Category: London Productions

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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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Accidental Death of an Anarchist- Review

Daniel Rigby stars in the funniest play in London (probably)

★★★★

Two actors hold on to athird actor who appears to be about to throw himslef out of a window in a scene from Accidental Death Of An Anarchist at the Theatre Royal Haymarket June 2023
Tom Andrews, Tony Gardner & Daniel Rigby (L to R) in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. Photo: Helen Murray

A maniac arrives at a police station in London and pretends to be a judge investigating a death in custody. There follows the maddest, funniest play you’re likely to see in London this summer, and possibly the most political. The script is cleverer than a false police report and Daniel Rigby’s performance is more hilarious than a Chief Constable trying to defend their corrupt officers.

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist was written fifty years ago by Dario Fo as a reaction to a death in police custody in Italy. Sadly it has never stopped being relevant, and with daily headlines about corruption in the Metropolitan Police, it has been crying out for an update.

Step forward Tom Basdon with an adaptation packed with references to recent events, alongside an abundance of timeless jokes. Farce may seem an odd way to expose a rotten constabulary but when, as the play mentions, all the inquiries, and inquiries into inquiries, and inquiries into inquiries into inquiries fail to change anything, the situation becomes so absurd that laughter seems the only response left to vent one’s anger and frustration.
And you can’t not laugh at Daniel Rigby, as his character who has been brought into the station accused of impersonating a psychiatrist wriggles out of that charge with much verbal dexterity, then takes the opportunity to impersonate a judge who’s investigating how a suspect fell out of a window during interrogation, and then a judge pretending to be a forensic investigator (with a wig and false arm, two of many props in his Liberty bag). He pretends to be on the side of the police while tricking them into revealing how corrupt they are. The hapless officers are led into ever more ridiculous explanations about what happened, as they try to cover their arses.
It’s not a long evening but it is packed with more jokes and visual gags than a whole comedy series. As absurdity piles upon absurdity with crazy logicality, Daniel Rigby rattles off his lines faster than a police car on a shout, while also throwing himself about the stage. The pace, as directed by Daniel Raggett, never stops, except for a moment when Mr Rigby gets off a table in comedic slow motion.
You would never pick Daniel Rigby out as a comic. He doesn’t have the face of say Rowan Atkinson or the gangly body of a John Cleese. In fact, the very ordinariness of his appearance in the lineup makes him funnier because what he says and does is all the more unexpected. He has a cheeky grin and his eyes glint with mischief- no wonder he was so successful at playing Eric Morecambe in the TV film Eric and Ernie. He talks in a slightly high voice that always seems to be verging on the hysterical, and his movements are sudden and surprising.
In fact, slapstick and physical comedy feature highly on the charge sheet: characters are punched and soaked in water, Mr Rigby throws files of statements into the air (they are after all just paper). And in a moment I loved, he starts writing on the whiteboard, runs out of space, and continues writing on the wall.

Thrilling and dangerous

Daniel Rigby and company in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. Photo: Helen Murray

To compound the fun, The Maniac (so-called) says he is an actor, and, of course,  he is an actor. The conceit is used to create further anarchy. So he refers to and even speaks to the audience, which the other characters think it is in his mind. He deliberately breaks the fourth wall by throwing his jacket and later sweets into the audience, following the mention of pantomime.

