Tag Archives: Almeida

Parlour Song – May 2009

6/10

By Jez Butterworth

Directed by Ian Rickson

Venue: Alemida Theatre

Date: Saturday 9th May 2009

This was a perplexing piece; very well written language-wise, with three very good performances and a fascinating set, but I’m still not sure what it was about. Mind you, when a playwright gets away with describing cunnilingus as a good ice-breaker, the afternoon’s got to be enjoyable.

The set was basic black, with two quarter revolves facing the back to start. The sides of these sections formed a screen, and at the start this had a misty picture of a forest of tree trunks projected onto it, a bit like a Chekov setting. Lines from the play were also projected at the start of each scene, like titles, and there were other images to add to the atmosphere. The two quarter sets held a sitting room on the left and a dining room and bedroom on the right, although at the end, all the missing items appeared on the left side (couldn’t see the stuffed badger, though). Some scenes were played in front of the screen, and on one occasion the two bits of screen came forward to create a V shape, similar to the position the revolves took when they swung round. There were conifers in a hedge to each side of the stage, and what with the lighting effects and projected images, the whole production had a dreamlike, surreal quality.

The play is set during a long hot summer, with Ned (Toby Jones) blowing things up all over the country (he’s a demolition expert) and Joy (Amanda Drew) his wife ‘disappearing’ various objects from the house while seducing Dale (Andrew Lincoln) their neighbour and Ned’s close friend, this despite the fact that Dale is also married with kids. It becomes (fairly) clear that Joy is planning to run away from Ned, and  preferably with Dale, but he bottles it (this is when he finally thinks to mention the two kids who are so important to him!) and she ends up staying with Ned. Finally, the rain comes, and I’m left wondering, was that a one-off and all down to the heat, or is there more to the story? I misunderstood that Ned killing his wife was part of his dream, so I was a bit confused when she reappeared, especially as the body double they’d got for Amanda Drew fooled me completely. I mean, I know she’s a good actress, but two places at once? (It’s been a long week.)

The early scenes in particular were excellent. Dale did a lot of talking to the audience, then we’d get a little scene, and so on, and the dialogue and characterisation were spot on. There was a lot of humour too, with different parts of the audience reacting more strongly to certain lines – the people along our row really enjoyed the line about Kosovans – but it didn’t feel divisive in this performance. I loved the exchange about Falkirk, where Ned’s sure he hasn’t shown Dale his video of that demolition job, and Dale has to describe the whole thing in detail before Ned remembers.

The workout scenes were also good. Initially, Ned asks Dale to help him get a bit fitter, and so Dale takes him through an exercise session, during which Ned is telling this long-winded story about how he came to buy his new bride a heavy soapstone bird bath from his share of the fifty pounds he’d found blowing along the street. The story gets in the way of the exercising, and the ultimate point is that that morning, the bird bath had disappeared. Not something Ned could have misplaced, or misremembered. The story itself is quite good fun, but the humour of this bit is mainly in the way the lads work out, with Ned almost rupturing himself with the first exercise, and Dale looking like a complete poseur.

The second session is similar, in that the comedy is all physical. This time, it’s just Ned exercising in his own sitting room using weights, and then working up to the bar bell which is just a bit too heavy for him. His little jogs and puffing out his breath were good fun, and then when he did get the bar up over his head he couldn’t control it properly, so when Dale arrived he had to topple over towards the sofa to get out of the awkward position he’d got himself into. Great fun. There was also the look that Joy gives him over dinner where we can clearly see that she’s not enjoying their relationship at all, and the bit in the bedroom, when Ned is listening to a tape that Dale’s lent him about satisfying a woman sexually, was just hilarious. That’s when we get to hear about the ice-breaking effects of cunnilingus, and get to enjoy Ned practising his tongue wiggles.

There were a lot of scenes and I found I wasn’t fully engaged all the time, but overall the performances kept it going and made it worthwhile.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Duet For One – February 2009

7/10

By Tom Kempinski

Directed by Matthew Lloyd

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 7th February 2009

What a start to our playgoing year! After a death in the family, several bouts of assorted illnesses, and retro winter weather that was a throwback to the 60s, I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see the inside of a theatre again. So this was an extra special treat, giving me the confidence boost I needed, as well as a very enjoyable afternoon’s entertainment.

