Losing My Prom Cherry

I have Prommed!

Yes, though I have lived in and around London my whole life I have never been to the Proms before now, and this year I decided that this was something that needed to be rectified. So after work on Friday I hauled myself over to the Royal Albert Hall and got in the day ticket queue (for I intended to Prom proper).

The Prom in question was number 28, an evening that consisted of the Magnus Lindberg clarinet concerto followed by Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. Neither piece I knew beforehand, but both were amazing in their way. The Lindberg was performed by Kari Kriikku and was technically amazing. He made the clarinet make noises I had no idea it could make. It was clearly a superb display of musicianship and yet it was difficult to connect with beyond this.

The Rachmaninov, on the other hand, was very accessible. This was big sweeping stuff, almost cinematic in its emotional uppy-downiness. I was totally caught up in the music, and left reeling by the power of the piece. I was less impressed by the Royal Albert Hall. Having never ventured inside this great domed building before now, I was surprised to find, once you ventured through the doors and into the arena at the centre of the hall itself, that it felt like a kind of period Wembley Arena – equally cavernous and surprisingly cold - though my disappointment was alleviated somewhat when I spied the War of the Worlds type saucer thingys that hung from the ceiling as acoustic buffers. They were quite something to behold.

And the people! My fellow Prommers. Well, they were something too. One couple lay on the floor, barefoot and ram-rod straight, with their eyes closed. Another man lay curled nearby like a sleeping child, while an immaculately dressed man beside me was almost vibrating with pleasure through the whole of the Rachmaninov piece. The experience wouldn’t have been half of what it was without them.

A Confusing Carmen

My week has continued in a pleasantly South Bank-y fashion. Not the National this time, but the Royal Festival Hall, where Jude Kelly is staging Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones as her big “hello, we’re open again,” show.

The results are muddled to say the least. For a start, the setting has been twiddled with: Hammerstein's original Broadway production relocated the Carmen story to a parachute factory in the US, but Kelly has uprooted it again, swapping this Deep South setting for a vaguely Cuban-looking backdrop. For, um, reasons that never become clear. All that this change of location achieves is that it makes the piece feel rather unanchored and uncertain of itself. The set is also an oddity, sitting awkwardly in the middle of the RFH stage, with the wooden back wall of the hall very visible behind it.

The amplification was all over the place too, making it hard to decipher a lot of dialogue, and, well, I could list more little niggly negatives, but actually the show wasn’t as unsatisfying as I’m making it sound. Though the first half is distinctly shaky, the production was far more cohesive and compelling after the interval. The orchestra were excellent (Kelly has plonked them in a pit in the centre of the stage with the action playing out both behind and in front of them) and there were some standout moments, most notably that of Beat Out Dat Rhythm On a Drum.

Performance-wise there are some excellent voices amongst the large cast. But it’s impossible not to notice that both Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi, as the volatile Carmen, and Andrew Clarke, as Joe, the man she seduces, are eclipsed in terms of charisma and presence by, respectively, Sherry Boone, who plays the heartbroken Cindy Lou, and Rodney Clarke, as the boxing champion Husky Miller. Indeed the only truly bravo-worthy episode of the evening was when Boone sang My Joe, a quiveringly beautiful lament to her one-time lover; it was a quite, quite wonderful moment.

Some Enchanting Evening?

I do love the South Bank on a sunny evening: the glittering river, the hum of human life, the glass of wine sipped whilst watching odd performance art types juggle bunches of flowers outside the National.

It was almost a shame to leave it behind for what promised to be two hours plus of Scandinavian gloom at the Cottesloe, but I had tickets for The Enchantment, so leave it behind I did. The play is by Victoria Benedictsson, who, though rather lost to history was an influential figure in her day, inspiring both Strindberg and Ibsen. Her 1888 play The Enchantment has never been performed before in the UK but its premier production has been directed by Paul Miller, (the man who brought the magnificent Elling to the stage) so my anticipation levels were high.

Nancy Carroll plays Louise Strandberg, a young Swedish woman living in Paris, existing in a world of artists, though she has no artistic talent or inclination herself – Paris for her is about escape and liberation from her tedious provincial background. Here, she embarks on an affair with Gustave Alland played by Zubin Varla. He is supposed to be a magnetic, attractive character – a man capable of exerting an effortless hold over the women he encounters. But the odd rhythms of speech Varla employs, and the strange emphasis he puts on unexpected words, speak less of boundless charisma and more of a man struggling to remember his lines.

In the second half, the action reverts to Sweden and we see the life Louise is escaping: marriage to a kind but staid and middle-aged bank manager and a living room swathed in symbolic dust sheets. The denouement is predictably, Swedish-ly bleak.

Though the play is slow in places and comparatively heavy-handed in others, Benedictsson’s writing contains some flashes of insight into the muddle of love and the impossible position of women in 19th century society. She knows she stands zero chance of changing Alland, yet she remains besotted with him, in total awe, able to excuse away his every abuse of her love. Nancy Carroll has a glowing presence as Louise and Niamh Cusack is equally good, if sometimes a little shrill, as her close friend (and former conquest of Alland’s). But good as they are they’re not quite capable of enlivening this rather stiff and tiresome production.

The Cottesloe’s in-the-round staging meant that I was seated with my back to the curious wall projection thingy, thus missing out on the most inventive aspect of the set. However my position did mean that, when a character dropped a rather crucial letter on the floor, it landed pretty much at my feet, allowing me to inspect whether it actually said what it was supposed to say. Unfortunately before I could decipher the scrawly handwriting, it was picked up again – however, and I’m just guessing, it may have said: “Off to run head under tap in preparation for melodramatic final scene.”

Oh, and the women’s costumes were rather beautiful, it has to be said. I really, really want a bodice and bustle now – I think it would look rather fine in the office.

A Little Link

Another Guardian blog post. Go. Look. Read. Debate away.

Something To See Here

Hurrah! Finally, I have been to the theatre. To the Menier Chocolate Factory in fact to see Take Flight, a new musical, by John Weidman, David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr, that interweaves the stories of the early pioneers of flying: the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart

The Menier is at its best with musicals, and while this show is far from perfect, it’s vastly more interesting and engaging than their last offering, the lumpy and unfunny All Mouth. Take Flight is about individuals who strive to do the impossible. It looks at what drives people to want to take to the air in an era where, more often than not, they would lose their lives in the attempt (or as the show’s narrator of sorts, the inventor Otto Lillienthal amusingly puts it: go ‘pfft’). Are these people visionaries, or, well, just a bit odd?

The answer appears to be a bit of both. Lindbergh is depicted as so cripplingly shy that flying solo is his only pleasure and the Wright Brothers exist in their own little nerdy world (“don’t have houses, don’t have wives, don’t have prospects, don’t have lives.”). Earhart is an independent spirit, who needs to constantly challenge herself in order to feel alive. She views the idea of settling down with her publisher husband, George Putnam with something akin to dread.

By necessity this is a musical of ideas, rather than visual spectacle. The flying scenes are simulated by the actors sitting on stepladders and jiggling about a bit (and though there’ll be a model plane going spare soon, once The Drowsy Chaperone closes, I doubt they could fit it in the Menier, so stepladders will have to suffice).

With a couple of exceptions the songs are rather samey – there’s little here that will be adding itself to your internal iPod – but the show’s sub-Sondheim style has its moments of wit and inspiration. Sally Anne Triplett’s Earhart is supposed to provide the emotional core of the piece but I was more taken with Michael Jibson’s pallid, introverted Lindberg, unfortunately his character is given little room for development.

Though flawed there is something genuinely uplifting about Take Flight if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s a celebration of what people can achieve, it’s about progress and hope, rather than the fear and apprehension about the future that seems so globally pervasive at the moment.

And, excitement of excitements, (well perhaps that’s overstating it, but still, anyway, good thing) the Menier has finally invested in an air conditioning unit! This will surely gladden anyone who sweated through The Last Five Years there last summer.

Nothing To See Here

This should be a post about Lady Be Good at the Open Air Theatre, but it is not one. Nor will there be one – at least not anytime soon. Because the weather gods did not respect my need to watch an array of pretty people merrily Charleston-ing across the stage in flapper dresses to the sweet sounds of the Gershwins. Instead they brought rain. Lots of rain. Plus a bit more rain for luck. Or rather not. And I was forced, forced, to head back to my flat and watch The Wire. Which, while damn good telly, is not quite the same, I think you’ll agree.