The inventiveness feels as thrilling and dangerous, as hanging out of a window on the fourth floor.
The five other actors are all in effect straight men and a straight woman to Daniel Rigby’s clown. Tony Gardner as the Superintendent has the panicky face of someone who has been promoted beyond their ability, Tom Andrews is a Neanderthal bullying detective, Ro Kumar is a naïve young officer, Ruby Thomas plays a reporter more interested in her image than uncovering the truth. They all have good lines. Mark Hadfield, playing a confused inspector, says at one point: ‘Unconscious bias? I don’t what it is, but I hate it.’
Anna Reid’s set conjures up perfectly the plastic soullessness of a police interrogation room. I liked the way she placed the stage floor at an angle to the proscenium arch, as a further indication of the way the world is knocked out of kilter, not only by The Maniac but by the fact that the people who should uphold the law are breaking it.
Allusions to real events are almost casually thrown in to take you by surprise when you’re in the middle of a belly laugh (‘It’s just bants, like when we take a selfie with a murder victim.’ )
There is a roll call of the names of real victims of Met police corruption near the end, and a statistic is projected onto the set after the curtain call stating that there have been 1862 deaths in British police custody since 1990. Accidental Death of an Anarchist is so shocking that it makes you wonder whether you should have been enjoying yourself quite so much. But this is the kind of defiant laughter that helps us through the worst of situations.
There’s so much madness and mayhem that it’s not surprising the play starts to run out of steam towards the end. Even so, you still feel you’ve had your money’s worth from this evening of non-stop eye-watering laughter.
Accidental Death Of An Anarchist is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London until 9 September 2023.
Paul Seven Lewis received a complimentary review ticket.
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Dear England – National Theatre – Review

Joseph Fiennes hits the back of the net as Gareth Southgate

★★★★★

Joseph Fiennes playing Gareth Southgate in front of actors playing footballers in the National Theatre production of Dear England in June 2023
Joseph Fiennes and company in Dear England. Photo: Marc Brenner

You might think if you’re seeing a play about the manager of the England men’s football team, you need to know about football. You don’t. There’s hardly a football in sight. Dear England is the story of a clash of cultures rather than a battle between teams on the pitch. It tells the story of how a self effacing nice guy tries to change the culture of a macho group that is paralysed by fear. In the process it provides us with a lot of comedy, as well as some thoughts about the state of the nation

I know next to nothing about football and that actually helped when I saw Dear England because I was probably more excited for not knowing the outcome of some of the matches than if I’d known what was going to happen. But the thing is, it’s not really about the results. I think we all know England didn’t win the World Cup last year. Or even the Euros the year before. Or it would have been all over the front pages, because one thing we do know is how important England the football team is to a significant part of England the nation.
James Graham has built Dear England around the idea that the team is a microcosm of the country.  One other footballing event we probably know about is the infamous missed penalty, the one taken by Gareth Southgate back in 1996 that meant England lost to Germany in a Euros semi-final.

It’s a failure that hangs over him throughout this play, because, for some reason, it has come to symbolise the moment when everybody realised there was something rotten at the core of the England team.

That’s where we begin. Rupert Goold’s production takes place sandwiched between the glare of two harsh neon circles, one above and another at stage level, recreating the feel of a stadium but also emphasising the pressure on the players of being in the middle of a pitch and indicating the magnifying glass focus of a nation’s expectations. On the stage floor are a mass of dotted lines and arrows of the kind that show attacking manoeuvres.

On stage are cubicles through which people enter and exit, symbolising perhaps the changes that take place in cubicles but also in a practical way cutting down the immense distance from the actual wings where actors appear and disappear. It is an imaginative and effective use of the Olivier’s large thrust stage by designer Es Devlin and lighting designer Jon Clark.

There’s a quick run through of a succession of England managers, who in amusing cameo impressions have plenty to say about their management style and why they have failed. Until eventually, Gareth Southgate takes over and, in his reticent way, asks why, with some of the world’s best players, they are not a winning team. He concludes it’s all in the mind.

Joseph Fiennes in Dear England. Photo: Marc Brenner

So he calls in a psychologist Pippa Grange. And this is where the fun begins. Well, actually it’s already begun when Mr Southgate (Call me Gareth) first meets his coaching team. Played by Joseph Fiennes, this is not simply an impressionist’s turn, although I’m guessing his mannerisms- the looking down, the pointing when he agrees with somebody, the precise use of language, the slightly nasal tone, the nervous grin, are all reasonably accurate.

