Travelling Light

Fresh from seeing The Artist my latest theatrical adventure was to see this 'tragi-comic love letter to early cinema' at the National. With Anthony Sher in a lead role, it had mixed reviews but I decided to give it a try anyway.

Based around one young mans attempts to turn film into art and his experience of getting sidelined along the way into pleasing audiences, there were lots of sly comparisons with Hollywood which worked very well. I enjoyed the way that his skill was in taking the ideas brought forward by others, and working out how to use them to his advantage (and then pretty much taking the credit). There was a lot of warm humour, and the narration by the older, successful version of the young enthusiast worked well.

Regardless of the good bits, it didn't quite catch fire. The pulling together of the threads at the end was a bit too neat, and it remained far too gentle and steady, even when there were good opportunities to turn up the heat and pace a bit. Towards the end most of the tragedy happened off-stage, and in the the final denoument, without the increased emotional kick that was there for the taking.

The cast though, were good, despite the slightly dodgy east european accents and I was pretty impressed with Damien Molony. The movies that we see being made and produced are very effective, and the set with its back projections worked very well. So a bit of tweaking could really bring it to life I think.

Overall, despite the opportunities for more depth, it all travelled too lightly in the end.

One Man, Two Guvnors

Well I had a bit of a palaver getting the tickets for this, as they were officially sold out, so finding a day when I could get up at 5 to queue for day tickets was a bit tricky. The day finally arrived, I got up well before dawn, logged in to my computer whilst drinking my wake-up coffee to find that a large number of returns had been added to the website. So, if I was prepared to pay four times the day seat price I would be guaranteed a seat and a couple more hours back in bed. Obviously I paid up.

The play is about to transfer to the West End, and deservedly so. It makes full use of its Commedia dell’Arte roots, managing to give everyone a roaringly good time whilst clearly and intelligently pointing out what it is up to. At one point my face ached with laughing, not something that happens often enough at the theatre. James Corden appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself and Oliver Chris gave him a great double act partner. All the performances were spot on, and the ad libs and improvisation were so seamlessly handled it wasn’t always clear whether they were scripted to appear off the cuff. Clever, whilst making sure no funny bone was left untickled, this was a slick and perfectly executed event from beginning to end.

I can’t leave this without mentioning the brilliant pastiche 60’s music from Grant Olding and ‘The Craze’ and the musical ‘turns’ by the cast, used to smooth each scene change. Oliver Chris’s musical number was perhaps my favourite, although Daniel Rigby’s acoustic chest beating came a very close second.

I bet this will run for years, so probably no need to hurry, but this cast is fantastic so definitely one to catch if you can.

Top Girls

I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first act of Top Girls. A Thatcherite career woman (Suranne Jones) having dinner in a swanky 80’s restaurant with a female Pope, Isabella Bird and a range of other historical characters.

Funny and moving as well as bewildering, we hear their stories and learn about their various sacrifices. So, at the first interval we spent some time trying to get to grips with things, despite the poor light and lack of reading glasses which meant I couldn’t cheat by reading the programme. I needn’t have worried as the second and third acts made things crystal clear. Classic political theatre, with the points hammered home, it was still satisfyingly thought provoking, and with great performances from the ensemble cast who each took a range of complementary roles. Written and set in the eighties, the most striking things were sadly, not how much has changed, but how little.

Not one to go for if you are planning an escapist cheery girls night out, but certainly one to make you pause and think a bit. I’d be taking a daughter if I had one, although perhaps, thinking about it, it would be more useful to take my sons.

Much Ado About Nothing

With a cast like this it really shouldn’t fail, but of course you can never be sure, so I am glad to report that this was a great night out as anticipated.

Not the deepest version I have ever seen, but for laughs, one of the best. The double act of David Tennant and Catherine Tate certainly paid off, and Tennant’s undoubted comic abilities meant that he shone, and probably would have done so regardless of the golf buggy, slapstick and lacy tights. It's also good to see Catherine Tate coming into her own as an actor, and although she has a way to go before the television stereotyping is left behind, I think she has a lot of potential for more serious stuff if she wants it.

