Category Archives: 6/10

She Loves Me – June 2011

6/10

Book by Joe Masteroff, Music by Jerry Bock, Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Directed by: Stephen Mear

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Thursday 16th June 2011

This was an excellent production of an above average musical. As we’re not great fans of musicals, I haven’t rated it that highly, but I don’t want to imply any lack of professionalism or talent on the part of the performers – they were all top-notch, and managed some amazing dance routines on a very cramped stage. The singing was excellent too, and other audience members were clearly enjoying themselves enormously; at the post show, several had seen the show at least once before.

The story is the familiar one of two people who think they don’t like each other gradually realising they’re in love and getting together. It’s done via letter-writing through a dating service, so although they work together every day, they don’t know who they’re writing to until an arranged meeting which leaves one of them still in the dark. Around all this is wrapped the story of a shop which sells all sorts of potions and creams to beautify women, and the characters who staff this shop. There’s some good songs, including one which uses Ravel’s Bolero as part of the tune, and a fair bit of comedy, although I found I didn’t laugh as much as the person behind me, who clearly loved the show.

Set: circular tiled pattern on floor, echoed by circular curved wheel structure above with globe lamps. The backdrop of a street perspective is screened by another curve, this time windows with a central door. The windows also have elaborate curved patterns on them, with bird images and coloured bottles on shelves creating a stained glass effect. The words above the shop door were “Maraczek, Parfumier”. The shop front was on a revolve, and there was another counter-revolve outside that, so the location could be changed pretty quickly, but from the post-show I gathered the cast needed a lot of practice to be able to walk on them. Most of the action takes place inside the shop, but we also visit a hospital room and Amalia Balash’s flat. The band was split between left and right balconies. The setting is an American version of a European city in the 1930s. The accents used were mostly American, as this fitted better with the dialogue, although the names were middle European and the prices shown were good old LSD! Such is the magic of theatre that we didn’t particularly mind.

I particularly liked Annette McLaughlin as Ilona Ritter, the good-time girl shop assistant who finds one man who’s disgracefully unfaithful and another who’s more the marrying kind, and Steve Elias as Ladislav Sipos, the only married shop assistant who has some of the best lines. His comment about the anonymous letter – next time, I’ll name names! – was really funny. But there were many good performances, though sadly, no more chances to see them as no transfer has been arranged. Shame. This was a good start to the season at the Minerva though, so if the rest are up to this standard we’re in for an excellent summer.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The City Madam – June 2011

6/10

By: Philip Massinger

Directed by: Dominic Hill

Company: RSC

Venue: Swan Theatre

Date: Friday 10th June 2011

This play was written in the post-Shakespeare period and before the Civil War. While I could see elements of later Restoration comedy, we both spotted lots of ‘echoes’ of other stories, especially from Will’s work – the masque from The Tempest, the hidden authority figure watching a deputy’s behaviour from Measure For Measure, the statues coming to life from The Winter’s Tale, etc. etc. It’s a good job there were some familiar things in the play; for the most part, I found the first half difficult to follow, not helped by our long trip beforehand admittedly, but the sheer number of characters and the unfamiliar language didn’t help either.

The set was very simple. Two double doors centre back, flanked by two upright wooden chairs. That’s it, although there was a big painting across this back wall showing a young man kneeling at the feet of an older man, with another young man looking on. I took this to be the story of the prodigal son, although it wasn’t entirely clear how this fitted in with the play. Perhaps the program notes will help. Anyway, the chairs were painted to blend in with this painting, so it was hard to make them out. Other furnishings were added as needed – a table, cushions, etc. – and chandeliers dropped down from above.

There were puppets, too. For the masque, Orpheus and Eurydice, there were puppets for Orpheus, Eurydice, Cerberus and the hands that dragged Eurydice back to Hades, as well as three human singers and a bunch of musicians. The masque was very well done, and there were additional magic tricks, Prospero-like, carried out by the chief American Indian, including a burning book.

The plot was fairly straightforward. Sir John Frugal has a wife, two daughters, an ex-con brother and a vast business empire. He’s ruthless in his business dealings, but apparently unable to rein in the frivolous excesses of his wife and daughters, who spend their time, and his money, on increasingly lavish outfits and plans for the daughters to wed into the nobility. Sir John’s brother, Luke, is treated badly by these women, and appears to be a changed man. No more materialistic concerns for him. He revels in the new-found simplicity of his life, or so it seems.

A friend of his, Lord Lacy, believes that Luke is truly repentant, and tries to persuade Sir John to treat him better. Sir John believes he hasn’t changed a bit, and that if he were given half a chance, he’d be just as bad as before. I wasn’t clear about this plotting at the time, but I soon grasped what was going on when Lord Lacy announces to Sir John’s family that he, Sir John, has gone to a monastery and left all his worldly possessions in the control of Luke, in the expectation that he will take care of his sister and nieces and deal kindly with Sir John’s various, and many, debtors. With so much wealth suddenly thrust upon him, Luke has the chance to show his wisdom and humility and stun us all.

Don’t hold your breath. With the key to the Frugal treasury clutched firmly to his bosom, Luke is set to become the world’s most rapacious usurer – cold, merciless, avaricious. He starts to call in all the debts, but first he sets the people up for a bigger fall, encouraging them in their profligacy before setting the bailiffs on them.

Lord Lacy brings along three men from the newly established American colonies, who wish to be converted to Christianity. Their chief is clearly Sir John himself, while the other two are his daughters’ suitors, who wouldn’t accept the life of total slavery the women tried to impose on them as a condition of their marriage. These three work on Luke’s greed, and finally persuade him to hand over Lady Frugal and her two daughters, now in plainer clothes, in return for riches beyond his wildest dreams.

Having sent all his debtors to prison, Luke takes the time to threaten Lord Lacy with the loss of the lands which carry his title, before settling down to enjoy a birthday banquet and some entertainment which the Indian chief has laid on for him. The masque comes first, of course, but then all the arrested folk are led on in chains, to see if Luke will feel pity for them. No chance. So then the daughters come on with their mother, to say goodbye to their former suitors, now supposed dead, by speaking to their statues. None of this moves Luke at all. So at last the chief uses his magic to bring the statues to life (Winter’s Tale and Don Juan!), and the final revelations can take place, with Luke being stripped (literally) of his position, and sent out to fend for himself.

The story wasn’t complicated as such; the difficulty lay in the vast number of characters, and the fact that the doubling wasn’t always clear. We did spot the Indian disguises OK, but there were one or two other situations where we weren’t sure if the actors were playing the same characters in different clothes, or different characters. I accept that Massinger was attempting to show how widespread the decadence and corruption went, but I still feel there’s scope for some serious editing to bring the play into sharper focus.

There were many nice touches in this production which suggest it would be well worth seeing again. I liked the way the suitors staggered about a bit after being the statues – I’ve done life modelling, and I know how hard it is to stay still for that long. Unfortunately, the blocking really was blocking tonight, and our view was obstructed many times, which certainly didn’t help. We’ve booked seats in a different part of the auditorium next time, so that should be better. Also, the language isn’t as easy to follow as Will’s, probably because we don’t hear these plays as often as the Shakespearean cannon, and with the plot being unfamiliar, I just couldn’t follow it as well as I would have liked. Second time around should be better.

All the performances seemed very good (those I could see, anyway). I particularly liked Sara Crowe as Lady Frugal – her face had some wonderful expressions flitting across it – and Jo Stone-Fewings as Luke. His transformation from puritan to rampant miser was beautifully done, and for all his unpleasant behaviour, he also provided much of the humour.

