Category Archives: Drama

Afterlife – August 2008

6/10

By Michael Frayn

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Saturday 2nd August 2008

It was another hot afternoon, I was tired, and we were facing a long journey back to the house after a less enjoyable play than I’d hoped, so at the end of this performance I was ready to give it a 4/10 rating. But, after a good night’s sleep, and remembering the good bits of the play, which did have quite a few laughs after all, I’ve decided 6/10 is fair. But not by much.

The set was epic in scale. Marble steps the full width of the stage swept up from the front of the stage, which was lower than usual, to a brief platform, then continued upwards to the upper level, which at the start was empty. Massive arches were brought forward almost immediately, though, and these seemed to keep coming forever. They moved about a bit, but basically they were in place for most of the play, with windows, doors or just see-through as required. They certainly made the atmosphere very Germanic and imperial.

The play was about Max Reinhardt, a theatre impresario and also a Jew, who stages lavish spectaculars across the world, with casts of hundreds and even thousands, and that’s not counting the musicians! Despite attracting equally huge audiences, he appears to have been a drain on many purses, but still managed to live a life of opulence. He buys a palace in Salzburg, and through his enthusiasm and drive starts a festival there. He himself directs a production of Everyman, a morality play about God asking Death to pick someone, anyone (sounds like a card trick, this does), and bring him to God for judgement. Being a morality play, it’s written in rhyming couplets, and that’s how a lot of this play is written, too. In fact, it starts out in rhyming couplets, as Reinhardt and his friends attempt to persuade the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg to allow Reinhardt to stage the first performance of Everyman in the square in front of the cathedral. To do this, Reinhardt demonstrates the play himself – he knows all the parts – and so we get to see various chunks of the opening scenes.

By magic, the magic of theatre, we’re whisked away to the palace, where Reinhardt has the actors help him perform the banquet scene where Death comes to select Everyman. It seems for a bit as though Reinhardt himself is being chosen by a “real” Death, with his name being called, and no one else being able to hear it, but it finally resolves into part of the play, and they all have a good laugh about it. The Prince Archbishop agrees to the play being staged, and then we’re into rehearsals (Reinhardt takes obsessive-compulsive to new levels) and the performance (the Archbishop is in tears), and then we get to see Reinhardt’s home life, or rather his away-from-home life, as his secretary and mistress exchange comments on his progress across the planet (he sends lots of telegrams).

There’s one entertaining bit when Reinhardt is choreographing his servants to perform perfectly for a party, and they end up all doing a serving dance to music. He’s a total showman, and rather than enjoy his own party, he’s depressed that the guests don’t know how to behave properly. They’re just milling around – rank amateurs! He wants everything in his life to be theatrical, but reality keeps letting him down.

The dance ends the first half, and then we get more of his life and times from the start of the second half. The growth of the Nazi party is shown, and one chap in particular, Friedrich Muller, has taken a complete dislike to Reinhardt. Muller ends up running the local government once the Germans annexe Austria, and decides to live in Reinhardt’s recently re-appropriated palace which now belongs to the German people. He’s a nasty piece of work. Reinhardt manages to get away and spends time in America where he eventually dies, having spent all his money and being almost friendless.

The performances were all excellent, with Roger Allam being in really good form, and getting the maximum out of the lead role. David Burke as the Archbishop was looking frailer than I remember, but still carried his part off well, and I also liked Selina Griffiths as the long-suffering secretary Gusti Adler, and Peter Forbes as Rudolf Kommer, known as Katie, who managed Reinhardt’s financial affairs for many years, but eventually left him to go to New York ahead of the German invasion. He had a lot of the funny lines, as did Selina, and God knows we needed that, especially in the second half.

My main problem with this play was the lack of dramatic structure. Although it seemed to be leaning heavily on the morality play format, that’s not how it really worked out. Reinhardt fell on hard times, yes, but he wasn’t downhearted by them. He wasn’t taken off for judgement by Death – he simply died. Despite setting us up for some parallels between the Everyman story and Reinhardt’s, nothing came of it, at least not to me. Although Michael Frayn is a very intelligent man, he’s also an atheist, and so perhaps the choice of a religious morality play wasn’t the wisest one, as he doesn’t seem to have grasped what it’s about. We need to see the behind-the-scenes judgement or redemption, or there’s no point. It’s no good criticising the equivalent scenes in the Everyman he’s drawing on for inspiration, if he can’t do better himself (see program notes). And since he obviously doesn’t understand what these scenes are about, perhaps it would have been better to have left the whole concept alone.

Having said that, there are a number of good lines in the play, though it’s shorter on ideas than most of Frayn’s work. I liked the desperation of the poor actor who’s trying to get what Reinhardt wants for the opening lines “Draw near, good people all, I pray”. And the comments about Jews being more supportive of the Catholic church than the local Catholics were quite fun. And Reinhardt’s description at the start of how simple the staging of Everyman will be – complete with sound effects cut off at his command – that was good fun too. So there were a number of good bits like these throughout most of the play, but an awful lot of dreary bits as well. Overall, not a success, but not a complete waste of time either.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Crown Matrimonial – July 2008

5/10

By Royce Ryton

Directed by David Grindley

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Date: Tuesday 15th July 2008

This play covers the events leading up to Edward VIII’s abdication from the family’s point of view, and finishes with a final scene set after WW2, when the Duke of Windsor was hoping to come home. The scenes are all set in Queen Mary’s sitting room, so a great deal of the dialogue is reportage. There’s also a fair bit of clunky exposition for those not so familiar with this story, so I found it took some time to get going.

I wasn’t immediately taken with Patricia Routledge as Queen Mary. She didn’t have quite enough authority for me, more of the middle class housewife done up with a load of bling. However, she grew on me as the performance went on. The other actors suffered from the clunky dialogue, cut-glass accents and lack of animation, which suited the characters but was dreadfully dull to watch. There was one good scene when the king turns up for dinner to find one more sister present than he expected. The awkward silence spoke volumes about how the situation was affecting the family, as well as emphasising why David feels the need for Wallis’ company. They could be a stuffy lot, these Windsors.

