.
If you’ve seen The Cord, please add your review and rating below
Sophie Thompson and Charles Edwards in The Ballad of Hattie and James. Photo: Mark Senior
Emma John writing for explained the plot of Samuel Adamson’s new play: ‘two friends reconnect late in life, and what follows is a journey backward and forward through their timeline, exploring the love of music that brought them together and the events that have pushed them apart.’
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Marianka Swain in The Telegraph 4 ‘a spellbinding showcase for the perfectly in-tune Sophie Thompson and Charles Edwards.’ ‘this is a rich reckoning with our younger selves, with talent, desire, art and absolution, led by two actors who together create a great emotional symphony.’ She concluded: ‘the revelation of the moments that have made them, as well as the missed connections that define them, are a powerful reminder of what we owe to each other.’ The critics nearly all agreed that the two central performances were powerful but disagreed about whether the time-jumping script worked or confused.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Tim Bano of The Independent (4★) was one of those who loved it, calling it ‘a big sweeping symphony of sexual identity and music…really good, really funny and really smart’. ‘Adamson writes brilliant dialogue,’ he said. He reserved special praise for the two leads: ‘It’s amazing to see the way they spin around each other during these long scenes, like magnets, sometimes attracting and sometimes repelling.’ ‘
Tom Wicker at Time Out (4★) also found them impressive: ‘As Hattie, a charismatic Thompson seems to disrupt the very air around her, sandpaper raw in a world determined to box her in. Edwards holds himself with excruciatingly effective tightness, clipping his lines with the simmering precision of a desk clerk who might be about to throw his typewriter out of the window.’
Clive Davis in The Times (3★) also praised the stars but with a caution: ‘Charles Edwards and Sophie Thompson make such an intense combination that you’re almost willing to overlook the script’s wilful, self-referential tangles.’ He also found fault with the way ‘Richard Twyman’s production rushes through too many key scenes.’ Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times (3★) also felt the actors were better than the play. They, she said, ‘find a spiky, intense chemistry’, and she did say the play was ‘richly textured, witty and original’ before adding, ‘it does suffer at its own hand: it’s very dense and packed, and the impressionistic whirl of periods and events sometimes makes it harder to anchor scenes, blurring their emotional impact’.
Emma Johnson commented in The Guardian (3★): ‘the revelation of the moments that have made them, as well as the missed connections that define them, are a powerful reminder of what we owe to each other.’
Lucinda Everett at WhatsOnStage (3★) disagreed about the lead actors: ‘Hattie and James’s connection never quite gets off the ground.’ She was also put off by the narrative: ‘thanks to all of the decade-hopping, the events that buffet their friendship feel oddly timed.’ Theatre Weekly‘s Oliver Valentine (3★) thought: ‘neither the characters or the play’s cliched middle-class dilemmas are interesting enough to drag out the epic saga that Adamson indulges in.’ Franco Milazzo in Broadway World (3★) was another who was unimpressed: ‘Some will find the final scene disappointingly overly sentimental, others a tearjerker of a goodbye. My hankie stayed where it was.’
Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (2★) found much to criticise: ‘(director Richard) Twyman does little to make the elusive story feel coherent, with an unevenly paced staging that rushes through the densest dialogue but slows to a crawl during poignant scenes.’
The Ballad of Hattie and James can be seen at The Kiln until May 18. Buy tickets direct from kilntheatre.com
Average critics’ rating 3.1★ Value Rating 78 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating moderated by the typical ticket price. In theory, this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60.)
