Category Archives: 5/10

Love The Sinner – June 2010

5/10

By Drew Pautz

Directed by Matthew Dunster

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Thursday 17th June 2010

This play set its stall out very effectively, but in a misleading way. The opening scene was set in a meeting room somewhere in a posh hotel in a major African city – I didn’t catch any names, and I got the impression it was meant to be generic. The attendees were all clerics, dog collars well to the fore, and since one was a woman, I assumed this was an Anglican shindig. The initial point being clarified was who wanted what to drink. It emerged later that this group had sequestered itself away to thrash out an agreement which included a wording about accepting different lifestyle choices (i.e. homosexuality), and for all we know that may have been the sole purpose of the meeting. The African delegates were having none of it, the lone woman was the only one who dared to speak up for the European and American congregations, and the archbishop, Stephen, was trying to encourage them all to play nice. Some hope! When I talked about them ‘thrashing’ out an agreement, it wasn’t entirely metaphorical.

When the coffee arrived, the group all closed their eyes, so as not to be influenced by any outsider. There was some humour in the way they chatted with the waiter, and he was certainly surprised to find everyone had their eyes shut. Only Jonathan Cullen’s character Michael opened his for a short spell near the end, as he tried to give the waiter a tip from the general contributions. After he left, the arguments went on, and showed no sign of doing anything but entrenching the opposing views even deeper.

This was good stuff, and since there were no program notes to give us a clue as to the overall direction of the piece, we naturally assumed that the themes of reconciliation, attitudes to homosexuality, and the way the west treats the rest of the world and vice versa, would be given a good airing. But no. The next scene shows us Michael and the waiter, Joseph, after they’ve had sex. Joseph wants Michael to take him back to England. Michael is appalled at the idea, and there’s a very stuttering conversation which darkens into menace and even violence, when Joseph shows Michael that he’s taken Michael’s wallet and passport. He refuses to give the passport back, but Michael is saved by the arrival of Daniel (yes, they all had tediously obvious biblical names, apart from Shelley, Michael’s wife). This scene felt very dated. Homosexuality may not always get an easy ride still, but it is talked about more openly than was shown here, and if all we were meant to understand from this scene was Michael’s discomfort with his own actions, then we could cheerfully lose about three-quarters of the dialogue, as we got that point very early on.

The next scene, which took us up to the interval, was set back in England, in winter, in Michael and Shelley’s house. I must confess to dozing off a bit at this point – there was so little to keep me awake. Basically, they dodge and spar around three subjects – at least Michael does the dodging – but they’re both showing the wear and tear of a problematic relationship. The subjects are their difficulty having a child, Michael’s recent obsession with reading the Bible at home, even on weekdays, and the removal of a squirrel family from their loft. I have no idea what we were meant to get from this, none whatsoever.

The second half also began with a good scene, this time Michael having a management meeting at the envelope-making company which he owns. He wants to add church donation envelopes to their range, what with the reduction in letter sending, but his team aren’t enthusiastic. They’ve clearly had enough of his attempts to sanctify the workplace by removing the porno calendars and putting up religiously symbolic pictures of light shining through clouds instead. One chap was brave enough to point out that they didn’t know what to expect when he came into work – nice Michael who was considerate and understanding, or money-man Michael, all nose to the grindstone and telling the staff off if they made a mistake. When Michael asked what they thought he should do, the lone woman (again) suggested he kill off one of the Michaels, so that at least the other one would have a chance to make things work, a very funny moment.

Shortly after this, Shelley arrives. She wants to know who Joseph is, Michael is reluctant to tell her, they bicker (the staff have left the room by this time), and before you know it, they’re getting ready to have sex on the table. The scene ends with a knock on the door at a most inopportune time. Very funny.

I think the next scene is the final one. Daniel and Stephen, the nice Archbishop, turn up in the basement of Michael’s local church, to prepare for some speech that Stephen will be making shortly upstairs. They discover Joseph hiding out there, with Michael’s help, and the whole story unravels. Daniel, who appears to be some kind of spin doctor for the Archbishop, is totally wound up at the prospect of a gay liaison being uncovered at a local church, and while the Archbishop is actually there! Stephen seems to be more concerned about the welfare of Michael and Joseph.

We also get to see the scars on Joseph’s back, so we know just how bad things were for him back in Africa. Other than that, there’s not a lot to this scene. It ends with Joseph, smartly dressed in a suit, heading up the stairs to the main body of the church, but to do what, we hadn’t a clue. Michael is left, cringing in despair in the basement, but again, we’ve no idea why. The music swells, the light shines through the stained glass window, and all to no effect as far as I was concerned.

