Category: London Productions

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Infinite Life – National Theatre – review

Annie Baker’s outstanding play about women coping with pain

★★★★

Two women sit next to one another, one is wearing a rucksack, in a stage production of infinite Life by Annie Baker
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.

Four women doze on sun loungers in the Atlantic Theater proudction of Infinite Life
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.

Paul purchased his ticket.

Click here to watch the video of this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

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The House Of Bernada Alba – National Theatre – Review

Harriet Walter leads first rate cast in revitalised Lorca classic

★★★★

Rosalind Eleazar, Thusitha Jayasunde & Harriet Walter in The House of Bernarda Alba. Photo: Marc Brenner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This National Theatre production isn’t for everybody. If you’re familiar with The House of Bernada Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca, you’re going to have to put it out of your mind. Alice Birch‘s version is a devastating dissection of an authoritarian household and the malign influence of men. Rebecca Frecknall‘s production offers some of the finest acting you could hope to see, and not just from Harriet Walter. If the beginning is a little disjointed, messy even, the second half is theatre at its best.

Sometimes you enter an auditorium and the set is already laid out before you. Not on this occasion. Instead you wait for the Lyttelton safety curtain to open. When it does, it reveals Merle Hensel’s magnificent house, filling the giant stage from top to bottom and right to left. It’s on three storeys with seven separate bedrooms and a bathroom on the top two levels, and, thanks to transparent walls, you can see its full depth. So there is no escape, no privacy for the five daughters of Bernarda Alba, we even see one of them masturbating. And that’s very much the dominant theme of this production: Bernarda rules her daughters and believes she knows everything that’s going on.

The complete set including props is a pale green colour, except for a rifle sinisterly centre stage, which is the trigger- no pun intended- for the devastating end. The colour is not only the least distracting you could choose but it provides the starkest of contrasts to the black clothes of the women, whose husband and father has been buried that day. Bernarda declares eight years of mourning to the horror of her unmarried daughters.

 

The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre. Photo: Marc Brenner

At first, as we get to know the household, there is much chatter and gossip from many women who have gathered after the funeral. Bernada says nothing but sits rigidly. She is a woman of few words. Harriet Walter gives a masterful performance in which less is more. She exhibits a cold stare, an imperious pose, and, when she does speak, it is without emotion. Bernada Alba has learned to survive in a man’s world by revealing no weakness.

The daughters are rebellious individuals but this is 1930s Spain and there is no escape for them. So, they are cowed by Bernarda and contain their thoughts, breaking out occasionally as when the oldest puts on makeup or the youngest a bright green dress. They are forbidden to fraternise with men, however Angustias, who is from Bernada’s first marriage, is the only daughter with money, which gives her an escape route. Her wealth has attracted a suitor, Pepe de Romans, and she is due to wed. Her fiance is an obsession of at least two of her sisters who both exhibit a dangerous jealousy. All the women are fearful of and fascinated by men generally, and Pepe in particular.

Spain in the 1930s was a patriarchal society. No doubt Lorca intended his audience to see parallels with an authoritarian society in which the people are forced into conformity, and this is why the play retains such power today. Bernarda Alba, like many in such a situation, does the job of the patriarchy for it by teaching, and expecting, her daughters to treat men with caution and respect.

She makes the house a female bastion against the male-dominated outside world, female but not feminist. ‘Men are capable of anything’ it is said, and there are hints, and more than hints, that men have and do behave despicably.
Her rule is cruel and dictatorial. Toward the end of act one, when one of her daughters does something wrong, the punishment is brutal and disproportionate. The first act ends with a shocking scene in which the house is invaded by a lynch mob chasing an ‘sinful’ young woman.

In Lorca’s original play, we never see Angustias’s fiance. In Alice Birch’s generally superb rewriting of the play, we see him silently moving across the stage in balletic manner. This underlines that he is a romantic fantasy, because we can see that in the flesh he is quite ordinary. Even so, I still prefer Lorca’s idea of him living in the imagination as an invisible presence hanging over the household.

As the play progresses to its tragic end, we see that Bernada is not as all-seeing as she thinks, and that her control is illusory.

The cast is uniformly brilliant. Angustias, the sickly and psychologically damaged eldest daughter, is played with layers of aloofness and vulnerability by Rosalind Eleazar. Isis Ainsworth provides an extraordinarily strong performance as the youngest sister Adela, in love with Pepe, defiant, and with emotions out of control. Lizzie Annis, Eliot Salt and Pearl Chanda are the other three sisters, also excellent. Eileen Nicholas is the senile grandmother who is locked in her bedroom. Thusita Jayasundera and Bryony Hannah are the servants who provide both honest comments and humour.

Rebecca Frecknall, after her recent successes directing Cabaret at The Playhouse and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida, has triumphed again with this forceful production.

The House Of Bernarda Alba can be seen at the National Theatre until 6 January 2024

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

Watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

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The Motive And The Cue – review

Mark Gatiss & Johnny Flynn astound as Gielgud & Burton


★★★★★

Mark Gatiss and Johnny Flynn in The Motive and the Cue. Photo: Mark Douet

If you love theatre, you will love The Motive And The Cue. It is not only about two legendary actors in rehearsal, thanks to playwright Jack Thorne’s ability to create drama, Sam Mendes ‘ direction and the acting of Mark Gatiss, Johnny Flynn and Tuppence Middleton, it is also as close to theatrical perfection as you can hope for. 