If you’ve seen The Ballad of Hattie and James, please add your review and rating below
Julian Ovenden and Giles Terera in Power of Sail. Photo: Manuel Harlan
In Paul Grellong’s play, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, a Harvard professor invites a racist, holocaust denier to a symposium. Various people are up in arms, freedom of speech is evoked, but as the would-be thriller travels back in time, it reveals there is more to various protagonists’ motives than their stated positions. There may have been an almighty row on stage, but in the stalls the critics showed a rare moment of unity (until a late review appeared). David Mamet is mentioned frequently in the reviews, both for content (remember Oleanna) and language, but the critics found Power of Sail fell short of greatness because there were too many twists to the plot. By the way, the title refers to the rule that says engine-driven ships must give way to sail boats. None of the critics came up with a satisfactory explanation of its relevance to the story.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (3★) found much of interest: ‘Paul Grellong’s intelligent if schematic play incorporates themes of cancel culture, Nazi legacies and the intersection between freedom of expression and hate speech.’ ‘it grips with its adrenalised dialogue,’ she said. ‘But,’ she said, ‘this is coupled with a briskness in plot – one twist after another – that pushes it forward at a rate of knots, while almost all of the characters turn out to be appalling in ways that feel too flat.’ Nick Curtis in The Standard (3★) agreed, even using the same adjective: ‘It’s an enjoyable and provoking watch, though the number of issues Grellong crams into 100 minutes means it’s necessarily schematic.’ Like others, he found ‘The rollercoaster of “aha” moments gradually shows diminishing returns.’
Sarah Crompton at Whats On Stage (3★) was on the same track. She said it ‘takes a fascinating subject and then via various unlikely plot twists, so muddies the water that its impact is blunted.’ Like the others, she found it superficial: ‘It ends up skating along the surface of a hugely important debate rather than digging deep.’ Dominic Cavendish in the Telegraph (3★) was yet another who felt ‘the subject-matter cries out for more time to unpack.’ He clearly thought this was a shame because it was ‘a timely look at freedom of speech and the perils of taking sides at university, smartly directed, as ever, by Dominic Dromgoole.’ He found space to praise the lead actor Julian Ovenden, describing him as ‘convincingly acerbic’.
Clive Davis in The Times (3★) appears to be more positive: ‘Not content with setting up a fast-paced debate about the limits of academic freedom, the American playwright catches us off balance with a shifting chronological structure which, in the second half, continually asks us to reassess the motivations of his main characters.’ But his positivity ran aground on the same rocks observed by the other reviewers: ‘It’s just a pity that Grellong tries to rush through many plot twists, some of them less than plausible.’ Did Patrick Marmion in the Mail (3★) take a different view? No: ‘Grellong also loses the dramatic focus of his would-be thriller by digressing.’
Mica Blackwell at Broadway World (3★) joined the procession: ‘Grellong’s snappy dialogue and Dominic Dromgoole’s direction keep the play punchy, but it feels too short to fully discuss the topics with the true nuance they deserve.’ ‘Maybe those conversations will be better discussed after watching the show,’ she added hopefully. Like the other critics, she praised the look of the show: ‘Paul Farnsworth’s sleek set captures the prestige of an Ivy League campus.’
But the critics’ unity was shattered when, a little after the others, Caroline McGinn’s review appeared at Time Out (4★) and told us why it was ‘Brisk, well-made and punchy’. ‘It has a genuinely exciting plot and a full-spectrum moral awareness of the murky motives and pitiless passions of identity politics…both together are an absolute treat.’ The ‘terrific’ play is, she said, ‘wisely and craftily directed by…Dominic Dromgoole.’
Value rating 59 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating moderated by the typical ticket price. In theory, this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60. This rating is based on opening night prices- theatres may raise or lower prices during the run.)