Finally, it’s remarkable how modern some of the play’s points are, with so many people running up debts and not being able to pay them back. I could see the National doing another modern dress version of this one, like The Man Of Mode and The Revenger’s Tragedy, as it would fit right in to that style of production.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Three Farces – June 2011

7/10

By: John Maddison Morton

Edited by: Colin Chambers

Directed by: Henry Bell

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 2nd June 2011

To create a suitable atmosphere for these three Victorian farces, we were treated to Mr Daniel Cheyne acting as Master of Ceremonies, resplendent in a fine purple frock coat, and carrying a small guitar (or large ukulele) with which he accompanied himself during the performance. He chatted with various audience members as we foregathered in the auditorium, and when proceedings were about to get underway, he introduced the cast to us, using the formal designations of the Victorian era. Each actor, as they were introduced, appeared in the far corner, glided across towards us, and exited gracefully through the nearer doorway, all to warm applause. The only exception was Mr Edward Bennett, who remained in the far doorway, and simply closed the doors to effect his exit. Mr Daniel Cheyne then sang a little song which recounted the story of the play we were about to see, to the tune of When I’m Cleaning Windows, if I remember correctly. Similar songs were sung before the other two plays as well. He also filled in as a messenger in the first play, and was fairly reliable at providing ‘noises off’.

Smasher & Crasher

7/10

Set: there was a piano between seats which in our row were split in the middle, a partially filled bookcase in the entrance to the left of that. Next came a sofa, and there were two chairs and a couple of side tables around the place, with double doors to my right and in the opposite entrance. Beside each pair of doors was a pair of cupboard doors – this time the cupboard on my right, which was reasonably spacious, led to the preserve store.

Two men, Slasher and Crasher, are to be married to Mr Blowhard’s niece and sister, and the play is almost over before it’s begun. But a letter arrives exposing both men as cowards, and the marriages are off. An ex-military man, Blowhard can’t stand the idea of his family money being passed on to the lily-livered, so he sends both men packing. Crasher conceives the idea of a fake fight between them, to convince Blowhard that they’re made of the right stuff, but things become a little more heated when Crasher lets slip that he was the one who knocked Smasher’s hat off at the races the day before – it was swallowing this insult that got Smasher in trouble with Blowhard in the first place. Their duel becomes more vigorous than planned, and a good deal of Blowhard’s property is damaged, including a cow (off stage) and the sofa (onstage). All is happily resolved, however, and the end of the play is a reprise of the start, this time with applause from us.

A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion

6/10

The demolished sofa was removed and a desk and larger round table added, along with a pot plant stand, comfy chair, and a portrait of Mr Snoozle on an easel. The tables have some food on them, and also a goldfish bowl with two rather static goldfish. There’s another, smaller, portrait on the desk, of a grim-looking older lady, looking a bit like Whistler’s Mother.

It’s a simple plot. Mr Snoozle has the house to himself – wife, daughter and niece are all out for the day and the servants have all been dismissed. He’s looking forward to a day of total peace and quiet, but finds he has to stop a young man from drowning himself in the fish pond, and said young man proceeds to make himself at home in a very intrusive way. We’ve already heard about a Mr John Johnson Junior, who wants to marry Snoozle’s daughter; Snoozle has turned him down and not replied to his subsequent letters. We weren’t fooled for a minute – this young man was the daughter’s suitor, and he made himself increasingly impossible to deal with until Snoozle finally threatens him with this Mr John Johnson Junior. He even writes a letter to Mr John Johnson Junior to say that Mr John Johnson Junior can marry his daughter, and have five, no, ten thousand pounds into the bargain. At this point, the young man reveals his identity, takes the cheque, and…… The script peters out, so the actors have to improvise the final appeal to the audience. They did this very well, and again we applauded them mightily.

Grimshaw, Bagshaw & Bradshaw 

7/10

Out went everything except the desk and comfy chair, while the piano was covered up. We’re now in a bedroom, with a single bed to our left, leading away from the piano and with a semi-circle of rug at its foot, a chest of drawers and plain chair middle of the next side, desk and plain chair middle of the opposite side, with a fire grate towards the corner entrance, and the comfy chair and side table in the middle of the side to our right.

This is Grimshaw’s room. He’s a shop assistant, on his feet all day and just getting ready for bed at 9 pm when there’s a knock at his door. Who can it be? The new arrival is Fanny, a lady whom Grimshaw met recently, and who has lodgings across the street. He offered to share his umbrella with her when it was raining, she took the whole thing, and now he’s smitten. She asks him to let her stay in his room till morning. He’s thrilled, of course, because he naturally thinks she wants him to be there as well. When she tells him to go, he’s more than a little put out, and despite being an agreeable sort of chap, he does at least put his foot down a bit. She soon prises it up again, though, and sends him packing.

Her need for the room is soon explained. There’s a sliding door in the cupboard on our right that allows Emily to slip through from the next room. She’s hiding from her uncle Towzer, who’s some kind of bailiff, because she wants to marry Bradshaw and her uncle won’t allow it – he wants to keep £300 that’s supposed to be hers when she marries. Bradshaw has taken lodgings a few streets away, but Towzer seems to be keeping an eye on Emily’s room, so Fanny has devised this scheme to help her sneak out without her uncle seeing her. (Don’t ask me how Fanny and Emily met. They skated over it pretty fast, and it was clearly one of those unlikely coincidences so necessary for plot development in farces.)

Meanwhile, Bagshaw emerges through the communicating door on the other side; the door had been nailed up, but clearly the Victorians liked their comedy to be destructive, and Bagshaw soon kicked it open. He’s a young man with a taste for cheap cigars and fine clothes, but an aversion to paying his tailor’s bill. For this reason he too is avoiding Towzer, who has been chasing him for several weeks to get said tailor’s bill paid. Add in a returning Grimshaw, determined to find out Fanny’s secret, and copious use of the communicating doors, and there’s a fair bit of fun to be had, with all ending happily yet again, apart from Grimshaw not getting any Fanny, that is.

With all three plays complete, it’s time for a final song from the assembled company, much applause from us, and finish. Except for the post-show discussion, of course. There was a great deal of interesting information about the writer and Victorian theatre in general from the Sam Walters, Henry Bell and Colin Chambers, but the most interesting thing for me was that so many of us had found the humour not only funny, but very modern. Monty Python and the Goons were mentioned, amongst others, and I was reminded of the word-play of the Two Ronnies sketches, especially with the names of the characters. It was good to see how the Victorians liked their humour – Morton was a very popular writer in his day – as it shows a different side to their character, and reminds us that we’re not so different after all.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Cause Célèbre – June 2011

6/10

By: Terence Rattigan

Directed by: Thea Sharrock

Venue: Old Vic Theatre

Date Wednesday 1st June 2011

I must make it clear from the outset that this production is considerably better than my experience rating above suggests. We had to rebook for this one due to ill-health the week of our original tickets, so for once we were back in row R, level with the start of the circle, and much further back than our usual E or F. As a result, I had difficulty hearing much of the dialogue, and a wonky headset didn’t improve matters in the second half. Also, I’d forgotten how much visual detail is lost from that distance, and I find it hard to describe the performances at all, it was such a blur. Even so, I got the gist of the story, or rather stories, as there were two central female characters juxtaposed in this piece; one, Alma Rattenbury, a real-life figure who stood trial for the murder of her husband, and the other, Edith Davenport, a fictitious woman who in the course of the play divorces her husband, loses her son, and, possibly the hardest one of all, loses her black and white judgemental certainty about life. The trial sections were easier to hear, as barristers need a powerful delivery and good diction, and as the bulk of these scenes were in the second half I found I enjoyed myself a lot more after the interval. I still missed some of the humour; the rest of audience was having a better time than me, judging by the amount of laughter I heard.