There have been a few criticisms, mostly based around the populism of this version, and particularly the verse speaking, where the laughs seem more important than the sense, but I think the purists are missing the point. As one of the original romantic comedies it seems a bit churlish to grumble about a version that focuses on the froth.

That doesn’t mean that the problematic Don John plot wasn’t dealt with head on though. By leaving us in no doubt about what Claudio has seen, the showdown in the church sat better than some other versions, although it still jars a bit. The introduction of a mother for Hero was less effective though. It didn’t really seem to make much difference to me, apart from to make the feeble interventions in the abortive wedding seem even more feeble. It also downgraded the friendship between Beatrice and Hero, which made the ‘kill Claudio’ scene even more unexpected.

But, these are tiny gripes for what was a brilliant example of how to do joyful and fun theatre. ‘Glee does Shakespeare’? Yes. But did it capture the essence of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’? Yes, it did.

Although painfully expensive at £61 per ticket, I think this was actually worth every penny, and the Lily Savage wig and inventive use of paint will keep me going for some time.

Rocket to the Moon

I have a lovely 'I told you so' glow after seeing Jessica Raine delivering a storming performance as Cleo, opposite Joseph Millson in Rocket to the Moon at the Lyttelton.

Keeley Hawes was replaced by Rendah Heywood for this performance, and although she did well, I think we may have lost some of the extra frisson that the similarities in physical form and apparent fragilities between the two female leads may have brought to the piece.

Millson was totally believable as the man caught between his dreams and reality, and the other characters with their different quiet desperations were all played perfectly. Raine though, caught exactly the mixture of vulnerable but vampish girl/woman, like an early Marilyn Monroe caught between the desires of men and what she wants to become.

Loved it!

The Cherry Orchard

Despite my best efforts I find it a bit difficult to find the laughs in Chekhov, but decided on the spur of the moment to give the latest version at the Olivier a try, especially as there were front row day seats available.

The production sits a bit out of its time, with telephones and electricity pylons decorating the set, and it sort of brought the play forward to a post revolutionary time, rather than the pre-revolutionary era in which it was written. It helped to create the feeling of a group of people out of synch with their times, floating through the world on a haze of orchards, borrowed money and pale linen.

The text had been brought up to date for this production, and although it occasionally jarred, it did bring the humour to the fore, and clarified the caricatures a bit. The frocks were lovely and I spent quite a few minutes admiring the cut and fabrics, particularly in the overlong scene in the gardens.

Zoe Wanamaker did strike a few classic tragic Chekhovian poses, but overall was quite restrained in the dramatics, focusing instead on the determinedly unworldly partygirl nature of Ranyevskaya. Some favourites were James Laurenson as the brother just making the best of things, and Tim McMullan as a scrounging landowner down on his luck.

Kenneth Cranham stole the show though with the excellent ending.

Frankenstein

I didn't get around to posting this while it was still on, but one of the highlights of my theatre year so far.

I faffed around for ages trying to decide when to go to see this, and which version of the casting to go for, so by the time I made up my mind it was sold out with overnight queues for day tickets.

So, I duly set my alarm and arrived to join the back of the early morning queue, ending up with a standing ticket.

I think I got a good deal though, as from the back you get a full view of the fantastic lighting effects which rippled above the stage, almost like an additional member of the cast. I saw the casting with Jonny Lee Miller as the creature, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein. Miller played the role as though electrified and with a real humanity and warmth, struggling to deal with his beastly exterior, whilst Cumberbatch was all cold science. I really wanted to see the opposite casting, to see what each would do with the same role, but sadly it wasn't to be. I hear rumours of a DVD release though, so fingers crossed.

Cause Célèbre

A slightly odd play, although with excellent staging, Ann-Marie Duff was a mix of fragility and passionate hedonism, playing the woman trapped in a moral quagmire. Full of polar opposites and double standards, it felt like we would be served up a black and white ending, but it all turned out in shades of grey. Based on real events in 1935, the play was first produced in 1977, and at first looks like a period piece, but the moralistic snap judgements by people who know little of the facts seems particularly relevant when we are surrounded by super-injunctions and twitter gossip. So, it made me think and wonder.

