Autumn 2024 Roundup

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast

I came back from holiday at the end of the Summer just in time to catch the last weeks of the Death of England trilogy at the Soho Place theatre, which incidentally is a lovely relatively new theatre space in the West End. It is set up in the round, which I always think creates an extra level of engagement with the actors and the stage, and it offers good clear views from wherever you sit. The space worked particularly well for Death of England because, as I talked about with the writer, Roy Williams, in the podcast episode about the plays, the actors are very much engaging directly with the audience throughout, the first two parts of the trilogy being monologues. The performances in all three parts in this production were exceptional, Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu delivering their scorching testimonies with electrifying energy, and Erin Doherty and Sharon Duncan-Brewster bringing a more balanced tone with the women’s accounts. I could not but marvel at the talent and professionalism of these actors, sustaining 90 minutes of full-on delivery. It was great to see all three of the plays together, and to see such a diverse audience for this very contemporary portrait of England.

Next up was The Real Thing at the Old Vic, which as you will know if you’ve listened to the episode on it, is a play with personal meaning for me. I’m not sure that I have seen it performed in fact since I saw the first production way back in 1982, so I was looking forward to this, although with some trepidation as to whether it would live up to my fond memory. I have to say that overall, I was slightly disappointed by this production. I still marvelled at how cleverly Stoppard constructs the play, and the sheer beauty and fun of his language, but I thought that the casting did not really come together. Although James McCardle was very good as the arrogant, romantic playwright, Henry – he delivered Henry’s famous cricket-bat speech with suitable aplomb – I did not believe in his marriage to Susan Wokoma’s Charlotte, and felt there was insufficient chemistry with Bel Powley as Annie, despite the fact that she herself was bright and engaging, if perhaps not a strong enough match for him. The director Max Webster ratcheted up the meta-theatricality implicit in Stoppard’s text, by self-consciously drawing attention to the staging and the stage hands, and I understand the intent of the conceit and it perhaps helped to offset the fact that the play may feel somewhat dated now – but I think the sleight of hand that Stoppard pulls in making us believe that the first scene is his play was slightly undermined by these overt signals. But perhaps that was because I knew what was coming. Still, I loved the chance to revisit the play, and had a great conversation with another Stoppard enthusiast, Mark Lawson, in our episode about it. Listen here.

I also very much enjoyed Nadia Fall’s production of Abigail’s Party at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East, and of course it gave me the opportunity to add this popular classic to the podcast catalogue. (Listen here). One of the joys of seeing the play is that designers can go to town with reproducing the 1970s décor and fashion, and the set for this show was suitably decked out in oranges and browns, while also not being overly kitsch and so still feeling like a real suburban home. Tamsin Outhwaite as Beverly was tremendous as the glamorous hostess for the disastrous neighbourly get together, wearing fabulously bright swishing 70s dresses and sporting magnificent Farah Fawcett hair.  I especially liked Nadia’s addition of the 60s disco dancing that she did on her own at the beginning of each act, complete with glitter ball. I also thought that the casting of South Asian actors as Tony and Angela, the new couple who have just moved into the neighbourhood, added extra bite to the competitive tension and class pretensions in the play.

Racial prejudice in a neighbourhood is also at the heart of Lorraine Hansberry’s ground-breaking 1957 play, A Raisin in the Sun, and I was very glad to have the opportunity to see the new production at the Lyric Hammersmith directed by Tinuke Craig. With her debut play, Hansberry became the first African-American woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and her portrait of a black, working class family living in the black ghetto of Chicago remains a talisman of racial prejudice. In the range of characters within the family who live in this cramped apartment, different perspectives on black identity and the American dream are represented. This production was a clear and moving rendition of the play, with strong performances throughout, especially from Solomon Israel as the man of the house whose rash pursuit of his big dreams brings more trouble for the family, and Cash Holland as his long-suffering wife. In fact, all of the characters have their dreams, and Hansberry’s achievement is to show us that these are not exclusive to the privileged white people we usually see in drama on stage.  I was privileged to talk in depth about this important play with the director of the show, Tinuke Craig, so look out for that episode in the first part of next year.