What we get in an outstanding performance is a rounded character who admits he doesn’t know everything, who listens, who isn’t confrontational, who doesn’t shout (I have heard of another famous manager’s hairdryer treatment) but who ultimately has a steel resolve. We realise that when he lets players go or when he stands up to racism.

Or when he meets Mike, the assistant he has inherited. I think this character has been invented to represent the antithesis of Gareth. He is a blustering ‘man’s man’, who has no time for losers or psychology and woke thinking. Played hilariously by Paul Thornley, he is red-faced and always on the brink of boiling over. Gareth lets Mike have his rant, and then ignores him.

I think we must assume that Mike and the new senior assistant coach Steve Holland, brought in by Gareth, continue to support the schooling of the players in physical training and tactics elsewhere, while the work on their minds takes place in front of us.

I only saw one football for the whole length of the play. Probably just as well because they are actors. I mean they’re physically fit and go through some balletic movements, thanks to movement directors Ellen Kane and Hannes Langolf, but they wouldn’t have convinced as professional footballers if they’d tried to kick a ball. In fact a feature of Rupert Goold’s direction is constant, feverish movement, heightened by the regularly turning stage.

Together Gareth and Pippa work on moving the team away from being individuals whose loyalty is to their club to a team who know and support one another. And away from people who bottle up their feelings to ones who are open about their emotions. And most importantly, away from a fear of failure to embracing and learning from it (echoing Samuel Beckett’s ‘Fail again. Fail better’).

There is immense enjoyment is in seeing the players gradually change from resistance to embracing the new approach- as well as each other. Near the beginning, Gareth tells his squad that it will be a long haul to victory, like a three act play. You could feel the sigh of relief from the theatre lovers that he was finally talking their language.

Apart from Gareth Southgate and to an extent Pippa Grange, all the other characters are caricatures. It is James Graham’s style in his many plays and TV dramas based on real people to create the truth of a person’s character through humour rather than a nasty or saintly portrait. You may remember his Brexit: The Uncivil War, Tammy Faye, Ink, Best Of Enemies, Quiz or This House. In this play, James Graham can’t resist introducing our recent prime ministers- all trying and failing to score.

So good, so good, so good

I can’t say how accurate the portrayals of the players are but I did end up feeling for them. England captain Harry Kane, as portrayed by Will Close, is barely articulate but seen to inspire the others through his lack of ego and a simple confidence in his ability. Josh Barrow’s goalkeeper Jordan Pickford is gloriously hyperactive.
Darragh Hand’s Marcus Rashford stands out as a young man from a deprived background with a bit of a chip on his shoulder who is inspired to become an enthusiastic leader. Adam Hugill is the solid defender and plain speaking Yorkshireman Harry Maguire.

It’s such a good cast that it’s hard not to mention everybody. I must pick out Gunnar Cauthery who gives us terrific impressions of a wisecracking Gary Lineker, a cool Sven-Goran Eriksson, a blustering Boris Johnson and a sanguine Wayne Rooney. And Crystal Condie who does the same for ex-footballer and now commentator Alex Scott and Theresa May.

Gina McKee in Dear England. Photo: Marc Brenner

I haven’t said enough about Gina McKee whose twinkling eyes and turned-up corners of the mouth are like the smile of a tiger, and whose soft northern vowels sugarcoat a hard centre. She made the most of a part that seemed to me slightly superficial, but this may be because Mr Graham didn’t want to distract too much from his main character.

The idea of someone coming to a football club and creating a successful team by getting them in touch with their feelings and believing in themselves may make you think of Ted Lasso. Both shows clearly touch the zeitgeist of the 21st century.

But unlike the Apple TV hit comedy, Dear England explores some big issues. At the beginning, the expectations the nation has of its team reflect the nation’s view of itself. The fans are steeped in a history of England as the birthplace of football, as the winners of the 1966 World Cup, as the home of the finest league football. The team should have success on the world stage by right. If it doesn’t, the frustration leads to riots.