If you’ve seen Power of Sail, you are welcome to add your review and rating below (but please keep it relevant and polite)
Despite the Arts Council withdrawing its grant, Hampstead Theatre continues to present new work. The Divine Mrs S is a new comedy written by April De Angelis, directed by Anna Mackmin, and starring Rachael Stirling. It tells the story of the great 18th century actress Sarah Siddons as she tries to break free from the control and exploitation of the men around her. Stirling’s performance went down well with the critics. However the play itself was at one extreme an ‘absolute hoot’ and at the other ‘unfunny’; the direction was ‘fleet footed’ or ‘without pacing’; and it was a ‘drama that makes you burn at the injustice’ or else it was ‘pointless’. Unusually, it was a night on which the female reviewers outnumbered the men, and it would be neat to say the women liked it and the men didn’t, except the harshest critic was a woman.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
For Claire Allfree in the Telegraph (4★), ‘A pitch-perfect Rachael Stirling brings an air of fruity exasperation to Siddons.’ She described the play as ‘beautifully skewering the entrenched hypocrisies surrounding female roles both on stage and in real life, The Divine Mrs S is an absolute hoot.’ As for the production, ‘Anna Mackmin’s fleet-footed production keeps the play’s light and dark tones and anachronistic sensibilities in fluent balance.’ Anya Ryan at Time Out (4★) was another enthusiast.: ‘To merge sharp comedy with drama that makes you burn at the injustice is no mean feat, but De Angelis has done it marvellously.’
Frey Kwa Hawking of Whats On Stage (3★) awarded one less star but still enjoyed her evening: ‘Anna Mackmin keeps things moving at a great clap, and harnesses the fun De Angelis is having with her language.’ She was also impressed by the way ‘Siddons, her life and enduring, existential questions about what to play and how to play it are done loving justice.’
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (3★) was more reserved in her praise: ‘ the larky comedy is good-natured and clever, but it does not deepen enough… and might have benefited from sharper pacing.’ ‘Rachael Stirling as Siddons puts fire into Anna Mackmin’s fitful production,’ said Susannah Clapp in The Observer (3★)
Cindy Marcolina of Broadway World (2★) didn’t like it at all, describing it as ‘a load of… silliness.’ ‘Very little happens,’ she complained. She went on, ‘It’s aimless and confused as well as riddled with static figurines who avoid going on any kind of personal journey.’ It is, she concluded, ‘a tired, unfunny comedy that doesn’t have a point.’
And so to the male critics. For The Standard’s Nick Curtis (2★), it was ‘Disappointing.’ ‘Rachael Stirling’s imperious, high-comic performance as Sarah Siddons is the saving grace of this aimless and tiresomely in-jokey play,’ he said. He didn’t like the direction, saying the play was ‘left to meander without pacing or purpose’. He conceded, ‘Many of the jokes are very funny but they rob the story of weight.’
Dominic Maxwell in The Times (2★) also found a redeeming feature in the ‘highly watchable’ Rachael Stirling. Thank goodness, because, ‘Beyond that, the feminist satire, the handsome staging and the forcible fun of the playing add up to less than the sum of their playfully mock-Georgian parts.’
Value rating 52 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price. In theory, this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60. This rating is based on opening night prices- theatres may raise or lower prices during the run.)
If you’ve seen The Divine Mrs S, you are welcome to add your review and rating below (but please keep it relevant and polite)
Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport rise above a messy play
★★★
Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport in The Human Body. Photo: Marc Brenner
The Human Body at the Donmar Warehouse in London tells the story of a middle-aged love affair to the background of the birth of the NHS.
Lucy Kirkwood‘s inspiration is Brief Encounter and other British films of the immediate postwar era that looked at women in a changing society. To hammer the point home, there are multiple occasions in the production when the action is videoed and shown on the back wall as a black-and-white film. Video has been used quite a bit in theatre productions recently, notably in Ivo von Hove‘s A Little Life and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but Ivo von Hove this isn’t. For me, the filming was a distraction, not a reinforcement, made worse, much worse, by having cameras and camera operators on stage, getting in the way, and killing the moment.
Maybe Lucy Kirkwood and the directors Michael Longhurst and Ann Lee meant us to be alienated so that, rather get too tied up in the love story, we could observe from a distance the parallels between the revolution in health care and women’s desire to abandon pre-war traditional behaviour.
The argument for universal health care is strongly made, the case for an affair between a rising politician and a fading movie star more uncertain. She rarely goes to the cinema and he is disinterested in politics, albeit able to quote Charlie Chaplin’s inspiring anti-fascist speech from The Great Dictator. Perhaps part of the attraction lies in each being outside the other’s world.