Likewise, I will be releasing an episode next year on Shakespeare’s enigmatic late tragedy, Corialanus, following the production that was staged at the National Theatre this Autumn, starring David Oyelowo as the eponymous military hero. I confess that this is one of Shakespeare’s plays that I had never seen on live on stage, and I very much enjoyed this production, directed by Lyndsey Turner. The story telling was very clear and compelling, and its modern setting underlined that the play’s portrait of class conflict in a world where the gap between rich and poor is iniquitously wide, and where populist politicians stoke the differences for their own advancement remains powerfully topical today. Oyelowo captured the rashness and restlessness of the arrogant military man who, knowing nothing but war, cannot adjust to play politics in peacetime. While we sympathise with him when he is attacked by the self-serving tribunes, here played with suitable unctuousness by Jordan Metcalfe and Stephanie Street, we cannot ultimately like him. Peter Forbes as Menenius embodies the voice of reason in an otherwise viperous world, but whose loyalty to the general proves naïve in such amoral times, and Pamela Nomvete was both dangerously imperious as Corialanus’s doting mother, Volumnia, and abject in her prostration at his feet when all seems lost. Like its hero, it is a violent and difficult play to pin down, but I thought that this production made its politics feel very relevant.

One of the shows that most disappointed me this Autumn was the West End revival of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, starring Mark Rylance, and directed by Matthew Warchus from the Old Vic theatre. I will always choose to watch Mark Rylance, whose range extends from his unique performance as the raging Rooster Byron in Jerusalem, to the quiet power of Cromwell in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which has just concluded its run on TV. But, O’Casey’s melodrama of the Boyle family struggling to make ends meet in a country torn by the Irish Civil War is carefully balanced between comedy and tragedy, and Rylance’s portrayal of Captain Jack Boyle as a Charlie Chaplin figure of fun completely undermines the play and his fellow performers. Granted he milks every laugh he can extract with his twinkling persona and exquisite timing, but in so doing he sucks all the air from the play and the production. J Smith-Cameron of Succession fame tries gamely to provide some proper substance to the piece, but she might as well be acting in a different play alongside Rylance’s selfish comic turn. There was also too much of the twee Irish folk music for my liking, and when Warchus has the Boyle’s tenement flat transformed into an expressionist suggestion of a church with an oversized stone sculpture hanging above in the finale, the wheels have really come off this rendition.

There are two versions of Sophocles’s Greek Tragedy, Oedipus, playing within weeks of each other in London this Winter, the first being Robert Icke’s updating of the play with Mark Strong as the eponymous king and Lesley Manville as his wife, and as it tragically transpires, also his mother, Jocasta. Icke is responsible for some of my most memorable times in the theatre in recent years, including his previous Greek adaptation of The Oresteia and Andrew Scott’s Hamlet, both of which featured great performances and stunning modern staging. His version of Oedipus is another triumph of modern adaptation. It is set in the campaign office of a popular politician on election night as Oedipus and his family await the results that are expected to confirm his landmark victory. A digital clock counts down the minutes to the declaration of the results, and we soon realise to the awful denouement when Oedipus and Jocasta will realise the truth of their relationship. It is an effective device, ratcheting up the terrible tension as they gradually begin to unearth the three truths that the mystic Tiresias has forecast for them. The sudden silence when the clock stops at the instant of their realisation is one of the most devastating moments I have seen in the theatre; Strong and Manville frozen in horror trying to comprehend the full meaning of what they cannot now unknow. Time literally stops. Manville’s final despair is made more compelling by contrast to the determined confidence about their future together she displays early on, and as she increasingly tries to dissuade her husband from pursuing his investigations into the past. Her violent end is theatrically shocking, but in a strange sense it is almost superfluous to the greater shock of that silent moment of recognition. Both of the leads are wonderful actors, and are brilliant in this. Oedipus continues at the Wyndham theatre until 4^th January, and I highly recommend it. It will also be fascinating to see how differently Rami Malek and Indira Varma tackle the tragedy in their version which is adapted by playwright Ella Hickson and comes to the Old Vic from the 21^st of January.