Both actors were on top form, getting every scrap of emotion and humour out of their parts. Juliet Stephenson covered a huge range in her performance, from overly bright and cheerful, through angry and depressed, via some truthful revelations to an eventual calm, but with some way yet to go. Henry Goodman had a lot less to do in the early stages, though he does get a good speech in the penultimate scene, but he conveyed the right amount of quirkiness and authority throughout to make both his patient’s outbursts and her occasional surrenders believable.

I don’t know if the text had been updated in any way, perhaps the reference to laptops was new(?), but the play didn’t seem dated at all. Sadly, in some ways – it would be nice if more progress had been made in treating MS. In any case, the story is about facing up to the challenges life throws at us, often unfairly, and this still comes across very strongly, especially with such powerful performances. There’s a great deal of humanity in this play, which is one of the things I like about it; it reaffirms life in the face of despair and suffering. It’s also very well crafted, as it’s not easy to keep an audience awake and in their seats with only two characters who hardly move, and who occasionally lapse into relatively long silences. Having a motorised wheelchair certainly helps, so at least one of the characters was more mobile than might have been expected, and the emotional outbursts from each of them certainly kept the energy levels up. But they would be nowhere without good writing, and this definitely qualifies. I will just mention though, that, in common with all other on stage psychiatrists, Doctor Feldmann short-changes his clients dreadfully. Three sessions in less than an hour and a quarter! Scandalous.

The set was a pleasant room, with windows to our left in a rectangular bay, the door next to these, and shelves filling the rest of the back wall. Unlike some other dramatic office/studies, these were mainly filled with records, CDs and presumably tapes, with books being squeezed into less than half the space. A chaise longue in front of the shelves had a richly woven carpet in front of it. The doctor’s desk was to the right, and there were two comfy armchairs on either side of the table in the window; at least they were once the doctor had moved one of them back – not needed for this client. The doctor was around for most of the short interludes between scenes, while Juliet Stephenson was changing her outfit, and there were also a number of musical extracts for our enjoyment – fortunately none of them set off my hearing aids, so we could relax and enjoy ourselves (and I did have a few sniffles as well).

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Waste – October 2008

5/10

By Harley Granville Barker

Directed by Sam West

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 25th October 2008

This was a bit of a waste, as it turned out. The talent was there, but the style of the piece just didn’t allow me to enjoy it as much as I had before, although the similarities with current events were abundantly clear.

To begin with, I forgot to get the remote for my hearing aids out, and so I missed some of the early dialogue which was just too quiet for me to catch. Having said that, even with my aids on full volume I still missed some of the later dialogue, either because the lines weren’t said clearly enough – the intonation or diction were a little sloppy – or because the set design meant that characters were addressing the far wall in order to speak to other characters, and didn’t project enough to fill even that small space. The amount of coughing was also a problem, and several lines were lost under that fusillade.

Even so I heard enough to get the gist of the story, though I didn’t remember the details from the earlier production we saw at the RSC. The opening scenes of each half were by far the best for us, especially the start of the second half, when the politicians gather to protect one of their own. The story concerns an independent MP, Henry Trebell, who has an affair with the wife of an Irish Catholic. When she gets pregnant by him, she decides to have an abortion, and that operation goes tragically wrong, resulting in her death. If the affair becomes public during the inquest, the bill which Trebell has been drafted into the Cabinet to spearhead, will fail. This bill is to disestablish the Church of England, and remove its connection to and influence on the British Parliament. So, lots of contentious issues there, and the play is even stronger because Trebell decides to kill himself once he loses his government appointment. The bill was his real baby; he comes across as a cold and pretty heartless person apart from his love of change, and especially change in this area. It’s not too surprising that the Lord Chamberlain refused to allow the original version onto the stage, and even this revised version had a long wait to appear in public.

The performances were mostly very good, clarity of speech aside, and my only real problem was in the portrayal of the two lovers. Trebell was too cold to be entirely believable as a man with carnal passions, and Amy O’Connell, the supposed lover, was a strange character, strong then weak, cynical then neurotic, so I could never make up my mind what was going on with her. With this weakness at the heart of the play, or rather this lack of a heart to the play, I found only the scenes with the politicians were really interesting, and the rest were tolerable. Hugh Ross as Cyril Horsham, the newly-elected Prime Minister, was excellent, as were all of his Cabinet, and I enjoyed Bruce Alexander as Gilbert Wedgecroft, a doctor who was closely connected to all these powerful people, and who could give us information on the abortion front, not that the word itself was bandied around much.

