Category Archives: Drama

Creditors – October 2008

7/10

By August Strindberg, in a new version by David Greig

Directed by Alan Rickman

Venue: Donmar Warehouse

Date: Thursday 23rd October 2008

I’ve only seen one Strindberg play before, at Chichester, and I was surprised on that occasion to find it more humorous than I’d expected. This play was similar in that respect, and also had the same darkness in all of the characters that appears to be typical of Strindberg’s work.

Three characters meet in the lounge of a Swedish hotel by the sea. There are three scenes, and each scene has two of the characters, so we get to see all of the relationships. At the end, all three are together for what is basically a final, short tableau.

The three people are Adolph, a painter who is unwell, Tekla, his wife who is also a writer, and Gustav, who appears to be a doctor. At first Gustav and Adolph are talking, and it’s clear that Gustav has had a very strong impact on Adolph in a short time. Tekla has been away – she’s expected back at any moment – and it’s the relationship between Adolph and Tekla that Gustav is working on, trying to get Adolph to stand up for himself and take back his manly “rights”, whatever they may be. As a result, Adolph doesn’t go down to the ferry to meet his wife, and when she arrives, all concerned for her husband, Gustav has taken himself off to the next room to overhear their conversation so that he can give Adolph some feedback later.

Husband and wife then have a conversation that shows us their relationship and how Adolph has changed towards her. There’s some frank talk about sex and lovers, and it’s clear they have, or had, a very playful relationship. Now that Adolph has been affected by what he’s heard from Gustav, including a very morbid and detailed description of an epileptic fit, he can’t relate to her in the same way. He wants them to leave that night, while she intends to stay to attend a soiree that evening. He leaves to take a walk in the fresh air and after a short time Gustav re-enters the room.

I’d realised by this time that Gustav had to be Tekla’s first husband, and indeed he was. He now shows his true darkness, as he pretends not to have known she was there. Despite their history, he still manages to seduce her enough to get her agreement to have an assignation with him that night after Adolph has left. She’s partly persuaded by a torn photo of her that Adolph left behind and which Gustav is using to good effect. She finally picks up on this because of something he said, and realises, too late, that she’s been had. As Gustav explains to her the way in which he’s corrupted Adolph as revenge for her betrayal, Adolph is revealed at the door. He’s been listening to their conversation, and now he’s succumbed to Gustav’s programming. He falls into the room suffering from his first epileptic fit, and the play ends with Tekla trying to help him and Gustav commenting that she really does love him.

This description doesn’t get across the lightness and humour in much of this play. Despite appearances, and all of the characters being unpleasant in their own way, I liked the gritty way in which Strindberg was examining these relationships. While I find these plays not as satisfying as those which include the light with the dark – Strindberg really isn’t interested in anything “good” about his characters or people in general from what I’ve seen – I find he makes some good observations about men and women, and introduces some interesting ideas. I was struck once again by how much energy for change there was in Scandinavia at that time. This comes out in Ibsen’s work as well. There were also some comments about how we pick up habits from those around us, especially those we are close to, and how difficult it is to tell who has influenced us and how much.

But the main pleasure for me was the performances. Owen Teale as Gustav conveyed just the right amount of malice concealed behind a well-intentioned exterior. I could see why Tekla had left him in the first place. He wanted to control everything and couldn’t stand to let her get away. Anna Chancellor as Tekla was superb, showing us all the intelligence, passion and vulnerability of this modern woman. And Tom Burke as Adolph gave us a believable victim, despite the increasingly absurd and extreme pronouncements of Gustav. He was like a rabbit in the headlights, transfixed and unable to move. A really good production all round.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Leaving – October 2008

6/10

By Vaclav Havel

Directed by Sam Walters

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 16th October 2008

The set was a country garden. There was a pergola beside me with ivy trailing around it, a stone arched doorway far right, more bits of shrubbery round the walls, and a female nude in the stonework over the entranceway. A swing hung down towards the stone arched doorway, there was a round patio table with metal chairs in front of us, and a wooden bench to the left. The floor was part stone flagged, part brown carpet, which may represent dead lawn.

The play was about a Chancellor who has left office, and how things change once he’s no longer in power, especially as his political opponents are now in charge. Vilem Rieger, played by Geoffrey Beevers, is a middle aged man who had massive popular support when he took office, but now his legacy is coming under scrutiny. He has a long-time companion Irina, who herself has a ‘friend’ called Monika, and he lives with them and his mother in one of the official residences. A couple of former aides are helping him to pack up his things, although he feels he should be allowed to carry on staying in the house. His mother, known only as Grandma, potters about, making unfortunate comments, and there’s also a manservant, Oswald, who’s so old and rickety he should really be retired. Along with this group, there are Rieger’s two daughters, Zuzana and Vlasta, Patrick Klein, a member of the opposition party now in power, who manages to make a miraculous climb up the greasy pole right to the top in the course of the play, some journalists interviewing the great man now he’s no longer so great, and a political scientist Bea, who’s simply drawn to power and is willing to do the usual sort of things to latch on to the top dog. She starts off being attracted to Rieger, then drops him like a hot potato when Klein takes over. And before I forget, there’s also Vlasta’s husband Albin, who says little but is still scolded for being a chatterbox, and who streaks across the stage at one point, completely nude. He’s also wheeled on in the same state, having spent the night in the garden. And there’s a gardener who basically comes on to announce the various political changes in the country, like the gardeners in Richard II.

