Longer versions of reviews featured on the YouTube channel and podcast One Minute Theatre Reviews, mainly London shows and selected regional and touring productions
Why Steve Coogan is better than Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove
★★★★
John Hopkins and Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove. Photo: Manuel Harlan
I don’t know what’s more spectacular, the production of Dr Strangelove or Steve Coogan‘s triumphant performance as four different characters. He’s hardly ever off stage and he generates most of the laughs. The script has some flaws, but these are far outweighed by the enjoyment gleaned from this magnificent show.
You might be wondering whether a film made in the 1960s about how a nuclear war might be triggered stacks up as a comedy for today. It does creak occasionally but it is funnier and more relevant than you might expect. I’ll return to that but more to the point is that Dr Strangelove is a vehicle for the powerful comic acting of Steve Coogan, following in the footsteps of the film’s star Peter Sellers by playing multiple roles. As well as constantly changing costumes, he is hardly off the stage. He deserves an award for stamina, as well as any others he will deservedly accrue.
The action starts at a US air base in Britain. The hut interior with its massive Venetian blinds, just waiting to be disrupted, is the first of a series of great sets by Hildegard Bechtler (who also designed the set for the current production of Oedipus). We meet the first and possibly the best of four brilliant characters created by Steve Coogan. He’s a RAF Captain Mandrake, shocked that the US commander has launched an unauthorised nuclear attack on Russia. It’s a masterpiece of British reserve, politeness and beating around the bush in the face of the utter madness of General Ripper played hilariously by a cigar-chomping, carpet-chewing and suitably square-jawed John Hopkins.
Steve Coogan and Giles Terera in Dr Strangelove. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Next, we are in a spectacular War Room with a huge electronic map or ‘Big Board’ as they call it working over the scene, showing targets as ‘circles, squares and squiggly bits’. Here, a panicking mix of politicians and military men have gathered in response to the news. Mr Coogan is the level-headed US President Muffley surrounded by war-mongering generals, led by an excellent Giles Terera as General Turgidson, maintaining a stiff military stance but always on the verge of jumping up and down with childish excitement.
Also in the room is Russian Ambassador Bakov (the amusing names keep on coming), played by Tony Jaywardena, who disintegrates from swaggering confidence to paralysing fear as he realises his fate is in the hands of his unpredictable and possibly mad leader.
There’s some excellent sleight of hand when Mr Coogan changes to Dr Strangelove, a former German scientist now masterminding the US nuclear response. He holds down his arm to prevent it making Nazi salutes, always with a reassuring ’I hated that’, while clearly looking forward to a new Reich. Mr Coogan plays down the German fanatic stereotype which makes his explanation of the logic of having automatic responses to the use of nuclear weapons without human intervention, and his casual description of the consequences of a nuclear holocaust as chilling as they are funny.
The third set cleverly recreates a bomber plane. The fuselage and landscape below are recreated impeccably, although I’m not sure how visible it would be from the back of the stalls. Sitting in the cockpit with two other members of the crew is the pilot Major TJ Kong, played by Steve Coogan.
It takes some chutzpah to put yourself up for comparison with the great Peter Sellers but Mr Coogan emerges with at least a draw, and he deserves an extra credit for playing all these parts in the course of two hours. Like Mr Sellers, he avoids going for the obvious laughs which could be gained from exaggerating the accents and mannerisms, and other clowning. Instead, they take the characters seriously and allow the humour to come out of the situation, making it all the more believable.
Steve Coogan outdoes Peter Sellers in one respect. That’s by taking on a fourth role, which the star of the film was unable to do owing to an injury. Again it’s a priceless performance as Major T J Kong, as the pilot reverts to cowboy mode. Despite objections and obstacles, he is determined to carry out the mission, but can he be stopped?
A code that will cancel the bombers is essential but Coogan back as RAF Captain Mandrake and in possession of said code has trouble trying to phone the President because of lack of change. This leads to one of the funniest scenes, as he tries to persuade a US soldier to shoot open a vending machine. To the American, vandalising Coca Cola property is a more serious offence than causing World War 3.
This stage show has been adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley from a 1964 film that satirised the military strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction- the idea that if all the major powers were armed with nuclear weapons they wouldn’t attack for fear of being destroyed themselves. At the time, hot on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, people were actually preparing for the possibility of a nuclear war. Sixty years later, it hasn’t happened. Not that that makes Dr Strangelove a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Yes, CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) is barely mentioned these days and we have become more concerned about the destruction of the planet through pollution and the climate crisis, but the reality is that nuclear weapons have proliferated, making greater than ever the danger of a country, a dictator, or even a terrorist group using them. With an aggressive Putin in power in Russia and an unpredictable President due to take over the US nuclear codes, not to mention nuclear weapons at the disposal of Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and, before long, Iran, this is a timely reminder that it only takes one or two psychopaths with their fingers on the trigger to desolate the world- and how absurd this is.
Giles Terera is excellent as a war-mongering general
Dr Strangelove imagines two such madmen (and the players are all men) setting off a potential nuclear war. In doing so, it exposes fundamental flaws in the macho culture and logic of war that has led them into this corner. So the US generals talk of ‘pre-taliation’, based on the assumption that an accidental attack by them will trigger retaliation and they will need to get in first. It’s satire but it bites deeply into the fanaticism that comes out of the dehumanisation of the opposition.
It’s not a musical but it begins and ends with a chorus line of military personnel dancing to popular songs, the opening number being the most aggressive version of Try A Little Tenderness I’ve ever heard, and ending with Vera Lynn (Penny Ashmore) singing with equal irony the sentimental World War Two song We’ll Meet Again.
The one-liners come thick and fast (‘You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room’) and, thanks to director Sean Foley, the pace rarely lets up. The only problem is that the plot is entirely centred around the question of whether a nuclear war can be prevented. With no subplots or diversions, the humour, never subtle and already dated in parts, becomes progressively predictable: you can only take so many jokes about redneck Americans and the madness of war.
Fortunately, Steve Coogan is magnificent, creating four very different characters and showing perfectly how the best laughs come from taking the comedy seriously. He looked exhausted by the time the curtain came down.
Dr Strangelove can be seen at the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End until 25 January 2025, and then at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre from 5 to 22 February 2025. Ticket information here.
The Cabinet Minister at The Menier Theatre. Photo: Tristram Kenton
Who would have thought that a forgotten play by a seldom-performed Victorian playwright would be one of the funniest theatre shows of the year?
Arthur Pinero was one of the most popular playwrights of his day- he was even given a knighthood. He made his name with farces and then with more serious plays on social matters like The Second Mrs Tanquery– one of the few that people may have heard of. While he may not offer quite the sharp wit or tight plots of his contemporary Oscar Wilde, Pinero too mocked the Victorian upper class.
I think it’s fair to say his plays haven’t aged as well as Wilde’s, but with a little attention from adaptor Nancy Carroll, The Cabinet Minister scrubs up very well. She’s simplified the story, cut the anachronisms, and added lashings of innuendoes.
What is the plot? Unbeknownst to him, a government minister’s wife and son have run up enormous debts. The latter is a gambler, the former has bought far too many expensive dresses on credit. If the debts aren’t paid, the minister already under pressure to resign, will be disgraced and forced to retire to that fate worse than death (to his wife, anyway) the countryside.