Finally, the set was an interesting design. There were three locations, and the design allowed for all of them. The opening scene was in a v-shaped drawing-room, with a door to our left, a corner of the room going back to some French windows, and a bookcase to our right. There was a piano and various chairs and sofas. With very little work, the central part of the set was rotated, and the “v” of the corner became another corner pointing outwards, making an “L” shaped office space. The door became a bookcase, the bookcase became a door, there was a desk and chairs, and voila, we are in Trebell’s office. The politicians gathered in a reprise of the first room, though now done up as a library, and then it’s back to the office for the final scenes. Very economical and effective.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Kicking A Dead Horse – September 2008

2/10

By Sam Shephard

Directed by Sam Shephard

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 13th September 2008

This was something of a disappointment. I’ve liked Sam Shepard’s work before – the Almeida did an excellent production of The Late Henry Moss in 2006 – and Stephen Rea is a very good actor, but this play just wasn’t good enough to keep me involved, never mind entertained, for all of seventy minutes.

It’s a surreal piece, dealing with the ‘death’ of the Old West. We see this through the eyes of an art critic who’s come out to the middle of nowhere to get back to his roots, only to have his horse keel over and die once they’re well out of sight of civilisation. The play isn’t exactly a monologue, as Stephen Rea’s character, Hobart Struther, speaks from at least two points of view, the optimistic one who wanted to come back, and the inner critic who’s always wise after the event. He did use different voices for these two aspects of himself, although occasionally I found they weren’t differentiated enough.

The set was excellent. At the start, there’s a blank curved back wall, and several mounds on the stage, with what looked like a plain sheet draped over them. At the very start of the play, some piano music starts up, and as the lights come on, I could see that the cloth on the stage was blue. It begins to slid back, revealing what’s under the mounds, and as I watched, I got the impression the cloth was dancing to the music. It certainly seemed to move in rhythm, and I kept my eyes on it till the last corners flicked down at the back of the stage.

Still on the stage were two mounds of earth (they could have been boulders, but as there was a big pit between them, and no other sign of the contents, I assume the mounds were that dirt), the aforementioned pit right of centre, a dead horse lying behind the pit with its back to us and its head to our left, and a saddle, saddlebags and other riding accoutrements to the left of the stage. Along the back wall were the gentle outlines of American western scenery, looking very distant.

There’s some noises and dirt flying out of the hole, and then the man himself emerges, slowly. He’s not happy with his horse, and kicks it several times through the play, each time accompanied by a drum beat which sounds slightly metallic, like the horse had a steel drum inside it. He tells us his story – art critic, made a lot of money spotting the ignored paintings in pubs and bars out west, and finally he chucks it all in to come back out west, where he was brought up, to become “Authentic” again. Trouble is, his horse dies after some oats went down the wrong way and choked him. So now he’s burying it. Only it refuses to be buried, according to him. Me, I thought he was the one with the problem.

His voices talk him into throwing his western gear into the pit before putting the horse in, including his hat, which I thought was a bit silly. Later, as he scans the horizon with his binoculars, singing a gratingly awful song, a woman glides serenely out of the pit, wearing the hat, and after standing there for a while, unnoticed, puts the hat on his head and glides back into the pit again. Don’t ask me what that was about – I haven’t a clue. She was wearing a slip and nothing else, apart from the hat. I found the song so annoying I was even considering leaving, so it had to be bad.

Finally, with the hat returned to the pit, he gets his rope round the horse’s ankles, and hauls it over onto its back. After a bit more ranting and raving amongst his various selves, he decides to rescue the hat again, and as he’s down there, the horse topples in on top of him. End of play, thank God. It was pretty obvious from a long way out what was going to happen, so stretching it out so long was pointless.

There were some good bits. I liked the set, and there were some fun lighting changes, driven by Struther himself. He mentioned it being sunset, and lo, it was sunset. Later he brought about a similarly swift change to daytime. He produced a tent with a mind of its own, and we got some laughs when it kept collapsing. Enjoyable though this was, it’s never a good sign when the props are more entertaining than the cast and dialogue. I also liked the horse well enough, and almost felt like cheering when it fell into the grave.

