Exit the King is about how we come to terms with the shocking fact that we’re all going to die. As a character says in the play, ‘everyone is the first person ever to die.’
Patrick Marber has done a brilliant job both as director and as the adapter of Eugene Ionesco’s original play. It sounds contemporary and there are funny lines galore and there remains Ionesco’s intention that theatre itself with its exits and entrances should be a metaphor for life. The characters speak in a theatrical way and the King is told early on ‘you’re going to die at the end of the play.’
And as the King, Rhys Ifans is extraordinary. He goes through denial and anger and all the other emotions experienced by those who are dying. Physically he declines before our eyes. He sounds like one of those declamatory stage actors of old like Laurence Olivier and his physical comedy reminded me of Jerry Lewis.
Rhys Ifans in Exit The King. Photo: Simon Annand
He’s supported by Indira Varma as the cool first Queen, Amy Morgan as the not-so-dumb blonde second Queen and Debra Gillett hilarious as the irreverent servant. Adrian Scarborough and Derek Griffiths complete an all round superb cast.
My only disappointment was that the ending felt dragged out and momentum was lost.
Oh, and credit where it’s due to set designer Anthony Ward. So often designers are defeated by the size of the National Theatre’s Olivier stage but his solution is to have the small cast at the front for most of the play with a big crumbling palace wall behind them, then, in a gobsmacking ending, the set disappears and the whole grand canyon of the stage area opens up as the king dies and fades into eternity. It’s a theatrical moment of which one feels sure Ionesco would have approved.
Exit The King with Rhys Ifans is at the National Theatre until 6 October 2018
Watch my YouTube review of Rhys Ifans in Exit The King-
Allelujah! at Bridge Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Much as I loved many of the Nicholas Hytner era productions at the National Theatre, not least his collaborations with Alan Bennett like The History Boys and The Madness of George III, I did find myself thinking that for all the criticism of his successor, Rufus Norris is at least trying to jolt us out of our comfort zone.
In Allelujah!, one National Treasure writes about another National Treasure- the NHS. What’s the diagnosis?
It’s like Alan Bennett is giving us a bed bath. He covers all the familiar places but there are no surprises. He does have some strong words to say about the care of the elderly and the creeping privatisation of the NHS but his play feels so old fashioned.
It’s set in a geriatric ward of a small general hospital threatened with closure. And straightway there’s a problem. if the play was a patient, the doctor would say it’s confused about where it is. This is more like a care home than a geriatric ward (which by the way are called Care Of The Elderly wards these days). I didn’t believe for a moment there would be time for a nurse to organise a choir among the patients. This play is living in a world of its own, a world we might call Alan Bennett Land.
Like the elderly patients in the play, Allelujah! is confused, unfocused and old fashioned
Allelujah! at Bridge Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan
The next symptom. Our patient can’t seem to concentrate on any one character. There are 25 and most are little more than clichés or ciphers. I just didn’t believe the kind, touchy-feely immigrant doctor (Sacha Dhawan) who ‘loves old people’, nor the neoliberal privatising consultant (Samuel Barnett) nor the yobbish work experience lad (David Moorst). The only one we get to know slightly better is the stiff ward sister, played by the excellent Deborah Findlay, who has a radical solution to the twin problems of incontinence and empty bed targets.
Repetition is another worrying symptom. The familiar Bennett humour is there but really it’s too familiar. There are some amusing lines but many more fall flat- I’ve gone beyond thinking the names of Yorkshire towns are funny in their own right, like the bathetic threat of Tadcaster.
Mood swings are another worrying sign of a patient who is no longer in control. There’s also an uncharacteristic burst of anger from the patient when the immigrant doctor berates us the audience for the way we have become as a country.
The best bits were when we went into the minds of the elderly patients and saw them as a chorus line performing singing and dancing of old songs. And that apparently was director Nicholas Hytner’s idea, not Alan Bennett’s.
I’m afraid this play felt very dated or, as the doctor in the play might say, the patient is suffering from old age.
So, I regret, it’s a Do Not Resuscitate from me.
Allelujah! by Alan Bennett is performing at Bridge Theatre London until 29 September 2018
Watch Paul Seven Lewis’ review on One Minute Theatre Reviews-
Aidan Turner in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore. Photo: Johan Persson
Mad Padraic is an Irish terrorist in the time of The Troubles, he’s too violent and unpredictable even for the IRA. But he loves his cat. When the only thing he loves is killed, Padraic wants vengeance. So begins Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant Of Inishmore at the Noel Coward theatre in London.
