Sandy Pritchard-Gordon

Sandy Pritchard-Gordon
Theatre Blog

Friday 26 October 2012

A Chorus of Disapproval at The Harold Pinter Theatre


The ingredients are there; a comedy by Alan Ayckbourn, Trevor Nunn directing and a potentially good cast, but somehow A Chorus of Disapproval at The Harold Pinter Theatre disappoints.  Whilst Rob Brydon, as Dafydd ap Llewellyn, the overbearing Welsh director of the Pendon Amateur Light Operatic Society, ticks all the boxes, it’s not quite enough to make this revival first class.  Perhaps it’s just that this company of professional actors don’t adequately portray a company of amateur ones.

The play revolves around Pendon’s production of The Beggar’s Opera and how life often imitates art.  The play opens with the recently widowed Guy Jones, played by Nigel Harman, shining as Macheath on stage but being extremely unpopular off.  As the play progresses we begin to understand why.  The nice guy, Guy, in his naivety, innocence and inability to say no, has become embroiled in concurrent affairs with two wives in the cast and is mistakenly believed to have insider details of a land deal being conducted by his multinational employer.  His rise in the Beggars Opera from the lowly part of Crook-Fingered Jack to the swashbuckling Macheath has less to do with his acting ability and more to do with various cast members taking him into their confidence over the land deal and a series of disasters within the company.   Rather than playing Guy as a timid, unlikely sex god who is as equally enthralled by Dafydd’s unhappy wife, Hannah, as he is the sexual predator Fay Hubbard, Nigel Harman portrays him as a shy but believable seducer.  Also Ashley Jensen’s Hannah, although on paper a polar opposite to Daisy Beaumont’s Fay, doesn’t come across as such here.  Yes, they are different, but the two actresses could very easily swap roles.  All of which seems to be a result of odd casting rather than performance.

Luckily Rob Brydon holds the whole show together and hits all the right notes whether his character is bossing the cast, earnestly urging them on, or slipping into a melancholic gloom as he reminisces about his time spent as a “professional”.  I also enjoyed the supporting roles of Enid Washbrook played by Teresa Banham, her husband, Ted, an excellent Matthew Cottle and Georgia Brown’s very sparky and aggressive Stage Manager Bridget Baines.

There are also no complaints about Robert Jones’ superb design, which flows seamlessly from village hall, to pub to house interiors and, although I was never helpless with laughter on Monday night, there were some very funny moments.  Just not as many as I hoped.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Scenes From An Execution at The Lyttleton


The title isn’t great and I wasn’t that keen to see Scenes from an Execution by the  irascible Howard Barker until I saw that Fiona Shaw was in the main role.  In reality the play is much better than I envisaged and Fiona Shaw is marvellous.

She plays Galactia, an artist, who has been commissioned by the Doge of Venice to paint a massive canvas celebrating the historic victory by the Venetians over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.  Unfortunately for the Doge and his cohorts, her vision of depicting the battle is decidedly different to theirs.  She paints a canvas showing the brutality, futility and, ultimately, denunciation of war, whereas they had envisaged a triumphal picture portraying a glorious conquest.  As a result, Galactia is thrown in gaol and her young lover, Carpeta, also an artist, although far less talented, betrays his love for her by agreeing to paint another version of the battle more in tune with what his clients require.  Fortunately her incarceration is short-lived, as is her liaison with Carpeta and, because he is not a particularly talented artist, the Venetian powers that be don’t want to exhibit his canvas either.  What to do now?  Their final decision would seem to illustrate Carpeta isn’t averse to compromise, as not only does she agree to dine with the Doge but does so wearing a dress with fastenings!

Up until this point, Fiona Shaw commands the Lyttleton stage with breast and often breasts free to do what they will.  Her loose fitting, grubby, open, short shirt leaves nothing to the imagination and she sketches various scenes for her painting with legs akimbo.  There is no doubt in anyone’s mind right from the beginning of the play that this female is one unconventional, earthy woman.  More of a man than her lover Carpeta will ever be.  I can see why this “ballsy” actress was cast in the role;  it would flaw a lesser one.
Meanwhile Tim McInnery makes the most wonderful Doge moving effortlessly from smarmy menace to all encompassing rage and Jamie Ballard is more than satisfactory as the weak but ambitious Carpeta. 

