Category Archives: Theatre

Her Naked Skin – August 2008

7/10

By Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Wednesday 13th August 2008

This is not only a new play, but the first play by a living woman playwright to be produced on the Olivier stage. How apt that the play’s subject is the struggle for women to gain the right to vote. The set was a layered framework of hanging rectangular metal grids. Some of the grids were covered with metal mesh and some were open, creating an overall effect of a maze of bars and wires, which seems very appropriate for a play about suffragettes in prison. The grids at the front were in the shape of a cross – it didn’t seem to be significant in terms of the play but with such a complex set I doubt that it was unplanned. One spotlight hit a chair in front of this assemblage, a chair with a sash proclaiming ‘votes for women’ across it, also a jacket and hat. The rest of the set was lit in a blue gloom. I was impressed as soon as I saw it.

It got better. Each panel could move around, sliding up when needed, and some even moved from side to side. A large platform was moved forward after the second scene; this held the prison cells and was raised up enough for tables and chairs to be slid underneath on the revolve or just straight through. Occasionally the central platform was rotated so that we could focus on individual cells or to see the whole row from either side. At first I thought this might be distracting but actually it worked very well, adding extra movement and interest while characters were entering and leaving the cells.

The story had two strands which blended well together for the most part, but did stray apart for a while in the second half. The context for the play is the suffragette movement in the early 1900s, up to the beginnings of WWI. Within that story, two of the women who smash windows for the cause, and end up in prison as a result, form a sexual relationship and after the interval that relationship tends to take over from the broader story.

To deal with the suffragette part first; the play begins with a woman putting on the sash, jacket and hat that were on the chair and after a momentary pause, heading off stage. Then we see footage of the famous incident at the Derby, when Emily Davison threw herself in front of the horses as they were rounding Tattenham Corner, causing her own death a few days later from her injuries. It’s an emotional piece of film, and it was projected repeatedly on large screens behind the metal grids. So immediately we were confronted with the lengths that many of these women were prepared to go to in order for their sisters to be able to vote.

The next scene took us from the moving to the funny, as tables and chairs revolved onto the stage for a meeting of important people with a female secretary also in attendance. The men were discussing what issues would be raised in the House of Commons that day and they generally seemed to dislike all the fuss and bother that these silly women were creating with their suffragette nonsense. After one comment condemning the intelligence of women in general, they had to appease the secretary by saying ‘present company excepted, of course’ – trust me, gents, that doesn’t help. (And the secretary wasn’t impressed either.) Their main concern about the Derby incident, apart from the health of the horse (it survived) was whether Davison was going to die and become the first suffragette martyr. In the end, the men decided the Irish question would probably dominate that day’s business.

The next scene takes place on a bare stage, at least at the front, as a number of women are gathering in an apparently unconnected way, just milling about as you do. One of them checks the time with a newspaper seller – seven minutes to six. Another of the women is clearly nervous – turns out it’s her first time. She’s so pent up she takes out her hammer and smashes a window a few minutes ahead of schedule, so the rest of the women do the same. There’s lots of breaking glass sounds – none of the real thing, thank goodness – and the women run off, exhilarated.

The next scene is where the cells come forward and they pretty much dominate the stage from now on. As the women arrive in the prison, they’re treated to the routine of having their names checked, given their numbers, aprons and kit and I noticed they were each weighed. I presume this was part of monitoring their health for when some of them inevitably went on hunger strike.

There’s a fair bit of banter, not all of it friendly, between the women and the prison staff. Florence, a veteran of the cause, insists on her occupation being described as suffragette and is angry they’ve been allocated to the wrong accommodation. They’re political prisoners in her book, not common criminals, and she quotes the rules like she wrote them. The guard in charge, Potter, points out that they’re in for criminal damage, which is a fair point, so tough luck. Some of the women are regulars in the prison – did they keep their cells for them, I wonder? – and one, the lady who was asking for the time earlier, turns out to be Celia Cain. The nervous woman, the one who jumped the gun, is Eve Douglas. I’ll just mention here that finding out who the characters are takes quite a while. Also, I was unsure at the end which of these characters was meant to be fictional – I assume Celia and Eve are, but I don’t know – and which historical. There are real people in the play, such as Asquith and Keir Hardie, and real events, such as the Derby day incident and the Cat and Mouse Act, but this lack of clarity has left me feeling a little unsure about the level of dramatisation versus the level of historical fact, and in my view that weakens the impact of the play somewhat. Anyway, the women are shown to their cells and there’s a nice exchange between Celia and the main female warden, Briggs. Briggs is very sparing of her words, never using two when one will do, and Celia has a nice line about this just before her prison door clangs shut.

The next scene sets up the most unpleasant aspect of the play – the forcible feeding of the women on hunger strike. Through various scenes we learn that the legal basis for this only applies to lunatics in asylums, but the law is being ignored in a desperate attempt to prevent the women from killing themselves and becoming martyrs. All we get this time around is a brief explanation of the process and the risks to the women if the tube goes down the wrong way – they end up getting pleurisy and dying, as it’s always fatal. Fortunately that’s all for now, so it’s back to the prisoners as they work in the kitchens next morning. Eve and Celia manage to have a surreptitious chat and start to make a connection, but for now I’ll leave off their story until I’ve dealt with the rest.