Back in 1964, the great classical actor Sir John Gielgud directed a production of Hamlet on Broadway starring the man who at the time was probably the most famous film actor in the world.

In The Motive And The Cue, the National Theatre production which has just opened in the West End at the Noel Coward Theatre, we follow them from the first day of rehearsal to the first night of the play.
This has to be one is the best plays ever written about the rehearsal process. Jack Thorne has talked about the way rehearsals are used to explore the text and find a way to the truth of the characters and situation. And truth is what art needs in order to succeed. As Gielgud points out in the play, the actor needs to share with the audience something they both can believe. To observe the process of how they get there is fascinating. 
It can be a disadvantage to use well known people and actual events, because we may think we know the characters and what happened and that may in turn get in the way of the play’s attempts to convince us of this particular interpretation of them.
So for a moment, let’s think of The Motive And The Cue as not about Gielgud and Burton, but simply about two people who clash because of their different approaches to acting but who learn to respect one another and work together to create a production that tells a truth about Hamlet.
So, the older man comes from an emotionally buttoned up generation, who at sixty is finding himself left behind by the new trend of ‘angry’ working class drama and actors,  like Burton. He values the verse which he speaks with a precise mellifluous voice, and, here’s the rub, is considered to have been the finest Hamlet in living memory.
The younger man is a great stage actor, potentially the greatest of his generation, thought by some to be the new Laurence Olivier, because of his rich voice and commanding muscular presence. He has become a Hollywood star but still yearns for success on stage. However his alcoholism and lack of discipline hold him back. The two are yin and tang.
Seen like that, it could be any clash between an older and younger generation, between a fading light and a bright young thing, between great past achievement and great future potential.
In this rehearsal process, we see Burton struggling to understand Hamlet. He sees the Prince as a man of action- not unlike himself- so cannot fathom why he dithers so. We see Gielgud offering many ideas or notes but unable to resist showing off his way of speaking the lines. And this is a most interesting aspect of the play- it says that the worst directors tell the actors what to do, while the best work with their actors to find the truth.
Burton initially reacts badly to this to-and-fro approach and, in moments of his worst behaviour, mocks the old thespian. Gielgud behaves with restraint but is a master of ironic comments: ‘Oh, you only wanted my opinion so you could disagree with it.’ When he does let go, he lets off the sharpest barbs.
Mark Gatiss and Johnny Flynn are both tremendous. Mr Gatiss speaks with a musical precision, he carries himself as the critic Kenneth Tynan said of Gielgud, like a furled umbrella. In fact, he is so convincing that it almost seems a shame for Mr Flynn, who otherwise would be the standout star of the show with his stabbing forceful vocals, his frenetic bonhomie, and his vicious bullying, all underpinned by emotional pain.
Tuppence Middleton is also splendid as Elizabeth Taylor combining vivaciousness and sexuality, with self deprecating humour and a down-to-earth quality.
The Motive And The Cue at the Noel Coward Theatre. Photo: Mark Douet

Es Devlin’s set follows the same principles of creating truth rather than imitation. The rehearsal room may not be totally naturalistic- there is less clutter but the brightly lit, airy space with no obvious ceiling suggests the truth of an openness where ideas can flow.

Similarly, the set for Burton and Taylor’s living room is not lavishly furnished, but a huge dark red wall convinces us that they live a life of luxury and decadence. The viewing aperture opens and closes in the rectangular shape of a proscenium arch, revealing and containing the sets but at other times closing them off, so that one or two actors are left alone at the front of the stage against a black backdrop for key moments of thought or conversation.
Hamlet of course is driven by his betrayed and dead father, so it’s hard not to see the relationship between the two men in The Motive And The Cue as that of a father and son, a love hate relationship in which they ultimately reconcile to release the Hamlet that is within Burton as they find the motive for Hamlet’s behaviour and the cue for releasing the passion of his performance.
This leads to Johnny Flynn performing a stupendous version of the ‘To be or not to be’ speech that, on the night I saw it, received a spontaneous and deserved round of applause.

How fitting it would be if Sam Mendes’ faultless production were to transfer to Broadway.

Originally seen at the National Theatre, this production has transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End of London (where Gielgud performed his own legendary Hamlet). It can be seen there until 23 March 2024
Paul was given a review ticket by the producers.
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Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis in Ulster American – review

Harrelson, Serkis & Harland shine in Ireland satire

★★★★

Woody Harrelson, Louisa Harland and Andy Serkis group for a selfie in a scene from Ulster American at the Riverside Studios in London December 2023.
Woody Harrelson, Louisa Harland & Andy Serkis in Ulster American. Photo: Johan Persson/

A big name from Hollywood has come to London to star in a stage play. That’s the basic plot of Ulster American by David Ireland. However, it so happens that two big names from Hollywood really have come to London to star in this particular stage play. And how lucky we are to be able to see the wonderful Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis on the Riverside Studios stage.

