A Night at the Theatre

[Belgrove]

Whereas Michael Frayn's Copenhagen used the interpretations of quantum mechanics as a metaphor to explore cerebrally the circumstances surrounding the development of the atomic bomb, Tom Mortan-Smith's new play Oppenheimer provides a linear account of the Manhattan project as a biographical narrative of its scientific director. It's a riveting story that, were it fiction, would be regarded as far fetched and fanciful. Oppenheimer was a hugely complex and multifaceted character and any one play cannot capture all those aspects, nor tell his entire dramatic story (the play ends with the dropping of the bombs). John Heffernan's wonderful performance captures his charisma, profundity, technical and organisational genius, charm and humanity in all its manifestations, including hubris and ruthlessness. It's as huge a role in any new play that I can recall.

The otherness of the scientists who were gathered at Los Alamos is well captured without overly resorting to the hackneyed cliches about nerdy boffins. Lots of extra marital affairs and alcohol fuel the narrative. But at the end, the play poses the hard moral issues that Oppenheimer was faced with and challenges the viewer with the question 'what would you have done in the circumstances?' Performances at the Swan Theatre Stratford are mostly sold out, hopefully it will transfer.

This is a play that deserves to enter the canon of regularly performed works - it will be a wonderful text for study in schools.

[aeolium]

Not exactly a night in the theatre, but a night in the theatre seen in the cinema. I went yesterday to an encore broadcast of the Globe's production of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. The confined spaces of the theatre, with dark doors and panelling at the rear and the use of candlelight throughout, created a very effective atmosphere for this sombre Jacobean tragedy. Some scenes were in a sepulchral gloom, and the scene in which the Duchess was presented with what she believed was the severed hand of her husband took place in total darkness. There was very good use of music, too, devised by Clare van Kampen, with quite a bit of Monteverdi in the first Act (including a duet between the Duchess and Antonio of Zefiro Torna).

The cast was led by Gemma Arterton in the title role, convincingly portraying the changes in the Duchess' character from playful yet ardent affection in her wooing of Antonio, carefree love in their marriage, terror mixed with defiance and resolution in reacting to the fierce revenge of her brothers. David Dawson was a sinister Ferdinand, his nervous twitches and laughter betraying his instability in the early scenes, before changing into a frighteningly capricious psychopath, given to violent eruptions of rage and actions suggestive of incestuous feelings in his treatment of his sister. James Garnon was a cold, manipulative Cardinal, playing on his brother's outbursts and directing them to further his own ends. Sean Gilder was an effectively conflicted agent of the brothers' revenge, almost immediately repenting his actions but unable to prevent them. The scene where the Duchess and her maid are strangled was harrowingly done. Among supporting actors I particularly liked Paul Rider's Delio.

This was an excellent production of Webster's play, presumably mounted to commemorate the 400th anniversary of its first performance. Apart from the quality of the acting and the diction, the imaginative use of lighting and music made it the more effective (and it must have been even more powerful to those in the theatre).

[french frank]

Apart from the quality of the acting and the diction, the imaginative use of lighting and music made it the more effective (and it must have been even more powerful to those in the theatre).

Sounds as if it would have been a bit good on television too ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Sounds as if it would have been a bit good on television too ...

It was - broadcast last May-ish. Superb production; but lots lost on the small screen - the cinema might have given a closer idea of the stage event (especially that scene done in complete darkness: it was just a blank screen in a living room on telly [I should have had the room lights off, I suppose] but in a darkened cinema/theatre ... brrrr!)

[Belgrove]

The NT's production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is still on in London and has just started an extended national tour which I saw last night. Based on Mark Haddon's book, it tells the story of Christopher, a young man with Asperger's syndrome. It's an arresting piece of storytelling conveyed with dazzling state-of-the-art stagecraft, and a sympathetic understanding of its subject. The energy that Chris Ashby invests in the lead role is worth the price of admission alone. Good to see the theatre filled to capacity and the audience enthralled throughout. An uplifting experience.

[Dermot]

Sweeney Todd

I was at a performance of Sweeney Todd at the London Coliseum last Saturday and, despite initial reservations, thoroughly enjoyed the occasion. A Sondheim musical is not something I would normally attend, but a friend asked me if I would be interested in going and I said yes. We both live outside the UK and we arranged a weekend in London around the performance.