The dressmaker and her moneylender brother intend to use the debts as leverage to gain entry into high society, and, in the brother’s case, to use insider knowledge to make a stock market killing. The wife’s solution is to marry off her children to rich spouses. They have different ideas- they would like to marry for love.
A rollicking farce
Nicholas Rowe & Nancy Carroll in The Cabinet Minister. Photo: Tristram Kenton
So, it has all the ingredients of a comedy of manners and a rollicking farce. Nancy Carroll, director Paul Foster, designer Janet Bird and a well chosen cast have cooked them up into the comedy of the year. Nicholas Rowe plays the government minister Sir Julian Twombley. Tall and patrician, and so cynical about politics he gets his butler to write his speeches, he provides the still centre for the shenanigans.
Nancy Carroll not only adapted the play, she stars as his wife Lady Katherine Twombley. She knows how lucky she is to be part of high society, and doesn’t want that luck to run out. In Ms Carroll’s hands, she carries herself haughtily, throws out barbed one-liners, and panics wholeheartedly, as when she tries to strangle her nemesis Bernard Lacklustre. He’s the main creditor and, played by Laurence Ubong Williams, is a Del Boy character failing at every turn to blend into upper class society.
His sister Fanny Lacklustre is a tradesperson in the morning and a lady in the afternoon, such are the complexities of the class system. Lady Katherine may feel contempt for her, and shows it, but she cannot resist the pressure to bring her into her world. Phoebe Fildes gives a great turn as the thick-skinned schemer, ignoring sleights, ever smiling and pressing on with her plans.
Then there are the children. I particularly liked Rosalind Ford as a naive, confused Imogen Twombley. She is in love with Valentine, a hairy, smelly explorer who won’t settle for domesticity, and played by George Blagden with panache. Unfortunately, her parents have promised her to a rich Scottish laird, Sir Colin McPhail. And here we come to the highest comedy of the evening. Sir Colin is taciturn and shy. Played by Matthew Woodyatt, he’s a lumbering giant ties himself in knots trying to proclaim his feelings, while his mother Lady MacPhail speaks for him and at times the whole of Scotland. Played by Dillie Keane, best known as part of Fascinating Aida, she is an over-the-top Scot forever banging on about the glens and hills of her beloved country.
Attempting to matchmake is Dora, the Dowager Countess of Drumdurris. She constantly appears and disappears through the two doors in classic farce fashion. Sara Crowe was indisposed when I saw the show. While her last minute replacement read the lines well from a script, we lost some of the speed that I am sure was intended by movement director Joanna Goodwin.
Members of the cast play musical instruments. This device is used regularly by The Watermill Theatre and by Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of). It is highly effective in establishing mood and sometimes character and can also help keep us the audience at bay in a play where we are deliberately distanced from being emotionally involved with the characters.
I mentioned Nancy Carroll has packed her adaptation with innuendoes. If you’d like an example, I’ll give you one. At one musical moment, Fanny offers to fiddle with flute playing Sir Julian.
The sets and costumes by Janet Bird are terrific. The Menier stage area is quite small but versatile. On this occasion, the audience is on two sides, creating an intimate drawing room feel. The costumes are sumptuous, looking fin de siecle and subtly reflecting the characters. The Twombleys’ home is decorated minmally but with a chintzy late Victorian style including a chaise longue and of course a piano.
The portrait of high society and its fragility, as well as the seriousness of debt, would have been much more recognisable to a Victorian audience, but we are still a class-ridden society and the characters’ many pretensions hit home. And without it ever needing to be stated explicitly, the references to corrupt politics and donations in exchange for influence show times haven’t changed as much as we might hope. I’m sure the rumours that Lord Ali gave Sir Keir tickets for the opening night are entirely without foundation.
A thrilling love story shattered by human fallibility
★★★★★
Lesley Manville and Mark Strong in Oedipus. Photo: Manuel Harlan
I love going to the theatre but I can’t deny that, while they offer the excitement of live performance, many evenings are transitory experiences- good at the time but not that memorable. Then, a production comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with theatre, and why at its best it’s a transcendent experience. A thrilling production like Robert Icke’s Oedipus, adapted from Sophocles‘ Ancient Greek tragedy and starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. For two hours, you are not only in the presence of two great actors, you are taken out of the here and now, into a timeless story of human experience.
First, we should pay tribute to Sophocles born over 2500 years ago and possibly the greatest playwright of all time. He wrote around 120 plays. Of the seven that survive, Oedipus, or Oedipus The King, is considered to be his finest. Sophocles provides the core of this production by showing the way Oedipus reacts to being the victim of a situation he only inadvertently caused.
Now, it will come as no surprise to you that the situation is, unbeknownst to him, he has killed his father and married his mother. And, if we didn’t know, we soon do because early on in the play, he meets someone who can foresee the future- Tiresias played by Samuel Brewer as someone frightened by his knowledge and reluctant to impart it. Oedipus, the truth seeker, insists so Tiesias tells him he will discover that he is the killer of his father and the lover of his mother. He laughs it off. After all, his father is still alive and his elderly mother is certainly not his wife.
In Robert Icke‘s interpretation, Oedipus is a modern day politican who, Obama-like, promises to be truthful and transparent- and means it. We meet him on election night, and await his almost certain victory in real time, as a clock counts down the seconds to the result. This is unbearably tense because the time is just a little less than the length of the play, which is without an interval, and which we are pretty sure will end badly
At the very start, Oedipus makes two rash decisions (rash in his advisor’s opinion). As there are doubts about his immigrant origins, he will release his birth certificate. Secondly, because there are rumours about how the last proper ruler King Laius, who was also his wife’s former husband, died 30 years earlier, he will conduct a public investigation. But sometimes the truth can be devastating and his well-intentioned decisions set off the inevitable conclusion.
Robert Icke’s Oedipus at the Wyndham’s Theatre
Everything takes place in one indoor location, the election campaign headquarters. As well as a workplace, it is also the place where Oedipus’ family live. Hildegard Bechtler‘s clean, shiny, white set suggests both a modern office and the temporariness of life, which is an on-going theme of the play. As time ticks away, so the furnishings are gradually removed.
Oedipus’ mother Merope has something important to tell him. We suspect what this will be, but he keeps putting her off. She is played by June Watson as a world-weary but steely old woman. Meanwhile, we get hints of political intrigue when we meet Oedipus’ close advisor Creon, his brother-in-law, played with a certain shiftiness and exasperation by Michael Gould. Oedipus doesn’t trust him, partly because Tiresias has predicted Creon will become leader, and partly because, unlike him, Creon sees the potential dangers of transparency.
Heart bursting drama
Most importantly, we meet Oedipus’ wife, Jocasta, a little older than him, and whom he clearly loves. The passion is still strong even after thirty years: he gives her oral sex on stage and, when interrupted, they go off for a quickie. It’s a love that dominates the play. ‘Love,’ he proclaims, ‘is the only thing that matters in the end’. Like their characters, Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are a match made in heaven: they’re tactile, warm, honest, and at ease with each other. You can feel the erotic charge. Your heart bursts with the knowledge of what is to come, knowledge that will shatter their love story.
Then, there’s the loving family. They may bicker but they are relaxed together. Some of the audience may know that in other plays by Sophocles, the consequences of tonight will play out in further tragedy, including Antigone, which features his daughter, and is currently playing in a hardly recognisable modern version called The Other Place at the National Theatre. It seems we can’t get enough of Sophocles. There’s even another version of Oedipus coming to the Old Vic next year, featuring Rami Malek and Indira Varma.
