A Night at the Theatre

[aeolium]

Although (the almost spherical) R-B gave a plausible descent into senility, with capricious flashes of violent instability, sadly it was the verse speaking by him and the majority of the rest of the cast that let this down, ranging from the inaudible to the garbled. Only Stephen Boxer as a sympathetic and noble Gloucester was uniformly excellent. The production has a cinematic sweep and pace (let us not forget that Mendes makes Bond films now) which kept it visually engaging. But if one cannot discern the text, this goes for naught. The last scene when the body count piles up was incoherent and, frankly, ludicrous. Why was Albany's closing couplet spoken by Edgar? Nothing in this tragedy led one to feel moved, but here I point the finger of blame at Shakespeare.

I saw this production last night via the NT Live cinema broadcast and I have to agree with Belgrove's comments about the performance. I have rarely heard worse verse-speaking in a major Shakespeare production, and only Stephen Boxer as Gloucester and Stanley Townsend as Kent were worthy of praise. Simon Russell Beale mangled the text and Anna Maxwell Martin as Regan was truly dreadful, gabbling her words frenetically. Mendes must bear some of the blame for this as he was in charge of the production overall (it would have been unthinkable, for instance, with Peter Hall directing). I thought the production was visually dull too, with the now almost obligatory suits and modern military uniform and some aspects, like Lear's murder of his Fool, quite out of place. Pretty poor for a generally acclaimed production.

[Belgrove]

The Crucible is one of the finest plays of the 20th century. Like all great plays, it has enough substance and depth to resonate with the issues current with the times in which it is revived. Thus the Old Vic's production warns us of the dangers religious fundamentalism now in spite of its being set in the 17th century.

The production is in the round with clever lighting and atmospheric sound giving a strong sense of suspicion and dread in a simple rural society. It is very powerfully directed by Yael Faber, progressing towards its terrifying conclusion with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Some of the acting is a bit on the shouty side. Jack Ellis' Judge Darnforth need not yell and point like he does - the beautifully written role shows how the cold and adamantine logic of a legal system can be perverted in the wrong hands - I recall seeing Peter Vaughn in the role, who hardly raised his voice but commanded through the force of his words, his freezing glance or full-on stare. Richard Armitage gives an anguished portrayal of John Proctor, he really does bare his soul. Adrian Schiller is excellent too as Reverend Hale, who comes to doubt and deplore what he initially represents. Anna Madeley is heart-rending in her final scene with her doomed husband. Do try and see it, a great production of a great play.

[amateur51]

Two very different nights recently ...

Natural Affection at The Jermyn Street Theatre by William Inge, set in 1960s Chicago, about how the American Dream went sour for a group of white Americans. It's an interesting play in its own right about hope & ambition, men and women, children & parents, the causes of murderous violence, but always my mind turned to Tennessee Williams with whom the comparison was not favourable. There is a character whose sexuality is not resolved and perhaps that's where the comparison with Williams enters. That character has many of the best lines too. When a knife appeared on the kitchen table in the third act, you just knew things were not going to end well. However, exactly how this comes about is a surprise and it left this audience member with his mouth in a perfectly shaped 'O'.

Brian Epstein at Leicestyer Square Theatre is a witty two-hander exploring the last day of the life of the Beatles' Svengali.Very little of what we discover about him is at all revelatory to one aged 62 but perhaps Epstein's name is not well-known to a younger audience, in which case the play takes them through some interesting territory. The cast is Epstein and a mystery cipher referred to as 'That Boy' and 'This Boy'. Much fun is had dropping the titles of Beatles' tracks into the script and some contemorary music lightens the mood. Ultimately Eppie's life did not have a happy ending and this evening goes some way to suggesting, rather than explaining, why.

[rauschwerk]

Amadeus at the Chichester Festival Theatre the other week. I was pleased to have the chance to see the original play, having previously seen only the film. A cast largely unknown to me except Rupert Everett (Salieri) and John Standing. Generally very well done but it reinforced my doubts about the whole thing. Since the absurd idea (possibly fuelled by this play) that Mozart suffered from Tourette's syndrome has gained currency, it seems obligatory to play him as though he really did. The last scene (Mozart and Salieri, then Mozart and Constanze) was really just half an hour of melodramatic tosh. No wish to repeat this experience!

[Belgrove]

Last chance to see Helen McCrory in NT's production of Medea to be shown in some cinemas tonight. An astonishing and shocking performance that makes Clytemnestra seem positively mumsy.

[Belgrove]

Tennessee Williams could be accused of writing the same play over and over again, but Streetcar Named Desire must rank as one of the best distillations of his recurrent themes. The Young Vic’s production was sold out as soon as Gillian Anderson was announced as playing Blanche, but I saw this last night in one of the NT’s live national relays (to be reprised in various locations).

It is set in the present and in the round. The minimalist set, representing the claustrophobic apartment as a vestigial cage, like a Bacon painting, confines the protagonists in close proximity and causes them spark off one another. The principal innovation is that this space rotates, so that the audience is presented with constantly changing perspective of the events, like watching through a fluidly roving camera in a movie. The cast is uniformly excellent, and Venessa Kirby’s Stella becomes the focus of the play, the sympathetic character over whom Blanche and Ben Foster’s volatile but complex Stanley battle for possession and to dominate. The fact that Stella is turned on by the rough treatment meted out by Stanley is not shirked by the production. But Ms Anderson’s portrayal of the even more complex Blanche was quite remarkable and full of contrasts – much funnier and sexier than I have seen before. She is both hilarious and terrifying when she flirts with the young paperboy, making the later revelations of her behaviour all the plausible. When she relents and is finally, delicately, escorted to the asylum one senses that she is going with a sense of relief – even though she has lost her home, mind and now her liberty. It’s a huge role and Ms Anderson takes it to a fresh and ultimately poignant place. Do try and catch it.

