James Norton in A Little Life with Luke Thompson – review

James Norton is a terrific choice for the lead role in Ivo van Hove’s production

★★★

Luke Thompson and James Norton, two actors in A Little Life, are seated on the ground looking at each other — Luke Thompson and James Norton in A Little Life. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

Director Ivo van Hove has made quite a bit about the trauma the audience for A Little Life will have to go through when they see A Little Life at the Harold Pinter Theatre or later at the Savoy. There are indeed pints of blood spilt as the central character played by James Norton self harms and attempts suicide. But, to me anyway, this was clearly stage blood, so not that disturbing. I believe the real trauma audiences risk is in their reaction to the detailed descriptions of the physical and sexual and emotional abuse suffered by a child, and the catastrophic effect it has on his adult life.

The little life in question is that of Jude played by James Norton. We see chronological scenes from over twenty years of his adult life starting at 30 years old. Within this narrative are flashbacks to his childhood in which the abuse he has suffered is revealed, up to a point where you may wonder how one person could be so unfortunate. It is probably best to regard the play as a fable about suffering to avoid a reality check.

Although the play is set in New York in modern times, it is deliberately isolated from the historic events and detail of modern life, and we know nothing of the background to Jude’s childhood. This has the effect of making the story more timeless, more universal.

What we learn in the course of the play is not only how child abuse is hugely damaging psychologically as well as physically but also how the love of those in his circle helps him to manage his adult life, and to heal emotionally, at least to some extent. But it is a harrowing journey, in which the past is never far away. His self disgust leads him to self harm and attempt suicide.

Jude’s saviours take the form of his three friends from college who have formed a lifetime bond. Exactly what attracted them to each other is unclear, but I assume it was more than the fact they all pursued careers beginning with ‘a’- artist, architect, actor and attorney, the latter being Jude’s profession. Although he needs them, we find out they need him too.

James Norton, who you may know as Tommy Lee Royce from Happy Valley, is a terrific choice for the lead role. He never changes his appearance from when he is an eight year old to a fifty year old. Yet, through his posture and his body language, he convinces as a child who trusts and is betrayed, and his face as an adult make you feel his pain as well as his indomitable niceness.

The other characters are less well drawn. Luke Thompson as his best friend Willem gives a solid performance, showing love, confusion and desperation in his open face.

The two other friends- JB, an insecure artist JB and Malcolm, an architect with puppy-like enthusiasm- are played by Omari Douglas and Zach Wyatt. His tormentors are all played by Elliot Cowan sometimes oily, sometime vicious, but all unredeemable, unsubtle villains.

Jude’s guardian angel Ana, someone who helped him but sadly died, continues to stay at his shoulder (literally) as a voice in his head encouraging and warning him. Nathalie Armin gives her character strength and warmth. Emilio Doorgasingh plays Jude’s concerned medical friend.

Best of all, Zubin Varla, who has just won an Olivier Award for Tammy Wynette The Musical and who was impressive in Fun Home at the Young Vic, plays his mentor and adoptive father with humour and tenderness.

Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And I think this is a clue to one of the failings of this play. The people who help the adult Jude are all nice, but, like happy families, it is difficult to make good, balanced people distinctive and interesting, compared with the unhappy person that is Jude.

Harold addresses the audience directly on a number of occasions to tell us about how to be a good parent, and indeed a good friend. There is quite of bit of exposition in this adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s book, almost as if we’re not trusted to draw our own conclusions.

We as an audience are commandeered into being part of Jude’s support group. It is stated explicitly near the end of the play but it is also implied from the start because there are three rows of audience at the back of the stage creating a traverse setting. This has the effect of making the actors closer to the audience, and the audience part of the play. It is as if simply by being there we are bearing witness to Jude’s suffering and giving him the love he needs.

