Category Archives: Biographical

Aristo – September 2008

6/10

By Martin Sherman

Directed by Nancy Meckler

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Monday 29th September 2008

I enjoyed this play very much. More so than the several people who left during the first half, or didn’t return after the interval. There was some swearing, and some sexual language which might not be considered appropriate before the watershed, but this is theatre, and we’re all supposed to be grown-ups, so I had no problem with it. In fact, given Aristotle Onassis’s reputation for coarseness, we were probably getting the polite version.

It did take me a short time to get into this play at first. The mildly pornographic story of Aristo’s encounter with a Turkish lieutenant certainly livened things up, and I warmed to the characters from then on. After the opening scene, with Onassis and Jackie on board his yacht, the curtain at the back of the stage slid aside, and a platform came forward with seven people on it, two of them musicians. I realised fairly quickly that this was the chorus, and that we were being given a Greek dramatic structure as well as subject matter. The music was Greek, too, and very good.

The first to speak was Costa, played by Julius D’Silva, who had stepped up to this role replacing another indisposed actor. His prior role, as Theo, was played by Hywel Morgan, another super sub, as he’d stepped in to play the captain and many other parts in Our Man In Havana (August 2007). Anyway, Costa goes into a long spiel about Aristo’s past, the women he’s slept with, the other men they’ve slept with, the marriages, the divorces, the plotting, the business deals, the loves, the hates, etc., etc. It was pretty complicated, but I just about kept tabs on it all, and Costa’s delivery brought out a lot of the humour. Then the technical wizardry started up.

To explain. At the start of the play, the set looked very simple. There was white planking everywhere, and a long rectangular pool, with actual water, along the front of the stage (well guarded during the interval). A flat white wall at the back had a long rectangular window, with a white curtain drawn across it. The sound of Greek music could be heard coming from behind this curtain. There were a couple of chairs, and that’s about it, apart from a door far left, almost completely hidden in the gloom over that way. Once the curtain was drawn back, and the platform came forward, the rest of the white wall was used as a projection screen, allowing for extra settings without much effort. In particular, it was used to create the idyllic island that Aristo used as a retreat, and also to show diagrams of the complicated connections between the many people involved in Aristo’s story, like now, when Costa has been explaining it all to us. The names appeared on the wall, with Onassis in the centre, and with lots and lots of lines drawn everywhere between the people. The chorus all turned and pointed to it, which was very funny. Costa then had even more names to give us, and got a deserved round of applause when he’d finished his stint, as it was mind-boggling how he remembered it all.

Yanni then took over. Played by John Hodgkinson (Absurdia, August 2007), he was instructed to be brief by Costa, which was a bit cheeky considering how long he’d wittered on for. But it soon became clear that brevity was not in Yanni’s repertoire. He kept prefacing the actual information by phrases like “if you’ll permit me to say this”, and “if I can put it this way”, which slowed things up tremendously, but also gave us some good laughs. Yanni was the financial chap, while Costa was the right hand man. Theo didn’t come into it until later, when Aristo asked him how his son, Aristo’s that is, was doing running a plane company. Aristo is furious when Theo describes his son as “nice”, and claims he’s liked by everyone. Not what Onassis expects from his son, obviously.

We also get to meet Maria Callas. She storms on, refusing to be left out of the litany of lovers, and we even get to hear a few snippets of her marvellous singing earlier in her career. It’s a lovely performance by Diana Quick, culminating in the second half in a marvellous cursing sequence followed by an “I wish them all the luck” for Onassis and Jackie’s marriage, which got one of the best laughs of the evening.

Apart from that, we get a brisk review of the tensions between Aristo and the Kennedy clan, his wooing of Jacqueline Kennedy before the death of her husband, and their subsequent marriage, and we’re taken into the speculative area of his involvement in the death of Bobby Kennedy. With this foray into assassination, the tide turns, and Aristo himself becomes one of the hunted. His son is killed in a helicopter crash, and now the man is convinced “they” are out to get him. It’s a study of a particular type of larger-than-life hero, a man who takes on the world and wins, doing what he feels he needs to do for business success. I was very aware during the scenes with his son, Alexander, that it would be impossible for his son to be anything like his father, because Aristo had such hard challenges as young man, while Alexander had been relatively pampered. Hard-won wealth creates its own generation gap.

Robert Lindsay as Aristotle Socrates Onassis was in fine form, showing us his character’s ruthlessness and cunning, along with his charm and passion for life (or should that be sex?). There was plenty of opportunity to sing and dance, including one Greek dance that all the men joined in, hopping over the pool one after another. There were a number of occasions when I felt I was watching the man himself, but occasionally the accent slipped a bit, and brought me back to reality. The changes of mood were very well done, as Aristo was a roller coaster of emotions. Living with him would have tested a saint, and he didn’t seem keen to surround himself with those.

Elizabeth McGovern played Jacqueline, and gave her a kind of dreamy quality. She never seemed to be fully there, even when sober, and certainly not when drunk. I could see the marriage would fail, as she was simply a trophy for Onassis, a way of getting one up on the Kennedy clan, as well as all other men on the planet, and there wouldn’t be anything in it for her other than the money, once Onassis no longer had to woo her into marriage. She came across as someone who wasn’t intellectually gifted, but had spent so much time around those in power that she understood how things worked, and wasn’t particularly bothered by morals. I quite liked this representation of her.