Although this is not explicitly stated, I would be surprised if Mr Graham doesn’t intend a parallel with England the country, which historically once ruled half the world, invented so much, and won World War 2, leading many of its people- at least an older generation- to expect that the country should by rights be a successful world power.

‘Believe in people, care about people, be kind’ is Gareth Southgate’s message to the new generation of England players but it is also a vision of the kind of nation England is in the new century or, at least, can be.

I was caught up in this journey and moved by its outcome, and loved being in a National Theatre audience singing along to Sweet Caroline.

Dear England can be seen at the National Theatre in London until 11 August 2023.

Paul received a complimentary review ticket.

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

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Groundhog Day – Old Vic – review

Tim Minchin’s Groundhog Day musical is worth watching again and again


★★★★★

Two actors Tanisha Spring and AndyKarl raises glasses in a bar in a scene from the stage musical Groundhog Day at The Old Vic in London June 2023
Tanisha Spring and Andy Karl in Groundhog Day. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I hesitate to say this, because it’s been a few years since I saw the movie Groundhog Day, but Tim Minchin‘s stage musical version at the Old Vic in London may be funnier and deeper than the original.

The story is essentially the same. In fact Danny Rubin who wrote the film screenplay has written this musical’s book . So, once again, a cynical, egocentric TV weatherman Phil Connors is fated to repeat the same day until he redeems himself. The day in question is Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, an annual event when a large rodent predicts the end of winter.

There is some rewriting but the added value is Tim Minchin‘s smart music. Apart from boasting some amusing lyrics, the songs add more emotional depth to the main protagonist. In addition, the character of Phil’s producer Rita is expanded to ramp up the romantic element. In fact, post ‘me too’, women generally are given a more important role in this musical version, with critical attention paid to Phil’s initially appallingly sexism.

The song Playing Nancy that opens Act Two is a case in point.  Nancy, nicely played by Eve Norris, has been presented earlier as simply a shapely body that Phil lusts after. Now the woman laments: ‘I wasn’t quite aware that / I was put here to be stared at’, and asks: ‘Who am I to dream of something better?’

The aspiration to be better provides the thrust of the show. As Phil asks early on: ‘What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?’ In some ways, it’s a simple idea, that it’s never too late to be a better person because each day is the first day of the rest of your life. The message may be wrapped up in glorious comedy but it is profound enough to occur in different forms in Nietsche, Aristotle and Buddhism, as the excellent theatre programme reminds us.

Andy Karl is perfect

So we see Phil go through the steps to redemption, travelling from his initial bemusement, to shock at what seems like a nightmare, to the power going to his head, to suicidal despair, to a growing understanding that the only way to be truly happy is to help others, his redemption completed when he learns humility. Andy Karl is perfect in the role. He can sing and moves well, but the joy of his performance is in his physical appearance: an expressive face that changes from handsome TV star with a fake smile to panic to glee to desperation, and he has an athletic, flexible body that can puff out, deflate, leap, and fall.  Bill Murray, the star of the film, was brilliant as a curmudgeonly weatherman but the complexity Andy Kay and the musical bring to Phil Connors takes the character to a whole new level.

Possibly the most memorable scene is when Phil becomes suicidal. As happens throughout the musical, the day opens with him in bed in his small hotel room. One suicide after another sends him off stage in one direction, only for him to reappear instantly waking up in bed. It’s the sort of trick you see in a film and think little of it but done live on stage, it takes you back to when you first fell in love with the magic of theatre. Credit to Paul Kieve for this and other illusions.

Andy Karl and the company in Groundhog Day. Photo: Manuel Harlan

The set by Rob Howell is a wonder. Scenes of the groundhog ceremony, a diner, a street, and more, switch smoothly from one to the other while consistently returning to the centrepiece of the tiny bedroom. At one point a bar converts to a truck; and there’s also inventive use of model cars and houses to illustrate not only a car chase but a bigger view of the small town.

