Alun Armstrong stands out in new comedy

A scene from To Have And To Hold at Hampstead Theatre in November 2023 — Marion Bailey, Chrtistopher Fulford and Alun Armstrong in To Have And To Hold. Photo: Marc Brenner

Richard Bean, writer of the incomparable One Man Two Guv’nors, has turned his attention to the challenges of old age in his new comedy To Have And To Hold. The focus is on the schism between working class parents and their educated middle class children. Something many of us have felt.

Yet despite the common experience and the pedigree of the writer, it lacks emotional impact. What it does offer are a lot of laughs and a superior comedy double act from Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey.

Many of us baby boomers will be familiar with the situation To Have And To Hold describes. We were the first working class generation to go to university in large numbers, to aspire to middle class professions, and to leave our roots. Before finding ourselves with elderly parents in need of support.

I’m not saying younger generations won’t appreciate this play but I suspect it does not have the universality of some dramas about generational conflict.

Jack and Florence are on their last legs, literally in that they need a Stannah stairlift. This provides the first of many laughs, when Flo slowly descends to answer the front door. At the front door is their son Rob, who has come to try and sort out getting them into better accommodation. He is later joined by his sister Tina who has a particular interest in their health.

James Cotterill has designed a beautifully naturalistic living room that positively screams of old people who have lived there forever and haven’t changed anything in at least thirty years. The homely set also suggests, correctly, that we are nearer to the cosiness of a TV sitcom than the bleakness and remembrance of, say, Barney Norris’s Visitors, which covers similar ground.

Flo is getting by physically but she is showing signs of dementia. There is a running gag about her locking the front door and forgetting that she has the key in her apron. Jack is very ill but his brain is still sharp, so he can entertainingly recite lists of the names of pop stars and make barbed comments about being tied to Flo for seventy years.

And they bicker. They have a hilarious argument when she refers to the prostate as the prostrate and is unable to distinguish between the words. On another occasion, a convoluted question-and-answer bounces around like a pinball while which he tries to identify the name of a film director she can’t recall .

Flo has not yet lost the ability to launch some arrows of her own. When it is revealed that he has considered suicide and Switzerland is mentioned, she says she told him to go: ‘It’ll do you good. Broaden your horizons…you’ve never been abroad’. But there are many hints they are much closer than these exchanges would imply.

A comedy double act

Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey are still in their seventies but are totally convincing as an elderly couple. Without them, the production would falter, because they are required to generate most of the laughs, and their timing is immaculate.

Christopher Fulford as Rob and Hermione Gulliford as Tina are fine actors but there is much less for them to get their teeth into. He is a successful crime writer, she an entrepreneur. Both are geographically and culturally a long way from Yorkshire and their parents. Their care seems more practical than emotional, their primary consideration seeming to be the price of everything.

Actors Marion Bailey and Alun Armstrong in a acene from the play To Have And To Hold at hampstead Theatre in November 2023 — Marion Bailey and Alun Armstrong in To Have And To Hold. Photo: March Brenner

Jack recognises this and responds with a permanent scowl and his best grumpy Northerner mode- words like cantankerous and curmudgeonly spring to mind. It is significant that he is happy to tell stories of his time as a police officer but won’t let his son record them, because he suspects Rob only wants fodder for his novels. This also suggests that old people have lives worth remembering if only the next generation took the trouble to listen.

A neighbour Eddie and a cousin Pamela, nicely played by Adrian Hood and Rachel Dale, appear to offer more genuine support in a digital age that has passed Jack and Nancy by. They help with shopping from a supermarket that is more than a walk away, with banking that is only available online, and with health problems now that doctors don’t do home visits.

This leads to resentment and suspicion from the children. And, if that isn’t enough, there’s a subplot to do with someone conning Jack and Nancy out of their money.

It’s all very familiar, I’m sure, for many people of my generation. I myself know about living a life totally foreign to my parents. I have first hand experience of how difficult it is to care for parents when they are 200 miles away. I have seen my elderly father scammed out of thousands of pounds. I know how my mother-in-law’s doctor won’t do a home visit, even though she’s over 90.

So, I felt a lot of sympathy with all the main characters, but I never felt empathy, no real emotional involvement. This production is jointly directed by Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson. You couldn’t get two better people to extract the best out of a comedy. And it is a lot of fun, but Richard Bean never digs deep enough into the main characters’ feelings to bring out the pathos of a situation that so many people like Jack and Flo find themselves in.

To Have And To Hold is at Hampstead Theatre until 25 November 2023.
Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

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

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

Tag: marion bailey

To Have And To Hold – Hampstead- review

Alun Armstrong stands out in new comedy

A comedy double act

Sophie Okonedo & Ben Daniels in Medea – Review

Powerful performances from Okonedo & Daniels

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