Making A Meal Of Things

One of the delights of the Whingers' site is that they share what I always assumed was a rather singular obsession with onstage eating.

In order to ascertain whether there are other strange souls who worry about such things, I have blogged about this most pressing of issues on the Guardian’s arts and entertainment blog.

In other news, the sky is looking rather grey and aggressive. I suspect my excursion to the Open Air Theatre tonight might prove quite soggy.

A Musical Interlude

Still Not At The Theatre. But I have been At The Barbican.

Sometimes when I go to the theatre I feel rather over-burdened with information – I’ve read the previews, heard the word of mouth whispers – I rarely, if ever, go and see a production without having some grasp of what it is I’m going to get, but since my knowledge of classical music is almost laughably poor, when I go to a concert I am freed of any sense of expectation. It is rather liberating and exactly what I wanted, as I had been feeling rather poked and prodded by life this week and simply wanted to sit in the dark for a couple of hours and let pleasant sounds float over me.

The concert was part of the Barb’s Mostly Mozart season and featured the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No 6, the Mozart Violin Concerto No 5 and Piazzolla’s Four Seasons. And, well, I don’t really have the vocabulary to do it justice, but I enjoyed it hugely. I went in feeling all tense and tired and tightly knotted and came away feeling less so.

Ooh and, as I type, the rather biblical deluge outside my window has abated and a tiny sliver of sunlight is just about discernable, which is a good thing indeed as I am due to visit the Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park on Monday and was starting to fear that it would be the Under Water Theatre if this continued.

To Show Off No More

Hmm, I appear to be Not At The Theatre again. A state I fear will continue until some time next week as, after the blip of Bath, work has returned to its usual state of workiness and also I have relatives visiting from abroad so am using my evenings for a bit of familial catch up.

But none of that is very interesting. So, um *twiddles with jewellery, cleans bit of fluff from keyboard* ooh, I see that The Drowsy Chaperone is to close on August 4, after a run of only a few months. I am rather surprised by this. I did not love this by any measure, but I certainly did not hate it anywhere near as much as some. I thought it was a sweet, frothy piece of theatre – a one joke show for sure, but a joke that kept me reasonably entertained for its running time, which is more than I can say for other things I’ve seen this year. And in Bob Martin’s performance there was a genuine nugget of pathos and humanity at its centre. True, I didn’t think it was destined to last long in London but I find the swiftness with which it is disappearing really unexpected.

For Shaw, For Shaw

Apologies for the brief break in blogging, but I have been away for a few days. Work has been very work-y of late, so my flat mate and I decided to abandon London for a couple of days, to embark on a weekend of ambling, pootling, mooching and imbibing. In Bath, city of spas and crescents and, um, pretty little cobbley bits with pubs in. And, of course, theatre. Because there’s always time for theatre, especially given the fact that the annual Peter Hall season has just kicked off for the summer at the Bath Theatre Royal. So we booked tickets for Pygmalion on the Friday night. Yes, more Shaw. But having had my expectations welcomely upended by Saint Joan earlier in the week, I was eagerly anticipating this one.

After Marianne Elliott’s intelligent, pared down production at the National, this was as traditional a staging as it gets, with big, elaborate, leather arm-chair peppered sets and scene changes so lengthy that the red velvet curtains were forced to descend between acts.

The contrast was a welcome one; though stylistically as different as it gets, the plays made for a fascinating pairing and both productions excelled at drawing out Shaw’s considerable capacity for comedy. This was especially the case with Pygmalion. Hall’s rather reverential direction was helped along immensely by Michelle Dockery's spot-on performance as Eliza Doolittle. She nailed Eliza’s vowel-mangling cockney howl and also conveys the pathos of her transformation, torn from the world she knows and understands, but never able to be fully be at home in this new land of jewels and garden parties and making small-talk about the weather.

Tim Piggot-Smith was also excellent as Henry Higgins, with his baggy cardigan, slippers, and complete lack of desire to trouble himself with normal social niceties. The affection that grows between him and his protégé is subtle but genuine, though the production leaves you in no doubt as to the callousness of his behaviour towards her. The ending is abrupt, ambiguous, and emotionally raw. In the climactic scenes between Higgins and Eliza you ache for him to just bend a little, to do something, anything to make her stay. You know it would only take the smallest of gestures, but he is unable to give even that much and both he and the audience are left quietly bereft, realising he has most likely lost her for good.

Maids and Marshmallows (or not, actually)

I must admit I was apprehensive going in. The National’s website stated a provisional running time of three hours and five minutes, and due to a minor brain hiccup while booking tickets I’d managed to land myself in the second row from the back of the Olivier circle.

There to see Marianne Elliott’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, I was anticipating a long fidgety evening squinting at the tops of people’s heads. But while my precarious perch did necessitate a degree of squinting, my somewhat negative expectations were pleasantly overturned and, despite the lengthy running time, I was completely engrossed.

Last time I saw Anne-Marie Duff, in the tedious The Soldier’s Fortune at the Young Vic, I was pretty underwhelmed; she looked lost and ill at ease in what was a messy and dull production. But here she was captivating and commanding, so full of passion and energy you quite understood why these soldiers would follow a young girl into battle. Elliott’s spare staging was also striking, drawing out both the humour and the drama of Shaw’s play.

The evening did have a few shaky moments. The opening sequence, which consisted of some slow motion fiddling with chairs to a soundtrack of what sounded like Enya played backwards, had me worried, I’ll admit (and absolutely certain that those chairs would be called into play for the climactic burning sequence, as indeed they were). A stylised battle scene, with a lot of percussive banging and stamping, also resembled something that would not have looked out of place in Stomp.

But most of these wibbles were quickly remedied by the confident staging and strong performances, including an appearance from the wonderful Paterson Joseph (the super-cool Johnson in Peep Show and the man who single-handedly saved Trevor Nunn’s irritating production of The Royal Hunt Of The Sun from its 1970s-style theatrical excesses)

On the interval I caught up with Andrew and Phil, the West End Whingers. They had also been fretting about the three hours plus running time, and were, like me, won over by the production. Indeed, we were so short of things to moan about over our interval drinks, we had to resort to whinging about the Royal Festival Hall refit. They even remembered that I was a gin girl, which perked me up further.

After the interval, and an incredibly tense and gripping trial sequence, the chairs did make a return for the burning, and though the National's smoke machine got a good work out, no actual actresses were harmed. A good thing for Anne Marie Duff, but a let down for the Whingers who were hoping to toast a few marshamllows.

Barbers and Baritones

Umbrella-less, I dashed through the rain last night over to the Royal Festival Hall. A ticket had tumbled into my lap for the production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, starring Bryn Terfel (who I gather is Big in Opera) as the Demon Barber. I’ve not been inside the RFH since they reopened the place after its lengthy refurbishment and I was surprised to see bits of scaffolding and carts of builders’ bits-and-pieces still tucked into corners. There was also a horrendous queue for the bar so I had to content myself with a coffee. I then took said coffee over to the window and watched the rain lash the Thames for a while as I waited for the show to start.

Given that this was billed as a concert production – a “semi-staging” – it was far more elaborate than I was expecting, with the performers all in costume (including the choir from the Guildford School of Acting Conservatoire, whose attire suggested that Victorian London was more heavily populated with Goths then I’d ever realised) and quite a few props. The musicians had been swept into one corner of the stage, allowing the action to play out in the remaining space. Terfel, who had played the role before in Chicago, was superb – a booming, damaged, dangerous man. And Maria Friedman was a delight as Mrs Lovett the pie-shop owner, bawdy and brash in her vile lace leggings. The blend of opera voices and those more suited to musical theatre worked surprisingly well.

I’m a bit of a Sondheim novice but I was gripped from start to finish, and I loved the way the absence of set allowed the story and the singing to speak for themselves, the way it left them nothing to hide behind. My friend Simon who knows far more about such things was muttering about amplification and acoustics, but I was too swept up in things to care about such subtleties.

A programme footnote proudly proclaims that the pies that appear in this production - and are eaten by a number of the actors during the performance - have been provided by the new branch of Canteen that’s just opened under the Royal Festival Hall. Given that the pies, at times, are said to contain fingernails, pussy-cats and actual bits of people, I’m not entirely convinced by the intelligence of this marketing strategy.

All That Glisters...

The sky did not look happy. It really didn’t. It frowned and fretted and let fall the odd, experimental droplet of rain. Enough, certainly, to have the groundlings in the yard at the Globe exchanging worried glances and unfurling those plastic cape-y things that look like bin liners with armholes cut into them. And then, just as it seemed as if the heavens would open, the sky brightened again. Which was a good thing indeed, as the Globe’s production of The Merchant of Venice is one that could use a bit of luck.

