Category: Past Productions

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Ralph Fiennes as Macbeth – review

Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma offer a glimpse of greatness


★★★★

Indira Varma holds Ralph Fiennes in a scene from Macbeth touring theatre production February 2024
Ralph Fiennes & Indira Varma in Macbeth. Photo: Marc Brenner

Ralph Fiennes wanted to take this production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth away from the traditional theatrical venues and audiences, so it has popped up in a warehouse-like hall in London’s Docklands. Apart from the possibility of attracting a new audience, there are other advantages to a venue like Dock X.

For a start, Frankie Bradshaw can begin her fabulous set design before you even enter the auditorium, by making the lobby or antechamber an immersive scene that conjures the aftermath of a battle. There’s a burning car, rubble and patrolling soldiers, as you might have seen on news reports from Gaza or Ukraine.
This is important because, although this production by Simon Godwin, constantly reminds you that you are in a war zone, the set itself, once you are inside the auditorium is a plain stage rising via wide stairs to a mezzanine, emphasising the domestic situations in which the play largely takes place, rather than battlefields.
The temporary seating is on three sides which adds an appropriate intimacy. I must say, though, I would rather sit in an actual theatre any day than this shed, into which well over a thousand people were crammed with apparently no consideration given to the torture caused by minuscule legroom and cheap plastic seats.
Anyway, enough of the venue, what about the show? Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, surpassed only, in my opinion, by King Lear. Its supremacy derives from its complexity: the constant psychological battles between good and evil, duty and ambition, fate and free will, truth and lies, and so on. I go to every production hoping it will shed light on the play’s depths, and guide us through the states of mind of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, as they make their bloody decisions.
In this production, we are constantly reminded that we are in a war torn country, and, as the cast are in modern dress, that it could be one of today’s many conflicts. There has been a rebellion and an invasion, and Macbeth has played an important part in the King’s victory over the opposition.
The sound of artillery is frequent and loud. But does that explain the Macbeths’ ambition? I don’t think so. If anything, the reminder of today’s awful fighting is a distraction, because it is unnecessarily upsetting. I saw this show on the day of the 2nd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Someone who was sitting near me and had experience of that war, didn’t return for the second half, apparently because they found it too traumatic.
The background of conflict seems to me irrelevant to a play primarily about the consequences of overthrowing a legitimate government (even if it’s one with which you disagree) and such themes as whether the end can justify the means, and how one evil act leads to another.
Perhaps this is a good point to run over the plot, if you’re unfamiliar with Macbeth. The Scottish lord and soldier meets three Weird Sisters, or Witches, who predict that he will become King. He’s quite excited by this prospect but seems prepared to let it happen naturally until his wife persuades him to take the opportunity to kill the monarch while he’s staying with them. The weird women also predict that his friend Banquo’s heirs will become Kings, so he decides to kill Banquo. MacDuff joins the English in opposition to him, so he puts out a contract on the MacDuff family. All very Putin. In the end, he suffers the consequences of his actions.
Actor Ralph Fiennes stands holding a knife in a scene from Macbeth touring production February 2024
Ralph Fiennes in Macbeth. Photo: Matt Humphrey

So, what do Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma as the murderous couple tell us about the ‘why’ of all this? Both actors bring out the richness of their roles. We first meet Mr Fiennes’ Macbeth as he lumbers onto the stage. He talks like a blunt soldier. He’s slightly stooped, he looks tired, as if he is exhausted rather than exhilarated by his victories. Maybe this explains why he’s not in a hurry to embark on another round of killing and thinks he might leave his succession to the throne to ‘chance’.

His wife on the other hand, bright eyed, articulate, and sophisticated in dress and manner, can’t wait. Ms Varma is clipped and matter-of-fact as she pushes him toward the deed. It’s then we get the first of many speeches in which Shakespeare expresses Macbeth’s internal arguments, sometimes to others, sometimes to himself. At first, his objections seem to be to do with etiquette: he is the King’s subject, obliged to be against assassination; that he is his host, who should be providing protection.
Ralph Fiennes is magnificent at these moments. He rightly acknowledges the speeches for the powerful poetry they are, and almost stepping out of the body of the plain soldier, to address the audience and explain his thinking. He articulates the lines beautifully, yet sounds as if he’s just thought of them, and he conveys their meaning with clarity. It’s an absolute pleasure to hear Shakespeare’s poetry projected to the back of the auditorium without any apparent strain. And I know because I was in the back row.
Indira Varma’ injects a moment of black comedy when Lady Macbeth loudly castigates her shaken husband for bringing the bloody knives out of Duncan’s bed chamber.
There’s a lot in the play about being a ‘man’, not a weak ‘woman’. Having initially seemed emasculated by his wife, Ralph Fiennes’ Macbeth becomes almost giddy following his killing spree, laughing and dancing nervously between appearances of Banquo’s ghost in the middle of a dinner party. It’s a funny moment but Indira Varma’s eyes show Lady Macbeth’s concern that her husband is becoming unhinged and uncoupled from her.
Guilt affects them both in different ways, Lady Macbeth cannot escape the thought of the horror of the crime they have committed and is driven to madness and suicide. The scene in which she tries to wash invisible blood from her hands was chilling. In fact, Indira Varma almost stole the show, except…
Ralph Fiennes as Macbeth, having begun the play hunched and exhausted, becomes more and more frenetically alive, and more reckless, even as he perceives the futility of life: the ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech, the last great examination of the consequences of his actions, is spoken to perfection, with the final conclusion that life ‘is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’, hanging in the air like a warning to us all.
The adaptation by Emily Burns makes the play move along at a pace, as it should, although she has excised the drunken Porter scene. I know a lot of people will be pleased to lose what they say is an incongruous piece of bawdy comedy in the midst of the murder of the King, but I think it offers a relief from the tension and a kind of parody of the chief villain’s antithetical way of expressing himself. I know you’ll want an example. So, a typical Macbeth declamation goes: ‘I should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself.’ The Porter uses the same form to say: ‘Drink provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.’
I did like the way the Weird Sisters permeated the play. I find the supernatural nature of the Witches a difficult element of Macbeth, even though they are essential to driving the plot but here, in everyday clothes and played by Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam, they come across as ordinary young women, maybe even displaced citizens, whose looks of mischief suggest they are passing on their predictions to expose and undermine those in charge.
I’d also pick out the performances of Steffan Rhodri who gives the loyal Banquo, solidity and a skeptical eye, and Ben Turner as MacDuff whose heartbroken reaction to the murder of his family was palpable.

So, for me, a slightly disappointing production, and a terrible venue, but a glimpse of greatness in the performances of Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma.