In fact, this play deliberately references other plays, specifically The Cherry Orchard and King Lear. Oswald is clearly Firs, the old servant who gets left behind when the family leaves, and who lies down on the sofa to die – Oswald does much the same thing. Both plays have a cherry orchard, but while the orchard in Chekov’s play is only being chopped down at the end, this orchard is being chain-sawed from a much earlier point. The King Lear references are abundant, as when Rieger finds he no longer has any influence, and is not only going to be booted out of the house, but may find himself in even deeper trouble. He ends up having to back the new regime, who have adopted his slogans and buzzwords, even though it’s clear they don’t intend to do anything about them. It was interesting to see that Irina, who seemed to be an older version of Bea, only staying with Rieger because he was powerful, actually stays loyal to him until this point, when he throws away his principles and supports the new power elite, specifically Klein. Once he does that, she leaves with Monika, although it’s possible Klein and Monika might develop a ‘special relationship’ themselves.

There’s also a Lear connection with the daughters. Zuzana is confident her boyfriend (French?) can put them up for a while, but later we hear that he’s been arrested on suspicion of something or other. Vlasta starts by offering her father a place to stay in their flat, then changes her mind as the pressure mounts. It may have been Albin’s (Albany) disagreement with that which led to her telling him to shut up as he was talking too much, and presumably triggered his bizarre behaviour.

There’s a load more stuff going on as one of the former aides plots to get himself into a good position in the new government, while the other worries about accounting for paper clips and a bust of Gandhi. Klein keeps turning up, each time with a more impressive job, until he’s finally made it to the top. He buys the residence, and plans to chop down the orchard and build a condo complex with facilities such as pubs, restaurants, shops, cinemas, and, of course, a posh brothel, located in the grand old house itself. He’ll be living in one of his other villas by then, as he’s cannily snapped up a job lot going cheap as the incoming party tries to balance the books. There’s also a lot of references to the Gambaccis, a Mafia-like family with fingers in more pies than they have fingers, if you see what I mean. All in all, this play gives us a complex and absurd picture of a country going to the dogs once a new party takes control, despite having had a good, if ineffective, leader for many years.

The autobiographical aspects are enhanced in this production because the author himself reads some entertaining notes during the performance – a disembodied voice telling us about the writing process, what the author intended at this point, how an actor should say a line, and generally giving us a humorous take on the whole process of writing a play. There’s a lovely spell when the stage has been left empty, and after quite a long pause, Havel talks about the difficulty of judging just how long to leave the stage unpeopled before the audience think the play’s finished and start leaving. Although I found his delivery a bit monotonous, I did enjoy his comments; the long boring bits were worth listening to for the punchlines.

I found myself enjoying this much more than I would have expected. I thought it might be a bit dull, but I now realise that Vaclav Havel probably wouldn’t know how to do dull. Although it obviously referred to Czech politics (Patrick Klein has the same initials as the chap who succeeded Havel), there were a lot of echoes of our own political scene, with Tony Blair having left office not so long ago. In the post-show chat, there were a couple of contributions from Czech ladies; an older woman who had lived through much of the massive changes that country has been through, and a younger woman who confirmed that she saw the play as essentially Czech in nature. She reckoned non-Czechs wouldn’t be able to get as much out of it, but even so, this production was apparently funnier than the original done in the Czech Republic.

There were only a few of the usual questions, what with these comments and questions about the nudity, etc. Someone asked about Irina being such a bitch, but I think the general feeling was that the characters all had some redeeming qualities, and that they weren’t just heroes and villains. I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the Havel season now.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Born In The Gardens – October 2008

6/10

By Peter Nichols

Directed by Stephen Unwin

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Thursday 9th October 2008

The first half of this play seemed to be by Orton out of Beckett. The set was a large room in a mock Tudor mansion, with a billiards light in the centre of the ceiling, a drum kit centre back, a coffin to the left of that, complete with dead body and floral tributes, a suit of armour back right, and a chair front right facing an old TV on a small table, which had its back to us. There were other chairs and a sideboard, plus a bookcase and standard lamp, etc. The coffin was removed for the second half, which gave them a lot more room. The back wall was dark wood, presumably oak, and panelled.

The father of the family has died, and the mother, Maud, and her younger son Maurice are waiting for the rest of the family to turn up for the funeral. It’s a small group. Hedley, the elder son, left home many years ago and made a career for himself as a politician. He’s now a back-bench MP with the Labour party, and still trying to make a name for himself. He has a wife, who from the sound of things is almost as crazy as his mother, two kids whom we don’t see, and a mistress, though we don’t find out about her until the second half.