There is certainly a physical attraction between the two- the dice are definitely loaded by having them played by Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport– and they do have in common that both are unhappy in their marriages, but, as in Brief Encounter, good old fashioned guilt and duty threaten to pull them apart. The echoes of the film are many but with some crucial changes. She, not he, is the GP. Both have greater reasons than a simple morality to stick with their spouses. And the sense of guilt and duty, in her case, extends beyond her family to take in the Party and her patients. The physical consummation of their affair is more satisfactory, shall we say, than in Brief Encounter.
Lucy Kirkwood’s dialogue is touching, heartfelt and funny and it’s an absorbing ‘will she, won’t she’ story. Ben and Max Ringham‘s score works well, sounding more like the tense background to a 1940s thriller than the stirring Rachmaninov piano notes of Brief Encounter. If only the production was as fast or exciting as the music.
Keeley Hawes plays a multi-tasking modern woman, not only a GP and would-be Labour MP, but also a wife and mother. Her husband has been disabled when fighting in the war. So, whether to save her marriage is just one of many choices she has to make. This makes the story more interesting as well as giving Ms Hawes many opportunities to display a middle-class stiff upper lip hiding a volcano of emotions. Often, when containing her feelings, she adopts a tight smile, but when she laughs, it’s as if an extra light shines on the stage. Her speech in favour of the new socialism and an end to Victorian values was so passionate, it actually received a round of applause from the audience. At all times, she commands the stage.
Admittedly, she is probably too glamorous for the ordinary woman she is meant to be. In fact, there is an unintentional moment of humour when her husband says ‘I hate your body’. There were audible intakes of breath from some people in the audience on the night I was there, as if they couldn’t believe anyone would reject the immaculate Keeley Hawes.
Top Class Cast
Tom Goodman-Hill, Siobhan Redmond & Pearl Mackie in The Human Body. Photo: Mar Brenner
All the actors are top class. Jack Davenport was full of self deprecating charm as a gone-to-seed film star. Siobhan Redmond, Pearl Mackie and Tom Goodman-Hill excel in multiple parts. Thank goodness, because they save the evening.
I can’t help feeling this play was not designed for the Donmar. Fly Davis‘ mainly dark blue set design with a revolve creates a sense of the monochrome austerity of the late 1940s and, with the audience on three sides, she wisely keeps the props to a minimum. However, unless you sit in the centre block of seats, your view of the high-up screen will inevitably be partially obscured. Much more detrimental than this, though, are the many scene changes which should have been fast moving and fluid but are slowed down by mobile props- tables, chairs and so on- being trundled on and off the empty stage via the aisles in the auditorium. Worse than the time this consumed in an already overlong play is the distracting noise of the wheels and of technicians whispering into headsets.
Earlier in the day, across the river at the National, I had seen Nye, the epic story of the Labour politician who was the driving force behind the creation of the NHS. The Human Body might have been a counterpoint, offering a microcosm about the creation of the health service at a local level. Instead, while strands of the story do offer insights into the struggles within the Labour Party, and the resistance of the medical profession and the need for free healthcare, these are not the focal point. However, along with the other distractions, they are enough to take the focus away from the conflicted love affair.
Annie Baker’s outstanding play about women coping with pain
★★★★
Christina Kirk & Marylouise Burke in Infinte Life. Photo: Marc Brenner
Infinite Life by Annie Baker, which I saw at the National Theatre’s Dorfman, is a play you might find riveting or soporific, or both. Five women all have illnesses that are causing them chronic pain but that conventional medicine has been unable to treat. Desperate for a cure, they have resorted to fasting in a retreat in California.
They lie on sun loungers, they doze, they sip their water or green drinks… and they talk. There’s no action, no emotional explosions, no-one dies, and no dramatic plot twists, although there is an interesting development at the end.