The scenes in the second half were better as a lot of explanation had already been done and the characters could get on with it more. I found the third scene very moving, where Bertie steps up to take on the role of king, and my eyes were very wet at times. I also enjoyed the earlier scene, where Elizabeth gets to speak her mind about David’s selfishness and how he’s affecting the rest of the family. It’s entertaining, and David does stand up for himself too, but it did go on a bit too long for my liking.

The debates between the characters were occasionally interesting, as they gave an insight into a time when Hitler and Mussolini hadn’t convinced everyone that they were bad news. David came across as an innovator, determined to bring his country and his church into the twentieth century, and even to build up the armed forces to make the country stronger. The opposite perspective is well represented by the Queen Mother and her daughter Mary, who are staunchly in the ‘no change’ camp, and who won’t even meet, or ‘receive’, Wallis Simpson because she’s divorced. Admittedly, her first divorce looks like misfortune, while her second, underway as the characters speak, looks like carelessness. And opportunism. We may never know.

This play was much more charged when it was first produced, as some of the characters were still living. Now that none of them are alive and we’ve had so many documentaries about this issue, it seems a bit stale, not helped by the lack of action and frequently stilted dialogue. There are some good laughs, and the performances were as good as the text would allow them to be, but it may be wise to leave it in mothballs for a good many years to give it more historical interest. Still, it was a good production, and I enjoyed my evening.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Chalk Garden – July 2008

8/10

By Enid Bagnold

Directed by Michael Grandage

Venue: Donmar Theatre

Date: Thursday 10th July 2008

Wow. Steve and I had seen this play before, but I had very little memory of it, as it hadn’t made much of an impression on me at the time. Today’s production was the complete opposite. Totally memorable, with magnificent performances and excellent writing.

The story is relatively simple. Mrs St Maugham advertises for a governess for her grand-daughter, and gets more than she bargained for. Of the four applicants invited for an interview, only one stays long enough to meet her prospective employer, and she seems very unqualified to take the post. The grand-daughter in question, Laurel, is one of those too-precocious-for her-own-good types, with lots of stories about how dreadful her life has been, all told in a causal, off-hand manner. There’s a manservant, Maitland, who appears to be a nervous wreck, and an elderly man who is looked after by a nurse. We never see this man, but he appears to have a strong influence in the household – he was the butler for many years – and the nurse occasionally comes down to pass on messages. Olivia, Mrs St Maugham’s daughter and Laurel’s mother, also makes an appearance or two, as she now wants to give Laurel a home with her and her new husband. She’s expecting another baby, and she clearly wants to get the family back together again.

Miss Madrigal, the one remaining applicant, seems to have some understanding of Laurel, but is reluctant to stay. She’s put off mainly by her own circumstances and is only persuaded to take the job through Olivia’s intervention. Miss Madrigal is also concerned about the garden. It’s a chalk garden, and the butler has been directing operations so badly that he’s trying to grow all sorts of plants, such as rhododendrons, that hate chalk soil. The analogy between the garden plants and Laurel is obvious, especially with a name like that. Within two months, at the start of the next scene, Miss Madrigal has restored order to both the house and the garden. Laurel is behaving herself – she hasn’t set fire to anything for a long time – and the garden is being licked into shape. The old butler isn’t happy at all, but being stuck in his room, he can’t do anything about it. The nurse does glare at Miss Madrigal when she comes down, but that doesn’t trouble her in the least.

Things change when an old friend of the family comes to visit. He’s a judge, and it turns out he presided over the one trial Miss Madrigal has attended – her own. She was a young girl, accused of murdering her younger step-sister, and her habit of telling lies to get attention backfired when nobody would believe her story at the trial. Now she’s naturally distressed to see the judge again, and convinced he’s rumbled her, she blurts out enough of the truth to jog his memory into remembering her fully.

With part of the truth out, there are ructions in the house. Olivia turns up to take Laurel away, and Miss Madrigal supports this. Mrs St Maugham wants to keep Laurel and send Miss Madrigal packing, but once Laurel has left with her mother, she finds the prospect of an empty house too frightening, and grudgingly comes to accept Miss Madrigal’s offer of companionship. The butler chap has died, just at the right moment, so Miss Madrigal can reign supreme in the chalk garden. The play ends with the two women beginning their edgy relationship, one that we know they’ll both benefit from, despite Miss Madrigal refusing to tell the other woman, and us, what we all want to know – did she do it?

Having said this was a simple story, I find I’ve taken a full page to give only a rough précis of the plot. Apart from the humour, of which there was a great deal, the enjoyment lay in teasing out the subtle clues about Miss Madrigal and her background. It became clear she’d been away from society for a long while – she didn’t have references, for example – and her ability to understand and relate to Laurel without joining in her games was a big clue. She wanted to help the child as much as she could, so she wouldn’t end up making the same mistakes as she had, the ones that led to her spending many long years in prison. Her knowledge of gardening was obviously learned there, and there’s one lovely scene where Miss Madrigal speaks out with more passion than usual for her, about taking care of the garden and the plants. It’s moving and very funny, and I must get the text as I can’t remember a word of it. Penelope Wilton played Miss Madrigal, and I suspect I’ll not see better this lifetime.

Margaret Tyzack as Mrs St Maugham will be hard to top as well. She got to perfection the scattiness and hauteur of the character – totally the wrong person to bring Laurel up. Some of her lines were incredibly funny, and impeccably delivered. The others in the cast were also very good, as I would expect from a Donmar production.

We were reminded both of Terence Rattigan and Ibsen in the style of the piece, with its gentle observation and symbolism drawn from nature. I’d certainly go to see this play again, though I won’t expect it to be of this standard.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Quiz – July 2008

8/10

By Richard Crane

Directed by David Giles

Venue: Mill Studio

Date: Friday 4th July 2008

I was very much looking forward to seeing David Bradley on stage again, and in a solo performance. As it was a new play, I had very little idea what to expect and the way the play was written, neither did the character on stage.