They will have to do incredibly well to match Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. When they are on stage, you feel you are in the presence of greatness. Mark Strong carries himself with the confidence, strength and arrogance of a leader, upright with jutting jaw, but he is also able to show a full range of emotions from fear to temper to tenderness. Lesley Manville is a sparkling foil to him. She laughs, she’s seductive, she’s protective, she tries to persuade him to leave well alone. When she talks of becoming pregnant at 13 and having the baby taken away, it’s a pin-drop moment of the deepest emotion, and made all the worse because we know who that baby is.
The tension is palpable as Oedipus’ determination to discover and reveal the truth leads him first to connect an accident he was involved in as a young man with the death of his wife’s despicable husband King Laius, and then to the much worse truth about his own origins.
Yes, the coincidences are a bit much, both in Sophocles‘ original and in Robert Icke‘s adaptation, but the ticking clock allows us no time to question the plot. We may not be cursed by the Ancient Greek Gods, but this play tells us we are all trapped by circumstances beyond our control from birth to death. We realise that Oedipus’ tragedy is not that he unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, it’s that his only too human quest for answers, without thought to the consequences of that knowledge, leads him to find out a shocking truth about himself. In a heartbreaking scene, we’re even reminded how different it could have been if he had made other choices.
It all comes back to being human, which I think is at the heart of theatre because of its human scale. There is a scene between Creon and Antigone in which they discuss a riddle, that is in fact the Riddle of The Sphinx, the one which made Oedipus a hero when he solved it. The answer to the riddle is, significantly, a human being.
As Oedipus’ mother says, ‘It was a struggle to get here. A struggle to be here. What can it be but a struggle to leave.’ Sophocles recognised the nature of the human condition, and Robert Icke, as adaptor and director, has laid it out again for us, magnificently.
David Oyewolo in Coriolanus. Photo: Misan Harriman
David Oyelowo has been rarely seen on stage in the last twenty years, thanks to the lure of Hollywood. I am pleased to report he does not disappoint. As for the production, this is a Tragedy of Coriolanus without the tragedy.
The problem with this particular Shakespeare play is that we never really get inside the head of the lead character. Unlike protagonists elsewhere in Shakespeare’s tragedies, he has no soliloquies. So we don’t understand and empathise with him in the way we do with, say, Hamlet or Macbeth.
He is a Roman soldier, but more than that he is a weapon, created by Rome’s military culture and specifically by his mother (the only human being he seems to care about). At the beginning, he establishes his military credentials in warfare. After that, it’s all about Rome trying to control this missile they have launched.
Actual physical fighting takes up a small but, in this production, memorable part of the play. Mostly we watch people talking about Coriolanus, trying to persuade him to be what he can’t be, which is to say someone who bites his tongue, compromises and flatters, and fatally underestimating him.
When he returns to Rome a hero, he seems an obvious candidate for a peacetime leader. The trouble is, he can’t hide his feelings of contempt for people and politics. Rome turns against him, then finds the missile pointed at them.
Coriolanus is up against the two great forces of Rome at that time, the plebeians and the patricians, and Shakespeare appears to have little time for either. The former are a rabble who are easily swayed, the latter are self-serving: ‘the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians’.
Coriolanus at the National Theatre. Photo: Misan Harriman
On the face of it, Coriolanus is a simple soldier, a man of principle who refuses to play the political game and seeks revenge when betrayed. As in any tragedy, his actions lead to his downfall but we are uncertain whether they are a symptom of arrogance, pride, humility, or simply a soldier’s rigid ideas of right and wrong? Lindsey Turner‘s production doesn’t discount or endorse any of these possibilities, leaving us with his inability to empathise and his black-and-white view of the world.
David Oyelowo provides us with a Coriolanus full of power and subtle feelings. He is undoubtedly a man of action. No-one in a Shakespeare play can be said to be a man of few words, and certainly Coriolanus bestows sone of Shakespeare’s finest metaphors in on those who let him down. Still, by the Bard’s standards, he is positively tight-lipped. Mr Oyelowo speaks the poetry clearly and fluently but it’s through his face and body that he most expresses his puzzlement and anger at what he encounters.
From the start, Mr Oyelowo conveys nobility- but he is a soldier first. As another soldier says: ‘Let me have war…it exceeds peace as far as day does night.’ He has a soldier’s bearing and bluntness. He bares his ripped body more than once, which contributes to the sense that he is very much an alpha male in a world of betas. In Rome during peacetime, he walks and sits awkwardly. He only seems comfortable when fighting. And the sword fight scenes are pretty exciting, as choreographed by Sam Lyon-Behan.
Whenever he leaves the stage, the temperature drops. None of the other characters emerge with much credit or force, although the actors do. Peter Forbes as Menenius, the wily politician trying to pour oil on troubled waters, is suitably patrician. Stephanie Street and Jordan Metcalfe as the devious populist tribunes Sicinius and Brutus are appropriately slimy. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Aufidius is also a successful soldier but, in contrast to his sworn enemy Coriolanus, he can play the political game. Pamela Novete as Coriolanus’s domineering mother has the right hectoring tone and, judging by the way she influences him into his fateful decisions, gives us another major clue to Coriolanus’s character. He respects, even fears her, but there’s no hint of love between them.
Lindsey Turner’s production brings out the contrast between the soldiers, who built and protect Rome, and the inhabitants who take for granted the benefits of peace that the army’s feats bring them. Her production begins with a video projection, designed by Ash J Woodward, where people are shown from high above scuttling around like ants.
Es Devlin provides an impressive set that continues this theme. It dominates the production and the people- maybe a little too much. The story may speak about war and democracy, heroes and the populace but it is told on a human scale. The huge set distracts from the humanity. On the other hand, when those massive marble blocks descend to create a feeling of the power and history of Rome, we get the sense that the current Romans, both the elite and the people, are like the ants we saw earlier.
There are many artefacts on tables which suggest a museum, perhaps indicating the past was once the present, that this story will soon be history, and that history constantly repeats itself. After all, we can see many examples today of populism and political ambition threatening democracy, and of people who would rather fight than compromise. This is underlined by the way the actors are in modern dress. There is a moment at the end that indicates fighters like Coriolanus will always be needed and always remembered.
A sense of hubris- that the character has brought his fate upon himself because of decisions he made deliberately- is essential to tragedy. In presenting Coriolanus as a soldier who has no interest in democracy or even other people, we lose any sense of him making a decision. In his mind there is no choice. At the Donmar a few tears ago, Tom Hiddleston made Coriolanus an arrogant aristocrat, which is one of many possible interpretations. The audience could see he’d brought his fate upon himself by choice. To me, that is why, despite David Oyewolo’s brilliant performance, this production is flat, a situation compounded by making the plebeians and the patriachs so pathetic that you wouldn’t blame Coriolanus even if had made a conscious decision to fight them.
With all the other characters reduced in stature in this production, the drama of conflict is diminished. No-one really tests him (except maybe his mother). It becomes very much about how Coriolanus is a misfit, and he’s a one trick pony, a single-minded soldier with no inner conflict.
It remains an interesting evening, but not I think one for the history books, despite an unforgettable performance from David Oyelowo.