Macbeth toured the UK and performed in Washington DC in 2024

Click here to watch this review on YouTube

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Reviews Round-up: Dear Octopus 3.7★

National Theatre (Lyttelton)

Lindsay Duncan in Dear Octopus.Photo: March Brenner

After many years of neglect, Dodie Smith‘s 1938 play Dear Octopus gets a revival at the National Theatre. The critics were charmed by its gentle story of a family through the years but some found it unexciting.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

Kate Kellaway in The Observer (4★) called it ‘a tip-top, fastidious, perfectly pitched production’. The Guardian‘s Kate Wyver (4★) thought it a ‘glorious revival’. Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (4 ★) described it as ‘a touching celebration of enduring love, family and forgiveness.’ Marianka Swain of The Daily Telegraph (4★) found the ‘sensitive revival’ ‘poignant, exquisitely performed theatre’. Although Tim Bano in The Independent (4★) thinks it’s ‘a slightly soppy, unfashionable play’, he found it ‘a pretty great pleasure to spend time in the company of this family’. The Financial Times‘ Sarah Hemming (4★) said ‘(director Emily) Burns’ delicately acted staging coaxes you to fall for this fretful, funny bunch and gently draws out the melancholy notes beneath the comedy’. In her Whats On Stage (4★) review, Lucinda Everett said it was ‘moving but never maudlin’. Paul T Davis at BritishTheatre.com (4★) liked ‘the sublime script and performances’. Maryam Philpott at The Reviews Hub thought the play ‘sprightly, beautifully observed and full of hope’. Cindy Marcolina at Broadway World (3★) quite liked what she called ‘a gold mine of dry humour and psychological fun’.

Less enthusiastic was Clive Davis in The Times (3★): ‘some of the dialogue is showing its age’ and ‘sometimes you long for a little more pace and levity.’ Caroline McGinn in Time Out (3★) said it was ‘a pleasant revival and the Evening Standard‘s Nick Curtis (3★) found it ‘incurably quaint and dated’. Adam Bloodworth in City AM (3★) had a similar reaction: ‘Smith’s play feels deeply dated, the overlong first act stuffed with hammy..banter’.

They loved Lindsay Duncan. The Guardian said she gave ‘an imperious performance’. Caiti Grove at londontheatrereviews.co.uk (4★) speaks of her ‘very genuine and motherly performance’.

Frankie Bradshaw’s set is praised, with The Telegraph saying the ‘ravishing revolving set is almost another character.’

Dear Octopus was at the National Theatre until 27 March. Buy tickets directly from the theatre.

Average rating: 3.7

Value Rating 53 (Value rating is the Average critic rating divided by the most common Stalls/Circle ticket price. In theory this means the higher the score the better value but, because of price variations, a West End show could be excellent value if it scores above 30 while an off-West End show may need to score above 60. This rating is based on opening night prices- theatres may raise or lower prices during the run.)

If you’ve seen Dear Octopus, you are welcome to add your review and rating below (but please keep it relevant and polite)

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Till The Stars Come Down – Review

Hilarious comedy reveals home truths about Britain

★★★★

A bridfe and her aunt played by actors are doing their makeup and hair in Till The Stars Come Down at the National Theatre February 2024
Lorraine Ashbourne & Sinéad Matthews in Till The Stars Come Down. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Till The Stars Come Down written by Beth Steel is a shocking insight into the despair of post industrial Britain disguised as a hilarious comedy about a working class family wedding. It may also turn out to be the best new play of 2024.

At the heart of Till The Stars Come Down are three sisters. We meet these delightful characters in the excitement of the morning when the youngest Sylvia is getting married. You positively glow in the warmth of this ebullient, raucous occasion of bickering and bonding.
Hazel played by Lucy Black is the eldest, the mother hen in the absence of their late actual mother. Overworked and over cheerful, she is also begrudging and bigoted. Lisa McGrillis plays Maggie, glittery and wild but unsettled. Sinéad Matthews as Sylvia, naturally nervous but the most forward-looking of the siblings.
They are joined by Aunty Carol. She’s a force of nature who deals with life in sarcastic quips that are funny enough to have the audience in stitches. Her hard mouth shoots out words like a nail gun. From her opening line, directed at Sylvia, ‘How you doing, sugar tits?’,  Lorraine Ashbourne‘s larger-than-life portrayal commands the stage in every one of her scenes.
In the beginning, all is lighthearted conversation and affectionate jibes. The women’s banter- especially Aunty Carol’s- is full of outrageous metaphors and vulgar observations: she talks of a woman who shaved pubic hair as a ‘trailblazer with a razor’. An unfaithful man would have ‘shagged a frog if he could gerrit to hold still long enough’. Maggie liked the way a man looked at her, making her feel ‘like I was a potato in a famine’. Hazel can’t wear a fascinator because she’s ‘got a flat head’.
We also meet Helen’s children. Leanne played by Ruby Stokes is a teenager who wants to save the planet while being depressed by the possibility it is beyond saving. Sarah is a confident little girl who dreams of being an astronaut.
A scene from Till The Stars Come Down at the National Theatre February 2024
Till The Stars Come Down at the National Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

It’s an intimate setting that keeps us involved with Beth Steel’s complex family. The audience is on all four sides looking at a stage floor almost filled with a revolve that, when it turns, enables us to get a fair view of all the characters. Props- usually tables and chairs- are taken on and off for the changing scenes. Samal Blak’s set enables director Bijan Sheibani’s deftly choreographed production to keep moving slickly.

In this stereotypical working-class society of strong women and weak men, they chat and interrupt and talk over one another most naturally.  In Beth Steel’s finest work to date, she juggles many characters and situations. And the performances are so real that you almost feel you are members of the wedding party rather than an audience. The ensemble cast are first-rate actors, many of whom you will recognise from the better quality TV dramas like Happy Valley and Sherwood.
Hazel’s husband John, a shell of a man, is given a mighty characterisation by Derek Riddell. His rabbit-like eyes are soft and nervous, his body trembles with feeling. Alan Williams plays Tony the father of the bride, a stolid man of few words who oozes disappointment but who in a magical moment suddenly comes to life when he remembers winning a Tarzan competition in his youth. His brother Pete played by Philip Whitchurch is a joker with weakness lurking behind his twinkling eyes.
But for Leanne’s mobile phone, it could be 50 years ago in this East Midlands mining community. Except that the mines have shut down and Sylvia is marrying an enterprising Polish immigrant of whom there are quite a few in the area these days. ‘The Team Leaders are all Eastern European and they look after their own’ says Hazel, explaining why she failed to get a promotion.
The guests are celebrating outdoors when a downpour sends them running for cover. Having warmed to these characters, we find ourselves journeying into a sometimes shocking discovery of the truth about their lives.
The wedding is a chance for the sisters to slip into the past, when they were carefree and their beloved mother was still in their lives. For a few hours, nostalgia fuelled by drink brings out, in some of them, their true feelings and their desire to live a more fulfilling life. Onto the stage tumble unconsummated love, unrealised ambition, and a longstanding feud between the father and his brother.
The title appears to derive from W H Auden‘s poem Death’s Echo about our short, meaningless lives and how we should dance while we can. There is certainly plenty of ecstatic dancing in the play. However, existential talk about the age of the universe and the destruction of humanity seems out of place in an already rich portrait of turmoil within a family.