The set was very simple. Various pallets were arranged to form a small platform and back wall in the centre of the studio space. Packing crates were distributed on either side, with candles stuck in bottles all over them. The candles were very short. Large candle holders stood on either side of the stage, with bigger candles, and a couple of rugs were lying across the platform and the floor in front of it. To complete the picture, a cross made of two strips of wood (probably off one of the pallets) was lashed to the top of the back wall. Simple, but effective.

David Bradley was playing an unnamed actor, who shambled on carrying another bottle with a lighted candle, a much longer one this time, and wearing a robe tied with a rope belt. He was obviously dressed as a monk of some kind, occasionally raising the hood. Underneath he was still wearing scruffy jeans and trainers. This was meant to be a performance of a story from The Brothers Karamazov, which the actor had been doing as a one-man show for many years, but tonight we were getting to see the effects of a serious row with his stage manager who has stormed off leaving him to do the whole show by himself. Fortunately the real stage crew has hung around, so we still get all the necessary lighting changes.

He starts by lighting all the various candles that adorn the set. This takes some time, and in the process he treats us to various candle-and-light-related comments, jokes, songs, etc. The story of his absconding stage manager, whom he refers to as a mouse, soon emerges, as does the whisky bottle, and it’s clear this is an actor who needs plenty of support to get his act together, never mind actually on to the stage. He keeps telling us about other performers who’ve died on stage or soon after a performance, and it turns out that the cause of the argument earlier on was his constant insistence each night that he’s going to do himself in. Go out with a whimper! This approach would deter most people a lot sooner than the ‘mouse’ lady, so she was obviously in love with him. It came as no surprise that years ago they’d had a one-off sexual encounter during an enforced stop-over in the only room the hotel had available at that time of night.

From time to time we get parts of what would have been the ‘intended’ performance. These are heralded by the use of the hood, and the actor taking up position on the stage and ‘acting’. These bits were fine, and showed that the old guy still had it in him, but not for long periods. Soon he’d be breaking off to tell us another story, swig from the bottle, and explain about how he’d always wanted to do a prologue, or an epilogue, but the ‘mouse’ wouldn’t let him. These statements usually led to another long-winded story about some performance where he’d deviated from the straight and narrow, and very entertaining it all was too. He also included a number of Tommy Cooper gags, and these gave us the best laughs of the evening. Not that the rest of it was lacking in the humour department.

The religious ideas were new to me, and I found them pretty odd. The character the actor was playing, the Grand Inquisitor, seemed to be saying that he didn’t want to believe in a god who would make suffering the price for redemption. A Christ who insists on pain as a precondition for heaven isn’t for him. He’d rather feed the needy, cloth the poor, etc, and to hell with god. As a result, when Christ returns, he has him arrested and sentenced to death, and this performance, and the story in the book, covers the night he spends with Christ in his cell before the execution, explaining his point of view. The actor shares this attitude towards religion with his character, whether naturally or from long acquaintance I can’t say, and gives us his own thoughts on the matter as well.

At the end, the actor takes a final swig from his bottle and collapses on the stage, a fitting ending for such an apparently disastrous performance.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Burial At Thebes – June 2008

8/10

Sophocles’ Antigone translated by Seamus Heaney

Directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Friday 27th June 2008

This was a very good version of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The language was formal and declamatory for the most part and every word came across clearly. The guard who reported the un-desecration of Polyneices’s body was the only one who spoke in more conversational English and with an accent, differentiating him nicely from the toffs.

The set was very plain. What looked like wooden panels, worn and battered, curved round the back of the acting space, with a central doorway for entrances and exits. There were irregularly shaped holes where there would have been knots in the wood. Centre front was a large bowl, spotlit.

The play opened with two men taking scoops of sand from the bowl, and then backing off to the sides of the stage. Antigone and her sister then tell us what’s been going on. Oedipus their father married his own mother (Greek drama has a way of going to places most other plays avoid) and his children, who are also his half-siblings, are still suffering for his sin against the gods. Their brothers are both dead, one fighting for Thebes and one against. The pro-Theban brother is being given full honours while the other one is being disgraced by not having a funeral rites. Apparently this means he won’t get his heavenly Oyster card and will be doomed (I think that’s the gist). Antigone is all for disobeying the order to leave her brother’s body to decompose naturally, but her sister is too scared to go against Creon’s command. Creon is their mother’s brother and the new king, so what he says goes or else. Antigone isn’t put off – she knows the dangers, but she also knows the duty she has towards a brother and the gods. She’s a tough nut, that one.

Creon appears next, giving an excellent speech designed to win the loyalty of his new subjects. It’s all smarm and charm at this point, but it isn’t long before the paranoid control freak shows through. There’s a bit of concern amongst the gathered bigwigs about the decree against the burial, but Creon soon smoothes that over. However when the guard turns up to tell Creon that someone has carried out the funeral rites for the dead man, he starts to go all Gordon Brown on us (stroppy and authoritarian, that is).  He’s convinced ‘they’ are out to get him, and that some rich people have bribed the guards to turn a blind eye to the funeral rites. He tells the guard to bring him the guilty party or he’ll be strung up instead. Naturally the guard’s a bit miffed by this, and decides to run away.

Now we’re introduced to Haemon, Creon’s son, in song. As the chorus sings of his great abilities and virtues, the character demonstrates these in mime. This is just a short intro – in fact, I don’t think I got his name at this point – and then we’re into Antigone’s arrest by the guard and the hearing before Creon and the chorus. Creon shows little pity – he thinks women should stick to the home, never mind disobeying him or carrying out a funeral service. It doesn’t seem to bother him that it’s his niece he’s condemning to death, though it does disturb the chorus. Mind you, their main concern seems to be that she’s engaged to Haemon, and how will he take it?