Propeller: Richard III

I just love Propeller. Funny, irreverent, but always on the button, this was a fast and fantastic production in the tiny theatre at The Watermill in Newbury. Packed with ever more dastardly methods of murder, and with a charmingly vicious lead in the form of Richard Clothier as mad, bad Richard III, this was the most entertaining death packed theatre trip I have had in ages. Still on tour, see it if you can..

Completing the set

A domestic equivalent of a perfect storm hit my already sporadic blogging and theatre-going last year. Kids' A levels, University applications and departures, followed swiftly by a change of job meant that not only did I not go to the theatre as much, but I wasn’t able to form even semi-coherent thoughts about it.

But I’m back now, and to assuage my completist tendencies I will start with a twitteresque run through of my favourite events of the last 10 months or so

Danton’s Death

Entertaining run through the French Revolution, although Toby Stephens was a bit too ‘Flashheart’ for my liking. Stonking guillotine ending.


La Bete

Mark Rylance appropriately and outrageously stole the show, while David Hyde Pierce balanced him out brilliantly. Great acting which outshone the play.


Tim Minchin and Orchestra at the O2

Fantastic playing with rockstar clichés and some brilliant new songs. I wanted more of the rude and rackety older stuff though.


Hamlet

Rory Kinnear as a very believable, studenty prince with excellent verse speaking. This remains my favourite play *ever*. Ophelia is still a rubbish part though.


Death Trap

A New Years eve treat with Simon Russell Beale. We jumped in all the right places, and laughed throughout. Loved it!


Seasons Greetings

Catherine Tate suitably luscious, making the most of the Abigail’s party overtones, while Mark Gatiss was all witty pathos. And what a treat to find Oli Chris as the male totty!


Treats I am already looking forward to during 2011 are Tennant and Tate in Much Ado , the dream team of Ben Goldacre, Robin Ince, Prof Brian Cox and friends being grumpy about irrationality and excited about science, hopefully followed by some more visits to The Globe, sadly neglected last year.

The Power of Yes

Well I had already seen and enjoyed Enron, so I thought I would balance things up and do a bit of pre-election revision by heading off to see David Hare's take on the financial crisis.

Not really a play, this was more of an illustrated lecture, and some of the people who had clearly paid the full £44 for their seats at a new David Hare play, were understandably a bit miffed! I did wonder if that was why there was no interval - so that they could be sure to have a full house until the end. Leaving that aside, this was a clear explanation of how it came to be that banks got away with such audacious risk taking with our money. It was well done enough that it made me angry in a way that Enron didn't, particularly through highlighting how little has changed.

I thought this was a worthwhile couple of hours. At least it means that my shouting at the telly during the pre-election period is a little more articulate and well informed than usual.

The White Guard

This was recommended to me on the basis that although it is Russian, is isn't Chekov.

Based on the play by Mikhail Bulgakov, this was a fast moving look at the Russian Revolution played as farce from the perpective of a bourgeois family living in Ukraine. Brilliant set and great ensemble performances, it was much more My Familythan Dr Zhivago, with some nicely paced set pieces. My favourites were the farcical turning points as the characters wave their guns at each other in succession, like something out of Dad's Army as everyone changes sides again and again. Chronicling the shifts of loyalties as various factions take charge then run away in the confusion, it brought to vivid life how difficult it must be to get on with 'normality' in such times, when a failure to pay attention for one moment may lead to being on the wrong side of a gun barrel.

It also had some brilliant explosions - the National Theatre with its permanent armourer has the best explosions in the theatre anyway, but these were good enough to make the whole audience leap in unison and then giggle at themselves. I love it when that happens.

The Little Dog Laughed

The play is a revival of a Broadway production, with pretty impressive (to me at least) American accents used throughout by the all English cast. This is the story of a gay actor being persuaded that to secure his dream role in a Hollywood movie, the closet of a fake fairytale marriage is a better career choice than a loving gay relationship.

Rupert Friend and Harry Lloyd play the star crossed lovers, Gemma Atherton has the fairly thankless role of the token girlfriend, but all were acted off the stage by Tamsin Greig who appeared to be an unstoppable but persuasive force of nature in the role of devious agent Diane. Like an Iago drawing us into her schemes, she managed to make us admire her daring and manipulations and love her style, even as she ripped the lives of the other characters to shreds to suit the movie industry ideal.