Alexander, Aristo’s son (Joe Marsh), was going through those difficult teenage years, made all the more difficult by his father’s wealth and power. How do you rebel against the man who has everything? And who can seduce you with a helicopter, or expensive car, without worrying where the next mortgage payment’s coming from? Life’s tough just below the top. The chorus, especially his nanny, made it clear he was for the chop, but he did show us another side to Aristo’s character when he was around.

His nanny (June Watson) and another maid in the Onassis household (Denise Black) completed the chorus. Denise did a lot of the singing, and has a very fine voice. I liked the way the chorus talked among themselves, giving us different points of view about the various events, as well as giving us the necessary information about the people. Their prayers to the gods were clear reminders of the cultural background of the main character, and I felt that that culture had a very strong presence in both his life and this play. No plates were broken, but that’s about all that was missing. It was a really good evening, with only a few spells that flagged a bit, and I was very glad to have seen it.

Post-show discussion 1st October 2008

We couldn’t get to this night’s performance, so we came over just for the post-show discussion anyway. Almost all the cast came out, eventually, and we had the writer and director there too, so it was an interesting chat. We learned that the understudies we saw on Monday had only had about a week to learn all those lines, so the achievement was all the more remarkable. The subject of audience involvement came up as usual, and tonight’s audience had apparently been quieter than most, which some reckoned was because there was so much information to take in. Robert Lindsay was asked about what had got him into Onassis’s character, and replied “sex drive”, which made us laugh, though it was evidently true. I forget most of the other points now, sadly, but I remember we laughed a lot, and the cast seemed to be a good unit, though somewhat tired after their exertions.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Brief Lives – September 2008

6/10

By John Aubrey, adapted and directed by Patrick Garland

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 22nd September 2008

Roy Dotrice’s John Aubrey is a delightful old codger, busily complaining about how the country has gone to the dogs, and telling us it wasn’t like that in Queen Elizabeth’s day. As he wasn’t even born in Queen Elizabeth’s day, this was funnier than it might seem. He had a sweet old man laugh – a ‘he-he-he’ – that was funny and endearing.

Set in Aubrey’s lodgings in London during the 1690s, the old man takes us on a general ramble through events throughout his life, including the Civil War and his early days and education. There are stories of folk remedies and strange cures by doctors, and a delicacy of vocabulary when referring to “ravishing”. Sex is fine, apparently, but “ravishing” is not to be taken lightly. There’s a lot of humour in his clumsiness – throwing his warm milk over his shoulder as he tells a story, for example – and in the general squalor and unsanitary conditions of the time. Was that a rat he fished out of his chamber pot, drowned? Actually, no, it was the end of his belt, but it could well have been a rat in that place.

In the second half he told us some stories of real people, some better known than others, and mixing well known history with juicy bits of gossip. Throughout the play there were noises from the street and the flat above, which fed into the stories or at least into his grumbling. It was enjoyable, but seemed a bit dated, although I don’t mind seeing a more gentle form of entertainment such as this from time to time.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Piaf – September 2008

5/10

By Pam Gems

Directed by Jamie Lloyd

Venue: Donmar Warehouse

Date: Wednesday 3rd September 2008

The set was very simple, as often happens at the Donmar. An elaborately carved rectangular stone arch framed the very back of the stage, while the back wall looked like it belonged in one of those underground tunnels that Don Wildman is always investigating on Cities of the Underworld. It was dark, with an unfinished texture, and just the word ‘Piaf’ in faint lettering running down the lower right hand side. The floor had cobbles and rough concrete to match.

We were in the back row again(!) – must book earlier next time – so we were actually feet away from the action, instead of inches! Never mind, this didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the play. What did spoil it a bit was the way a perfectly good bio-drama, with songs (she was famous for her singing after all) had been edited down to a Greatest Hits compilation, with a few bits of dialogue tying it together. [And I read in the play text that it was the author herself who did this!]

To be fair, the performance of Elena Roger as Piaf was excellent. She aged herself tremendously over the course of the play, with only a little help from makeup and wigs. Her singing voice was powerful and could easily tackle Piaf’s songs, and she was also small, which helped the impersonation. The rest of the cast also sang well, and we know them to be good actors from past experience, but with so little for any of them to do this time around, you’d be forgiven for thinking that neither the author nor the director had any of our confidence in them.

I liked the finale very much. From the point when her old mate Toine turned up, with Piaf looking at death’s door, to the closing chords of ‘Je ne regrette rein’, the emotional impact that had been conspicuously absent so far suddenly hit me, and as the music for her final song started up, my tears began to flow. It was enough to leave me feeling reasonably happy with the production, but I still don’t know why they had to cut out so much good stuff. I particularly missed Piaf and Toine’s discussion of crabs (the genital variety).