Coriolanus can be seen at the National Theatre until 9 November 2024
Arthur Hughes and Peter Sandys-Clarke in The King’s Speech. Photo: Alex Brenner
One of the best things about where I live is that my closest producing theatre is the Watermill in Newbury, which was named The Stage’s Theatre Of The Year. The venue is quite a miracle really because it has a tiny stage and it no longer receives an Arts Council grant, yet it consistently knocks out excellent shows and occasionally an absolute banger- like The King’s Speech.
One of the challenges of mounting a play like The King’s Speech is that you, as an audience, know what’s going to happen. If you’re not familiar with British history pre-World War Two, then you’ve probably seen the film. This means the drama is not in what’s going to happen, but how it happens.
The King’s Speech was originally written as a play, even though it was first produced as a film, and you can easily imagine, when you watch the screen version, why it succeeds so well on stage: most of the action takes place in small rooms. By the time we get to Westminster Abbey, we’re so absorbed, we don’t even think about the missing grandeur. Well, I didn’t anyway.
The triumph of David Seidler’s script (he also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay) is in the portrayal of two men from very different backgrounds- one a member of the highest family in the land, the other a commoner, and a colonial commoner at that- who form a bond. Prince Albert, as the future King Edward VIII’s brother, is being forced onto centre stage, to use a theatrical metaphor, but he is terrified of public speaking because he has a stammer. Lionel Logue is an Australian who has made a career as an outlier in the profession of speech therapy but has ambitions to be an actor.
At first the Prince is stiff and tetchy, not to mention skeptical of the process. He is played by Peter Sandys-Clarke who is every bit as good as his predecessors in the role- Colin Firth in the movie and Charles Edwards on stage. We feel his frustration, panic and the gradual thawing of his frigid persona. He communicates this so well, that you are at times on the edge of your seat wondering if he will get out a particular word, at others almost tearful when, even momentarily, he manages to overcome his affliction.
The relationship between the two blossoms partly because of the Prince’s desperation to be cured but as much because of Lionel’s lese-majesty. He treats the future King as an ordinary person, calls him ‘Bertie’ and thus builds friendship and trust. Arthur Hughes, with a believable Australian accent, is an extraordinarily good actor. He brings to the role an ability to look both indifferent to being rejected and caring about his client simultaneously, using a bend of the head, an intense look and a cheeky smile.
Another reason that they bond is that both are flawed. They are sensitive men who were bullied by their fathers and consider themselves failures. There is a particularly moving scene when Lionel cries in the arms of his wife. So, the success of the treatment would represent redemption for both of them.
A portrait of the monarchy at a turning point
Arthur Hughes, Aamira Challenger and Peter Sandys-Clarke in The King’s Speech. Photo: Alex Brenner
Director Emma Butler uses the stage well, with characters entering from the back of the auditorium as if from the world outside, the would-be puppetmaster leaders appearing high up at the back of the stage, and the Prince moving right to the front when he speaks to the people, so you can see the rabbit-in-the-headlights look in his eyes.
The flaw in this play is in the use of the other characters. With the exception of the wives, they are there primarily to provide historical context. We need to know that King Edward VIII wanted to marry a divorced woman and this threatened a constitutional crisis- and if we were in any doubt about whether this was fair, we are also told he was a Nazi sympathiser. And we need to be informed that there was a lack of confidence among the elite about Prince Albert becoming King George VI just before the war, because he would need to be able to speak to the nation, in order to reassure them in our darkest hour.
The supporting cast provide us with fine cariacatures but inevitably there is no depth to them, and no matter how it’s dressed up, it feels like we’re being given a potted history lesson. Jim Kitson is Churchill, Stephen Rahman-Hughes plays Edward VIII and prime minister Baldwin, and Christopher Naylor is an excellent snobbish and waspish Archbishop of Canterbury. That reminds me that are a great many funny lines in this play, including the one where Churchill says to the Archbishop: ‘You may have been elected by God, but he only has one vote.’
The wives are important for the support they give but also because they are the people their spouses can speak to about their intimate feelings. Aamira Challenger is an amusing Elizabeth, and Rosa Hesmondhalgh brings out the frustration and compassion felt by Lionel’s wife Myrtle.
In this play, we find the monarchy at a turning point. The rise of radio, as well as a less subservient press, make it vital that the future King speaks confidently. He will no longer be a remote figure. Instead, he will be expected to talk directly to his people in their own homes, and will be seen by them as a human being. So, the sound, designed by Robin Colyer, plays an important part in the production, from the gramophone Lionel uses to help Bertie, to the microphone that looms in front of him, to the thumping of his heart over the speakers.
Breta Gerecke is the latest designer challenged with fitting a quart of set into the pint pot of the Watermill stage, and she does a good job. The floor is kept clear of all but essential furniture but at the back are three rising dominant structures which start as staircases and break up into planks of wood, symbolising the perilously disconnected structure of Prince Albert’s brain.
It’s an absorbing and uplifting production in which the script, the two principal actors and the intimate space of the Watermill combine to provide generous measures of tension and empathy. If you live anywhere near Newbury, you should go see it.
Adam Dannheisser in Fiddler On The Roof. Photo: Marc Brenner
Fiddler On The Roof opened on Broadway in 1964, and became the first Broadway musical to pass 3000 performances. Since then there have been tens of thousands of productions: there are said to be 500 amateur productions a year in the USA alone. Proof, if needed, that this story of a small Jewish Community in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century is an audience favourite, all over the world and across all races and faiths. But why does it touch so many hearts? And what is so special about this latest iteration at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre?
Fiddler On The Roof is built around the story of a milkman called Tevye and his conflicts with his daughters over who they should marry. If you haven’t seen Fiddler, or maybe even if you have, you might have the impression that this is all it’s about- a comedy in which Tevye talks to the audience, talks to God and even talks to the violin player about his dilemmas. The idea that it is a light-hearted musical has been reinforced by the cheeriness of the most famous Tevye, Chaim Topol, and the way all the best tunes are loaded in the first half.
We move through Tradition, Matchmaker and If I Were A Rich Man, almost while people are still taking their seats; Sunrise, Sunset follows rapidly, then The Dream which is performed hilariously in this production by all the cast dressed in white acting out Tevye’s apparent nightmare, and, at the climax of act one, the great Bottle Dance, based on Jerome Robbins’ original idea but in this production excitingly choreographed by Julia Cheng, best known until now for her work on the current hit production of Cabaret. All these most familiar moments are gone by the time you claim your interval drink. Which is not to say there aren’t some good numbers in the second act.
I don’t want to talk too much about the second half, in case you haven’t seen Fiddler, but it becomes much clearer that what the first act was setting us up for is the need to compromise our traditions as the world changes, wherever we live, whatever the time, and whatever our own age. And that this will help us face adversity, and not give in to despair. And while this is a positive message in this sometimes depressing world, it comes against a dark backdrop of a small impoverished Russian Jewish Community in 1905, living in relative poverty and threatened by antisemitism. That it still packs a punch today is a credit to the writer of the book Joseph Stein, the lyricist Sheldon Harnick and of course composer Jerry Bock who combined a traditional east European sound with modern music to make unforgettable show tunes.