With plays like this, I feel I miss out because I was never brought up in an organised religion. I’ve learned a few things along the way, but sometimes the arcane methods and practices of these groups are so obscure to me that I reckon a lot of the subtler points miss me by a mile. I have no idea why we were being shown these things, or what we were supposed to get out of the piece. We both felt there was a good play in there, with some moments that work very well on stage, but it needs a lot of work to make the grade from our point of view.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Tom’s A-Cold – June 2010

5/10

By David Egan

Directed by Lora Davies

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 8th June 2010

This was the first play in the Directors’ Showcase. It was written by a Canadian playwright. Two men sit in a boat, trapped on an island in the far north of Canada. They’re survivors of the ill-fated Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage; however as the play progresses, we realise that one of the men may not actually be there. Cannibalism rears its toothy maw, and eventually we find that there’s only one man left alive, though clearly not in his perfect wits.

The only set was a rowing boat, with oars, placed diagonally across the stage. It rested on a piece of hessian, and there were lots of props on board – spoons, comb, books, a gun, etc. Costumes were nicely in period.

The story started out with a fair bit of humour, as the two men attempted to keep their spirits up with various games, including the most predictable version of I-spy ever. It then became darker, as the story of the original ships was told via flashbacks, and as the “captain’s” insanity started to show itself more clearly, I was pretty sure his shipmate was a figment of his imagination long before he turned up again wanting to be told the story of his own death.

This was a mixed bag. There was a surprising amount of humour, some ‘scenes’ that were uncomfortable to watch, and some bits that dragged because they seemed repetitive. I felt the hour and a quarter running time could have been cut by twenty or even thirty minutes to create a tighter piece, but maybe that’s just me. The performances were excellent, as usual.

Post-show. There were several attempts by one gentleman in the upper level to hijack the discussion with a solo diatribe on the awfulness of the first piece, Tom’s A-Cold. Fortunately the audience and the two young directors (Sam sent his apologies) managed to fend him off.

Lora found her play through attending a play reading at Oxford(?) several years ago, and had wanted to put it on stage since then, so this was the perfect opportunity. Emma found it quite hard to select her play. Her remit was to find a short piece by a well-known writer which used three or four characters, and ran for only fifty minutes. It took months, but finally she thought of Orton and discovered this play, which she hadn’t known before. They each had to direct on their own this time – no assistants for the first-time directors – although they did the casting process together. I got the impression that as well as learning a lot about what the director’s job entails, they’ve also started to establish their network of contacts, which can be so important in many areas of life.

Apparently we were a quite sophisticated audience – not too many of us fell asleep, and we laughed at some of the jokes. Our quick response to the second line of Ruffian told them we were with the cast from the off. Perhaps the grim nature of the first play made us more receptive to the humour of the second – we needed a good laugh by then – although both pieces were pretty dark. Many people enjoyed both of the plays, though in different ways, and the cast and directors were warmly applauded at the end.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Ruined – May 2010

5/10

By Lynn Nottage

Directed by Indhu Rubasingham

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 22nd May 2010

I don’t know what went wrong for me at this performance. Maybe I was tired, maybe I had the wrong expectations of this piece, or maybe we were just too far round the side for this production, but I found it uninvolving in a number of ways.

Firstly, the humour was great, and I acknowledge that in difficult situations it’s normal for people to laugh as a way of coping. But when there’s so much death and violence going on, sometimes the humour seemed to be too light. We’re not used to living in those circumstances, so I felt I needed more of a sense of the hardships in order to appreciate the women’s reactions and the ways that they coped. When working in a brothel can seem a better prospect than life in a village, it’s hard to know just how sorry to feel for these women, and for the people as a whole. Are they suffering? Or are they just a strange bunch of folk who don’t seem to mind living in a war zone? I like ambiguity, but this felt more like indifference.

And secondly, the production looked like it was aimed squarely at the centre stalls. I missed a good few lines because the actor’s back was towards me, and while the rotating set was very effective, it came so far forward that parts of the stage weren’t visible from the side of the stalls.

The set was the inside and outside of Mama Nadi’s bar, somewhere in the Republic of Congo, near a road in a mining area. She takes in girls to work as prostitutes, often because there’s no one else to take care of them – their husbands and families have been killed or are away fighting in the civil war. We see the rebel soldiers and the official government troops – each lot seems as bad as the other – and in between are the ordinary folk, mainly the women, who are simply trying to survive. I was very aware of the wasted lives and the senselessness of the cultural conditioning that rejects a woman after she’s been abducted and raped, because she would dishonour the family.