If you’ve only seen Aidan Turner in Poldark, you’ll be amazed at how hilarious as well as threatening he is as this man of extremes, flipping from anger to tears to a twinkling smile in the space of a few seconds.
Chris Walley, Aidan Turner and Denis Conway in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore. Photo: Johan Persson
He’s well supported by Denis Conway as his father Donny, Chris Walley straight out of RADA but hitting it out of the auditorium as the hangdog youth Davey, Charlie Murphy as Padraic’s equally crazy love interest and, in fact, all the cast. Every character is as thick as two slices of peat- but maybe we all are when it comes to understanding terrorism.
Martin McDonagh’s play is the blackest of black comedies. Written nearly 25 years ago but more relevant than ever, it satirises terrorists and how their distorted idealism, in which violence breeds violence, leads to a blind pursuit of their goals at the expense of morality or even decent human behaviour.
Michael Grandage’s comical production
The first act has some great funny lines. I particularly liked a description of cats as ‘full of themselves’ but it mainly serves to introduce us to the characters and set up all the fastmoving action of the second act. That’s when it really takes off with one violent incident leading to another in a series of twists so ingenious that that every so often they got a round of applause from the audience.
And what violence! Michael Grandage’s triumphant production is so exaggerated that everything becomes comical but even so, it’s still quite a shock to see someone’s brains splattered across a wall, live on stage.
It’s so totally over the top, it goes down the other side and over another top.
The Lieutenant Of Inishmore with Aidan Turner is at the Noel Coward Theatre London until 8 September 2018.
Here’s the YouTube review of The Lieutenant Of Inishmore with Aidan Turner on One Minute Theatre Reviews-
Vanessa Kirby in Julie at the National Theatre. Photo copyright: Richard H Smith
Polly Stenham said in an interview that she wanted her new play to show the ‘dark heart of liberalism’ and to ‘go for the jugular’. So did the audience leave the the National’s Lyttleton Theatre reeling with shock? I’m afraid not. If Ms Stenham wants to shock the white liberal middle class National Theatre audience, she’s going to have to try a lot harder.
Julie, played brilliantly by Vanessa Kirby, is a privileged white woman in her thirties who’s clearly been given everything she’s ever wanted except love. She’s used to ‘taking’, including taking from her servants whom she sees as possessions.
Thalissa Teixeira and Eric Kofi Abrefa in Julie at the National Theatre. Photo (c) Richard H Smith
She affects to talk to the servants as equals but doesn’t really see them that way. So the ‘help’, powerfully played by Thalissa Teixeira, thinks her mistress is her friend but gets a rude awakening.
Julie wants the chauffeur Jean, a nicely judged performance from Eric Kofi Abrefa, for his body but he has his own agenda, looking to use her as a step up society’s ladder.
So how much of ‘the dark heart of liberalism’ is exposed? I suspect we know there is still a big gap between entitled rich and exploited poor, despite the fact that we’re all on first name terms. There is no real shock in a relationship between a powerful woman and her male servant or between the rich who take and the poor who are taken from. Making the two servants black immigrants provides echoes of the western empires’ treatment of their colonies but a liaison between a white woman and a black man is hardly shocking.
There’s a wild party going on in the background of the early part of the play that uses the Lyttleton space well, but it’s very tame, as is the sexual coupling.
Perhaps what is exposed is that we don’t really care about people. Certainly the audience seemed to find the terrible treatment of a pet bird, which appears in Strindberg’s original Miss Julie, much more shocking than anything that happens to the human beings.
Vanessa Kirby, Polly Stenham and director Carrie Cracknell have created a monstrous but at the same pathetic character
We’re left with a portrait of two self-centred cold hearted people for whom it’s hard to feel any compassion. Tom Scutt’s wide open set has an appropriately bright, sterile feel.
Maybe if the play had been longer (it lasts less than an hour and a half), we could have found out more about the two main characters and then maybe we would have felt more. Maybe it just needed more development in a smaller space.
Having said that, Julie is worth seeing. In their portrayal of a privileged western woman whose blinkered life of drugs, drink and sex is on a downward trajectory, Vanessa Kirby, Polly Stenham and director Carrie Cracknell have created a monstrous but at the same pathetic character that is actually shocking. Vanessa Kirby is able to behave like a wild child while still showing the underlying brittleness. When Julie starts to realise that she is not as in control of the people around her as she thought and that her actions have consequences, Ms Kirby’s portrayal of her collapse is powerful.
Other Reviews
There was a mixed response from the critics but no-one seemed overwhelmed by Julie.
Among a number of two star reviews, the Evening Standard said ‘there’s an impulse to provoke, but no real sense of danger’ and The Guardian said it ‘doesn’t make sense’.