In fact, apart from a couple of good jokes, the humour had largely disappeared. This was a determinedly bleak view of a woman who had faced many tough times, and proved herself to be even tougher. She drank like a fish and got hooked on drugs after one of her car accidents – she would let reckless young men drive her about. Many of the men in her life just used her as a money machine, and she had a habit of cutting herself off from anyone who really cared for her. Even so, there was still a spirit there that could fight back against the odds, and a talent that could captivate thousands. Where was that spirit today? I felt the whole production had been made deliberately unsentimental, with very little warmth, and practically no time to get to know the characters and relate to them. This is why it took till nearly the end of the performance for me to feel engaged with it. It didn’t help that the dialogue was often too rushed for me to make it out, even when it was in English, and the songs, though sung very well, didn’t move me much at all.

Having said all that, it obviously pleased a lot of Piaf fans, with several standing at the end, and I did enjoy it well enough to give it 5/10. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this again though, unless it’s closer to the original version, which we saw many years ago and enjoyed better than this.

P.S. I caught up with some reports of Pam Gems’ comments. Apparently she was adding in new information about Piaf’s relationships and her activities during the war that weren’t available last time. Doesn’t change my opinion, but interesting all the same.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Never So Good – July 2008

6/10

By Howard Brenton

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Wednesday 30th July 2008

I found this a bit disappointing, given the good reviews it’s had. The queue for returns was certainly long enough. But even so, I did enjoy a lot of this performance. In fact it was the performances that made it for me – the writing seemed lacklustre at times, while the staging had a few high spots and a greater number of low ones. I was finding the heat difficult today, I must admit, but as I found the opening line funny, I don’t think my state of mind was the problem.

There were four acts, covering major periods of MacMillan’s life. The first took us up to his final wounding in WWI, and introduced us to his mother and the chap who was his best friend, until that friend decided to convert to Catholicism. This section may also have been meant to show us how MacMillan related to the sufferings of the working-class soldiers, but the writing was rather clunky in this area, and we get characters making comments about his attitude rather than letting us see it for ourselves. My main impressions from this section are that he’s a homosexual who never comes out of the closet, and who doesn’t really have any ambition for himself, so his incredibly pushy mother can mould him to suit her wishes. She wants a son who’s a big cheese in the political world, hence her insistence that Harold give up any idea of converting to Catholicism himself as it would make it impossible for him to hold high office.

Jeremy Irons is playing the older MacMillan throughout, but there’s a younger version we get to see a lot of, and in this early part, he’s doing most of the action while the older version dodders about the stage commenting on events. The younger version manages to survive the battle, despite lying in a foxhole for eight hours with no medical attention other than a shot of morphine. He’s psychologically damaged, however, and the exchange between the two MacMillans at this point makes it clear that his younger self is like a ghost haunting him, a conscience who keeps reminding him that he once had great ideals and has failed to achieve anything to justify them. Survivor’s guilt was mentioned in the program notes, and that’s clearly what’s being represented here. From this point on, the younger version wanders around, but doesn’t seem to get much dialogue, which made the character seem a bit redundant to me, and a waste of a good actor. (Having checked the playtext, the character seems to have more to say than I remember, so perhaps lines were cut, or perhaps they just didn’t register with me.)

The second act covered the run up to WWII, and a brief part of MacMillan’s wartime career when he was based in North Africa. While out there he met Eisenhower, and the two men got along well, which would be to MacMillan’s benefit in later years. At this point MacMillan gets the chance to save a young pilot’s life after his plane crashes, and there seemed to be some lessening of his survivor’s guilt, though I wasn’t absolutely sure about this. However, it does seem to be his turning point, when he becomes much tougher and determined to succeed.

Before this, the play covers the plotting that went on in the Conservative party after Chamberlain’s triumphant return from Germany with minimalist stationary supplies, and it was very entertaining. The opening scene shows MacMillan visiting his mother, who is constantly telling him off for his political choices, including becoming MP for a constituency north of Watford. It’s an absolutely hilarious scene, with several very funny lines, impeccably delivered. We also learn about his wife’s affair with another Tory MP, and one whom MacMillan will be involved with closely, as they’re both supporting Churchill in his attempts to retake power. He refuses to divorce his wife, though, as it would be another block to him holding high office. When the inevitable happens, Churchill takes over as leader of the country, and MacMillan finds himself in Africa talking to Eisenhower (see above).

There were warnings about pyrotechnic effects in the production as we went in, but nothing could have prepared us for the actual plane crash. I felt a serious blast of heat in my seat, and I don’t know how they stopped the flames from scorching the ceiling, never mind the actors. It was most impressive. Fortunately they now have the interval to clean everything up.

After the interval, we see the back room shenanigans involved in the Suez crisis. It’s quite good fun seeing the plotting and intrigue, the speculation about what will happen and, more importantly, how the intervention will look to everyone else. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s a ludicrous plan, but it does show how the last traces of the Empire attitude lingered after WWII. MacMillan’s also in good form, manoeuvring himself nicely into the top job as Eden nose-dives into oblivion. It’s in this scene that his younger self seems particularly quiet and superfluous.

The final act is a short one, and takes us from MacMillan’s appointment as PM to his retirement. We see him getting to grips with the requirements of the top job, including negotiations with the French and with Eisenhower. MacMillan attempts to get access to America’s nuclear secrets, only to be told fairly bluntly that the Americans think the British have been faking their atomic orgasms. The effect of the new generation of satirists is mentioned, and then the Profumo affair comes along, and it’s Supermac’s turn to leave the political merry-go-round. And with a final reference to Google, he bids us farewell and leaves the stage.