There’s a brief glimpse of the sort of debate some MPs were trying to have in the Commons, but the Government keep diverting the subject away to something more innocuous or occasionally something quite important, such as the Irish question. There’s no love lost between Keir Hardie and Asquith at this stage.

Celia’s husband visits her in prison and this is the first glimpse we get of the way the suffragettes’ commitment and determination (or, as the men put it, stubbornness) is affecting their families. Her husband is a top lawyer and he does his best to support Celia in her work, but he’s obviously feeling the strain. They chat about various things – the political situation, Scott’s death at the South Pole, one of their sons wants to marry – and it’s clear that what she’s doing to gain the vote for women is more important to her than her family. Her husband wants her to see a psychiatrist when she gets out in the hope that if she’s declared mentally unfit she won’t be sent back to prison in the future, or at least she’ll be spared some of the worse aspects of their treatment inside. Given that forcible feeding was originally intended for crazy people, I wasn’t sure that was the best move, but I can sympathise with his concern and desire to protect her.

The next scene clearly takes place after the women have been released. Florence is on her soapbox in Hyde Park and some of the men are taking offence at her speech. One chap has a go at Celia for smoking and she quite happily mouths off right back at him, in much better language of course, as befits a well-educated woman. He eventually takes a swing at her and manages to jostle her to the ground before the men around them get him under control and see him off. She’s not bothered, but it shows the sort of response the women could get from time to time. It also shows that Celia is now smoking, which is relevant in terms of her relationship with Eve.

Then Eve is back in prison and takes matters into her own hands when she can’t get the light turned off. She takes her metal cup or jug and smashes it. She’s then dragged out of her cell. Immediately after this, Celia visits Dr Stein and they have a brisk and interesting conversation, somewhat guarded on Celia’s part. I wasn’t sure if there was any sexual frisson between them – the doctor seemed keen to see her once a week after her next stint in prison and I wasn’t sure it was an entirely professional interest – but Steve didn’t detect anything, so maybe it was my imagination.

The next scene has Florence and Celia doing some work with posters or leaflets. Celia hasn’t been focussing on her work and she and Florence argue over Eve’s commitment to the cause. They have quite an argument, though not past the bounds of friendship, and there’s some lovely lines. At the end of the scene, Celia makes some comment about Florence finding plenty of work in the Russian women’s army, and Florence replies with “The Battalion of Death? Sounds a bit soft to me”, beautifully delivered.

There’s a scene where Celia visits Eve in prison, and then we get another chance to see Celia’s home situation. Her husband wants her to give up the demonstrations and getting herself locked up, but she’s not remotely interested in backing off. They have a nasty squabble, showing deep cracks in the relationship, and he heads out to do some more drinking. We also become aware that their sex life is non-existent, so no wonder he’s unhappy. She does seem a cold type, this Celia, never giving herself fully to anything but the cause.

However after a short scene where Florence is dragged out of her cell, having attempted to barricade herself in, and is given a good hosing down by the guards, we see Celia and Eve together in bed, both in dressing gowns, and enjoying each other’s company in a very intimate manner. All seems well with them now, and after the interval, during a practice shoot for the women in Epping forest, they’re canoodling in as much secrecy as they can.

Celia’s husband William is at his club in the next scene and getting some stick from the other members. Some are supportive, at least to the extent of telling the more aggressive ones to shut up, but ultimately William punches the most belligerent chap to the ground. Then Florence is visited in her cell by the doctor and there’s a discussion of force feeding methods. He’s becoming disillusioned by the process and wants her to use her authority to get the other women off hunger strike. She refuses, but in their debate we learn a great deal about the suffering caused by the force feeding, the retribution the women take on the doctors who do it once they’re out, and that Florence’s imprisonments have meant her missing her sister’s final days and her funeral, a fact which makes even this strong woman show her emotions.

Celia and Eve spend some time in a park at night, then later Celia’s husband gives her an ultimatum; give up the hunger strike next time she’s in prison or he’ll disown her. She won’t be allowed back into his house. Their argument has some lovely touches of humour, such as when she points out that she’s borne him seven children and he comments that he had actually noticed that fact. He’s fed up being treated as if he were some savage who doesn’t understand and doesn’t have needs of his own, while she’s lost her love for him long ago and doesn’t know how to handle this change in their lives.

The next scene shows us bath time at the prison. Florence doesn’t pick up the towel Briggs throws at her and there’s a short scuffle of wills as Briggs insists on her picking it up, but eventually Briggs’ deeply buried kindness starts to peep out and she rescues the towel herself. Celia and Eve have a meeting in a tea-room, with Celia keen to avoid being seen by a lady she knows, then Celia is trying to have a fling with a chap called Charlie, in a bedroom at the Ritz where he works, and then Celia visits Eve again in prison.

Then comes the dreaded scene. We get to see Eve being force fed by the doctor. It’s a gruesome experience to watch, so God knows what it was like to endure for those who actually went through it. Although I’ll go into some detail here (those of a nervous disposition may wish to skip a paragraph or two) I must confess to covering my eyes up for the insertion of the feeding tube and for parts of the feeding. However, I got the gist, and the whole setup, with the reactions of all the people involved, was important.