Others gave it three stars but didn’t like the update. The Telegraph said the ‘vital sense of societal transgression piling in on top of psychological flaws is lacking’ and The Independent said, ‘the dramatic stakes are lowered.’
‘The play struggles to make the class transgression feel dangerous,’ said BroadwayWorld.
On the other hand there were some four star reviews. WhatsOnStage called it a ‘sleek, satirical update’ and The Stage described it as ‘brilliant’.
All eyes were on Vanessa Kirby in the title role. Radio Times said she gave a ‘virtuoso performance’. The Guardian praised her ‘genuine pathos’. ‘Kirby excels’ agreed The Independent.
The Observer’s three star review said, ‘as a brave and peculiar character study, this is extraordinary. Both witty and vicious. Vanessa Kirby’s Julie is panic and scorn.’
Orlando Bloom in Killer Joe at Trafalgar Studios. Photo: Marc Brenner
This is the sort of night at the theatre I live for. Killer Joe was written by Tracy Letts, an actor who understands how theatre works and how to create great roles.
Despite all the sex and violence in the play, it is a moral tale. It’s reminiscent of Jacobean revenge tragedy with a nod to the claustrophobic overheated southern dramas of Tennessee Williams. In this case the claustrophobic set by Grace Smart is a convincing, trashy mobile home in a Texan trailer park. The intimate ‘cockpit’ of Traflagar Studio One really helps the oppressive atmosphere.
The literal trailer trash is very detailed and adds to the play’s recreation of the trailer trash lifestyle with its automatic switching on of Prozac television and Fast food diet. (One use of a fried chicken leg may have a permanent effect on how you view a bucket meal.)
Orlando Bloom and Sohie Cookson in Killer Joe. Photo: Marc Brenner
The Smith family who live there are poor and ignorant which adds a layer of welcome humour but they could be anyone led by greed and a total lack of morality. They want someone close to them killed so they hire a hitman. Inevitably things go wrong and there are plenty of twists along the way.
In a series of scenes of sexual abuse which are uncomfortable to watch and shocking violence which is extraordinarily well done, we see what can happen when people are not controlled by morality or law.
Orlando Bloom is a revelation as a the smooth talking cold eyed sociopathic Joe. His sinister alpha male dominates the evening but each character is far more subtle than stereotypical trailer trash and every member of the superb cast seizes the opportunity to show a wide range of emotion.
Sophie Cookson is brilliant at walking the tightrope between being frightened of Joe’s sexual advances and, because she is used to being controlled, willing.
Adam Gillen and Steffan Rhodri in Killer Joe. Photo: Marc Brenner
Steffan Rhodri as her father Ansel is a subtle mixture of bravado, cowardice, fear and excitement.
Her frantic, gullible brother Chris is the kind of person who always has a plan and the plan is never thought through. He’s a person adrift in a world he doesn’t really understand and that seems to be against him. He recognises feelings of love and regret but doesn’t know how to handle them. Adam Gillen conveys this with jerky body movements and looks of wide-eyed wonder as he realises what’s going on.
When we first meet her, she is confident, sassy which makes her downfall is all the more shocking.
Killer Joe is a unique theatrical experience. For example, there is no substitute for seeing someone hit in the face actually in front of you. The graphic fights directed by Jonathan Holby are incredibly well done.
Director Simon Evans keeps what could easily be an over the top grand guignol production under control right up to a beautifully choreographed violent finish.
Warning at Traflagar Studios
The warnings about this production are many and it certainly is not for the faint hearted. On the matter of nudity, there are three instances. At the beginning, in one of the many humorous moments in the play, Sharla answers the door to her stepson Chris wearing only a top. Her pubic hair is clearly visible. When Chris complains, she responds by saying ‘I didn’t know who it was’.
Another occasion is a glimpse of Orlando Bloom’s bottom. By far the most shocking is a moment when Dottie is told to undress by Joe. He has his back to her but she is facing us the audience. It’s an unnerving moment which makes us feel complicit in this abuse, just as the Smiths have become responsible for much more than they bargained for in hiring this monster.
Finally a word about the excellent use of music by Edward Lewis, both his own unobstrusive mood creating music and his sinister use of known pop songs.
Spoiler alert!
Killer Joe is a kind of pact with the devil and involves a sort of virgin sacrifice: the devil being Joe and the virgin being Dottie.
Red by John Logan directed by Michael Grandage at Wyndham’s Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson
Red is a conversation about art. I realise that could sound boring but I promise you it isn’t. You will be caught up in the passion that writer John Logan shows for the history of art, the creation of art, even the meaning of the colour red. And you will be gripped by a drama about the conflict between an older and younger generation.