The set was quite complicated. It had to be, because the action moved around a lot, giving us flashbacks to the night of the murder as well as alternating between the courtroom and people’s homes. There were chairs and tables, a drinks cabinet, a gramophone, stairs and walls, and a judge’s bench for the court scenes. An upper level was used for a scene in the prison, but mostly the different locations were indicated by lighting different parts of the stage. This did allow for quick changes of scene, but I found the overall effect a bit stark, with high, open spaces dwarfing the small figures.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the structure of the play itself. It seemed bitty in the beginning, starting with the swearing in of Edith, then jumping between the two women’s lives to show the events prior to the murder. The contrast between the two leads didn’t really get going until Edith’s surprise assertion that she couldn’t be on this particular jury because she was prejudiced against Alma, and so wouldn’t be able to give her a fair trial – perhaps if this was done right at the start, it might create greater tension throughout the play. As it is, that part happens at the start of the second half, and left me a little confused. Was that bit before the swearing in? Or had the swearing in already happened, and now Edith was trying to get out of her civic duty? Anyway, the trial scenes in the second half gave the play a better structure, and were more entertaining on the whole. We did get flashbacks to the events of the murder, which were acted out in front with the court behind in darkness, and these made it very clear that Alma hadn’t been involved in the murder at all, but that her behaviour in general had influenced the police to view her as guilty. With the jury advised by the judge, and defence counsel for Alma, that they were only trying her for murder, and not for loose living, there was only one verdict they could return. As we didn’t know the result beforehand, I was still tense as we waited for the decision, so it was a relief that she got off. Even so, it didn’t surprise me that she took her own life shortly afterwards – she didn’t seem the most stable of people to begin with, and despite her feelings for her son, she evidently felt suicide was the only way out.

The performances were at least fine, and several were much better than that. Nicholas Jones was perfect as Alma’s defence counsel, and with his stronger delivery I caught almost all of his funny lines; he had plenty of them as well. I liked Lucy Robinson as Stella Morrison, Edith’s sister. She had a more relaxed view of some things than Edith, who was totally uptight, although Stella was an out-and-out snob. The worst thing about the Rattenbury murder for her was that Alma was involved with a servant! She placed a bet on the outcome of the trial, £600 at 3/1 on Alma being found guilty, based on the disparaging way Edith refers to Alma after day one of the trial. No wonder she was unhappy when Alma’s acquitted.

Niamh Cusack and Anne-Marie Duff came across well as the contrasting leads, even though I didn’t hear all of their lines, and I’m hoping that I get to see and hear this play properly sometime in the future.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Verdict – May 2011

6/10

By: Agatha Christie

Directed by: Joe Harmston

Company: The Agatha Christie Theatre Company

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday, 30th May 2011

This was a perfectly reasonable touring production; nothing spectacular, but decent performances all round. I’m an Agatha Christie fan myself, and although I recognize that she’s not the greatest writer, I do think she’s better than her critics admit. That said, there were one or two areas which I felt didn’t work so well tonight, and I’ll start at the beginning with the whole idea of using tableaux. It’s a dated style of theatre, and one I don’t particularly care for, as it can often lead to confusion. The play tonight started with Mrs Roper, the cleaning lady, standing centre back, spot lit for several seconds while the rest of the set was in gloom. I had no idea who she was at this point, so what was that for?

I’ll describe the set now, to save complications. It’s an unusual layout, so pay attention. To the left was a huge set of shelves crammed with books. Leaning against this was a wide ladder, and when the lights go up after the opening tableau, there’s a chap sitting at the top of the ladder, reading a book. In front of the shelves stood a pot plant stand and another table, which was next to Anya’s wheelchair when she was on stage. To the right of the shelves was an opening showing more bookshelves – this led to Anya’s room. To the right of this the stage was split into two levels. On the same level middle right was a desk with two chairs, one behind and one in front, and there was another chair and side table to the right of it. Behind these stood a dresser(?) of some kind with a drinks tray on it.

Across the middle of the stage stretched two wide steps, with a raised area behind. There was an opening off left which led to the front door, another opening in the middle which led to the rest of the house, and a large window to the right. There was a dividing door which was normally pulled back, but for one crucial scene it was drawn almost fully across the top of the stairs. There were books everywhere, a tray with water jug and glasses on the side table front right, and a telephone on the desk. Now read on (or not if you don’t want to know the plot).

The opening scene between Mrs Roper and the young man on the ladder, Lester Cole, set the scene a bit, so we know we’re in Professor Hendryk’s study (no idea what subject he teaches), and that he’s somewhat charismatic. When Lisa Koletzky turns up (Susan Penhaligon), we also learn that she’s chosen to look after Anya Hendryk, who’s been an invalid for five years, although Lisa’s training as a physicist would allow her to get a job anywhere. With her accent, it’s clear she and the Hendryks are middle European, and without knowing the time period accurately, images of them fleeing Nazi persecution flitted across my mind. However, the period is 1958, and anyway this isn’t a political play, it’s about the destructive possibilities of kindness and compassion.

It turns out that the professor’s kindness to a colleague he didn’t even like meant that he and his wife, Anya, had to leave their comfortable home and friends and move to London, where she is housebound, lonely and fretful (to put it mildly) and he has to work long hours to keep them in some degree of comfort. It’s not helped by his principled choice of providing extra tuition to poor students who show promise, and turning down rich students who may not be so able.

One such rich girl is the catalyst for his downfall. The professor has already turned Helen Rollander down, but she turns up, well, barges in really, while the professor, Anya, Lisa and Doctor Stoner, Anya’s doctor, are having a cup of coffee together. Helen demands that the professor take her on for extra tuition. She’s beyond tactless, this girl, with hints of budding sociopathology (we watch too much TV) and an obvious crush on the prof. The visit upsets Anya, who goes back to her room, and although the professor finally gets Helen to leave, her father, Sir William Rollander strolls in shortly afterwards with a much more persuasive offer.

Anya suffers from something-or-other sclerosis, which is apparently incurable. She’s confined to bed or a wheelchair, her hands have started to shake more, and she naturally gets cranky and depressed, with a side order of guilt because she feels she’s a burden to everyone. The prof still loves her, though, and it’s this that Sir William uses to get what he, or rather his daughter, wants. He can guarantee access to a select trial of a new antibiotic which has had good results in treating Anya’s disease in the US. The prof will do anything to help his wife – he’s still feeling guilty that he caused them to leave their former home – so he reluctantly agrees to take Helen on. She pops back in to pick up some books – she’d been waiting in the car while daddy worked his magic – and we suspected the massive volumes the prof gave her wouldn’t be read as thoroughly as he might wish.