The Coliseum was packed and the audience was enthusiastic with everyone appearing to be having a good time. We had seats in the third row of the balcony and they were fine if slightly cramped. In passing, I normally find it possible to book affordable seats for the Coliseum, and sometimes for the Royal Opera House, something I have never succeeded in doing for operas in Paris, Barcelona or Cologne, to take three cities I have visited recently. The musical was described as being semi-staged and it was very well done. The conductor and orchestra were on stage and there was interaction between them and the cast. Emma Thompson was excellent, as an actress who can sing a bit, in the role of Mrs Lovett. In contrast, Bryn Terfel, as predominantly a singer, was a bit wooden in his acting abilities as the demon barber. It was an enjoyable and fun evening in the theatre, but nothing more. Sondheim is no Cole Porter and none of the music remains in my memory. Whereas great music, that of Doctor Atomic or the Makropulos Case, say, which I also heard at the Coliseum, haunts the imagination years later.

On Friday evening, we dined at Caravan in King's Cross beside Central Saint Martin's art college. It could be described, I suppose, as a newly fashionable and trendy area. The restaurant is located in a former warehouse and the clientele was predominantly young and about a third of our age. The food was excellent, with robust flavours, apart from the coffee which was the worst we have ever tasted. It was fairly expensive, at least for someone who books balcony seats at the Coliseum. Before the musical, we ate at Côte in St Martin's Lane a few doors from the Coliseum. We have dined there many times and the three course set menu is outstanding value. On Sunday, we visited the Red House in Bexleyheath as herself is an Arts and Crafts enthusiast. We ended our Easter weekend drinking Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Prosecco and eating Lindt milk chocolate truffles in our hotel while watching Poldark and Match of the Day on television. It was a great Easter weekend in London.

[gurnemanz]

It was a great Easter weekend in London.

We had a rather compressed Easter weekend in London. Making the most of travelling to London from Wiltshire, on the Saturday we rather crazily squeezed in two shows on the same day. "Closer" as matinee at the Donmar which we had missed first time round. An impressive play and performances to match, well worth looking at, but quite unremitting and not characters I could really like or associate with. Then "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" at RoH in the evening. Great to see it live for the first time, having studied Brecht years ago as a student and got to know the music via CD. Really enjoyed the show, even if for me neither the staging nor the opera itself can be said to be complete success. We stayed overnight at our daughter's in Balham and she cooked us breakfast - bacon and eggs with a very tasty home-made spicy salsa - before we headed for the hills.

We've only been to Dublin once and only for a few days in 2001, but we did manage to see a play at the Abbey - a memorable performance of John B. Keane play Big Maggie.

[Honoured Guest]

We've only been to Dublin once and only for a few days in 2001, but we did manage to see a play at the Abbey - a memorable performance of John B. Keane play Big Maggie.

Yes, it's good to go to theatres in different places. Most have their own unique atmosphere. I've also only been once to Dublin, and to the Abbey then, where I enjoyed a big new play with a seasoned but still keen audience, unlike any UK theatre I've ever been to.

I've planned first visits in the near future to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton and the Brighton Dome Corn Exchange.

[Belgrove]

Sadly Stoppard's latest 'The Hard Problem' did not fulfil its promise, the thesis being that consciousness requires something in addition to the complex assembly of the brain's components, that something being provided by coincidence furnished by God. It can only be careful planning (or coincidence?) that Shaw's Man and Superman is simultaneously playing at the NT and explores similar territory with more satisfying effect. Indeed, although over a century old, the jokes are remarkably contemporaneous and the ideas better expressed sans the scientific constructs on which Stoppard over relies.

Shaw gives to The Devil that role filled by God in Stoppard's play, and The Devil is a much more entertaining sparring partner for Jack Tanner/Don Juan played by Ralph Fiennes (who despite his being a successful Lothario, recalled Leonard Rossiter's creation Rigsby in Rising Damp). Tanner is a colossal role and Fiennes does him proud, his best stage performance since his saintly Henry VI. Indira Varma as Ann is more than a match for Tanner's circumlocutions. A joyous evening that revels in the word, expressing simultaneously profound ideas and subversive comedy. On until mid-May, do try and catch it.

[Belgrove]

Patrick Marber's adaptation of Turgenev's 'A Month in the Country' at the National, compresses the action into 'Three Days' and lops two hours from the running time. Being allergic to Russian drama, I approached this with trepidation, left the theatre unmoved, but have warmed to it on reflection.

It's the usual stuff that Chekov did ad nauseum; of land-owning gentry having an endless house party populated with pointless bores reflecting on their worthless existence, who get gingered up by an outsider from a different class. The best performance is Amanda Drew's Natalya, the lady of the house who is besotted by the arrival of her son's tutor Belyaev, as indeed are most of the other females in the household, and who manipulates the affections of others to gain advantage and access to him, but is totally undone through her infatuation. Turgenev portrays the agonistic Belyaev as an innocent abroad, whereas Marber's take on the character is one who is altogether more knowingly disruptive, both politically and sexually. The function during the first act of the abstractly suspended red door above stage becomes all too apparent and emblematic through Belyaev's actions in the second.

