The Inquiry – Minerva – review

New political play by Guardian writer lacks drama

★★

John Heffernan, a male actor, stands in front of Deborah Findlay, a female actor, and leans forward to make a point, in the play The Inquiry at Chichestre's Minerva Theatre — Deborah Findlay & John Heffernan in The Inquiry. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I’ve probably been to and enjoyed more plays at Chichester Festival Theatres than anywhere else except the National Theatre. Unfortunately, The Inquiry at The Minerva wasn’t one of them.

The finale of Chichester’s 2023 season is Harry Davies’ theatrical debut and, no question, he is a promising playwright. Indeed there are signs that he has the potential to be another James Graham. I even suspect that, with more work, this play could take off but, at the moment, it’s still on the runway.

Before I report on my inquiry into what went wrong with The Inquiry, let me describe the subject of the play. Public Inquiries were established to answer the need for independent investigations into major incidents, as opposed to the previous practice of governments scrutinising their own wrongdoing. Harry Davies questions just how independent they are.

The subject of this particular Inquiry is a mass poisoning involving a water company. We join it at the stage known as ‘Maxwellisation’, a word I’d never come across before, but which is the term used for the moment when an Inquiry’s draft report is passed to those criticised, for comment and possible correction of facts.

The Justice Minister, who is also Lord Chancellor and an aspiring Prime Minister, has been chastised in the report for his actions whilst Environment Minister. He is dragging his feet in providing his response. To spice things up, someone is leaking confidential information about the report. The minister and his cohort are convinced it must be the Inquiry chair’s team. They plan a counterattack through the media to undermine the inquiry.

You might imagine this is the stuff of gripping drama. It’s not. Apparently, the Inquiry has so far taken four years, and the first act, in which the groundwork is laid for the second act, at some moments felt like it was going to last as long.

The complexities of public inquiries and political intrigues have the potential to be interesting, but only if the characters are meaty. The problem with The Inquiry is that they’re all rather more vegetable than red-blooded.

John Heffernan plays Arthur Gill, the minister under siege. Soft spoken with a ready smile and a flippant approach to serious questions, he is never likely to be accused of being a bully, or arrogant or even ambitious, despite having his eyes on the prime ministerial prize. Mr Heffernan brings colour to the role but he’s working from a pastel palette.

His assistant Helen played by Stephanie Street and his civil servant-cum-just-plain-servant Donna, played by Macy Nyman, are scarcely less pleasant.

Over on the opposing team, Lady Justice Deborah Wingate who chairs the Inquiry is just as quietly spoken, reasonable and smiley. You do get a sense of the steel she would need to employ in her position, but Deborah Findlay’s portrayal emphasises the niceness. No less nice is her right-hand man Jonathan Hayden KC, a charming fixer played by Nicholas Rowe.

Oh, and there’s Arthur Gill’s fixer, his old mentor, Lord Patrick Thorncliffe, who ‘knows’ people and shows at least a hint of ruthlessness behind his smooth exterior. Malcolm Sinclair is appropriately patrician in the role.

Not enough variety in the characters

Mr Davies writes decent, flowing dialogue but his characters all have the same way of speaking, and they’re all ever so polite. It’s as if they all went to the same public school, the same university and belong to the same club. Imagine you bought a Kellogg’s variety pack, and found they were all cornflakes. At one point, Arthur and Deborah even compare memories of their barrister days.

Now, Harry Davies might be making a point that those who run our government and judicial system are all part of an elite club, who know one another and have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of us. But, in a drama, we need characters to have characteristics that will amuse us and annoy us, but, most of all, make us believe their story.

Take David Cameron and Boris Johnson. They have almost identical educational backgrounds but very different characters. The people in The Inquiry seem to have no distinguishing features. When it comes to vanilla, they rival Madagascar.

John Heffernan, Stephanie Street and Malcolm Sinclair who are three actors in the play The Inquiry at The Minerva Theatre in Chichester, are grouped around a table — John Heffernan, Stephanie Street & Malcolm Sinclair in The Inquiry. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I don’t mean The Inquiry should be like The Thick Of It but it would help if the combatants had some distinguishing mannerisms, verbal habits, or, heaven forbid, volatility. For goodness sake, these are politicians and barristers, professions full of actors manqués, people who deliberately adopt a persona for effect. It not only undermines the drama than none of them possess a ready wit, a line in sarcasm, a short fuse, or even a twitch, it takes away credibility.

