Tag Archives: NT

The Power Of Yes – October 2009

8/10

By David Hare

Directed by Angus Jackson

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Thursday 15th October 2009

We decided not to have high hopes for this play after seeing such a fantastic performance of Enron earlier in the year. Surely we couldn’t get two great plays on such closely related subjects in the same year? And we know from experience not to get our expectations up as that usually leads to disappointment.

Well, I’m delighted to report that we both thoroughly enjoyed this new work. David Hare seems to have developed the knack of being entertaining as well as informative and here he manages to get across a great deal of technical detail while giving us many opportunities to laugh at both the people who contributed to this sorry mess, and even the situation itself at times (note to self: never let bailiffs get inside the door, not even to go to the loo!).

The set was uncompromisingly sparse. The screen at the back showed what looked like a charcoal rubbing of wooden floorboards to start with, then all sorts of other images to illustrate the story. I felt particularly nostalgic when the building society names were up there – those were the days. There was another screen nearer the front which was raised and lowered as necessary, and which usually showed at least a portion of the fuller picture on the rear screen, as well as the ‘scene’ headings. There was a blackboard, some chairs and a table that made infrequent appearances but other than that, the stage was bare.

When Anthony Calf as the author walked on from the back of the stage, I was surprised to see how deep the acting space was; with so little furniture it was hard to judge distance. Mind you, they needed the room, as a cast of twenty spread itself out over the stage to give us a chorus-like introduction to the credit crunch. One character even called it a Greek tragedy.

After a short while, most of the cast trooped off and the author was left with a journalist from the Financial Times who was going to tell him the story of how the global financial systems collapsed. As she did, various characters came forward, introduced by a young man or woman, and told us, via the author, their part in the story or how they saw it unfold, and why they’re not to blame. Some of the characters preferred to be anonymous. There were occasional clips of the lower part of Alan Greenspan’s face saying something profound (now known to be untrue) and the characters covered a broad spectrum of interested parties from all walks of life, from the (ex) Chairman of the FSA through politicians, investment bankers, lawyers, economists and journalists to a chap who worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau, helping ordinary folk to deal with their debts. A large number appeared to have been at Harvard, Goldman Sachs and/or the Financial Times.

The character who probably came out best in all of this was George Soros. The author interviewed him, and this was shown at the end of the play so that his views on rampant capitalism were the final impression we were left with. In response to some comments by Alan Greenspan when the two of them had lunch some time before, about the benefits of capitalism being worth the price that had to be paid, Soros pointed out that the people who reap the benefits are not the same people who pay the price. A sobering thought, but unlikely to be a popular one with bankers.

I won’t go through the whole sordid story again here – frankly I couldn’t, as it was one of those things I followed well enough at the time, but couldn’t remember past the curtain call. I did get several ideas very clearly from it. One is that the people involved in banking are so brimful of self confidence (or could that be arrogance?) that they genuinely didn’t believe they had done anything wrong. On the way to the train, I recognised a similarity with Coriolanus. We as a society set bankers and other money men the task of making the country rich, without regulating how they should do that, and with the strange belief that if some people are coining it in then everyone benefits (trickle down theory). In the same way, Coriolanus is unleashed to give Rome military success, but when it comes to the social responsibility aspect neither he nor the bankers give a toss. So we all end up paying for our collective mistakes and ignorance.

Other points included the lack of regulation, the weird delusion that we’d broken through the cycle of boom and bust to a ‘new economics’, and that underpinning all this was a lack of knowledge of, and even interest in, history. Maniacal greed was also exposed, as one of the journalists explained that her friends who now worked in the city weren’t satisfied with only half a million a year. I think she’s also the one who pointed out that many of these financial folk consider they have earned the money instead of the company, and equate good luck with their own genius. And all of this unprecedented growth was founded on cheap labour in China.

There was a hint from George Soros near the end that the old capitalist certainties are changing (already there are moves to have the oil price quoted in a basket of currencies, including the Chinese Yuan) and with so many of the Western economies racking up huge debts he may well be right (he often is). So perhaps the lessons will be learned eventually, just not today.

The performances were all superb, as was to be expected from such a talented cast, and I only mention Anthony Calf in particular because he was not only on stage for almost the entire one and three quarter hours, he also provided the reactions that most of us would have had if we’d investigated the subject; bewilderment, anger, confusion, etc. I also liked his little demonstration of the need for speed in delivering a story, something the writer clearly understands. At one point, a journalist makes a comparison between the self confidence of the bankers and Hare’s own self belief. It’s a fair point in some ways, but then David Hare is unlikely to have been paid an obscene or disproportionate amount of money for writing his play, the enjoyment of his work is a subjective experience, and the measure of his success is bums on seats. The bankers, on the other hand, appear to be reaping rewards out of proportion to their effort or results, and the measure of their success can be clearly identified (if you can make sense of the bank’s accounts, that is). However, the comparison still has some validity, and I like the fact that this play has given me plenty to think about.

And how did it compare to Enron? Well, it didn’t have the singing and dancing nor the ladies’ knickers, but it did get the information across in an equally enjoyable way, so at least that’s two good things to come out of the credit crunch.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Black Album – August 2009

2/10

By Hanif Kureishi

Directed by Jatinder Verma

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Thursday 27th August 2009

I think I can best sum up this stage version of Hanif Kureshi’s novel with one succinct four-letter word. Dull. The only way I could really expand on that would be to repeat the word, several times. Fortunately, the seats in the Cottesloe were uncomfortable enough to keep me awake throughout the first half, so I can speak with some confidence as to the consistency of the dullness. Not even the Cottesloe seats could keep me totally alert for part two, but I got enough, with Steve’s input as well, to have a clear view of the production’s inadequacy.