As I’ve already said, I enjoyed the performances more than the writing or staging. The problems with the staging were simple, but first I want to describe the set. It had an angled wall with tall doors to our left. The doors have glass panes, so at first I thought they were windows. To our right, there were three or four rows of storage shelves, filled with official-looking boxes; these were moved about in later scenes to create the setting for the  Cabinet Room. Wooden chairs were placed in front of the pillars on either side. It was too gloomy at the start to see what the back wall was like, but it looked like industrial concrete. There was also a huge panel of windows that dropped down towards the front of the stage a couple of times, complemented with two chandeliers, and this usually represented a posh location – the Ritz ballroom perhaps. For the First World War, there were mounds and wire and suchlike to represent the battlefield – these were moved into place behind the panel of windows. A wall with greenery slid on about halfway back on the right, with a bench, and this was the setting for MacMillan’s country home. The plane crash in North Africa had lots of metal barrels standing around to hold the many flames, and for other scenes there were tables and chairs brought on as required.

Although we weren’t sitting that far to the side (about six seats in), I found I could see right through the shelving on our right, into the wings, and so whenever the stage crew were getting ready to move things around, these people who were clearly nothing to do with the performance on stage would come into my line of sight, distracting me for a moment from the play. It happened enough that it affected my enjoyment of the piece, and shows a sad lack of ability on the part of the designer, creating a set with such an annoying tendency to prevent audience members from enjoying the show! The amount of haulage was also a problem at times, and reminded me of Michael Attenborough’s comments about “theatre of burglary”, where the lights go down and people dressed in black come into your home and rearrange the furniture. The burglars were well active today, and obviously so, as this time the lights didn’t go down.

A number of the changes were covered by dances, usually between the acts. These did have the advantage of letting us know which time period we were in, but they went on for so long that the momentum of the performance was lost. Given that the writing was a bit lacking in interest, that’s not a good idea. Other than that, I liked the set and the flexibility it gave, but I wouldn’t willingly see this production again, despite the good performances.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Funny Girl – May 2008

7/10

Music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, book by Isobel Lennart

Directed by Angus Jackson

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Tuesday 13th May 2008

I’m not a great one for musicals, but I was interested to see this one. Barbara Streisand made the part of Fanny Bryce so much her own that it’s understandable that there’s been no major production of it for many years, so as I haven’t seen the film, this was pretty new territory for me.

Of course, many of the songs were familiar, and the story, despite being based on Fanny Bryce’s life (or parts of it), was incredibly familiar. Piaf, Marie Lloyd, etc. all seemed to have similar themes to their life stories. But here we only get to see the unpromising beginnings, the rise to stardom and the glory days – no descent into post-stardom for this show.

To get across the show-biz nature of the piece, most of the sets showed the back wall of the theatre itself, which also doubled as the outside walls of the apartment blocks in the run down area Fanny comes from. There were some more opulent sets as well, for when she’s made it big, but I really don’t remember noticing the changes, they were done so slickly.

The story is one long reminiscence, as Fanny prepares to go on stage. Starting with her early attempts to get a job, we see her shoehorn her way into a tall, leggy chorus (she’s short and plump), take over the act completely by improvising comic business, and gradually make herself the star of whatever show she happens to be in. She’s helped in this by a tall, good-looking chap, Nick Arnstein, who seems to be well-off, and is certainly charming. He bids up her salary with the current management by claiming to represent another theatre, so she’s naturally grateful. Not that that matters, as she fell hook, line and sinker for the guy as soon as she clapped eyes on him. He, of course, is a chap with no real job, who just loafs around the theatre circuit taking advantage of whatever’s on offer. He soon realises that Fanny is an all-you-can-eat meal ticket, and it’s not long before they’re married. Naturally, there’s another chap who adores Fanny, but whom she regards as a good friend, and who would have been a much better match for her.

To do him justice, Nick does actually want to make his own way in the world; he’s just hopeless at doing it. He invests Fanny’s money in at least one get-rich-quick scheme (a golf course or hotel or casino, or some such), and loses it all. Later on he gets an amazing offer of a job that seems to be right up his street, but he realises it’s too good, and that Fanny has arranged it to give him some self-respect. That proves the clincher, and they split up. Fanny had even given up her career to be Nick’s wife, but now she has to go back on the stage to earn her living, and the play takes us up to her return.

It’s a moving story, with some very good songs, and this cast do it pretty well. The musical numbers with the dancers were all excellent, some of the duets were a bit weaker, but Samantha Spiro gave us a very good Fanny Bryce. Her voice isn’t as strong as Streisand’s, obviously, but she got the vulnerability across, and still got my toes tapping to the songs. I prefer musicals like this which do at least have some depth of character to them, so I enjoyed myself more than I expected.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Fram – May 2008

5/10

By Tony Harrison

Directed by Tony Harrison and Bob Crowley

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Thursday 1st May 2008

This was an interesting play, at least for the first half. The subject matter was relatively unknown to me, and the choice of characters seemed really weird until they all came together for the final scene before the interval. Perhaps I should mention here that Sian Phillips’s speech as Sybil Thorndike in that scene nearly put me off my ice cream! (I said nearly.)