The press night had already been pushed forward due to the unexpected departure of Michelle Duncan, who was to play Portia. And then, on the night before I went, the actor who plays Gratiano had to be replaced by an understudy at the interval because of an attack of gastric trouble. Fortunately there were no further mishaps when I went along and even the weather eventually began to play ball, allowing us to concentrate on what is an intriguing if slightly unsatisfying production of what is often termed one of Shakespeare's 'problem' plays (there’s a nice piece in the programme on this unhelpful label).

The most notable thing about Rebecca Gatward's production is the way it concentrates on bringing out the play's humour. Merchant is not one I’d ever thought of as a comedy but in her hands it is very entertaining with some proper laughs. This is only achieved however by a downplaying of the Shylock plot, with John McEnry giving a solid but rather low-key performance in the role. It’s an approach that has caused quite a split in the reviews, with many, including Lyn Gardner, labelling the production a cop out for taking this creative tack. Though I enjoyed it, I think, on reflection, I agree; it was slick and nice to look at (I particularly liked the Rialto bridge they’d erected in the yard) but it felt as if the meat of the play was missing, it had a hollow at its heart.

I had dragged French Claire along for the evening, as not only is she good company, but she studied on the Text and Playhouse MA course at King’s College London which is run in conjunction with the Globe, and is therefore full of useful information on all things Shakespearian – but did she know where the bar was? No (or should that be non), she did not. We almost ended up in a queue for the soup stand, for God’s sake, which would never do.

The Globe is of course unlike other theatres, it is open to the elements for one thing and, given what had happened earlier in the day, it’s not surprising that the actors were occasionally drowned out by the sound of helicopters overhead. This was however less of a distraction than the tiny, howling baby someone had with them in the yard. Now for the most part I’m all for exposing kids to the arts at a young age. I think the odd bit of giggling and seat-back kicking is worth enduring it if they end up being engaged with and excited by what they’re seeing, and hate it when people get all sniffy and British about children in theatres, galleries and restaurants and so forth. But from the raw, animal sound this kid was making, it was clearly barely out of the womb and therefore, I’m thinking, not really capable of appreciating a nuanced line reading.

With A Song In My Hart

After the bitter wallow of The Pain and The Itch I felt in need of something a little lighter, something altogether more lacking in marital discord and genital scabs for my next theatrical outing. This something turned out to be From The Hart at the New End Theatre, an anthology show that celebrates the life and work of lyricist Lorenz Hart.

The show itself is a simple thing, a breezy run-through of 32 classic Rodgers and Hart songs performed by an engaging five-man cast. It managed to provide some interesting nuggets about Hart's life, whilst acting as a superb showcase of the man's astute and intelligent lyrics.

Hart was barely five-feet tall and gay, and the show suggests that he held a life-long unrequited passion for his very heterosexual creative partner Richard Rodgers. He was also very conscious of his perceived unattractiveness, saying: "If I wanted perfection I had to look outside myself. If I wanted love, I had to invent it." He descended into alcoholism that would eventually contribute to his death from pneumonia at the age of 48. But despite the almost text-book tragedy of his life, the show does not wallow in pathos, far from it; instead it keeps exposition to a minimum and allows the songs to do the talking. And since these songs include Have You Met Miss Jones, The Lady Is A Tramp, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, My Romance and Blue Moon (which Hart apparently hated for being far too lyrically twee and obvious) it's not like you need anything else.

John Guerrasio plays Hart with a cigar in hand, trousers hitched high and a thick New York drawl. His performance holds the show together and gives the songs a necessary framework, however this is an ensemble piece and everyone involved pulls their weight in what is a slight but sweet evening's entertainment.

On an unrelated note, the New End Theatre was apparently originally built as a mortuary, a fact that rather delighted me when I found out, possibly more so than is normal.

Back On Topic

So I headed over to the Royal Court last night to see The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris. I’d been looking forward to seeing this for a while, partly because of the Mathew Macfayden factor (I was rather taken with his portrayal of Mr Darcy, preferring his awkward and taciturn take on the role over Colin Firth’s) and partly because it originated with Chicago’s famous Steppenwolf theatre company, whose excellent production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was one of the shows that really opened my eyes to what good theatre can be.

Norris's play concerns a well-heeled couple, Clay and his wife Kelly, who are hosting a holiday dinner for Clay’s plastic-surgeon brother Cash and his East European girlfriend, as well as the brothers’ mother Carole – this despite the fact that the brothers seem to actively dislike one another. There’s also the matter of the avocados: something has been taking bites out of them – rodents, or possible raccoons, are suspected – and worry about their young daughter Kayla, who has developed an itch in a rather private place. All of these events are related to a mysterious Asian man, though his role in the story only becomes clear near the end.

Michael Billington called it an “ingenious satire on the American brand of phoney liberalism,” but I guess he’s using the lesser known definition of the word ingenious that means heavy-handed and repetitive. A lot of the jokes felt rather broadly telegraphed and the twists in the plot equally obvious. Satire should unsettle the audience, it should make you question yourself, but this was just too extreme, every character so irredeemably vile, as to undermine whatever impact it set out to have.

Even Cash's girlfriend Kalina, with her Eurotrash boots, her smoking, and her ability to interact with screechy Kayla as an actual child rather than a pet to be praised and reprimanded, breaks into a shocking rant about gypsies just as she seems to be developing into the human heart of the piece.

I know a lot of this unpleasantness is intentional and I suspect part of the problem is the play hasn’t traveled particularly well, but still I felt a little grubby at the end of it all. Matthew Macfayden was brilliant though, shucking off his Darcy-ness quite spectacularly to play the whiny Clay. Peter Sullivan was also quite wonderful as the narrow-eyed Cash, who seemingly had only two vocal settings: sarcasm and disdain. The rest of the cast were strong too, though Andrea Riseborough’s accent as Kalina did seem to wander from the Baltics to the Balkans and back again throughout the course of the evening.

Having sweltered in stuffy pub theatres last week, this time around I was rather grateful that I took a jumper, as the Court appeared to have set their air-con to ‘winter,’ perhaps to coincide with the play’s Thanksgiving setting.

I Should Koko

So once again I was Not At The Theatre last night, trading overpriced interval wine for tepid beer in plastic cups (well actually I stuck to gin, but you get my point).

I was watching Zach Condon, and his perhaps unwisely monikered band Beirut, play Koko in Camden. If you’ve yet to encounter him, Condon plays a kind of jazzed up take on the music of Eastern Europe. Actually, no, it’s more wide-ranging than that. There are touches of Klezmer and Celtic in there. But basically we’re talking accordions and mandolins and ukuleles. Vocals distorted through a loudhailer. And much trumpet.

What was fairly downbeat and mournful on his album, Gulag Orkestar, came wonderfully alive on stage; there’s something surprisingly joyous about this kind of music and Condon, despite being a twenty-something be-fringed fellow from Sante Fe, manages to evoke the heart and power of real-deal Balkan gypsy gods like Boban Markovic without coming off like a bandwagon-jumper.

So, yes, I enjoyed that a lot, though I find there’s something a bit offal-y about Koko, something about all that red that’s like, as I think I said once before, being trapped in the belly of a big gay whale. Also I had managed to position myself on the beer corridor, the path through the crowd that everyone automatically follows from the bar to the stage, so there was a fair bit of side-stepping and shuffling and ‘sorry, excuse me’ dancing with chaps juggling five tumblers of lager. But still, good fun.

A Perfect Sunday

And no, it’s not actually theatre-related. Instead Lisa and I went along to the Billy Wilder double bill at the Curzon Mayfair: Double Indemnity followed by Sunset Boulevard, it doesn’t really get much better than that.

I’ve not been to this particular cinema before, so was delighted to discover it has the most impressively 1970s interior I’ve seen in a while. Low ceilings and lots of orange and brown, almost oppressive – yet something about it rather chimed with my intermittent longing to live my life like a character in a Woody Allen film.

We followed the double-bill with a long ambling walk through the streets of Mayfair before ducking into a pub for a gin or two. Wonderful.

Now does anyone know where I can buy some black soap?

PS. Do nip over to the Whingers' site, where there's an interesting discussion in progress about the AA Gill attack on theatre critics in this week's Sunday Times. Oh, and there's a brilliant riposte from Andrew at The Arcades Project too, which sums it all up nicely.