Mr Harrelson is the actor Jay and Mr Serkis plays Leigh, the director of the play. The two men are due to meet with the playwright the night before rehearsals begin. The venue is the director’s living room, a meticulous naturalistic set from Max Jones. They are playing a cat and mouse game, the rodent being Leigh. He thinks the coup of securing an Oscar-winning Hollywood actor will propel him to the artistic directorship of the National Theatre, so he doesn’t want to upset his star. Hence he pussy foots around Jay, panders to his outlandish opinions and eccentric behaviour.
All the while, Jay swaggers and poses and mansplains. Woody Harrelson is superb in this role. He has an easy film star smile and a physical dominance that especially manifests itself when he crouches in what could be a yoga position but makes him appear like an alpha male gorilla. He lopes like a menacing ape while Andy Serkis scuttles like a demented crab.
Jay is a caricature of the kind of actor whom stardom has turned into a spoilt child, and whose every whim and fancy is indulged. He is convinced the Bechdel test was invented by a man; he asks whether white people should ‘reclaim’ the N-word.
The most disturbing moment of this early encounter is when Jay asks Leigh who he would rape if forced to do so at gunpoint. It is shocking but amusing that Jay is so crass that he could even ask the question, but the funniest aspect is Andy Serkis’s reaction. His shocked expressions, squirming postures and desperate grabbing for a drink are a joy to watch.
Even so, is rape a subject for humour? You feel that, while David Ireland is exposing the hypocrisy of these two self-centered men who pretend to have feminist credentials in order to maintain their power, he is also jabbing his finger at us the audience as if to say why are you laughing at this?
He intends a parallel between these white males’ behaviour towards women and the British attitude to the Northern Irish, past and present. So, we the audience’s hypocrisy is being tested.
When Ruth the playwright arrives, tension is already high. And there are few directors as good Jeremy Herrin at signalling antagonistic feelings between characters, as we’ve seen recently in Best Of Enemies and A Mirror.
Played by Louisa Harland in a powerful performance, Ruth is thrilled her play has been chosen by this great actor. Her smile soon fades when she realises the true character of these men.
Straightaway , she reveals her steel when, despite her being introduced by Leigh as being Irish, she insists that, as someone from Northern Ireland, she is British.
Matters are made worse when the Irish American actor who thinks he will be playing a member of the IRA discovers that his character is a psychopathic Ulster Unionist who wants to kill catholics.
She will not change her script to accommodate him. Both men reveal their true colours as they abandon their previous pretension that they want to reveal artistic truth, by ignoring the truth of her play and trying to rewrite it.
Before long, verbal abuse becomes physical, and there is an hilarious chase around the room and through doors that reminds us of Jeremy Herrin’s skill as a director of farce that was seen in his production of Noises Off.
Some of the comedy dialogue is heavy handed, sometimes Woody Harrelson clowns a little too much, and the violent ending doesn’t have the smooth inevitability of a Martin McDonagh play, (which Ulster American resembles) but overall the effect is equivalent to a theatrical stun gun.
The message seems to be: ‘Don’t be surprised if your bad behaviour whether towards women, the Irish or anyone, comes back to poke you in the eye’.

The Ulster American can be seen At Riverside Studios intil 27 January 2024.

Paul received a review ticket from the producer.
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To Have And To Hold – Hampstead- review

Alun Armstrong stands out in new comedy

A scene from To Have And To Hold at Hampstead Theatre in November 2023
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.

Actors Marion Bailey and Alun Armstrong in a acene from the play To Have And To Hold at hampstead Theatre in November 2023
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.

Click here to watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

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The Confessions at the National Theatre – review

Hi Alexander Zeldin reveals the extraordinary life of an ordinary woman

★★★★★

The Confessions at the National Theatre. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

What does a person’s life amount to? How much do we really know about what went on, or goes on, in someone else’s life, even if we’re friends or family. Alexander Zeldin who has written a series of successful plays about ordinary people based on interviews, this time has decided to find out about his mother’s life, on the surface another ordinary person. A life she told him and tells us that is not interesting. Not an encouraging opening line when you know you have two hours without an interval to sit through but it turns out to be blatantly untrue.

Because, and this is part of what writer and director Mr Zeldin is saying, everyone has a story worth telling, if you tell it right. Which is what he does as he picks out key episodes from his mother’s life that show what women had to cope with in the sexist, racist sixties and seventies, first in conservative Australia and then in ostensibly progressive Europe, and how, as they say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

We first meet Alice as an older woman, played by Amelda Brown, standing in front of a red curtain. The curtain is drawn back and her story begins. Young Alice appears, acted by Eryn Jean Norvill. You can believe they are the same person at different stages of their life. Both have a ready smile and a vulnerability that make you empathise, as her creativity is suppressed by those around her: “You don’t need to set the bar at an unrealistic height for yourself,”says her first husband.

Also revealed is Marg Horwell’s clever set. It occupies a standard proscenium arch but, within that, there is smaller space , giving two areas for scenes to take place. Often we see the scenes changing, and how the set is constructed, as if all the memories are in the same space, in other words Alice’s mind.