It sounds like a snooze-fest, and in fact some members of the audience did doze or even leave, but I was engrossed by this outstanding play.
Infinite Life may remind you of Waiting For Godot and its days apparently repeating into infinity. Like Beckett’s play, there is not much drama but a lot going on beneath the surface and quite a bit of humour. For good measure, there is the doctor in charge of the clinic, and possibly their fates, who is mentioned frequently but never appears.
Why is it called ‘Infinite Life’? I think, because the five women are so consumed by their pain that they live very much in the moment, unable to think of life beyond it.
I understand that you may prefer loud over quiet, fast over slow, witty comedy over gentle humour, but personally I loved the way every sentence of Annie Baker’s dialogue seems carefully constructed to work on two levels, and rewarded concentrated listening.
There’s the surface of apparently inconsequential talk about what they’re reading, their lists of diagnoses and failed treatments, their chat about sex. Then there are the implications of what they’re saying in the context of the pain they are feeling, as well as the hints of the lives they have led and will lead outside of this moment of suspended time.
Even Annie Baker’s trademark pauses and silences as the women gather their thoughts, or get lost in them, reinforce the disorientation caused by fasting. They also provide us the audience with moments of contemplation.
If you’re expecting their pain to be a metaphor for life, you’ll be disappointed. It is what it says on the tin. As one of the characters says: ‘If pain doesn’t mean anything, it’s so boring. But if it means anything at all then I don’t know if I can bear it.’ It is what it brings out in their characters that stands out.
It is certainly not as depressing as you might imagine. Most of the time, rather than feel sorry for them, you admire these women’s resilience, and the mutual respect inspired by their confinement together and common predicament. Their conversations are leavened with some very funny lines. I could have carried on listening to their conversations long beyond the one hour 45 minutes.
This is a joint National Theatre and Atlantic Theater Company production but the effort has been put in by the Americans. Thanks to an agreement between the British actors’ union and American Equity, the off-Broadway production has been transported set, creatives and cast. And what a cast we were privileged to see! Annie Baker has created five strong characters. Directed by James Macdonald, all the actors do a superlative job at subtly suggesting their suffering, their vulnerability, their fortitude and their inner life.
The women are mostly in their sixties or seventies. Marylouise Burke as Eileen, the oldest, shuffles slowly on and off stage, carefully laying out her cushions on her lounger, moving with delicate precision as if every movement hurts.
Mia Katigbak plays Yvette, precise and firm in her thoughts, and who reels off a tremendously long list of ailments, but also reveals her desperation for the fasting to be a cure. Brenda Pressley is Elaine, reserved and determined. As Ginnie, Kristine Nielsen has a twinkling eye and a playful manner.
Christina Kirk plays Sofi, at 47 the youngest of the cohort. She is tortured, and self torturing, at times blaming herself for her illness. You might think that chronic pain would push sex off the agenda. Far from it. While the older women muse on sex, she is still wracked by desire: forbidden lust that has jeopardised her marriage, the sex itself that is debilitatingly painful, the desperate belief that orgasms might be the cure. In the night, she leaves voice messages about her agony for her husband, and sexual fantasies for her platonic lover.
Incidentally, this was the second National Theatre production running I’ve seen (The House Of Bernarda Alba being the first), in which a woman has masturbated on stage. I’m hoping this isn’t now mandatory because the next show I’m seeing at the National is a family show, The Witches.
Sex crops up quite frequently as a subject for conversation. Someone wonders if bad sex is the cause of illness. On another occasion, there is an extended discussion after someone reveals that a cousin describes pornography for blind people. We always learn about their characters from what they say.
Some time into the play, a solitary man appears. Nelson is mature and attractive enough to make the women take notice. His character is much more thinly drawn than those of the women but Pete Simpson exhibits a believable arrogance. Unlike the others, he has a specifically identified and, it would seem, mortal disease. He seems to be introduced for two reasons. I’ll come to the other later but the first is to provide a contrast to the women’s camaraderie. ‘I don’t want to sound like a dick,’ he says, then proceeds to do just that.