That’s pretty much it for the first act, apart from confirmation that Lisa, a cousin of Anya’s, is also in love with Hendryk herself, which is her main reason for choosing to be there, and that the prof loves her as well, desperately but unattainably. In the second act, we see Helen confirming that she’s not much of a student, just a selfish, spoilt girl with the hots for the professor and a neo-Nazi attitude towards culling the useless members of the population, such as the professor’s wife, for example. With everyone else either out or about to leave, Helen uncharacteristically volunteers to sit with Anya till Lisa gets back – alarm bells are ringing. The doctor gives the prof a lift to his lecture, Mrs Roper pops out for yet another packet of tea (she’s the only one who drinks it), and so the cute cuddly bunny is left alone with the hungry python. What will happen next, we wonder?

It doesn’t take long. After a short exchange, where both women seem to find something in common, the clock chimes, and Anya exclaims that she needs her medicine. Helen offers to get it for her – four drops in a glass of water – and Anya obligingly tells her that it’s dangerous stuff and she mustn’t take too much, only four drops. Helen may not be the greatest intellectual on the planet, but she can add two and two, and so we see her tip the whole bottle (it’s a small one) into the glass. Anya comments on how strong it tastes, but Helen assures her it was only four drops, so she obligingly knocks it back. Within a couple of minutes, she’s dead.

Now Helen has to cover her tracks, which she seems to do pretty well. She puts her gloves on, takes the glass and empty bottle over to the table by the wheelchair, wipes them clean and then puts Anya’s prints on them. Then she heads off, only to return a few moments later, perhaps in response to our silent screams of ‘you’ve forgotten the water jug’. She puts that right, then leaves, and from the way she sets herself up to walk out of the door – head high, calm, self-assured – it’s clear she’s headed for a life of crime in the future, killing anyone who gets in her way. Always assuming she gets away with it this time, of course.

Shortly afterwards, Mrs Roper returns, and fails to notice the dead body cluttering up the living room. (Honestly, you just can’t get the staff nowadays!) She heads into Anya’s room to do some work (yes, I know, it shocked me too), so when Lisa gets back and does realise that Anya’s dead, Mrs Roper hasn’t seen her come in. There may well have been another tableau before the interval, but I don’t remember the details.

The second half begins with a tableau of the doctor, Lisa, the prof and young Cole, all standing on set with their coats on. When the action starts, they’ve just come back from the inquest into Anya’s death, which recorded an open verdict. Other than Cole, who’s come back with them to try and help, no one believes it was suicide, and the prof in particular believes it was a tragic accident. Lisa heads into Anya’s room to start clearing out her stuff – may sound cold, but she was just being practical – and later she and Cole take a couple of parcels to the mission, that period’s version of the charity shop. The doctor also leaves, and so the prof is alone when Helen comes to call. She’s nervous at first, but soon bounds back to full confidence as she declares her love for the prof and that there’s nothing to keep them apart now that his wife’s dead! She’s said some breathtakingly callous things already, but this takes the whole biscuit factory. He’s dismissive of her at first, so to show him how much she deserves his love, she confesses all to him – crazy, or what? When he realises what she’s done, he’s horrified, of course, and finally shows some anger. He makes it absolutely clear that he has no feelings of that sort for her, and she’s terribly upset. For once, when he tells her to leave, she goes, in tears.

Now you, I and the next person would probably call the police immediately if we found ourselves in this situation, but the prof is made of finer stuff. He reckons the poor child (who’s twenty-two, by the way) has never had a chance to develop such qualities as compassion, etc., but that there’s still a good person underneath her insensitivity, selfishness and murderous intent. The doctor sums it up more accurately later on, I feel, when he describes Helen as a cruel little bitch – that brought a small gasp from the audience.

This is where the central theme of the piece is brought out. Lisa comes back, and the prof tells her about Helen’s confession. She’s insistent that he call the police straightaway, but he points out that grassing up Helen (he didn’t use that actual phrase) wouldn’t bring Anya back, so to avoid blighting a young woman’s life, he won’t say anything. Why she doesn’t just pick up the phone herself, I don’t know, but soon the two of them turn their attention to their own, unacknowledged love for each other, and at long last they embrace each other for the first time. Unfortunately, Mrs Roper spots this through the translucent glass of the dividing door, which had been moved across at the start of the scene, and the tableau here has the two lovers, moving apart when they realise she’s there, and staring at her as she watches them.

In the following scene, the prof has just returned with the doctor a few hours later, and both Lisa and the doc go through the arguments again to try and persuade the prof to report Helen’s confession to the police. He’s still adamant that he won’t, and so, like some Greek tragedy, the consequences of his choice kick into action. A police inspector arrives, with his sergeant, and asks some more questions. They now reckon it was murder – any idea who could have done it? That sort of thing. The prof still refuses to implicate Helen. As a result, the police arrest Lisa. Mrs Roper has reported what she’s seen between the two of them, plus she found Lisa standing over the dead body with no alibi for what happened before that. Now the prof decides to come clean, but it’s too late. Not only does it sound bad, that he’s trying to implicate another woman when his lover is under threat, but it turns out that the evening paper he bought when he was out with the doctor earlier carried the story of Helen Rollander’s death! She’d been so distressed by the prof’s rejection that she’d run out into the road without looking and been flattened by a lorry. You couldn’t make this stuff up! (Um, actually……)

With Helen not available to change her story – that she left at Anya’s request before Mrs Roper got back – Lisa is arrested and tried for murder. The final scene shows the prof, doctor and Cole waiting for the eponymous result of the trial. The phone keeps ringing, but it’s always the press looking for something to print. There’s speculation about the verdict, but ultimately this scene is about the final confrontation between the prof and Lisa after the doctor and Cole have headed back to the court house.

Despite the evidence, somewhat miraculously Lisa was acquitted, and now she’s come back to collect a few things before starting a new life somewhere else. The prof is devastated – he wants to develop their relationship – but the writing was on the wall in the earlier scene when the professor allowed Lisa to be arrested without immediately offering the Helen option to the police. It still wouldn’t’ve worked, but at least he would have demonstrated loyalty to her instead of to his idealised principles. Ah well. She leaves, the doctor comes and goes, and then the prof is left alone to endure the anguish he’s created for himself. He puts on a record of the Tristan And Isolde song that was an integral part of his first meeting with Lisa, and sits down on the floor to weep.

That’s the end of the action, but the final tableau involves Lisa coming back on to stand at the rear of the stage, still in her coat and carrying her suitcase, with her and the prof spot lit. Curtain. This final tableau caused some confusion within the audience. Some thought she’d come back, some that it was just his fantasy, while others, like me, thought it was just to emphasise the final situation – that’s what these tableaux usually do, after all. I have no objection whatever to ambiguity, but in this case I felt the confusion undercut the resolution of the play, and we’d have been better off without it. Still, we did enjoy ourselves, and the rest of the audience seemed appreciative too.

So what else didn’t work so well? Writing this, I’m aware how creaky the plot is in places, but the writing and acting were both good enough to keep the ship afloat. Cole’s character was a bit of a puzzle. His purpose in the opening scene was to show the professor’s compassionate nature; when Cole finally confessed to selling one of the books the prof had loaned him, so that he could take a special girl out on a date, the prof lets him off the hook, glad that he’s owned up to it, demonstrating his unusual approach to ethics. Fair enough, but thereafter Cole is a bit of a spare wheel, always hanging round, and frankly without much reason for it and with very little to contribute. No reflection on the actor, of course – Agatha has to take responsibility for this one.

The part of Mrs Roper, on the other hand, is a little gem; a nasally charwoman who likes helping herself to the prof’s cigarettes as well as the tea, and ready to bitch and pry at a moment’s notice. It was a lovely performance from Elizabeth Power, and as well as the comic relief, she instigates one of the crucial turning points of the story.