Queenie, the sister, is also Maurice’s twin. She also left home many years ago to live in America, where she became a journalist. She’s incorporated the trip back for the funeral into a three week assignment travelling through Europe to report on the situation there. This is the late 1970s, and most of Europe is going through political and economic changes (is this the only drama we’re going to get now? Economic doom and gloom? God help us!). She phones her chap back in LA, just before the interval, only to find he’s not being as faithful as he thought.

Maurice has stayed at home with his parents all this while, and has developed some strange habits. He talks to his mother by reporting what the cat says, thus allowing him to be nice to her himself, but seriously catty as the cat. He plays jazz records (still vinyl in those days), and accompanies them on his drum kit. He also deals in second hand books of a pornographic nature, judging by the short extract Queenie read from one of them. I noticed that Hedley was so horrified when he read it that he completely forgot to hand it back and shut it in his briefcase instead. Maurice also spends most of his time winding his mother up. She’s a batty old dear, what with preferring to watch the TV with the sound off so she can talk to the people she sees on the screen. She believes the sound is broken, but we learn that it’s actually fine; it’s just Maurice who’s kept it turned down, presumably so that he can play his drums.

Maud is very much the heart and soul of this piece. Played superbly well by Stephanie Cole, she comes across as old, gullible, kind-hearted, and stuck in her ways. Despite Hedley’s best efforts, he can’t get her to move out of the big mansion into a small condominium in London, so that they can sell the property for developers to do what developers do. She’s adamant that she wants to stay where she is so she can go to the local hypermarket and buy lots of things really cheaply. Like tampons. She keeps lots of packets of soup in the freezer that Hedley bought her, so he wouldn’t feel she didn’t appreciate his gift. She keeps using the old gas boiler for heating the water, even though it might blow up any minute (we hear several loud bangs to reinforce this point). I don’t know what she’s meant to represent in terms of the author’s experience of Bristol folk, but she’s enough like so many people’s older female relatives to stay just this side of unbelievable (but only just).

There’s also an incestuous relationship between the twins, which accounts for Queenie wanting her brother to come and stay with her in the States, and we learn about their father’s sexual abuse of Queenie which Maurice walked in on and which caused her to leave home as soon as she could all those years ago. All in all, it’s not a happy family, but at least Maud and Maurice are content with their lot. The play finishes with Maud chatting happily away to the silent TV people, while Maurice plays his drums to an accompanying song.

While I enjoyed this performance, I find this type of play doesn’t get me as involved as more straightforward storytelling. The surreal nature of the piece distances me from the characters, and although I found it very funny in places, there was little to engage me emotionally or mentally. And as I don’t know Bristol at all well, I didn’t get much from those aspects either. Still, the performances were excellent, and the humour was good throughout, especially the confusion between duplex, Durex, condominium and condom. I’d still choose to spend an afternoon watching a play like this over a lot of other options.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Glass Menagerie – October 2008

6/10

By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Braham Murray

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Wednesday 8th October 2008

I was a bit tired after a long day which involved a trip back from Stratford amongst other things, but although that might have lessened my enjoyment of some parts of this production, I still feel it was too unbalanced to do this play full justice, the excellent cast notwithstanding.

Firstly I’ll describe the set. Designed by Simon Higlett, the rear wall of the set leaned drunkenly against the side of the stage, the windows equally skew-whiff. The rest of the set had come home early from the party, though, and so was much better behaved. We sat just off the centre aisle, so to our left was a day bed with jonquils rather absurdly flowering beside it (they looked like daffs to me, but from their use later in the play I deduced what they were meant to be). Near that was a small table which had a typewriter and books, further back was the dresser and dining room table, and the space extended back to create an exit to the (unseen) kitchen. Above this, along the back wall ran a walkway with a metal railing. At the right hand side it became a stairway down to the apartment, with the central props of the railing perpendicular to the angle of descent. To the right of the stairs was another chaise longue, and beside that was the gramophone and records. In front of these was the semi-circular three-tiered stand that held the glass figurines, and above it there were five strands of wires suspended, with copies of the glass animals attached. I suspect this was to make it clear to everyone in the audience, not just those at the front, what was in Laura’s collection, and this symbolic yet practical touch was echoed by a short cascade of boxes down part of the rear wall, towards the corner. When the lighting was bright enough, I realised these had shoes tumbling out of them, representing the boring job that Tom does to support his family, and a nice diagonal counterpoint to the dangling glassware. Later, when it lit up, I spotted the Paradise Club sign to the left of the back wall – it was just too dark over that way to spot it earlier. There were rugs and cushions and knick knacks all dotted round the place, entirely in keeping with the period, and during the interval those kind stage crew folk came and spruced the place up, ready for Laura’s “gentleman caller”. The typewriter and books were cleared away, there were bright new chintz covers for the chairs and even the cushions on the dining chairs, and the table was covered in a beautiful cloth. The ladies’ clothes changed to match. It was very detailed and created a strong sense of the period and specific location, though not necessarily the wider setting.