Stephen Rea’s accent was unusual. I thought I could hear a lot of Irish creeping back into it, but I don’t know if that was intentional. After all, the author himself directed the piece, and presumably he knew what he wanted. The delivery was so monotonous, though, that I didn’t really care; I just wanted it to be over. This was more Beckett than Shepard, and not one I’ll see again in a hurry.

© 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 Last Days Of Judas Iscariot – April 2008

6/10

By Stephen Adly Guirgis

Directed by Rupert Goold

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 12th April 2008

This was a good production. It was pretty loud – I only used the headset briefly in the first half, during Simon’s testimony, but I used it a bit more in the second half.

The overall effect was surreal. The play was set in Hope, a suburb of Purgatory, according to a helpful angel. It concerns an appeal hearing on behalf of Judas Iscariot, to get him out of Hell and into heaven. The story jumps around a lot, so I’ll just throw things in as I remember them. St. Monica, resplendent in a red tracksuit, gave us a good insight into Judas’ suffering, and how she was requested to put in a good word with God about helping him. She visits Judas, and finds him frozen in grief, unable to move, with only one tear trickling down his cheek. She’s very moved by this, and does her best to help.

Corey Johnson played the judge who does his best to refuse to hear the case. We find out later that he’d hanged himself when he was on Earth, which is why he was trying cases in Purgatory. Really he should have recused himself in this trial, but that’s the afterlife for you. There’s a young woman lawyer, Cunningham, who’s determined to get him to change his mind and eventually succeeds, and another chap who’s keen to defend against the appeal. He’s so smarmy he took flattery to the next level. He flirted outrageously with Mother Teresa and constantly praised the judge, but he was brought up short by Satan. Cunningham has her own issues, as we discover later, but she’s mainly feisty and determined, and does her best to get Judas’s sentence repealed.

A jury is sworn in – it includes the angel who gave us the introduction at the start – and they sit in the front row of the auditorium, to one side. Witnesses are called, and it’s an illustrious list. One of the first is Satan, played by Dougie Henshall, all svelte and charming in a classy suit, but he could get nasty at times. He was very candid about his activities, but completely denied that he tempted Judas to betray Christ.

Initially, Satan was complaining that a couple of his souls had been nicked, and he wanted replacements, he wasn’t fussy who. He had an unsettling way of looking at the audience at this point. He also reckoned he didn’t compete with God – people were turning up in Hell all by themselves, while he sat on his sofa watching hour long dramas on HBO. I thought there was more humour in this than the audience responded to, and there were some gaps in the auditorium after the interval. The language wasn’t a problem for us – if you watch The Wire regularly, as we do, this was pretty tame – although I probably didn’t get all the cultural references.

Saint Peter told us of ‘Drew running off to be with Jesus. Matthew was also with Peter, and explained the attitude towards Jewish tax collectors. A nun read out a quote from Thomas Aquinas(?) during Mother Teresa’s testimony. She got a bit stroppy at having to read it out a second time, as the prosecution lawyer didn’t get it first time around. Personally I don’t blame him, it was a tricky piece of language.

Satan was recalled to the stand, and was very unhappy about it. He put both counsellors through Hell before continuing. Pilate was called, and arrived in sandy coloured plus fours with purple socks, carrying a golf club. He clearly enjoys all the facilities at the heavenly country club. Despite her best efforts, Cunningham was unable to pin any responsibility for Jesus’ death on him; that’s how cool Pilate was.

The second half started with Monica introducing us to Mary Magdalene. She was clear that she wasn’t Jesus’ wife, but his best friend. Judas was probably his second best friend, chalk to Jesus’ cheese. Jesus argued with Judas a lot, but always loved him. Then we were back into the court case.

Caiaphas gave testimony, and was fairly unmoved about it all, but he still couldn’t explain the difference between his betrayal of Jesus, and Judas’s. There were lots of different arguments put forward, but at times I felt the writer’s own passion had taken over, and I wasn’t able to connect with what was going on. On the whole, I liked Satan’s evidence best – he seemed to be pointing them in a more useful direction, had they cared to take it.

We saw two jury members, apart from the angel we met near the start. One was a woman still on life support back on Earth, so she was dressed in hospital blue; the other was a young man who didn’t yet know he was dead, and who didn’t ask anyone in case he found out. He ended the play by bringing Judas some beer, and then telling him a long story about how he cheated on his wife. At this point Judas has frozen up again, in the pose that Monica found him in earlier. Jesus is sitting on the far desk, having tried to help Judas get past his guilt. It was a fairly downbeat ending, but there was a lot to like during the rest of the play.