The nature of the story means that other characters don’t really develop but we do get to know them, and, by Phil’s actions, they do change as they too improve their lives. Take for example Debbie, played by Kamilla Fernandes, who discovers her voice and hits us with a powerful rock’n’roll song.

Tanisha Spring is terrific as Rita Hanson, a sweet, innocent woman who gradually reveals more about her insecure self and her ambitions, and provides the moral example Phil needs. The musical has a lot to say about time: we may all have felt regret at wasting it, or wishing we could have it over again to do things differently, or dreaming of the future while not living in the present. Ms Spring leads two of the best songs about this: she kicks off One Day which becomes an ensemble climax to Act One (Sample line: ‘One day, some day, my prince will come / But I won’t hold my breath / There’s only divorcees and weirdos left’),  and an outstanding second act duet with Andy Karl, If I Had My Time Again which includes the line ‘I’d take the path less trodden / avoid the crap I trod in’.

As well as enjoying the wonder and the laughter again, another reason for seeing Groundhog Day repeatedly is to catch more of Tim Minchin‘s clever lyrics.

Matthew Warchus directs the whole imaginative spectacle with imagination and verve. If this production doesn’t end up with a long run in the West End (and it should), it would make a great alternative to the Old Vic’s annual Groundhog Day-like repeat of A Christmas Carol.

Groundhog Day The Musical can be seen at The Old Vic in London until 19 August 2023.

Paul was given a complimentary review ticket.

Click here to watch this review of Groundhog Day on our YouTube channel

 

 

 

 

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The Third Man at The Menier – review

A musical thriller from a stellar team

★★★★

Scene from The Third Man at The Menier in June 2023
Sam Underwood and Natalie Dunne in The Third Man. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Theatre has become something of a vampire in recent years, roaming the dark auditoria of cinemas searching for films to turn into musicals. Sunset Boulevard is being revived; Groundhog Day is at the Old Vic; a version of Brokeback Mountain with music can be seen at Sohoplace; 42nd Street, The Wizard Of Oz, Sunset Boulevard and Grease are all back this year; Mrs Doubtfire is on the way and of course Back To The Future, Moulin Rouge and The Lion King are already racking up long runs. Even so, one film I never expected to be adapted as a stage musical is The Third Man. Yet here it is at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory – and it’s a triumph.

I have a slight reservation about one aspect of the adaptation of The Third Man, which I’ll come to, but it’s far outweighed by the thrilling pace and the rollercoaster emotions it evokes. Wisely it sticks closely to Graham Greene’s original mystery story of love and betrayal with its reluctant hero, its twists and turns, and its shocks. I’ll try not to give too much away because you may not have seen Carol Reed‘s classic black-and-white film from 1949.

The creative team of Christopher Hampton, Don Black, George Fenton and Trevor Nunn are all as old or older than the film. Their new musical version is a distillation of all their talent and experience.

Let’s start with the music written by George Fenton. Among the hundred plus films and TV series for which he has written the score are Gandhi, You’ve Got Mail, The Jewel In The Crown and David Attenborough’s Planet series. Appropriate to a serious story, it leans towards the drama of Claude-Michel Schoenberg‘s music for Les Miserables or the starkness of Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera.

Mr Fenton is a brave man to tackle The Third Man because the film’s theme is one of the most famous ever written. In this musical version, he pays brief homage to the jangling zither-based hit but goes for a score that suggests danger, passion and anger. Played by a live nine piece orchestra, directed by Tamara Saringer, the songs enhance the story and reveal character, as they should in a good musical.

The legendary Don Black and Christopher Hampton, provide the tight book and sharp lyrics. There are even a couple of duets that Rodgers and Hammerstein would have been proud of.