Alfred Molina plays the artist Mark Rothko at a late point in his career when he’s famous and successful. And if you go to this play for no other reason, go to see Alfred Molina.
The abstract expressionist movement of which Rothko was a major player has blown away what went before, but he himself now faces destruction from a new movement with new ideas, Pop Art. As Rothko himself says, the child must banish the parents. It’s a commanding performance. His Rothko is a confident, self-centred, controlling, great artist but we also see just how vulnerable he feels.
Alfred Molina and Alfred Enoch in Red. Photo: Johan Persson
His assistant Ken, played by Alfred Enoch, represents the new generation. Rothko is very serious about how he fits into history and how profound his art. Like Ken, the new generation- Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol- are more broad-minded and playful. Ken questions and challenges Rothko, gently at first, more confidently as the months pass.
The tension and teasing between them is riveting. Then, every so often, there is an interruption to the musical point and counterpoint of the conversation. And at these points, the two move as one to, for example, move a canvas or (and this was a theatrical moment I’ll never forget) when they paint the red undercoat on a white canvas in silent dance-like unison. I guess this symbolised the fact that, whatever their differences, the two generations were united in their love of art.
Just as the red and black in Rothko’s paintings work with and against each other in a constant dialogue. In fact, the whole production is analogous to Rothko’s approach to painting.
It was vital to him to control how his paintings were viewed- the setting, the lighting, the mood. So, at the start of the evening, Molina is sitting silently on stage as the audience enter still chatting and settling, illustrating how art is diminished if the viewer is not concentrating on it.
Christopher Oram‘s set impressively recreates Rothko’s studio and provides the perfect setting in which to see the play. Lighting designer Neil Austin keeps the paintings at the centre of our thoughts and makes the red of the title shimmer and glow. Director Michael Grandage has created a wondrous, flowing rhythm in both dialogue and movement.
Jane Horrocks, Bian Vernel & Mark Bonnar in Instructions For Correct Assembly at Royal Court. Photo: Johan Persson
If there were instructions for the correct assembly of a stage play, how would they read? First, get a good theme. In Thomas Eccleshare‘s Instructions For Correct Assembly, we have at least two: dealing with grief;and when we create something how much responsibility and control do we have.
Then you need a plot. Again we have two. We start with a married couple, who enjoy DIY, constructing a human robot. It becomes apparent that they are trying to create an improved version of their young adult son who died. The second story- of what happened to their son- is told in parallel.
The two stories don’t always fit easily together. The sci-fi story leads to some hilarious moments as the robot tries to please but reveals his essential amorality. There’s a scene at dinner with friends where his inability to filter leads to sexual remarks so rude I can’t repeat them here. On the same occasion, he states his ambition to sell junk food outside secondary schools before responding to the shocked reaction and eventually muting it to organic healthy food. The other story is a poignant sometimes brutal portrayal of what it’s like when your child is an addict.
Instructions For Correct Assembly at Royal Court. Photo: Johan Persson
Then you need good characters and you need to assemble a cast of good actors to play them. Jane Horrocks as Max and Mark Bonnar as Harry are excellent as the fragile but positive parents. They make a believable loving couple. Michele Austin and Jason Barnett are exactly right as their friends- the Joneses, as it were, with whose child Harry and Max can only wish theirs could keep up with.
Brian Vernel is brilliant both as the son and, especially, as his fast talking robot replacement. Alike but subtly different, both try to impress and both lie. Neither ‘son’ turns out how the parents plan- and this is the glue that holds the play together.
A good production also needs a good designer. Cai Dyfan’s superb set starting as a tight aperture through which we view the action gradually opens up to show that the world cannot be controlled.
As with many assembly packs, there is one piece missing. A heart. Perhaps this is deliberate on the part of the author but, funny and interesting as it was, I didn’t find the play emotionally involving.
Instructions For Correct Assembly performs at the Royal Court‘s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs until 19 May.
See below the review on the YouTube channel One Minute Theatre Reviews
The lights come up and there on the stage is Carey Mulligan. No set, just Carey Mulligan.
She’s the only person we’re going to meet for the next hour-and-a-half. She holds our attention for that long. We do see some colourless generic sets occasionally during Girls & Boys at the Royal Court but the main image you are left with is that of a single person alone on a blank set.
It’s a tour-de-force. Yes, she’s very engaging with her twinkling eyes and dimpled smile. But, more than that, she has the skill of seeming to speak directly to you. Her pauses make you hang on her words. Her timing is Olympic stopwatch standard.