We’d seen the chair being set up in an earlier scene where the regular doctor was explaining things to the new boy. A sheet was placed under the chair, with straps being laid ready on either arm and on the chair back. There was a large funnel with a long rubber tube and about half way along it there was a fist-sized bulge. There was also an enamel jug. This time around the new person was a nurse, and she was the one who had to do the pouring. Eve was tied to the chair and held down while the doctor chose to put the tube down her nose. This is the yucky bit. I know it wasn’t real, but I’m squeamish about anything medical. A lot of the tube ‘went down’ her nose – the doctor commented that you have to get about twenty inches down them so the food will reach the stomach – and then the doctor tells the nurse to pour. She has to tell him if it’s not going down so he can do something about it; in fact, although it is going down, he decides to hold Eve’s nose shut anyway. The mixture is eggs and brandy, and once it’s all gone there’s the tube to get out and then she’s helped back to her cell. Gruesome doesn’t begin to cover it, although I appreciate there’s worse things happening in the world right now. The nurse was obviously in shock after seeing what was being done to these women, and Briggs shows us another level of her kindness when she gently helps the nurse to get off the stool she’s been standing on, frozen with shock.

After a scene showing us Celia arriving home after her night on the tiles and having a bit of a row with her husband, we see Eve at her washbasin, slitting her forearms and holding them in the water until she collapses. I thought this was at the prison, but the text says at her lodgings. It’s confusing, because the next scene is back in the prison, and both Florence and Celia are visiting Eve who has her arms bandaged. Florence leaves first and then when Celia says her goodbyes and leaves, the prison recedes into the background, with Eve and the wardress spotlit. I got that this was the relationship fading into the past.

The final scene has Celia sitting in Florence’s house, waiting for William to come and pick her up. From her chat with Florence, it appears she’s decided to go back to live with him and from her chat with him it appears she’s been away for three months. Florence has mentioned meeting Eve while she was out – Eve’s going to be married, to a watch maker. There’s some chat about the upcoming war and the decision to drop the protests and be patriotic once it’s declared. When William arrives her bags are taken away, but Celia’s suddenly overcome with emotion and her husband realises she’s not going to be coming back to him. She makes some comment about a wolf they both saw in the forest when they were little – I have absolutely no idea what that was about – and he leaves. End of play.

The suffragette parts were very interesting, even though I saw more than I wanted to of the force feeding. The relationship between Eve and Celia was superbly well performed but looking back, and occasionally at the time, I wondered what the point of it was. I couldn’t see clearly the connection between getting votes for women and hopping into bed with one, especially as Celia did her best to destroy the relationship once it looked like it might amount to something.

From the early meetings at the window smashing protest and the prison stint, we see the connection develop quickly as indicated by Celia taking up smoking, which she never used to do apparently. Eve smokes a lot. They’re obviously enjoying each other physically, with the scene in bed and the stolen kisses in Epping Forest, but when they get to the park Celia suddenly introduces the fact that she’s had affairs before and Eve is taken aback by this. She seemed to think their relationship was special, something to build on for the future; now Celia is talking about the inevitable time when they’ll be bored with each other, indicating this is just another fling for her or at least that’s what she wants Eve to think. It’s certainly the end of the fun part of the relationship and despite Eve trying to persuade Celia to carry on, Celia is determined to stop the affair completely regardless of her own suffering. Hence the attempt to have a one-night fling with the man from the hotel. It’s clear her marriage is on the rocks and she loves Eve, but she won’t go the final mile and commit to anything. Why?

I have no answers to this, but I must also say that the performances were excellent, not just for these parts but for all of the characters. They kept me involved and entertained, so while my description of the storyline may seem bitty, the pace of the play meant I was never bored. There was more humour than I’ve indicated, although the subject matter meant there was also a lot of heavier, emotional content to deal with. Overall, it felt like a very good play, and with a bit more work and more correlation between the two aspects, it could be a great play. Steve felt that if the author had written this ten years down the line, with more experience, it would have achieved greatness. Still it’s a tremendous offering regardless, and I wish it every success in its run.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

A Slight Ache – August 2008

6/10

By Harold Pinter

Directed by Iqbal Kahn

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Thursday 7th August 2008

This was effectively a platform performance at the Lyttelton – the set was on a raised platform at the front of the Never So Good set. It held enough furniture to represent several rooms in a big house, plus the garden. Chairs were everywhere, including a few on their side in the garden, with plants trailing all over them.

Plants featured strongly in the dialogue as well, with the usual Pinterish contretemps between husband and wife over what the plants were called and whether or not the husband actually knows which plants are in his garden. The wife is called Flora, though the husband refers to her as Fanny, even though he appears to be talking about another woman; the usual sort of thing for a Pinter play.

The story is simple. A matchseller has positioned himself by their back garden gate, and has been standing there for months, without apparently selling any matches. The husband tries to talk to him, but can’t get him to say anything. The wife has a go, and manages to get the measure of the man, priapically speaking. The husband has another go, but is stricken with some unnamed affliction, and ends up prostrate on the floor with the matchseller’s tray, while the wife gets the matchseller. End of play.

There’s more to it than that, of course. The opening scene over breakfast includes a wasp-killing sequence that was both gruesome and funny, especially when the husband, fresh from the slaughter, feels invigorated and ready to get on with the day. He’d been feeling a slight ache in his eyes, but killing the wasp seems to have worked better than aspirin.