I hadn’t seen the play for a long time (1998, according to our records), so I’d forgotten that Tom narrates the story. It started with him lighting up the first of many cigarettes (statutory notices adorned every available door on the way in), and telling us that this was not a true story, because it was based on memory, and then giving us the social context of the period, the 1930s. The mention of economic catastrophe inevitably got a good laugh from the audience, and it was certainly a good opening; getting a laugh while connecting us to these characters’ circumstances is an excellent way to get an audience involved – well, it works for me, anyway. Sadly, things didn’t go so well after that.

For me, Brenda Blethyn as Amanda wasn’t believable enough as a woman who had been a real southern belle in her youth. This meant that her character’s grieving for past glories, and mourning over missed opportunities for happiness was transmuted into vanity and fantasy, lessening the emotional impact, and turning her into a thoroughly unpleasant harridan with no redeeming or sympathetic features whatsoever. This was coupled with Emma Hamilton’s  rather robust portrayal of Laura, which underplayed her timidity and suffering, and left me feeling that Laura was essentially fine if only her mother would shut up for a bit. Again, I found it difficult to engage with her character, and with that of her brother Tom. He was another unpleasant chap, driven to drink and extended cinema attendance (or so he claimed) by the dreadful behaviour of their mother. I don’t blame him, but then I wouldn’t want to spend time with him either. Only Jim, the gentleman caller, showed us some degree of recognisable normality, and it was in his scene with Laura that the performance began to find its feet. Jim was able to show his natural self, instead of the life-and-soul-of-the-party persona he’d been demonstrating till now, while Laura was finally able to express some of her feelings to someone not in her family and feel accepted, liked and even loved, at least for a brief moment. I liked this scene very much, though without the build up from the rest of the play it couldn’t be as moving as I’ve experienced before, but it did show us some nice subtle touches in the two performances.

I thought the main problem was the uncertainty as to how accurate Amanda and Tom are about Laura’s problems. This meant I had to consider the play intellectually, to figure out the clues I was being given, rather than being able to engage emotionally with the characters and their situations. This isn’t Pirandello, for heaven’s sake! But it certainly had some sense of playing with reality, presumably based on the opening narration. I also got a whiff of Chekov, in that instead of going into the heavier emotional aspects of the play, the production seemed determined to give us a lighter version, almost a comedy take on the play. There is humour in it, but I’m not convinced the play can take a comedy emphasis to this extent.

I was also aware of how close in time this play was to Arthur Miller’s first efforts, and could see how he might have been influenced by this, especially in relation to Death Of A Salesman. It’s still a good play, and there was enough to enjoy in this performance that I didn’t feel I’d wasted my time, but I do hope I’ll see a version that involves me more than this in the future.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band Changed My Life Forever – October 2008

6/10

By Patrick Prior

Directed by Jim Dunk

Company: Isosceles

Venue: Mill Studio

Date: Friday 3rd October 2008

What a title! With a name like that, we just had to see this one, and after seeing such a gem last week, I had to make sure my expectations weren’t too high tonight.

Two guys turn up for an audition for a tour of tribute acts for one-hit wonders of the 60s. Eric, already at the place, is warming up on his keyboard when Bob arrives and starts identifying the songs in so much detail that it’s clear he’s something of a nerd. At first he and Eric don’t hit it off, but as time passes, and the rest of Eric’s band don’t turn up, they start singing some of the old hits, to fit in with their conversation, and the ice is broken.

Bob intends to become a world-wide Viv Stanshall impersonator. He’s the BDDDB’s greatest fan, and when he got a redundancy payoff after nearly thirty years in the same job, he decided to use the money to launch his new career. His wife reckoned the money would be better spent on starting up their own business, so they went their separate ways, his ex taking half of everything, including the redundancy money. He’s now living with his mother in her council flat, and giving informal performances in her  sitting room.

Eric’s been rocking for many years, never quite making it into a successful band, though he claims that he was very nearly one of the Dreamers (as in Freddie and). He’s on his third marriage, and I wondered if there was some connection between his band not turning up and his wife being home alone. To be fair, he had had a row with the band the night before – artistic differences – so it may be simpler than it looked. Bob has been making some phone calls and just before the interval he received one which was clearly giving him bad news – I suspect he’s not long for the tribute industry. With Eric off getting them coffee from a nearby café, the first half ends with Bob carefully removing his blond wig, so that he can bury his head in his hands and have a good cry.

The second half starts with Eric arriving back with the coffee and finding Bob in this state. He’s concerned for him, but Bob keeps insisting he’s alright, as men do, and puts it down to nerves about the audition. Eric tries to help by giving him a shot of whisky, and reckons that Bob still hasn’t got over losing his wife, Juliet – cue for song. Then Eric gets a phone call from his band, and isn’t happy. We can guess what’s happened. The two men keep on at each other until all is revealed. Bob has prostate cancer, and Eric’s band has given him the sack. To fulfil Bob’s ambition to leave something that will live on after his death, something that will show the world he existed, Eric suggests that he film Bob doing his Viv Stanshall routine, and then he can put it on the internet for everyone to see for a long, long time. This cheers Bob up, and they finish with a rousing rendition of Urban Spaceman, to celebrate.