How can this be, you may ask? Let me explain. The set was OK, a small room with two walls, opening wide from the back, each of which were used as screens before and during the performance. To begin with there were slogans, song titles, etc., then wallpaper and other furnishing images appeared which helped to create quick changes of scene. So far, so good.  The room had four doors, at least one window (the projections confused things a little) and a desk, sofa and chair. We could see the shadows of people knocking on the doors, and characters often used the front of the stage when they were walking outside. It all felt a bit rough and ready, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There was also music playing from time to time – not entirely to my taste, being a child of the sixties – but it was decent enough.

The story is set in the 1980s and begins with a young man, Shahid, heading off to college to get a qualification. His father is dead, his older brother is married, and his mother, possibly with the brother(?), runs the family’s travel agency business. There’s some nice humour to do with an over-protective mother sending her youngest away but that’s soon over and then we get to meet the different strata of society that young Shahid starts mixing with.

These include the overly rigid Muslims who want to mould him in their image, Shahid’s brother and sister-in-law (confusingly referred to as “aunt”) who are intent on enjoying the commercial opportunities and fleshpots offered by the West, the right-on female lecturer who beds Shahid and encourages him to think for himself, and her husband, the communistic lecturer who sees everything as an aspect of the class struggle. He’s going through a bad time because the opening up of the Eastern Bloc is revealing unpleasant truths about the former Communist regimes; he’s developing a stutter to compensate.

Not so much a coming-of-age piece, then, as a where-do-I-fit-in story with a state-of-the-nation setting. Shahid ultimately rejects the moral certainties of the religionists to stay with the lecturer, and the play ends with the two of them getting down to some serious nooky while his former Islamic brethren turn themselves into suicide bombers. When the bombs go off, the actors fall down and the walls collapse outwards, leaving the final image of a startled Shahid sitting up on the sofa trying to comprehend what’s just happened.

The final image was a good one, but sadly there was little else in the play to rejoice over. The funniest joke was probably the eating of the sacred pakora (it contained a message from god) but that had been so well signposted that it lost a lot of its impact. I had the feeling that we were meant to be laughing a lot more – nothing else could explain the less-than-two-dimensional characters and the turgid dialogue, which the actors often delivered as if they were reading off the back of a cereal packet. But either the humour just wasn’t there, or we, along with most of this audience, just weren’t getting it.

I don’t mean to criticise the actors either. Steve thought at first that they might have simply been miscast, but on the whole I think they were all doing their best with a very meagre script. Shereen Martineau, playing three female characters, probably got the most out of her parts, while I thought Alexander Andreou who played Riaz, the community’s political leader, also came across slightly better than the rest. The style of the production suggested a rollicking farce, or the Asian Marriage of Figaro we saw some time ago, while the dialogue just didn’t support that. There was one character, a kind of identikit skinhead drug dealer, who was a complete muddle, first supporting one side, then the other, but in a nod to My Beautiful Laundrette I guessed he was in a relationship with Shahid’s brother Chili. Homosexuality was hinted at, but not made explicit (unless I was dozing at that point). Anyway, the skinhead guy moved in a very choreographed way, which reminded me of the way they often play the clown role in comedies by the likes of Molière, but no one else really fitted with this style. I did like the fight scene in DeeDee’s flat, with Chili suddenly proving very good at dealing with attackers, but it didn’t make up for the remaining two hours of dross.

If we hadn’t known better, we would have thought this was some am-dram version of a very dated piece by a not very good writer, and while it still came across as very dated we know the rest isn’t true. I put the problems down to the script, Steve feels the director has a significant share of the responsibility, and neither of us feels like arguing about it. Let’s leave it at that.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Time And The Conways – May 2009

6/10

By J B Priestley

Directed by Rupert Goold

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Wednesday 27th May 2009

As Steve was saying on the walk back to Waterloo, there are some dramatists you can adapt to your heart’s content, Shakespeare being the most obvious one, and others whose work is much more specific, and which doesn’t necessarily benefit from superfluous gimmickry or convoluted interpretations. Today’s offering was a case of the latter. Fortunately, despite the director ‘Goolding’ the lily with his usual filmic flourishes, the performance was enjoyable enough and the actors mostly did a fine job given the limitations of the production.

The opening sequence was one of those superfluous touches. The metal curtain opened to give us a viewing slit, and with a curtain drawn part way across we could only see a small section of the stage. One of the characters, Hazel, was carrying a suitcase full of clothes and apparently running across the stage (but actually staying on one spot) while some of the other characters moved past behind her, presumably as if they were standing still or just milling around. It wasn’t very effective from my angle, and the few lines were lost in all the hustle and bustle. Then she actually did run forward and off at the side, while the curtain was pulled back. This left us with a long narrow slit showing very little of the set, letterbox viewing gone mad. All I could see was the top of someone’s head, and nothing else for about a minute. Then the metal curtains opened fully and Hazel finally came bursting into the room with the suitcase. A long start, and not a particularly good one. Did the curtain not open when it was meant to? Was the delay intended for some meaningful reason? Or did the complicated opening delay the start because the stage crew had to clear stuff out of the way? I neither know nor care.