A rollicking start leads to a deeper, darker conclusion

After the rollicking start, you look forward to two-and-a-half hours of laugh-out-loud comedy but it doesn’t last. The humour never quite stops but the play becomes deeper and darker, because this is a play about a community laid low by the loss of the mines around which it prospered. The once proud working class population now work in meaningless jobs in warehouses and supermarkets. Hazel talks of ‘Lost men, lost boys, who once thought they’d have a better life.’ It’s a story that could be repeated in so many parts of post-Industrial Britain, the parts that punished the country’s elite by voting for Brexit, you may think.
If the community has been crushed, so have the dreams of the older characters. Of the sisters, only the youngest Sylvia remains an optimist, looking forward to married life, and embracing change, even if she does sometimes mystically wish she could freeze her moments of happiness. The other two and Helen’s husband John as well as the senior generation have seen their dreams crushed and they bemoan their unhappy, disappointing lives.
By contrast, the outsider, the Pole, is positive about life. Marek, played by Marc Wootton, is willing to work hard at ‘shit jobs’ as he calls them- the kind in which the others feel trapped- to build a better life. He exposes the sense of entitlement and lack of ambition of the British natives. Like the pigs in the abattoir he once worked in, they know their fate.
He is also an outsider in this play, an underdeveloped character and seemingly without any family or friends at the wedding. Of course, we are meant to be concentrating on the state of the British working class but it still feels like a clumsy piece of writing.
Bigotry and racism among Sylvia’s family, kindled by their frustrations and lost power and frustrations, simmer and eventually boil over into a violent climax. The empty shell of a community cracks and the sisterly bond is tested to the limit.
And all praise to the National Theatre for presenting Beth Steel‘s superb play with its impressive large cast. Some other theatres have all but abandoned new writing in the face of funding cuts but the National, also operating on a reduced budget, continues to nurture new writing.
Till The Stars Come Down was performed at the National Theatre until 16 March 2024. It is playing the Theatre Royal Haymarket 1 July – 27 September 2025 (cast may change). Tickets here
Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.
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The Witches musical at the National Theatre – review

Daniel Rigby & Katherine Kingsley reach comedy heights in musical spectacular


★★★

Daniel Rigby and cast of The Witches. Photo: Marc Brenner

It’s hard not to compare the National Theatre’s The Witches with the

West End hit Matilda. Both originated as stories by Road Dahl, both have been turned into much-loved films before being transformed into musical spectaculars.

Good as this well-produced show is, The Witches never quite reaches the heights of its RSC rival. But it does offer an entertaining evening, especially if you want to take your older children to a theatrical show more inventive, and less cliched, than a pantomime.

National Theatre favourite Lucy Kirkwood has done a good job with the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, although it does take a while to get going. It could have gained from being half an hour shorter than its current two-and-a-half hours plus interval.

Still, her lyrics, jointly credited with the composer Dave Malloy, are sharp and witty. The latter clearly knows his way round musicals and has written varied hummable tunes appropriate to the different situations.

The plot goes back to the original story, losing the happier ending of the 1990 film. To remind you, a child discovers that a group of witches is meeting in the hotel at which he’s staying and they are planning to turn every child into a mouse. With the aid of his Gran, he sets out to thwart them.

The cast of The Witches

Director Lyndsey Turner was previously at the National with a very different show about witches. Following the tense drama of The Crucible,  she shows she is also a champion of fast-moving musical comedy. Supported by set and costume designer Lizzie Clachan, Ms Turner takes full advantage of the large cast, and the Olivier revolve.

My only reservation about Ms Clachan’s contribution is the surround of dark thorns which provide a contrast to the brightly colourful sets and costumes (and fill in the enormous Olivier space) but seem like too heavy handed a reminder that the world is a dark place.

Spectacular routines

There’s a Broadway chorus style number Magnificent, which introduces Mr Stringer, a character much expanded from the novel and played by Daniel Rigby as a frantic Basil Fawlty-style hotel manager, obsequious to his rich guests and rude to the less well off.

By the time there is an outbreak of mice in the building, Mr Stringer becomes hysterical and leads possibly the stand-out routine of the show- Out! Out! Out! It’s a dizzying number in which he and his staff prance round the revolve going from room to room looking for mice, placating complaining guests along the way. Daniel Rigby‘s contortions of face and body combined with a strangulated voice surely make him the finest physical comedy actor currently on the London stage.

Katherine Kingsley and cast of The Witches. Photo: Marc Brenner

The Grand High Witch is a superb villain, and Katherine Kingsley extracts every drop of evil from her cauldron. She is imperiously haughty, she snarls at everyone including the audience, and sings an hilarious song Wouldn’t It Be Nice, about how marvellous it would be for parents if they didn’t have children dominating their lives.

Both Daniel Rigby and Katherine Kingsley are a gift wrapped in a bowto this musical. They take the foundations of words, music and situation, and build upon them until the comedy reaches summits of laughter.

The good adult, so to speak, is the boy’s cantankerous elderly gran, beautifully played for laughs and pathos by Sally Anne Triplett. She sings a gorgeous song with her grandson Luke called Heartbeat Duet.

Let’s go back to the comparison with Matilda. Where the earlier musical scores is that its child hero survives intact to the end whereas Luke is turned into a mouse halfway through. At that point, his character alternates between being a mechanical mouse and a  boy in a costume. I know we often need to use our imagination in theatre, but this particular concept failed to fire mine.

One other caveat. Although this is a family show, it is not for young children. It’s not only the complexities of the plot and the darkness of some of the events (Luke’s parents die early on), the language and length are too much for anyone under about ten years old.

Still, for the rest, children and adults alike, there’s plenty of spectacle and comedy in this musical

The Witches performed at the National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre until 27 January 2024.

Paul paid for his ticket.

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

 

 

 

 

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Infinite Life – National Theatre – review

Annie Baker’s outstanding play about women coping with pain

★★★★

Two women sit next to one another, one is wearing a rucksack, in a stage production of infinite Life by Annie Baker
Christina Kirk & Marylouise Burke in Infinte Life. Photo: Marc Brenner

Infinite Life by Annie Baker, which I saw at the National Theatre’s Dorfman, is a play you might find riveting or soporific, or both. Five women all have illnesses that are causing them chronic pain but that conventional medicine has been unable to treat. Desperate for a cure, they have resorted to fasting in a retreat in California.