The play starts in Westminster Cathedral. There’s a pillar with a marble decorated ledge, two large stained glass windows, one suspended at the front of the stage, the other at the back, and lots of echoing darkness. The stained glass windows were actually projections, which made them easy to remove and replace. The floor was covered with black cloth, also easily removed to reveal the arctic ice. Film projection was used quite a bit, both at the back and on a screen lowered towards the front of the stage. There was also a proscenium arch set with two side boxes, a drawing room type scenario (where Sybil gives her stomach-churning speech), and some good interpretations of snowy wastes. The first of these consisted of a central area with some jagged ice blocks sticking up at an angle, and lots of flat floes around it. The temporary hut was set up beside these blocks. Later, when Nansen and Johansen return to the Arctic, their ship, Fram (means “forward” in Norwegian), rises up majestically out of the floor, as the central part rotates. It was reasonably impressive, but I noticed that the ship’s masts were at right angles to the stage, although the ship itself was angled as if it were a submarine rising from the depths, and at speed. Very peculiar.

The play opens with the sounds of locks being turned, doors creaking open, and footsteps echoing along stone floors – slightly reminiscent of Tales of Old Dartmoor, a Goon classic. Eventually we get to see a character, Gilbert Murray, a dead professor who not only translated ancient Greek dramas into English verse, he also speaks the stuff, and at considerable length. He’s a little miffed that his translation of the Oresteia wasn’t used for the National’s production some years ago (funnily enough, they used Tony Harrison’s instead), but exceedingly miffed to find he’s buried only a short distance from T S Eliot, a man he obviously detested (and who didn’t speak highly of him).  Fortunately he gets another character to explain things to, and this is Sybil Thorndike. He tells her he’s writing a play, in verse, about Fridtjof Nansen, a man they both knew, and there’s a part for her in it. Nothing gets an actress’s attention quicker than that, and despite the total lack of a script, set, costumes, rehearsal time etc, she’s persuaded to join in this ‘improv’ piece. She’s none too happy when she finds her dress is the wrong colour and she’s only in one scene, but those come later. And given the amount of time she does spend on stage (and screen) it’s hardly a bit part.

Anyway, they head off to the National, and the screens at the back show us their progress, including their arrival at the entrance to the auditorium. It’s no surprise when they come down the side aisles, Sybil to our right, Gilbert to our left, although from the audience reaction, you’d have thought this was the first time it had ever been done.

I should mention that canned applause was used frequently throughout the production, and it’s a good job too, as this audience seemed reluctant to play the part of the audience within the play. With one notable exception, we restrained ourselves from laughing, clapping, oohing and ahhing as much as possible – I suspect I would have enjoyed the play more if the audience had been a bit more giving. In fact, there were noticeable gaps amongst us for the second half, and I don’t usually see so many folk leave during the applause at the end. From the first scene, I felt there were jokes that didn’t get a suitable response, and Steve and I reckon those who came just weren’t expecting so much humour. Ah well.

Once Gilbert and Sybil were on stage (again), there was some faffing about with a Greek tragedy mask before we get to meet the subject of the play, Fridtjof Nansen. The screen comes down, and we see a slide projected onto it – Nansen is giving a talk about his Arctic experiences. He gives us a reasonably long opening spiel, introduces us to his colleague from the ice, Johansen, then repeats the opening bit twice more, as slides for his talks in Newcastle and Aberdeen appear on either side of the London one. At least the audience was warming up a bit by this time, so we got a chance to laugh at the humour of the repetition.

The screen at the front also covered up the set changes behind, so when Nansen moves from slide show to dramatic reconstruction, all that’s needed is for the screen to lift, and for the black cloth to be surreptitiously whisked off to the wings, like some dead body being dragged away by an alien creature on Doctor Who.

Nansen and Johansen showed us their ‘roomy’ hut (it was tiny), their bear fur sleeping bag which they planned to split in two now they had the luxury of separate sides of the hut, and their complete inability to communicate with each other. They were described as each other’s opposite, with Johansen being the dark side of Nansen’s soul. Personally I wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time with either of them by choice, but I can see how extreme need makes for stranger bedfellows than ordinary necessity. Nansen believed that, as the seas were cooling, the planet would end up covered in ice and snow – everywhere would be like the Arctic. It’s a chilling prospect, though shot through with irony given current concerns about the climate, and it made him a less than comfortable companion. Johansen puts the blame for his own suicide squarely on Nansen’s shoulders; he claims it was the depressing effect of Nansen’s beliefs that led to his drinking and terminal despair. I can see the man’s point. However, being dead means nothing in this play, where ghosts have a remarkably physical presence, so Johansen isn’t gone. Oh no, he becomes Nansen’s conscience and biggest critic, and probably gets more lines in that role than he did when he was (supposedly) alive.