The other performances were all fine, and the play built up a nice degree of tension towards the end. Although we’d seen this play back in 1984, I didn’t remember it as such, though I was confident about which way the story was going, so perhaps the memories were closer to the surface than I realised. I found the delivery a little patchy at times, so I missed some of the dialogue; I think that was mainly down to the accents, although Susan Penhaligon was fine throughout.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Hamlet – May 2011

6/10

By: William Shakespeare

Directed by: Conrad Nelson

Company: Northern Broadsides

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Saturday 28th May 2011

It was interesting to see this only a couple of days after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. The set had two ramps slanting across the stage at right angles, with stool-steps behind, for easy access as well as seating. The back of the forward ramp, which ran right to left, had an inbuilt piano, which was used to good effect, while the ramp on the left, which ran roughly back to front, included a nifty two-door grave, reminiscent of an Andersen shelter (more on that story later). Around the back were some strange wire thingies – several pairs of wires stretched floor to flies, with a large trapezium of white material between them at about the level of the balcony. A strip of dark gray Lurex was wrapped around the base of these wires, with some grouped together and some pairs done individually. Only the central group was different – the fabric was plain black, and for the second half it was pulled up to form the arras behind which Polonius hid; the rest of the strips only came up two or three feet. There were a couple of chairs for Claudius and Gertrude during the play scene, and various other implements were brought on as needed, but that was pretty much it.

I have no idea what the wire and cloth arrangements were meant to be, but at the start, we soon realised we were in the Second World War period. It started with a public service announcement about switching off all phones, done in the plummy tones and formal language of such things, and then the opening scene was preceded by an air raid siren; this made me think that the wire sculptures might represent search lights, but apart from that fleeting thought, nothing much came of them. There was also a piper at the start – fine playing, but no idea why.

The first scene was done in near darkness, with torches, and Francisco was standing right beside me for his few lines. The strong northern accents were well to the fore from the off, although Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were Scottish, and Hamlet had spent so long in Wittenberg that he often lapsed into RP with odd flashes of ‘up north’. For once, it’s Horatio who asks what all the warlike preparations are for, and Marcellus or Bernardo who tells him – this makes much more sense than the usual format. The ghost appears on the balcony, wearing a fetching white cape and a fencing mask, while waving his sword around in slow motion. Although it gives the lie to the later reports to Hamlet about the ghost’s expression, etc., this staging did have the advantage of allowing them to show the ghost flitting around a lot with the use of some poles and duplicate capes and masks – the ghost appeared on either side of the stage before disappearing altogether.

The next scene began with a lively jazz number, which perked things up no end. Actually, it started with one man coming on, hat pulled down, with his jacket slung over his shoulder. He walked slowly to the end of the ramp on the right, lifted the piano lid, sat down, and played a chord. Slowly, deliberately, repeating it once. I thought, oh, it’s the death march, and then he picked up the beat, the tune began to swing, and as the lights came up the rest of the band came on stage to treat us to a great little jazz number. Ophelia, in a gorgeous evening dress with more swags than a Palladium curtain, stood at a microphone on the ramp in front of the pianist, and sang the songs from her mad scene – ‘valentine’ and ‘how should I your true love know’ – all nice and lovely in this context. Gertrude arrives on the other ramp, and sashays about a bit, to applause from the court. Turns out Claudius was the piano player. Hamlet played double bass, Polonius the cello, and the rest all seem to be playing anything and everything from time to time. Talented bunch. This upbeat start to the scene makes Claudius’s speech much lighter in tone, and he comes across as a pretty good guy. Cornelius  has become Cornelia again, while Fortinbras is referred to as ‘she’ – I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right first time round, but we even get to see and hear her in this production, so there’s no mistake.

All this while, after the music stopped, Hamlet has been sulking over near us, sitting on the corner of the ramp. When he gets involved, he simply stands up to say his lines, putting some heat into the “Tis not my inky cloak” bit, but otherwise seeming a bit static. Left to himself for the “too, too solid flesh” speech, he does start to move around, dropping to his knees and other signs of suffering. The dialogue came across well enough, though.

The scene with Horatio was fine, as was Laertes’s leave-taking. Ophelia can be quite snappy in this production, and it comes out here as well as in the mad scene. Polonius needed to refer to a little notebook for some of his precepts, a reflection on the character rather than the actor, but judging by Laertes’s reaction to the contents of the envelope Polonius gives him, he’s a generous man to his children.

The platform scenes had some problems, mostly in the second phase, when Hamlet talks with his father’s ghost. The ghost appeared on the balcony at first, and disappeared quite quickly, but came through the rear entrance onto the ramp almost before Horatio and Marcellus had finished making their exits that way. Whenever the ghost was on stage, they played church-type music in the background – organ playing, choir singing – but this time it was loud enough to drown out a lot of Hamlet’s lines. Of course, it didn’t help that his back was turned to us for most of this scene, but one way and another I hardly heard a word he said. The ghost was loud and clear, and mercifully short compared to usual. Hamlet is much different after this encounter – much more lively and energetic. He also has his father’s sword, which the ghost gives him – strange ghost, this – which is handy for the swearing scene. He also scrawls something in chalk on the right-hand ramp which I couldn’t see, but it related to “meet it is I set it down”, so I assume the word ‘villain’ was in there at least. Nobody else seems to see this, or the other stuff he writes later, and I wasn’t taken with it as a staging choice.

Polonius sends Reynaldo off to France with the usual instructions, although he doesn’t mention drabbing as a potential slur on Laertes’s character, whether from brevity or morality I couldn’t tell. Ophelia’s report on Hamlet’s mad appearance was OK, and it started to bring out the lack of physical contact between father and daughter, unlike her fond embraces with Laertes earlier on. Polonius was more disturbed by the error he’s made in cutting Hamlet off from Ophelia than I’ve seen before, and his concern seemed genuine.

Now for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and if you couldn’t tell them apart before, you wouldn’t have had a hope this time around. Apart from their suits – one a light tan, the other grey – they were identical. Twins or brothers, I’m not sure, but since I focused on their outfits I was fine. Claudius gets it wrong (again!), then we hear from the ambassadors, and finally Polonius struts his stuff with Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia.

For Hamlet’s next entrance, he’s carrying a fishing basket, rod and stool, and wearing a waterproof and hat. He dumps this stuff at the bottom of the ramp, and he’s busy getting things out of the basket while talking to Polonius. The fishmonger reference is therefore apt, though I felt it was a bit contrived. Still, it was fun. He also has a book, which is used for the “Words, words, words” bit, and he chalks “gone fishing” on a small blackboard and props it on a stool, which got a laugh.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have the usual tough time of it, and then Polonius introduces the players. They’re very jolly. One chap in particular is keen to give a speech himself, but it turns out Hamlet wants one that’s not his to give – I thought he looked a bit disappointed. Hamlet’s intro was significantly helped by a prompt from the lady player, and the rest of the speech was very well delivered. I was aware of Hecuba snatching up the blanket to cover her naked body, and I had an unexpected glimpse of a physical aspect to her relationship with Priam. The player wasn’t at all bothered about Hamlet’s request for The Murder of Gonzago, so the general public obviously aren’t suspicious of the succession.