Fringe Things

I have written about Theatre 503 before. This studio space above the Latchmere pub in Battersea is one of my favorite fringe venues – and not just because it’s a ten minute bus journey from my front door.

At the moment they’re showing a play called Future Me by Stephen Brown. To steal a term from the press blurb, the play is about ‘ordinary monsters,’ men who do unspeakable things. The main character, Peter, is a young barrister with a promising career ahead of him and a loving girlfriend who he's about to move in with. So, clearly, the laws of drama dictate that his life is about to fall spectacularly apart. This happens by way of an email – he accidentally forwards an attachment to his entire address book that includes a pornographic photograph. Child pornography to be precise.

The play then goes on a journey that covers a number of years. Peter goes to prison where he is kept in a separate unit (his crimes, it seems, went to more than just pornography, he touched as well as looked), he attends group therapy sessions, is released and has to adjust to life on the outside once more. The play also concentrates on the impact Peter's crime has on the people around him. Though initially horrified, his girlfriend Jenny deals with things in a very level-headed fashion, unable to fully relate the man she loved with the man in prison for child molestation.

Stephen Brown’s play is commendable on many levels; it has a detached but not overly clinical tone, and for the most part manages to maintain the difficult balance between the intellectual and emotional. It allows us to question whether some crimes are too horrific to forgive, and whether forgiveness, acceptance, is even desirable. It’s very well written, often very incisive and entertaining, though not without flaws, some of them quite fundamental. The crucial scene where Jenny interviews Peter, ostensibly for a feature she's writing, and Brown takes the opportunity to remind both her and the audience of just exactly what Peter did, should leave you shocked. By hitting home the contrast between Peter’s articulate, sensitive demeanour and the truth of what's he capable of doing, has done in fact – well, it should leave you as bruised and betrayed as Jenny feels, but it doesn’t quite manage it. You never fully get under Peter’s skin as a character.

Two and half hours is a long time to spend in a (very) stuffy studio above a pub on a summer evening, but this is an intelligent, thought-provoking and often unsettling piece of theatre and more than worth it. Good performances too, especially from David Sturzaker as the unnervingly calm and articulate Peter, though he appears to have stolen Simon Amstell’s voice, which was a tad disconcerting.

Domestic Bliss?

“Please, keep off the grass,” said the rather stern usher as we filed into the Cottesloe auditorium. Now, these are not words you usually hear as you enter a theatre, but the National obviously had a bit of turf left over from covering the flytower with the stuff, as there was indeed grass – a whole suburban garden in fact had been assembled, complete with plastic paddling pool and patio furniture.

This was the set for Matt Charman’s new play The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder, a knotty but involving comedy about polygamy. Well polyamory actually, as the play takes pains to point out that nothing illegal is going on, but nonetheless this is very unusual family set up. Maurice is a Lewisham scaffolder who lives with Esther, Fay and Lydia, as well as Fay’s son Vincent and Lydia’s baby Fergus. On every other level this is a normal family, they have their rules, their quirks and their customs (big family dinner every Tuesday and so forth) and their domestic arrangements, though idiosyncratic, seem to work just fine for them.

Even the arrival of a fourth woman, Rowena, young, pregnant and just out of an abusive relationship, doesn’t appear to rock the boat too much. Charman is an engaging writer and he succeeds in making the Pinders into a plausible family unit; you can believe in the way these women interact with one another (despite the fact they have a rota for who has, um, bedroom duties with Maurice on any given night), and while I thought the character of free-spirited Reiki healer Lydia was a dip too far into the cliché-cupboard, the relationship between the older women, Esther and Fay, was very well sketched.

Having made a semi-convincing case for this kind of lifestyle, Charman then turns things upside down in the second half, with the arrival of sensible, cardigan-clad office manager Irene. This is a wife too far for the other women and the careful balance of their family is upset. Ultimately Charman’s position seems to be that such relationships are appealing but untenable, though he takes a rather muddled road to reach this conclusion.

Still, this is a fresh and often very funny piece of writing, that as they say “raised some interesting questions”, about love, about commitment, and so forth. Though, having said that, I was never able to fathom exactly what it was about Maurice that was supposed to make him so irresistible – something of a crucial drawback.

Anyway, I eschewed my interval gin to watch the set dressers at work – a process that was actually rather fascinating. A whole brick wall was built and there was one girl running around with a watering can to give the set a just rained-on look. Not quite worth skipping the gin for, but interesting to watch all the same.

A Question

Anyone have any clue what the deal is with Kingston Theatre? As I understood it, a summer 2007 opening was on the cards, but having checked their website, it seems they’re still in the process of, you know, building the thing. It seems like ages ago now that I saw Rebecca Hall doing her Rosalind in the half-finished auditorium (a rather inspired idea as it turned out, all the exposed concrete and wires made a brilliant backdrop – shame the production itself was so conventional.)

Anyway the theatre is a space with potential, and I like the idea that you’ll be able to pay a fiver and sit in the central carpeted space in front of the stage, it seemed like a relaxed, inclusive set-up, and it could be a great community resource, but that’s only if it ever actually opens.

Jazz Hands (Well, Feet Actually)

So, the soundtrack to my Wednesday evening went a bit like this: Tap. Tap. Tap. Tippety, tap. Tippety, tappety, tippety, tappety. Tap, tap, tippety, tap. Tappety, tappety, tappety. TAP. TAP. TAP.

I was at Sadler’s Wells, watching Savion Glover make his London debut. Glover is a big name in the US tap scene, though his name was new to me (apparently he had something to do with that icky, animated penguin syrup-fest Happy Feet, but I shan’t hold that against him - though someone, somewhere should surely pay).

Anyway, being a creature of habit, I went to the Tinderbox Café on Upper Street first, as I usually do when seeing anything at Sadler's, and had a big, frothy mocha – because they serve it in 1950s milkshake glasses and that’s really all it takes to make me happy – and read a few chapters of my book before heading over to the theatre.

The posters for the show had led me to expect some kind of big dance spectacular but actually the show was very minimal in its approach and it was all the better for it. There was no set to speak of, just a four piece jazz band gently noodling away. Glover came on, dressed all in white save for a pair of bright green tap shoes, and, head down and dreadlocks bobbing, began to do his stuff, tapping away in time to the music. It felt more like a jam session than anything else, with the rhythms made by Glover’s feet forming an integral part of the music.

This idea – the body as instrument – was taken further in the livelier and longer second half, where he was joined on stage by three supporting dancers – they each had their solo moment, taking turns to create riffs, but in his own understated way Glover was the star. In my rare brushes with traditionally staged ballets, I’ve always come away feeling in awe of the dancers’ evident technical skill but unable to connect emotionally with what I had seen. On this occasion I was able to do both. I left the venue feeling pleasantly uplifted though, unlike some other audience members, I was (just) about able to restrain myself from testing out some rudimentary tap moves on the Islington streets as I walked back to the tube.

Spaced Out

In theory it sounds like something I would love. I am somewhat fascinated by Japanese culture and the Bush Theatre is very much in my good books after their superb production of Elling. So it was in an open and easy-going mood that I trundled over to Shepherds Bush this week to see Trance, the UK premiere of a popular play by Japanese writer/director Shoji Kokami. Even the use of the term ‘hilarious consequences’ in the press blurb, didn’t dent my upbeat demeanour.

Trance is an intense three-hander that examines issues of sanity and identity and the fragility of both. It concerns three school friends who reunite in later life. Masa is a freelance journalist, unsatisfied with his job and with his life, who is starting to experience blackouts and periods where he feels strangely distanced from his own actions (and there’s a joke in here about me after a few gins, but I’m going to step around it). The psychiatrist he goes to visit, Reiko, turns out to be someone he had a relationship with at school – though this apparently presents no barriers to her treating him - and she diagnoses the onset of schizophrenia.

Sanzo, the last of the trio, is now working as a drag artist and after a chance meeting at a nightclub, he too becomes drawn back into Masa’s life, just as his friend’s blackouts begin to worsen and he becomes gripped by the delusion that he is, in actual fact, the deposed Emperor of Japan. Sanzo, who had a crush on Masa as a boy and who is still clearly a little in love with him, convinces Reiko to let him nurse their friend, something he does by pretending to be one of the Emperor’s eunuchs.