The first act unfolded pretty uneventfully, introducing us to the family, their situation (father dead, but family still well off and both sons home safe from the war) and the time period, just after WW1. (See, some writers do manage to tell us these things without too much trouble.) We also get to meet two friends of the family: Joan, a friend of Hazel’s with her beady eye fixed firmly on Robin, the younger son who’s just been demobbed and turns up towards the end of the act, and Gerald, the young lawyer who looks after the family’s legal affairs. Gerald has also brought along Earnest Beevers, an intense young man who would nowadays be called a stalker. He’s got it bad for Hazel, and puts up with the snobbish attitudes of most of the family in order to get to her. The only family member who’s nice to him is Carol, the youngest. There’s also Alan, the elder son who has seen action and is now working as a clerk for the local council, Madge, the eldest daughter who’s rather plain with a good mind and a passion for socialist ideals and reform, and Kay, the birthday girl, whose party we’re seeing. She wants to be a writer, though she hasn’t produced anything she’s happy with yet. And of course there’s Mrs Conway, family matriarch and temperamental diva, capable of great shows of loving and great cruelty, though we don’t see so much of that in this first act.

Everyone is having a wonderful time in that scatty upper middle class way – mercifully the charades are done off stage – and despite a few ominous comments, the tone is light-hearted and happy. With Mrs Conway singing for the guests as the final piece of entertainment (top of the bill, as usual) only Kay sits in the darkened drawing room, listening to the music and trying to get her thoughts and feelings down on paper. Suddenly she has one of her ‘turns’, and we get a freeze frame effect, with the actress, spotlit, on the central seat while the walls start to move and the room revolves, so that we see her from different angles. Then the lights go out. Visually, it’s quite a good effect, but it does have the disadvantage of disconnecting Kay from the older version in the next act. The ‘traditional’ version simply has her going over to the window and being in that same position at the start of the second act. This time, I don’t remember where she was in the room, so the placement clearly wasn’t as evocative for me.

The second act shows us the Conways twenty years on. Another war is looming and the slump after the last war has wiped out most of the value of the family’s assets, those which Mrs Conway hasn’t squandered on the profligate Robin, now unhappily married to Joan and avoiding her and their two kids as much as he can. Well, they’d get in the way of his drinking and complaining about how bad his luck has been. His mother looks as though she’s had a mild stroke, although it may just be bitterness that makes her mouth twist that way when she talks, and she appears to have a greater fondness for port than before.

Hazel has married Earnest, who is doing very well for himself and their family, but he doesn’t intend to help the Conways out with his hard earned cash. Hazel is clearly able to afford whatever she wants, is completely miserable and terrified of Earnest, although I didn’t see much reason for it in this production. Alan is still a clerk with the local council, and despite the contempt some of others have for him, he’s really the most successful and certainly the happiest of the Conways. Kay is a journalist for some paper which sends her out to get stories on film stars. She hasn’t written anything serious for years, and judging by this portrayal, she’s a dipso lesbian with a drug habit and a job in a very camp woman’s prison. Hattie Morahan’s facial grimaces made it hard to engage with this central character. She seemed like a caricature, and long before the comment was made on stage I wondered if the director was deliberately trying to turn this act into another family charade. If so, it didn’t work for me at all.

Hazel was also a bit over the top in this scene I felt, while Ma Conway can get away with anything, such is her character. The others were fine, but the overall effect was spoiled by the lack of balance and I found some bits dragging during this and the final act which never usually happens with a Priestley play, at least not for me.

The drawing room was appropriately empty-looking for this scene in the future. The signs of vanishing fortune were writ large on the bare walls and in the lack of furniture compared with Act 1. At the end of the second act, Kay is standing at the mirror, and again the walls move, but this time the mirror swings in at an angle, and we get a series of similar mirrors, suitably reduced in size, with other actresses dressed like Kay standing at them. There’s a nonsensical movement sequence that ripples down the line, and then the mantelpiece lights are switched off one by one to end the act – another puzzling and unnecessary interpolation.

The final act opens with Kay back in the freeze frame position. They’d cleverly arranged some papers so they could cascade onto the floor and stay there, in mid flight. When the action started up again, she pushed the papers all the way onto the floor, which looked quite effective. Next we get to see some of the events referred to in the second act, and some of the ways that some members of the family bring about the unhappiness of the future. We see how casually Mrs Conway ruins Madge’s best chance at a loving relationship, how Robin woos and wins Joan (not that she was resisting) and we get to see Carol again, the one missing from the second act and described by Earnest as the best of the lot. Kay starts up the kind of grimacing that explains a lot about her future facial expressions, as echoes of the future come back to her. She wants Alan to tell her the lines from William Blake that had given her some comfort in the future, but he doesn’t know them yet. Mrs Conway makes some comfortable and glorious predictions about the family members, accompanied by some more pointless choreographed movements from the girls, and then Kay slips through the curtains at the back with Alan following. Mrs Conway heads off to sing, and then things get really weird.