They lie on sun loungers, they doze, they sip their water or green drinks… and they talk. There’s no action, no emotional explosions, no-one dies, and no dramatic plot twists, although there is an interesting development at the end.

It sounds like a snooze-fest, and in fact some members of the audience did doze or even leave, but I was engrossed by this outstanding play.

Infinite Life may remind you of Waiting For Godot and its days apparently repeating into infinity. Like Beckett’s play, there is not much drama but a lot going on beneath the surface and quite a bit of humour. For good measure, there is the doctor in charge of the clinic, and possibly their fates, who is mentioned frequently but never appears.

Why is it called ‘Infinite Life’? I think, because the five women are so consumed by their pain that they live very much in the moment, unable to think of life beyond it.

I understand that you may prefer loud over quiet, fast over slow, witty comedy over gentle humour, but personally I loved the way every sentence of Annie Baker’s dialogue seems carefully constructed to work on two levels, and rewarded concentrated listening.

There’s the surface of apparently inconsequential talk about what they’re reading, their lists of diagnoses and failed treatments, their chat about sex. Then there are the implications of what they’re saying in the context of the pain they are feeling, as well as the hints of the lives they have led and will lead outside of this moment of suspended time.

Even Annie Baker’s trademark pauses and silences as the women gather their thoughts, or get lost in them, reinforce the disorientation caused by fasting. They also provide us the audience with moments of contemplation.

If you’re expecting their pain to be a metaphor for life, you’ll be disappointed. It is what it says on the tin. As one of the characters says: ‘If pain doesn’t mean anything, it’s so boring. But if it means anything at all then I don’t know if I can bear it.’ It is what it brings out in their characters that stands out.

It is certainly not as depressing as you might imagine. Most of the time, rather than feel sorry for them, you admire these women’s resilience, and the mutual respect inspired by their confinement together and common predicament. Their conversations are leavened with some very funny lines. I could have carried on listening to their conversations long beyond the one hour 45 minutes.

This is a joint National Theatre and Atlantic Theater Company production but the effort has been put in by the Americans. Thanks to an agreement between the British actors’ union and American Equity, the off-Broadway production has been transported set, creatives and cast. And what a cast we were privileged to see! Annie Baker has created five strong characters. Directed by James Macdonald, all the actors do a superlative job at subtly suggesting their suffering, their vulnerability, their fortitude and their inner life.

The women are mostly in their sixties or seventies. Marylouise Burke as Eileen, the oldest, shuffles slowly on and off stage, carefully laying out her cushions on her lounger, moving with delicate precision as if every movement hurts.

Mia Katigbak plays Yvette, precise and firm in her thoughts, and who reels off a tremendously long list of ailments, but also reveals her desperation for the fasting to be a cure. Brenda Pressley is Elaine, reserved and determined. As Ginnie, Kristine Nielsen has a twinkling eye and a playful manner.

Christina Kirk plays Sofi, at 47 the youngest of the cohort. She is tortured, and self torturing, at times blaming herself for her illness. You might think that chronic pain would push sex off the agenda. Far from it. While the older women muse on sex, she is still wracked by desire: forbidden lust that has jeopardised her marriage, the sex itself that is debilitatingly painful, the desperate belief that orgasms might be the cure. In the night, she leaves voice messages about her agony for her husband, and sexual fantasies for her platonic lover.

Incidentally, this was the second National Theatre production running I’ve seen (The House Of Bernarda Alba being the first), in which a woman has masturbated on stage. I’m hoping this isn’t now mandatory because the next show I’m seeing at the National is a family show, The Witches.

Sex crops up quite frequently as a subject for conversation. Someone wonders if bad sex is the cause of illness. On another occasion, there is an extended discussion after someone reveals that a cousin describes pornography for blind people. We always learn about their characters from what they say.

Some time into the play, a solitary man appears. Nelson is mature and attractive enough to make the women take notice. His character is much more thinly drawn than those of the women but Pete Simpson exhibits a believable arrogance. Unlike the others, he has a specifically identified and, it would seem, mortal disease. He seems to be introduced for two reasons. I’ll come to the other later but the first is to provide a contrast to the women’s camaraderie. ‘I don’t want to sound like a dick,’ he says, then proceeds to do just that.

He is the only character who contends that his agony is worse than that of the others. Sofi says to him: ‘You don’t actually know if your level of pain that night was worse than my level of pain on my worst night. It’s impossible to know.’ Until then, I hadn’t fully taken on board how, for the women, their suffering is not a competition. They realise that, like sex, everyone has their own unique, incomparable experience of suffering. And as an audience, we cannot make a judgment. They and we can only offer a gentle sympathy.

Privately it may be different. Eileen, who seems the calmest of all, has a moment alone on stage when she says: ‘This is the night you heard me screaming. I said terrible things …I said none of you have ever been in this much pain …I said it’s a conspiracy..I said …A minute of this is an infinity.’ Not something any of them would actually say out loud to one another: they keep their all-engulfing agony to themselves. 

When they’re not talking about sex or illness, the women often talk philosophically about what they have read, and again we can see how what interests them reflects on their own lives-  how did a similarly ill woman go about setting up a successful business; does an Asian pirate, brought up in a certain culture (for which, perhaps, read afflicted by sickness), have the free will to choose his actions or is he bound to act in a certain way?

Boring or entertaining or both?

Most significantly, Sofi is trying to read George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda. This is not a random choice by Annie Baker. When asked what it’s about, Sofi says that so far the book is concerned with Gwendoline and her suitors. Those familiar with the novel will know that Gwendoline is self-obsessed, contained in her own world, much as people in constant agony are.

She says: ‘If I’m not reading it all the time it seems really boring, but once I’m into it, it’s like the most entertaining thing in the world.’ Is Annie Baker giving a knowing wink to the audience about this play?

Sofi is finding it hard to get beyond page 152. The sentence she gets stuck at says irrational fear can stop you doing what you know is achievable. Something else to think about, and certainly relevant to the test Nelson provides for Sofi on whether she will act on her sexual desire.

Dusk follows day, night takes over, then another day in the blazing Californian sun begins. Lighting designer Isabella Byrd dims the lights into moonlight that actually feels cool, then slams on a sudden migraine-inducing flood of daylight. The women’s current lives may be an infinite loop as each day merges into the next but there is a finite time frame to the play. It begins with the first day of Sofi’s stay at the retreat and ends on the day she leaves.