The play becomes odder and more elliptical as it goes along, playing Pirandello-esque games with its characters, and inviting the audience to question just who is suffering from delusions, the journalist, the drag queen, the psychiatrist or perhaps all three. Hilarious is not the word I’d use to describe this production, unless hilarious has somehow come to mean repetitive and a little strange with the odd wry laugh thrown in. Instead it felt rather stilted and underpowered, too in thrall to its own philosophical musings. It’s perhaps a predictable conclusion to come to but I suspect that on this occasion a good deal of what Kokami was trying to say, about identity, about society, has been lost in translation.

A Musical Treat

With a tagline like: “Putting the Gin in Original”, I couldn’t very well not go and see it, could I? So on Wednesday, I did traipse over to the Novello Theatre to see The Drowsy Chaperone, though I was unsure, as someone who, in the main, doesn’t really ‘get’ musicals, whether a musical about someone who is obsessed with musicals would be quite the thing for me. But actually, despite a few reservations, yes, yes it was.

The show begins in darkness with a man's voice bemoaning how theatre can so often let you down; muttering about how so many shows these days are overlong and over-hyped and destined to disappoint (for some reason I found myself thinking of hobbits at this point). And then the lights went up and the man was revealed to us – a slight chap in a baggy cardigan and corduroy slacks, sitting in a cluttered apartment beside a stack of beloved LPs of musicals from the 1920s. One of these albums is for a show called The Drowsy Chaperone, which he proceeds to play while talking the audience through it, scene by scene, song by song, and feeding us tid-bits about the personal lives of the actors (the actors in the made-up musical, that is - keep up) and making little post-modern asides about breaches of the fourth wall.

This show-within-a-show is a slim thing indeed, much concerned with weddings and whatnot. It features a leggy starlet, a toothsome groom, a comedy Italian who appears to be wearing Pepe Le Pu on his head, and of course, Elaine Paige as the gin-happy chaperone of the title. Her part is a surprisingly small one (in every sense – her diminutive stature is gently mocked throughout), she only gets one song to herself.

The real star is the narrator, played by Bob Martin, whose role it was on Broadway and who also co-wrote the show. His is an endearing, warm performance, sweet and affecting, and one that helps considerably in skimming over some of the show's patchier moments. His nerdy enthusiasm for the show he's describing is such that you can't help but share it (even when the show itself seems rather unworthy of his adoration – there’s only one song that sticks at all in the memory: the hilarious Show Off). His portrait of a lonely man, revelling in his obsession with old musicals that he's never seen, only listened to, is also surprisingly poignant – it gives the show a heart, a hook, and keeps you involved.

So, OK, it’s not going to make me become a musical fan of Lisa’s calibre (our flat regularly vibrates to the sound of show tunes and she has seen Wicked three whole times) but I did enjoy myself, despite being slightly mentally traumatised by the American man with the World’s Scariest Facelift, who was sitting a couple of rows in front of me in the stalls.

PS: Every time Ms Paige did grace the stage, the words “Write It Down” kept popping into my head. These chaps have a lot to answer for.

The Truth Will Out

Ah Hampstead Theatre. How many times have I trundled up the Jubilee line to Swiss Cottage to visit you, revelling in a warm anticipatory glow, and how many times have I come away feeling all “huh?” and “hmm?” and “feh.” The answer is many. Rather too many times. So I was in a cautious mood when I went up to see Dennis Kelly’s latest play, Taking Care Of Baby.

The play begins with the words: "The following has been taken word for word from interviews and correspondence," scrolling across a bank of television screens. Using the techniques of verbatim theatre, Kelly tells the story of a young mother, Donna McAuliffe, who has been imprisoned, and subsequently released, for killing her two children. It's a depressingly familiar set-up, resembling any number of stories that have recently graced the headlines, as well as bringing to mind the National Theatre Of Scotland's production of Aalst which covered similar thematic ground.

Donna is released from prison after she is diagnosed by psychologist Dr Millard as suffering from Leeman-Keatley Syndrome, a condition that could cause an otherwise loving mother to harm her own children. This is despite questions being raised about the doctor's research methods, and indeed, whether the syndrome exists at all. Of course, after all this, Donna's life is no longer her own - her marriage inevitably crumbles and her mother Lynn, an ambitious local politician, finds her career initially jeopardised and then, perversely boosted, as her family's tragedy becomes tabloid fodder.

But Donna's innocence or otherwise is not really the issue here; Kelly is far more interested in the way her story gets pulled apart for the personal gain of others, how her truth, the reality of what happened to her children, ceases to be as important as the truths that other people impose on her. The play becomes increasingly cynical as it progresses, with Kelly even poking away at the very idea of verbatim theatre itself. He slowly chips away at our sense of what we're seeing, toying with audience expectations as the narrative becomes increasingly fragmented.

The actress playing Donna, Abigail Davies, does an amazing job: her speech is excruciatingly nervy and hesitant, with pain evident beneath the surface of every action, every utterance. Anthony Clark's direction is sharp and well-paced, knitting all the disparate strands together and this along with the memorable set, with its creepy baby-in-a-box centre-piece, adds to the overall impact of the piece.

But there's a nagging sense of missed targets as the play reaches its increasingly satirical conclusion. A sense that Kelly is trying to say too much about too many things - and, in doing so, he loses the focus that elicited so much uncomfortable laughter in the first half. This is an undoubtedly ambitious and intelligent piece of writing, but it's one that, in the end, proves just too slippery for its own good. Despite this, it’s still the most satisfying thing I’ve seen at Hampstead in a good long while.

All Mouth, No Heart

As a general rule, most plays need some form of structure and shape; they need to unfold, to develop, to take the audience on a journey. It doesn’t need to be a long journey, it doesn’t need to make you reassess your life as you know it or shift your political beliefs. But it needs to move you in some small way. Or else it’s just two hours of noise.

Which brings me, conveniently, to All Mouth, the new comedy at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The play, by Jonathan Lewis and Miranda Foster, is set in the world of advertising voiceover artists, and while it does make you chuckle on occasion, it’s more or less two hours of noise. The characters, four actors who use a central London flat as a base for hanging out and learning their lines, are incredibly thinly sketched, stereotypes who never really grow beyond simple two-word tags: aging thesp, American bloke, divorced mother, and, erm, the other one.

There’s a plot of sorts about an actors strike and a young actor who wheedles his way into the aging thesp’s affections as a way of getting his career off the ground, but it doesn’t work as drama or satire and you get little sense of who these people are. Some solid performances keep the play afloat and render it watchable but, as it is, it feels like a work in progress – a play in need of a complete re-write.

Now, the West End Whingers have a thing about the Menier’s unreserved seating policy, but this has never bothered me quite so much as the lack of air-con, more noticeable here than at any other venue I can think of. I have never had a more uncomfortable night at the theatre than I had watching a performance of The Last Five Years there on a hot July night last year. It was so stuffy in the theatre that the staff were handing out tiny battery-powered fans at the door. Even with those it was impossible to enjoy the show properly; it was like sitting in a sauna. Christ knows how the actors coped. It’s a shame because as a venue I’m quite fond of it, though my affection is bound to dwindle if they keep on staging nothingy comedies like this.

Oh yes and the ‘dead white men’ debate is still trundling on, with a riposte from Nicholas Hytner in the Observer.

Tradition!

After Tuesday’s Adventures in Noh, Wednesday night saw a return to more conventional West End fare, as I had tickets to see the Sheffield production of Fiddler On The Roof at the Savoy Theatre.

I took my mother, as it’s one of her favourite musicals, so no bribes of wine or promises of young men in tight white sailor suits were required to coax her up out of the suburbs.

Lindsay Posner’s production is a conventional one that retains most of Jerome Robbins’ original Broadway choreography. And if you take it on those terms, if you’re not expecting it to twiddle with the text in any way or do anything particularly new with the material, it makes for an enjoyable evening. Reliable. Solid. (It's perhaps not surprising then that Lyn Gardner liked it not so much). Henry Goodman makes a decent Tevye, though he rather dominates the other cast members and relies a little too much on silly voices and panto double-takes for my liking. Even so both my mum and I enjoyed it considerably – though we both thought they rather fumbled the (much shorter) second half, when the big familiar musical numbers give way to darker ground. The emotional kick that the destruction of the village and the family’s separation should deliver was rather lacking.