I wasn’t sure when the interval would be taken – not at “the play’s the thing” this time – so we continued with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reporting to the king and queen on their lack of progress. Then there’s the setting up of the confrontation between Ophelia and Hamlet, and then the big one – “To be, or not to be”. OK, everyone wants to find their own way of doing it, but this choice just wasn’t that good. Hamlet uses the chalk again, and scrawls the question on the top of the left-hand ramp. I could see the writing this time, but that really didn’t improve things. He treated the first part of the speech like a pros and cons list, writing under “not to be” such things as “die”, “sleep”, “dream”; all this writing was done with his back to us and it felt more like an old-fashioned classroom talk than a vibrant dynamic speech about Hamlet’s internal philosophical wrestling. He recovered a bit with the latter part of the speech, but on the whole this was not a good version of this important section of the play.

The meeting with Ophelia was much better, with Ophelia being a little snappy again when she tells him “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind”. She’s also very upset at Hamlet’s ranting, sobbing and distraught and in need of a hug when her father and Claudius re-emerge. Polonius isn’t keen, and avoids her altogether. I wasn’t sure if Hamlet was aware of Polonius’s presence after “Where’s your father?” – it just wasn’t clear.

The advice to the players was fine, and with Claudius and Gertrude sitting on the left-hand ramp, the play got underway. The opening mime sequence was a very fresh take to my eyes. Two players brought on a wheelbarrow, placing it well up on the right-hand ramp, and they were wearing smocks. With some music and ‘effects’ – they used a watering can, I think – first one row of flowers stood up in the barrow, then the next, and finally the man sorts of leans down and rests his head on the flowers to have a kip. The woman leaves, and another chap comes on with the poison, and actually invites Claudius to come on stage and pour it into the sleeping man’s ear! It was all very jokey, and I could see why Claudius wouldn’t be too worried by it. In fact, it was entertaining enough that I wasn’t watching the court’s reactions at all. When the dumb show king dies, he literally kicked the bucket. Yes, literally! There was a bucket on the ramp, he stood up, staggered about a bit, then stopped to deliberately kick the bucket off the ramp, and then collapsed and died. It was very good fun.

For the second part, the players did a lovely version of Brief Encounter. The loving couple were Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard to a T, including the little fur stole she wore and the clipped accents, which sounded strange with Shakespeare’s dialogue, but the reference was worth it. When the poisoning happened, Claudius reacted strongly and stalked off, calling for a light. The rest of the scene was pretty standard, and then the interval.

The second half started with the short scene between Claudius and first Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and then Polonius, followed by the attempted reconciliation with heaven. Fine Time Fontayne, as Claudius, gave one of the best performances today, and this speech was particularly well done, leaving him sitting on the front ramp in the appearance of prayer when Hamlet arrives on the scene. Standing close behind Claudius, he’s ready to strike, but has second thoughts. It’s one of those odd things; why should he think that Claudius would go to heaven when he’s committed murder? And a brother’s murder at that? The belief that forgiveness is always available for repentance must have been very strong for the doubts to stand any sort of chance in Hamlet’s mind. Anyway, we want the rest of the play, so fortunately Hamlet decides against taking this perfect opportunity, and heads off to his mother’s room. Claudius is then free to tell us how ineffective his efforts have been, and also leaves the stage.

Hamlet is soon with his mother in her chamber, with Polonius ensconced behind the arras, partially visible to us. This scene seemed a bit flat to me, although the dialogue came across well enough. Gertrude was certainly upset by the whole thing, but I didn’t get any sense that she realised that Claudius was a murderer. And she must have had excellent eyesight, because the two pictures Hamlet was holding up for comparison were rather small, and he was standing several metres away from her during that bit, though of course, she would be able to remember what each man looked like. The ghost was fine, but for once I wondered if it would be possible to drop the physical presence and just hear the ghost’s words, so that the audience could relate more to Gertrude’s point of view, assuming the production has decided that she doesn’t see the ghost, of course. For once, Hamlet doesn’t bid his mother not to do the things he tells her to do, but he does drag Polonius’s body away, thankfully.

Despatching Hamlet to England doesn’t take long, and then we meet Fortinbras and her army, followed quickly by Ophelia’s first mad scene. This wasn’t too bad, with Ophelia throwing papers around and singing snatches of the songs she sang at the start of the play. There’s more menace in her threat that “my brother shall know of it” than usual. Then Laertes arrives, and when Ophelia returns she has a small bunch of flowers in her hand to distribute. She’s already thrown the papers about, and also drops a lot of the flowers, so the stage is beginning to look rather untidy, and gets more cluttered as the play continues.

Horatio reads the letter from Hamlet standing in the balcony, and then Claudius and Laertes seal their pact to kill Hamlet down below. Gertrude reports Ophelia’s death, and then the gravedigger comes on to prepare for Ophelia’s funeral. He opens up the doors to the Andersen shelter, and starts pulling skulls out of it (why are there never any other bones?), leaving one of them perched on his spade, leaning against the wall. Hamlet and Horatio walk on behind him, and as they talk, the gravedigger tosses fresh skulls over his head which they catch. The skull on the spade is Yorick’s.

The funeral is very brief, just a quick up, down and across, and the priest is done. Hamlet and Horatio are crouched by the end of the right-hand ramp, and Hamlet is pretty vigorous in attacking Laertes over who loved Ophelia the most.

Now we’re into the final phase, and Hamlet recounts his adventures at sea to Horatio. The sequence with Osric was good, with Osric’s hat being bent out of shape so that he looked ridiculous when he put it back on. Osric and Reynaldo were one and the same, by the way – Andy Cryer did very well with this part. Osric’s fussiness was clear, and he obviously had a prepared speech – he checked his clipboard from time to time – and was easily flustered by Hamlet’s responses.

The fight scene worked fine. The poisoned cup was set on a stand to the left, the combatants had fencing gear on, and the fighting itself was reasonably good. Hamlet is standing with his back to Laertes, who’s on the ground, when Laertes cuts him on the back of the leg, and then Hamlet’s furious and unstoppable in his determination to get back at Laertes. Even without a sword, he overcomes Laertes and cuts him in return. The queen has already drunk the poison, and it’s all going horribly wrong from Claudius’s point of view. It gets worse. Hamlet stabs him, pours some drink down his throat, then carries the cup over to Laertes to exchange forgiveness with him; Laertes dies before Hamlet can complete his side of the bargain.

After that, it’s a quick trot to the end of the play, with Fortinbras turning up and making her claim to the throne. All jolly good fun, and despite some dubious choices in the staging, and a dreadfully sparse audience, we gave them a warm reception at the end. I felt the Second World War theme was underused, and the performances were sometimes patchy, but on the whole it was the usual sound, well-spoken no-nonsense Northern Broadsides production. The music was lovely, and well-chosen, although I’ve already made it clear that the ghost’s accompaniment was a bit too much.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

I Met A Man Who Wasn’t There – May 2011

6/10

By Philip Meeks

Directed by Bruce James

Company: Bruce James Productions

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Friday 27th May 2007

This was a reasonably decent modern supernatural thriller, which didn’t scare me much, but did have some tension, and the unravelling of the story was well done. It was a two-hander with a cast instantly recognisable from the soaps – Cathy Shipton as Amanda Schilling and Brian Capron as Edgar Ryme, a supposed clairvoyant. She’s a journalist who claims to be doing an article on clairvoyants, and is willing to pay him for his time and information. They swap ghost stories and it’s clear she’s got something to hide, but then so does he, and then strange things begin to happen…….