A group of actors stand in a semi circle in a scene from A Little Life at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London 2023 — Luke Thompson, James Norton, Zubin Varla,Emilio Doorgasingh, Omari Douglas and Zach Wyatt in A Little Life. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

The set, lighting and video are designed by Jan Versweyveld. Most of the stage floor is painted light red like a faded pool of blood. There are some accoutrements of a home, soft seating, a kitchen area on one side, and a washbasin in the centre representing the bathroom that is the scene of Jude’s self harming and suicide attempts.

One thing that fascinated me was the smells: onions cooking, and the strong scent of Dettol used to clean up the spillages of blood- and there was a lot of symbolic cleaning up by those around him. This may have been meant to underline for us how strong Jude’s memories were of the smell of his abusers.

There is music from a live string quartet placed very visibly at the front of stalls. Written by Eric Sleichim, it is slow, piercing and haunting, evoking Jude’s edgy state of mind. The musicians deserve a credit and are Alison Holford, Eleanor Parry-Dickinson, Hazel Correa, and Alison d’Souza.

A video is projected continuously on the side walls. It is mainly in slow motion, as a camera winds its way through the streets of New York, suggesting I think Jude’s enervated mind, but it quickens and is covered in screen noise as Jude gets high on self harming. At one point it goes as red as the blood being shed.

The nudity is about humiliation and vulnerability

You may have heard that there is nudity in this production. The abuse that Jude suffers involves him being forced to strip naked on a number of occasions. This also happens sometimes when he is attempting suicide. So, if you were wondering, far from being erotic or sexy, the nudity is about vulnerability and humiliation. By contrast, when he gets naked for a scene of lovemaking, he remains under the covers, while his lover parades easily in the nude, showing the equality of true love.

When he is stripped naked to be abused, James Norton adopts a hunched pose that reminded me of Masaccio’s renaissance painting of Adam and Eve, who having lost their innocence are expelled from Eden; and when his friends carry him tenderly to a hospital bed after a suicide attempt, another iconic image from religious paintings came to mind, this time by Caravaggio and Michelangelo‘s images of Christ being tenderly carried by those that cared for him from the cross to his tomb. If these Biblical allusions are deliberate, they may help explain a dramatic ending that could be intended to evoke the entombment of Christ.

The production is nearly four hours long. Not that I was bored, but I did wonder whether the effect of the play would have been the same if it had been an hour shorter and therefore the experience more intense, or if there had been less horror-film blood, or if the self harming had been described or mimed- as the sexual abuse is. I say this because by the end I was less shocked than I think I would have been if more had been left to my imagination. But it’s not for a critic to try to rewrite a play, we can only describe what we saw and felt.

I did find some of Ivo van Hove‘s adaptation and production heavy-handed, but there is much to recommend. As a visceral description of child abuse, A Little Life is painful to watch. As a story of the power – and limits – of love, it is moving. And James Norton does give an extraordinary performance.

The italicised sentence at the end of paragraph 2 was added a few hours after the review was posted, for clarification.

A Little Life is performing at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 18 June 2023 and then transfers to the Savoy Theatre until 5 August 2023. Details from https://alittlelifeplay.com/

Paul purchased his ticket to see A Little Life

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

December 3, 2022

Elton John’s Tammy Faye – Almeida Theatre – review

Like Tammy Faye herself, the musical by Elton John, Jake Shears & James Graham is good but flawed

★★★★

Actors Andrew Rannells and Katie Brayben stand together singing a song in a scene from Tammy Faye the musical at the Almeida Theatre — Andrew Rannells and Katie Brayben in Tammy Faye

The music for Tammy Faye the musical is by Elton John. It’s hard to tell at one listen how catchy the tunes are but they’re in the style of his glam rock heights and a few certainly get the heart racing. His lyricist is Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters fame. He does the job of illustrating what’s going on but on first hearing the lyrics are sharp but without any of the unexpected words or rhymes that you find in the very best.