The fact that it is patently a piece of theatre, from the set itself to the way the older Alice observes the younger one, sometimes smiling, sometimes distressed, enourages us to consider what is false memory, wishful thinking, interpretation, or just plain made up.  Alice and a friend even argue over what happened in a particular shared memory- one we have witnessed earlier. As her second and much nicer husband says: both memories can be true. So it is clear that we are being told a story, and indeed our memories are a story we tell ourselves.

It is, as people are fond of saying these days, Alice’s truth, or perhaps to be absolutely fair, Alexander Zeldin’s interpretation of her truth, and as such it speaks to our hearts. Even while theatricality reigns, we are convinced of the truth of what we are being shown, and this is partly because the conversations between people are totally natural. They talk over one another, falter, and fail to finish sentences.

Many of the men in her life attempt to bring her down. We also see from early on how women, from school friends to her mother to a right-on feminist, try to undermine her confidence. Like the men, in order to make them feel better about their own situation, they have to diminish others.

A truly shocking scene of sexual assault

Alice’s first husband Graham is pretty nasty, but the worst man she meets is Terry, an art historian. Graham is initially stiff and shy but eventually is revealed as possessive and rigid in his thinking. He insists against her objections on having sex to make a baby (“I’ll only take a few minutes” he says).

Terry is big headed and narcissistic. She gets the better of him in an argument about art and he regains his self respect by raping her. A scene that is played out behind a door in excruciating silence. A truly chilling moment. Followed by an extraordinary scene of retribution in which the older Alice gets him to strip naked. She too takes clothes off, then denies him sex, thus teaching him a humiliating lesson in consent. I imagine the reason it’s the older Alice doing this is because it’s what she wishes she had done at the time rather than what actually happened.

Eryn Jean Norvill in The Confessions. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

Both these brutal men are played by the same actor, Joe Bannister, who creates two very  different characters but shows us that they are cut from the same threadbare cloth.

Similarly, the two women who try most to eat away at her confidence – her mother and the feminist Eva – are both played by Pamela Rabe, again an impressive acting achievement in creating two contrasting but comparable characters, one passive aggressive, the other a larger-than-life bully.

The other actors are just as talented, often in multiple parts, and often making the same point about similarities. Jerry Killick plays two obnoxious men, a neighbour Eldon and a lecturer Joss. Brian Lipson is Alice’s caring but ineffective father and her kindly but nervous companion Jacob.

Yasser Zadeh plays various sincere, emotional young men including her friend Leigh. Lilit Lesser as Pat, a naval officer, shows that men don’t have a monopoly on racism, militarism or immorality. Gabrielle Scawthorn is Alice’s friend Susie who swaps one restricted life for another.

A quick word of praise for the lighting by Paule Constable: the house lights stay up for the whole show but there are many subtle changes of mood. And Yannis Philippakis provides dramatic sonorous music.

In the end, you are uplifted by Alice’s ability to survive what her mother called a world full of hard surfaces, thanks to her resilience and self belief. There is a fantastic moment, when the smaller arch turns around completely and she steps through it like Pierrot in the painting by Watteau that she so admires.

When her son played by Lilit Lesser, who could be the author, eventually arrives on the stage and is revealed as a rude, angry teenager, we have proof that children don’t know their parents and only see them from their selfish point of view, unless they take the trouble to find out more, as the brilliant Alexander Zeldin has, in this extraordinary story of an ordinary life.

The Confessions can be seen at The National Theatre until 4 November 2023 and then at Comédie de Genève (8-12 November), Théâtre de Liège (15-18 November) and Comédie de la Clermont (22-24 November).

Paul paid for his own ticket.

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The Ocean At The End Of The Lane – review

Neil Gaiman’s fantasy story is adapted into a theatrical spectacle with a heart

★★★★★
Keir Ogilvy, Millie Hikasa & Kemi-Bo Jacobs in The Ocean At THe End Of The Lane. Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg

Maybe, like me, you’ve never got around to seeing The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Yes, it has been around a while. It opened at the National Theatre in 2019, then Covid intervened. Then it was revived and a tour throughout this year has finally seen it wash up at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End. There have been plenty of opportunities, so what’s your excuse?

Let me give you mine. It’s a children’s show, or even if it’s not, it’s a fantasy, or even if it is rooted in real life, it’s all spectacle and no heart. Well, I’ve finally seen it, and I can tell you, none of these excuses hold up.
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is a stage adaptation of a novel by Neil Gaiman.  The idea of bringing this story to the stage came from a true theatre person: Katy Rudd. She knows theatre, she loves theatre and she knows how to make a magical show.
I’ve got to be careful here because the word ‘magical’ is loaded. There is a whole literary genre known as magical realism, wherein an ostensibly real world has unnatural things going on. Then there’s the magic that is more properly called ‘tricks’, which theatre is full of. Then again, there is the magic of theatre that involves no tricks but somehow transports you into another world.
All these forms of magic combine in this production.
The story concerns a child. So is it a children’s show? Well, older children will probably enjoy it, but the answer is emphatically ‘no’. It’s very much about how we as adults lose our ability to see beyond the world in front of us and enter into the world of imagination.
We meet a particular adult who is reminded of something that happened to him as a child- or may have happened. Cut to an unhappy 12 year old, already regarded as weird because he seems to prefer books to people, who has gone through the trauma of losing his mother. Keir Ogilvy is magnificent in this part, a stuttering, gangling, wide-eyed performance.
He meets a strange girl called Lettie, a Peter Pan like character played with energy and passion by Millie Hikasa. He also gets acquainted with her mother and grandmother, who seem to know things well beyond the time and space they occupy.
Thus begins a fantastic adventure that takes place on their farm and in his house.
So, yes, it is fantasy but not Star Wars or Marvel Universe fantasy. This is the everyday world you and I might occupy, suddenly host to strange goings on.
Like a monster from another parallel world being let in ours and wreaking havoc. And what a monster. Guaranteed to send chills down your spine. Until it is personified in the form of a sinister lodger- Ursula, played by Charlie Brooks, with mad eyes and a steely smile). Then the battle begins.
The stage is filled with the kind of spectacle, that is far more impressive than cinema CGI because it is being created before your eyes with smoke and coloured lights and swirling cloths and people in costumes.