And all the performances were absolutely brilliant. Jenny Jules as Mama Nadi was central to the piece, and she carried it off superbly, with Lucian Msamati’s Christian close behind as the man who loves her and finally wins her. The music was great, and the costumes and set very colourful. If I could have connected with the characters more, I would have really enjoyed this. As it is, it was still a great performance, and I hope it gets the awards it deserves.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

King Lear – February 2010

5/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by David Farr

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Monday 22nd February 2010

This was only the fourth performance. I felt there was some good stuff, and some things that didn’t work so well. The biggest problem was blocking – Darrell d’Silva as Kent kept blocking our view through several scenes, and didn’t budge for up to five minutes! Also, I didn’t care for the flickering lights – if the acting can’t create the tension required, those lights ain’t gonna do it. And when there was a good atmosphere of suspense created, I found the lights distracted me.

The set design was a warehouse, much dilapidated and crumbling – very industrial grunge. A square plinth was raised or lowered in the middle of the stage as required. Assorted lights hung over the stage, from a chandelier to modern strip lights. There was also a bell in the far right corner with a rope that hung down to the stage. Furniture and other props were brought on as needed, and the setup and removal was pretty brisk.

They used Edwardian/first world war costumes and uniforms for the daughters’ side, with Lear and Cordelia in romantic medieval dress, and using swords. Contrasting the disillusionment of the ‘modern’ age with the romantic ideals of earlier times, perhaps? This production also used the technique of bringing the characters for the next scene on stage, having them speak the first few lines of that scene, then holding their position while the stage is cleared or reset. I only remember it being done a few times – will this change? Also, this production blended three scenes so that all three sisters are on stage at the same time – Goneril reading her letter from Edmund, Cordelia praying for her father, and Regan trying to tempt Goneril’s letter to Edmund out of Oswald’s keeping. Nice touch.

In terms of the staging itself, they had enough actors in the cast to provide Lear with a number of followers at the start, but I felt there wasn’t enough of a reaction from them when Goneril was telling her father off. The advantage of having large numbers to show how Lear’s followers leave him was negated by the deadening effect if we don’t see any reactions.

The storm scene used ‘real’ rain, falling on the raised plinth, with only Lear getting wet. Not much thunder, so the lines were easier to hear, but there was much less tension. The interval was taken after this, when Gloucester led Lear away to shelter.

When Lear has been brought to shelter, and has the trial of his daughters, Edmund had previously been left at the back, sitting in a chair at a desk, having just betrayed his father. As the next scene is set up, Goneril appears from behind the curtain and straddles Edmund. Didn’t see what else happened – too caught up in the scene in the foreground. After the trial, the Fool chooses not to go with Kent and Lear to Dover, and isn’t seen again, hanged or otherwise.

The battle sequence, with Gloucester still lying in a corner of the stage, was done by each side striding across a lit diagonal, followed by the sound effects of gunfire, etc. Then several bags deposited small piles of sand across the stage, although one bag kept going with a small dribble of sand through the rest of the scene – intentional or accident? Certainly distracting. [From understudies run, it was an accident – didn’t happen for that performance.]

Edmund has a pistol during the duel, but with a big two-handed sword to deal with, he doesn’t get a chance to draw it until later, when a watchful soldier disarms him. The duel was over quickly, a good choice, I think.

The performances: Kathryn Hunter was good as the fool. I don’t know if I’m just getting familiar with the lines or they were better delivered tonight, but I got more than usual from this part – probably a bit of both. Greg Hicks’ performance is good overall, but still a little patchy. Once or twice he reminded me of Lily Savage – not an image I usually associate with Lear. I think it was the large fur collar on his jacket that gave that impression. He was believable in the mad scenes, although he didn’t display as much emotion as some I’ve seen. Not sure what Lear was like before the play begins, how did he ever hold a kingdom together? This production may have suffered a bit from the discrepancy between the set and the costumes, especially in the first half – the performance didn’t seem to fit in that space. I felt it worked better in the second half, as the military uniforms blended in more.

Katy Stephens was good as Regan, and well matched by Kelly Hunter as Goneril. Both were predatory, and I got the feeling that their treatment of Lear wasn’t premeditated from the start, but when they confronted Lear together at Gloucester’s place they took the opportunity to tighten the noose. I’m not sure about the other performances yet, although James Tucker was good as Oswald, those lines that he was left with anyway.

The cuts we noticed – if it be lawful, I take up what’s cast down (one of my favourite bits!), Oswald’s lines asking Edmund to take the letter to Edgar, Lear’s lines at the end about Cordelia reviving.