Very well, apparently. After Antigone has had her say, insisting that following the gods’ instructions is more important than obeying the whim of a mere king, she’s taken away to be walled up in a cave. Her sister did try to be noble and join her in her final prison but Antigone rebuffs her – if she didn’t do the crime, she doesn’t do the time. Creon keeps changing his mind about the sister – she’s for the chop, then she isn’t, then she is. Anyway, when his son arrives there’s some friendly words of warning from some of the chorus, but Creon’s not listening. At first, his son speaks up for his father in total support, as a good son should in ancient Greece. This gladdens Creon’s heart, but it doesn’t last. Before long Haemon is suggesting very strongly that his dad should reconsider – better to admit a mistake than upset the gods.

Well, Creon’s not having that, so disaster is pretty much assured (as if there was any doubt!). Tiresias, the blind seer, turns up and his advice is so pointed and so clear that even Creon begins to doubt his actions. He sends people to release Antigone and to tidy up what’s left of the corpse, but too late. Eurydice, Creon’s wife, appears just in time to hear the sad news of Haemon’s death. He stabbed himself after hanging Antigone (or she got him to hang her, whatever). If these people hadn’t been so keen to die all might have been well, but then it wouldn’t be a tragedy. Eurydice is ominously quiet and heads off to top herself, and Creon drags on his son’s dead body – Eurydice’s arrives a few minutes later – for the final weeping and wailing. The play ends with the whole group assembled on stage in near darkness, with just the bowl at the front spotlit.

This was absolutely great. The cast worked brilliantly together. Various actors would discard assorted sheets and blankets to emerge as a character, then re-robe to blend back into the chorus. There wasn’t any humour (which is why I tend to be flippant in my notes) but I don’t expect any in a Greek tragedy, and the intensity of emotion was just right for me. The translation was excellent and very understandable, with a good rhythm and tone that seemed perfect for the tragedy style. One of the best things we’ve seen here.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Gertrude’s Secret – June 2008

6/10

By Benedick West

Directed by Andrew Loudon

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 26th June 2008

Tonight we saw Maureen, Terence, Candida, Alexander and Tina in the first half, and Eva, Desmond, Gertrude, Emily and Eric in the second half. This confused me a little, as the program had listed all these characters’ stories, and then said we would get a selection from them, potentially different each night. Not so, as it happens. And I’m not complaining.

There was no set as such. For the first half there were a few chairs and a bench, while the second half was more elaborate with a bed and a sofa.  Each story lasted about ten minutes – in some cases I was glad it wasn’t any longer, while others were much more entertaining. On the whole, we felt the women’s parts were better than the men’s, and I would put this down to the writing rather than the performances.

The first story was told by Maureen. Dressed in a vivid red coat and clutching her handbag, she started telling us about the man in her life, name of Derek (possibly). As she burbled on happily about how wonderful their relationship was, even though she had to make all the running, we gradually realised that this match made in heaven is entirely one sided. She’s a deluded stalker, and even when Derek screams “leave me alone” at her, she doesn’t take the hint. As she said, even the policeman agreed with her that she wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time. She gave us a quick flash of the outfit she was wearing under her coat – Derek was certainly in for a treat if he ever changes his mind (think black lacy underwear). At least she did regret poisoning his cat, which was very funny, even if a bit dark.

Terence sat in a pub, drinking his beer and telling us how proud he was of his son. Again, there’s a shift from light to dark, as we find out that his son is in prison for having knifed some other boys. I found this a bit dreary. It was well enough acted, but the rhythm of speech was very predictable – each section had a gentle piece followed by a bit of bellowing – and it was too soporific for me. I didn’t spot any humour to lighten the load, so I was glad when it finished.

Candida, named after the disease rather than the play, clearly had issues around sex. The recent arrival, and then departure of a foreign au pair led her to express  her dislike for messy sex with a man and speculate on the pleasures of woman on woman action. A few times the actress also showed us the au pair; she stood centre stage and was spotlit with the other lights lowered. This piece was mildly entertaining, though the best joke was probably at the start, when she was rubbing the stem of a highly suggestible plant with a view to pollinating it.

Alexander started his story at the front of the stage, and spotlit so that only head and shoulders were visible. He gave a rant along football supporter lines, then the lights came on and he became himself, dragging a drip round with him, the victim of an attack by that same rabid football hooligan. He was telling us about his experience, and gave us a another couple of glimpses of his attacker during the story. This was another section with little humour, and I found it hard to relate to these stories. There was little depth or insight to them, and without a funny line or two they couldn’t do more than pass the time.

Tina completed the first half. Pushing a pram, and wearing a bright yellow coat with matching accessories, she lets us into her world of cheap housing (condemned, even), poorly paid jobs, and a husband who’s just been sacked and is suffering from depression due to having fallen in the cement mix in a previous job. It’s funnier on the page than the stage. For all her best efforts, Ann Micklethwaite couldn’t rescue this piece. It didn’t seem to know what it was doing, and neither did I. Was it meant to be funny, sad, dark, some combination of these? The dialogue jumped around from place to place and never settled, so I just couldn’t get involved in what was a sad story with comic potential. If that had been it, I might have given the evening a 3/10 rating. Fortunately the second half proved to have a few gems to raise the standard.

To start us off, Eva treated us to a series of sexually confused malapropisms that were good fun. She was a cleaner, from a long line of cleaners, who’d cleaned for the best. As she tidied the bed and sofa, she chatted to us about her friends and so on. There were a number of good jokes, but all I can remember now is “penis colada”, a car called a “vulva”, and how uncomfortable her new “brasserie” was. We really had to pay attention with this one.

Desmond arrived on stage on a mobility buggy. He told us all about his success story, how he’d built up the best printers business in the area, and now sold it for a packet. He used a lot of printer’s jargon, which certainly made the character real, but also helped me keep my distance. His wife had left him, as he couldn’t provide anything but money, but he wasn’t downhearted. He was still full of energy and had plans for the future. He was going to open a sex shop cum strip joint, the first in the area. We were treated to some of the details – no expense spared – and then he was off to get the project started before we could pinch his idea.