Four women doze on sun loungers in the Atlantic Theater proudction of Infinite Life
Christina Kirk, Kristine Nielsen, Brenda Pressley and Mia Katigbak in Infinite Life. Photo: Marc Brenner

The set, from the New York design collective, dots, suggests the monotony of fasting. It is minimal and never changing. In front of a beige background, there’s a patterned breeze block wall of a similar colour, about two metres tall. In front of that there are a number of loungers. The cheap nature of the wall and beds implies that the so-called clinic is a new age sham designed to make money from desperate people who have been failed by medical science.

For the majority of the play, the women lie down as if their loungers are islands in an ocean of agony. They talk but they don’t make physical contact or delve deeply into each other’s lives. Then, as we reach the final minutes of the play, there is a moment between Sofi and Eileen, which does seem to take us forward.

They touch each other, both mentally and physically.  It’s a human connection that suggests we need not be alone in our pain. This seems to point to a way in which we can possibly learn from it. Perhaps by moving from the inward-facing world of Gwendoline to the outward-looking and more empathetic behaviour of Daniel Deronda himself.

Annie Baker is that rare class of writer who can create a funny, moving play about the human condition, without resorting to easy messages and emotional manipulation.

Infinite Life was performed at the Linda Gross Theater in New York from August 18 to October 15, 2023, and from 22 November 2023 to 13 January 2024 at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre.

Paul purchased his ticket.

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

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Visitors by Barney Norris – The Watermill – review

Threatened theatre produces a jewel of a play

★★★★

Tessa Bell-Briggs and Christopher Ravenscroft in Visitors. Pamela Raith Photography

The Arts Council has cut its annual funding to The Watermill Theatre in Newbury which will be a tragedy for UK theatre if they are no longer able to produce shows like last year’s Whistle Down The Wind, Bleak Expectations (soon to open in the West End), or their current production of Visitors.

Visitors was written by Barney Norris about ten years ago and has been revived with the author now directing. It is a sad but ultimately uplifting play about the long-lasting relationship of an elderly couple, one of whom is succumbing to dementia, contrasted with the rootlessness of newer generations. It is beautifully written, both in its construction and in its language.

After my recent visit to A Little Life where I was bombarded with blood, violence and video, it was something of a relief to be witnessing a play that relies on actors and words- pure but never simple. The Watermill has a small stage and the designers Good Teeth use it well to create a farmhouse sitting room made for two and, to the sides, a suggestion of the ripe wheat fields that were the business of the farm and now being symbolically harvested.

The occupants are Edie and Arthur, now well into their old age. In many ways, the play is a eulogy to a rural way of life that has been lost in our consumer-driven metropolitan world. They met as very young people and have adapted to each other in the same way as they have lived their lives, with a kind of make-do-and-mend. They may not have had the family or the holidays they would have liked, but they have happy memories, especially of a wedding on a beach. They have come to rely on one another and take strength from their shared experience. They talk, well Edie talks mainly, but now, as Edie puts it, her dementia has created a dam that holds back what she wants to think and say.

Barney Norris is clearly interested in the power of roots and tradition. His adaptation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding at Salisbury Playhouse in 2020 was firmly set in the community of Salisbury Plain. In Visitors, the Wiltshire farm has been in Arthur’s family for three generations, but the continuity that it, and the elderly couple who have lived there all their married life, represents is under threat. Their son Steve isn’t interested in taking over the farm and has pursued a career in insurance. A young carer, Kate, has been drafted in to help them in their old age but she is neither skilled nor certain to stay.

The restless attitude of the newer generations contrasts with the stoicism and acceptance of the older one. Steve is dissatisfied with his life and whose marriage is on the rocks. The millennial Kate is drifting aimlessly. As Edie says to her: ‘You’re unsure because you could be anyone, really, and you don’t know which life to have.’ Edie may wonder what other lives she might have led, but is content with the one she did.

If Steve and Kate are visitors to Edie and Arthur, Edie in her more lucid moments regards us all as visitors to the earth for the duration of our lives, and sees that we must make the most of it, which she fears Steve and Kate will not, given the illusion of choice that today’s rootless world offers.

As the play moves towards the inevitable closing of the door on Edie and Arthur’s life together, we learn more about all four characters.

An authentic portrait of old age

Edie is revealed to be well-read and quite a philosopher, and, in her use of language, a poet. Her brain may now be letting her down in her interactions with others but she sees the patterns of sunlight across the room and over the wheat fields, changing but eternal. Tessa Bell-Briggs as Edie seamlessly segues between warm awareness and drowning in dementia, while always retaining the sense of who she is.

Three characters sit in a circle chatting and laughing in a scene from Visitors at The Watermill Newbury April 2023
Tessa Bell-Briggs, Patrick Toomey and Nathalie Barclay in Visitors. Pamela Raith Photography

Arthur is quiet and, like many men of that generation, not given to showing his emotions, which makes the moment all the more poignant when, contemplating the prospect of Edie going into a home, he breaks down in tears. Christopher Ravenscroft gives a deep performance as a shy, gentle man whose eyes twinkle with contentment and who is horrified when his lack of social skills causes him to say the wrong thing. It’s a portrayal so authentic, you feel you know him from somewhere.

Patrick Toomey plays the middle-aged, but yet to grow up, son. As we find out more about him, his initial crassness gives way to a sense that, despite his different life choices, he is like his father in his inarticulacy and social blunders.

Nathalie Barclay is Kate, the slightly on edge young woman with blue hair who finds temporary security by caring for his parents.

Despite how I have described the play, Visitors is celebratory rather than depressing. Yes, all life is temporary and usually ends badly, but Edie and Arthur have had a fulfilled life, made so by things that can’t be accounted for by economists and marketers, like tradition, love and acceptance. I thank Barney Norris for putting it on record before people like Edie and Arthur end their visit to our world and their way of life disappears forever.

Visitors is running at The Watermill until 22 April 2023. https://www.watermill.org.uk/

Paul was given a review ticket by the producer

Click here to watch this review on our YouTube channel

 

 

 

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Wodehouse in Wonderland – review

Robert Daws charms as the great comic writer


★★★

Production photo from Wodehouse in Wonderland February 2023 showing the actor Robert Daws as Wodehouse laughing and holding up a dry martini
Robert Daws in Wodehouse In Wonderland. Photo: Pamela Raith

There’s a lot to enjoy in this one-man play about PG Wodehouse, especially since the man in question is the very talented Robert Daws.

The world is divided between those who love PG Wodehouse’s books and those who hate them. Well, that’s not strictly true because there must be a large proportion of the world that has no opinion at all about him. But if you do have a positive view about the man known to his friends as Plum, I think you’ll like Wodehouse In Wonderland which I saw at the Haymarket in Basingstoke.

