Alan Bennett’s Play Not Ageing As Well As Richard Wilson
It was a pleasure to see Richard Wilson performing in Forty Years On by Alan Bennett at Chichester Festival Theatre. Age and illness have not diminished his rich voice, his comic timing or his arched eyebrow.
Richard Wilson in Forty Years On at CFT
Sadly Alan Bennett’s play hasn’t aged as well as Mr Wilson. It’s not that it doesn’t have plenty of funny moments but it lacks the cohesion it may once have had when the mishmash of recalled events led to the present day. Now it seems more like random sketches from a random period in the past.
Even the concept of an old guard defending traditions against a new radical generation expressed in the form of a retiring headmaster versus his successor seems dated with the liberal hegemony now under attack by neoliberals.
On the plus side, it was a splendid set by Lez Brotherston replicating a school hall and the actors playing the main ‘boys’ were strong and funny.
On The Town at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is a helluva show. From the moment the three sailors appear in the previously languid dock scene, it’s a joyous, colourful celebration of life. It could be called Seize The Day.
With the songs and sub plots of the original stage play restored, this is a much more explicit eulogy than the film version to enjoying the moment . Even the opening line of the opening song is more explicit- ‘helluva town’ instead of the bowdlerised ‘wonderful town’.
The sailors have 24 hours in New York and they want to make the most of it. There are three strong female characters who want to make the most of them. Lizzy Connolly as cab driver Hildy has her eyes on Chip (superbly played by understudy Jacob Maynard). When she takes him back to her place and sings I Can Cook Too, we don’t have any doubt what else she can do. And I don’t mean that she sings well and has excellent comedic skills.
Although World War Two is not played on in the heavy handed way of that other revived Gene Kelly vehicle An American In Paris at the Dominion, it is there in the background. The sailors have faced death and survived. The women are doing ‘men’s jobs’. Everyone is living for today.
Miriam Teak-Lee is a wonderful find as Claire, the anthropologist and fiancée of The Judge, who gets, in the words of her song, Carried Away when she meets other men, including Ozzie (Samuel Edwards). Making her professional debut, she sings and dances like the best of them.
Siena Kelly as Ivy, Miss Turnstiles, is another graduate of Arts Educational Schools making her professional debut. She has a great personality, making it clear why Gabey (Danny Mac) would fall for her. Danny Mac himself, yet another of the Arts Educational Schools alumni, acquits himself well. All three male leads present their characters as ‘nice guys’, straightforward, sensitive and sentimental, adding to the joy of this show.
The production never flags. Director and choreographer Drew McOnie has honoured Jerome Robbins’ original concept with some exuberant, dynamic dance sequences, including the most moving moment in the show, a secretive liaision between two men danced to Lonely Town, reflecting those more prejudiced times.
Peter McKintosh is to be congratulated for his industrial style set contrasting with his colourful costumes. The music by Leonard Bernstein has aged well. The lyrics by Comden and Green are fresh and amusing.
This was one of the most enjoyable nights I’ve spent at a theatre. I can’t imagine a better summer treat.
Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill tear one another apart in front of our eyes
★★★★★
Conleth Hill & Imelda-Staunton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
You might think it odd that my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by seeing a play about a marriage breakdown. If you knew us, you’d know that one of the reasons our relationship has lasted over 20 years is that we both love theatre. We have shared many wonderful experiences that provide the cement of our marriage and theatre is right at the top of them.
When you’ve been married for a long time, you understand one another so well. You reach the point where either you love each other’s ‘perfect imperfections’ or they drive you mad. In Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, it’s the latter. Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hillact like they really have been married for two decades. They tear one another apart in front of our eyes.
Even then, the brilliance of this play is that you can recognise their repartee as being similar to that of any established marriage. They know each other. They anticipate what the other is going to say, they get both frightened and excited when the other goes off-script. Okay, their marriage is falling apart but it is totally real as a married couple’s relationship.
I’m happy to say the relationship between my wife and myself is of the former kind but watching Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf was like seeing a Portrait Of Dorian Grey version of our marriage.
This play is a classic, well worth reviving and with a cast commensurate to it.
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? is playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London until 27 May 2017.
James Graham’s play shows politicians as human beings
★★★★
Steffan Rhodri & Nathaniel Parker in This House
James Graham‘s play shows politicians as human beings. It’s set in the 1970s when Labour was running minority governments and ends at the moment the Tories returned to power. But it’s not about Wilson, Callaghan or Thatcher. The play is set in the Whips’ Offices, the people who organise their party members’ voting.