The book by James Graham is funny and revealing. He’s maybe a little too interested in the story of the rise and fall of TV evangelists in 1980s America than that of Tammy Faye herself, despite it being the most human of tragedies.

James Graham clearly believes in the adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So, this musical is another example of him giving us a history lesson and telling us why it’s important.
In This House, he told us about what happened behind the scenes in 1979 during a minority Labour government. In Ink, he wrote about the rise of the Murdoch-style tabloid. In Labour Of Love, he examined the last few decades of the Labour Party.

His most recent play Best Of Enemies, which has just opened in the West End (I gave it a 5 star review when it premiered at the Young Vic a year ago), tells us about two what we would now call political pundits who faced up to one another in the first popular TV debates in America back in 1968 (when President Nixon was elected). He showed that it sowed the seeds of today’s polarisation between the liberal left and the conservative right.

In Tammy Faye, he again goes back to the early days of television and the rise of the conservative right. Evangelists, following in the footsteps of Billy Graham, were inspiring masses of people in churches and arenas with their fiery sermons. Then they discovered television and in the 70s and 80s became known to millions who paid massive amounts of money to their churches, a lot of which they pocketed. More importantly, perhaps, is their association with politics in America.

I thought Presidents had ended their speeches to the nation with ‘God Bless America’ since time immemorial but I learned from this musical that President Nixon was the first to use it. Prior to that, Presidents carefully stuck to the constitutional requirement to keep church and state separate.

The evangelists expanded on this, with the help of Ronald Reagan, to create the so-called Moral Majority and a Christian right. One evangelist Pat Robertson, played in this production as a smarmy snake by Nicholas Rowe, even put himself forward as a potential Republican Presidential candidate. Ever since then, the Republican Party has relied on the Christian right to deliver them substantial numbers of votes, and has tailored its policies accordingly. So, the establishment of women’s and gay rights has been slowed down, and, in the case of access to abortion, reversed. So, very relevant to today’s world.

Anyway, that’s the history lesson, and you really wish James Graham had been your history teacher in school. The characters he creates are funny and frightening at the same time. Take the evangelist Jerry Falwell, Tammy’s nemesis. He is portrayed as a humourless, negative, mean-spirited man with narrow eyes, a dead voice and a hangdog expression. In one of the many funny lines, it is said he didn’t die of heart failure, he lived with it. It is actually hard to believe this character could evangelise anyone but the brilliant performance by Zubin Varla sends a chill through the auditorium.

Dancers on stage in a scnee from Tammy Faye by Elton John — Tammy Faye the musical

Tammy herself is seen rising from a tacky Christian puppet show to faltering TV presenter to the star of America’s biggest Christian channel, and the founder of a Christian theme park (“like Disneyland but with better people”).
Of course, it’s her husband Jim Bakker who initially gets top billing, because the evangelical Christians believed that a woman’s place is in the home or, if not, as a support for her husband. All the evangelical men we meet behave badly, eventually succumbing to pride, greed, adultery or some other sin. Her husband too lets her down.

He’s played by American actor Andrew Rannells who is extremely funny whether he is being nervous at being on TV, pompous when he believes himself to be in control, or snivelling at his failure.

Tammy’s star shines because she is not the stereotype mousey housewife. She is bright in brain, eyes and dress- great glittering costumes from Katrina Lindsay by the way. She is witty, and she’s compassionate to the point of crying on a regular basis. It takes someone exceptional to play a funny, warm woman who can also belt out high octane songs. This production has such a performer in Katie Brayben who has a beautiful voice and powerful lungs, and can hold the entire audience in her hands. Even when she is brought down by her only too human failings, we continue to love her because she exudes goodness and humility and humour.

What really sets her apart, other than being a woman in this man’s world, is that, while the others preach hate, she preaches love. Her fellow evangelists are homophobic and consider AIDS to be a plague sent by God. She says Christians should love everybody. She brings people onto the TV show who would normally be persona non-grata to evangelicals, including most famously a gay pastor who has AIDS. This occupies a small amount of the show but is immensely moving.