The lights go down, the curtain comes across, and then goes back again to reveal a smaller proscenium arch with curtains. It seems to represent the Conways’ bow window and curtains. Carol steps through and does a little dance to accompany her mother’s singing, then she goes off and the curtains are drawn back to show us a gauze screen which is used to project images of Alan and Kay, as well as having the actors themselves there, moving in such as way as to interact with their other selves. Lines from the play were repeated at this stage, presumably another attempt to be ‘meaningful’. However it was all pretty pointless and meaningless and was really turning me off, but finally it ended, the lights went out, and the whole performance came to an ignominious end. I held my applause till the actors were actually present on stage, as I didn’t feel the production deserved any reward. The cast had worked hard though, so I wanted to acknowledge them for that, and several performances were as good as they could be in the circumstances. Adrian Scarborough as Earnest and Faye Castelow as Carol were the best for me.

Looking back this evening, I find that writing these notes has reminded me how much was missing from this production. I wasn’t as emotionally engaged, the tweaks and twiddles didn’t add to my enjoyment or understanding and mostly took away from it, and I feel cheated somehow, as if the ‘real’ play is still waiting to come out. I’m glad the National have decided to embrace the dramatic tradition of this country once again, but I hope we get some better productions of these classic plays from them in the future.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Dido, Queen Of Carthage – May 2009

6/10

By Christopher Marlowe

Directed by James MacDonald

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Wednesday 6th May 2009

This production was very good, the actors all did a fine job, and I have nothing against the set or costumes, although the initial scene with Jupiter was placed so high it was hard to see what the Gods were up to from our lowly position (‘twas ever thus). No, the only problem I had with this play was the tedious nature of the writing. That Marlowe could bore for England! Anyone who thinks he wrote Will’s stuff needs their head examined. No real characters, relatively little emotion (all the suffering was in the mind, and, towards the end, my backside) insufficient plot and not much humour, at least not in the text. There were a couple of funny moments with Iarbas, and some laughs with Cupid and the nurse, but all in all I don’t plan on seeing this one again.

Steve found it more enjoyable, mainly because he saw a dire production at the Globe last year which I wisely avoided, and he was so pleased to see a really decent production that he coped with it better than I did – he’d been immunised, as it were. Still, he only gives it 6/10, so once again we’re of similar minds on this one.

The story is simple. Leaving aside the godly machinations which I didn’t entirely follow, Aeneas and his followers, fleeing from defeated Troy, are tossed by a storm onto the coast of Carthage, which is in southern Libya if the dialogue is to be believed (it’s not just Will whose geography was as bad as mine, then). So there they were on the (northern) coast of Libya and they’re warmly received by Dido, who despite giving them succour is tactless enough to demand over dinner that Aeneas tells her court all the grisly details of what actually happened at Troy, and how it was defeated. This story, well told by Mark Bonnar as Aeneas, was one of the better bits of the play. I noticed that Dido, who had been so insistent on hearing the details at the start, was the first to ask him to stop once he got to the gory bits. He didn’t, so we got the horrors in full, although I did detect a hint of spin in his assertion that there were a thousand warriors in the wooden horse – just how big was this beast? Two hundred to two fifty warriors I’ll accept, a thousand is pushing it too far.

But anyway. The devious Venus, mother of Aeneas, is concerned for her son, and substitutes her other son Cupid for Aeneas’s boy, Ascanius. Given a small golden arrow, the tip of which Venus had used to prick her own breast, Cupid proceeds to make Dido fall madly in love with Aeneas to the discomfort of Iarbas, a neighbouring king (and something of a looker, too, with just the right amount of bulge in the muscles) who’s in love with Dido. Sadly, Dido’s sister Anna is in love with Iarbas, so it’s a bit of a love trapezium situation.

All of this is complicated by Aeneas’s destiny to found Rome, which explains why he speaks Latin at moments of extreme tension (though it doesn’t begin to explain Dido’s occasional use of the same language). After she tells him of her love (as they shelter in a cave from a ferocious storm thoughtfully provided by Juno) his first reaction is that he’s not worthy, then he vows undying devotion and to stay with her forever, then he gets a reminder of his mission and he and his men all head off to the ships only to be called back by Anna. Then Dido offers him her kingdom, he agrees to stay, she steals the ships’ sails and oars, he gets another message direct from Jupiter via Mercury telling him to shift his backside over to Italy, and Iarbas helps them to refit their ships so they can set sail.

Not that Aeneas wants to go, but he finally tears himself away leaving a lovesick Dido to grieve. Telling her sister that she wants to make a private sacrifice of everything that Aeneas has left behind, with Iarbas’s help she builds a pyre, and left on her own, pours oil over everything including herself. Seated cross-legged on the middle of the pile, she then strikes a match, and with the lights down, we get the sound effects of a raging fire coupled with the glow of the match for several seconds before the flame burns out. All that’s left is the discovery of her burnt remains by her sister and Iarbas, and their subsequent suicides, Iarbas with Aeneas’s sword, and Anna by hanging herself with Iarbas’s chest plate. Not a cheerful story then.

Apart from the fall of Troy story, I enjoyed the way Iarbas reacted when Dido had the disguised Cupid on her lap. Cupid was singing a song, and Dido and Anna were smiling at him, while Iarbas was having a good sulk. At one point, Anna exchanged looks with him, and he plastered a happy smile on his face just to appear sociable, but it was lovely to see the way the scowl returned once Anna looked away.

He had another lovely reaction later on when Aeneas and his men were wondering how to get away when Dido has made their ships unable to sail. Iarbas had earlier made a sacrifice to Jupiter (nothing bloody, just burned some powder), and prayed that Jupiter would intervene and remove Aeneas from the kingdom to give him a chance again with Dido. When Aeneas tells him that Jove has sent instructions that he’s to sail for Italy immediately, Iarbas lifts his eyes up and mouths silent thanks to the god for granting his prayer. Beautiful. Naturally, he’s only too happy to help out with the ships, thinking his luck’s in. Be careful what you wish for….