He is the only character who contends that his agony is worse than that of the others. Sofi says to him: ‘You don’t actually know if your level of pain that night was worse than my level of pain on my worst night. It’s impossible to know.’ Until then, I hadn’t fully taken on board how, for the women, their suffering is not a competition. They realise that, like sex, everyone has their own unique, incomparable experience of suffering. And as an audience, we cannot make a judgment. They and we can only offer a gentle sympathy.
Privately it may be different. Eileen, who seems the calmest of all, has a moment alone on stage when she says: ‘This is the night you heard me screaming. I said terrible things …I said none of you have ever been in this much pain …I said it’s a conspiracy..I said …A minute of this is an infinity.’ Not something any of them would actually say out loud to one another: they keep their all-engulfing agony to themselves.
When they’re not talking about sex or illness, the women often talk philosophically about what they have read, and again we can see how what interests them reflects on their own lives- how did a similarly ill woman go about setting up a successful business; does an Asian pirate, brought up in a certain culture (for which, perhaps, read afflicted by sickness), have the free will to choose his actions or is he bound to act in a certain way?
Boring or entertaining or both?
Most significantly, Sofi is trying to read George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda. This is not a random choice by Annie Baker. When asked what it’s about, Sofi says that so far the book is concerned with Gwendoline and her suitors. Those familiar with the novel will know that Gwendoline is self-obsessed, contained in her own world, much as people in constant agony are.
She says: ‘If I’m not reading it all the time it seems really boring, but once I’m into it, it’s like the most entertaining thing in the world.’ Is Annie Baker giving a knowing wink to the audience about this play?
Sofi is finding it hard to get beyond page 152. The sentence she gets stuck at says irrational fear can stop you doing what you know is achievable. Something else to think about, and certainly relevant to the test Nelson provides for Sofi on whether she will act on her sexual desire.
Dusk follows day, night takes over, then another day in the blazing Californian sun begins. Lighting designer Isabella Byrd dims the lights into moonlight that actually feels cool, then slams on a sudden migraine-inducing flood of daylight. The women’s current lives may be an infinite loop as each day merges into the next but there is a finite time frame to the play. It begins with the first day of Sofi’s stay at the retreat and ends on the day she leaves.
Christina Kirk, Kristine Nielsen, Brenda Pressley and Mia Katigbak in Infinite Life. Photo: Marc Brenner
The set, from the New York design collective, dots, suggests the monotony of fasting. It is minimal and never changing. In front of a beige background, there’s a patterned breeze block wall of a similar colour, about two metres tall. In front of that there are a number of loungers. The cheap nature of the wall and beds implies that the so-called clinic is a new age sham designed to make money from desperate people who have been failed by medical science.
For the majority of the play, the women lie down as if their loungers are islands in an ocean of agony. They talk but they don’t make physical contact or delve deeply into each other’s lives. Then, as we reach the final minutes of the play, there is a moment between Sofi and Eileen, which does seem to take us forward.
They touch each other, both mentally and physically. It’s a human connection that suggests we need not be alone in our pain. This seems to point to a way in which we can possibly learn from it. Perhaps by moving from the inward-facing world of Gwendoline to the outward-looking and more empathetic behaviour of Daniel Deronda himself.
Annie Baker is that rare class of writer who can create a funny, moving play about the human condition, without resorting to easy messages and emotional manipulation.
Infinite Life was performed at the Linda Gross Theater in New York from August 18 to October 15, 2023, and from 22 November 2023 to 13 January 2024 at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre.
Marion Bailey, Chrtistopher Fulford and Alun Armstrong in To Have And To Hold. Photo: Marc Brenner
Richard Bean, writer of the incomparable One Man Two Guv’nors, has turned his attention to the challenges of old age in his new comedy To Have And To Hold. The focus is on the schism between working class parents and their educated middle class children. Something many of us have felt.