This was another lovely piece, with lots of humour, good music (for the most part – I defy anyone to cover My Boy Lollipop successfully), and some moving moments, though not enough to give me the sniffles. Apparently these actors spend their time touring a number of productions, and they put on whichever show the venue wants to see. Tonight was only the second time they’d performed this one, which accounts for some slightly fluffed lines and minor hesitations. (Steve picked up this info during the interval, while the director was chatting to someone else.) Still, it was an enjoyable evening, and I’d certainly be happy to see their stuff again.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

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

The Walworth Farce – September 2008

2/10

By Enda Walsh

Directed by Mikel Murfi

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Saturday 27th September 2008

I should have known. A play by an Irish writer, about three Irish blokes in a tatty London flat, and me not one for liking the Irish style. It was bound to end in disappointment, and although I did my best to like what I saw, the dreariness, brutality and lack of humour won out. My favourite part was the lights going out at the end of the play.

Both Steve and I reckoned this was a crude Irish knock-off of The Homecoming (February 2008). Clearly influenced by Pinter, the play mixed the surreal and the violent, and left us with no idea of the playwright’s intentions. Despite the title it wasn’t funny enough to be a farce, it didn’t show enough of ‘real’ human nature to engage me on that level, and apart from a few throwaway lines about the situation of Irish folk in today’s London, it wasn’t socially relevant either. It certainly gave the actors some fun parts, and they did their jobs with enthusiasm and a lot of energy, but it wasn’t sufficient for me.

The story of the play is that of a father and his two adult sons, who spend almost all their time in the flat re-enacting the story of how they got there. This isn’t the best performance they’ve given, as the younger son picked up the wrong bag at Tesco’s, so they’re without some of the necessary food props for their story. The father is seriously abusive, and uses both violence and the threat of what’s ‘out there’ to keep his two boys chained to him like animals.

As the acted story limps along, we get glimpses of the real one behind it. The father killed his own brother and sister-in-law after their mother’s funeral, and had to run from the police. He ended up in this flat in the Walworth Road, and somehow his two young sons arrived on his doorstep a short while later, possibly to bring him home (although why would their mother have let them go and then not tried to find them when they didn’t return?). He takes them in and to calm them down tells them a story. This goes on for a few days, then one of the boys asks a question, and the great lie comes to life, taking over their lives in the process. For years they’ve gone through a fake version of what happened, with just enough of the truth incorporated to keep it at bay. The father plays himself, while the boys play a lot of other parts, including their younger selves and a number of women. But this time they’re interrupted with more serious consequences.

The checkout girl at Tesco’s had been friendly with the shopping son, and even suggested they go to Brighton the next day. He was so rattled he picked up the wrong bag, and she arrives just before the interval to deliver the right bag. My first thought was of Jenny Jules turning up at The Homecoming – not the same actress, but a young black woman, not too dissimilar. She gets drawn into their storytelling, forcibly, and despite trying to get help from her Mum on her mobile, she isn’t able to get away till near the end.

The older son seems to have grasped that his younger brother not only wants to leave the flat, but might actually be able to survive in the outside world. He decides to kill their father, but winds up his brother by telling him he’s going to kill the girl instead. After stabbing Dad, he releases his brother from the cupboard at just the right time so that the younger man will stab him as he apparently tries to stab the woman. With two of the nutters dead she heads for the door, and dashes out into the rain. So, what will the younger brother do?

He wanders round like a zombie, redoing a few parts of the story, silently. He’s already taken all his father’s money, so he’s not completely lost it. Then he gets his coat on, takes the bag of shopping, and appears to be heading out the door. Instead he shuts and bolts it, and stands, with his back to the door and arms outstretched. And that’s how it ended.

This description makes it sound better than it was. I did get a sense of the sadness of these boys’ lives, brought up to repeat this weird story endlessly, but it was so unreal that I could neither take it seriously nor find it particularly funny. There was some humour, especially in the second half, but overall I think I’ll avoid Irish stuff in future, unless there’s some really good reason to see it.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Drawer Boy – September 2008

9/10

By: Michael Healy

Directed by: Gavin Stride

Venue: Mill Studio, Guildford

Date: Friday 26th September 2008

This was a fantastic experience, and although we’ve seen a lot of good stuff at this small theatre, this was probably the best of them all. My heartstrings weren’t just tugged, a piano’s worth of them were pulled right out of me as we went on this emotional rollercoaster, and I don’t expect to get them back anytime soon. Exquisite agony. And there was a good deal of humour as well, to lighten the load. Heaven.