There is no better moment of stage

Three actors, namely Laurie Ogden, Charlie Brooks and Trevor Fox, sit round a kitchen table in the stage play The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Laurie Ogden, Charlie Brooks and Trevor Fox in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Photo: Pamela Raith

magic than when Ursula disappears through a door stage right and instantly reappears through another door stage left. Then more and more doors appear with Ursula appearing here there and everywhere until your brain is overwhelmed. Members of the audience were gasping with astonishment. 

And in this eulogy to theatre, we are shown how some of the magic works- we see the ensemble of ‘stage hands’ who carry characters through the air when they are flying, falling or swimming; or moments when a scene ends and the stage hands move in to remove scenery only to find the characters decide to carry on talking, so they pause and replace the props. We see the mechanics, but still imagine it to be ‘real’. I use the word advisedly since, as this play reminds us, your perception of reality, present and past, will be different to mine.
The point is, like all art forms, theatre stimulates our imagination, then requires our imagination in order for it to work. And, as this story underlines, imagination is what enables us to see the truth about the world and how to change it,
If it were purely to enjoy the magic of theatre, I would recommend seeing this show. But there is more, much more, and that’s in the power of the storytelling. The boy regularly quotes from The Chronicles Of Narnia but also Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan.
Like many great stories, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane engages the heart as it takes us into the world of this lonely young misfit. It leaves us simultaneously uplifted and sad.
It is irrelevant whether the events really happened or were invented as a way of coping with an unfriendly world. The story of threatening monsters, benevolent witches, and a faithful friend is grippingly real for him, as it is for us.
Neil Gaiman is one of the great storytellers, and all praise to Joel Horwood too for adapting the story into two and bit hours of character-driven adventure.
The other actors deserve recognition. Trevor Fox, who plays the boy’s father and the boy as an adult, is as funny, melancholy and eccentric as adults so often are in children’s eyes. Laurie Ogden is suitably annoying and obnoxious as the boy’s sister. Kemi-Bo Jacobs is Lettie’s gentle, loving mother. Finty Williams makes her grandmother seem as old as the hills but has a glint in her eyes that show she is as sharp as a brand new knife.
While I’m giving credits, I must praise- or more properly bow down to- set designer Fly Davis, Costume and Puppet Designer Samuel Wyer, Lighting designer Paule Constable, and Magic and illusions director Jamie Harrison.

So, even if you normally shun shows about children, or flee from fantasy fiction, or sidestep spectacle, I urge you to make an exception and go to the Noel Coward Theatre to see this 5 star show about the power of storytelling.

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Jonny Lee Miller in A Mirror – Almeida – review

Jonny Lee Miller excels as actor playing censor

★★★★

A male actor stands looking down at a female actor on a chair
Jonny Lee Miller and Tanya Reynolds in A Mirror. Photo: Marc Brenner

It may seem like we’re attending a wedding but it’s clear there’s something else going on. There are posters telling us ‘This Play Is A Lie’. There’s a massive Oath of Allegiance in the foyer. The smaller poster warning against subversion. Even as you sip your delicious coffee from the bar, you realise that you are meant to be in some kind of authoritarian state and this is going to be one of those evenings when you are part of the play. The play in question is A Mirror, a new work by Sam Holcroft that explores state censorship and the state of theatrical writing.