I saw the play in the week that Colin Firth won an Oscar for playing a gay man, but with little sign of a gay man winning an prize for playing a straight leading role, this raises the nasty question of whether Hollywood really does behave like this. Unbelievable, but also scarily believable. I suppose we won't know how accurate this is, unless and until we get a big star brave enough to step up and out.

Vicious, caustic and cynical in the best way, but very, very funny, this was a surprise hit for me. My lasting feeling, apart from a renewed crush on Tamsin Greig and aching ribs from the laughing, was sadness. So, a good job well done I think.

Enron

It was a bit of a struggle to get discount tickets at the Noel Coward Theatre, so I finally ended up with side balcony tickets for me and the kids. Great view as long as you didn't mind leaning forward to see anything!

The play was a witty dash through the events that led to the Enron collapse, and showing how the seeds of the later global crash were set. With music, dancing and dinosaurs to help us through the story, it certainly kept us paying attention, and it was the clearest explanation I have yet seen on how we got into our current financial mess.

The whole cast was excellent, with Sam West and Tim Piggot-Smith playing the architects of the disaster but with Tom Goodman-Hill stealing the show with his portrayal of Andy Fastow, complete with his barely controlled 'Raptors'.

I had an American sitting next to me and it was interesting to hear his take on the show, as well as his explanations of where all the characters were now. Although overall, I would have preferred him to limit his comments to the interval rather than whispering to me throughout the second half......

A New Jerusalem containing Welshmen, Pacific Islanders and National Treasures

A bit of a gap since my last post, and I seem to be missing it much more than I thought I would. Self indulgent rambling seems to be quite addictive – who knew?

So, I have decided to pull up my socks, gird my loins, get into gear, pull myself together and get a grip, along with any other metaphorical whip cracking I can think of. More suggestions for clichéd motivational phrases very welcome.

Theatre trips over the last month or so have been a bit sparse, but with some brilliant moments so I thought I would use this post to bring us all up to speed.

Nation
This National Theatre production, adapted from the Terry Pratchett novel, was quite light, and a bit clichéd, but very enjoyable as a holiday treat. We had arranged an informal tour of the theatres beforehand, an experience which was strangely disorientating, although we absolutely loved standing on the middle of the stage and working out where we were sitting that night. Eating in the staff restaurant was also a bit weird – I’m not sure I can cope with my disbelief being suspended so far as to see the ‘islanders’ knocking back a burger and chips with double tomato sauce beforehand. It was also a bit strange seeing bits of the set, props and costumes being repaired before going on to stage later that evening, but I was both amazed and impressed to see the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep the magic in place at the front of the stage.

The Habit of Art
This latest Alan Bennett play, also at the National, was multi-layered, and excellent in all respects. Frances De La Tour was just perfect, as were Richard Griffith and the rest of the cast, teetering confidently on the edge between comedy and the bleak tragedy underneath. Although I didn’t fall in love with it as I did with The History Boys, I have found it lingering, in that I keep going back over bits of it, seeing it from new angles. It seemed to be an underlining of past work as far as Bennett is concerned, and suggests that perhaps he might be a bit tired of his previous incarnations. The references to The Tempest and Death in Venice certainly make me feel that he is consciously in ‘late works’ mode, and as a result (and perhaps a bit paradoxically) it has made me really interested to see what comes next for our slightly unwilling ‘national treasure’.

Rhod Gilbert and the cat that looked like Nicholas Lyndhurst
This has been touring since Edinburgh last year, so I am a bit late to the party on this one, but the new face of Wales finally arrived at The Anvil in Basingstoke last week. Rhod Gilbert is a master in apparently incoherent rage and this was the best comedy I have seen for some time. Seemingly unstructured angry ramblings, interspersed with confessional discussions with the audience, leading to a masterful dénouement which linked everything together so beautifully I laughed for joy at the neatness of it all.