The set was a small living/dining room in an upstairs flat. Window with permanently drawn curtains to the left, then the door to the kitchen, then an area I couldn’t see very well – hidden by the table – but it had the record player, then the dresser with various windmills and other knick-knacks. Centre back was the fireplace with a large mirror over; the fireplace was screened off with a board and there was a small electric fire in front of that. The door to the outside world was to the right of the fireplace, then a table and comfy chair. There was a sofa under the window, and the dining table with chairs was front and left.

We moved closer in the interval, as I wasn’t able to hear all the dialogue in our original seats. Sadly, the theatre was less than half-full, so we had no problem relocating. The title refers to the poem Antigonish by Hughes Mearns (I’m relying on Wikipedia here, so fingers crossed), which David keeps reciting as part of his strategy for taking over Edgar, and it did become a bit creepy after a while. The performances were fine, and although the writing was a little clunky at times, there were also several fine speeches, most notably Amanda’s description of her time in Bosnia. It may not be a masterpiece, but this deserves better audiences, and I hope they get them.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead – May 2011

Experience: 6/10

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Trevor Nunn

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Thursday 26th May 2011

I’ve usually found Tom Stoppard’s work a bit cerebral for my taste, and this play was no exception. There are some good bits, and this is likely to be a very good production once it’s settled in, but I wouldn’t say it was one of my favourites.

Tonight’s performance had a ripple of understudies due to the indisposition of Tim Curry, so although I didn’t detect any significant fluffs, future performances are bound to come on a lot. I didn’t catch all the understudy names, and it was too recent a change for printed slips in the program, but I gather that the part of The Player was taken by Chris Andrew Mellon.[Oops, we’ve since found the insert – Chris Andrew Mellon confirmed, and his role as Player King taken by Stephen Pallister 3/6/11] Since they haven’t yet had their understudies run, the audience was suitably appreciative of his efforts, and he managed the part really well, getting across the swagger and bluster, and doing a particularly good death scene, I thought. All the best to Tim Curry, of course, for his recovery.

The set was quite beautiful, one of Simon Higlett’s best. The floor of the stage was covered in glossy black boards which followed the stage’s shape apart from two triangular cut-outs, one on each side, giving the overall effect of an arrow head. Above this was a similarly shaped layer of black boards, but with gaps, like a pergola. The back wall and surround were full of stars for the outdoor night scenes, and the central rear doors were flanked by two concealed doorways with false perspective arches, which gave a fantastic impression of a vast castle.

At the start, there was a tree centre back; this was removed when the players arrived with their cart (very Mother Courage), but it was done so well that I just didn’t spot it. After the players leave, R&G are transported straight to the castle, so the arches are on show for a major chunk of the play. There’s some set dressing for The Murder Of Gonzago – this time we’re seeing the dress rehearsal – which was mainly four tall candle holders, a rug and two small chests.

Once off to sea, part of a ship and three barrels are carefully positioned on the stage. The ship has an upper deck with a deckchair, screened by a large umbrella; it turns out that Hamlet has been snoozing there through the start of this scene. The barrels are large, which is just as well, as the players, scared by the hostile reception of their play at court, have stowed away by hiding in them. One of the best bits tonight was watching them all clamber out.

After the ship scene, I think the set was bare till near the end, when some of the Gonzago trimmings were brought back on for the very end of Hamlet itself, when the ambassadors from England have arrived to report that R&G are dead.

The play is certainly interesting, taking a sideways look at these two minor characters as they wend their short path through this famous play, and bringing up many philosophical ideas along the way. It’s those philosophical bits that tend to drag, in my view. It may be that Jamie Parker as Guildenstern (or was it Rosencrantz?) will find a delivery that brings out more humour in those lines, but I suspect they would be a bit dry for me regardless. Samuel Barnett as Rosencrantz (or ………?) was more down to earth, stupider and generally had the funnier lines, and his was the more assured performance at this point in the run. The constant coin tossing had some humour, though it went on a bit long, and the players were good fun, though also a bit long winded. I enjoyed the mathematical joke of the bet – that a date of birth, doubled, will be even – and it shows how wide-ranging this content of this play is.

With their arrival at Elsinore, the actual Shakespearean dialogue makes an appearance, and it’s to Stoppard’s credit that he manages to blend the two styles so well. Many another writer has incorporated chunks of Will’s work into theirs, only to show up their own inadequacies; Stoppard holds his own just fine, and although I wasn’t totally loving this, I didn’t find myself wishing I was watching Hamlet instead, a good sign. (Mind you, I did wonder if the actors having a go at a partial Hamlet were wishing they could do the full version.)

The dress rehearsal was nicely done, adapting the snippet we see in the regular version into a reprise of the Hamlet plot, with two new characters, looking uncannily like R&G, involved in this one. We even get to see the executions in England. R&G are troubled by the similarities for a while, especially when their doubles take off their capes and their costumes are so similar to the original R&G’s, but the pair soon reassure themselves that all is well.

There’s a string of pearls used in this section – I think it was presented by the usurping king to the widowed queen to persuade her to marry him – and tonight the string broke, scattering pearls everywhere. Presumably this was not meant to happen. The actors soon cleared up most of them, but a stray pearl travelled further than the rest, and it was Rosencrantz who did the honours and removed it in passing.

When the duplicate R&G’s are killed, and their capes placed over them, the lights go down – it’s after Claudius has stormed off – and when they come back up, it’s the ‘real’ R&G who are under the capes. These two are on stage all the time, with the action of Hamlet coming to them, so they can’t actually go anywhere to search for Hamlet, leading to an entertaining scene where they opt to go in different directions, then together, then one way, then another. There’s a short scene on the beach, where Hamlet encounters Fortinbras’s men, and then they’re on the boat. When Hamlet is saying his soliloquies, by the way, he has a tendency to drift to the back of the stage and mutter to himself.

In the process of figuring out what they’re going to say when they get to the English court, R&G role play that encounter, and as a result they open the letter and find out that Hamlet is to be killed. Much consternation. Then they go to sleep, Hamlet sneaks down from his deckchair and swaps the letters, and they’re on their way to oblivion.  The players emerge from the barrels, the pirates attack, and Hamlet disappears with them, leaving R&G with nobody to present to the king of England, so they redo the role play to get some ideas, open the letter again, and hey presto, they’re now the ones for the chop. That’s pretty much it for these two. We don’t see their executions, and the final scene shows their deaths being reported to the Danish court, or what’s left of it.

The performance showed signs of this being a very good production, once they’ve had time to bed it down. It’s not my ideal kind of play, but I hope it does well here and in the West End.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Dumb Waiter – May 2011

6/10

By: Harold Pinter

Directed by: Tim Astley

Company: Apollo Theatre Company

Venue: Mill Studio, Guildford

Date: Saturday 7th May 2011

It was interesting to see this play again. I’d enjoyed it at school; although I don’t usually ‘get’ plays just from the text, the unsettling atmosphere of menace came right off the page with this one. The venue tonight supported this feeling, with the small space and brick walls adding their own sense of dilapidated claustrophobia. The set itself comprised a back wall with a door far left and a doorway far right. There were two single cot beds either side of the central dumb waiter door, which was quite small and square. The speaking tube was to the right of that door, but lay on the floor underneath.

The actors were on stage when we entered. Ben was reading the paper on the bed on our right, while Gus was lying on the left-hand bed until close to the start, when he took his time putting his shoes on. Simon Cotton’s portrayal of this character was on the fussy side, bordering on camp. I wasn’t sure how this would work, but the tension built up pretty well, so no complaints there. Ross Ericson was fine as Ben, with just enough bluster to his authority until the final moments.