The big disappointment was John Simm's Rakitin, who loves Natalya but who will not betray the lifelong friendship he has with her husband. Simm speaks his lines with inappropriate exaggeration, like they are Wildean epithets, but these are not funny, nor do they contain any deep truths. Indeed this character is superfluous (there is always at least one pointless male in Russian drama), neither propelling the play forward nor providing mirth. Rather, this function is supplied by Mark Gattiss' inept country doctor ('... a master of misdiagnosis...') who's rictus grin, smouldering resentment of those around him, and spectacularly inept proposal of marriage is equally superfluous to the drama, but saves the show from blandness.

Stoppard's Arcadia used this play as its model, but to greater comedic effect and more profound, resonant and modern purpose. But in spite of it being superseded by a later work, this is still worth a visit: for Marber's effective adaptation and stage direction, and for Drew's portrayal of the disintegrating Natalya.

[Belgrove]

Currently at the National Theatre, Jane Eyre originated from the Bristol Old Vic and is an exhilarating telling of the familiar tale, made fresh through inventive staging that uses the ensemble cast to economically populate the many characters of the story (including Rochester's dog). Two women dominate the drama, one overtly - Jane played by Madeleine Worrall, who is on stage almost without a break throughout the 3-1/2 hour show. The other is the covert presence of Bertha, a role sung (very beautifully) by Melanie Marshall. Indeed music plays a large role, and is provided by a jazz piano trio on stage throughout. When Blanche Ingram gains Rochester's attentions, the conflict that Jane experiences is succinctly and subversively crystallised in a rendition of Coward's 'Mad About the Boy' - you never quite know what is coming next in this show, nor how it gets portrayed.

The use of the ensemble recalls the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby, but done in the style of Complicite in terms of its economy and the roller-coaster pace at which the story advances. And yet within it there are moments of heart-stopping tenderness, Jane nursing Helen Burns through her last night, Jane and Rochester's declaration of love for each other; but always Jane.

It's being shown in cinemas during November in an NT Live relay, and then goes on tour in 2016 following the London run, but do try and catch it at a theatre to get buoyed-up and carried away by the sheer verve and joy that theatre at its best can bring.

[gurnemanz]

An afternoon, in fact, that began with a coach breaking down on the Chiswick Flyover, so we arrived 20 minutes late for Waste at the National and had to watch the last hour of the first half standing right at the back of the gallery. It was a very stylish and stylised staging. It is long and, it has to be said, a bit long-winded and wordy in a Shavian sort of way but devoid of his humour. For me it was not always that riveting as drama with about 20 characters doing a good job but with their lines often not really being conducive to interacting and the main character as a bit of cold fish. It was still a very worthwhile theatrical experience. The set was minimal but effective with bits of rectangular screen moving around as if inspired by a Mondrian painting.

[Belgrove]

Worth resurrecting this thread having had a busy weekend at the theatre, and not a dud among them.

Amadeus has been revived at the National, and is sold out already - however it will be shown in cinemas on 2/2/17 and may be of interest to some because of its subject matter. I saw the original production with Paul Schofield, Simon Callow and Felicity Kendall, and concluded that it is a highly overrated play (but made a pretty good film). I therefore expected to carp, but was won over by the spectacular production and a fine performance by Lucian Msamati as Salieri. Salieri's descriptions of Mozart's music forms the best writing in the play. Adam Gillen is absurdly over-the-top as Mozart, and almost undermines the entire show. But it's saved by the inventively used Southbank Sinfonia who perform on stage and, paradoxically, become the most plausible characters through integration of the music with the plot. In their black garb they even resemble animated notes on a backlit page, and the scene before the interval culminates in a real coup de theatre. Lots to enjoy here, and it is sad that Peter Shaffer did not live to see the revival.

Tom Stoppard's Travesties is also sold out at the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory, but is transferring to the West End. Tom Hollander plays Henry Carr as both a young and rather confused old man who recalls erratically his involvement with Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara in Zurich in 1917, whereby Dadaism, Ulysses and Bolshevism somehow get mixed up with Saville Row tailoring and an amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest. It's an astonishing feat of writing and acting by all involved (only Lenin is a bit turgid, his words being his own rather than Stoppard's). It's continually entertaining, never boring, and fiendishly clever, but I only managed two outright laughs in three hours, which for a comedy is a rather low strike rate. The themes of (artistic) chaos versus form and order had evidently gelled in Stoppard's mind even in 1974 when this was written, but explored with a more forensic analysis, breadth, and less obvious showing off, in Arcadia. Great fun.