The story is about a pulp fiction writer called Holly Martins, who arrives in Vienna at the end of World War 2, when it is occupied by the American, British and Russian soldiers. He’s there to do some work for an old school friend Harry Lime, only to find he has died in an accident. As the first act progresses, he becomes increasingly suspicious about the circumstances surrounding his death. The British military police meanwhile indicate to him that Lime was a bad lot.

The first act ends with an astonishing discovery and the show continues with even more shocking revelations and heightened drama.

Where the musical really stands out is in the feelings expressed by Holly and also by Lime’s lover Anna. Both loved Harry and can’t believe he would have been involved in anything truly bad. As the pair investigate Harry’s death, Holly falls in love with Anna and pursues her with reckless, puppy-like devotion, a sentiment she does not return.

Sam Underwood is a fine singer and actor who communicates sadness, frustration and infatuation as he searches for the truth and wrestles with his conscience. With his naïve, boyish determination, Holly could be a hero from one of his adventure novels

Natalie Dunne is strong as Anna. By dwelling on her character more than is the case in the film, the musical is able to show her in a nightclub singing songs that could have come out of The Threepenny Opera or indeed Cabaret, songs both sad and amusing- and indicative of her free-thinking character. And because we get to know her, the subplot of the triangle between Holly, Anna and Harry carries more weight.

Simon Bailey also impresses as a callous villain who commands devotion. And that’s my reservation about the adaptation: he is portrayed as more obviously nasty and not as full of fake charm as this key character was in the film.

The Third Man at The Menier. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Edward Baker-Duly and Jonathan Andrew Hume strike just the right note as righteous but ruthless military policemen Major Calloway and Sergeant Paine. Other characters are more in the way of caricatures but they are well acted- it’s a pleasure to see Derek Griffiths as The Porter. Rachel Izen is his wife, and Gary Milner, Alan Vicary, and Harry Morrison are Lime’s shady associates.

The design by Paul Farnsworth is full of atmosphere. The costumes in grey or other subdued colours add to the film noir effect. Rubble litters the edges of the stage floor, a dark alley or tunnel goes off to the side: You feel you are in a sinister city ravaged by war.

The Menier has been reconfigured so the audience is on three sides. Actors run up and down aisles, ramping up the excitement, and, thank goodness, the sight lines are kept free from obstruction. The simplest of furniture is enough to suggest effectively a hotel lounge, backstage at the nightclub, a flat, and even a ferris wheel gondola.

Getting us off to the best of starts is the opening scene where Holly wanders the dimly lit streets of Vienna at night, helped by dark expressionist lighting from Emma Chapman, and is surrounded by people begging. Straightaway we know we are in desperate times.

It’s a masterpiece of direction by Trevor Nunn, who brings so much that he has learned and practised in a long career that encompasses Les Miserables, Cats and the National Theatre production of Oklahoma! He constantly holds our attention, with a changing pace that switches from frenetic activity to tense conversation.

I must credit to Christopher Hampton whose previous plays and translations  include Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Art, Sunset Boulevard and Florian Zeller’s The Father. I thought a musical adaptation of The Third Man couldn’t be done, but he and his team have done it.

The Third Man is performing at The Menier Chocolate Factory until 9 September 2023.

Paul paid for his ticket to see the final preview performance.

Watch this review of The Third Man at The Menier on YouTube

 

 

 

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Brokeback Mountain- romance and the kitchen sink

Gay love story throws in romance, heartbreak, and the kitchen sink

Actors Mike Faist plays a harmonica while he and Lucas Hedges crouch round a camp fire in the stage production of Brokeback Mountain at sohoplace theatre in London in June 2023
Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges in Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is the heartbreaking story of a forbidden love that lasts a lifetime. And the stage version by Ashley Robinson, based on the original short story by Annie Proulx, is excellent at conveying both its romance and its anguish. Unfortunately, it has also ended my love affair with Sohoplace Theatre.