Overall, I hope this improves, but I’m not banking on it.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Waiting For Godot – August 2009

5/10

By Samuel Beckett

Directed by Sean Matthias

Venue: Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Date: Saturday 1st August 2009

I’m so relieved to have finally seen this play. I’m not a fan of Beckett’s work – I think he’s hugely overrated – but I did want to see this one in case it changed my mind and awakened me to the riches others evidently see in his oeuvre. It didn’t. But now, bliss, oh bliss, I can ignore Beckett productions with a clear conscience, confident that there’s nothing for me there. (But then there’s Endgame, Richard Briers’ farewell to the stage…)

The set was interesting. The stage had been built out a little (row A was lost) and on either side at the front was an arched entrance topped by two dummy boxes, designed to echo the real boxes next to them. However the stage ones were dusty and dilapidated, and the narrow bit of roof that stretched between the sets of boxes was crumbling away. There was also a lighting gantry stretching across the space which emphasised the theatricality of the performance. The back wall was of brick, with a plank door to the left hand side. A short distance in front of it was a crumbling wall, and since Estragon climbed up that way to get onto the stage I assume there was a ditch in between them. The stage floor was mainly planks, painted dusty white, and with a steepish rake from the wall down to the middle. The rest was flat. There was a gap in the raked planks approximately in front of the rear door, and a makeshift bench forward of that. Right of centre, at the bottom of the rake, stood the tree – a scrawny trunk and several windblown branches, totally bare. The lighting suggested various times of day, including evening and night time; each half ended with the two leads in a contracting circle of moonlight.

If there is a plot to this play, I, along with the rest of the universe, have yet to discover it. Two tramps, Vladimir (Patrick Stewart) and Estragon (Ian McKellen) spend two evenings waiting by a tree for a chap called Godot. If he comes, they’re saved. If not, they have to come back again and wait the next evening. There’s a sense of endless repetition, coupled with forgetfulness and uncertainty – was it yesterday they met Pozzo and Lucky, or is this the first time they’ve seen them? (And, frankly, who cares?)

Pozzo (Simon Callow) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup) are master and slave. On day one, we see Pozzo treating Lucky badly, as well as being ‘treated’ to a very long speech by Lucky which appeared to contain some garbled dialogue concerning the nature of existence. Possibly. (I found it pretty boring.) On day two, Pozzo has gone blind, and when he and Lucky arrive they fall over, leading to a surfeit of falling over gags. On both days, after they leave, a young boy clambers out from underneath the wall to give the tramps a message from Mr. Godot – he won’t be coming tonight, they have to wait again tomorrow evening. And that’s basically it. Nothing to get excited about or even stay awake for. There was a surprising and entirely necessary amount of humour throughout, mainly during the banter between the two old men. They were a regular old couple, been together for years. And that’s about all I can say about them.

Apart from the funny bits, I found it terribly dreary and I had to stop myself from checking my watch too often. Still, the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it and I did like the entertaining way they took their bows, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen acting like a couple of song and dance men. Even so, it was good to be outside in the rain and heading home.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Oklahoma! – June 2009

5/10

By Rodgers and Hammerstein

Directed by John Doyle

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Monday 22nd June 2009

Musicals aren’t Steve’s and my favourite type of entertainment, and while this performance was enjoyable it didn’t change our minds on the genre as a whole, although we would be happy to see another production of Oklahoma! in the future. The set was as minimalist as one could possibly get; just two grimy sheets slung across the stage at angles to suggest a wide open sky and a floorboard mound to suggest a field of wheat and the like. The director is well known for his economic use of resources in the Watermill Theatre (we hope to attend that one soon) and old habits evidently die hard.

The staging was similarly pretty sparse, and from reviews I’ve read the costumes were positively niggardly, with only one outfit per cast member (Ado Annie excepted, if I remember right). I thought the singing was great, and I especially loved Ado Annie (Natalie Cassidy) and her various partners in dialogue or song. Natalie Cassidy has such an expressive face, and she brought out the character and the humour really well.

From the post-show discussion, it was clear that the director had decided to bring out the darker side of this piece, and while that can make for an interesting evening it isn’t always appropriate. With this musical, I think the darker side is so under-written that it seems silly to emphasise it so much instead of giving the punters a rollicking good evening’s entertainment, but that’s just me. At least Steve and I had nothing to compare the production with, unlike many in the audience who could remember the original West End production, never mind the one at the National several years ago. Generally speaking, those who’d seen a more upbeat, lavish production found this one dismal and disappointing, while those of us who came to it relatively fresh (we had at least seen bits of the movie) found it more enjoyable.