Inside the auditorium, a wedding is taking place. Except it isn’t. That’s just a cover to fool the authorities. We’re really here to watch an unlicensed play, apparently at some danger not only to the actors but to ourselves.
Sam Holcroft was inspired to write this play by a visit to North Korea. Then again, censorship comes in many forms: self censorship under the pressure of social media mobs or powerful people being the most pernicious.
The play- the illegal play- begins with a government censor Mr Čelik interviewing a new young playwright Adem. Those who have come to the show primarily to see Jonny Lee Miller will be very happy. The star of the film Trainspotting, the TV series Elementary, and theatre such as the National’s Frankenstein commands the stage. As Čelik, his leather gloves, his stiff stance, his tight smile, his clipped way of speaking, even his moments of vulnerability and self delusion, give him a sinister air no matter how charming he appears to be.
It’s really quite hard to take your eyes off him, which is a shame because Micheal Ward from TV’s Top Boy who plays Adem is tremendous in his stage debut. His character’s sincerity and naivety are pitched perfectly so that his puzzlement at the criticism leveled at his writing and his eagerness to please, even as he inadvertently produces ever more provocative work, is always believable.
What has attracted Čelik to Adem’s first play is that he can write dialogue that rings true. The problem is, the subject matter is unacceptable- a prostitute and her client, drug dealing, a man masturbating, and much more expose the failings of the country. It turns out that Adem has the ability to remember word for word what people say and that his work is transcripts of conversations he has heard through the walls of his flat, which is why his play is so true to life.
Things get decidedly more complicated- and funnier- when he returns with a new effort which is a transcript of his first meeting with Čelik. Why is this controversial? Because by holding up a mirror to Čelik, the government officer sees his own behaviour as a censor exposed.
The theme of the play- that is, both the play within the play and the overall play- is that art should be a mirror to us, to life and to society. This is an entertaining satire so I’m sure Sam Holcroft doesn’t mean us to take literally that art is better when it offers verbatim dialogue, but the point is, the best art tells a truth, whereas the Ministry of Culture wants it to tell a lie– to offer heroic tales with happy endings that glorify the motherland.
Čelik takes his new assistant Mei under his wing. Alongside an awkward seduction, he attempts to educate her about the power of art. One of the tragedies of this story is that the censor is only too well aware of its power, which is why it needs to be censored. He introduces her to Shakespeare, particularly Romeo And Juliet which has been banned because of its downbeat ending.
One of the joys of this production is the performance of Tanya Reynolds in which Mei blossoms before our eyes. At first, she is a nervous newcomer worried about expressing an opinion but aware that the little, and officially approved, theatre she has seen doesn’t have the ring of truth. All the while she is trying to manage her boss’s amorous intentions. Then she grows in confidence as she gets to know great plays: a perfect illustration of the power of art.

She also gets some of the funniest lines, as when the only thing she likes about one officially approved play is that the trees were realistic.

Two male actors exchange a joke
Micheal Ward and Geoffrey Streatfeild in A Mirror. Photo: Marc Brenner

Some of the most enjoyable moments in A Mirror are when the characters do readings from plays, usually badly, with Mei the most stilted of all. It’s a hilarious parody of theatre, illustrating the important role of actors in interpreting writing. Two versions of a real wartime event are set alongside one another- one a heroic fairytale by an official playwright Bax, Čelik’s star protégé, the other raw and truthful by Adem.

It could be argued that Sam Holcroft presents some of her arguments against censorship too simplistically. After all, much great art has been produced in censorious times: before 1968, Wilde, Coward, Shaw, Rattigan, even Joe Orton, had to submit to the blue pencil of the Lord Chamberlain, and Shakespeare’s plays required the approval of his predecessor, the Master of Revels. Many classic films of the forties were made under the Hays Code.  But Ms Holcroft and director Jeremy Herrin keep the satire moving in a way that doesn’t give you time to question the details too closely.
The state-sponsored playwright Bax is pleased with his fame but cannot come to terms with his compromises. Geoffrey Streatfeild gives his character the right mix of arrogance and self-loathing.

The Power of Theatre

There are various interruptions because police are apparently in the vicinity, during which the cover story of the ‘wedding’ resumes. Characters rush around the auditorium checking doors. These are the occasions when we are reminded that Jonny Lee Miller is an actor playing an actor pretending to be a censor. Again, a first-hand example of the power of theatre.
I won’t go any further in describing the story because it ends with a major twist, albeit one that makes perfect sense when you review what you’ve seen.
Instead, let me describe Max Jones’ set. It begins as a wedding venue. The audience is on three sides, and a raised thrust stage features a cake on a table. This is cleared to be replaced by a desk and chairs. Further back is a half-curtained area indicating a backstage but also suggesting, to me anyway, the kind of curtain that concealed the reality of the puffed-up Wizard of Oz.
Nick Powell’s music played by cellist Miriam Wakeling is a constant addition to the tense atmosphere. And tense is the word I would return to again and again in Jeremy Herrin’s robust production of Sam Holcroft’s exploration of the importance of art and the many ways, crude and subtle, in which it can be censored.                                       
Thank goodness for the Almeida Theatre and its artistic director Rupert Goold for continuing to stage bold new work when so many are playing safe.
Parts of this review have been redacted by the Minister of Culture
A Mirror runs at the Almeida Theatre in London until 23 September 2023.

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

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Lucy Prebble’s The Effect – National Theatre – Review

Intimate play swamped by huge theatre despite Paapa Essiedu’s giant performance


★★★

Taylor Russell & Paapa Essiedu in The Effect. Photo: Marc Brenner

How much does our brain make us what we are, and how much does our behaviour influence our brain, particularly when it comes to love? In The Effect, Lucy Prebble examines what makes us human and the nature of love. It’s a dizzying journey, ful of emotion, shock and stimulation for that blob of grey matter. The dialogue is not only snappy and funny and sad, but extraordinarily natural. It’s a gift to the actors who include Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell on top form.

The Effect was premiered over ten years ago in the National Theatre’s smallest auditorium. Since then, its author Lucy Prebble has received global acclaim as a writer for the TV series Succession, as well as I Hate Suzie. Now it’s back, and given pride of place in the National’s large Lyttelton Theatre. However, despite one massive star performance, this revival of The Effect is a disappointment.