As already mentioned, the performances were fine. I liked Kyle McPhail’s Mercury, apparently suffering from narcolepsy, who only roused himself a couple of times – once to take a message to Aeneas, and the other when Jupiter pulled a feather out of his leg. Even so, he soon settled back to snooze, giving his ankle a gentle rub as he did so. Ganymede (Ryan Sampson) was also good, holding out for a Playstation, an iPod and some other stuff (or the Olympian equivalents) before he’d let lecherous Jupiter give him a proper ‘cuddle’. Siobhan Redmond made an excellent Venus, all wiggles and seduction, while Susan Engel’s Juno was the wronged and bitter wife to perfection. Their scene together, when Juno is about to kill the sleeping Ascanius, only to be thwarted by Venus, was good fun, and although they kissed and made up, I don’t think it will last.

A couple of other things to mention: apparently somebody was helped out during the first half, unwell. They were at the other end of our row, and the reason I didn’t notice it was because I was too concerned about someone stepping on the tomatoes which had spilled onto the floor after the feast. The floor was covered in bright blue rubber marbles, the tomatoes were bright red, and the actors were constantly walking in their vicinity. It was only a matter of time, but thankfully Alan David (Jupiter and Ilioneus) managed to rescue them first. Whew. I could finally concentrate on the play again – I think that was a good thing, on the whole. Still it was his first play, apparently, so I can safely say he got better with practice. Glad I’ve seen it, don’t plan on seeing it again.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Burnt By The Sun – April 2009

8/10

By Peter Flannery from the screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Tuesday 21st April 2009

This was a very interesting play and an excellent production. I’ve seen a number of pieces which comment on Stalin’s impact on the Soviet Union but this play gives a different perspective, bridging the gap between Chekov’s soon-to-be-ousted upper classes and the thuggish period of the mass cleansings and executions.

The set for this play was a beautifully detailed veranda and adjacent rooms in a dacha, with tall tree trunks round the sides and back. The dacha rotates to change the scene, and at one point two sets of wooden railings are brought round to screen the house while the action takes place on the front of the stage. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the costumes, but they all seemed fine to me.

The dacha is occupied (I don’t know if ‘owned’ is the right word for these times) by General Kotov, a hero of the Revolution who has married a member of the old upper classes and chosen to live in her family’s dacha. He’s generous enough to allow the remaining members of her family to stay there too, so we have Maroussia’s mother and grandmother, her uncle and the grandmother’s friend all living there as well as Kotov, his wife Maroussia and their daughter Nadia. The only servant we see is Mokhova, whom the older generation tease mercilessly when they’re not reminiscing about the old days and complaining at what they have to put with now. Mind you, it’s the uncle, Vsevolod, who notices the coming storm when he reads a story in the paper about how “confessions are the source of all justice”. Nobody wants to debate the issue with him and he’s constantly distracted by lecherous thoughts, so if it wasn’t for our knowledge of what’s to come I can see that many people at the time would have accepted such an announcement without comment.

A former friend of the family, Mitia, arrives back after many years away. It’s clear there was a relationship between him and Maroussia and at first I thought he’d come back to get her to run off with him. He’s been spending a lot of time abroad, playing the piano and singing to make ends meet apparently, but now he’s back and he and Kotov are immediately at odds. The battle is quite subtle at first, then escalates through storytelling and Mitia taking Maroussia away for private conversations. Finally it emerges that Mitia is in fact an agent of the NKVD come to arrest Kotov and garner evidence to be used at his trial (though why they need evidence when he’s going to confess….). The rest of the family have gone to the zoo, a promised treat for Nadia, and after roughing Kotov up a bit (he resisted arrest – honestly, he did) and shooting a lorry driver who came along looking for Mokhova, they drag Kotov off leaving Mitia behind on the veranda. He uses Kotov’s own pistol to play a losing game of Russian roulette with himself, with the lights going out as the shot is fired.

It’s a powerful ending and a pretty powerful play. Light at the start, it darkens down through all the revelations until the final act of desperation snuffs it out completely. The characters are well drawn and well acted, and there’s a lot of humour as well as emotion. I so wanted Mokhova to get together with the driver, who came to the house originally for directions as he was lost. They seemed so well suited, but he turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time and death was inevitable. The old biddies with their twittering, grumbling and opera singing were very reminiscent of Chekovian characters. It was surprising to see how well they’d survived the initial stages of the Revolution, but then there would have been lots of them and only so much time in the day for executions.

Mitia is an interesting contrast to the other, raincoat clad NKVD men. He’s bright, articulate and full of stories and song, which gives him excellent camouflage in spying out the Russian exiles who might be a danger to Stalin. He clearly feels the loss of everything he cared about when he first left the area, initially to fight in the Revolution and then sent away to spy by none other than Kotov. It was Mitia’s protest that he had to get back to see Maroussia that led Kotov to investigate this woman, fall in love with and marry her, so Mitia’s grudge is easy to understand. His despair at what he has to do to keep his bosses happy is evident, and his final act completely at one with his personality and situation. Rory Kinnear’s performance was superb in this role, showing off his many talents to perfection.