I say ‘think’ because, although there are many quotes from the great man’s books, this is not a play about Jeeves And Wooster, or Lord Emsworth. Instead, it’s a dip into the mind of the man himself, and Wodehouse alone on stage is not as funny as his books.

Then again, what do I know? I’m reminded of Plum’s opinion of reviewers: “Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime?” he said.  “Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.”

For someone who seems quintessentially English, Wodehouse spent a lot of time in America. As a young man in the period after the First World War, he was there writing the lyrics to a number of successful musical comedies, working mainly with Guy Bolton and the great composer Jerome Kern. After the second world war, he took up permanent residence in the USA and never returned to England. And it is quite late in his life that we meet him in his home in New York State.

We’re treated to much Wodehouse wit, as he talks in letters to his beloved daughter Leonora (“without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time”), and to an unseen biographer who asks him earnest questions about the effect of his almost parent-less childhood on his writing.

William Humble’s script is certainly amusing, and Robert Daws is such a brilliant actor that he is able to capture the whole audience with a smile and an anecdote.

But compared to one of Wodehouse’s novels, this delightful play lacks one crucial element. As the man himself said: “If they aren’t in interesting situations, characters can’t be major characters.” In the first act at least, Wodehouse isn’t in an interesting situation. There is none of the great conflict that you get between say Jeeves and Wooster, nor the complex plots that Wodehouse spent weeks working out and that propelled his characters into ever more hilarious plights. Truth be told, unlike his characters, Wodehouse is not larger than life.

A delightful but not entirely successful attempt to pin down Wodehouse

Not only that, he erects a considerable defence to prevent anyone from discovering any interesting depths. He won’t allow his biographer- or us- to dip into more than the shallows of his mind. He once said: “It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.”

So, writing a play about PG Wodehouse is a challenge, somewhat like keeping a souffle from sinking. William Humble only meets it fully when we get to the second act. It’s then that the twin tragedies of Wodehouse’s adult life are revealed. As he put it himself: “it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”

Add to which, he was ostracised or, as he might have put it: “the supply of the milk of human kindness was short by several gallons”. We see, illuminated in flashes as it were, the depths to which he must have sunk, before pulling himself back up using the safety line of writing comedy.

Production photo from the play Wodehouse In Wonderland February 2023 shows the actor Robert Daws istting at a desk with a typewriter next a window with a sunny view
Wodehouse in Wonderland. Photo: Pamela Raith

And writing was his life. Whatever else there was going on, he worked hard at his typewriter, turning out three or four books a year.  He appears frivolous and out of touch with the real world. Indeed, his critics describe him that way, and dislike the way he creates a bubble in which his characters and their stories exist. Yet, from the extracts that William Humble regularly inserts into the proceedings, we can tell that Wodehouse showed a level of craftmanship his contemporaries struggled to equal. His contortions of the English language are priceless and, even though his characters are not realistic, they are vividly real.

Oh, and he sings songs. I mentioned Wodehouse’s early success as a lyricist. In the 1920s, he was renowned as much as a writer of musical comedies as he was a comic novelist. We’re treated to quite a few of his songs in this play. I’m pleased to report Mr Daws has a fine voice.

It’s not easy to keep a show visually interesting when you only have one person on a stage and no special effects, but director Robin Herford injects a good rhythm into the production.  The design by Lee Newby is just right. It’s a naturalistic reproduction of a study with a writing desk dead centre, in a bright and beautiful house where, metaphorically, the sun always shines.

To sum up, this is a slightly flawed play but still a pleasurable evening, made exceptional by the quality of Robert Daws’ performance. You can’t help but be charmed by him, as charmed as I imagine you would have been by meeting Plum himself.

This is a production that could easily run in the West End, where you would pay £100 to see it. On this tour of the UK, you can probably catch it for under £30. Top hole, I say.

Wodehouse In Wonderland is touring the UK until the end of April 2023. More details at cahootstheatrecompany.com/wodehouse-in-wonderland

Paul received a free review ticket from the producer.

Click to watch this review on YouTube

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Sophie Okonedo & Ben Daniels in Medea – Review

Powerful performances from Okonedo & Daniels

Production photo from Medea at sohoplace theatre in London February 2023 showing a woman holding up her hand in the rain
Sophie Okonedo in Medea. Photo: Johan Persson

★★★★

You may well be familiar with the horror story of Medea. It began as an Ancient Greek myth and was immortalised in a play by Euripides. In this review, I’ll be talking about how it ends. If you don’t know, and want to have the extra tension of wondering whether or not she will commit the terrible act of violence that is threatened from the beginning, you may want to stop reading.  Although, if you do, you’ll miss me talking about a stunning theatre production featuring Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels giving two of the most powerful performances I’ve seen.

In Euripides’ version of the myth, Medea kills her children as an act of vengeance against her husband who has left her for a richer, more influential and younger woman. Stories of parents murdering their children make headlines to this day, and no doubt such an act was just as shocking to the Ancient Greeks. But what Euripides does, while not in any way whitewashing the monstrosity of the act, is to lay out everything that led to it. 

Unlike the other ancient classic currently gracing the London stage, namely Phaedra at the National which I saw and enjoyed last week, this production makes no attempt to modernise the story. Yes, the characters wear modern dress but it’s fairly plain, and the set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, is almost bare. Such details as there are, are telling– a low wall concealing a staircase to a basement (where the final horrors take place) is made of stone (a word that is used frequently in the play to describe Medea); high above hangs a giant golden headband or crown which parallels the circular stage and predicts the headband that is weaponised later in the play. Even a table and chairs which could denote the possibility of sitting and talking things through are removed before a word is spoken.

And this is all happening in the round, at the wonderful new theatre @sohoplace. So it’s like being in an Ancient Greek amphitheatre, where the audience was all around, drawn into the play and treated as witnesses and judges. Even more so, because no-one is more than a few rows from the actors. In fact, the chorus of three women sits among the audience, making us all feel like we’re the women of Corinth trying in vain to understand and intervene. 

Even the adaptation is a classic, the 1947 version by American poet Robinson Jeffers, which has both the natural flow of modern English and an accentuated use of metaphor. ‘Stone’, ‘bone’ and ‘dog’ run like a motifs through the play.

Medea has been wronged and she wants revenge. She played a major part in the success of her husband Jason (of Argonaut and Golden Fleece fame) only for him to betray her by leaving her for the daughter of Creon, the King of Corinth . The play is a series of ‘interviews’ between Medea and the powerful men in her life: Creon, Aegheus the King of Athens, and of course Jason.

 From the very beginning of Robinson Jeffers’ adaptation, Medea is full-on angry and prepared to be as evil as required in response to the perceived evil of Jason and of the male-controlled society that has demeaned her. And what this means is that Sophie Okonedo can let rip with her anger and her anguish from the start.