Our experience was also slightly tainted by the family behind us, who midway through the (admittedly long) first act began to unpack a Pret a Manger bag stuffed with crisps, flapjacks and fruit pots – a veritable picnic – which they started to consume well before the interval. Now I’ve spent evenings in Richmond Theatre, home of world-class handbag rummagers and ice-cream spoon twiddlers and ‘Oh hello Gladys, I haven’t seen you in months, why don’t you tell me all about your new granddaughter, right here during this pivotal moment of play’, so I understand that complete silence in the stalls is probably asking to much, especially during a big, popular show such as this, but this takes the (Pret A Manger carrot and walnut) cake. There was also a chap a few seats along from me, busy subjecting his girlfriend to a kind of Judaism 101 all through the show: “that’s a mezuzah”, “that’s a prayer shawl”, “look, they’re going to smash a glass now,” which was sort of sweet, but again this went on all through the show, so no, bad. Grumble.

Noh Doubt

Yesterday, after work, I hopped on the Central Line and made my way over to Notting Hill’s Gate Theatre to see Ben Yeoh’s new work, Nakamitsu an adaptation of a classic noh play.

Having done some hasty wikipedia-ing before I left the office, I now know that Noh is a major form of classic Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. But, if I’m honest, even armed with this knowledge I still had a very hazy idea of what I was actually going to see. My brain was picturing something very stylised and visual along the lines of Kabuki – so I’ll admit to being a little bewildered, on first entering the theatre, when I set eyes on the rather buff fellow in a school boy’s outfit who was parading up and down the stage, coquettishly slapping his bottom and doing suggestive things with a banana, as the audience filed into the narrow Gate performance space.

However after this slightly disorientating opening sequence (during which the dancer peeled down to his tiny, shiny pants – Lisa, again you were foolish to sit this one out) everything suddenly snapped into place. Following an unbearably tense scene set in the strip club, Yeoh takes the piece back to its traditional roots. The story is simple but harrowing – when his master flies into a rage at his only son, who has squandered his education, Nakamitsu is left to make a terrible choice between love and duty. What follows is gripping, exciting and visually striking. I don’t want to give too much away but it involves samurai swords, great swathes of coloured silk, and a really big drum. Yeoh manages to make it very accessible without undermining the play’s dramatic traditions. The performances were all engaging. And it was less than an hour long. Still daylight as I left the theatre (something that will please these chaps no end).

My not exactly thorough wikipedia-based research (which may well count for nothing as this: “article or section does not cite any references or sources.”) tells me that noh has a rather unique rehearsal process in which the actors practice their roles independently without interacting. I’d be fascinated to learn more.

A Gathering

Lisa and I did have a party on Saturday. A Start-Of-The-Summer party, which was rather foolish/optimistic of us given the weather this weekend. Still people did come and eat and drink and talk until the early hours of the morning. And there was Pimms. And Cocktails. Lots of cocktails. And Lisa's homemade lime cheesecake. And a boat-load of Damson gin.

Sunday, unsurprisingly. was rather foggy and lethargic. But it was worth it. Oh yes.

Cuban Grooves

After a pleasantly aimless week of No Theatre, I ended my drought by drifting over to the boxy, character-free Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells city-centre sister venue, to see their new show Havana Rakatan.

This is one of those big dance extravaganza type things that Sadler’s Wells likes to stage from time to time. The last one was Brasil Brasileiro, which I saw last summer, and this new production does for Cuba’s musical heritage what that show did for Brazil’s.

Havana Rakatan is a kind of chronological trawl through the country’s musical history, so we get opening scenes devoted to Cuban music’s colonial and African influences, with a second act concentrating on mambo and salsa, with a little chachacha chucked in for good measure. And it was entertaining, as these things go, though I often find these shows work as a kind of two hour build-up to that bit at the end where they want to get everyone on their feet and clapping in unison. Something I whole-heartedly detest, being both a natural introvert and a bit of a snob. Still despite my resistance to the enforced enjoyment factor, the sheer energy of the musicians and dancers made it nearly impossible not to get swept along by things - at least a little bit anyway.

I was however distracted by the dancers’ costumes on a number of occasions: in the earlier tribal set-piece, one chap appeared to have scalped Bungle and be wearing the results on his head, while later on, one woman was sporting, not only an Ed Wood-worthy mid-riff exposing angora sweater, but also these bizarre billowy satin hot pants that resembled, rather disconcertingly, an adult nappy. No-one else on stage was thus encumbered. I think she may have lost a bet or pissed off the costume designer.

There were also a large number of toned, shirt-less and sweat-slick torsos on display, Lisa, I suspect will be rather sorry she sat this one out.

Withdrawal Symptons

I've not set foot inside a theatre for seven days now, I am starting to get The Shakes. (Which, of course, has nothing at all to do with the three cups of coffee I've had today).

Inspired Casting

Thumbing through the Culture magazine of the Sunday Times yesterday over cereal and coffee, I came across an interview with Tim McInnerny about his forthcoming role as Iago in the Globe’s new production of Othello. It was fairly predictable stuff: blah, blah, Blackadder, blah, blah, proper actor actually. But then I read something that got me rather excited, something that had passed me by up until now – I read that the Othello to McInnerny's Iago will be played by a certain Eammon Walker, best known, to me anyway, as Kareem Said from the bonkers HBO prison series Oz.

How fantastic is that! Shakespeare with added shankings! Or something. Possibly. I'm slightly loathe to admit it, but I used to be a teeny bit obsessed with this show and how it consistently managed to be so, so wrong, yet so oddly watchable at the same time. I'm really looking forward to seeing him tackle the role and think the Globe should give serious thought to extending their HBO inspired casting further. How about Six Feet Under's Rachel Griffiths as Lady Macbeth? Or James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano himself, in doublet and hose?

PS: There will be slightly less theatre this week due to the stubborn insistence of people I know on having birthdays and warming their houses and such like.

Scenes from Russian Life

What better antidote to a grim, grey May Thursday then a piece of deeply bleak Russian theatre? No, seriously. It doesn’t sound promising and I’ll admit when I read the synopsis, which made liberal use of the words ‘harrowing’, ‘uncompromising’ and ‘human spirit at its lowest ebb’ I wasn’t convinced that this would be quite the thing to haul me out of my current vague malaise. But actually I was pleasantly surprised. Phil Willmott’s adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s second play, The Lower Depths is a spirited and compelling production. It’s on at the Finborough in Earls Court, one of London’s best pub theatres (though, having said that, this actually the first time I’ve been there in something like two years now).

The play is set in a provincial pre-revolutionary Russian doss house inhabited by a thief, a prostitute, a gambler, an alcoholic former actor, an elderly vagrant, and various other characters on the lower margins of society. The set is appropriately grubby, a muddy collage of browns and greys. And things don’t exactly begin well - the play starts with death of a young woman and an awful lot of wailing, making me immediately regret not making better use of the ‘pub’ part of this pub theatre and stealing myself with a pre-show gin (or vodka for that matter, which at least would have been thematically in keeping with the play). However due to Wilmott’s agreeably earthy adaptation, some fine ensemble acting and a healthy streak of black humour, this wasn’t the misery-fest it could have been and it successfully lifted me out of my self-induced fug.

In other news, my lemon tree has gone all wilty again - my excitement over its resurrection was clearly premature.

"Dead White Men"

So, in case you missed it, Nicholas Hytner got a bit snippy about the middling reviews for A Matter Of Life And Death and laid into the critics for, not only being past it, but for also being a little bit sexist, referring to them as "dead white men."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, messers Billington, De Jongh et al took against this, while the Guardian's Lyn Gardner agreed with Hytner that theatre criticism is indeed too male-dominated.

David Eldridge, who of course has had work staged at the National under Hytner, says his bit over here and the guys at Theatre Encore Magazine wade into the debate here.

Me? I think Hytner has a valid point that he rapidly undermines by flinging accusations of misogyny around. The world of theatre criticism is currently far too insular - I remember Mark Shenton blogging some time ago about how a large number of the top critics went, not just to Cambridge, but to the very same college at Cambridge. Which inevitably makes for a rather narrow critical spectrum.

It's just a shame this discussion was sparked by the reviews for A Matter Of Life And Death, a bloated, unnecessary production, where I found myself heartily agreeing with a number of the dead white men in question!

Death Row Drama

Ah, that’s more like it. After a run of duds and disappointments, I was beginning to wonder whether I was becoming unduly cynical and difficult to please. After all there were so many good reviews in the press for the overblown A Matter Of Life And Death, I was starting to think that the fault was mine, that something in me had, you know, soured.

Thankfully I saw something this weekend to lift me clear of my black little pit: Terre Haute by Edmund White was an engaging and thought provoking piece of theatre, a concise yet powerful play.