Holding all of this together is Ciaran Hinds’ Kotov. A man of the people, he’s proud of having achieved so much in his life entirely on merit. He’s hard but not completely ruthless; believing that the victory has been won, he’s inclined to relax and enjoy life a little. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the danger he’s in immediately although he’s certainly suspicious of Mitia’s arrival. But then, he knows the sort of work Mitia’s been doing, so no wonder. He comes across as a loving father and a generally decent man, though prepared to take tough decisions when he has to. It’s sad to see him brought down by Stalin’s paranoia but that’s how it was. Anyone who was popular or successful was a threat and had to go.

There was a fair bit of humour during the play but I’ll just mention two bits here. The first happened in the opening scene when Kotov is roused by neighbours complaining that there are tanks in the fields of wheat. Kotov uses his rank to get them removed and the change in attitude of the two young soldiers is very entertaining. At first they’re throwing their weight around, thinking they’re dealing with peasants (or comrade peasants) but when they realise who they’re talking to, they turn into simpering schoolgirls and are only too happy to put him through to their commander. In relating Kotov’s instructions, one soldier translates “piss off” as “go away”, which also got a good laugh.

The second occasion was the singing near the end when the family is heading off to the zoo. The NKVD men have arrived, and to provide a cover story Mitia introduces them as his colleagues. The family assume that means they’re musicians with the Moscow Philharmonic, and from the expressions on their faces these blokes wouldn’t know one end of a bassoon from another. Still, they end up joining in a chorus or two of Evening Bells, and one chap even sounds quite good. It’s a nice bit of humour before the unpleasant ending.

Although I’ve mentioned a few of the actors by name, all the performances were excellent. I liked the set very much, although the veranda rail was in the way for a lot of the breakfast scene, cutting off the actors’ mouths, which was a bit irritating. It was well worth seeing, and I hope to catch it again sometime.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

War Horse – March 2009

Experience: 9/10

By Michael Morpurgo

Directed by Marianne Elliot and Tom Morris

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Tuesday 17th March 2009

This was a very emotional experience. I sobbed when Joey the foal gave way to Joey the horse, then when Joey gave his all to win the ploughing competition, and I wasn’t entirely dry-eyed during the first, traumatic cavalry charge. And this was just the first half. After the interval, I deployed tissues on a number of occasions; Topthorn’s death didn’t move me quite so much, but there were plenty of other opportunities to increase the profits of Kleenex – Joey volunteering to pull the ambulance for one. The finale, with Joey saving his own life by responding to Albert, was almost embarrassing as I struggled to keep quiet and avoid disturbing the neighbours. But it was a marvellous release of all the emotions stirred up by this powerful piece.

I suspected there had been a few changes, and checking last year’s notes has confirmed this. The biggest change, apart from most of the cast being different, was that Emilie, the little girl in France, was played by an actress this time instead of a puppet, and magical though the puppet was I feel this version worked even better.

From our backstage tour last summer, we had learned that the horses were being rebuilt to make them lighter as well stronger and hopefully better able to take the wear and tear of regular performance. I certainly noticed the difference – the animals seemed lighter, and Topthorn was carrying a lot less condition this year. Steve reckoned they got him in from the paddock earlier this time. Maybe because of this, or perhaps because we were a lot closer, I noticed the horses moving around a lot more. They seemed to be more flexible and more responsive to whatever was going on.

The other puppets were much as before. The goose was just as annoying and the nasty crow had competition for the eyeballs this time. The cast changes didn’t affect the performance too much. I preferred Angus Wright as the German officer; Patrick O’Kane played the part reasonably well but his performance occasionally seemed over the top, with much larger physical movements than necessary. They might have been intended to carry to the back of the auditorium, but then why weren’t the other actors to scale? Albert was played by Kit Harington this time and I found it harder to spot him in the crowd initially. His father was in competition with his own brother – a definite change from last time – which made his father more sympathetic this time, I felt. Still unpleasant but understandably so, as he was the one excluded by his family. Albert’s mother was evidently an Irishwoman who had married into a Cornish family, and had picked up a few traces of the Cornish accent but still used her original brogue whenever possible. The Song Man was the understudy today but I didn’t notice any drop in quality in that department.

An excellent revival and I wish it well for the West End run too.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

England People Very Nice – March 2009

8/10

By Richard Bean

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Tuesday 3rd March 2009

Set: dominating the stage at the start is a big rectangular block of boards. Actually, it’s a double-decker set of doors, with six across the top, and the two on the right hand side of the bottom row turned horizontal. I expected something like the top one opening up to become a stall or some such, and I wasn’t far off. In front of these doors there’s a bigger raised area of floorboards. To the right of that and round the front are the wide black floorboards, while on the left the stage seems to be bare – I could see the line of the revolve quite clearly.

Behind the doors, many of which are open at the start, a mesh fence spreads across the stage from wing to wing, with two openings, one on each side. Through the fence and the open doors we can see rails of clothes, presumably costumes, and possibly some of the props. A set of stairs runs up behind the doors. There’s a drum kit to the right of the doors and some other musical instruments in that corner, and a red plastic chair, standard issue, centre stage. The whole effect is stripped down, as if the production is laying something bare.

Before the start, the cast gradually drift onto the rear of the stage, though one chap does come and sit on the red plastic chair. He’s working on his laptop and then he puts it aside and looks at some papers – photos perhaps, or artwork. Then there’s an announcement, telling the cast to assemble on stage, and we’re into the action for real.