The set was quite elaborate for the Mill Studio. At the back were two blue sheets, hung one in front of the other, to allow for an exit to the farm proper. In front was the farmhouse kitchen, cut away so we could get a good view of anyone approaching from the direction of the farm. There was a stoop to our left, and a door to the rest of the house on our right. The kitchen had a sink next to the stoop, a stove to the right of that, then the fridge. A table stood by the wall along from the door, with butter and jam on it, and there was a bread bin underneath it. There was a small table with a telephone beside the door. A larger table stood in the middle of the floor, with two chairs and box to sit on. Above the sink was a window, and through this we could see tall stalks of corn growing. Outside there was a stool and a trestle stand which Morgan used as a seat.

The three characters are Angus, Morgan and Miles. Angus is a simple, gentle character. From the start he’s a character we care about, even before we learn about his accident during the war and how it left him with no memory. Morgan is his life-long friend who takes care of him, and he shows a great deal of love in the way he handles Angus’s little ways. Miles is a young actor, part of a collective who have descended on this small farming community to learn about the farmer’s lives and devise a play based on what they find. Miles is not the sharpest tool in the box. He shows so little aptitude for the farming life that after hitting Morgan with the tractor, Morgan gives him nothing but spurious time-wasting jobs to do. Like gravel washing. He fell for every tall story Morgan told him, including the one about rotating the crops during the night, so that the corn that got the morning sun could get the afternoon sun as well. Over time, as Miles gets to know more about these men than Morgan bargained for, he brings to the surface some long-buried secrets, and we get to go through this painful journey with them.

As Angus has no ability to retain memories of anything since his accident, Morgan has been telling him the story of their lives every day for years. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, and well told tonight, under the stars. (I won’t get it right, but here’s the gist.) Morgan tells Angus the story of two boys, one who could draw and was really smart, and one who was a farming boy and was his friend. They grew up together. The one who could draw, the drawer boy of the title, drew pictures of a cabin, and they built it themselves. Then the war came and they both went off to fight. They went to England and met two English girls, one tall, the other taller. The tall girl liked the farming boy, and the taller one liked the drawer boy. They made plans to marry and live together in a double house. One day the drawer boy was outside during a bombing raid, and a front door hit him when a shell exploded in the empty house he was looking at. When the war was over, they all went back home, and they married. Then the women were out driving a big black car that they’d bought, and had an accident. Both were killed, and their bodies were buried at the top of the highest hill in the place. Then the two men lived together in the house.

It’s a sad enough story, but even more moving as told properly in the play. Miles was listening in, and took notes, and in the next scene we see the results. Angus and Morgan have been to a rehearsal by the collective, and see Miles doing this story. Angus is delighted – he recognised the story and that Miles was playing Morgan – but Morgan is furious that their personal story has been used like this, and is in the process of sending Miles packing, when Angus starts to remember things. Up to now, he’s not remembered Miles’s name at all, and Miles has learned to introduce himself whenever Angus walks into the room, or even turns around and catches sight of him after a gap. Now Angus not only remembers his name, he starts to remember why Miles is there, and insists that he stays.

This took us up to the interval. After the interval, we get the gravel washing scene, where we come in part way through Miles telling Angus the story of Hamlet. It sounded as though Miles is talking about himself at first, but we soon picked up on the plot (handy that we’ve just seen the play a couple of nights ago), and Angus seemed to be fascinated by this story. I was concerned that he was confusing reality and fiction, but he always seemed to get a foot back on solid ground when he needed to, a remarkable achievement for someone in his condition.

Angus wants to hear their story again, and wants Miles to tell it like he did at the rehearsal. Miles feels awkward about this, knowing that it’s Morgan’s story to tell, and that Morgan still isn’t happy with him for telling it. He gets Angus to tell the story, prompting him when he needs it. As they get to the end, Angus becomes concerned about where the double house is, and where the two girls are buried, and why Morgan has never taken him there. He starts insisting that they go there, now, and Morgan can’t seem to distract him anymore. Finally Angus just ups and heads off on his own in the middle of the night, with Morgan heading off to search for him, and Miles left in the kitchen to wait.

With Angus not yet back the next day, Miles and Morgan are not getting on. It’s clear there’s more to Morgan’s reluctance to take Angus to the hilltop than he’s admitting, and finally Miles realises that it’s just a story, and that Morgan’s been lying to Angus all along. Unfortunately, Angus hears this comment as he stands outside the kitchen window, and throws a great big wobbly. For a while I thought he’d completely lost it, as he starts talking about Morgan as “him”, and claims “he” killed Angus’s father and married his mother. I thought he’d taken the Hamlet story and started believing it was his, but in fact he was just upset that Morgan wouldn’t admit that he’d lied, nor tell him why. And perhaps there was a bit of spite there too.