My disappointment wasn’t with the play itself or the acting or the songs . It was with the production. As you may know from my enthusiastic reviews of Medea and Marvellous, Sohoplace is a theatre in the round, but it seemed like this production had been designed for a studio theatre but had had to settle for Sohoplace while still being in denial that the audience is on all four sides there.
When you perform a show in the round, you need to keep at least one actor facing the audience as much as possible but the unquestionably talented director Jonathan Butterell – he directed Everybody’s Talking About Jamie–  took some strange decisions.
For example, the two main protagonists regularly huddle in one corner of the stage by a camp fire with their back to two thirds of the audience. A tent, blocks some sight lines for a while. The production even throws in a kitchen sink. The latter rises from the floor on one side of the stage for a number of domestic scenes and blocks the view for those of us on that side (Stalls row A low numbers). One of my friends who was at the performance said he felt he’d seen a good play about plumbing. And I still don’t know who Ennis’ wife Alma remarried.
View of the stage from the front row of the stalls

Then again, I had a great view of the pained looks passing between Ennis and Alma as they stood at the sink, which three-quarters of the audience must have missed. Tom Pye is the brilliant award-winning designer of My Neighbour Totoro but, on this occasion, his set seemed to ignore the needs of an in-the-round production.

I can’t say who in particular was responsible but I do feel somebody should have looked at this production from all angles and pointed out the restricted views. That’s assuming the producers care whether people who’ve paid good money to see the show can actually see the show. (And, yes,  I did buy my ticket.)

Well-crafted, superbly acted

You will almost certainly be familiar with the story, thanks to the film. Two cowboys Jack and Ennis are assigned the job of looking after a flock of sheep on a remote mountain. They gradually get to know and like one another until one cold night, they huddle together in a tent, and desire takes over. Nothing untoward about that except this is Wyoming in 1963, a time and place where Homosexuality is not only illegal but liable to get you killed.
This explains why neither admits their homosexuality until their bodies touch. Here and now, gay love stories are commonplace but even today a gay man will have come across prejudice and threats, and it’s a timely moment to be reminded of the effect of homophobia, given the rise in legal discrimination against homosexuality in some US states, and the introduction of the death penalty in Uganda for what the law calls ‘aggravated homosexuality’.
Although Jack suggests they could live together, Ennis holds back, trying to maintain a sham marriage, but lives for occasional meetings with Jack in remote places. I’m assuming you’ve seen the film or read the story so I can say Jack takes more risks than Ennis and with disastrous consequences. Ashley Robinson tells their story with a deep understanding and a superb ear for dialogue. It’s hard to believe this is his theatrical debut.
The two handsome American actors wear their parts like gloves. I felt their love and their pain.
Mike Faist with crooked good looks and ready smile is the reckless extrovert Jack. Lucas Hedges is the nervous, taciturn Ennis. They are totally believable as an affectionate couple: I remember a head resting casually on a chest that caught perfectly the comfort lovers experience in each other’s company.
Emily Fairn was convincing as Ennis’s bemused and badly done by wife, another victim of the situation who is by turns sad, understanding and angry.
I wasn’t sure about the presence of an older Ennis. He does appear in the prologue to the short story, to kick it off as it were, but I was puzzled by his continuing appearances on stage, without giving any commentary. It may have been a way of making clear that Ennis had never come out, so his only love was Jack, but, in practice, like the sink, he just got in the way.
There was a kind of commentary in Dan Gillespie Sells’ songs. You may know his work with The Feeling or his music for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Here he echoes American country and western music, with songs that are plaintive and full of deep emotion. Providing a moving counterpoint to the onstage action, they are beautifully performed by Eddi Reader and the slightly off stage band (at least they didn’t get in the way!).
Brokeback Mountain is a well-crafted, superbly acted play. I would love to have seen more of it.
Brokeback Mountain runs at sohoplace until 12 August 2023.
Paul Seven Lewis paid for his ticket
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