The Lyttelton is a cavernous auditorium, and that’s the problem, because everything about this play says ‘intimate’. There are only four characters, two of whom are taking part in the trial of a drug, two of whom are supervising doctors. And it nearly all takes place in the confines of a clinic.
I assume it’s the idea of director Jamie Lloyd to reconstruct the auditorium into a traverse configuration. There is now a massive bank of stalls seating on what would be the back of the stage, facing the usual (albeit reduced) stalls and the circle. The stage has been brought forward so both sides are given equal weight. It’s a good way to try to bring the audience closer to the action and restore some of that lost intimacy. But it wasn’t enough for me, because this is still a huge space with around 900 paying customers.
Like theatre-in-the-round, a traverse stage demands minimal props. (Don’t get me started about how the sink and bed blocked views during Brokeback Mountain at sohoplace.) In this production, there is an empty platform with a chair at each end. Any physical representation of a clinic is replaced in Soutra Gilmour’s striking set by varying uplit rectangular sections indicating different scenes. It’s still clinical but in more of a sci-fi film way. Yet, this is not a futuristic play: it’s very much about today’s world, and in particular our reliance on medicine and what being human means.
So this entire setting has the effect (sorry, no pun intended) of making us, the audience, feel like clinicians looking dispassionately at an experiment. This may be the intention, but, if it is, it undermines the strength of the play which is the way it draws us into the feelings of the characters, feelings which basically wreck the clinical testing.
There is superb music by Mikey J Asante that helps ratchet up the tension and release the euphoria.
Beyond that, everything hinges on the actors. And they do well, but it’s a lot to ask of them: to provide an intimate performance in a vast auditorium. Inevitably they’re mic’d, as is usually the case these days, to amplify their voices. So, at least they sound normal rather than strained, but it is also a reminder that they are playing to a large crowd.
This is the story. A man and a woman are taking part in a four week trial of a new anti-depression drug and the effect it has on the brains of healthy volunteers. I don’t speak as an expert but my understanding is that antidepressants rely on raising dopamine levels- the chemical in the brain that makes us feel good. So, when two participants fall in love, we ask ourselves, just as the doctors do: ‘is it really love or the effect of the drug?’ This inevitably leads us to question: ‘what is love?’ We do eventually get some answers as we go beyond the end of the trial but I’ll say no more about that, because I don’t want to spoil how this marvellously written play pans out.

Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell are a believable couple

Paapa Essiedu is the man, Tristan. It’s the latest in a string of impressive performances that must cement his position as one of the top actors of the new generation. Appropriately this experienced actor plays a seasoned participant in scientific tests, which he does for the payments, and doesn’t take too seriously. Triss is an East London boy, fast-talking, edgy, constantly jigging up and down. He gets the funniest lines as he pushes boundaries or steps with both feet into delicate situations. When he falls in love, he is puzzled and deliriously happy, but skeptical that chemicals are playing a part. It’s a bravura performance, full of complexity and authenticity.
The woman he meets- Connie- is a psychology student who gets involved in a trial for the first time out of what you might call professional and possibly personal interest. She is serious-minded, knows a lot about the way the trials are conducted, and believes the chemical affects the brain. But she is also needy in her relationships with the doctor and with Triss whom she finds amusing and intriguing, but also irritating.
A close up of two actors Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell kissing in Lucy Prebbele's play The Effect at the National theatre in London in August 2023. The woman holds the man's face
Paapa Essiedu & Taylor Russell in The Effect. Photo: Marc Brenner
Just as Connie is new to being a participant in scientific trials, the part is played by a newcomer to the stage, Taylor Russell.
So there is a parallel here between the experience of the characters and of the people playing them. I don’t know if this affected the dynamics between them as actors, but they are certainly believable as a couple. There is a series of rapid short scenes in which they escape the clinic and play games with each other and explore each other’s bodies with laughter and euphoria, that left me as giddy as them.
It’s a high profile debut but Taylor Russell proves to be a talented actor who takes it in her stride.
There are twists and misdirections that make us, the audience, constantly reassess this relationship, and the question of how much is the result of the dopamine they are being fed and how much comes from the dopamine they are producing naturally.
In the same way, we are asked to consider whether depression is biological or psychological. It’s a debate that concerns the two doctors: Dr Lorna James who is supervising the test, and Dr Toby Sealey who is supervising her. Just to complicate matters further, it turns out they have had a relationship in the past.
Toby, in an authoritative performance by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, is totally committed to the idea that depression can be cured by pharmaceuticals, and at one point he is seen giving a well-rehearsed, smug lecture on the subject. Lorna is not so sure. It emerges that she herself suffers from depression and does not trust the drugs used to treat it. In one of the most powerful scenes in the play, she talks about the parts of her brain and what function they have: ‘Here’s my impulse to kill myself. Here is my controlling that impulse.’ Michele Austin, in a strong performance, delivers most of her lines in the flat monotone you might expect of someone suffering from depression.
The play has been changed to accommodate, among other things, the background of the actors (London and Canada), and the fact that the cast is all black. Michele Austin‘s character is given the wonderful line: ‘I’m a working-class Black woman. Getting out of bed is a political act’, which generated applause from some of the audience.
The two doctors discuss the effects of the drug but, like the participants, or indeed any human being, they have their opinions, their experience, and their secrets that influence what happens in the trial. It seems Lucy Prebble is saying there is no possibility of a truly objective scientific trial, despite the use of placebos and bias testing.
And she really piles it on to make the point. In a confined space, I suspect we would be carried along by the characters’ passion, but, in the arms’ length environment of the Lyttelton, I for one was left wondering how these people ever got to be on the trial or supervising it, in the first place.
The nature of depression is one thread running through the play but the more dominant one is about the nature of love: why do we fall in love, why do we sacrifice for love, why does it last long after the initial dopamine infatuation fades? In her convincing story of Triss and Connie, Lucy Prebble covers a lot of ground, and establishes that, in a world in which medical science may sometimes seem to have all the answers, love remains one of life’s mysteries.
The Effect is performing at the National Theatre until 7 October 2023.
Paul paid for his ticket to see a preview performance of The Effect
This review was revised (mainly reorganised) on 11 August 2023. 
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Operation Mincemeat- West End review