The wife finds him later in the scullery, wanting to be left alone, and clearly obsessing about the matchseller. When she sits in the chair he’s vacated, she gets a perfect view of the man. It’s after this that the husband tells his wife to bring the man in so he can talk with him in the study. She suggests calling the police, or perhaps the vicar, which got a good laugh. He’s determined, though, so she goes out to ask the man to come in, tempting him with an offer to buy all his matches. He shuffles on stage gradually, looking very decrepit. He’s swathed in heavy clothes from head to foot, and as it’s a hot summer’s day, midsummer’s day in fact, he must be sweltering. We can see his leather balaclava and huge coat, and it turns out later he’s also wearing a jumper and a vest. No wonder he’s going so slowly and looking so weak.

The husband welcomes him into his study, and offers him drinks and a seat, but the chap just stands there, saying nothing. The husband does all the talking, and so we get to hear about the local squire as was and his three daughters, all with flaming red hair. He can’t remember what the third daughter was called, and then he gets it – Fanny, “a flower”. He’s disparaging about Fanny, and if you know your Pinter that tells you instantly she’s his wife. Frustrated at his inability to make the man talk, he does finally manage to shoo him into the corner where he’s in shade and can cool down. When he does eventually sit down, it’s on the bigger chair the husband was sitting on at the start of the scene, the first step in swapping places.

At some point the husband is overcome and has to dash out to the garden for some air. He pretends to his wife that he’s doing better with the chap than  he actually is, but she decides to go and talk to the man herself. This is where she starts to uncover more than her husband achieved. She demonstrates the unholy trinity that applies to almost all Pinter’s women characters – mother, wife, whore. She comments on the man’s disgusting smell, but inhales deeply through the chiffon scarf she’s just used to wipe his head and face. She leaves us in no doubt that she’s found a man she intends to keep, and they won’t just be talking about the garden or killing wasps.

Her husband comes along and boots her out, and it’s clear at this point that his eye trouble is getting worse. He seems to be almost blind, and his emotions are in a right state as well. He tears his jacket off, and pulls his shirt out from his trousers. To be honest, I can’t remember what he was talking about at this point, as it didn’t interest me much. He just seemed to be ranting without giving us any more insight into the play, but then he collapsed on the ground, still ranting, and I knew the end was nigh. Sure enough, the wife returns, takes the matchseller by the hand, then takes his tray away, places it on her husband’s tummy, and leaves with her new man, who’s walking with a spring in his step now.

I assume the play is about female infidelity caused by the rampant sexual lust that rages through all womankind, according to Pinter, and the effect it can have on the poor men who get enmeshed in our snares. As such I find it less interesting than some of his other plays, but still an entertaining use of an hour in the theatre. The performances were splendid, as is to be expected from Claire Higgins and Simon Russell Beale, and Jamie Beamish gave them a good blank page to project onto. This play is being continued and partnered with another short Pinter, but as we weren’t so taken with this one, we may not bother with the double bill.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Revenger’s Tragedy – August 2008

10/10

By Thomas Middleton, or possibly Anonymous?

Directed by Melly Still

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Wednesday 6th August 2008

This was another production in the style of The Man Of Mode last year, a glorious updating of an old play. There was a great deal to enjoy. The set was in three sections on the revolve, with passageways sandwiched between them. This not only allowed for very quick scene changes, but also gave lots of opportunities for characters to lurk in corners to hear and see what’s going on. One of the three sections showed us the poorly furnished house of Vindice and his family – gaps on the walls showed us where the old masters had hung – while the other two represented rooms in the court, one with red plastic seating and pictures on the walls that left little to the imagination, the other more neutral for an assortment of uses.

The opening scene was a montage of the situation at the start of the play. Vindice sits in his room, raging at fate like a depressed teenager, while all around him the court is partying like mad. The duke and duchess appear to be enjoying themselves, but the duke is soon getting a blow job from one of the athletic dancers (female), while the duchess is trying to seduce a surly young man who turns out to be the duke’s illegitimate son Spurio, and not the only member of the family who merits the title ‘bastard’.

The music is pounding, the stage is spinning, and suddenly we see a woman being set upon by several men. One of them rapes her, his buttocks fully displayed, and when that scene comes round again, the woman has been left to sort herself out, clearly distressed, and trying to cover herself up with the tattered remains of her dress. It’s a disturbing scene, and really lets us know about the depravity and corruption in this court.

Now the party’s almost over, but the duke and the other guests are having a final stroll through the night air, still surrounded by the dancers and other courtiers. The revolve stops, to show us Vindice in his room, with long dank hair, scruffy clothes, and bare feet. As he begins his rant against the “Duke: royal lecher”, the characters are obligingly festooned across the stage in front of us. Well, we need no telling that the duke is lecherous, but it is helpful to have these people introduced to us, and the proximity of their depraved actions and Vindice’s condemnation makes his bitterness readily understood.

Mind you, he’s not bitter about the corruption of the government in general, nor does he know of the rape we’ve just seen being committed. His anger is based on an earlier incident when his fiancée Gloriana was murdered by the duke because she wouldn’t let him get his leg over. Vindice has kept her wedding dress, veil and skull as  mementos, and takes them out while telling us of his pain at losing such a wonderful woman. The skull was a touch macabre, and we have to gloss over questions about time of death, how the flesh was removed, and even how did he get hold of it, because his  brother turns up to offer him a job.