Or not, as it happens. The play uses a framing device; all these people are at a detention centre, either working there or potential immigrants. They’ve been devising a play about the English response to successive waves of immigrants since the Romans, and they’re just about to give us their dress rehearsal. First though, the director, Philippa, gives some notes, and this gives us a chance to meet some of the “real” characters, as well as prepping us very nicely for some of the jokes, particularly the “fucking _____” gag, which worked particularly well, and the “wagon” joke, which only worked because it didn’t.

The director’s priceless pearls are regularly interrupted by an annoying man who turns out to be a Palestinian, Taher. He’s unpopular with everyone, and is banned from mentioning Israel – I sensed the backstory involved a lot of aggravation during the rehearsal process. Despite the interruptions, and the shock discovery that the “Imam” has shaved off his beard the night before the performance (he stuck it all back together to make a fake one), the dress rehearsal goes ahead as planned.

It’s at this point that the multimedia aspect of the production becomes apparent. We’ve been told that Elmar, the chap with the laptop, has done some animations for their play (he regularly won a silver something-or-other in Azerbaijan), and these are projected onto the block of doors and the back wall throughout the play to add to the story. The first section deals with the original Brits, living their primitive lives, and being taken over by the Romans, who kill the man and ravish the woman (they didn’t have a lot of original Brits to work with). Then the Roman soldiers are killed by the Angles and Saxons, and it’s all much the same thing. This is all done to a jolly song, while the animation shows these successive invaders running up behind the previous lot, and then the next lot of actors come on to hew and slash, before shagging the woman. As the dead bodies mount up, the animation shows them filling the screen. We both liked this use of multimedia from the word go, as it didn’t distract from the performance at all, just gave it a more immediate effect as well as adding to the humour.

This quick series of invaders slows right down when a town crier announces from the upper storey that the French king has kicked the Protestants out of his kingdom, so there will be a lot of “frogs” coming London’s way. As the Huguenots are skilled cloth manufacturers, the local weavers are soon up in arms about the detrimental effect they’re having on local workers, while the French build themselves a church, and plan to civilise the English. This church, and the subsequent synagogue and mosque, are drawn in animation, with the appropriate symbol appearing physically above the roof. There’s the beginning of an eternal love story which echoes through the ages when Norfolk Danny, a silk weaver in Spitalfields, is persuaded to give shelter to a Frenchwoman, Camille, and her brother, also a weaver. The situation gets ugly when the weavers guild find this out, and when they interrupt Danny’s coitus to smash his loom, he stabs one of the men who attacks Camille, leading to his eventual hanging (and the “wagon” joke). This was shown on the screens behind, a good use of the film media.

Meanwhile, another set of characters have been introduced to us who will also echo down the years. The lower horizontal door slid forwards and becomes a bar, a table and chairs are brought on to the left of the stage, and we’re in the generic pub, with Fred Ridgeway as the landlord Laurie, Sophie Stanton as the barmaid Ida, and Trevor Laird as the pub regular Rennie, latterly from Barbados. Ida is the source of the “fucking ______” jokes, with the blank being filled with “frogs”, “Micks”, “yids” and a few other derogatory terms. The humour was in Sophie’s delivery of the lines (excellent), especially in the second half, when she holds a long pause after the “fucking”, gets the laugh anyway, and then compounds it by adding “yanks”. If we hadn’t guessed before, we knew at that point that we were up to the Second World War.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This first time it’s the “frogs” she’s upset about. Rennie tells us a number of French folk have moved in above him, and provides the insider’s view of life with the French (too unsavoury to repeat here). He’s an unlucky fellow, because the same thing happens when the Irish turn up (keep pigs), the Jews, and the Asians. (The Irish don’t build their own church, by the way; they have to worship in secret at “art appreciation classes”.)

Anyway, things come to a head when war breaks out between Britain and France. The leader of the French community changes his accent and starts talking colloquial English, and then I think they all move to Redbridge(?), leaving room for the new incomers, the Irish (but I might have got that wrong).

When the Irish arrive, Ida is now the granddaughter of a French immigrant, and we get to see how these groups have assimilated themselves, and laugh at the funny side. Later on, this same point is made about the other groups, but I think it came across most strongly this first time, possibly because that early tranche of immigrants was too long ago for anyone to get upset about now, unlike some of the later groups. The cycles repeat themselves, with the previous set of immigrants complaining about the new lot, and the only variation I could see was that the English Jews were equally as unhappy about the Jewish incomers as the non-Jewish residents.

The final group are the Muslims, and here the tension rises a bit as some of the Muslim community become militant, and start aggressively attacking the parts of British culture they don’t like (most of it, from what I could see). The play does show that not all Muslims take this hard-line stance; there are clear references to the Wahibi sect as the cause of the problem, and the Imam who arrives to take over from his more tolerant predecessor has two hooks for hands. This is the final wave of immigration they can show, and brings us up-to-date, with a pair of twins being born to a Pakistani man and a British woman from an adulterous relationship. The idea of the children, especially the boy, being our hope for the future was floated, but couldn’t be resolved within the scope of this piece.

The overall idea of the play within the play was that love conquers all, and can bring disparate and even warring communities together. Despite this happy ending, the context play ends with the guard handing out letters to the immigrants to tell them if they’ve made it into Britain. Some do, some don’t, and some don’t get a letter. This had a sobering effect, and I found myself, in the final moment, recognising that the director can walk out of the “detention centre” and go wherever she likes, while even those who have been accepted by Immigration will be limited in what they can do to begin with. Those turned down have few, if any, choices.