I felt fortunate to get a ticket to see Adrien Brody make his London theatrical debut in Fear of 13 at the Donmar in November. Brody won an Oscar for his performance in the 2003 film The Pianist, and he is a magnetic presence on stage here as Nick Yarris, a Pennsylvanian man who spent 22 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. The play was written by US playwright Lindsay Ferrentino, and is based on Yarris’s 2015 documentary of the same name, though I was never entirely clear of the title’s meaning, other than that Yarris was extraordinarily unlucky to be convicted initially without substantial evidence and then repeatedly frustrated in his appeals by administrative errors, including the loss of crucial autopsy and DNA evidence. The play adaptation is somewhat uneven in its narrative meanderings, with the second half in particular dragging, as inevitably Yarris’s extended appeals really did, and Brody’s lengthy sentimental epilogue after all suspense has been settled felt indulgent and superfluous to me. That said I was never less than riveted by Brody’s performance and character, and the staging of the story was wonderfully theatrically inventive. Set mostly on an empty square that serves as a prison interview room, the director Justin Martin, who was responsible for Jodie Comer’s star turn in Prima Facie, conjures dramatic action pieces with the excellent ensemble cast roaming about the theatre, and clever dramatic lighting. An emotional highlight was the isolated prisoners breaking together into gospel song to mourn another prisoner. Nana Mensah gives a sympathetic portrayal of the prison volunteer who falls for Yarris and waits a decade in vain for his release, before moving on with her life. So, a mixed result, Fear of 13 – a powerful story of injustice and prison brutality, with memorable performances and staging, diluted by a somewhat baggy script.

There couldn’t be a larger contrast in my moving from a Pennsylvania prison to the drawing rooms of the English upper classes in the Park Theatre’s staging of The Forsyte Saga, but the drama was no less gripping. Based on the three novels and two interludes written by John Galsworthy between 1906 and 1921, the story of the multiple generations of the Forsyte family is probably better known from its two television adaptations , first with the 26 episodes of the BBC series in 1967, and then again by ITV in 2002. Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan’s masterly adaptation distils the saga into two parts, each running two and half hours in length. You could choose to watch them both in a single day, or split them over different days, as I did; either way the time raced by, the story telling being surprisingly gripping and funny. The success of the adaptation is down to the inventive staging by director, Josh Roche, who not only maintains the pace of the extended narrative through fluent scene and time changes, but also manages to conjure place and character on a largely empty stage with the use of a few chairs and intelligent lighting, as well as carefully coloured and composed costumes.  The nine-strong cast was also excellent throughout, playing multiple roles each, with the exception of Joseph Millson, who was the patriarch and man of property, Soames Forsyte, and Flora Spencer-Longhurst as his daughter Fleur, who narrates both parts and participates in the second. Millson is tremendous, maintaining Soames’ stiff posture and repressed rage throughout, while also conveying his warped sense of honour and underlying tortured humanity. Soames treats his wife Irene as another part of his property, reasserting his rights when he shockingly rapes her in the pivotal scene in the whole saga. Irene was played with passion and fortitude by Fiona Hampton as she attempted to escape her unhappy marriage. The second of the two parts which tells Fleur’s story and the aftermath of the collapse of Soames’s marriage to Irene, never quite matches the intensity of the central conflict between Soames and Irene as played out in the first half. The whole was an unexpectedly entertaining treat, a testimony to the power of good storytelling, creative staging and fine acting. I would be surprised if the production did not find the reprisal it deserves.

My final show before Christmas was the National Theatre’s glorious new production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring the current Dr Who, Ncuti Gatwa, as Algernon, Hugh Skinner as Ernest or Jack, and Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell. This production triumphantly dispelled any fear that I had that the play would struggle to be more than a dated drawing-room farce. Max Webster’s take on the play is ravishing to look at and to listen to, and its self-conscious knowingness and frank fore-fronting of the play’s sexual resonances make this is a modern rendition that I can’t help but think that Wilde himself would have loved. I am super excited to have had the chance to talk to Max about the play for a full episode of the podcast, which I will release first thing in the New Year. In the meantime, I can’t think of a more joyous show to see over the holidays than this. It runs until the 25^th of January, so if you can get a ticket, go. The curtain call alone is unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and tops off an exhilarating ride.  

As always, I’d love to hear what you thought of any of these shows, so please don’t hesitate to share your views here. We’ll return in the New Year with some more timely new reviews.