His dream job, in fact. With their father recently dead (Hamlet featured strongly in our list of the plays we were reminded of), the family fell into poverty, so Hippolito, Vindice’s brother, got a job at court and wormed his way into the confidence of the duke’s legitimate, though younger, son and therefore heir (King Lear). This chap, Lussurioso, but I’ll call him Lusty, is a chip off the old block, so naturally he wants a villain to do his dirty work, and he gives Hippolito the task of finding one (Richard III). Of course Hippolito thinks of his brother, and the plot appeals enormously to both of them. It will give Vindice a chance to be at court, in disguise, and find a way to take revenge on the duke.

Meanwhile, the duke’s youngest step-son is being tried for the rape we witnessed earlier. The duke is stern, the wronged noblewoman is present, and her husband speaks eloquently against the criminal. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the judges won’t pronounce the man guilty and sentence him to death. But then the duchess, mother to the rapist, pleads for his life (Titus Andronicus), his brothers ask for mercy on his behalf, and even the duke’s heir asks his father to reconsider. Despite the guilty party being completely unrepentant, the duke decides to wait a bit before allowing the judges to announce the verdict, and it looks like nepotism has triumphed over justice yet again. Admittedly the culprit is sent to prison to await his fate, but that doesn’t seem like serious punishment in these circumstances.

The play really livens up now with Vindice’s first appearance in disguise, as Piato. Rory Kinnear has taken off his wig, and now appears with shaven head and wearing torn jeans and a shiny bomber jacket. He decides to adopt an accent to hide his identity even more, but don’t ask me which one, I’ve no idea. Lusty sends everyone else packing so he can check out the new boy himself. He likes what he sees, and doesn’t even object to being groped by a commoner, so long as the man will get him what he wants. Turns out that what he wants is Vindice and Hippolito’s virgin sister! This shocks Vindice, naturally, but he plays along with Lusty, and decides to use the opportunity to test his sister and mother’s integrity.

When he turns up at the family home, now togged out in decent gear, his sister doesn’t recognize him. So when he offers her the letter from Lusty, she lets fly with a ferocious punch that floors him completely. She then has a good rant (it’s clearly a family trait), and storms off, leaving her brother to pick himself up, in ecstasy at her reaction. She’s still chaste! Then his mother arrives, and, as agreed with Lusty, Vindice turns his persuasive powers on her, only to find that she is eventually lured by the massive amount of money he can offer her. To his great disappointment, she agrees to work on her daughter, and suggests he tell Lusty that he’ll be very welcome to drop in next time he’s in the neighbourhood. Disaster. Vindice succeeded where he hoped to have failed.

Back at the court, his brother informs him of the scandal of the duchess and Spurio, who have been spotted having illicit nooky. With Lusty about to head off to take advantage of Piato’s good work, Vindice tries to distract him by warning him that Spurio has been seen heading into the duchess’s bedchamber, and Lusty, incensed at this treachery (his conscience is so selective), dashes off to avenge this wrong. Unfortunately, it’s his father in bed with the duchess, not his half-brother, and since his actions look like treason, Lusty himself is sent to prison. Several of the lords come to the king and plead for Lusty’s life, and by now the king has cooled down enough to tell them to have his son set free. However, before this, the two remaining half brothers had been trying their version of mind games on the duke. Someone should have explained to them that in order to play mind games, you have to have a mind. While claiming to want mercy for poor Lusty’s life, they try to emphasize the heinous nature of his crime, and work the old boy into such a lather that he’ll have his son executed immediately. But the duke’s too wily for that. He spots their ploy, and tests them out by declaring that they’ve persuaded him to forget and forgive – his son shall go free. They change course faster than a racing catamaran rounding the marker buoy (the Olympics are on), and urge him to take the seriousness of the offence into account. This he does, and declares that his son will die! He gives them a ring to take to the judges to have them deal with it. So I was a bit concerned when the lords then pleaded for Lusty to be released, that it might be a smidgeon too late.

However, the two ‘clever’ sons are busy scheming to get Lusty bumped off, with the younger of the two planning on promoting himself even further once the first heir is out of the way, by getting rid of the second as well (his brother). They’re so busy with this, in fact, that they get to the prison shortly after Lusty’s been released. When they then tell the officers (they decided to bypass the judges, to avoid the risk of any unnecessary reprieves) that the duke has ordered that their brother be executed straightaway, and with tears in their eyes, it’s perhaps understandable that said officers (none the brightest, maybe, but still), should mistakenly assume that they were to execute the rapist brother. And so they do. Oops. But the brothers have already left, secure in their belief that they’re one step closer to the dukedom.

Meanwhile, Vindice, as Piato, has been hired by the duke himself to find a virgin for him to ravish that night. Vindice meets his brother, and explains the whole plan. They’re in a dark lodge apart from the palace, and here Vindice has arranged for the Duke to come and enjoy himself. However, he has set a trap. He’s made up a woman out of Gloriana’s gown, her skull, and a mask, and plans to work her like a giant puppet to get the duke to kiss her lips, which he smears with poison, the same poison that Gloriana herself was killed with. The duke arrives, and without much ado, starts to fondle the supposed virgin, getting slapped at a couple of times for his trouble. But he soon grabs her face and plants a huge smacker on her lips, only to find he’s been tricked.