The set had a curved box covering the upper level, with a big slit at which characters could appear. Towards the back there was a fireman’s pole, while the floor underneath was a dangerous looking design of random and shattered tiles. To our left, the judge had a desk, to our right was the lawyers’ table and chairs, and in the centre was a manhole cover. Various lights gave a number of different effects, and on the whole I liked the sparse design and jumping from one scene to another without much explanation or sense of place (place on Earth, that is). One exception was Satan’s description of his meeting with Judas at a bar after the betrayal. Judas brought on two bar stools, and his Hawaiian shirt brightened the place up enormously. Satan pretends to be Clementine from Cappadocia, and Judas is so drunk he thinks Cappadocia is in Egypt. Or else he just didn’t care, which is more likely.

There was lots of humour in this, and lots of excellent performances. The down side was that some speeches went on too long, and the energy flagged in the second half with some of the repetitious questioning. I would have liked to have heard more from Judas himself, but then one of the points was that he was too locked up in his guilt and grief to help himself. I was sad that he couldn’t get past those things to accept the forgiveness that was on offer. To sum up, there was much to like, with some rough patches.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Homecoming – February 2008

8/10

By: Harold Pinter

Directed by: Michael Attenborough

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 9th February 2008

After the first scene of this play, I wondered why it wasn’t better known, even done in schools. After the first half, I had a pretty good idea why it wasn’t done in schools, but I’m still not clear why it isn’t better known, and done more often. Perhaps the violence and misogyny put people off. If so, it’s a shame, because it’s a brilliantly written play, full of Pinter’s ambiguities and menacing intonations, and with the rhythms and cadences making it seem like a classical composition rather than a play.

The story, if it can be called that in a Pinter play, concerned the return of one of three sons to the house he grew up in. It’s an all-male household – the father, his brother, and the other two sons. The returning son has brought his wife, and in this production they’ve cast Jenny Jules as the wife, Ruth. This was suggested by Pinter himself, apparently, as well as being the director’s choice, so the juxtaposition of unknown wife and abandoned family is theoretically given an added dimension by having her played by a black actress. However, there’s nothing much in the dialogue to suggest that anyone takes any notice of her skin colour, so in some ways this was a wasted opportunity, and we’re effectively dealing with colour blind casting again. Anyway, she’s an excellent actress, and played the part with great assurance, bringing out what little of her character Pinter puts on the page. Let’s face it, he never could do women well, so this is really a play about the male relationships, and the men’s inability to relate to women as anything other than whore or saint, and often confusing the two.

The scenes give us glimpses of the characters in action. The father, Max (Kenneth Cranham) would give Alf Garnett six lengths start and still pass him well before the furlong pole. He’s a bitter, twisted old man, who spends his time alternating between smooth charm (rarely) and vicious ranting (mostly). He’s obviously done his fatherly duty by hitting his sons copiously with his stick, and I wondered what treatment his wife received when she was still alive. When he first sees Ruth, he attacks Teddy (Neil Dudgeon) for bringing a whore into the house. Even when he’s been told she’s Teddy’s wife, he still has a rant, and then he’s all charm and smarm with her.

Teddy is a strange character. At first he seems nervous and over-anxious, as he and his wife arrive. His meeting with his dad has some very uncomfortable undertones, as they square up for either a battle or a cuddle. It’s clear he’s done his best to get away from the toxic atmosphere of the house, which is why he’s been in America for the last nine years. He’s a doctor of philosophy, literally, as philosophy is his subject. He then decides to leave; presumably the family hasn’t improved over the years he’s been away. However the family want Ruth to stay and look after them, at least when she isn’t turning tricks on the side to help make ends meet. Teddy seems completely unconcerned by this, and is totally happy to leave his wife with this group of Neanderthals. Strange doesn’t quite cover it.

Lenny (Nigel Lindsay), the second son, is a smooth operator. We don’t find out what business he’s in till the second half – he runs a number of prostitutes. He seems to have got past his upbringing by no longer being frightened of his dad, but when confronted with Ruth’s calm assurance, he becomes quite nervous. Joey (Danny Dyer) is the third son, a boxer still under the influence of his dad. He’s the quiet one. There’s also Sam (Anthony O’Donnell), Max’s brother, who works as a chauffeur by day and does the dishes by night. He’s clearly the sensitive one in the family, and the only one who seems to value women for more than sex and housework.