Again, this was only mildly entertaining. The actor chose to go for volume jumps during this, talking quietly and conversationally for some parts, then for no apparent reason, shouting a line or two. I’ve never heard anyone talk like that in real life, at least not to such an extreme, so I’ve no idea what was intended.

Gertrude, the lady in the title, was played by Prunella Scales. Clad in dressing gown and slippers, she fretted for a while by the phone, anxious not to miss a call from her daughter. It was Gertrude’s birthday, and despite problems in their relationship, Gertrude was hoping her daughter would call.

Actually, relationship problems were nothing new to Gertrude, as she had a terrible time of it with her husband, what with the drinking, and then the beatings. The use of the past tense suggested she’d been on her own for quite a while, but it turned out she’d given herself a birthday present and stabbed the horrible man. His body was behind the sofa (she’d already made it clear she was house-proud, so she wouldn’t leave a messy body in full view), but she did remove the large carving knife she’d stuck in him, so we could see for ourselves she meant business. This was one of the better sections, and Prunella Scales added plenty of experience to make it very enjoyable.

The next story was definitely darker in tone. A young girl, Emily, appeared lying on the bed in her pyjamas, holding her teddy bear. She was in a hotel in Amsterdam, and her father had left her on her own so he could attend some business meetings. She was scared, and the TV in her room only showed weird stuff that she wasn’t interested in. She did her best to cheer herself up, and told us of a new friend she’d made via the internet. It was another girl just like her, same age, same hair colour and everything. She even lived very close to Emily’s house back in the UK. Emily had told her all about a secret place she goes to in the woods nearby, and she was going to meet her new friend there secretly once she got back. She was ever so excited about it. And she wasn’t going to tell her parents, so there. Oh dear. This was heart-rending stuff, though still in a fairly light vein, despite the subject matter.

The final scene involved Eric, a short-sighted old man wheeling a shopper around with him, and complaining bitterly to a cardboard cut out of a woman, whom he thinks is a shop assistant. I don’t remember any of the jokes now – they were pretty slight at the time – but it did raise one or two good laughs. All in all I enjoyed myself well enough, but I thought there was very little atmosphere in the theatre tonight, with relatively few seats sold, and perhaps these short pieces would do better in a smaller, more intimate space.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Quartermaine’s Terms – June 2008

8/10

By Simon Gray

Directed by Harry Burton

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Date: Thursday 19th June 2008

This is a much kinder play than I’m used to seeing from Simon Gray. Although all the characters have their less likeable qualities, there wasn’t so much unpleasantness around as usual. Quartermaine himself was an affable chap, doing his best to please everyone, and spending most of his days in dreamland, even when he was supposed to be teaching. He reminded me of Firs from The Cherry Orchard – he always sat in the same chair in the staff room, and at the end it seemed likely that he would still be sitting there when everyone came back for the next term, even though he’d been fired.

The setting was a school for teaching English language and culture to foreign students. The other teachers included an older spinster who lives with her invalid mother, a woman married to an academic chap who is having an affair with another woman, a husband who is having an affair with his typewriter and whose wife therefore leaves him, taking their son with her, a new man who shows a remarkable affinity for accidents, and an older academic sort who is perfectly capable of talking at great length in learned detail without actually adding anything to the conversation. The proprietors are a male couple, one of whom we never see.

The set was a marvellous depiction of a staff room back in the late fifties/early sixties. The walls were scruffy, the furniture shabby, but there was lots of room. There was no plot as such, just a tour round the different characters and their ups and downs. Husbands and wives split up and got back together again. The spinster apparently bumped off her mother by pushing her down the stairs, to judge by her reactions to a police visit, about another, unrelated matter of some students trying to kill and cook a swan. She then gets religion, only to end up some time later on the fags and booze, looking desperately unhappy. The new boy ends up a permanent member of staff (just as well, as he seems to be the most hard-working of the lot of them), and experiences a brief accident-free period during his engagement, only for normal service to resume once he’s married. The older academic takes over the school when the unseen proprietor dies, and finally someone has the courage to sack the one man who doesn’t really contribute to the school’s purpose. It’s a sad moment, but inevitable.

Although we don’t get much of an explanation of why Quartermaine is the way he is, there are some oblique references to his aunt’s house, and some childhood fear of swan’s wings. We seem to be getting a number of plays and productions at the moment that don’t attempt a psychological explanation of their characters, and it makes a nice change. Steve spotted a number of Chekhovian parallels throughout the play – I’ve no idea if this was intentional on the author’s part or not. Anyway, we enjoyed it very much, and the performances were all excellent, getting a lot of subtle detail across about each character so that I felt I knew them all personally.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Last Train To Nibroc – June 2008

8/10

By Arlene Hutton

Directed by Katie Henry

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 17th June 2008

The set was same chopped-corner platform as for De Montfort, with a bench on top, and a book sitting on that. Clothes were hanging on a peg to our left, and, as I realised later, to our far right. We sat in the middle of far right front row.

The plot is simple. A man (Raleigh) and a woman (May) meet on a train journey from California to the east coast in December 1940. They develop an unlikely relationship, which continues over the next two scenes, when they finally(!) come to terms with their love for each other. God, the frustration. There were times I wanted to bang their heads together and tell them to get on with it, but the writing was good enough to keep me watching to see what would happen.

They were an unlikely couple because of their different personalities, but these two opposites clearly attracted each other. May was an uptight, prim little madam from a small Kentucky town, with a fantasy, rather than a dream, of being a missionary. Having just spent Christmas with her (ex-)fiancé and discovering that he was no longer interested in helping her realise her fantasy life, she’s naturally feeling unsure of herself, and this combines with a natural caution of strange men to make her rather uncooperative when the young airman sits down beside her on a crowded train.