On the whole, I felt the characters were pretty uninteresting, apart from Ado Annie and Ali Hakim (Michael Matus) the Persian pedlar who occasionally took off his makeup and spoke in a regular American accent. I felt he was worth more attention, compared to the bog standard Oklahomans. Aunt Eller in particular seemed to be on stage a lot but spoke and did very little, despite being a main character apparently. Ah well, better luck next year.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Alphabetical Order – May 2009

5/10

By Michael Frayn

Directed by Christopher Luscombe

Venue: Hampstead Theatre

Date: Saturday 16th May 2009

A is for Actors. This was a decent bunch.

B is for….  Bugger, I hate these alphabetical lists. (And I even had a ready-made entry for W. Witches. How often does that happen?)

This was our first visit to the Hampstead Theatre. I’d seen it under construction for a number of years when visiting a friend in the area, but it’s taken a long time for us to take that final step and actually come here to see a play. I like the look of the place, the ladies’ loos are fine, there’s lemon sorbet on offer at the interval, and the auditorium feels snug and intimate. We joined the Friends scheme on the spot. The only down side to today’s trip was that our seats were right at the back in the mezzanine, row M, and I felt I was missing a lot through being so far from the stage, but we’ll know better when we book next time. And we also managed to make our first visit on the very Saturday the Jubilee line was completely closed!

The play itself is obviously dated, although it took a while for me to suss out the period. Given that it’s set in a local newspaper cuttings library, there would have been plenty of scope for the dialogue to have firmed this up, but it wasn’t to be. Likewise, in the second half, I wasn’t aware of how much time had passed since the first. Not essential, I know, but I felt the overall vagueness as to time had leaked into the production as well, making it less funny than it could have been. I had the feeling that I’d come in part way through, as there was a good deal of laughter in the early stages for no reason I could see. Perhaps I missed a reaction, or just didn’t get the joke. I then found I was laughing at some things pretty much on my own, so the audience was definitely not as one in the early stages.

The set was also pretty dominant, which may have affected my experience. The characters seemed quite small and mostly static against a set of bright blue (verging on turquoise) filing cabinets and cupboards, there were a couple of desks, a lift door with wrap-around stairs, various office accoutrements (kettle, coat stand, etc.) and a mass of papers and folders everywhere. The mess was transformed during the interval to leave the place spick and span. Food could have been eaten off the floor, had one so wished, and assuming Lesley (the tidy one) wasn’t there to stop it. In trays were clearly marked, removed folders had to be signed for, all trace of comfortable nooks and crannies for errant journalists to lurk in had been scrupulously removed, and only Lucy’s desk, now separated, even distanced from Lesley’s and with a marvellous view of a wall, retained that air of total disarray so familiar from the first half. It didn’t stay that way for long.

The first half shows us Lesley’s first hour in her new job as assistant to Lucy, the newspaper’s librarian. Lucy’s the scatty sort, arriving late because she spent half an hour trying to decide whether to buy a fur coat in a charity shop for five pounds. She did buy it, and then spends several minutes in the office trying to decide if it’s really her. Being nice to everyone and finding information in the mess that constitutes her filing system are her two main talents, so it’s no surprise when she invites Arnold, one of the journalists, round for supper. He’s an older bloke whose wife has gone into hospital, leaving him without protection from Nora, the features editor and a predatory widow who’s desperate for company. There’s a garrulous messenger called Geoffrey, the leader writer John, who has been in an on-off relationship with Lucy, and Wally, another journalist or editor who livens the place up by constantly pretending to be about to run off with Lucy.

All of the existing group get on reasonably well, allowing for the usual amount of bitching behind each others’ backs. Lesley on the other hand is the compulsive type, who doesn’t find the current employees as charming or as entertaining as they find themselves. Without staging an actual coup she still manages to take over the library, hence the massive change in the interval. Both Steve and I noticed some signs on the filing cabinets and cupboards in the second half, but we weren’t close enough to read them (no doubt they were instructions from Lesley).

This time it’s John and Lesley who are having the relationship. She wants to buy a house, he’s showing all the usual signs of dithering. Lucy is still there, and nominally in charge, but she’s clearly finding it hard to keep going. Eventually, the news comes that the paper is to close, and with Lesley not in the room, the rest of the cast indulge in a frenzy of clippings tossing. In no time at all, the floor is awash with news cuttings and I could really relate to the fun they were all having.