Ruth is the typical female blank at the centre of Pinter’s work. She’s described, by herself and Teddy, as the perfect wife and mother – they have three boys back in America – yet she shows a strange tendency to use sexual allure to enthral the men in the house. She has an encounter with Lenny early on, where he tries to impress her by telling her how he beats up women (not a chat-up line I’d recommend, by the way), and she unnerves him by staying calm and asking straightforward questions. She wins the battle of wills over a glass of water, and yet she seems to be propositioning Lenny. Later, when Joey comes downstairs after spending two hours upstairs with her, it turns out he hasn’t done anything – no sex, nothing. According to his tales of other encounters with women, this is not usual. All these men are attracted to her – moths and flame spring to mind – yet they’re able to talk of putting her on the game so she can earn some money for her keep. At the end, she chooses to stay with the family, on her terms, and as her husband leaves, she’s sitting in the main chair, Max’s chair, just beginning to smile. Her reign has begun, but what sort of a reign will it be in that household? It reminded me of Lord of the Flies, but with a woman involved.

This description really doesn’t get across the beauty of the language. Even with all the swearing and crudity, it was powerful and focused. The performances got the most out of it, and although I would like to see it again, I’m not sure it could be done better. I just hope it is done again – it deserves to be.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Cloud Nine – December 2007

8/10

By: Caryl Churchill

Directed by: Thea Sharrock

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 8th December 2007

We’d seen this play back in the 80s at Chichester. Neither of us could remember much about it apart from Tom Hollander dressed as a little girl. We weren’t sure how good this afternoon’s performance was going to be, and our low expectations gave us ample scope to enjoy this production, which seemed much funnier and more interesting than we expected.

The play was originally developed during a workshop period, with Caryl Churchill going off and writing the piece after the actors and director had explored a specific topic, in this case sexual politics. For the first half, we see a family out in Africa in Victorian times, supporting Queen and country, and seething with repressed and expressed passions of all kinds. With mixed gender roles – the son is played by a woman, the mother by a man – there’s a lively sense of fun which reminded Steve of farce. The set is simple – a round raked disc (is this a theme? – Thea Sharrock did the same thing with The Emperor Jones) with a square flat platform in the middle, a doorway with a couple of windows, and a bench. Sophie Stanton, who played two characters in this half, had a lot of quick changes to do, but otherwise the characters stayed the same throughout.

In the second half, we see the family group twenty-five years on, but in terms of the outside world, we’re now in 1979, in London. This strange warping of time works remarkably well. Victorian attitudes lingered on for longer than necessary anyway, and this juxtaposition shows up the changes more clearly than a more realistic timescale would have. It’s also good fun, as when the Victorian characters reappear from time to time – more quick changes, but for everyone this time. There’s no real plot, just the characters discovering what works for them and what doesn’t.

For example, Betty the mother is now a prim, uptight sexually repressed woman who worries for England and gradually finds her feet, and her clitoris, by the end of the play. Her daughter Vicky, played rather well by a doll in the first half, now emerges as a woman in her own right, but so far up the collective gender political backside that we sometimes need subtitles to understand her. Her determination to find herself as a woman makes it virtually impossible for her man, Martin, to know where he stands. I found myself wondering if these scenes were funnier now that we’ve moved on a bit from those situations, or if this is just a much funnier production.

The son, Edward, now played by a man instead of a girl, has accepted his homosexuality, and is content to be a wife to some man. Unfortunately, his partner of choice is rampantly unfaithful, so Martin ends up living with Vicky and her lesbian lover, Lin – a more interesting ménage-a-trois than most. The next generation consist of Cathy, Lin’s daughter, whom we see, and Tommy, Martin and Vicky’s son, whom we don’t. Cathy is played by James Fleet, who also played the father in the first half, all rugged colonial with a moustache and a hard-on for another woman. The moustache stayed on for part two, and although it didn’t entirely go with the pink frock, after a while we got used to it. I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t become the fashion, though.