Nansen’s successful trip meant he was welcomed back to Norway as a great hero. His achievement (he reached furthest north) was surpassed a few years later, so he also faced the challenge of despair and discouragement. However, he avoided the bullet, and chose instead to focus his energies on helping the rest of humanity in any way he could. This leads to the scene in a open-plan drawing room, which was using the very slow revolve to subtly change the perspective. It took me some time to spot, and I find that sort of thing helpful in what are otherwise quite static scenes. Various characters were present, all deeply involved in the relief effort for Russian famine victims. There’s some debate about the best way forward – film, radio, newspapers, acting – and the scorn heaped on the influence of the actors is so great that Sybil has to show them what she’s made of. Her moving speech as a starving Russian woman and mother was a little too long, but was also tremendously powerful, and even stomach-churning. The descriptions of eating cooked human flesh have stayed with me longer than I would like, and her wrecking of the buffet was entirely appropriate, if somewhat messy. Delivered as it was by a well-nourished, well-dressed woman, this speech ably demonstrated the power of performance to move people, and Sian Thomas got the loudest round of applause for her superb acting when Sybil made her triumphant exit.

The second half showed us Nansen’s tour to raise awareness and funds to help with the famine relief effort. He was using the slide show again, only this time the pictures were horrific and sadly not unknown today. He left, and Johansen’s ghost harangued us for a while, exhorting us to look at the pictures in case one of the dead bodies moved. He also stomped off, leaving us with the picture of two dead bodies, supposedly a brother and sister. After a very long pause, there was indeed some movement, which was startling, but I have no idea what any of that was supposed to convey to the audience.

From there, Gilbert and Sybil returned to Westminster Abbey, and after reviling T S Eliot some more, they were interrupted by a Kurdish poet with his mouth sewn up (don’t ask me). He struggled to express himself, and that was that. For a final scene, we get to see Nansen and Johansen on the ice again, this time on Fram, as it rose up from the depths. God knows what that bit was about. Nansen meets a couple of African kids, who’ve apparently been frozen to death because they stowed away in the undercarriage recess on a plane, and were taken too high to survive. The idea of these two being explorers of the frozen air appeals to Nansen; didn’t do it for me, though.

There was also a ballet during the first half, an actual ballet, inspired by Nansen’s drawings of the aurora borealis. It went on too long for me, as ballet has never been my thing, although I’m sure the dancer did a great job.

The ooh moment came during Nansen’s second slide show. To soften us up, he commented that when he showed his pictures of the animals on his arctic expeditions, it was only in England that people went… and the audience this time obliged with an “ahh” (a particularly lovely husky was on the screen at that point).

The performances were all fine, given the tedious nature of some of the dialogue, and the confusing jumble of symbolism and realistic, biography and fantasy. The constant use of rhyming couplets can jar after a while, especially when the rhymes are emphasised, as they often were here. There were a lot of in jokes, mainly to do with the Olivier itself, and although we got most of them, it did take the emphasis completely away from the subject matter, assuming the subject matter was something to do with Nansen and his career. The time spent on the ice was less than I’d expected from the pre-publicity, especially as almost all the photos used that part of the set. It was spectacular enough, although not the only good aspect of the set design.

Overall, it was a disappointing play with some good scenes, which could do with some serious editing if it wants a life beyond the Olivier stage.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes – March 2008

8/10

By David Stuart Davies

Directed by Gareth Armstrong

Venue: Mill Studio

Date: Friday 17th March 2008

No need for a headset tonight. Sitting in the front row, of a very small studio theatre, we also had the benefit of an older actor with impeccable diction and sufficient power to be absolutely clear throughout this engaging performance. Roger Llewellyn reprised his role as Sherlock Holmes (and a number of other characters) in a new play, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s attempts to kill off Sherlock and get some peace. In fact, he got the opposite, and had to resurrect him, but this play concentrates more on the assassination aspect.

The set was much as before, with a chair, table and coat stand to our left, representing the 221b Baker Street flat, and another table and chair to our right, for Conan Doyle and his alter-ego Watson. Roger wore a smart frock coat over a regular Victorian suit, only adding a topper when Professor Moriarty came to call. With this, and some lighting and sound effects, Roger Llewellyn wove his magic. He began by coming right to the front of the performance space and making an announcement to the gathering of shareholders of the Strand magazine – us. As the magazine’s editor(?) he had to inform us of the sad news that Mr Conan Doyle would not be writing any more Sherlock Holmes stories after the current one had completed its run, and expressed all the regret and concern that must have been felt at the time. Not only were they going to miss out on some superb stories, but the magazine might not survive the drop in circulation.

Next we hear from Conan Doyle himself, as he explains his dislike both for Holmes and the way these stories have taken attention from what he considers to be his better work – his romances and historical novels. He’s fed up being the “Holmes man”, and determines to finish the blighter off. Holmes, meanwhile, knows nothing of this, and continues to solve whatever puzzles the writer can throw at him with the easy arrogance and self-satisfaction that Conan Doyle finds so loathsome. We get to see a glimpse of one of these, with Roger acting out brilliantly the character of the wrongly accused chap that Holmes saves from the gallows. When speaking as Holmes, he often includes Watson in his talk, and looks at the chair on the left where Conan Doyle sits to speak to us or write his letters, etc. This was a nice touch.