I was a bit worried when I realised the director was Jordan Fein who was responsible for the downbeat version of Oklahoma! at the Young Vic. I do realise there is a dark undercurrent in Oklahoma! but I felt his gloomy treatment sucked all the joy out of the musical. But here, his ability to see the dark side of a musical is tempered by a lightness of touch, and the heavier theme is handled with sobriety rather than despair. He doesn’t labour the destruction of the community nor the modern parallels, any more than the musical itself does, but he doesn’t skate over them either, as previous productions have tended to do. You could say he has succeeded in balancing the traditional view of Fiddler with a modern sensibility.
Fiddler On The Roof at the Open Air Theatre. Photo: Marc Brenner
Tom Scutt’s design is extraordinary. The costumes feel authentic, all loose simple clothes, that look handmade. The irony is not lost that The Open Air Theatre is the only major London theatre without a roof, but he has created a roof across the stage that looks like a wheat field, symbolising the way the community live off the land. It acts as the village’s protection, yet seems ready to crush them like a Venus Flytrap. The roof dominates but never distracts and it’s high up on that roof that the fiddler is first seen and heard. Raphael Papo is the talented violinist.
Adam Dannheisser banishes all thoughts of Topol
The choice of Adam Dannheisser to play Tevye is inspired. He has a great ability to convey his attempts to reconcile the previous way of matchmaking and the new way of marrying for love. His commanding physical stature helps him seem like an authoritative father figure, but this is accompanied by a world weariness, an uncertainty and a benign quality, expressed through his gentle eyes and gestures. Strong on the outside, soft on the inside, he articulates the inner conflict he feels in trying to reconcile tradition and the modern world. It’s an eternal conflict that audiences identify with.
It seems invidious to pick out other members of the universally excellent cast but I have to bring attention to Lara Pulver as Golde, who provides a strong willed wife for Tevye and has an superb singing voice, best illustrated in the bittersweet duet Do You Love Me?
All the daughters sing and act beautifully. The oldest daughter Tzeitel is played by Liv Andrusier with chutzpah. Dan Wolff is a suitably shy and awkward as her choice of husband Motel. Daniel Krikler is the passionate radical Perchik who wants to marry another strong-minded daughter Hodel, played by Georgia Bruce. Hannah Bristow is the bookish daughter Chava who falls in love with Fyedka, played by George Milne. Comedy is provided by Beverley Klein as the matchmaker Yente, and Michael S Siegel as the miserable butcher Lazar Wolf.
It’s a production that perfectly balances the humorous and the serious.
Fiddler On The Roof can be seen at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 28 September 2024
Paul paid for his own ticket
Click here to watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre reviews With Paul Seven
It’s a Mystery why Witness For The Prosecution is a Success. Here are the Clues
★★★
Witness For The Prosecution at County Hall. Photo: Pamela Raith
It’s been on since 2017 but somehow I never quite got round to seeing Witness For The Prosecution. To be honest, there was a little bit of prejudice involved. Partly, much as I enjoy an Agatha Christie novel, I have seen her plays before and found them a little stilted. Secondly, it seemed a bit gimmicky to be presenting the play in the old County Hall. The mystery is, it works. So, I’ve engaged my little grey cells and I think I’ve solved the mystery of why it’s a success.
The first clue is the venue. County Hall, near Waterloo, and by the Thames, is a magnificent building. It was the home of the old London Council. Just entering is a stunning experience. The auditorium for Witness For The Prosecution is the former debating chamber. Consequently, it has very comfortable seating, with a terrific view- you wouldn’t expect anything less for the politicians running the capital city. It’s almost worth going to see the play just to sit in the chamber.
Although you can regard setting the play there as a gimmick, it may be more generous to call it ‘site specific’. The important thing is, it works. That’s partly because the auditorium has the grandeur you associate with the Old Bailey, where most of the play is set, and partly because the layout of the chamber with two sides facing one another matches the adversarial nature of a court case, which is the main subject of the play.
Then there’s the play itself. It starts with a scene in the chambers of a defence barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts. This seems to confirm your worst fears. In 1953, when Agatha Christie wrote Witness For The Prosecution, theatre was changing- it’s the same year that Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot premiered, and three years before John Osborne‘s ‘kitchen sink’ drama Look Back In Anger opened- both of which are being revived in the West End this year, by the way. But the style of this play looks backward rather than forward. The people are middle class, and everyone speaks as they ought to, rather than as they would. The dialogue is like any standard so-called ‘drawing room’ play- or film- from the early part of the century.
Then, we are taken to the criminal court. The place where to this day, they still behave like people from the 1950s, or 1850s even.
The clue here as to why Witness of The Prosecution is a success against the odds is in the talent of the creators of this production, director Lucy Bailey and designer William Dudley, to see the potential for this old building as a setting for a play mainly taking place in a courtroom. Chris Davey’s lighting is pretty impressive too- emphasising drama and contrast.
And the final clue: Agatha Christie herself. Now her characters may be ciphers, in the sense that they exist purely in the service of the twisty legal drama and don’t have a lot of depth, but the plot is grippingly good. It’s not just a clever story full of mystery and twists (although it is) but it’s also supplied with a lot of realistic detail. Ms Christie studied many court cases and had the help of a barrister to make sure the legal details are accurate.
George Jones and Meghan Treadway in Witness For The Prosecution. Photo: Pamela Raith
That helps a lot. But so does her story. We begin with Leonard Vole, a handsome cockerney lad accused of murder. He protests his innocence and we believe him but he is clearly too honest and too naive for his own good. The cast changes every so often but currently George Jones plays him with conviction – sorry, that’s probably an inappropriate word, better to say, ‘convincingly’. Leonard had befriended an older well-off woman who was found dead one evening not long after he had visited her, and it turns out she’s left him her fortune.
It’s a challenge to defend him but Sir Wilfrid, with humour and a degree of arrogant self confidence, decides to take on the case. Oliver Boot nails the role and dominates the stage, as he should. Sir Wilfrid and Leonard’s concerned solicitor Mr Mayhew, played by Ewen Cummins, subsequently discuss the case with condescension, patronising humour, and a dash of misogyny.
And the case goes well. A benign and predictably stuffy judge Mr Justice Wainwright is played by David Killick with authority and a twinkle in his eye, as he watches Sir Wilfrid run rings around the exasperated prosecution lawyer Mr Myers, played by Gyuri Sarossy who keeps bouncing back like a punch drunk fighter. He destroys witness after witness including the forensic scientist Dr Wyatt played by Nicholas Chambers, and the vindictive housekeeper Janet MacKenzie, given an scene stealing turn by Veronica Roberts. Finally, Leonard’s wife appears as a witness for the prosecution and, under oath to tell the truth, demolishes Leonard’s alibi. It’s a bravura performance by Meghan Treadway.
Why has she done this? The second act reveals all. And you realise as twist follows twist just how much Ms Christie has misled you, maybe even taken advantage of your expectations of a traditional ‘drawing room’ play. You see that, dammit, just like the people who meet her character Miss Marple, you’ve underestimated the Queen of Crime.
It turns out to be a very satisfactory evening, well put together, well acted and well produced in a striking venue. Mystery solved.
Witness For The Prosecution can be seen at the County Hall in London for the foreseeable future.
Imelda Staunton and the cast of Hello, Dolly! Photo: Manuel Harlan
It’s a legendary show from the Golden Age of Musicals. It’s one of the most successful shows of all time in terms of awards and performances. Yet (whisper it) Hello, Dolly! isn’t very good. Michael Stewart‘s book comprises a ludicrous plot and is saved only by the amusing machinations of its main character. Jerry Herman contributed hardly any memorable songs except the title number and Dolly’s other great song Before The Parade Passes By. Worse, the score also features the execrable It Only Takes A Moment.