The play ends with Betty of old coming on to be embraced by Betty of now. It wasn’t a bad ending – I just felt we hadn’t concentrated on Betty enough to make it a completely fitting ending. However, this is probably a compliment to the fine ensemble work that kept the whole piece entertaining all the way through.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Awake And Sing! – October 2007

5/10

By: Clifford Odets

Directed by: Michael Attenborough

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 13th October 2007

This is the second play we’ve seen at the Almeida this year which is set around the time of the Depression in America. Big White Fog (16 June 2007) showed us the impact on a poor black family, while this play centres on a Jewish family with a strong mother, a father who’s achieved failure-hood at fifty, a daughter who’s well on the way to becoming a single mother till a marriage is arranged, a son who wants a better life, and a grandfather who has a lot of spirit but no way of doing anything about it, as he’s in a wheelchair. There’s also a chap called Moe Axelrod, whose connection with the family I couldn’t figure out but who eventually runs off with the daughter, and a brother, Uncle Morty, who’s done very well for himself, apparently.

Showing us a particular period through the lives of ordinary people can work very well, but here I felt it came across as more of a domestic drama, on a small scale. I didn’t get any sense of larger forces at work, although what did come across in both this play and Big White Fog was human resourcefulness triumphing in the end. Both plays left me feeling that these folks would get by.

The performances were all good, the set was fine, and Steve noticed that the Almeida is diversifying in order to make ends meet. They’d taken in a load of washing and it was hung up over the stage to dry – presumably the heat from the lights would do the job in double quick time. Or it could just have been set dressing to indicate the washing strung out between apartments. Whatever.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Big White Fog – June 2007

5/10

By: Theodore Ward

Directed by: Michael Attenborough

Venu: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 16th June 2007

This is a play, written in the 1930s, dealing with the various ways that black folk in US northern cities (Chicago, in this case) handled the discrimination they experienced every day. The family is a mixture. The wife, Ella, is the daughter of a woman (Martha) who’s part-white, born out of wedlock, and inordinately proud of being a Dupree. Ella has married Victor, a fully black man who’s heavily involved in the movement set up by Marcus Garvey, encouraging black people in America to return to Africa to set up a modern state there. Ella’s sister, Juanita, has married Daniel, who’s a wheeler-dealer type, trying to work the system to his advantage, and doing OK at this time, though the Depression gets even him in the end. Daughter Wanda chooses to drop out of school to work in a shop, as she doesn’t see education helping her much, while Les, the son, has received an ambiguous letter suggesting he’ll be accepted for a scholarship to study chemistry at college.

We see how things develop over several years, eventually ending up in the middle of the Depression. Les is turned down for a place at college because he’s black, and the scholarship committee is specifically forbidden from granting scholarships to black people. He turns to communism as an alternative, supported by a Jewish friend. Marcus Garvey does a runner with the money raised to found the Black Star Line, and is eventually put in jail, but Victor stays resolute to the end, becoming even more important in the organisation, and even less able to provide for his family as he’s put all their savings into Black Star Line shares. Wanda, influenced by her friend Claudine, ends up with a white sugar daddy, only she’s the one who has to be sweet to get any money out of him. And there’s also Uncle Percy, Victor’s brother, who spends all his time having fun, drinking and spending his money on clothes (and, presumably, women). He ends up a serious drunk. Meantime, Ella has done her best to keep her family together and cared for, but eventually even she has to speak up and complain.

One of the most interesting aspects of this production is that it’s the complete opposite of the colour-blind casting we’re so used to. It’s totally colour-sensitive. I noticed this first when Claudine comes in, as she’s light-skinned enough for me to be unsure that she’s playing a “black” character. Later, the racism amongst African-Americans comes to the fore, as Martha lets rip at Victor because he’s a black man! I know that no group is free of its own prejudices, but it’s rare to see this shown on stage. We get a touch of Queen Lear at this point, as Martha flounces off to her other daughter, only to return years later, saying she can’t stay with Juanita another night.

The other point of interest is how much the Depression affects everyone, black and white. Given that the Communists are racially integrated, it’s a sign of hope, but given that the whole country is suffering, it’s a setback for those trying to improve the lot of black people.

I did enjoy this play. It was amazing to see such a huge cast on the Almeida stage, and good to see an “authentic” piece – written by a black playwright at the time. I didn’t feel it was particularly shocking or even that powerful; it seemed quite gentle given the subject it’s covering, but that may be down to my detachment in time and experience from the events depicted. All the performances were excellent, though Novella Nelson (Martha) and Clint Dyer (Percy) were my favourites. The set reminded me of the Eric Sykes show, with the stairs, door and sitting room. Good fun.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me