Eventually Conan Doyle enlists Professor Moriarty to help bump Holmes off. The Professor has been let into the secret, and chooses to inform Holmes of the writer’s plan. It comes as quite a shock to Holmes to find out he’s a fictional character, but the old arrogance soon reasserts itself. Between them, they agree to change the plan. Meantime, Conan Doyle is already planning his next work. With his interest in the supernatural and spiritualism, he wants to include these elements in a story. He’s thinking of a supernatural creature, perhaps a huge hound, that seems to haunt the moors. The only trouble is, he needs a strong character with good scientific reasoning powers to hold the work together and carry out the investigation. But who could this be? He’s determined it won’t be you-know-who, as he’s now dead; Conan Doyle’s just finished the last chapter of that story! It’s quite a problem.

The main enjoyment of the evening was Roger Llewellyn’s performance, or rather performances, as he did all the parts – Conan Doyle, Sherlock, and Moriarty – so well. His ability to change from one character to another with scarcely a beat between, was remarkable, and his accents were superb. The script was still very entertaining, though perhaps less fun than the earlier play which covered Holmes’s cases, but it was good to see Conan Doyle brought in, and to play with the idea of a fictional character having a life of his own. Which of course he does, even if it is always 1895.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Pete & Dud: Come Again – June 2007

3/10

By: Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde

Directed by: Owen Lewis

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Tuesday 26th June 2007

This performance suffered from a number of factors. Firstly, the audience was as sparse as I’ve seen in the Connaught for a long while. They normally get better attendances than this, but tonight there was very little atmosphere from our side of the curtain. Secondly, the comedy material in the show was not really designed to get the audience involved. The Morecambe and Wise tribute show, The Play What I Wrote, is the opposite of this. They did their time learning how to get an audience on their side, and the material in that show gives the actors plenty of opportunity to interact with the crowd. But the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore stuff is at the start of alternative comedy – satirical and surreal – so it’s more up to the audience to get themselves involved, and if they’re not interested, tough.

Thirdly, the structure of the show didn’t help too much, either. It was done as a chat show from the 80s, with Dudley Moore being interviewed by a combination of Russell Harty and Terry Wogan, and Peter Cook showing up part-way through. We got flashbacks of their days with Beyond the Fringe, etc, so we did get to see a fair bit of their material, but we also got snippets of behind the scenes stuff. I felt this made the whole evening rather clunky. To get into the flashback, they had to get props, etc, and while the set was well constructed to allow for all the different settings, it did limit their movements. Also, the need to dispose of the props, hats, and the rest, after the flashback, meant there were longer gaps than I would have liked between scenes.

Finally, the contents of the play are well known, and have already been explored well on TV, so it’s hard to know just who this play was intended for. Aficionados of their work would only get a modest amount of the humour presented to them, and the darker side of their relationship wasn’t explored in enough depth to be really satisfying.

What did I like? Well, the performances were good enough, and some of the sketches were still fun to see, although it’s very difficult to impersonate such a one-off as Peter Cook effectively. I did like the way that neither Pete nor Dud was made the scapegoat for the problems in their relationship. The various TV programs I’ve seen about them often seem to take one side or the other, but while there’s no doubt that in his later years the drinking made Peter Cook a difficult man to deal with, it’s also likely that there were other factors as well. So well done for keeping a balance. I also liked the way the action often contradicted what was being said on the chat show.

All in all, I was glad when it ended, though I hope it has better luck and bigger audiences for the rest of its run.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

lies have been told – May 2007

an evening with robert maxwell

6/10

By: Rod Beacham

Directed by: Alan Doffor

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Wednesday 30th May 2007

This is the third time we’ve seen Robert Maxwell portrayed in drama in six weeks. First there was Michael Pennington in The Bargain, then David Suchet on TV, and now a one-man (though given his size, it didn’t seem like that) show with Philip York playing the man himself.

All three portrayals had definite similarities; not too surprising with someone so recently deceased, and with such a strong public persona. This version gives us a post-death Maxwell, lecturing his audience on the tricks and tactics that made him a “successful” businessman, revealing his past, and eventually letting us in on the biggest mystery – how and why he died. Except that nothing quite happens as expected, and this play certainly gets across one of Maxwell’s early points: people will believe anything as long as it’s what they want to believe. There are some tremendously funny moments as he gives us examples, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury taking out a contract on John Gielgud because he doesn’t like the country’s leading actor being gay!

He takes us through his life in bite-sized chunks, appropriately enough, as he’s wolfing down Beluga caviar and champagne all the while. His early life as a poor Jew in Czechoslovakia, his arrest by the Germans, his escape from a one-armed guard when he was taken on a train journey, his various identities, ending up with the Robert Maxwell we know and ….well, know.

He often plays the other characters as well. At one point, he’s trying to persuade a colonel to set up a publishing company so that valuable scientific information from a German scientist can be published abroad at a time when Germans weren’t allowed to do this. He “plays” the colonel by holding up the cap and working it like a puppet. Very effective.