The lads now reveal themselves, and taunt him as he’s dying, as well as stabbing him several times just in case. Vindice had also found out that the duchess and Spurio had arranged an assignation in the same lodge, so he intends to torment the duke by showing him his wife’s own infidelity with his bastard son, just to make sure the duke dies unhappy. Such is the nature of the duke’s own villainy, this actually seemed quite reasonable at the time, but do remember children, don’t try this at home. The duchess and Spurio turn up on cue, and start enjoying themselves in various positions – I won’t bore you with all the details – while Vindice and Hippolito hide the duke’s body.

The next scene brings us back to the deceased duke’s stepsons, still happy that they’ve got rid of Lusty, but bickering like mad over whose bright idea it all was. One of the officers brings them the bloody head of their victim, in a bag, and the sight of them pretending sorrow while actually being delighted was a lovely moment. It’s short-lived too, as Lusty strolls past on his way to somewhere else, so they get the first inkling that all has not gone to plan. When they discover their brother’s head in the bag, they’re naturally upset, and one of them carries the head off, stroking it tenderly, a worrying sign.

Lusty has reappeared in the red plastic room, the ‘sex suite’, and is pretty angry with Piato for giving him duff information and getting him into trouble. Actually, he takes it out on Hippolito first, as he was the one who brought Piato to Lusty. When Piato does turn up, Lusty chases him away, and then he orders Hippolito to bring his brother, Vindice, to him, as he wants to get Piato killed, and Vindice is a good prospect to do the murder. This is where things get complicated. (Now they get complicated?) How do they bring Vindice to Lusty without him spotting that Vindice and Piato are one and the same? And how to kill Piato without killing Vindice? It’s a puzzle.

Still, Vindice gives it a go. Dressed more like his former self, with long hair, a cap, and smarter but more sombre clothes, he puts in an appearance as himself, and sulks and scowls his way into Lusty’s favour. Tasked with killing his alter-ego, he hits on the plan of substituting the duke’s body for Piato’s (although the duke has been missed, no one’s found the body yet), and dressing the corpse in Piato’s clothes so that people will think Piato killed the duke and swapped clothes with him to make his escape. But before they do this, the brothers head home to see if they can persuade their mother to be virtuous again.

It’s a funny scene at first, as their mother insists she’s done nothing wrong, only to find herself confronted by the very man who persuaded her to turn bawd in the first place – her own son! There’s eventual repentance and redemption (Hamlet again), and all three are reconciled. After the brothers leave, their sister turns up, with bag packed, ready to surrender her virtue to Lusty’s lasciviousness, as her mother asked. Are we too late? Has the damage already been done? Her mother thinks so, and does her best to persuade her daughter to take the virtuous path again. Fortunately, it’s all a test on the daughter’s part, and she’s always been determined to keep herself chaste. Phew, that’s a relief. Hugs all round for this family.

Back at the palace, the lads drape the dead duke tastefully on a chair, and remove themselves to the background. Lusty soon joins them, and then they pretend to discover Piato, drunk and asleep, and stab him to death, only to discover it’s actually the duke. Naturally Lusty’s keen to distance himself from this killing, so he quickly latches onto the idea that Piato did it, and the whole court is presented with this explanation as a fait accompli.

Now that the duke’s death is known, Lusty becomes the next duke, and with several of the court attendants and nobles becoming unhappy with the depravity and corruption of the court, Vindice and Hippolito have a sizeable team to help them with the final phase of their revenge. For the new duke’s revels, there are to be dancers dressed in masks, and these plotters have all the details of the costumes. The stage is set for a bloody ending.

The new duke is crowned, and then the party begins. A group of dancers come on in strange looking outfits, and in the course of the dance, they draw their swords and kill the new duke and the lords who are with him. When the “real” dancers arrive – these are the other nobles, including the step-brothers – they’re accused of having done the killings, and the actual assassins take the opportunity to kill the rest of the evil bunch there and then. It wasn’t as gory as it might have been, but the body count was higher than an episode of Midsomer Murders. The nobleman whose wife had been raped (she subsequently died) is asked to take over as duke, and then Vindice makes the biggest blunder of all time. He confesses, the silly bugger. Well, he obviously thinks it’s alright now, the bad folk have been killed, and only the good folk are left, but he forgot that the new new duke is an upstanding man, who will have to prosecute murderers regardless of the provocation, or the benefit to himself. And so it turns out. Worse still, Vindice has already named his brother as his accomplice, so both of them are for the chop. Vindice sees the justice in all of this, and goes to his death a contented man; understandably, his brother’s not so happy with this result.

As the bodies are carried back onto the revolve to be tidied away, the stage turns again, and we see the new duke telling Vindice’s mother and sister what’s happened. They’re naturally upset. Meanwhile, as the stage still turns, we see the whores being cleared out of the sex suite, and there’s a general sense of order being restored. It was a lovely way to finish, and we gave the cast a good reception, which they thoroughly deserved.