Raleigh comes across as very brash to begin with, a big lummox type who’s going to have a conversation even if she doesn’t join in. As the scene develops, though, we can start to see other aspects to each of them, and we also learn a lot about their lives. Turns out they’re both from small Kentucky towns, about twenty miles from each other, one of them being Corbin. In fact, Raleigh’s uncle has a farm just opposite her family’s place, so they practically know each other already. He’s been invalided out of the army/air force (they do things differently in the States) as he started to get fits, later confirmed as epilepsy. He’s a bit down about that, but when he found out from the porter on the train that the coffins of two great writers, F Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanial West, were on the train, he’s inspired to go all the way to New York to become a writer himself.

Through this first scene together, he spends most of his time trying to persuade May to either go with him to New York or, if he does go back home instead, to go with him to the Nibroc festival (Corbin spelt backwards). She finally agrees, so there’s hope for her yet. The actors moved the bench around four times during this scene, so everybody got to see them from all four angles. It was nicely judged, as there were some natural pauses in the flow of the dialogue. At the end of the scene, they moved the bench again, and then used the entranceways to get changed, before heading off so they could make a proper entrance for scene two.

This second scene is a couple of years later, from what I could tell. The war is beginning to bite, and the Nibroc festival has had to downsize accordingly. May arrives first, with a small green bag that she’s anxious to dispose of somewhere. Eventually she throws it away, but Raleigh finds it and returns it to her. There has obviously been some problem in their relationship, and several times I thought the scene was going to come to an early end. But they just can’t get each other out of their systems, and a remark or question would set them off again. It was good to see a play which didn’t give the impression of being structured to suit the audience so much as reporting what real people actually do. In that sense it was perhaps less overtly dramatic than most plays, but it kept me involved and caring about these two people.

May has been stepping out with a reverend chap, who’s off to be a missionary (he actually ends up enlisting as an army chaplain), but she’s worried about the amount of money he’s been taking from the church collection. The bag she was so worried about held that night’s takings, which she was presumably going to return to the church, believing that God would provide for the minister. Given her attitude, it’s a blessing she doesn’t go with him. For both of their sakes.

Her judgemental attitude knows no bounds. Raleigh is concerned to find out why she didn’t come to have a meal with his folks, after he’d been for dinner with her family. She tries to avoid the subject, but eventually we find out that it’s because his father had Jake leg, a condition that weakened the joints and caused the sufferer to limp or shuffle, and was caused by drinking adulterated alcohol. Many people, usually the poor, did this during prohibition and the distinctive limp became a social stigma, especially to someone like May.

Meanwhile, Raleigh’s time has been spent far from New York, although he did make it to Detroit in search of work. His epilepsy kept getting in the way though, as he’s susceptible to bright flickering lights, so he’s ended up back on the farm helping his folks. There’s a very moving speech towards the end of this scene where he expresses his feelings about the illness for the first time, explaining how ashamed he’s felt about everything – not being able to fight, not being able to work, letting his parents down, etc. I was nearly in tears, and it obviously affected May as well. However, he then has an actual epileptic fit (very accurately done apparently), and May dashes off to get help while he twitches on the stage. It was a powerful moment.

The final scene has them watching a huge blaze at a lumberyard from the safety of her folks’ back yard (it was an actual event in Corbin). Raleigh has come over for dinner again, so things are obviously better between them, and they each have something to tell the other. Raleigh’s news is that he’s going to New York after all, to fulfil his dream of being an author. He’s already sold some stories, including the one about how May’s younger brother hid himself away in the back of Raleigh’s pickup when he and May were out for a drive, and then ended up being car sick. He’s also got a job with a New York paper. Her announcement takes longer to fully come out.

He’s not long been out of hospital after his epileptic fit. They’d mistakenly put him in a hospital for crazy people, and she wrote to him every week, though she didn’t visit him. She’s surprised to find his skin is fine, and mentions this several times. Finally she explains that she’s been reading up on his condition, and basically offers to take care of him. The only thing is, she misheard him when he named the illness, and she thinks he’s got leprosy! After a good laugh at her misunderstanding (we all joined in), Raleigh focuses back on what’s important to him – that she was willing to spend her life taking care of someone with an incurable disease. He pins her down (not easy – she could give an eel lessons in being slippery) to admitting that they would actually have to live together so she could take care of him, and well, after that it’s not surprising that the marriage question pops up. Despite a final little wriggle, she agrees, and I was so happy for them.

There’s more to this play than this simple storyline suggests, and it was a real heartwarmer. The performances were excellent, as were the accents, and for something written fairly recently it had a great period feel to it. Although it’s set during WWII, the war is part of the background to these two people’s story, not a big issue that the play is attempting to deal with, and for me that’s fine. Lots of people just had to get on with their lives through the war years, and they weren’t constantly locked in philosophical debate about the ‘issues’, so it’s nice to see a play that reflects that for once, as well as being a gentle and detailed observation of human relationships and their quirks. A good choice by this young director, and very good casting.

The post-show discussion was missing Sam Walters for once, but the director and full cast were available. There was much praise for the performances and the play, with points like the accuracy of the epileptic fit and real life events such as the lumberyard fire coming up. Apparently the author had paid a visit during rehearsals, and been totally happy with the choice of actors. We did seem to get sidetracked into a debate about the likelihood of these two characters getting together, but I think it was perfectly reasonable. He wasn’t the sort of man who wanted a drippy wife who would agree with everything he said, and given the sort of life he was planning, it made sense that he would naturally want someone down to earth, and who would keep his feet on the ground, which she would certainly do. She may not have been much of a cook, but growing up on a farm she understood hard work, and by the third scene she’d been made principal of a local high school, so she’s smart too. And underneath her prim manner there’s both a kind heart and a feisty nature, both of which attract him.

For her, I think the attraction is that he doesn’t fall for her dreams, which are usually pretty unrealistic. He’s also not put off by her pickiness, at least not completely, and he opens her up to new ideas, which is challenging and a bit scary, but ultimately exciting. They’re likely to have a prickly but happy relationship, though they’re the sort of couple that will make a lot of people wonder what they see in each other.