So now we’re set up for the final unravelling of what actually happened all those years ago. There was a slight hiatus at this point during tonight’s performance, as Ian Blower, who played Morgan, had only had a week to rehearse after replacing another actor who had broken his ankle. He carried a clipboard from time to time – to be honest, although the director had made an announcement at the start about this, I hadn’t actually noticed any problems with any of the parts up to now. But this was a big speech, and it had awkward variations on the earlier story, making it harder to learn, I’m sure. The correct speech wasn’t on the clipboard, and the director and another assistant were involved getting the right bits of paper for him. Once they did, we got to hear the full tale, and although some impetus was lost, we soon got back into it. (Steve felt it didn’t affect the performance at all – men!)

The real story was that Morgan talked Angus out of going to university, and persuaded him to join up. They saw some horrific things near the start of their service – three men being burned to death – and decided to take a back seat as often as possible, even firing their guns into the air to waste ammunition. They’d met the girls in England as before, but the reason Angus was out in the open when the bomb fell was that Morgan had sent him out to fetch a bottle of brandy which Sally, the taller girl, had in her car. It was a piece of shrapnel that got Angus, in the back of his head, and then no memory.

When they all got to Canada, Sally decided to wait until Angus was better before getting married. The double house wasn’t built, but they did buy the farm, and lived in the house that came with it. One day, when Sally was baking bread, Angus hit her for no reason. She realised there was no chance of him getting better, and so she and her friend left for England. Angus had been asleep when they left, and when he woke up he knew something was wrong and spent ages searching the house. Finally Morgan grabbed him to stop him running upstairs one more time, and told him the story about the car crash to give Angus some peace, which it did. From there, it became easier for both of them to stick to Morgan’s version of events, and so he carried on lying.

There were many emotional moments during this play, but when Angus says to Morgan “you must have hated me then” or similar, once he realises that his hitting Sally has caused Morgan to lose the love of his life, I just wanted to sob for ages. I can still feel the tears now. To say that to a friend who caused him to have no memory, was tremendously moving. After this, Angus seems to settle back into the previous setup, and Miles heads off to another rehearsal. He’d been to milk the cows, and apparently broke the milking machine, so milked all the cows by hand to give them some relief. Without a bucket. Morgan heads off to see how much damage he’s done, and is delighted to find that he actually got the machine to work, and that the vat is full. With his delight still ringing in our ears, Angus takes the plans for the double house and pins them up on the back of the door, where they had been previously. It’s a worrying sign – how much will he now expect, and how hard is Morgan going to have to work to keep him happy? But at least we know all, and I don’t just mean the story.

This was such a moving play, with plenty of understanding and compassion for the characters, that it was a real privilege to be watching it. Like Calendar Girls, it’s the kind of play that makes me glad to be human. There were no heroes, but the mistakes that were made were normal for young men, and their relationship was full of caring, which tempered the guilt Morgan must certainly have felt at times. Both Morgan and Angus will stay with us for a long time. Miles, on the other hand, will not be allowed through the door, though if the acting doesn’t work out, he can always get a job milking cows.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Hamlet – September 2008

10/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Gregory Doran

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Wednesday 24th September 2008

We were really keen to see this production again after our first viewing back in August. The performance didn’t disappoint, but there were some factors which took the edge of our enjoyment. Firstly, the seats were two of the narrowest you can get in this theatre, and we’re not two of the narrowest people on the planet, so we were wedged up against each other, and our neighbours, for the whole of the play. This meant I wasn’t as relaxed as I like to be. Secondly, there were so many people coughing during the first two hours that I found it harder to concentrate and really get caught up in the story, even though it was being told so well. At least the second half was quieter, and even in the first half, a lot of those coughing seemed to realise they could wait till a scene change, so the distraction level wasn’t so bad. I also realised that the circle seats are very creaky, and my hearing aids don’t handle that kind of intermittent background noise very well, so that was something of a problem for me – Steve didn’t notice it all.

Right, that’s the down side out of the way. Now for the fun stuff. I liked our position, squashed as it was, because I had a very different view of the play. Not being so close meant I didn’t feel so involved emotionally, but I was much more aware of the interactions between the characters, and there were some things I just hadn’t seen before. There were only a few changes that I noticed, and now that I’m more familiar with the order of events, I’ll try to get that down as best I can, and mention any variations from the earlier performance.

The opening scene is on the battlements, and I was much more aware of the use of the torches to bounce a light up into the face of whoever’s speaking. The glossy floor and mirrored wall at the back meant that there were at least four lots of everything, and not just in this scene. It was harder to spot that the ghost was also played by Patrick Stewart from this angle.

The first court scene starts at the back, as the mirrors open to reveal the royal family acknowledging the applause of their people. A balcony scene, as it were. Hamlet didn’t stand out quite so much from this angle, although I was much more aware of Gertrude managing the event, and glancing across to check on Hamlet from time to time, making sure he doesn’t spoil her big day. Again I had the sense of her trying to give her son a good talking to, but being constrained by the public nature of the occasion.