Yet despite the common experience and the pedigree of the writer, it lacks emotional impact. What it does offer are a lot of laughs and a superior comedy double act from Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey.
Many of us baby boomers will be familiar with the situation To Have And To Hold describes. We were the first working class generation to go to university in large numbers, to aspire to middle class professions, and to leave our roots. Before finding ourselves with elderly parents in need of support.
I’m not saying younger generations won’t appreciate this play but I suspect it does not have the universality of some dramas about generational conflict.
Jack and Florence are on their last legs, literally in that they need a Stannah stairlift. This provides the first of many laughs, when Flo slowly descends to answer the front door. At the front door is their son Rob, who has come to try and sort out getting them into better accommodation. He is later joined by his sister Tina who has a particular interest in their health.
James Cotterill has designed a beautifully naturalistic living room that positively screams of old people who have lived there forever and haven’t changed anything in at least thirty years. The homely set also suggests, correctly, that we are nearer to the cosiness of a TV sitcom than the bleakness and remembrance of, say, Barney Norris’s Visitors, which covers similar ground.
Flo is getting by physically but she is showing signs of dementia. There is a running gag about her locking the front door and forgetting that she has the key in her apron. Jack is very ill but his brain is still sharp, so he can entertainingly recite lists of the names of pop stars and make barbed comments about being tied to Flo for seventy years.
And they bicker. They have a hilarious argument when she refers to the prostate as the prostrate and is unable to distinguish between the words. On another occasion, a convoluted question-and-answer bounces around like a pinball while which he tries to identify the name of a film director she can’t recall .
Flo has not yet lost the ability to launch some arrows of her own. When it is revealed that he has considered suicide and Switzerland is mentioned, she says she told him to go: ‘It’ll do you good. Broaden your horizons…you’ve never been abroad’. But there are many hints they are much closer than these exchanges would imply.
A comedy double act
Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey are still in their seventies but are totally convincing as an elderly couple. Without them, the production would falter, because they are required to generate most of the laughs, and their timing is immaculate.
Christopher Fulford as Rob and Hermione Gulliford as Tina are fine actors but there is much less for them to get their teeth into. He is a successful crime writer, she an entrepreneur. Both are geographically and culturally a long way from Yorkshire and their parents. Their care seems more practical than emotional, their primary consideration seeming to be the price of everything.
Marion Bailey and Alun Armstrong in To Have And To Hold. Photo: March Brenner
Jack recognises this and responds with a permanent scowl and his best grumpy Northerner mode- words like cantankerous and curmudgeonly spring to mind. It is significant that he is happy to tell stories of his time as a police officer but won’t let his son record them, because he suspects Rob only wants fodder for his novels. This also suggests that old people have lives worth remembering if only the next generation took the trouble to listen.
A neighbour Eddie and a cousin Pamela, nicely played by Adrian Hood and Rachel Dale, appear to offer more genuine support in a digital age that has passed Jack and Nancy by. They help with shopping from a supermarket that is more than a walk away, with banking that is only available online, and with health problems now that doctors don’t do home visits.
This leads to resentment and suspicion from the children. And, if that isn’t enough, there’s a subplot to do with someone conning Jack and Nancy out of their money.
It’s all very familiar, I’m sure, for many people of my generation. I myself know about living a life totally foreign to my parents. I have first hand experience of how difficult it is to care for parents when they are 200 miles away. I have seen my elderly father scammed out of thousands of pounds. I know how my mother-in-law’s doctor won’t do a home visit, even though she’s over 90.
So, I felt a lot of sympathy with all the main characters, but I never felt empathy, no real emotional involvement. This production is jointly directed by Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson. You couldn’t get two better people to extract the best out of a comedy. And it is a lot of fun, but Richard Bean never digs deep enough into the main characters’ feelings to bring out the pathos of a situation that so many people like Jack and Flo find themselves in.
To Have And To Hold is at Hampstead Theatre until 25 November 2023. Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.