There was also some comment about feminism and May’s choice to ‘sacrifice’ her life for Raleigh at the end. Personally, I think that’s rubbish. Given the circumstances of the play, it’s much more likely that May will go to New York with him eventually and get a job there to help support him, so for those to whom only having a career can possibly be fulfilling for a woman, that’s fine then. (Minor rant coming here.) Actually, I find the whole feminism thing utterly distorted now, as it only seems to want women to be ersatz men, rather than allowing women to choose whatever type of life suits them best, and according us the same rights as men. There’s an implied judgement that all ‘feminine’ activities are inferior, which actually encourages the macho culture we’re lumbered with at the moment, provides men with the conditions to thrive competitively, and undermines the very equality the feminists have set out to achieve. Ggrrhh. (Rant over.)

Well, now that that’s out of my system, I can conclude that this was another very successful production, and we’re looking forward to the Vaclav Havel season later this year, as well as the new air conditioning.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Rosmersholm – June 2008

8/10

By Henrik Ibsen, in a version by Mike Poulton

Directed by Anthony Page

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 14th June 2008

The set was a drawing room, with scruffy walls in depressing shades of blue, a window to our left, a stained mirror, portraits on the walls, nice formal furniture, and a white tiled stove in an angled recess. There was an attractive bowl of flowers on the table, otherwise it was as austere and gloomy as an Ibsen play. (So the designer’s done a good job, then.)

The second act has the same window and stove, but the rear wall is further forward, the furniture is more relaxed, and there are bookcases and no portraits. This was the private sitting room/study off Rosmer’s bedroom. The final scenes revert back to the first set, and all the action takes place over three days.

Rosmer is one of Ibsen’s naïve, idealistic heroes. His wife committed suicide a year ago, and he is just starting to get involved again in the life of Rosmersholm, the town his family have effectively ruled over for a couple of centuries. He’s been helped by a woman, Rebecca West, who was originally nursing his wife through her illness, and who’s stayed on in order to assist Rosmer to find his true vocation. It appears nothing improper has happened, but the situation leads to rumours, and while Rosmer remains a pillar of the community they’re unlikely to affect him much. However, as he’s not only stopped being a priest but renounced his religious beliefs as well, he finds himself friendless and vulnerable to gossip and suspicion. He’s keen to support the movement for change that was surfacing in Norway at that time, and Rebecca’s support for this has been a key factor in his recovery from his wife’ suicide. Various revelations through the play make past events fairly clear to us, although the possibility of incest in Rebecca’s past is left as a suggestion only, and the final choice of the unconsummated lovers is as downbeat as one might expect from Ibsen.

The other characters are interesting. Rebecca West herself is less likeable than Ibsen’s usual women – Strindberg would have approved. She represents the kind of free-thinking women that must have been coming out of the kitchen closet at that time, but here she’s not necessarily a force for good. It’s interesting that this character has the same name as the famous writer, although the play was written six years before the real person was born.

The doctor, Kroll (very close to troll?), represents the absolutist establishment view. He’s for God, King, country and keeping the peasants in their place. His friendship with Rosmer appears to be based more on the Rosmer family’s status and his friend’s earlier traditional opinions than on any great affection for the man himself. He frequently tells Rosmer how gullible he is, and is only reconciled to him once the revelations make Rosmer ready to doubt his support for change. Malcolm Sinclair gave us a wonderfully detailed performance, with many good lines delivered impeccably.

Ulrik Brendel is Rosmer’s old tutor, currently a down and out but hoping to make it big now that the political tide has turned in his direction. He talks big, but there’s nothing behind it. It’s a fetching performance by Paul Moriarty, and allows us to see how easily Rosmer can be swayed, and how kind and generous he can be as well.

Mortensgaard is the editor of the left-wing paper, and his insights are very entertaining. At first delighted to find that Rosmer has given up the priesthood, he’s quite candid about his disappointment that Rosmer has left the church altogether. He wants people still in the church to come out in support of the new ideas, so that ordinary people will listen to them. Another atheist is no good to him, so he just won’t mention that part. It’s a useful part for showing us how impractical Rosmer’s idealism is. Sitting in his ivory tower, hatching plans with Rebecca to change people’s attitudes, he’s completely unaware of how opinions are influenced and shaped. He had hoped to stay above it all, a pure radiant beacon of light showing others a better way to live, and he’s sidelined so quickly he hardly has a chance to take it all in.

This leaves the maid, Mrs Helseth, a strict but kind Christian woman, prone to believing superstitions, such as the local one about a ghostly white horse presaging death. She shows us the ordinary people who still hold the church and its priests in high esteem; she still calls Rosmer ‘pastor’, though I assume she knows he’s defrocked himself. Her view of events on the fatal footbridge gives us the ending of the play.

I felt this was a very good production of an interesting play. I enjoyed the arguments and the insight into the upheaval that Norway was going through at that time. The program notes identified this play as the crossover point between the external threats in Ibsen’s plays (An Enemy of the People), and the interior conflicts (Doll’s House). I’d agree with that, and that’s part of what made it so interesting for me.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Merchant of Venice – June 2008

7/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Pia Furtado

Company: RSC Understudies

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Tuesday 10th June 2008

Wow! This was an amazing performance from a group of very talented actors. They’ve set a high standard for the full production to live up to.

The set was simple, a basic purply-red. The upper level had a projecting semi-circular balcony, and the wall in front of that was raised and lowered at times. The play opens with a dance. The cast troop on stage, and with Antonio front and centre, they cavort about a bit, and then most of the group leave the stage to the opening trio. From the opening lines, I was aware of hearing much more than I usually do, even for a play like this which I’m reasonably familiar with. I suspect my hearing aids helped a lot, but the actors were so clear with their dialogue that I heard many of these lines as for the first time. The comments by Salerio and his pal, for example, in this opening scene, never struck me much before. This time I was aware of how they expressed what would be troubling them if they were in Antonio’s shoes.