What with Helen McCrory’s Medea, this, and Kirstin Scott-Thomas’ Electra to come, it’s a vintage year for big female roles.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's a terrific play and I was cross to miss out on tickets - I was already thinking of a first trip to a filmed play to catch this, having gathered that amateur51 was at a live relay last night too - hope he will come on and give further opinions!

[Nick Armstrong]

Still hoping for some review action here from ammy about 'Streetcar'...

[clive heath]

Further to Belgrove's last sentence, Kim Cattrall was pretty impressive in "Sweet Bird of Youth".

[muzzer]

I too saw Streetcar on the big screen on Tuesday and it was magnificent. Absolutely coruscating performance from GA, that builds from the mildly camp to the genuinely disturbing. Fabulous.

Btw Caliban, a friend got seats simply turning up on spec one afternoon last week. Possibly returns just in hand of course.

[muzzer]

And also looking forward to Electra.

About a month ago was lucky enough to see Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan in David Hare's Skylight. Rip-roaring in places but he always reins it in when needed, I think. And she matched him toe to toe. Very very good performances. The audience was a bit too arch imo but you can't have everything.

[gurnemanz]

We had booked early for Streetcar (i.e. my wife spent ages on line getting through). Great evening. Only a couple of negative points: I don't think the updated set contributed much and I did not catch all of GA's Southern accent.
Last Saturday we went to My Night with Reg at the Donmar. Beautifully acted drama - both funny and moving.

[Belgrove]

What a stimulating delight Tom Stoppard's Arcadia proved to be at Nottingham's Playhouse Theatre. This was the first time I have seen this play and it enters that rare and distinguished group of works that uses the ideas of science, without distortion or fanciful analogy, to reflect upon the human condition - in particular the role of chance and latent patterns in human affairs.

Rather improbably, chaos and thermodynamics are infused with shenanigans in the gazebo, landscape gardening and the minutiae of literary criticism in two interpenetrating epochs, to produce a comedy that this genuinely very funny yet also (slightly) tragic. The 'two societies' of arts and sciences get to rehearse their ambitions whilst also revealing their deficiencies.

The production has elegance, subtlety, charm and wit. It's beautifully lit, magically capturing the change in light as the day progresses from dawn to dusk. The text is delivered by the cast with total clarity, so important in a play where the exchanges between characters are swapped with crisp and epigrammatic economy and precision.

I guess to fully appreciate this play, one has to know something of the science of the 19th and 20th centuries (it was written in 1993), but even if ignorant of this, one could still enjoy the wit without appreciating the wisdom.

More Stoppard next year at the NT; his new play 'The Hard Problem', tackles consciousness.

[Belgrove]

Just a few days left to catch Electra, which continues the run of first rate productions at The Old Vic in London.

I only knew this work through the opera. In all but two scenes, I found the opera (especially the libretto) superior as a stage work. The sense of dread and implied horrors going on behind the doors at Mycenae, so vividly evoked by Hofmannsthal, is missing in Frank McGuiness' adaptation of Sophocles. Clytemnestra is no raddled old bag of neuroses, but rather argues the case for her actions with the precision of a lawyer (Cherie Blaire kept springing to mind, for some reason...). But the Aegisthus scene carries greater weight than in the opera; no effete dandy here but a warrior whose tongue is a dangerous as his weapons. Where it did trump the opera was in the recognition scene, which packed a huge emotional charge and gave Kristin Scott Thomas her only moment of ecstatic happiness. Despite looking haunted, hollow-cheeked and positively anorexic, her luminous beauty shines through the grime and she gains sympathy despite playing rather unsympathetic character.

One hundred minutes of timeless, high quality, high-octane drama. Do catch it if you can, hopefully it has been filmed for relay in cinemas, like The Crucible earlier in the season.

[Belgrove]

Something wicked has this way come to the Menier Chocolate Factory, where Sondheim's Assassins has been revived - the perfect anti-panto. It is set in a funfair gone very wrong, run by The Joker-like Proprietor who goads into action the cast of attempted and successful killers of US Presidents, whom he variously imitates. Their results are recorded in garishly flashing light-bulbs, 'Hit' with pinball-clangs and 'Miss' with booby-prize klaxon. The two traits that unite this bunch of hopeless losers is their expectation of immortality, only achieved in a couple of instances, and their absolute right to deprive another of life.

Where is Lee Harvey Oswald in this group? He does make his eventual appearance in a great coup d'theatre and the inevitable is played out in extended finale set in the Dallas Book Depository, where the shades of assassins past and future come to cajole and encourage murder. This is pretty audacious stuff, and one can understand why America did not exactly take to the work. But the fairground setting gives a warped logic to this show of childish freaks, their reality is a hall of distorting mirrors.

The Assassins are the metaphorical embodiment of American Can Do taken to its illogical conclusion. In truth, it's not the most memorable of Sondheim's scores, being constructed around homespun all-American ballads, with folksy banjo and characteristic multi-layered and fractured vocal ensembles. But the assembly of words and music, and the mosaic-like narrative, is executed with great skill. Who would have thought that the most deliriously funny thing I have seen this year is the execution of Charles Giteau (the nuttiest and most deluded of all the assassins, and mortal wounder of James Garfield).

Great vision and theatrical verve is used to provoke unsettling thoughts on the American mindset. On until mid-March.