This was a reasonably good touring production, which got a very good response from the audience – friends and family, perhaps?

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Little Eagles – May 2011

6/10

By: Rona Munro

Directed by: Roxana Silbert

Company: RSC

Venue: Hampstead Theatre

Date: Wednesday 4th May 2011

For those of us who’ve been paying attention, this play offered little new information about the Soviet Union’s early space program, and although it told the story well enough, with some good performances, I could have done with more humour to lighten the fairly dark tone of the piece, especially with a running time not far short of three hours.

The set had a back wall with large, dirty windows and central double doors. Above these, a platform could be revealed when needed. To the right was a sweep of metal, curving up into the flies. Furniture was brought on and off as needed, and once or twice I felt this was a bit slow, but it worked OK for the most part. The costumes were presumably authentic for the period (they should be – with all the Russian plays the RSC’s been doing, their costume department must be bulging at the seams with this stuff).

The opening scene had Stalin speechifying from the platform about the threat from without and within. As he spoke, a couple of guards and some shambling prisoners came on to the stage, and gradually, through collective mime, we were led to understand that this was a labour camp, and conditions were really, really bad. Personally I felt they overdid this bit, with the mime looking very actors’ workshop, and although parts of this scene were useful later on, it could probably be trimmed if not dropped altogether with some rewriting elsewhere. Anyway, we met Korolyov, the father of the Russian space program, his mate Old Man, and a young female doctor who’s inexperienced in the ways of the gulag, but soon learns the ropes.

The next scene is set in the prison factory where the USSR is developing its own ICBMs, out in the back of beyond. Korolyov’s wife and daughter have just arrived from Moscow, and we learn that if Glushko, Korolyov’s current boss, didn’t shop him during the purges, his wife certainly did. This makes it a bit difficult for her to stay with her husband, especially as she wants her Moscow life, and he gets so obsessed with his work that he wouldn’t see much of them anyway.

It’s a big day for the project, as they’re being visited by members of the Politburo and they have to present them with a success story. Turns out Stalin is dead, Khrushchev has taken over, and with his right hand man Brezhnev, he’s keen to be brought up to speed on Uncle Joe’s secret little project. When Korolyov gives him the information in a way he can understand, Khrushchev puts him in charge of the whole project, and pardons all the prisoners. Not only that, Korolyov is finally able to put forward his dream of space flight, and with Khrushchev keen to beat the Americans at something, Sputnik can finally fly.

We soon get through the early years of the space program. From Sputnik’s beeping at the world we move swiftly on to the cosmonaut program, glossing over the animal test flights with a mendacious assurance to the first four test pilots that all the dogs came back alive. The reality is admitted to Geladze, the military officer responsible for selecting cosmonaut trainees, and who provides the hard line Communist perspective through to the end of the play. For example, he recommends Yuri Gagarin as the first cosmonaut because he has impeccable proletarian credentials, even though his test scores weren’t as high as at least one of the other pilots.

There’s also a glimpse of the degree of suffering which the Soviets were prepared to inflict on their own men, when we see a short encounter between Gagarin and a human guinea pig, a wreck of a man slumped in a wheelchair. He’s been through the same physical endurance tests as the trainees – heat, cold, oxygen deprivation, large g-forces – and taken to the limit of each so that the scientists know how far they can push the trainees without killing them, the implication being that some of the guinea pigs weren’t so lucky. In some ways it was harder to watch than the gulag stuff, not only because I found it easier to relate to a specific individual, but because he was so happy to be serving his country in this way. The doctor looking after him was the doctor from the camp in scene one.

The Gagarin launch scene was done in an unusual way, and I’m still not sure if I liked it or not. With various people scurrying around the stage, and tempers fraying as the deadline approaches, Gagarin was up on the platform waiting, while his backup was in his flight suit on the stage, hoping his chance would come. It didn’t. Gagarin was given the go-ahead, and came down onto the stage, where he was attached to two wires. As the spacecraft took off, he was gently lifted up, while the other actors peered upwards as if watching the rocket disappearing into the sky. The stage was darkened, small blue lights shone out all across the back wall and the sweep of metal, and when the rest of the cast left the stage, there was Yuri, swinging around in space, telling us all how beautiful it looked. It was a fairly effective piece of staging, though rather spoilt by cast members coming on once or twice to set Yuri spinning – this was when he was making his re-entry.

His landing in a country field was well done, though, with two women working in the field and being understandably suspicious of a strange chap parachuting in. Gagarin’s keen to take them, and some other farm workers who turn up, for a drink before the official welcoming party arrive, but he’s too late, and the officials whisk him away to see Comrade Khrushchev as quick as you like.

I have no idea what the scene with Khrushchev and Gagarin waving to the crowds from the balcony was intended to give us. With those two at the back of the stage, we were left with Mrs Gagarin and Korolyov having a conversation, and I found a good deal of this dialogue incomprehensible due to Samantha Young’s delivery. I did get that she thought their reception was an honour, and that she was shy, but not much else.

After the interval, we had another speech from the platform, this time by Khrushchev. I nodded off for a bit during the next scene, but I gathered that it covered Korolyov’s remarriage, a major disaster with long-range missile testing, the Soviet side of the Cuban missile crisis, and the increasing rivalry between Korolyov and Glushko. With mounting pressure to beat the Americans, deadlines become ever tighter, and finally Korolyov is facing a crunch moment. Brezhnev, now in charge, arrives to sack him and put Glushko in charge. The evidence mounts against Korolyov – his ill-health, dubious decisions, etc. – until finally he makes Brezhnev a guarantee that he will have his Soyuz rocket ready to launch in eighteen months. With this chance to regain the competitive lead over the US, Brezhnev leaves Korolyov in charge, and now things get even tougher for his team.

We’ve seen him before being ruthless and tyrannical, insulting people and driving them to do their best, then being best buddies with them when things are going well. Now he’s much worse, even using the idea put forward by Geladze earlier that they can get by with only six hours sleep in every forty-eight. Some clamps are discovered to be defective, but with such tight deadlines and a limited budget, there’s no opportunity to change them. As a result, the cosmonaut’s capsule fails to re-enter properly, and he’s blown up. This was another use of the wires, with much more spinning this time, and although I experienced the emotional effect of knowing this chap won’t survive, I didn’t feel this staging worked as well as the first time.

Just before this, Korolyov was sent to Moscow for surgery, and in the final scene, we learn that he died during the operation due to problems caused by the beating he took way back in the gulag. The doctor has defected to America, and this scene is part of her debriefing. She’s still obsessed about getting an apartment, and there’s some humour in the US airman’s comment “everyone gets an apartment”. After the airman leaves, Korolyov’s ghost appears, and the final lines are a question from the doctor about the meaning of Korolyov’s achievements.

It was an OK ending, but I still feel the play hasn’t quite come into focus yet. There’s the historical stuff, of course, and that story’s pretty well told, but the use of ghosts was a bit clunky at times, and there’s too much done with Gagarin’s character in the middle section which takes the attention away from Korolyov needlessly, I feel. I’d prefer to see the first scene cut, with the information conveyed during later scenes, which would give us more personal time with these characters as well, but then I’m not a dramatist, just an enthusiastic observer.

Decent performances all round. Greg Hicks was excellent as Geladze, doubled with Old Man, while Brian Doherty as Khrushchev and Phillip Edgerley as Brezhnev gave nice little cameos. Noma Dumezweni was perfection, as usual.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me