Then Lesley arrives, and handles the situation remarkably well, I thought. She did point out that there was a meeting to try and keep the paper going by means of a staff buy out, so in fact the cuttings will be needed again. The play finishes with Lucy starting to get the bits of paper back into order while the others have headed off to the meeting, a slightly down beat ending.

I would say this isn’t Michael Frayn’s best work, possibly because of his background in journalism, working for the Manchester Guardian and then the Observer for a number of years. He may have liked and appreciated the characters and story, but that doesn’t necessarily translate well to the stage. I have no complaints about the acting – Penelope Beaumont was a late substitution for Annette Badland, and did a fine job – but the piece was just too slight to really engage me. Even allowing for the way we were affected by our distance from the stage, I wouldn’t consider this one worth seeing again.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Tragedy Of Thomas Hobbes – December 2008

5/10

By Adriano Shaplin

Directed by Elizabeth Freestone

Company: RSC

Venue: Wilton’s Music Hall

Date: Saturday 6th December 2008

Wilton’s Music Hall currently has the decorators in, so it looks worse than any other temporary home the RSC has used in London to my knowledge. The toilets were OK, though strapped for space, but everything else could do with improvement. I wasn’t impressed with the acoustics, the chairs were comfortable enough (given the state of many West End theatres, they were above average) but space was at a premium in every direction. We arrived later than we would have liked so had to sit in the balcony, and my neck is just about de-cricked from the excessive twisting it had to do. The ice creams in the interval were below average, and I won’t even go into the horrendous crowd that was the bar area.

So with all this affecting my sensitive nature, it’s no surprise it took me a wee while to get involved in today’s performance. Also, not being able to see some of the action was a drawback, though not so serious as not being able to make out the dialogue clearly. Hence the comment about the acoustics. The volume was fine, but I just couldn’t make out enough of the words to follow the early stages. However, things improved, especially when there weren’t half-a-dozen people talking at the same time on stage, and I started to get what was going on about the time that Robert Boyle (I thought it was Foyle from the way they said it) took Rotten into his service and they attended a demonstration of an experiment (sadly, the dog died).

Basically this play, commissioned by MIT, is about the beginnings of full-blooded scientific research practices, and the tussle between the experimental scientists and the natural philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes. The arguments didn’t always come across clearly, but I gather that Hobbes (he wrote Leviathan, don’t ask me what it was about) was in favour of rational thinking and testing of hypotheses, but stopped short of actually getting his hands dirty by testing said hypotheses against physical reality. The new boys on the block, including Boyle, Robert Hooke, some others less well known, and eventually Isaac Newton, wanted to go all out with repeatable experiments that would verify or refute theories.  And all of this was played out against the backdrop of the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. It’s a busy period, and with so much to be crammed into just under three hours, there wasn’t much opportunity for a nap, thank goodness.

The play makes good use of self-deprecating and self-referencing humour. At the start of the second half, Rotten and Black, former actors currently resting due to the interregnum, are seen rehearsing a piece by Hobbes, which is intended to counter the arguments of his opposition. Rotten and Black make some entertaining comments about how they can change the piece to make it more acceptable to the audience, and suggest Hobbes play himself, but in disguise.  When they interrupt a demonstration by the newly formed Royal Society, they’re dismayed to find the king is present, so they don’t get to finish their piece. A shame, as Angus Wright looked particularly fetching in a large bush of pubic hair and not much else. The play itself finishes with an extract from another play, The Virtuoso by Thomas Shadwell, which poked fun at the new scientists and especially Robert Hooke. Hooke was now under threat from the up and coming Newton, and found himself in a similar position to Hobbes, with his views being derided and fresh approaches being put forward.

It may be that that was what was intended by the title of this piece; that the tragedy wasn’t just that of Hobbes, but the tragedy of any scientist who failed to keep up-to-date with his thinking. Other than that, I can’t for the life of me see why the title was chosen, as Thomas Hobbes himself is around far less than Boyle, and isn’t a particularly appealing character in any case. It’s still a good play, and I’d like a chance to see it in better circumstances than today’s.

The set was about as rickety-looking as the theatre itself, though with health and safety rampant, I suspect the scaffolding and ladders were actually more robust than the building they were in. Actors accessed all levels – we had them pounding the floorboards behind us a few times, which could be distracting, if only because it let us know the scene was coming to an end – and even came up through a trapdoor, as well as using the space in front of the stage, the sides of the auditorium, etc. About the only thing they didn’t do was swing from the ceiling, but if Michael Boyd had his way….