Carey Mulligan in Girls & Boys at Royal Court
Now delivery is one thing but, no matter how great an actor she is, she needs the words- and Dennis Kelly’s play, looking back on the story of a relationship from its light hearted beginning to its devastating end is also a grand achievement. It’s funny, insightful and sharp as a 4K TV. The language is at times rich, almost Rabelaisian, and at others pared down to the bone.
I’m guessing that the director Lindsey Turner made a major contribution to this triumphant production. It begins like standup comedy and ends like the bottom has fallen out of the world. Paralleling the course of the woman’s relationship, I began roaring with laughter and ended in shock.
Girls & Boys with Carey Mulligan at the Royal Court continues until 17 March 2018
Here’s the review from One Minute Theatre Reviews on YouTube-
Anne-Marie Duff & Rory Kinnear in Macbeth at National Theatre. Photo by Brinkhoff and Moegenburg
The first thing to say about Macbeth at the National Theatre is that Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff as the murderous couple do full justice to Shakespeare’s magnificent poetry and his insights into human nature.
Director Rufus Norris places Macbeth in some post-apocalyptic version of today’s world. Rei Smith’s design is a disaster but not in the way some critics meant. The striking black and broken set underlines that something terrible has happened. Society has broken down into low tech tribes fighting for turf. They exist in ruined buildings, wearing cobbled together clothes and sitting on what looks like furniture salvaged from the tip. The characters’ many different accents take the setting well away from Scotland into what could be any modern war zone.
Beautifully acted by Rory Kinnear & Anne-Marie Duff
Macbeth is an ordinary person who finds himself in this extraordinary situation- and no-one does the complexities that lie beneath ordinary people better than Rory Kinnear. You feel that in peaceful times, his Macbeth could have been the guy from accounts, so low key and sensitive and humorous is his portrayal. Yet, in this time of war, he’s become a successful soldier.
Once his ambition to become the top man is sparked by the witches and his wife, even though he clearly isn’t a leader and despite his conscience and all the horrors, he heroically follows through what he started. Unlike Anne-Marie Duff’s wonderfully agitated Lady Macbeth, who, when tested, can’t cope. Rory Kinnear’s everyman Macbeth does dreadful deeds but makes us wonder what we could be capable of in such violent, anarchic times.
The production is a little lacking in tension at times, especially at the end, which I put down to this grubby small scale war needing to be played out in more confined space than the Olivier. Then again, a smaller theatre would have meant less people getting to see this dystopian, beautifully acted production.
Here’s the review on the YouTube channel One Minute Theatre Reviews-
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. Photo: Manuel Harlan
A Worthy Addition to the Harry Potter saga
I’ve read the Harry Potter books and seen the films. If you haven’t, you might be less intrigued than I was by this return to Hogwarts because the past looms heavy in this new adventure.
JK Rowling tells a good children’s story that adults can also enjoy, and she does it again with her stage play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, currently at the Palace Theatre London.
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Her chronicle of good versus evil in the world of witchcraft continues with the sons of Harry Potter and his former enemy Draco Malfoy. Both boys suffer from being the children of well-known parents. That’s why they become friends and go an adventure together, an adventure which is as much about the excitement of problem solving as fighting evil.
Good story by JK Rowling- great play by Jack Thorne
The Cursed Child is blessed with a script by Jack Thorne which is full of humour and emotional depth, especially in the difficult relationship between the adult Harry and his adolescent son, both troubled by the past in their different ways, both feeling inadequate. It’s also fascinating to see the way Draco Malfoy is changed and challenged by becoming a parent.
The story is about the effect of the past on the present. Literally and chillingly, we see that changing the past can change the present. More interestingly, what the older characters have or haven’t done previously affects how they are now. It is this exploration that makes what otherwise would be a good children’s show into something of real interest to an adult audience.
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. Photo: Manuel Harlan
There are many very good characters well acted. When I saw the plays,Rayke Ayolashowed a good range of emotion as Hermione Granger. I especially liked the Malfoys played with relish by James Howard and young Samuel Blenkin,who was the star of the show.
John Tiffany’s production has some excellent theatrical effects: the appearance of the Dementors is spine tingling. The illusions by Jamie Harrison that provide some real ‘wow’ moments such as the split second in which actors seem to disappear into a telephone.
The difficulty for me is that while action adventures told on a stage work well for children, for adults they can seem a little melodramatic. Despite or perhaps because of an existential threat in the story, this is no exception.
That said, this is a magical production and a worthy addition to the Harry Potter saga.
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child can be seen at the Palace Theatre London
Here’s my review from the YouTube channel One Minute Theatre Reviews