These were dramatic times as Labour struggled to maintain its majority and govern. I would never have thought day-to-day politics could be quite so tense, especially when ‘pairing’ is suspended. This is the agreement whereby members absent through government business or illness have their missing vote cancelled by someone from the opposition not voting. To go behind the scenes and see that our democracy can only work by co-operation and compromise is an eye-opener, especially as our politics seems to be becoming more emotional, populist and confrontational.
Many people- some of the Brexit voters and Trump supporters, for example- seem to be rebelling against the perceived cosiness of the establishment. This House shows that there is a purpose to this comity. We only have to look across the Atlantic to see how the extreme differences between Republicans and Democrats have brought government to a halt after decades of working together.
But more than that, in This House we meet the real people behind the parliamentary constituencies. Plays and other forms of storytelling need characters and This House is packed with flawed human beings with feelings. They are sometimes bullies, sometimes desperate, and most movingly they show compassion. We see that in many cases these are people who care passionately about their beliefs but still respect their opponents and act honourably. Outstanding are Steffan Rhodri and Nathaniel Parker as the opposing Chief Whips
Politicians often try to show their human side in PR exercises- a pint down the pub or an appearance on Have I Got News For You– but a play like This House shows them as flawed human beings, just like you and me.
This House started at the National Theatre and more recently performed at Chichester Festival Theatre’s Minerva where I saw it.
Powerful acting from Niamh Cusack and Sean Campion
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Sean Campion & Niamh Cusack in Unfaithful at Found111. Photo: Marc Brenner
It’s a long time since I’ve seen a play on a traverse stage. Unfaithful at Found111 reminded me just how powerful it can be compared to the usual proscenium arch. As you know, a traverse stage runs the full width of the auditorium with the audience on two sides. Unfaithful at the temporary Found111 space was in a small room with barely 60 people facing the same number across the stage.
You might think that looking through the action at members of the audience in the opposite seats would be distracting and I guess it could be if the action were not riveting. Fortunately there was no chance of that. Instead you are much more aware that you are part of an audience watching a performance. In this respect, the arrangement is the same as the catwalk in a fashion show. You feel you are examining what is being presented before you.
This feeling that you were examining the characters was what made Unfaithful so powerful. This story about an older couple who, bored with their years of marriage and pushed by mid life crises, have liaisions with younger people who themselves are struggling to separate sex and love.
Ruta Gedmintas and Matthew Lewis complete a strong cast
Intimacy is the other characteristic of the traverse stage. With the audience divided in half, we’re all close to the action. Every twitch, every blink is visible. There’s no possibility of an actor taking a rest. Any lack of concentration will be noticed. The kind of actor that says acting is about learning your lines and not bumping into the furniture doesn’t stand a chance in this arena. The good actor who inhabits the part physically and mentally can form the strongest of bonds with the audience, as did the four actors in Unfaithful- Niamh Cusack, Sean Campion, Ruta Gedmintas and my cousin Matthew Lewis.
Niamh Cusack in Unfaithful. Photo: Marc Brenner
There is a moment when the husband of Niamh Cusack’s character makes a surprising revelation. We’re as shocked as she is. We know she can’t let her husband realise the full effect on her of what he’s said but we can see the slight widening of the eyes and ripple that goes through her body as she stiffens. On another occasion, Sean Campion rubs his nose. It’s a small gesture easily missed in a large auditorium but it matters because of what was said earlier about him.
Under the magnifying glass of a traverse stage the script and direction also have to be spot on. So full marks to Unfaithful’s Owen McCafferty for a script without a wasted word and Adam Penford‘s direction that ensured every moment was filled wherever you looked.
And a special word for Emily Hobbs for finding and adapting this temporary theatrical space and putting on a tremendous season.
Sheridan Smith in Funny Girl. Photo: Johan Persson
For many actors, there’s a role they’ll always be remembered for, no matter what else they do. Sean Connery as James Bond, Mark Rylance as Rooster Byron in Jerusalem, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien.
I suspect, when the day comes to present Sheridan Smith with her lifetime Olivier Award, her role as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl will be seen as the moment she achieved greatness.