The performances were all very good, and possibly excellent, given our unfortunate location. I especially liked Arsher Ali, first as John  Lilburne, giving us his “what about the workers” diatribe, and then as Charles II, exiled to France and then resplendent as the restored king. He had a soft spot for Hobbes, his old tutor, but not soft enough to overlook his misbehaviour, nor to ignore that he had fallen behind the times. Stephen Boxer as Hobbes also gave us a good performance, though as I’ve said, there didn’t seem to be enough of it. Robert Boyle was played by Amanda Hadingue, the only woman in the cast, which did rather emphasise the lack of female roles in this play, while Jack Laskey was excellent as Robert Hooke, growing from young enthusiastic scientist from a poor background to self-important self-appointed leader of the scientific establishment, finally ousted by the likes of Isaac Newton. We were also treated to two old men, called Statler and Waldorf, à la The Muppets, who commented on the developments on stage, and even joined in a bit. Overall, it was an interesting play, and deserves better than a short run in this small, out-of-the-way theatre, I hope it gets it.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Holly And The Ivy – November 2008

5/10

By Wynyard Browne

Directed by Michael Lunney

Company: Middle Ground

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 21st November 2011

This was a revival of an earlier Middle Ground touring production which we’d seen at the Connaught several years ago. We’d enjoyed the previous performance well enough, and tonight was a similar story.

The set was as before. A large sitting room with a sofa and chairs, a window at the back showing us the local church, doors off back right (vicar’s study), back left (kitchen and dining room), and an entrance lobby front left, with access to the stairs. The time is 1947, Christmas Eve, so there’s a Christmas tree and some decorations.

When the play starts, Jenny is finishing the decorating, but is interrupted by her friend, David, and her father the vicar, who needs to get to a school for some pre-Christmas event. From these conversations we learn that a group of people are expected for Christmas, including a couple of aunts. David wants Jenny to come away with him when he leaves for South America at the end of January, but she feels she can’t leave her father. There’s another sister, Margaret, who could come home and look after him, but it seems to be generally accepted in the family that that’s not going to happen. Jenny’s brother Michael arrives unexpectedly – he’s doing his National Service and managed to wangle some leave by making out it could be his last Christmas with his father – and he helps David to decorate the room while Jenny gets on with the dinner.     Then the aunts arrive, and they’re well worth the price of admission. Aunt Bridget is Irish, the vicar’s sister, I assume, as he’s also Irish, and she’s as outspoken as you could wish for. Aunt Lydia was presumably married to Bridget’s other brother, long since dead, but she’s still part of the family. Both women have all the instincts of the most intuitive vulture, and they soon figure out that David has sort of proposed to Jenny. So their next task is to arrange for a happy ending by getting Margaret to take over the job of caring for her father so that Jenny can get away with her young man. Aside from all this, aunt Lydia has a nice line in offering to help, but sinking happily back into the sofa when the offer is turned down, while Bridget insists on sitting in her preferred spot on the sofa, and she only has to stand and look, for others to realise their mistake and move. They were very good fun.

A chap called Richard turned up – Margaret’s godfather, otherwise not sure what his connection with the family was – but he hadn’t brought Margaret with him from London. She had the flu and couldn’t come. Nevertheless she turns up shortly afterwards, and appears to be the career woman type; smart suit, acts superior, and appears rather unemotional. During a chat with her sister, which starts out as a confrontation and ends up as a heart-to-heart, she confesses that she’d had a child by an American soldier she’d fallen in love with during the war. The soldier died, and after a few years the child also died, of meningitis. As she was an unmarried mother, she felt she couldn’t tell their father, and so she rarely came to visit. Her problem now is that she can’t face the prospect of coming back to stay with her father and living a lie for the rest of her life.

After dinner, Margaret and Michael head off for the cinema, while the others sit around and ‘chat’. Lydia and Bridget have decided that for Jenny to find happiness, the vicar will have to retire. He’s not keen on that idea, so they have to tell him about Jenny’s situation. To add to his troubles, Michael and Margaret come home well sozzled; she faints and is taken up to bed. Michael tries to cover it up, but it’s no good. He makes some comment about nobody being able to tell the vicar anything, and also heads for bed.

The next day, Christmas, brings more revelations. The vicar persuades Michael to reveal all he knows (Margaret spilled the beans to him the night before in the pub), and so the scene is set for the final showdown between father and daughter. It goes quite well, remarkably. Since he already knows the story, it’s more a case of sorting out their relationship. It’s clear that personal relationships have never been his strong suit, and he’s aware that his parishioners don’t get as much pastoral care from him as he feels he should have been giving. With Margaret on the point of leaving (they had trains on Christmas day back then!), he finally manages to connect with her, and for the first time in their lives, they actually talk to each other like normal human beings. This changes her attitude so much that she’s quite happy to stay now and take care of the old man, and when David turns up to get Jenny’s final answer, she can give him the ‘yes’ they both wanted.