White has been inspired by the idea that, during his last days on death row, Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh entered into a correspondence with the essayist Gore Vidal. White uses this as a springboard to “imagine” a scenario where an elderly writer, much like Vidal, visits a young man in prison, who much like McVeigh, has been convicted for the mass murder of 168 people.

These characters are called James and Harrison to differentiate them from their real-life counterparts, but James is played (superbly) by actor Peter Eyre in a way that makes it difficult not to think about Vidal as you watch. Despite this White manages to successfully steer through the reality/fiction issue and produce a play that is easy to appreciate on its own terms.

The character of Harrison is articulate, intelligent and utterly without remorse - far more than the red-neck, survivalist stereotype he could have been. He’s played deftly by Arthur Darvill – in fact, both his and Eyre’s performances are first class. White draws some interesting parallels between the men – both are having to deal with their own mortality, as a result of old age, for one, and imminent execution for the other.

The play does not shy away from the reality of Harrison’s crime either, and the scene where James is no longer able to maintain his studied detached demeanour and screams at Harrison about the sacredness of human life, trying to illicit some reaction, some regret, is particularly powerful.

So, in short, strong but compelling stuff, though I rather wish White didn’t cloud things by adding a narrative strand about the bisexual James’ attraction to the younger man. I agree with theatre blogger John Morrison's view that White seems a little more interested in the Vidal character than that of the prisoner, something White more or less concedes in an article in the Guardian, saying that in the process of writing the play, the character came to reflect his own fears, anxieties and "confused amorous-paternal feelings towards a younger man in trouble."

That’s a small criticism though, Terre Haute is an excellent production, and at less than 80 minutes, one that hits you hard and leaves you hungry for more, rather than checking your watch and fidgeting in your seat (a quality in short supply of late). It’s playing at the smaller of the two Trafalgar Studios until June 2nd and is well worth seeing.

Heaven Can Wait, Gin On The Other Hand...

Two hours and ten minutes without an interval! Not a good sign. It’s not that I need that half-time gin, but, hey, this thing ain’t called Interval Drinks for nothing. So it wasn’t in the best of moods that I entered the Olivier in the National to see what Emma Rice’s Kneehigh theatre company had done to one of my favourite ever films, the classic 1946 Powell & Pressburger movie, A Matter Of Life And Death.

The film tells the tale of RAF pilot Peter who is forced to bale out from his burning plane without a parachute. To do so will mean his certain death, something both he and the American air control girl he is speaking to over his radio, know. This opening scene has me weeping every time I watch it. “You’re life and I’m leaving you.” Fantastic stuff.

So, in fairness, I was always going to be difficult to please with this one, but I’ve liked Kneehigh’s work in the past, and I was more than willing to give it a chance. Indeed, both Lisa and I thought their take on Nights At The Circus was one of the best things we saw last year. However in that show, their particular brand of theatre – cluttered stages, aerial stunts and rather ramshackle live musical accompaniment – gelled perfectly with the source material. Here almost identical techniques are trotted out with little thought given to how they might enhance (or overpower) the story. So we get cycling nurses and flying beds and small explosions and annoying Scandinavian chappies and some really quite bad music. Just far too much stuff. I quickly began to regret not smuggling in a hip flask. Then remembered I didn’t own one, a huge oversight on my part, I wonder how much they cost?

Anyway, sorry, distracted there, back to theatre stuff.

I’ll admit the production delivered a couple of visually striking set pieces (I enjoyed the slo-mo table tennis game and the camera obscura scene), but that wasn’t nearly enough to save this production from its own excessive approach. Plus they’ve tampered with the ending. When Peter takes his case to heaven’s version of an appeal court, to argue that – having fallen in love during the extra time on earth mistakenly awarded to him – he deserves to stay alive, he is now confronted not only by his dead father, but by the victims of the Coventry and Dresden bombings.

The production hits you about the head with the message that love, however pure, rarely triumphs over the indiscriminate brutality of war. Yes, War is Bad, and good people die and, yes in this respect, war in 1945 has much in common with war in 2007. It’s not exactly a message you can argue with, but surely there were other ways of making this resonate with modern audiences, by giving the play a contemporary setting, or, I don’t know, creating an original work that didn’t involve pissing all over one of the best British films ever made?

Page To Stage

Another bank holiday sprints into the distance, bringing with it summer rain, cake and coffee, evenings down the pub with friends, and various other hurrah-not-at-work type happenings. Oh, and Vernon God Little, the Young Vic’s staging of DBC Pierre’s Booker-winning novel.

I’ve read the book and remember liking it for its Technicolor prose style, though the actual plot faded faster from my memory then, well, a fast-fading thing. It was just one of a glut of novels based around school shootings that came out a couple of years ago, and not the best one at that. Fortunately this didn’t prove to be to much of a problem – unlike some page-to-stage adaptations, Rufus Norris’ production was easy enough to follow, whether or not you had any knowledge of the book. I’m just a little puzzled as to the point of the exercise.

Shorn of Pierre’s prose style, the story feels clumsy and cartoonish in the extreme: Vernon Gregory Little, a teenager from a small town in Texas, has been falsely accused of being an accessory to mass murder after his friend Jesus opened fire on his high school class mates before turning the gun on himself. As a satire of media mores and excesses, it already feels dated, a fact compounded by the recent appalling events at Virginia Tech. It also unfailing opts for easy laughs. Americans you see, they’re funny because they’re stupid. And fat. And greedy. OK, the book swiped at the very same targets but these were easier to take in the context of Vernon’s first-person narration

The set was something of an oddity too, consisting mainly of a moveable platform – seemingly made of sticky-backed plastic – that was raised and lowered at various points in the production. And the Young Vic got to play with their exciting new toy again, the ceiling heist – so Vernon spends the closing scene wearing a harness over his fetching pink shirt. The cast were great though, tackling multiple roles with ease, and Colin Morgan made an engaging Vernon, baffled, angry, horny, a plausible teenager in an impossible situation.

The whole thing was at least a whole lot slicker and more entertaining than Absolute Beginners. But whereas that was an interesting idea, ripe with potential, let down by poor execution, I just couldn’t grasp the reasons for bringing this to the stage.

Spotted in the audience on the night I was in: Mark Lawson, Lionel Shriver (who of course wrote the similarly-themed We Need To Talk About Kevin) and the Scottish chap with the lime green turban whose name escapes me, so I’m guessing this will be under discussion on Newsnight Review on Friday.

Back To The Beginning

So, yes, Lyric Hammersmith last night, with the man who for reasons best know to himself prefers to be known as Juice, to see Absolute Beginners, Roy Williams adaptation of Colin MacInnes’ novel set in 1950s Notting Hill.

I’d been looking forwards to this one considerably; I have a lot of time for Williams, having seen one of his plays, Little Sweet Thing, tame and engage a theatre full of rowdy, gum-chewing and generally disinterested teenagers a couple of years ago. I also have a personal interest in the subject matter as my family lived in Notting Hill during the time the play is set, after coming to England from what was then Yugoslavia.

(Not that this interest had extended to actually reading MacInnes' book you understand, but I knew of it, and at least I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. Sample interval conversation, heard several times over: “so, have you read the book then?” “No, but I know of it.”)

Anyway, point of story being: expectations high, perhaps too high. Things started well enough. Visually the production is spectacular – the set is a Mondrian-esque collection of blocks that drift about the stage giving the city a kind of stylised vibrancy, London depicted as playground and party town, really quite striking. These blocks in turn open up to reveal rooms and spaces within spaces. Unfortunately the look of the thing sets the bar a little too high and the actual meat of the play never really delivers on this initial promise.

The unnamed hero – a wannabe photographer and a part of the ‘teenage generation’ that had suddenly sprung into existence – dashes about town in an attempt to scrape some cash together in order to impress his girlfriend Suze. He encounters an array of characters: shady media types, Teddy boys and beatniks, as well as some nasty Keep-England-White thugs; Soweto Kinch's tinkly jazz score plays throughout. The elements are all there for a thrilling evening of theatre, but for all its promise, it just didn’t work. Nothing clicked. The dialogue was flatly delivered and the pacing felt all off. The episodic first half was little more than a primer on 1950s London and the Notting Hill race riots, while at least giving the second half more of a dramatic focus, were portrayed by means of a Dance Sequence. Yes, that’s right. Lots of chaps twirling and tumbling. I know this was in keeping with the production’s overall stylised atmosphere. But, still. No. Bad.