Its greatness lies in two redeeming features: the opportunity to put on magnificent chorus numbers, like Put On Your Sunday Clothes (which I admit has a nice hook) and the title number; and providing a vehicle for a female musical star to shine. Fortunately, if a production can get those right, that’s all it needs. And this new production, directed by Dominic Cooke who was responsible for the National Theatre’s legendary Follies, does get it right.
For a start, it is a sumptuous production in the great tradition of the Golden Age. The large London Palladium stage is not only packed with people, it is filled with Rae Smith‘s set and costumes that conjure up the glamour of the end of the nineteenth century. Among its delights are a conveyor that stretches the width of the stage and creates even more movement, a full-size train that is jaw-dropping in its execution, and an enormous staircase to accommodate the arrival of Dolly for her big number.
The choreography was originally by Gower Champion, who wowed Broadway and gets a credit to this day. Bill Deamer is named as choreographer of this production, and his chorus numbers are magnificent in their scale, co-ordination and vitality. There are something like three dozen members of the company but, in case you’re wondering, there’s not much opportunity for individual brilliance on the dance floor.
Imelda Staunton in Hello, Dolly! Photo: Manuel Harlan
Then there’s the star. Carol Channing first played Dolly, the matchmaker and all-round entrepreneur, to massive acclaim. Since then, many top musical stars have added it to their cv, including Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Pearl Bailey, Bernadette Peters and of course Barbra Streisand in the film version. Can any have bettered Imelda Staunton? I don’t see how. She has a great voice that hits the back of the circle when it needs to, but also an ability to plumb a depth of pathos you didn’t even realise was there in a potboiler song like Before The Parade Passes By. Plus she injects the whole proceedings with a level of energy that could single-handedly power the government’s new Great British Energy company.
Fans of her film and television work would probably have no idea of her ability as a singer, but she has played the Baker’s Wife in Into The Woods, Miss Adelaide in Guys And Dolls, Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Sally in Follies, Gypsy Rose in Gypsy, and now Dolly Levi. All triumphantly. Only Mame remains before she has a full house of the great musical roles for mature women.
She is supported by a strong cast but the characters don’t give them much to get their teeth into. In fact, the term ‘character’ may qualify as misinformation. Andy Nyman is an excellent actor but as Dolly’s prospective husband, the rich but miserable Horace Vandergelder, he has little to do except be irascible while his suitor draws him into her web. The same goes for Jenna Russell as Irene Molloy, Dolly’s friend who has her own romantic ambitions: she does what she does very well but she hasn’t much to do. Irene’s romantic interest Cornelius Hackl is a traditional (for which read ‘cliché’) ‘juvenile lead’, with little to do except look pretty and behave cheekily. Harry Hepple handles the role well. Their friends Minnie Fay and Barnaby Tucker are supposed to be the comical parts but remain resolutely unfunny despite the Olympian efforts of Emily Lane and Tyrone Huntley.
With due respect to all of company and creative team, the evening belongs to Imelda Staunton.
Theatre de Complicite’s Mnemonic at the National Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson
Even now, as I reconstruct my memory of Complicité‘s Mnemonic in order to write this review, it has changed from my instant reaction after the show. Which is only right. This is a play about how memory works, the way it is constantly revised by new experiences, how it is vital for imagining the future.
But it’s more than a trip down Memory Lane: it’s a trip across Europe and a journey 5000 years into the past. It becomes a search for origins, and shows how our past, both personal and shared, informs where we are now and where we might go.
When I came out of the Olivier auditorium at the National Theatre, I was feeling I’d seen a familiar but nevertheless impressive use of mime to tell interesting but fairly simple stories. Now, I feel I saw something hugely important. Why the revision? Partly it’s because I’ve thought about it, but also it’s because the ongoing riots in Britain, which seem to be triggered by a desire to defend a vision of the past against change blamed on immigrants, have reminded me how Mnemonic is not an academic exercise but an examination through theatre of a contemporary issue that will affect all our futures.
I’m sure you know but, just in case, a mnemonic is any device or trick we use to jog our memory, from tying a knot in your handkerchief to using the first letters of words in a phrase to remind you of a sequence. For example: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain for the colours of the rainbow. This production of Mnemonic itself could be a mnemonic for those who saw the original and are taken back 25 years to what will now be a memory revised by the intervening years and this reimagined version.
In the intervening years, Complicité‘s techniques have come to seem less experimental, some are even commonplace. Few West End musicals are as naturalistic as they once were: they expose how the show is constructed, they use mime. But the book usually takes precedence. Very few productions give equal weight, as Complicité do, to every aspect: sound, light, set, props and the actors’ bodies in what you might call ‘total theatre’ to tell their stories, with text simply the starting point.
We start with a bare stage and a chair. In the style of a rambling comic, a man gives an introduction to the physiology of memory: how each new memory draws on and changes our existing memories (thanks to the hippocampus since you ask). We are invited to put on an eye mask and remember our past, then imagine being a child with our parents and their parents and their parents’ parents, going back through 5000 years at which point everyone on the planet is one of our ancestors which relates neatly, too neatly perhaps, to a recounting of the real life discovery of a human body frozen in the Alps for 5000 years, the so called Ice Man.
Parallel to this is the story of Omar whose girlfriend Alice has left him abruptly to search across Europe for her long-lost father. Cue many fragmentary adventures on a journey which she remembers and recounts, possibly unreliably. In a bravura performance by Eileen Walsh gives a bravura performance as Alice, increasingly frantic and riven with grief, ploughs her way through the diaspora of Jews, Greeks, Arabs and more who have spread across the world to escape danger or find a better life. It seems we are all migrants or the descendants of migrants, and may yet migrate ourselves.
The many possibilities of her ancestry are laid on thickly but show the futility of latching onto one past when you have an almost infinite number, all of which inform your present and, most importantly, your future. The determination to cover so much ground in Alice’s story makes it hard to get involved but it is told with the verve that Complicité are famous for. In particular, there is a moment when her money is stolen, and the memory of someone bumping into her is repeated and repeated, with variations, until finally we see exactly how she was robbed.
A stand out performance from Khalid Abdalla
The tale of the 5000 year old Ice Man was also, on the surface at least, an origins story rather that one obviously about memory. In the gradual development of the archeologists’ understanding of who he was and how he died, we do see an analogy of how memory works. In a wonderfully satirical moment, the scientists are shown sitting in a row at a conference, each imposing their own beliefs onto their interpretation of the scanty evidence that has been uncovered- so the Ice Man is said to have been a shaman, a trader, a hunter and so on. More than that- and it’s rare that Complicité works only on one level- there is the implication that as our common ancestor, he is all the things we are.
At a time when politicians, populists and owners of social media use fear and division to their own ends, it is a good moment to speak up for our common humanity and the way all history flows into each of us and out again.
Mnemonic at the National Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson
But it would be pure didactics without Complicité‘s outstanding way of creating theatre to convey the stories. A bed, a table, a couple of chairs are all that was needed most of the time in Michael Levine‘s spare set. Dialogue is echoed, movements repeated, actors flow around the stage like migrants might flow around the world. A seemingly simple chair transforms into a puppet that takes the last steps of the Ice Man before he died.