The production, originally staged at the Menier Chocolate Factory and then the Savoy Theatre, would be worth seeing simply because Funny Girl is an excellent musical but what makes it exceptional is Smith’s performance. I saw her before on stage in Legally Blonde, on film in Tower Block and in various TV appearances including Cilla and Gavin And Stacey, so I knew she was good but I never appreciated just how funny she is and just how deeply she can occupy a role.
She makes her character seem real, a genuinely complicated human being. But there’s more to it than that. I don’t doubt that the real Fanny Brice was uniquely great but Sheridan Smith’s acting makes you believe you are seeing one of the finest stage performers of all time.
You can see a live recording of Sheridan Smith in Funny Girl on digitaltheatre.com
Game Of Thrones Star Displays His Acting Skills (and his body)
Kit Harington in Doctor Faustus
Kit Harington stars in a modernised in-your-face version of Doctor Faustus at the Duke Of York’s Theatre, in which he sells his soul for celebrity. Yes, the blood was sometimes over the top but this production is an engaging, contemporary take on the Christopher Marlowe play.
Making the protagonist want to be a celebrity magician may have been designed to appeal to a younger crowd, although it did seem a trivial ambition to me, given the price he has to pay. There was another price, the cost of a coherent plot. Then again, perhaps the young brains coped better than mine.
Jamie Lloyd‘s production was gory, sexual, violent, disgusting and many other things designed to shock but much of it worked. What I liked best was that the Devil and his disciples were so lacking in glamour or sexiness. Some had saggy bodies and all were dressed in grubby underwear. Their dancing would shame dads at a party. It made Faustus’ blindness to any consequences of his deal with the Devil even more clear.
Soutra Gilmour‘s grey set, revealing the drab backstage of the theatre, reinforced this sense of the hellish emptiness of celebrity.
Kit Gets Most Of His Kit Off
Anyone expecting to be titillated by the nudity is likely to be disappointed. Early on we see full frontal nudity but, as it suggests Adam and Eve and the original sin of the first human beings to be tempted by the Devil, it is the opposite of sexual. The only other flesh revealed in any quantity is Harington’s when Kit gets most of his kit off in the second act. He has a great body but the naked flesh reminds us of the earlier scene and suggests vulnerability rather than sexuality.
Some people have suggested Kit Harington only got the lead because of his success on TV as Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones. That’s as may be but he was actually very good. He spoke the Elizabethan poetry well and offered a convincing portrayal of Faustus’ ego and anguish, although I have to say I wasn’t ultimately moved by it.
Jenna Russell damn near stole the show as Mephistopheles. She was world weary and sarcastic and exuded an inner sadness- and she’s a good singer, as people who stayed in their seats during the interval discovered.
Hugh Bonneville in a brilliantly nuanced performance ★★★★★
Hugh Bonneville in An Enemy OfThe People
When a public vote chooses Boaty McBoatface as the name for a polar exploration ship, it’s easy to agree with the main character in Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People (Chichester Festival Theatre) that the majority is ‘stupid’.
Dr Tomas Stockmann starts out believing the people will welcome his revelation that the town’s spa water is unhealthy. But when local people of influence realise the effect on business and the cost of putting it right, the townspeople are soon persuaded by them that Stockmann is their ‘enemy’.
His mistake is to think that truth cannot be denied. The reality is that most of us believe what we want to believe against the facts. And if the facts don’t fit, we blame a cover up or a conspiracy or make a leap of faith.
If our hopes and fears are exploited by ruthless politicians, advertisers or others with an agenda, all the worse. When you hear the outrageous statements made by our political elite during the current referendum campaign and the level of ignorance among the electorate, even though the BBC’s Reality Check is freely available, you can sympathise with Stockmann.
He may believe the majority are stupid and society would be better run by an elite but we the audience can see that the majority are not stupid, merely uninformed, and the elite are the very ones who have undermined his truth.
An Enemy Of The People offers a view of society in which nearly everybody operates out of self interest and those that don’t are crushed by those that do. Ibsen tells the truth as he sees it and it’s a bleak view of human nature that may make him an enemy of the people but like all great artists he helps us understand humanity- provided we are prepared to accept that life isn’t black and white. Our hero Stockmann isn’t spared from an honest depiction. He may be admirable as a whistleblower but he has flaws and suspect motives.
We see that he is driven by jealousy of his brother. We cringe at his hubris when he thinks he will be feted by his fellow citizens. We realise his ‘honesty’, at first attractive, is naive because he doesn’t see the need to engage and persuade people. We find him arrogant in thinking he is superior. We are shocked at his willingness to sacrifice his family.