The Red Barn, also at the National, is a new play by David Hare that is based on Georges Simenon's novel La Main. It's a strange hybrid thriller. Half Pinter play, with quotidian exchanges loaded with ambiguity, portent, threat and eventually dread; and half Hitchcock movie (Rear Window?) with its roving cinema iris revealing only part of the action (but what is going on behind that black screen?) This is without doubt the best 'film' I've seen all year and the cast is terrific at ratcheting up the tension through their oblique dialogue. Mark Strong is wonderful as the buttoned-up Don, who slowly unravels - but in a terrifyingly controlled, yet not entirely self-comprehending way. Elizabeth Debicki (she it was who adorned The Night Manager) is the femme-fatale ice-princess who has set Don on his trajectory through the tale, and Hope Davis is Don's all-seeing and dangerously intelligent wife (scarily, I could not get Hilary Clinton out of my mind). The ending makes the 110-minute-without-a-break play horrifyingly complete.

All these are worth the effort of seeing.

[Conchis]

Worth resurrecting this thread having had a busy weekend at the theatre, and not a dud among them.

Amadeus has been revived at the National, and is sold out already - however it will be shown in cinemas on 2/2/17 and may be of interest to some because of its subject matter. I saw the original production with Paul Schofield, Simon Callow and Felicity Kendall, and concluded that it is a highly overrated play (but made a pretty good film). I therefore expected to carp, but was won over by the spectacular production and a fine performance by Lucian Msamati as Salieri. Salieri's descriptions of Mozart's music forms the best writing in the play. Adam Gillen is absurdly over-the-top as Mozart, and almost undermines the entire show. But it's saved by the inventively used Southbank Sinfonia who perform on stage and, paradoxically, become the most plausible characters through integration of the music with the plot. In their black garb they even resemble animated notes on a backlit page, and the scene before the interval culminates in a real coup de theatre. Lots to enjoy here, and it is sad that Peter Shaffer did not live to see the revival.

Tom Stoppard's Travesties is also sold out at the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory, but is transferring to the West End. Tom Hollander plays Henry Carr as both a young and rather confused old man who recalls erratically his involvement with Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara in Zurich in 1917, whereby Dadaism, Ulysses and Bolshevism somehow get mixed up with Saville Row tailoring and an amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest. It's an astonishing feat of writing and acting by all involved (only Lenin is a bit turgid, his words being his own rather than Stoppard's). It's continually entertaining, never boring, and fiendishly clever, but I only managed two outright laughs in three hours, which for a comedy is a rather low strike rate. The themes of (artistic) chaos versus form and order had evidently gelled in Stoppard's mind even in 1974 when this was written, but explored with a more forensic analysis, breadth, and less obvious showing off, in Arcadia. Great fun.

The Red Barn, also at the National, is a new play by David Hare that is based on Georges Simenon's novel La Main. It's a strange hybrid thriller. Half Pinter play, with quotidian exchanges loaded with ambiguity, portent, threat and eventually dread; and half Hitchcock movie (Rear Window?) with its roving cinema iris revealing only part of the action (but what is going on behind that black screen?) This is without doubt the best 'film' I've seen all year and the cast is terrific at ratcheting up the tension through their oblique dialogue. Mark Strong is wonderful as the buttoned-up Don, who slowly unravels - but in a terrifyingly controlled, yet not entirely self-comprehending way. Elizabeth Debicki (she it was who adorned The Night Manager) is the femme-fatale ice-princess who has set Don on his trajectory through the tale, and Hope Davis is Don's all-seeing and dangerously intelligent wife (scarily, I could not get Hilary Clinton out of my mind). The ending makes the 110-minute-without-a-break play horrifyingly complete.

All these are worth the effort of seeing.

I think the play is weak and the film is effectively ruined (for me) by its use of a largely American cast. I keep expecting to hear someone say 'Yo! Mozart!' and high five the titular composer.

What lunatic had the idea of casting an actor with a thick Brooklyn accent as the Emperor Joseph ll, I wonder?

[gurnemanz]

Nice to rediscover this thread. We've booked for Red Barn. Not tempted by current Amadeus, although we enjoyed the play many years ago with Frank Finlay as Salieri. My wife has booked for iHo at Hampstead - a theatre we have never visited before - good cast and well reviewed. Not as enthusiastic about as some critics about Oil at the Almeida last weekend. Also coming up soon is Glenda Jackson's Lear at The Old Vic. Intriguing to see Jane Horrocks as Regan and Celia Imrie as.Goneril. I think the last time I saw Glenda was at the RSC in the 60s.