We see his temper tantrums and mood swings (firing his secretary then being amazed she should take him seriously), his manipulation of people (picking someone to bully in the audience, then getting us to stand up to him and reacting in a way that will hook people to him for life), and his sheer inability to recognise when anything is enough, a result of serious deprivation at an early age, which led him to grab and grab and grab, and never feel satiated.

All the rest is possible, but not definite; we’ll just never know the truth. But his desperate greed, the way he’s driven to succeed so fanatically that he’ll ride roughshod over people and the law to achieve greatness, that rings true. His varied versions of his final minutes are entertaining but ultimately give way to the only question that matters: why did he do it? Although we can never know for certain, this play gives a pretty good insight into the possibilities.

I loved the performance and the play. It’s probably better suited to a studio space, and so the relatively empty Yvonne Arnaud auditorium may have let it down a bit. I felt we could have responded more to some of the lines, although the chaps behind us were very enthusiastic when it came to standing up to him. I didn’t hear all of it, and I found my busy few days catching up with me a bit during the first half, but I still felt it was a good drama, well staged, and well worth the trip.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Mistaken …. Annie Besant In India – April 2007

Annie Besant

Image via Wikipedia

5/10

By: Rukhsana Ahmad

Directed by: Chris Banfield

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 26th April 2007

This was only the second performance of this play, and it became clear early on that a fair bit of work is still needed, even once the performances bed down. The subject is interesting, but the play itself lacks some coherence, and could do with more humour. The performances came across as lacking confidence for the most part, but there was still enough enjoyable material to suggest that, with revision, this could become a very watchable play.

The action is basically split into two sections, covering Annie’s experiences in India in 1916 and then in 1919, with some later events tacked on. Given that she seems to be largely forgotten now, it might have been helpful to have filled in her background more, such as her involvement in the match workers strike, and her relationship with her husband and children. However, we still get to see some momentous occasions, such as meetings with Ghandi, and her support of the young man who became Krishnamurti. With such a rich life, the problem must be what to concentrate on so that the audience can get home before midnight!

The author uses a narrator, or storyteller, to provide us with a structure. She reflects back to her time with Annie Besant (a fictional storyline), and this gives us a window on the past. (This narrator is played by two women – the storyteller who stayed to one side and linked some of the scenes, and the young woman who enters the play and meets Annie in person.) We see Annie as an already established figure within Theosophy and the Indian Home Rule movement. She regards herself as Indian, and is convinced that India’s future lies in a close relationship with Britain – Home Rule within a Commonwealth, rather than Independence. We see her increasing isolation as she disagrees more and more with the choices made by the other Indian leaders, such as Ghandi and Nehru. And we also see Krishnamurti’s split from the Theosophical Society, which she initially rejects, but then comes to accept – why identify someone as special, gifted, and destined to lead people spiritually, then not trust his choices? While he travels the world, teaching, she languishes back in India, waiting for his return, and finally dies in 1933.

The main problem I found was purely technical – many of the cast did not deliver their lines clearly enough. Reading the play text, I suspect I lost about half of what was going on – it is so important for actors to project clearly. This was not true of everyone – on the whole I heard Annie fairly well throughout, and Krishna was usually clear, but the others needed to become stronger in their delivery – the storyteller was almost conversational in volume, and as she was located in the far corner of the stage, that made it very hard to hear her.

Secondly, there were some confusing aspects of the play. In one scene, after Annie is involved in inciting those attending a rally to riot, we see her on the ground, where Krishna finds her. She seems to be confused, rambling, doesn’t know who Krishna is, etc. Shortly afterwards, she’s steered into a meeting with the Governor of Madras, to be sent to prison as a terrorist (there is a war on, after all), and she seems clear and focused. I couldn’t easily see how these scenes related to one another. Had she made a remarkable recovery? Was she losing her mind? Why did Krishna appear to be taking her home and then leave her? Was it a dream? There was too much confusion in what was meant, so although it was possible to ignore that bit and move on with the rest of the action, it left a niggling doubt about how the information was being presented, especially in terms of the timeline.

In the final scene, after Annie’s death, as the storyteller and her character in the play are discussing the event, they express regret at not telling her the truth. What truth? I assumed it was to do with Krishnamurti not coming back, but it’s not clear, and left me with an unfinished feeling at the end.

The other main problem I experienced was the dullness of the piece. There is one lovely piece of humour, when Sidra, the character of the storyteller, starts to explain a spiritual term to Krishna’s father, and he explodes with anger, complaining that “Every second person thinks he’s a swami!” It got across the situation much better than several pages of exposition. Unfortunately, this was the only laugh all evening, and the whole piece felt rather dreary and worthy, like a drama-documentary. More humour would make it more accessible, especially as truly spiritual people are usually full of humour, in my experience.

Mind you, Annie herself comes across as a dour campaigner, so perhaps this play is simply reflecting her personality accurately. I was left at the end not knowing whether the play was a celebration of the life of an amazing woman who influenced Indian political thought and nurtured its educational system, but who ultimately fell into disrepute and became a forgotten heroine, or whether it was a critique of her work, pointing out her mistakes, while trying to remember her in some way. The title suggests the latter, though the elements of the play don’t entirely support that conclusion.

All in all, I was happy enough that I’d seen it, and would be willing to see it again, once the initial run has sorted out the performance issues.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me