Jerusalem


Saving the best to last, I finally caught Jez Butterworth’s much praised play this week. With Mark Rylance in the lead role, I was upset to have missed it at the Royal Court last summer, so this West End transfer felt long overdue. This was all I could have wished for. A clever and angry but stormingly funny play, which puts all sorts of Englishness together in a jar, gives them all a good shake and then pulls them all out for minute inspection. We saw bits of Shakespeare and Shakespearian characters, green men and giants, morris dancing, unruly youths, colonels, publicans, prejudice, small mindedness, violence, heroism and bolshy bloodymindedness, all brought together to show the English ambivalence to their own history and sense of national identity.

The play is focused on Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, a charismatic, self-mythologising, drug dealing outsider, living in a scruffy caravan in countryside beside a new estate in a Wiltshire village. I wonder how much Jez Butterworth had this particular actor in mind when writing this play though, and whether it will survive new leading men.

Regular readers will probably already know how much I adore Mark Rylance, and this is perhaps his best performance ever, in a role which allowed him to bring aspects of his own back catalogue to add further depth to the character which toys with a range of stories about Englishness. Mark Rylance is regularly referred to as our greatest living theatrical actor and, although that is a huge claim, on this performance I think it is well deserved. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Darker Shores

Watching the first preview night of Darker Shores at Hampstead Theatre was a slightly nail-biting experience. The first night had been delayed as Tom Goodman-Hill had taken over his role from Mark Gatiss just a couple of days earlier, and I was beginning to wonder if all my visits to this theatre were going to be jinxed.

Despite this, all appeared word perfect and, if the pace slipped on occasions and some scenes meandered about a bit, overall this was a very creditable performance. Tom Goodman-Hill did an excellent job playing Professor Gabriel Stokes, a Victorian widower consulting an American spiritualist/potential huckster after a supernatural experience and recruiting him to investigate further in the best tradition of ghost stories. Julian Rhind-Tutt played Tom Beauregard, the American ex-civil war soldier turned ghost-finder, battling his own demons in a performance nicely balanced between bravura showman and troubled war veteran and throwing in a few magic tricks for good measure! The rest of the cast did a brilliant, understated job in holding the whole thing together, leaving the men to get on with the melodrama.

On second viewing, I had a much better seat and the pace had picked up considerably so that the plot whipped along quite nicely. There are fantastic special effects throughout, best appreciated from the stalls, and the final reveal, when we find out what all this is about, was a real treat, particularly as I hadn’t seen it very clearly on the first visit. Despite following the tradition of plays like Women in Black, there is a secular sensibility underwriting it all, giving Gabriel Stokes in particular some great (and funny) lines which mean that for most of the play I was never quite clear whether we are supposed to take it all seriously or not. The slightly uncertain chuckles from the audience seemed to suggest to me that they felt the same way!

The one thing that was missing was the final chiller moment – I think it is there in embryo, but it seemed to get lost in the final scene on both occasions I saw this, and I would love to see it built up a bit more. I’m going again in January, so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Saying it again

As promised, I did manage to get back to see Speaking in Tongues again... twice as it happens. I won some tickets, so took my sons, then went again with a friend.

Seeing plays more than once is always fascinating, watching the performances grow and develop, and how a different audience can change the whole evening. Then, of course, there is my own changing responses, finding that some things still work for me, whilst others lose their shine.

On the second viewing, the co-ordination of the actors had certainly developed much more, and the flow of the speech had reached that comfortable, lyrical stage so I had a great night again.

On the third night though, it was as if they had all gone off the boil a bit. John Simm had altered his playing of the role, as if he was putting less of himself into it, particularly in the second half... and I really missed the notebook that he battled to get out of his pocket on both previous occasions - this time he simply didn't bother. I have read since about Ian Hart's little grumbles about audiences and apparent temper tantrum and I wonder if some of that was contributing to the strange atmosphere?

The audience seemed to still be having a good time though, so maybe it was just me, and three viewings is one too many.

Endgame

I’ve always put off going to see Endgame on the basis that, as with the heavy end of literature or swimming the channel, you need to work up to it, and I’ve never really felt that I am out of the shallow end of my theatre going. But when I found out that Mark Rylance was appearing as Hamm in the Complicite production at the Duchess Theatre I decided it was worth getting rid of my armbands and going for it.