I added Anonymous as a potential author of this piece as the authorship is in some doubt. Middleton is some people’s choice, but there are other opinions, although the National is content to put Middleton’s name on this production. I couldn’t honestly say from hearing the lines whether Middleton is the man as I don’t know his work very well, but it’s easy to see why it was a popular play in Jacobean England. There’s plenty of talk about sex, lots of references to death, and plenty of killings, which is just what the audiences liked at that time, or so we’re told. It’s noticeable that there’s no actual sex on stage as far as the text is concerned – the rampant activity on show in this production is entirely to get the point across to an audience that’s pretty much seen it all before; a bit like an Andrew Davies adaptation, but much darker. It seemed totally valid to me, and the music fitted in perfectly to this style as well. In fact, I really didn’t notice the music much, that’s how good it was. We had one group to our right doing more traditional music, while on our left were two DJs giving us the loud club sound, which was a brilliant way to represent the depravity of the court. I didn’t actually notice any of the characters snorting a line or dropping a tab, but it wouldn’t have been out of place.

The other thing I noticed early on was that I found it harder to understand these lines. I became aware of how much Shakespeare has influenced our use of language, even today. It just seems to be easier to hear his lines. This dialogue was much harder work.

The many connections we noticed with Shakespeare’s plays were confirmed in the program notes, as Middleton (if indeed the author) was effectively Will’s complementary opposite, writing works such as The Ghost Of Lucrece to echo Shakespeare’s earlier The Rape Of Lucrece. Even the excellent scene where Lusty arranges for Vindice to pimp his own sister has a precursor in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Ford, disguised as Brook, hires Falstaff to do much the same thing with his own wife. Still, it’s a good scene, and perhaps for once Will found himself wishing he’d written that.

To get back to the production itself, the actors were all excellent, although I must mention Rory Kinnear’s performance. It was superb, and given the close ties between this play and Hamlet, I’m looking forward to seeing his take on that role in a couple of years. (Apparently he’s delaying playing the part as there’s such a glut at the moment, a wise choice.) The whole effect was perfect, and I don’t expect to see a better production of this play ever.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Circle – August 2008

6/10

By Somerset Maugham

Directed by Jonathan Church

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Tuesday 5th August 2008

I don’t think I’ve seen this particular Maugham play before, but as with most of his plays, the plot isn’t what you would call complex, so I felt very much at home with the story soon after the start. This isn’t a criticism, as I don’t go to a Maugham play expecting convoluted plots with lots of twists; the gentle teasing out of the human condition with some good laughs along the way is enough for me.

The opening was a little confusing though, as it wasn’t immediately clear who was married to whom. Arnold, the main husband in the story, is actually married to Elizabeth, but his attitude towards her in the opening scene is more that of a father than a husband, and she does look young enough to be his daughter.

We get the relationships sorted out at the same time as we learn about the situation. Arnold’s father Clive has arrived back unexpectedly from France, and will be staying in his lodge in the grounds (we’re talking posh folk here) at the same time as his runaway ex-wife Kitty and the lover she ran off with thirty years ago pay their first visit to the family home since they scarpered. Oops, how embarrassing. It turns out that Elizabeth has some romantic notions about the woman who would have been her mother-in-law, and wants to meet her. As events unfold, it seems likely that part of the attraction is Elizabeth’s own discontent with her marriage, and the possibility she sees of repeating the process with her own new love.

Arnold isn’t at all keen to see his mother again. She left when he was five and he hasn’t seen her since, but he grudgingly accepts his wife’s choice to invite her down. He comes across as a stuffed shirt with very little affection for his wife, but with a penchant for interior design. His father Clive is a smooth operator, who’s adjusted to life without his spouse by deciding to enjoy himself to the full. The scandal of his wife running off with another titled politician, who was also a good friend, meant Clive had to resign his government post, so he’s spent his time, and some of his considerable wealth, having fun. He’s fairly relaxed about everything, and doesn’t mind seeing Kitty again.

The other house guests are Anna, presumably an old family friend, and Teddy, a relatively poor chap who has been working on plantations out in Malaysia and is keen to get back there. He gives us the outsider’s view of English society, and is also the man that Elizabeth adores. Fortunately, he loves her as well, so we’re all set for a jolly romp and the two older lovebirds haven’t even turned up yet!

Actually, I’ve got ahead of myself. Once Elizabeth has explained the situation to Clive, and he’s agreed to stay out of the way (he doesn’t), the final couple arrive. Played by Susan Hampshire (Kitty) and Phillip Voss (Hughie), these are definitely not romantic lovebirds, nestling and cooing at each other. More like an arthritic porcupine with a hangover and a batty old hen with a lipstick fetish (I mean this in a nice way.) These two bicker and argue, Hughie insults everyone who comes in range, and Kitty does her best to get on with everyone, even asking her ex if he’d like to take her back. He declines the offer. Over the three acts, Elizabeth gets to see what can happen to an illicit couple who are shunned by polite company, but still she’s determined to make a new life for herself with a new man.

Seeing what’s up, Clive devises a plan to help Arnold keep his woman. Arnold’s already blown it once, by reacting badly when Elizabeth first confronts him with her choice, but his father’s taught him that the way to win her back is to give her the opportunity for noble self-sacrifice. So Arnold apologises to Elizabeth for his earlier behaviour, and withdraws any objections to her plans, insisting on giving her a generous allowance which she can use if she wants. His only stipulation is that he will not divorce her; but as I recall he gives her the means to divorce him. I remember thinking at the time that she needed to think of the effect her actions would have on him, and now she does. Her heart is wrung with pity, and with additional input from Kitty explaining what a tough time she would have, she decides to do the noble thing and stay with her husband.