It’s an interesting play, though not the best written. The dialogue is stilted at times, and the structure feels unbalanced; we get to know Jenny so much more than Margaret, yet Margaret and her experiences are really the key to the whole piece. The vicar’s attitudes are also very important, but again I don’t feel they come across strongly enough for the final confrontation to be as moving as it could have been. I was very moved to realise that this man has only just found out that he had a grandchild and lost it as well, but this was only a passing thought, when it could have been more prominent. The play is still enjoyable, but not as strong as some.

In terms of the performances, the aunts and cousin Richard (now I’ve checked the program I know how he fits in) were the strongest and most entertaining. The others were mostly fine, but Philip Madoc, fine actor though he is, didn’t seem able to get the lines across clearly in the Irish accent he was putting on. Not that there was anything wrong with his accent as such, though at times I sensed the lilting Welsh straining to burst through, but his delivery was so abrupt that I couldn’t distinguish the words. When he spoke more slowly, as he did after the final scene with Margaret, it was fine. It’s always a shame to lose so much dialogue, and I would like to see this play sometime with the father’s part more strongly cast, though as it’s not the greatest play I’m not sure who would put that on. So on the whole I enjoyed the evening, our last but one up at Guildford this year.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Waste – October 2008

5/10

By Harley Granville Barker

Directed by Sam West

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 25th October 2008

This was a bit of a waste, as it turned out. The talent was there, but the style of the piece just didn’t allow me to enjoy it as much as I had before, although the similarities with current events were abundantly clear.

To begin with, I forgot to get the remote for my hearing aids out, and so I missed some of the early dialogue which was just too quiet for me to catch. Having said that, even with my aids on full volume I still missed some of the later dialogue, either because the lines weren’t said clearly enough – the intonation or diction were a little sloppy – or because the set design meant that characters were addressing the far wall in order to speak to other characters, and didn’t project enough to fill even that small space. The amount of coughing was also a problem, and several lines were lost under that fusillade.

Even so I heard enough to get the gist of the story, though I didn’t remember the details from the earlier production we saw at the RSC. The opening scenes of each half were by far the best for us, especially the start of the second half, when the politicians gather to protect one of their own. The story concerns an independent MP, Henry Trebell, who has an affair with the wife of an Irish Catholic. When she gets pregnant by him, she decides to have an abortion, and that operation goes tragically wrong, resulting in her death. If the affair becomes public during the inquest, the bill which Trebell has been drafted into the Cabinet to spearhead, will fail. This bill is to disestablish the Church of England, and remove its connection to and influence on the British Parliament. So, lots of contentious issues there, and the play is even stronger because Trebell decides to kill himself once he loses his government appointment. The bill was his real baby; he comes across as a cold and pretty heartless person apart from his love of change, and especially change in this area. It’s not too surprising that the Lord Chamberlain refused to allow the original version onto the stage, and even this revised version had a long wait to appear in public.

The performances were mostly very good, clarity of speech aside, and my only real problem was in the portrayal of the two lovers. Trebell was too cold to be entirely believable as a man with carnal passions, and Amy O’Connell, the supposed lover, was a strange character, strong then weak, cynical then neurotic, so I could never make up my mind what was going on with her. With this weakness at the heart of the play, or rather this lack of a heart to the play, I found only the scenes with the politicians were really interesting, and the rest were tolerable. Hugh Ross as Cyril Horsham, the newly-elected Prime Minister, was excellent, as were all of his Cabinet, and I enjoyed Bruce Alexander as Gilbert Wedgecroft, a doctor who was closely connected to all these powerful people, and who could give us information on the abortion front, not that the word itself was bandied around much.

Finally, the set was an interesting design. There were three locations, and the design allowed for all of them. The opening scene was in a v-shaped drawing-room, with a door to our left, a corner of the room going back to some French windows, and a bookcase to our right. There was a piano and various chairs and sofas. With very little work, the central part of the set was rotated, and the “v” of the corner became another corner pointing outwards, making an “L” shaped office space. The door became a bookcase, the bookcase became a door, there was a desk and chairs, and voila, we are in Trebell’s office. The politicians gathered in a reprise of the first room, though now done up as a library, and then it’s back to the office for the final scenes. Very economical and effective.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me