The set designed by Max Jones reflects this: a background of a large rectangle of oak against a larger rectangle of marble, a leather-topped desk on a green carpet on a polished wooden floor. What could be more solid, more neutral- and more boring? This would be highly effective, if only it were in contrast to the characters squabbling on this stage.

Thank goodness for the quality of acting and Joanna Bowman’s direction, which breathed some life into the story.

There are moments within the play when you wake up and take notice. Each act features an ongoing interview between Arthur and a friendly journalist, Elyse. She’s not exactly Jeremy Paxman but she does get beneath his skin, and enables him to reveal more about himself than we might otherwise have learned. It’s a part played with zest by Shazia Nichols.

And I did like the way the play was full of misdirections, admittedly some more clever than others, before it gets to its big question: whether these two powerful people- the minister and the judge- will put their personal feelings or their ambition first.

Everything leads to the one-on-one confrontation, as he tries to force her into resignation and she steadfastly stands her ground. This provides some real drama, as an amiable irresistible force meets a mild-mannered immovable object. It’s a scene of revelations and one major twist. However, that twist is so implausible that when Dame Deborah said, ‘I find that hard to believe’, I found myself nodding: ‘You and me both, my Lady.’

I wondered for a moment whether I’d got the time frame wrong but the play is clearly set in the present day or thereabouts. Both have secrets that could have been scandals in a play from the early 1950s, maybe by Terence Rattigan whose style this drama resembles, but today? I wasn’t convinced.

Even if The Inquiry doesn’t quite deliver the goods, I hope to see more from Harry Davies.

The Inquiry can be seen at The Minerva until 11 November 2023

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre

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December 28, 2022May 4, 2023

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.

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April 9, 2021

Romeo & Juliet with Josh O’Connor & Jessie Buckley – review

Josh O’Connor & Jessie Buckley shine in fast-moving Shakespeare film

★★★

Production photo of Josh O'Connor and Jessie Buckley in the National Theatre's film of Romeo and Juliet — Jessie Buckley & Josh O’Connor in Romeo & Juliet. Photo: Rob Youngson

The National Theatre‘s Romeo & Juliet is another of the hybrids of theatre and film that have emerged during lockdown. In this case, William Shakespeare‘s play, directed by Simon Godwin, is a film but filmed in the Lyttleton Theatre and as if it’s a spontaneous development from the rehearsal room.

As film, it is beautiful. The backgrounds are nearly always plain , often grey or black. In fact the colours generally are blue or grey, with faces brightly lit from the side, appropriately like 17^th century portraits. Credit for the design goes to Soutra Gilmour.

The two lovers are wild and rash, as they should be. Jessie Buckley is intense with passion, Josh O’Connor overwhelmed with emotion. They have great faces which is great for the close-ups. Their scenes together- the balcony, the wedding, the consummation (the film features a lengthy lovemaking only alluded to in the original play) are all believably romantic.

Thank goodness because this is a Romeo & Juliet that strips away all it can from the surrounding story of adults who should protect the youngsters but instead are misguided, self-centred and irresponsible. We also lose Shakespeare’s intention to emphasise the ultimate reconciliation of two warring factions as they acknowledge their part in the death of their young heirs.

Some of the most glorious poetry is filleted. There’s no ‘light from yonder window’ breaking in Emily Burns’ adaptation. Rather than rely on the verse that remains, there is a great deal of music, as if the makers didn’t trust Shakespeare’s words to convey feeling. Having said that, the music, which includes Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is superb.

The editing of text and film means this Romeo & Juliet goes at a terrific pace which is good because, in this play, you need to be carried along by the speed with which the youngsters fall deeply in love, get married and (spoiler alert) commit suicide.

Of the older actors, I particularly liked Tamsin Greig, playing the part that was Lord Capulet in the original. She’s cold, calm, as softly spoken as a snake, verging on a pantomime villain.

Deborah Findlay as the Nurse and Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence both convey the way the adults miscalculate the situation because of their own desire to meddle. The great Adrian Lester has so little to do as the Prince, because of the cuts, that a cynic might say he’s only there to provide a star name.

Romeo & Juliet can be seen on Sky Arts catch-up and on PBS on 23 April

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