Hildegard Bechtler’s multi-level set works extremely well .  I say works, although on Press Night, it apparently didn’t work at all for about ten minutes.  No such excitement on the night I went and, from what I could see, no walkouts.  It amazes me why anyone would actually do that.  This may not be the greatest production ever seen at The Lyttleton but, unless one has an aversion to breasts and the rather risible sight of a wounded sailor with a bolt buried in his skull and intestines on display under his coat, it is certainly worth sitting through until the end.  Rather pretentious it maybe – why Gerrard McArthur’s narrator is called The Sketchbook is anyone’s guess – but I like the ingeniousness of installing him in a white box which descends from high up in the ceiling.  The Director, Tom Cairns, keeps the whole play moving along at a brisk pace and it asks the theatre goer some interesting questions about the power of art and the responsibility of the artist to portray the truth.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Berenice at The Donmar


Berenice by Jean Racine should be subtitled “I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure”, such is the should I, shouldn’t I dilemma facing the two male leads, Titus and Antiochus.  It’s rather fortuitous that this interpretation by Alan Hollinghurst is relatively short, 1 hour, 40 minutes to be precise, because by the end I didn’t really give a dam whether they did or not.  It’s not the fault of the actors, but of the play.  Racine himself wrote a preface stating that he thought it unnecessary for there to be blood and death in a tragedy, it is sufficient that the action is great, the actors are heroic and the passions are excited.  He felt that majestic sadness is the pleasure of tragedy.  That may be enough for some but I felt somewhat short changed.  There is certainly plenty of sadness on the present Donmar stage, with just one tiny glimmer of amusement but, I’m afraid no great denouement.

The plot, such is it is, is that Titus, on the recent death of his father, will now be Emperor of Rome.  As such, he feels unable to marry the love of his life, Berenice, Queen of Palestine, because the Romans won’t tolerate a foreign queen as Empress.  She must be banished.  Meanwhile she has another man madly in love with her, namely, Titus’s friend Atiochus.  Unfortunately Berenice doesn’t reciprocate his love and only has eyes and heart for Titus, all of which, understandably, makes for a very unhappy trio of characters.

There are positive aspects of this production apart from the excellent cast.  Alan Hollinghurst’s version has dispensed with the original Alexandrine couplets, instead using unrhymed pentameter.  The text is therefore presented in clear, simple language but, unfortunately, the whole piece is rather static.  Unusually for The Donmar, this production is staged in the round and the set by Lucy Osborne is intriguing.  A stage filled with sand, yet more sand drizzling down from the lighting rig and stairs and bridge as if made from wooden chairs.  I am assuming the trickling sand is a metaphor for time running out for Berenice and her two ardent suitors and despite it being a tricky surface on which to work it is a very interesting interpretation.  The Roman costumes also work well and Anne Marie Duff as the barefooted Berenice sporting waist length blonde tresses and a red sheath dress is most becoming.

The actors bring believable and recognisable emotion to the play, especially Anne Marie Duff.  Her Berenice has a wealth of feeling from genuine warmth and palpable love when she wraps Titus in her arms, to almost controlled fury when she learns that his marrying her will not be politically correct.  Furthermore her reaction on discovering it really is the end and she isn’t going spend the rest of her life with Titus is heart breaking to watch.  Stephen Campbell Moore as Titus fairs almost as well, although I did lose concentration during some of his longer speeches, due I think to his slight sing songy approach to the text.  I preferred Dominic Rowan’s Antiochus and felt quite moved during one of his declamations of love for Berenice, especially when a tear trickled down his ruddy cheeks.

My main thought on leaving the Donmar on Monday evening was that I’m really not in tune with Josie Rourke’s choice of production for my favourite London theatre.  If the play is hardly ever staged or rather obscure she’s in favour of putting it on, if not, forget it.  That’s all well and good but sometimes popular and straightforward are acceptable  I can only hope that her choice of The Weir for next season is a sign of the new times to come.