​From fringe to hit West End musical

★★★★★

Two actors watch as another dances in front of a painting of Winston Churchill in the stage musical Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre June 2023
Zoe Roberts, Jak Malone & Natasha Hodgson in Operation Mincemeat Photo: Matt Crockett

This was my first ever visit to the Fortune Theatre, because for the last 33 years it has been the home to The Woman In Black. Now it’s hosting Operation Mincemeat and while it may not match the previous occupant’s three decades, this accomplished, fast-moving musical comedy certainly deserves a long run.

From the moment the yellow curtain goes up on Operation Mincemeat, you know you’re in for a treat. It begins with a chorus number by the five cast members, who start as they mean to go on. They fill the stage with their larger than life characters, exuberant performances and the sheer enjoyment of being there.
Over a couple of hours, we are told the true, albeit embellished, story from World War Two of an MI5 plan to use a dead body with fake papers to fool the German army into thinking the British will invade Sardinia rather than Sicily. However, this is not really a tribute to MI5, more a satire on male chauvinism in general and the Old Boy network in particular.
Operation Mincemeat is written and composed by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts, developed from an idea that became a run at the tiny New Diorama theatre in London and then polished into a West End show. Currently, all of the creators, less composer Felix Hagan, are in the cast and are joined by Claire Marie Hall and Jak Malone who have fantastic singing voices. The others sing well too. I’m pretty sure the four understudies who are given equal billing in the programme are also multi-talented.
The cast play many parts of both male and female gender, and this adds an additional layer of humour, as when Natasha Hodgson, playing the group’s leader Ewen Montagu, struts with old Etonian entitlement and masculine pomposity. His response to the question ‘Is it legal?’ is ‘Does it matter?’ And he tells us in song:
​For we were made to give the orders / While lesser men take heed / For some were born to follow / But we were born to lead.

Outstanding performances

Outstanding is Jak Malone as the secretary Hester, who sings the most moving song of the evening, Dear Bill, a fictitious letter to a soldier on the front line. Zoë Roberts is constantly hilarious as Johnny Bevan, the bureaucratic man ultimately in charge, Ian Fleming with his eccentric ideas for a spy novel, and Haselden, our out-of-his-depth ‘man in Spain’. David Cumming is a riot as the shy, panicking, nerdy Charles, while Claire Marie Hall excels as the artless young assistant Jean.
The cast of Operation Mincement, a stage musical at the Fortune Theatre in London. Three actors are standing, one is sitting on a desk, the fifth is seated holding a phone.
Zoe Roberts, Jak Malone,, David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson & Claire-Marie Hall in Operation Mincemeat. Photo: Matt Crockett

Many of the routines seem like classic comedy- music hall even. For example, there’s a scene where all five are exchanging and getting tangled in hats, phones and a briefcase, with clockwork precision. And there are moments of stage magic when they change characters and costumes in the blink of an eye.

The cast are greatly aided by having director Robert Hastie and choregrapher Jenny Arnold on board. Both are highly experienced and it shows in the slickness of the production. And yet Operation Mincemeat retains the feel and excitement of a fringe show. The theatre is one of the smallest in the West End with a stage to match.  Ben Stones‘ set is deliberately sparse with a couple of desks and chairs, a display board and a mobile staircase, plus a backdrop reminiscent of a map, and, that staple of farces, lots of doors. Until that is, we launch into a very non-fringe-like finale, complete with glittering Nazis, which really is as ‘glitzy’ as they announce.
The songs cross a number of musical genres, with clever, witty lyrics that are often delivered at the sort of breakneck speed that may remind you of Gilbert and Sullivan or Frank Loesser. How about this?
If we cannot storm the beaches / It’s sure to spell defeat / If the muscle-men can’t do it / Call the masters of deceit.
In a way, there is a parallel between the small MI5 team that pulled off this unlikely deceit that helped an invasion, and the small group that created this unexpected hit that invaded the West End. It is an incredibly polished, laugh-out-loud musical, and one that deserves to run and run.
Operation Mincemeat is at the Fortune Theatre until at least 4 November 2023. operationmincemeat.com
Paul paid for his ticket.
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