But this isn’t a play, it is a musical and so stands or falls on its music. Elton John is experienced at writing musicals. He has had hits with The Lion King, Aida and of course Billy Elliott. He knows how to integrate the music with the plot so that it keeps the story moving and adds to its depth. You could easily imagine songs like If Only Love, which is a beautiful ballad, Empty Hands, If You Came to See Me Cry or Right Kind Of Faith slotting neatly into his 1970s songbook, (though perhaps not on a greatest hits album). They are stirring and often accompanied by a large chorus line of dancers, choreographed by Lynne Page. However, none of the songs are quite showstoppers, except maybe the finale See You In Heaven which certainly gets people bouncing in their seats.

Bunny Christie’s set is just right. She leaves plenty of room for the actors to move on a relatively small stage but At the back is a set of 25 identical openings that act as TV screens but are also windows out of which characters poke their heads to contribute to and comment on the on-stage activity. These include, hilariously, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The director is Rupert Goold, who is the Almeida’s Artistic Director. You can see his hand in making this such a slick, punchy musical.

So why isn’t it a five star musical? I think the problem is that, interesting as the story of the rise and fall of the male TV evangelists is, it’s not that engaging. Yet so much time is spent on them that the central character of Tammy ends up being shortchanged. She and Jim are clearly fascinating, tragic people but they’re not explored enough, which meant I wasn’t able to get fully engaged with their story either. So, like Tammy Faye herself, this musical is very good but slightly flawed.

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

Tammy Faye performed at the Almeida Theatre until 3 December 2022

July 11, 2018December 12, 2018

Fun Home – Young Vic – review

Fun Home is a perfect musical

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Click here to see the YouTube review of Fun Home on One Minute Theatre Reviews

Production photo of Kaisa Hammarlund and cast in Fun Home at Young Vic — Kaisa Hammarlund and cast in Fun Home at Young Vic. Photo: Marc Brenner

Fun Home is a perfect musical- a joyous story driven by mystery and tragedy; songs with clever lyrics and catchy tunes that give an extra depth to the tale; characters you believe in and care about.

The musical is based on an autobiographical graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. We meet Alison as she’s in the process of creating her book. It’s an attempt to look back and understand how she tackled coming out and how her closet gay father came to commit suicide. As a song from early on says, ‘I want to know what’s true, dig deep into who and what and why and when, until now gives way to then.’

Although there is a central tragic event, this does not stop it being an uplifting evening.

Two younger versions of Alison take us through episodes of her life as today’s Alison narrates and comments. All the cast are tremendous singers and actors- Kaisa Hammarlund as the nervous narrator Alison, Eleanor Kane as the gauche teenage Alison and on the occasion I saw it, Harriet Turnbull as the troubled small Alison, displaying a skill rare in an child actor.

Jenna Russell plays the suffering mother and Zubin Varla is tremendous as the complex father. There’s also great support from Ashley Samuels and Cherrelle Skeete.

Production photo of Fun Home at Young Vic London — Fun Home at Young Vic. Photo: Marc Brenner

The songs, composed by Jeanine Tesori with lyrics by Lisa Kron, are by turns humorous, heartbreaking and, most importantly, totally integrated into the story. Perhaps it helps that Lisa Kron also wrote the book.

A quick word of praise for David Zinn’s clever set which is like an extension to the father’s character. It’s detailed when it needs to be, spins round as scenes change, and is bleak and blank at appropriate times. And there is a wow moment late on.

There’s a lightness and movement in director Sam Gold’s tender, funny production that give the still moments huge impact.

Fun Home is a touching look at the relationship between parent and child and a wonderful celebration of being true to yourself. It’s the kind of evening I always hope for when I go to the theatre.

Fun Home is performing at Young Vic until 1 September. Click here for the Young Vic website

Watch the One Minute Theatre Reviews YouTube review here-