Summoning Teddy, who was waiting for her in the summerhouse (Arnold had banished him from the house, but he was staying at a local hotel), she tells him of her decision, and he thinks she’s barking mad. However, through his own straightforwardness, he comes up with the ideal argument to change her mind yet again. He spells out for her that he’s not offering her happiness, or an easy life, or a comfortable one. There will be rows, and loneliness, and boredom, people will snub them, and there will be all sorts of other unpleasantness. But he still wants her to come with him and share his life regardless. What woman could resist? Kitty and Hughie are still there to lend moral support, which they keep undermining through their excitement at seeing two young lovebirds getting together, and Teddy and Elizabeth are soon driving off in Hughie’s car, which Teddy had thoughtfully taken out of the garage, just in case. And to much applause from the audience, as well.

After they’ve gone, Clive turns up feeling well satisfied that he’s sorted out Arnold’s little spot of bother with the missus. The other two keep their knowledge to themselves, leaving him to boast of his cleverness as the sounds of the car engine fade into the distance. And that’s how it ends.

It was a very enjoyable evening, with very entertaining performances from all the cast. Nearly a 7/10 rating, but the play itself doesn’t have quite the scope to get us there. The set was impressive, with a polished black tiled floor, ornate and formal furniture, and a false perspective view at the back showing us a classical style garden shed at the bottom of the garden.

There was a post-show, of course. Jonathan Church was there, along with David Yelland (Clive), Bertie Carver (an excellent lead in Parade, and here playing Teddy), Charity Wakefield (Elizabeth), and later Susan Hampshire (Kitty). Susan Hampshire had appeared in a production of this same play back in the 1970s, also at Chichester, so naturally when she arrived the first question for her was whether the audience response had changed at all in that time. Apparently not. The question of Arnold’s potential homosexuality came up – he doesn’t have sex with his wife, and likes interior design – and the possible connection to Maugham, himself a homosexual. They had decided not to try and bring that sort of idea into the production, as it’s not specified in the text, and they didn’t want to impose it on the play. I brought up the confusion about who was married to whom at the start, and this led to a lot of information on the work that was done to establish the problems in the relationship between Elizabeth and Arnold, and to tie Teddy’s personality in with that. They’d worked very hard to get just the right approach for each of the characters, and I personally think it worked very well. Someone mentioned how similar many of Clive’s lines were to Oscar Wilde’s style, and David Yelland agreed – there had already been a reference to sub-Wildean dialogue in some reviews.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

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

The Music Man – July 2008

7/10

Book, music and lyrics by Meredith Willson

Story by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey

Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Thursday 31st July 2008

A number of people had been telling me how much they enjoyed this musical, and that can sometimes lead to disappointment, but fortunately this time it didn’t. I loved the music and the singing, especially Scarlett Strallen as Marian, the librarian. She has a lovely voice, and hit her notes perfectly, without the off-key sliding that is so prevalent nowadays. I also enjoyed the hen chorus, where the women of the town are done up with little mini-bustles at the back that look like tails, and walk around like chickens while gossiping away. The story was good too, with some decent characters and a believable setting.

The set was very good. Wooden facades curved round the back of the stage, with lots of doors and windows, and two bigger doors plumb centre. Telegraph poles stood forward of this on our right, but blended into the walls as they went further back. Apart from this, and a small platform over to our left which served as the porch for Marian’s mother’s house, the stage was bare, and picket fences, benches and the rest were brought on as needed. When the Pony Express wagon arrived bringing the uniforms, I had hoped they’d bring it through the big doors with some sort of horse attached, but sadly they just had the townsfolk a-pushing and a-pulling. Shame.

One other slight disappointment was that having seen Six Characters earlier in the month, we’d had a preview of the finale for this production in the video clip they showed, so there was no surprise for us when everyone turned up at the end wearing their uniforms; in fact I found I was waiting for it towards the end. Also, I didn’t hear all the lyrics clearly, though I did still enjoy the singing, and for once I was surprised to find that I knew a lot of the songs, including Till There Was You, one of my favourites (I’m a mushy sentimentalist at heart). All the performances were excellent, although Steve felt Brian Conley wasn’t quite right for the lead part. Certainly his singing could have been better, but as a character who’s meant to be non-musical perhaps his standard of singing was too good!

I’ll finish with the opening of the performance, as that was my favourite bit. A group of people, mostly travelling salesmen, are sitting on a train, and as it chugs along, they debate the issues of the day until one of them asks if anyone knows the whereabouts of a certain Harold Hill, a disreputable salesman who’s giving his more honest(-ish) colleagues problems by cheating a town’s population out of their money and scarpering. This guy wants to track him down and put him out of business. At the very end, as the train’s about to pull out of River City station, Harold reveals himself, and announces his intention to stay in town and do what he does best. It certainly took me by surprise, and got a good reception from the audience.

But the thing I enjoyed most about this opening was that the train was simply the suitcases placed on the revolve, which turned round slowly while the passengers and guard jiggled about to show the movement. This, combined with the singing, which went from person to person so fast I could hardly keep up, was entrancing, and just the sort of thing I love in the theatre. I’m looking forward to next year’s offering already.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Never So Good – July 2008

6/10

By Howard Brenton

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Wednesday 30th July 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

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