Euripides’ explanation, Daniels’ provocation, Okonedo’s persuasion

I guarantee you will rarely have seen a performance like that of Sophie Okonedo as Medea.  She’s mad with anger, yet able to outargue and deceive these men with smiles and guile. She cries proper snotty tears, she smiles like a tiger, her eyes turn to stone, all in a minute. You may know what’s going to happen, but the tension is palpable, because, even when given an out, the men patronise her, and, even though they know she is to be feared, underestimate her.

As modern people, we are more into the idea of atonement and forgiveness but we understand the visceral need for revenge, and while we may not see it as noble in the way the Greeks did, this play helps us comprehend why Medea feels she has no alternative but to carry out her gruesome vengeance and we feel her heart breaking at the thought of it.

Production photo from Medea at sohoplace theatre in London February 2023 showing a man in a vest in the rain
Ben Daniels in Medea. Photo: Johan Persson

In an astonishing piece of theatre, director Dominic Cooke has one actor Ben Daniels play all the male parts, thus emphasising that it is men generically who rule society. Even so, Mr Daniels, in a performance as powerful as Miss Okenedo’s, gives each of them a distinct personality: the selfish Jason, the weak King Creon, the shallow King Aegheus. And he constantly walks round the edge of the stage, usually in slow motion, showing she is encircled and trapped by men who disrespect Medea and take all chance of justice away from her.

The panic of the women around Medea, especially Marion Bailey as the Nurse, piles on the stress.

This is a most tense and ultimately devastating 90 minutes. You don’t actually see any of the deaths but I can tell you the hairs on my neck stood up when Medea went down the stairs to kill her children.

And this is where it goes wrong as a play. It may, or may not, have worked for the ancient Greeks- but for a modern sensibility, murdering your children crosses a line, even with all of Euripides’ explanation, and Ben Daniels’ provocation, and Sophie Okonedo’s persuasion. It is too much like a terrorist justifying killing innocent people.

Medea can be seen at sohoplace theatre in London until 22 April 2023.

Paul paid for his ticket.

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

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Phaedra with Janet McTeer – National Theatre- Review

Janet McTeer excels in a dramatic tale of forbidden love by Simon Stone


★★★★

Production shot from Phaedra at the National Theatre in February 2023 showing the cast standing in a sitting room
Phaedra at the National Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson

On the whole, I loved Phaedra by Simon Stone at the National Theatre‘s Lyttelton auditorium. There was just one element I didn’t like. First, let me tell you what was so good about it.

Don’t worry if you’re not keen on Greek tragedy. This is not a production full of togas and choruses. It’s a bang-up-to-date tale of a politician who has an affair. The essential story of Phaedra is still there, as told in Ancient Greece by Euripides, in Ancient Rome by Seneca the Younger, in the middle of the last millennium by Racine, and many times over since including relatively recently by Sarah Kane.

It’s always been a tale of forbidden love, originally of a princess falling in love with her stepson, but in this new version, the young man is already in his forties and he’s the son of a former lover. So, not a stepson, and certainly not a young man being taken advantage of. I guess most of us can understand the way love, or lust, can overtake reason. The forbidden love is, on the face of it, that of someone whose passionate feelings lead her into infidelity- simple adultery, although not so simple, as it turns out.

Our protagonist, called not Phaedra but Helen, is a shadow cabinet minister. You might think her forbidden love is not so much for someone other than her husband but her love for herself.  This play is dominated by an examination of a certain kind of liberal middle-class people who have no moral code beyond what they feel.

We first meet a family bickering over breakfast. A teenage son is uncontrolled in his language or subject matter in front of and towards his parents. The older daughter, just visiting, is not much less restrained. The affable father jokes with them about sex. It seems to be a family without boundaries. You may or may not approve of the liberal principle of treating the children as equals, as quasi-grown-ups but, in this case, the children seem to have become self-centred and lacking in respect. Helen, the mother, leads by example. This is brought home by the way they speak over one another, barely listening. You may find this scene appalling or laugh-out-loud funny or both.

The self obsession extends beyond family to the rest of the world. Helen can be seen as the patronising face of first world- imperialist, even- attitudes towards other cultures. For example, when Helen spent time in Morocco, she didn’t bother to learn the language, and she hasn’t taken the trouble to find out where her black, best friend was born.

Production shot from Phaedra at the National Theatre in London February 2023 showing Mckenzie Davis holding Assaad Bouab's face and staring into his eyes
McKenzie Davis and Assaad Bouab in Phaedra. Photo: Johan Persson

Then Sofiane arrives. He reminds Helen of his father- her past Moroccan lover, a man who died in a car crash and whose letter to his son provides an intermittent sub-titled voiceover expressing hope and regret. Sofiane makes clear he reciprocates the feelings Helen has for him. It’s not just that he’s like his father physically, he too is a political activist and that reminds her even more of how she not only has traded physical excitement for a boring marriage but has given up the thrill of activism for the compromise of party politics. I don’t need to tell you how often an older person has an affair to try to recapture lost youth.

Despite changes to the plot and the modern setting, this is still a Greek tragedy in its structure. I won’t go any further with the story, except to say Simon Stone has retained those ancient ideas that people who misbehave get punished, and revenge moves through the generations. So, there are many twists, and it does all end badly. In fact, the ending is very dramatic, almost melo-dramatic.

It’s a well-told story with much comedy and many great set scenes. One in particular takes place in a restaurant where the family and close friends are gathered for Helen’s 60th birthday. Revelation follows revelation in a scene that wouldn’t go amiss in a farce, with glasses smashing, home truths spewing out, and Helen all the while lamenting loudly about the distraction from her celebration.

Production shot from Phaedra at the National Theatre in February 2023 showing Janet McTeer leaning against a glass wall
Janet McTeer in Phaedra. Photo: Johan Persson/

The acting is marvellous.  Janet McTeer is so on point as this totally self-absorbed politician. She talks at speed, with passion and intensity, and expresses her feelings so naturally, that you forget she’s acting. The script gives her the platform for what will surely turn out to be one of the acting performances of the year.

Paul Chahidi as her husband Hugo is terrific too in the role of this put-upon husband and father who manages to keep afloat with jokes and diplomacy. He’s charming and likeable, but also exudes insignificance. You can see why he appealed to the dominating Helen, but also why she was ready to be unfaithful to Sofiane, played by the handsome, charismatic Assaad Bouab.

All the cast impress but a special word for Akiya Henry as Helen’s friend and fellow shadow cabinet member Omolara. She portrays an easy-going person who seems to take Helen’s ignorance of her background and her mockery of her religion with good humour, but you sense an iron core that emanates from her moral grounding (something Helen lacks) and she has the kind of painted smile that conceals an objective, calculating mind.