Actually, I don’t know what I was worried about really. I’m not saying I understood it all, but it appears to me that was part of the point. The cast seemed to me to bring this very stagey piece to life very well, so that, although I was often mystified, it somehow seemed as if we were all in together. I loved the tenderness between Miriam Margolyes and Tom Hickey as Nell and Nagg, and once I had got past Simon McBurney’s clowning (is it supposed to be that cheesy?) I thought he managed the role of Clov very well, trapped in his relationship with Hamm, partly by being the only character with the power of movement.

Mark Rylance was, of course, as absorbing to watch as always, and the absolute centre of the play in all senses. An exceptionally physical actor anyway, it was intriguing how he managed to convey a kind of balletic quality to every movement he made, regardless of the fact that he remained fixed to his wheelchair throughout. He coaxed the humour and pathos out of every possible line and, despite the theatricality of the whole play, managed to avoid it ever feeling forced.

Hamm asks ‘We're not beginning to ... ... mean something?’ Well yes, I think they did, even if only when seen out of the corner of my eye.

Speaking my Language

All I knew about Speaking in Tongues when I booked our seats was that it had the amazing John Simm to complete a classy cast of Kerry Fox, Ian Hart and Lucy Cohu playing all nine characters.

A fascinating bit of writing, the play circles around the characters and events, playing with language and scenes and using simultaneous and overlapping speech to highlight links and gaps between people. It especially uses rhythm, with pauses and accents to an extent that this could almost have been performance poetry. Reviewers and the programme notes highlight the themes of trust and betrayal, but the main thing that struck me was the swirling circular nature of that rhythm, bringing us back round to the same scenes and words from a slightly different perspective.

The first half looks at two couples teetering on the edge of adultery, and then in the second half focuses on the events seen and mentioned earlier from the viewpoint of the other characters involved, resulting in a sort of complicated six degrees of separation thing, with the only repeated character being John Simm’s Leon. The plotting is so complex I was still sorting it out in my head on the way home, but despite that, there is no neat conclusion, which left a strangely unsettled feeling – something I love! Much better than an ending neatly tied up in a bow.

All of the actors managed their multiple roles very nicely. I saw Ian Hart just a few weeks ago in Three More Sleepless Nights at the Lyttleton; he was excellent in that as well, and this felt like a natural progression. Of course, John Simm is a huge draw and deservedly so. He had the two most diverse characters, and was just as mesmerising but different in both. Despite spending most of his career on screen, his stage energy is just amazing, doing that clever actorly thing of seeming to become the character, rather than ‘acting’.

Despite being a polished and gripping production and one of the most interesting plays I have seen this year, I think it still has scope for more, and I am keen to come back at the end to see how it has developed. I’ve already mentioned the importance of the rhythm and because of that, any tiny false steps and missed or delayed cues are glaringly obvious. I have a feeling that at the end of the run, the actors might have internalised the lines as if they are lyrics, so that they could speak along with it whilst cooking the tea and feeding the cat without missing a beat. If that happens, this will move up into another realm. And I really wouldn’t want to miss that.

A Painful Pleasure

I wasn’t sure I would enjoy A New World at the Globe, as it sounded a bit worthy, and I was a bit tempted to spend my afternoon browsing around the Thames Festival and overpriced craft stalls, rather than watch a history play over three hours long.

But, I was glad I did keep the appointment, and not just for the sake of my bank balance. Using Benjamin Franklin as a narrator who doesn’t let the little matter of his death stop him talking, the play takes us through Thomas Paine’s involvement in the American War of Independence in the first half, then the French Revolution in the second. The play and performances had a lovely light touch and every time there was any danger of being sunk by words, a suitable song or bit of diversion was thrown in to keep things moving along very nicely. There were a few grumblings in the interval about some merging of characters and events, which passed over my head completely I’m afraid, so I can’t tell you what was missing, but as the programme notes point out that the play was cut down from an original mini-series size, I expect the grumblers were right.

For a matinee, it was a pretty full house and, somehow, a real warmth was generated by the end in that mysterious chemical reaction that sometimes happens at the Globe. As a result, the cast were taken aback by a well deserved third ovation, and reappeared looking slightly dishevelled but chuffed.