At the climax of the evening, the various characters follow one another faster and faster round the stage, as if in a vortex, in which their individuality becomes blurred.
You can imagine this is no walk in the park for the actors. Nearly all are required to take on multiple roles, but also to mime and move with precise choreography. Tim McMullan is tremendous as a senior archeologist full of wonder, humour and enthusiasm. Richard Katz, Laurence Laufenberg, Kostas Philippoglou and Sarah Slimani are all superb.
But the stand out performance comes from Khalid Abdalla, whom you might recognise as Dodi Al Fayed in the TV series The Crown. He plays both Omar, falling apart as he misses Alice, and the Ice Man, picked apart by archeologists. In both roles, he spends much of his time naked, because that’s how the corpse was discovered, and because that’s how Alice likes to see Omar. In both cases, nakedness seems to become a symbol of humanity stripped of all defences and pretences. Without clothing, they are not part of a tribe or a profession or any group, they are Everyone, at either end of 5000 years. Just as the Ice Man is at the mercy of scientists, journalists and nationalists, so Omar’s future is subject to Alice’s wishes.
All of which may seem a long way from memory, or indeed a mnemonic, but what Complicite‘s artistic director Simon McBurney has pulled together, in collaboration with the company, is a piece of pure theatre- in the sense that it would not work as film or any other art form- that evokes how memory of the past is reformed in the present and gives us the possibility of moving forward together. What better way than through the shared experience of theatre to feel our common humanity? My memory says that, despite its weak stories, I witnessed something very special.
Mnemonic can be seen at the National Theatre until 10 August 2024.
Olivia Washington and Kit Harington in Slave Play. Photo: Helen Murray
‘Is London ready for this?’ asks the publicity material for Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris. We’re promised- sorry, trigger-warned- about racist language, sexual violence, and of course a naked Kit Harington. There’s even a high-tech solution to stop you taking a picture of Kit with his kit off: you’re given a piece of sticky paper to cover your mobile phone’s camera lens. So, is this the most shocking play in the West End?
Well, I wasn’t shocked but, if you are of a sensitive disposition, this may not be the play or indeed the review for you. More to the point, before you read on, I will be revealing a number of plot twists which may not be shocking, but, if you are going to see Slave Play, will spoil the intended surprises. What surprised me is how funny the play is.
The first thing you see is Clint Ramos‘ set. You immediately notice that the back of the stage is covered in mirrors. This means you can see some of your fellow audience members, plus a painting of a Southern States plantation owner’s house that is fixed to the front of the circle. Why the mirrors? Perhaps it’s so you can see who’s finding the discriminatory language funny, and who’s uncomfortable with it. Or maybe, so you can how many black people are in the audience, to which the answer is, definitely more than usual in a West End theatre. Or, given that we the audience are still predominantly white and the slavemaster’s house appears to be in our midst, it could be to remind us that this play is intended to be about us, white as well as black, even if we think it isn’t.
‘Work’ is the name of the first act. A couple appear, played by Kit Harington and Olivia Washington (she’s Denzel Washington’s daughter by the way). Some of the Broadway cast have come over, along with original director Robert O’Hara, but both these actors are new to the play.
Judging by what they are wearing and their drawling speech, we seem to be in a pre-Civil War, or antebellum, Southern state. She’s a black slave, but she’s gyrating to a Rihanna song called Work, as she does her chores. This strikes one as a little odd- a bit Bridgerton maybe. He’s a white overseer but not a slave master, as he is at pains to make clear.
There’s a sexual relationship in which he dominates and she submits. He throws a melon on the floor, which he describes as a watermelon, and tells her to get down and eat it. She corrects him, pointing out it’s a cantaloupe. (The poster for the play cleverly turns a cantaloupe melon into a sexual image.) This seems slightly off kilter, as she appears to be more like his equal, maybe even taking the lead. Nevertheless, as instructed, she eats it off the floor. The scene ends with him eating her.
In the second scene, a mature Southern Belle seduces a mixed race (or ‘mulatto’, as she describes him) servant, who could pass for white. She produces a family heirloom- a large black dildo, which she proceeds to use on him. Like all the sex in this production, it is simulated but quite graphic for the stage, and also laugh-out-loud funny (or maybe not, depending on your sensitivities). For me, the stilted Southern accents and porn movie dialogue made me think it could be called Carry On In The Cotton Fields or perhaps Carry On Up The Khyber might be more appropriate.
Scene three and couple number three: two men, one black, one white. The white man is shifting bales of cotton. He is an indentured servant who eventually licks the boots of his black boss. It is by now fairly obvious that there is some kind of role play going on in which the couples are acting out domination and submission fantasies. We are reminded in the programme of the quote by J N Benjamin: ‘everything is about sex, except sex which is about power’. But it could still, just, be early 19th century America. Act One culminates with all three couples having sex. Then Kit Harington’s character calls out ‘Starbucks’, which turns out to be a safe word, and everyone stops. Two women with clipboards enter and we move from farce to satire.
Act Two is called ‘Process’. It turns out that all three couples are on the fourth day of a therapy group- it’s fantasy day, hence the title Slave Play. The black partners are suffering from anhedonia, the first of many conditions I had never heard of. Some of these are made up but anhedonia does exist and, put simply, is lack of arousal.
They gather for discussion and analysis led by the two researchers, played by Chalia La Tour and Irene Sofia Lucio, both from the Broadway cast. They turn out to have encountered the same problem in their own relationship, which they believe can be overcome using what they call ‘Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy’. This begins an initially hilarious satire as they spout more and more psycho babble, while being at times over sensitive to feelings and at others ignoring them, sometimes shutting down people for saying the ‘wrong thing’ and at others embracing whatever is said and attempting to integrate it into their theory.
Farce and satire are followed by a disturbing climax
To my way of thinking, these couples are simply incompatible, or bored with their relationship. Not so, say the therapists, they maintain that the black participants are feeling the legacy of their ancestors having once been slaves and subject to white imperialism. This is said to affect their sexual relationships with their white lovers. They propose acting out fantasies involving slavery as a solution.
I am assuming from the way the play mocks the researchers that their theory is poppycock. I suspect this extreme kind of unaccredited group therapy is more familiar to Americans than us British. In fact, it’s only a few months since I was at the National Theatre watching Annie Baker’s Infinite Life, another American play about a group of people being conned by bogus therapy.
Slave Play. Photo: Helen Murray
I was amused at first by this central and dominant part of Slave Play, but it is like a satirical sketch that has been stretched out until it stops being funny. A bit like when a pleasant hug carries on until you feel trapped in the embrace.
After a while, I began to wonder how much more humour could be wrung out of these parodies of quack therapists, no matter how well the actors were nailing their techniques. I started to wish there was a safe word I could call out to get us on to the next scene. After all, this play is over two hours long without an interval.
Then, there is a change of gear from comedy to disturbing drama. Despite, rather than because of, the therapists, the black characters overcome what the therapists describe as ‘racialised inhibiting disorder’ and ‘alexithymia’ (guess which term is invented for their difficulty in talking about their emotions). They begin to recognise the true root of their problem, different in each case but with one thing in common.