All these swings from initial confidence through pride, bewilderment and anger to eventual collapse are conveyed in a brilliantly nuanced performance at Chichester by Hugh Bonneville taking a break from Downton Abbey. I could feel every emotion his character was feeling. Even when I was laughing at his expectation of the honour he would receive to his insults to the crowd, I still felt sorry for him. This is a mountain range of a performance.
When a public vote chooses Boaty McBoatface as the name for a polar exploration ship, it’s easy to agree with the main character in Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People (Chichester Festival Theatre) that the majority is ‘stupid’. I’m don’t even want to talk about the EU referendum.
Dr Tomas Stockmann starts out believing the people will welcome his revelation that the town’s spa water is unhealthy. But when local people of influence realise the effect on business and the cost of putting it right, the townspeople are soon persuaded by them that Stockmann is their ‘enemy’.
His mistake is to think that truth cannot be denied. The reality is that most of us believe what we want to believe against the facts. And if the facts don’t fit, we blame a cover up or a conspiracy or make a leap of faith.
If our hopes and fears are exploited by ruthless politicians, advertisers or other people with an agenda, all the worse. The debate about ‘fake news’ and the behaviour of Donald Trump and some of our own politicians makes Ibsen’s play seem bang up-to-date. When you hear the outrageous statements made by our political elite during the EU referendum campaign and the level of ignorance among the electorate, even though the BBC’s Reality Check was freely available, you can sympathise with Stockmann.
He may believe the majority are stupid and society would be better run by an elite but we the audience can see that the majority are not stupid, merely uninformed, and the elite are the very ones who have undermined his truth.
A mountain range of a performance
An Enemy Of The People, directed by Howard Davies, offers a view of society in which nearly everybody operates out of self interest and those that don’t are crushed by those that do. Ibsen tells the truth as he sees it and it’s a view of human nature that may make him an enemy of the people but like all great artists he helps us understand humanity, if we are prepared to accept that life isn’t black and white. Our hero Stockmann isn’t spared from an honest depiction. He may be admirable as a whistleblower but he has flaws and suspect motives.
We see that he is driven by jealousy of his brother. We cringe at his hubris when he thinks he will be feted by his fellow citizens. We realise his ‘honesty’, at first attractive, is naive because he doesn’t see the need to engage and persuade people. We find him arrogant in thinking he is superior. We are shocked at his willingness to sacrifice his family.
All these swings from initial confidence through pride, bewilderment and anger to eventual collapse are conveyed in a brilliantly nuanced performance at Chichester by Hugh Bonneville. You may know him from TV’s Downton Abbey or W1A. I could feel every emotion his character was feeling. Even when I was laughing at his naive expectation of the honour he would receive, I still felt sorry for him. This is a mountain range of a performance.
For the second time in six months, a star known for his serious acting has amazed me with his skill at comedy. Just as when I saw David Morrissey in The Hangmen, I was surprised and delighted to find that Kenneth Branagh’s talent for farce was the outstanding feature of The Painkiller at the Garrick Theatre.
He plays a hired killer who gets drawn into helping a suicidal photographer. This being a farce, he ends up the victim of many misfortunes including suffering from the effects of a tranquilliser. Branagh’s portrayal of exasperation, his slurred and mixed up words, his comedy walk were a revelation from an actor I had previously known and admired in Shakespeare and Chekhov.
It helped that his opposite number was Rob Brydon, who was every bit as funny as you would hope. Thanks to them and the rest of an excellent cast, there were times when I, along with most of the audience, was crying with laughter.
Sean Foley adapts & directs top class comedy
Considerable credit should go to the French writer Francis Veber and Sean Foley who adapted and directs this now vintage play. Like all good farces, it is built on step-by-step misunderstandings that lead logically to a ridiculous conclusion. Any moments when you might question the likelihood of something happening are lost in the sheer speed, another vital element in farce.
Taking the whole thing seriously, in other words not being deliberately funny, is another key factor in successful farce. In this respect, I couldn’t fault any member of the cast. Mark Hadley was brilliant as the confused Hotel Porter attempting to carry out his job in the face of an increasingly bizarre situation deserves a special mention.
Alice Power’s clever set was as crucial to making the farce work as any of the characters. Two identical hotel rooms with an adjoining door and an imaginary wall split the stage into two halves. We the audience could see what was going on in each room but the participants couldn’t.