Canadian screen star Mckenzie Davis makes an impressive stage debut, riding a rollercoaster of emotions as Helen’s daughter Isolde.

No thinking outside the box

So what didn’t I like? The design. All the action takes place within a revolving glass box . This was an interesting coincidence because only the night before I saw Phaedra, I saw The Lehman Trilogy which also features a revolving glass box. But, whereas the latter worked, this didn’t. The effect is perhaps of making the audience feel like the Greek and Roman Gods who would look down on humans and their folly. Or it could suggest the way in which the characters are trapped, in this case in a cycle of betrayal and revenge. The many uprights may have been intended to reinforce the idea of the characters being in a prison but they too often obscured the faces of the actors. It was a shame not to see the agonies their characters were going through.

The biggest problem caused by the design is that every change of scene took forever. Sometimes the scene change was longer than the following scene! When you’re dealing with a raised box with awkward access and egress, everything takes much longer than it would if the action had taken place on the stage floor and scenery could be rolled on and off easily. The extended blackouts would have been intolerable but for Stefan Gregory’s hypnotic sound which played as we waited.

Designer Chloe Lamford’s talent is beyond question, and the sets within the box did look fantastic. It’s just the box that didn’t work.  I don’t want to lay all the blame at her door because it could well be that she was simply doing what director Simon Stone wanted. The last production by him that I saw was Yerma at the Young Vic, and that too took place behind glass walls, so maybe it’s his thing.

Phaedra performed at the National Theatre until 8 April 2023

Paul received a free review ticket from the producer.

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

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Emma Corrin in Orlando – Garrick Theatre – Review

Crown star Emma Corrin is mesmerising in comedy about gender freedom

★★★★

Emma Corrin as Orlando at the Garrick Theatre 2022
Emma Corrin in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

It may be nearly a hundred years since  Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando, but it’s only todat that our society has caught up with its story about the fluidity of gender, desire and time. As the novel, quoted in the play, says: ‘If you can just live another century.’

Emma Corrin, probably best known as young Princess Diana in The Crown, plays the eponymous protagonist. When the play begins, Orlando is a young male aristocrat in the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

In our first encounter with him, we catch a glimpse of a penis. It’s a startling and funny moment that sets the scene for the rest of the evening. His trusty servant-come-dresser-come-tutor-come-guardian angel Mrs Grimsditch tries to get him to put his trousers on. Deborah Findlay is funny, warm and down-to-earth, providing a necessary foil for Emma Corrin who gives a mesmerising performance as the romantic, confused, freedom-loving hero. The symbolic trouser-wearing is a motif throughout the play.

Even if they prefer the non-binary pronoun ‘they’, Emma Corrin, of course, doesn’t have a penis. It’s a theatrical prop. Before long, Orlando has lost that organ and mysteriously become a woman, as well as moving on many years to the court of James I without getting much older. To confirm the sex change, we catch a glimpse of her breasts, which I think were real but this is theatre, a world of pretence, so who knows?

In fact, theatre is a theme of this play. It moves through many theatrical styles as Orlando navigates from Elizabethan (a hint of Shakespeare) to Jacobean to Regency to Victorian times to the gradual liberation of the modern era. This substitutes for the literary journey that Orlando undertakes in the original novel. Theatre is not as effective a barometer for the changing attitudes to women, but it works nicely as a metaphor for being whatever you want to be.

To support the theme, Michael Grandage and designer Peter McKintosh have created a set that looks like a bare stage with brickwork and a large metal door. It’s populated with the trappings of a theatre- ropes and counterweights, a large costumes basket, a clothes rail, a stepladder and more. The set frequently features a bed that starts large and becomes much smaller in Victorian times (the worst of all periods for women). Having set up the theme, I think Neil Bartlett could have put it across more strongly in the script. There seems to be no equivalent of the constantly changing book that Orlando is writing and that provides a unifying thread through the novel.

From the start, this dramatised version offers the kind of inventive freewheeling imagination found in the original novel, because no less than nine Virginia Woolfs appear, speaking together and separately, to tell us the multi-faceted story of Orlando.

View of Emma Corrin's naked back in Orlando at The Garrick Theatre London
Emma Corrin in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

Much as she liked being a man, Orlando likes being a woman more and that’s how they remain, as the play develops into a romp through three centuries of the history of women in our society. And just as there are many different Virginia Woolfs, Orlando discovers there are many different ways we can desire. They also realise that time is elastic rather than linear, and that (spoiler alert) life needs to be enjoyed go the full in the here and now. It is above all a story that lauds the freedom of poetic imagination above the prosaic.

Orlando finds out what it is to be a woman, an experience made more shocking by them having been a man. They experience the disturbing effect a bare leg can have on heterosexual men and the way misogynistic men subjugate women. They realise that women can love each other, that love and betrayal go hand in hand. They find that men and women can dress up as each other for practical as well as sexual purposes.

Emma Corrin and Deborah Findlay stand shoulder to shoulder in a scene form Orlando at the Garrick Theatre 2022
Emma Corrin and DEborah Fidnlay in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

Orlando is an everyperson rather than an intrepid hero or overpowering genius. Emma Corrin is tremendous at portraying the inarticulacy of the character, the frequent lack of understanding, but also the enthusiasm and optimism. They dominate the stage with their wide eyes, knotted features, hesitant speech, squirming body and sparkling smile. It’s a performance that is both funny and sad, and thoroughly engaging. As with the relationship between Orlando and Mrs Grimsditch, Emma Corrin’s youthful exuberance is balanced by the twinkly-eyed experience of Deborah Findlay.

In a play where gender is fluid, an entirely female cast bar one takes on all the roles, which of course leads to some mockery of men. Lucy Briers memorably plays a blustering naval officer who moves like a bantam cock. She also provides a haughty Queen Elizabeth.

Although writer Neil Bartlett couldn’t hope to convey the depth and complexity of Virginia Woolf’s novel, he does pick the important themes and moments, and by introducing the author onto the stage we get to hear direct quotes from the novel in her stream-of-consciousness way of writing.

Missing, in this fast moving 80 minute play, were the deeper relationships. Orlando’s first love Sasha whom they never forget, is played with verve by Millicent Wong, and their last Marmaduke is given a sensitive portrayal by Jodie McNee. But these lovers flash by as we skim across the surface of Orlando’s life. Their journey is not always pleasant, but it is ultimately optimistic.

Orlando is an entertaining evening thanks in no small part to Emma Corrin who displays all the signs of being a great star of the stage.

Orlando is playing at the Garrick Theatre in London until 25 February 2023.

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

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