The play was crying out to be grimier, to be tougher than it was. True, there was a scene towards the end, where the hero and his black friend Cool get into a fight over Suze, which had the requisite intensity that the rest of the play lacked, but it was too little too late – even the constantly shifting and sliding boxes, so exciting initially, had started to grate at that stage. So, to summarise, I was bit disappointed in this one. It felt like an opportunity missed. Plus one Notting Hill social group were significant, to me anyway, by their absence – where were all the Eastern Europeans? Because obviously that’s what this needed. A load of shouty Slavs, that would have helped I’m sure.

Beautiful Thing

“Wasn’t that wonderful?” said the woman next to me as the house lights went up, and I had to concede that it was.

I was at the cosy Bush Theatre to see odd couple comedy Elling, a play based on a cult Norwegian film, adapted for the stage by Simon Bent and directed by Paul Miller. A play that happens to star John Simm, which of course had nothing to do with my decision to see it - no, I was here through a love of live theatre. Not to see That Thing With John Simm In It. Well maybe a little bit. But I was definitely not here because of Life on Mars, as, due to a mild phobia of that evil test-card girl and to over-praised telly in general, I only ever watched about an episode and half of that. My Simm obsession stems from watching Tony Marchant’s Never, Never and Paul Abbot’s brilliant State Of Play. So I am obviously better than all those people here to see that bloke from Life On Mars. Obviously.

Anyway, Elling is a good-natured comedy about two of society’s outsiders who, having been released from a mental institution, have to work out how to adjust to living independently. Simm plays Elling, a prissy self-declared mummy’s boy, prone to story-telling, who hides in wardrobes when things get too much for him. He wears sensible beige trousers that match his sensible side-parting and is the antithesis of his friend Kjell Bjarne, played by Adrian Bower, a lanky, hairy chap, who dislikes washing and wearing trousers, and who says “Holy Shit” a lot. Bjarne, that is, not Bower.

Given a flat to live in by the state and assigned to a social worker, the two men soon discover the joys of phone sex and takeout pizza and, with the help of a heavily pregnant woman and an aging poet, actually start to reengage with the world. Elling discovers poetry, and the fact that he may have some real talent, and Bjarne gets to touch a real live woman who doesn’t immediately have him arrested.

With his prim measured way of speaking and pink-scrubbed face, Simm is barely rescognisable, completely wrapped up in his character. The bond between the two men is touchingly and entertainingly conveyed, with Simm having a great rapport with the amiable Bower, and the play is stuffed with highly quotable dialogue - lines with more than a touch of the Withnails to them, like: “Mother did the shopping, I was in charge ideology.”

Elling is warm and compelling and a pleasure to watch. This was delightful stuff, very funny but with an occasional edge of poignancy, and it left me so uplifted that even the interminable journey from Shepherds Bush back home seemed more of a pleasure than a chore; indeed I positively bounced to the bus stop.

One Year On

Today is my blog’s first birthday. It is a whole one year old. This is probably not exciting to anyone other than me, but still I am quite chuffed about the fact. Thank you to everyone who occasionally drops by to read this unfocused waffle (which since I finally got around to installing Stat Counter I know is more than none and less than many people – substantially more than I ever imagined would read it though. I was also quite amused to discover that someone ended up here after typing Cheap Gin Drinks into Google – welcome, my friend!)

I started writing Interval Drinks because, as I found myself seeing more and more theatre, I wanted a place to order my thoughts about what I saw, a place to record the things that moved and engaged me (as well as the things that irritated and infuriated me). I had been pondering the idea of starting a blog on the subject for a fair bit and then I went to see a play by this man (Festen, if you're interested, which after stupidly missing it in the West End, I finally caught on tour in Richmond), that was vital and thrilling, and finally made me stop prevaricating and get on with it.

Oh, if you are able to make it over to Theatre 503 in Battersea in the next week or so, I strongly recommend you see George Gotts’ new play Cocoa. It’s an unsettling and engaging little play about a daughter returning home to visit her parents - but just like in Festen you soon sense there are dark, hidden things in this family. I enjoyed the way it took a familiar premise and twisted it around. It felt fresh and original; Gotts' dialogue has a lovely lulling rhythm to it as well, an excellent sense of pace and pause. In short, ‘tis good – go see.

New York, New York

I was standing by the bar in the Coliseum (gin-less for a change but waiting for my mother who’d nipped outside for a quick interval cigarette), when an elderly man in a grey suit, who was also waiting for someone, started talking to me. “£75, my ticket cost,” he informed me.

I made a kind of noise that began as a popular expletive but was hastily amended to something a little milder. It sounded a little like: “fosh, really?”

He nodded, with the stunned look of a man who was still coming to terms with this fact, but then he shrugged and smiled warmly, “But whatever makes her happy.” He waved his hand in the vague direction of ladies’ toilets where I’m guessing his wife was. And I smiled too because his sentiment seemed genuine and because I was glad my tickets had not set me back anywhere near £75. It had been an enjoyable evening so far, but it wasn’t £75 worth of enjoyable. In fact, I was under the impression that the most you’d ever pay for a ticket in the West End was a still-scandalously high £55, but I guess the Coliseum operates slightly differently.

Anyway, I was there to see the ENO’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s On The Town, which was back in London after a sell-out run in 2005. As I said I was with my mother who - though she had claimed to be far too busy to come to Menopause The Musical with me - suddenly had a free evening when the show on offer involved three strapping young men in sailors’ garb.

The plot, such as it is, involves the three aforementioned sailors, who have 24 hour shore leave in New York. One of them spots a poster of a pretty girl on the subway and resolves to find her before the day is through. The musical is set in 1944 and therefore this is not considered weird or stalker-ish behaviour but as something sweet and romantic. Much running about follows and, oh, you’ve seen the film, you know the rest.

Though staged by an opera company, surprisingly there weren’t that many standout vocal performances, bar a fabulously resonant turn from Andrew Shore, as a cuckolded judge, and a great performance from Caroline O'Connor as the man-hungry and magnificently named Hildy Esterhazy, who managed to exude brassy New York charm even when driving around the stage in a strange taxi contraption seemingly made from Meccano.

The stage is stuffed with people, all gamely dancing away, which went some way to compensates for the rather spare sets, and I did enjoy hearing the score performed by a full orchestra. But even with all the care that had clearly been lavished on it, it wasn’t possible to disguise the fact that the plot was thinner than (insert lame but topical size zero related pun here) and that the three sailor chappies remained unforgivably interchangeable throughout.

The Importance Of Being Interesting

Prior to the Whingers’ bash on the weekend I managed to squeeze in a trip to Jermyn Street Theatre. If you’ve not had the pleasure, this is a little basement theatre tucked beneath the Getti Restaurant, kind of charming in its own way despite some of the most cramped seating of any fringe venue I’ve been to. Indeed the two men sitting beside me had to resort to some increasingly elaborate seat gymnastics to retain blood flow in their lower limbs. At least that’s what I assume they were up to.

The current production is a revival of The Importance Of Being Earnest, a play of such comic perfection it would take a fairly determined director to make a hash of it. And this staging, by the fringe company Antic Disposition, does indeed avoid anything resembling a hash-making. In fact, theirs is a pleasant, conventional, entirely competent production. Straight, solid and safe. Determinedly dependable. Do you see a pattern emerging? The only vaguely novel element in this version was the casting of James Pellow as the fearsome Lady Bracknell, but even this bit of cross-gender casting malarkey seemed a tad obvious, and Pellow’s performance felt rather subdued.

There was nothing very wrong with the production, the acting was decent, and the audience chuckled in all the right places. It’s just that there was nothing there likely to make it stick in the memory, nothing to make you poke your friends repeatedly on the shoulder, when you meet for a drink afterwards, and annoy them by saying: “you really must go and see this show.” (The way I did after seeing Ridiculusmus’ frenetic two-man staging of the play). Maybe I’m being too harsh. Not everything has to be daring and rule-bending. Or have a singing polar bear. But there should be a spark - of life, of love for the text, of something – and there simply wasn’t one discernable here.

Putting Faces To Names

So these chaps had a party on Saturday, attended by a number of theatre bloggers, and very entertaining it was. I tend to get a bit nervous in these situations, so I hit the gin with more enthusiasm than was prudent, but fortunately I had brought along a friend to back me up (and to hold me up for that matter.) This chap was there and this one too. Oh and him also, and several more I suspect, though those are the ones I talked at/to the most. And now all these virtual voices have form and shape and faces, which is a trifle odd but on the whole a delightful development.