It has already become clear that the white people are doing a lot of the talking, even though the sessions are supposed to be for the benefit of their black partners. Particularly funny in this respect is the way a middle-aged woman Alana, acted with a wealth of shocked facial expressions by Annie McNamara (from the Broadway cast), constantly speaks for Phillip. He is played with wide-eyed shyness by British actor Aaron Heffernan. She says she doesn’t even think about his colour, until he eventually speaks up and declares that he has been mistaken in thinking that his ability to pass for white is a good thing and that he’s at his most fulfilled when he is seen as being black. He mentions that he was excited by the way they met, when he was brought in by her then husband to fulfil the latter’s cuckold fantasy of seeing his wife have sex with a black man.
Gary, played by British actor Fisayo Akinade, eventually sees that he was wrong to regard a white partner as a kind of prize. Dustin, a flamboyant actor played for laughs by James Cusati-Moyer, who acted the part on Broadway, doesn’t want to think of himself as white. Gary becomes furious that this attitude denies the importance of his own ethnicity. It is one of the most emotional moments in a play that is otherwise more often melodramatic than realistic. The chemistry between them is electric.
Kit Harington‘s Jim, a British white man, is the most skeptical of this so-called Process, and says that he is uncomfortable with role playing a slave master. After some reflection, he observes that his partner seems to regard him as a virus. It is a turning point for Olivia Washington’s Kaneisha, who recognises that her anhedonia has developed because she does see white people that way.
So, at its heart, this play is about an on-going power struggle between white and black people, of which slavery may be the supreme example. The sexual relationships in Slave Play are intended to illustrate that, because white people are used to a society in which they are supreme, they fail to see that they are part of the problem that has caused their black partners’ sexual inhibition.
In the final act, called ‘Exorcise’, the mood becomes more serious. We are back in the bedroom with the couple who opened the play. Kaneisha asks Jim to listen, which he does as she explains to him he needs to recognise that he, as a white man, carries this so-called ‘virus’, because he has inherited a legacy of imperialism, colonialism and, of course, enslaving other races. Then, in a gesture which I took to mean that, this time, he wasn’t simply putting on a costume to play a part, he takes off all his clothes. The lighting is a little subdued as he walks around the bed but it is clear that his body is completely exposed, just as his deepest feelings are now fully acknowledged and revealed.
He once again goes through the ritual of treating her as a slave but this time with sincerity, flinging her, fully clothed, on the bed on her front and climbing on top of her. His aim is not to pleasure her, as in the first scene, but to force himself upon her. All the while, we focus on her calm face and, via the mirrors, and thanks to the bleaching effect of a bright light, at his very white buttocks rising and thrusting. When it’s over, she thanks him, but she is looking at the audience, so it seems she is also thanking those of us who are white for listening and recognising our racial heritage.
Mr Harington does well to convey a character who goes from confident to confused to broken. Ms Washington acts with passion. But, like the rest of the excellent cast, they are portraying characters who too often are ciphers rather than real human beings, and who offer melodrama in place of emotion.
Slave Play may mean more to Americans whose experience of race is different to the British one, so it may not have hit me as forcefully as intended. For me, the points about the psychological effect of white power that Jeremy O. Harris finally teases out in Slave Play, while interesting and provocative, are undermined by the earlier mockery of the psychiatrists. They also take too long to emerge and are less effective than they might be because the narrative is so obviously subservient to an agenda. On the plus side, there is much to enjoy in the sex romps and the send-up of the psycho-therapy industry.
You can see Slave Play at the Noël Coward Theatre until 21 September 2024. Buy tickets direct from the theatre.
This comment was made about the video on the Theatre.Reviews With Paul Seven YouTube channel. It is reproduced with permission:
Thank you for this review. I saw the Broadway production five years ago, and I own a copy of the script, which I subsequently read after seeing the play. So I want to make a few points from the perspective of an American audience member who has quite deep knowledge of the American history of enslavement as an economic institution of domination and exploitation. I should preface this by stating that I’ve volunteered for years for an historic property that is New England’s main site that served as essentially a Northern “plantation.” (The Royall House & Slave Quarters.)
So I think your review is very insightful, but I also think this play is deeply American in a way that probably won’t read the same for a British audience. I deeply appreciate your respectful attempt at having equanimity and reviewing the play on its own terms. However, there are aspects of this play that probably don’t land the same in London. Our particular, awful history with enslavement as an economic institution that formed a backbone to this country’s economy is a deeply American pathology. It really was like a virus that infected us, to borrow the words that the character at the end of the play says out of sorrow and rage. Plantations really do feel like haunted places. Especially the ones whose structures remain in the South. Consider that these sites are sometimes used as wedding venues for white people – how revolting is that? That’s just one example of how the play directly confronts the legacy of this institution. But I don’t even think it is only about that, or enslavement is the antagonist of the play per se.
I think the Carry On reference – which I understand minimally but I imagine you are saying that the sketch comedy aspect feels broad and silly like something called Carry On – is apt. However, I think there is quite a bit more encoded into the seeming humor and whimsy. As another example of the layers this play is operating on and peeping back: the Black characters play surreal versions of harmful Black stereotypes that began during enslavement. These are numerous, and American audiences recognize them right away as integral to our cultural identity. Though they are consigned to the dustbin of history now, it really wasn’t that long ago that these stereotypes carried violent weight. My grandparents’ generation grew up with the colloquial saying, “Eeny, meeny, mynie, mo/catch a __ by his toe/if he hollers, let him go” I’m sure you can imagine the word that goes into the blank, which I could never bring myself to say because it’s so horrifying and destructive. But I’m sure you can deduce what it is from the topic at hand.
When this play came out in 2019 on Broadway, white audiences – even supposed liberals – were getting overheated and angry enough that some of them would scream and yell during the talkbacks. It was the show that introduced “Blackout nights,” where people of color could attend the show among their peers without the intrusion of the White gaze. (Which is something Slave Play addresses – the White gaze – hence the mirror, in case you were wondering why there’s a mirror.) In our country, states are making it illegal to tell the truth about the brutality of enslavement as a racist system of exploitation and appropriation and commodification of the Black body. Even though the public records available in our country will tell us how brutal this system was. In the town in Massachusetts where the farm/plantation was that housed many enslaved people in the years prior to Massachusetts abolishing enslavement, there are public records that list Black/African people as simply property. You can see evidence of these human beings being sold. And bounties being placed on them when they attempted to flee to freedom. This was in Massachusetts, a supposed liberal bastion.
And there is another thing that probably won’t register for an audience member who doesn’t identify as “Queer” or as a member of the LGBTQ+ communities: this play was written by a Black, queer-identifying person whose intersectional identities in both categories are doubly marginalized in this country. Even now, Black queer people in the US are murdered – just for being themselves and existing in public space. That is part of the reason the Rihanna song “Work” is heard in the show. Jeremy O Harris is making a point about the amount of unasked-for labor people with multiply marginalized identities have to carry in this country. That exploitative model is in part due to the legacy of enslavement. If you’ve read a Faulkner novel about these overall subjects, this play is a bit of an offspring of the ideas contained in those books.
I’ll end for now by pointing out: if you want to know just how personal this play is to the US context, a direct example from a current political figure is how white children were afraid to play with Kamala Harris when she was growing up in California. The legacy of this vile institution of enslavement is hundreds of years in the making, and it is America’s Original Sin. (Though colonialism/Other-ing/xenophobia are not unique to the US, of course …) I hope you find these thoughts useful to your consideration of the play.