I didn’t find the play particularly racist, but then I don’t have the sensibilities of some people or groups, nor a readiness to take offence. I don’t know how I would have reacted to jokes about the Scots or Welsh, mind you. I do think this play had a specific scope – to show the effects of immigration on English culture and society over a long period, using a particular area, Spitalfields, to focus the drama, and then widening the focus to show us the reality of today. I appreciated the humour, and I suspect some of the critics were taking it (and themselves?) too seriously, as some folk did with Till Death Do Us Part, thinking that Alf Garnett was speaking up for the racists when he was actually a figure of fun. I’m certainly happier that plays like this can be staged, especially at such a high-profile venue, and I only wish more writers with different experiences and points of view would take up the challenge of showing us these subjects from another perspective. We can only hope.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Oedipus – November 2008

8/10

By Sophocles, translated and adapted by Frank McGuinness

Directed by Jonathan Kent

Olivier Theatre

Saturday 15th November 2008

What a journey we had to get here. The road past Haywards Heath station was closed off, so we had a long detour to reach it another way. Then there were roadworks outside Waterloo East that made us take another detour. At least, I thought, the Lyttelton performance will already have started, so the Ladies will be relatively empty. Not so; the Lyttelton performance was also starting at three o’clock, and the place was hoatching (Heaving, adjectival description of a busy location – Wikipedia). All this, and having to put our rucksacks into the cloakroom, meant we made it to our seats with only a few minutes to spare. Still, as I told Steve, if we think we’re having a bad day, what about Oedipus? How we chuckled.

The set was fantastic, though I was a little distracted by its brilliance. We’d seen the dome taking shape in the workshops during a backstage tour, and now we could see it completed. It filled the centre of the Olivier stage, and was tipped slightly forward. The surface was like weathered copper, slightly roughened, and with patches of copper colour mixed with the green. It reminded me of a globe map, with the copper as land and the green as sea. There was a large doorway towards the back, facing the audience, with two vast metal doors between chunky posts and lintel, and to our left, near the front of the stage, was a long table with two matching benches. Panels at the back of the stage opened about four times when people arrived, one on each side, and each time there were trees on display. The first time they were all silver, the second time vultures had been added, and the third time they were golden autumn colours. The fourth time they were blasted stumps. (I hope they’re mentioned in the playtext, as I can’t remember exactly when they happened.)

The set used the slow revolve to perform a complete circle during the course of the play, finishing shortly before Oedipus arrives, covered in blood, for his final speeches of suffering. The table and benches didn’t move at all, however, and this was what distracted me briefly, as I looked for the groove that had to accommodate whatever was supporting the table. I spotted it fairly quickly, and I also noticed some of the chorus, when they were sitting on the benches, having to adjust their feet from time to time as the floor passed underneath them. Still, it was only a minor distraction.

The chorus was very good, with plenty of singing, chanting and speaking, often interleaving their lines. I thought the translation/adaptation was excellent. It kept the feel of a Greek tragedy, with some nicely poetic rhythmic lines, but also introduced some apposite modernisms, such as Creon saying he’d hang every terrorist. There were fine performances from Ralph Fiennes as the man who curses himself, and Clare Higgins as the mother who finds she’s married her son. Both were over-confident and scornful of the gods and prophecy, only to find the truth too much to bear. The other characters  were also very good, especially Jasper Britton as Creon, who, despite his apparently sincere declaration that he wasn’t seeking the top job, looked remarkably comfortable in the role once he’d got it. Also Alan Howard was powerful as Tiresias, the blind seer who gives Oedipus his first cryptic warnings of the doom to come. The question was asked several times, if Tiresias was so smart, how come he didn’t spill the beans a lot earlier and prevent all this suffering? Thebes is in a pretty bad way, crops not growing, women not having proper babies (buckets of blood were mentioned), and food apparently rotting in folk’s mouths (I assume this was poetic rather than literal). There’s no satisfactory answer to this question, except that Tiresias serves Apollo, so we’ll just have to assume that Laos, the previous king and Oedipus’s daddy, upset Apollo big time, and that’s why the entire family, and the country, suffers so much.

For Oedipus’s final appearance, the doors dropped down, and the panels at the back slid open to reveal emptiness. Oedipus gets a brief chance to be with his children, hugging his two little girls, before being sent inside on Creon’s orders, away from the public view. Creon tries to stop the girls from helping him, but I noticed that the elder – Antigone, I assume – escapes his clutches to lead her father off (she’ll defy Creon again, but that’s another play). The stage is left to the chorus and one or two of the other characters. As the chorus spreads out across the stage, the lights dim, and finally go out.

I love the way Greek drama is so direct. The characters speak lines that would rarely, if ever, come out of ordinary people’s mouths, yet, like Shakespeare’s poetic dialogue, they can be so much more moving. Also, we get to hear all sorts of arguments and points of view debated and discussed. We do also have to put up with unpleasant violence and lots of deaths, but on the whole I think it’s a fair price to pay, especially as performances tend to come in under two hours. This production was well worth the effort to get here.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Walworth Farce – September 2008

2/10

By Enda Walsh

Directed by Mikel Murfi

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Saturday 27th September 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

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