Hamlet’s “too, too solid flesh” was still good, and leads into the scene where Horatio arrives to tell him of his father’s ghost. After this comes Laertes’ leaving scene, and this was certainly as good as before. From the Circle, I could see Ophelia lying down when Laertes is giving  her his “good” advice, and doing a starfish imitation – the physical equivalent of sticking her fingers in her ears and going “la, la, la, la”. Not a new action, but more clearly seen from the higher position. Polonius was just as good, and so to the next night time venture onto the platform. Hamlet draws a short sword on the others to stop them following him, and the rest of the scene is as before. I wasn’t so sure this time whether they were running away from or towards the sound of the ghost during the swearing part.

I think the next scene was Ophelia reporting Hamlet’s strange behaviour to her father, followed by the arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at court. When they leave, Polonius steps forward with the information about the ambassadors’ arrival, and the possibility that he knows why Hamlet is mad. The ambassadors are still dealt with swiftly, and then we get the lovely tediousness of Polonius for a while. He summoned his daughter on stage at the start of this bit, and she’s standing there while all this is going on. They resolve to test out the “mad in love” theory, and as Hamlet is coming along right about that time, Gertrude is sent off, Ophelia is given a book, and Claudius and Polonius hide behind the mirror.

Hamlet does “to be or not to be”, and then Ophelia enters again to give him back his gifts. It’s a difficult scene, especially as Hamlet later claims he loved Ophelia, but I guess we have to allow him some leeway, as he’s had a challenging few days. He hears a noise about halfway through their talk, and realises they’re being spied on, and that’s when he turns nasty towards her. I recognised this as the same response he has to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; he doesn’t know how complicit she is in whatever plots are on the go, so he shuts her out completely. After he leaves, Claudius and Polonius re-enter, leaving the mirror open. Ophelia is sent home, Claudius leaves, and Polonius tackles Hamlet as he comes back on.

When Hamlet sees the open mirror panel, he realises where they were hiding, and goes through it to check behind, but of course, there’s nobody there now. He baits Polonius as usual, and then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turn up, and we’re into the arrival of the actors and Hecuba. After this, the scenes are much as usual, and the break was still spectacular, though not so much of a surprise. The effect with the gunshot that kills Polonius was better this time around, and Ophelia’s mad scenes were riveting. She swung from gentle dottiness to screaming rage in an instant, and all believably. Gertrude’s recognition of the danger in the cup, and her choice to drink anyway, was still powerful, and the play ended in happy tragedy, if I may use that term, as despite all the deaths I felt so uplifted to have seen another excellent performance of this production. One more to go.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Calendar Girls – September 2008

8/10

By Tim Firth

Directed by Hamish McColl

Venue: Festival Theatre, Chichester

Date: Tuesday 23rd September 2008

The set for this will take some explaining. There was a rectangular platform on the stage, basic brown with the markings of a badminton court and a piano in the corner. Very village hall. The back wall was dark at the bottom, with a lighter top half, and a curved edge between them representing hills in the distance. As the play started, there was a lone voice singing Jerusalem, and the back wall lifted up so that the characters could come on stage, and the back part of the village hall could come forward, giving us a hatch to the kitchen and some stairs to the outside, as well as some walls to hang bunting on later.

Most of the characters formed up on the platform and began doing something which could pass for tai chi, while Elaine C Smith, as Cora, carried on singing Jerusalem on her own, varying the words a little as she got onto the second verse. From here, we follow the lives of these six women as they learn of John’s illness and death, and do their naked photo shoot to make the charity calendar. All of that takes up the first half, and while the story is much as expected, there are important differences. For a start, they’re only allowed to mention six of the women because the others no longer want anything to do with the story. And the nude bits had to be done with care, as the Festival Theatre is a seriously thrust stage, and the audience were almost completely surrounding them. There was very little detail on show, but plenty of humour as the ladies bared their flesh for the camera. The final shot, for December, had them all draped over the piano singing carols, and ended the first half.

The second half followed the amazing popularity of the calendar, and the effect it had on their lives and relationships. The play didn’t cover the trip to America, understandably, but we still got the bust up between Chris and Annie over Chris’s desire for the limelight. The final scene had all the women visiting a section of hillside where sunflower seeds had been planted, and admiring the blooms. For this, the platform was tilted – this had already been done once or twice for outdoor scenes – and the cast opened up the flaps which were covering the flowers, and lifted them up. It may have taken a bit of time, but the effect was lovely, especially through my tears. A couple of tourists arrived and want to take a picture, and the women are quite taken down when they find out it’s not the glamorous calendar girls they want, but the sunflowers.

I loved the way this play covered much the same story as the film, but brought out different aspects of the story. The lives of the other women came much more to the fore, and that gave it more balance. It was also easier to see how difficult it must have been in that small community to have made that choice and actually posed for the calendar. The performances were excellent, and it was more of an ensemble piece than the film. It’s not often now that a play really celebrates what it is to be human, warts and all, and I felt uplifted to have seen this tonight, as well as enjoying several lots of sniffles. As someone commented in the post-show, there just aren’t the dramas in any medium showing us these sorts of lives, or women of these ages and these backgrounds, and allowing them to have a voice. This one will fill that gap for many years to come, I’m sure.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me