There was much hugging in this performance. All the Italian men seemed to get on really well and care for each other, so there was no suggestion here that the youngsters were sponging off the older, richer Antonio. Nor was there any hint of homosexuality in the Antonio/Bassanio relationship – it was played completely straight as far as I could see. Gratiano got a lot of laughs from his lines, especially when he came back on again to give even more of his thoughts to his jaded listeners. He played it with a fairly serious expression throughout, and got a lot of detail into his performance.

When Portia and Nerissa discuss the soon to be ex-suitors, various men in the audience were picked out to represent these unfortunate men. Everyone seemed to take it in good part, and this is one way in which a full audience can really help the understudies get used to their parts.

The caskets in this production rose up from the floor to the rear of the stage. Largely undifferentiated, we didn’t get to see the inscriptions nor the contents, all of which worked just fine for me. As each suitors made his choice, Portia was revealed behind the rear wall, fully decked out in her wedding dress, and a part of the balcony wall rose up to reveal a long row of wine glasses, partially filled with water. Several hands appeared and played these glasses – they made a haunting eerie sound, quite beautiful. It was a bit disconcerting at first to see the disembodied hands at work, but I soon got used to it. At the end of the first half, these glasses were again on show, and several of them filled up with red liquid, presumably representing the blood that could be spilled if Antonio can’t be saved in time. Not so effective, I thought.

When Bassanio comes to make his choice,  Portia is with him initially, then moves to her position at the back. And when he is successful, a servant has to indicate with a jerk of her head that he should go and kiss Portia – he is a bit dim, this guy. Unlike Gratiano, who takes the opportunity to have a good snog with Nerissa. These kisses go on for some time, and it all becomes too much for Launcelot Gobbo, who grabs the female servant and gets his tongue down her throat as quick as you like. She doesn’t push him off, either.

Snogfest over, the bad news about Antonio breaks up the party. I remember thinking as Portia is blithely talking about paying umpteen thousand ducats to help Bassanio’s friend, just how rich is this woman? Her attitude suggests she could get the amount out of petty cash and not notice a hole.

Since Nerissa and Jessica are being doubled, and we need both on stage at this point, I don’t know how this is being staged in the regular version. Here, Nerissa isn’t on stage until after Portia has given instructions to Balthazar, so there’s even more emphasis on the fact that Portia hasn’t told Nerissa her plans. Still, she seems to be up for it, so off they go.

The trial scene was well done, although I wasn’t entirely sure about the long breakfast bar that rose up from the miniscule basement. Running from front to back of the stage, it was long enough for a man to lie down on, and this was where Antonio was placed when it looked like Shylock was going to get his pound of flesh, with Shylock standing over him. Must be quite a sight in the full production, as Angus Wright is pretty tall anyway (Sean Kearns is no short-arse either), and to have him an extra three or four feet up should be pretty dramatic. The audience was a bit nervous this time, though, and there was a bit of giggling, which weakened the tension somewhat. Mind you, Arsher Ali as Antonio didn’t have anything like a pound of flesh to hand over. The most aggressive liposuction would have been lucky to get as much as a few ounces. Even so, I’m looking forward to seeing this part again.

The actual trial worked very well. Shylock had some scales on the far end of the breakfast bar, and was well ready to use them. Bassanio and his mates were in fine form – Gratiano was so obstreperous that he had to shift himself pretty quickly when the security guards started taking an interest. He reappeared on one of the side balconies, hurling abuse like a football fan, and was grabbed and dragged off by the security guards to stop him causing trouble. Bit of a police state, this Venice.

The ladies turn up in suits (and did they have little beards?), looking more manly than many a cross dresser. I’d like to see Amara Karan’s Viola sometime. One nice touch was the way the Duke handed the letter from Bellario over to his clerk to read out from the balcony (it is in the text, but it seemed new to me this time around).

With Antonio saved, there’s really just fun left now, although I did feel sorry for Shylock’s suffering. Gratiano does look concerned when Bassanio changes his mind about giving the ‘doctor’ Portia’s ring, but even so he not only takes the ring to the doctor but ends up giving his own away as well. Silly boys. The scene where he does this had a very peculiar staging. The balcony wall was raised up again, in a similar way to the glass-playing incident, with Portia and Nerissa sitting on the edge of the balcony as if by a stream. So far, so good. However, when Gratiano comes walking along, we can only see him from the waist down, and when the women stand up to join him, they’re likewise obscured from view. Steve reckoned this may have been to put more emphasis on their hands, but it just looked wrong to me.

Back in Belmont, Jessica and Lorenzo are having connubial fun, as usual. There’s a sparkly thing that came down from the ceiling, a bit like a glitter ball but in long strands. These sparkled beautifully, but they kept moving up and down, which I found distracting.

The final ring scene was great. I love the way Gratiano betrays Bassanio without hesitation (other than a pause to let Bassanio say one of the funniest lines of the play). The girls were magnificent, giving their husbands a good winding up, which they thoroughly deserved. When Portia has to produce the good news letter for Antonio, she gets it from a chap sitting in the front row, possibly one of her ex-suitors from the first half. Then Nerissa has to produce a letter for Lorenzo, only she can’t find the gentleman on our side of the front row who’s been given it. Oh dear! It looks like everything’s gone horribly wrong, but the RSC are fond of inserting rehearsed mistakes, and eventually she remembers – she’d tucked it in her waistband.

Other points to note – we get the full Gobbo in this production, father and son. It was well enough done, though it’s always a tricky scene to pull off. The performances were all good, and I liked Sean Kearns as Shylock. He was very business-like, and at this stage relatively unemotional, but the dignity and loathing were there, and I felt for him as he went through his self-inflicted torture.

I felt the final dance went on too long, as all I wanted to do at that point was applaud. This was such a good performance I just hope the ‘real’ one isn’t a disappointment.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me