Sandy Pritchard-Gordon

Sandy Pritchard-Gordon
Theatre Blog

Monday 24 June 2013

The Night Alive at The Donmar


Conor McPherson is turning out to be one of my favourite playwrights.  His play, The Weir, which was the last offering at The Donmar was exemplary, so it was with excited anticipation that we headed off to that same space to see his latest offering.  This time he is the Director and, although The Night Alive isn’t as wonderful a play as The Weir, it is pretty damned good.

Soutra Gilmour’s atmospheric set is a shabby bedsit belonging to an equally shabby Tommy (Ciaran Hinds).  Tommy, a fifty something who has really let himself go, is separated from his wife and children and rents the room off his Uncle Maurice (Jim Norton).  Maurice owns the whole house, lives upstairs and continually frets about Tommy allowing “guests” to stay in his room.  Beneath his grumpy veneer Maurice obviously cares deeply for Tommy, who in turn often hides his caring nature, especially when bickering with his mate, Doc (Michael McElhatton).  Tommy earns a crust or two by doing odd jobs in his, one assumes, white van, aided and abetted by Doc.  Doc has mild learning difficulties and seems very reliant on his relationship with Tommy, so much so that he’s rather put out when a female is added to the mix in the shape of Aimee (Caoilfhionn Dunne).  Tommy is her knight in shining armour, having found her bleeding and battered in the street following a beating from her boyfriend, Kenneth (Brian Gleeson).  He brings her back to his room to recuperate and offers her tea, sympathy and a dog biscuit (Tommy’s idea of a rich tea is a Bonio taken from the box).  She in turn offers him physical comfort beneath the sheets.  Is she a prostitute?  Probably, although this, like so many other things about this play isn’t clear.  What is obvious is that Tommy and Aimee forge a very close, albeit strange, friendship, him even professing his love for her at one point.  As in The Weir, a woman has once again thrown the lives of lonely single men into disarray.  The play is wonderfully comic with Conor PcPherson’s lyrical writing at full tilt, but there is a sinister undertone.  It’s not a relaxing atmosphere in this Dublin house and the arrival of Aimee’s demented boyfriend, or is it ex, makes us realize why.  The following violence is so real it takes the breath away. and is in such sharp contrast to the gorgeous moment when the three damaged dependents forget their troubles for a moment and dance to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.  A glorious piece of theatre.

The whole cast is superb.  Ciaran Hinds, resplendent in hideous long, lank black wig, allows us to glimpse a decent bloke beneath the stained t-shirt and laconic wit.  Michael McElhatton has us all rooting for his sweet natured, sandwich short of a picnic Doc, especially when we realize he will become Aimee’s boyfriend’s next victim.  Jim Norton is magnificent throughout, but especially so when he gives a master class in drunk acting and Caolifhionn (how on earth does one pronounce that) Dunne is definitely one to watch. Brian Gleeson, too, makes the blood run cold, so believable is his deeply disturbed Kenneth. 

The ending is rather odd and surprising but what’s gone before, the humour, pathos, drama and choice of music, all parceled up in a thoroughly entertaining 105 minutes, more than makes up for it.  So much so that I tried, unsuccessfully, to book and see it a second time.

Sunday 16 June 2013

Sweet Bird of Youth at The Old Vic


I very much admire the playwright Tennessee Williams, who gives his audience a witty and ironic insight into the tormented lives of his characters, who are all too often victims and outsiders.  He was an extremely sensitive young man who was continually ridiculed by his tyrannical and womanizing father.  With his mother a rector’s prudish daughter, it is easy to see that Williams’ parents weren’t exactly a love match and is probably the reason why his plays centre around profound sexual conflicts.  He was unable to examine his own sexual orientation within his plays, written as they were when homosexuality was a no go area in American theatre, so produced nominally heterosexual dramas changing tormented autobiography into artistic metaphor.

The sexual content in Sweet Bird of Youth is there right from the beginning, although in Marianne Elliott’s version currently playing at The Old Vic, there isn’t quite enough wit.  The first scenes do tend to somewhat drag.

The story centres around Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown of St Cloud in America’s Deep South, as gigolo to faded film star, with the odd moniker of The Princess Kosmonopolis.  They are holed up in the bedroom of the Royal Palms Hotel, badly hung over and fleeing from who knows what.  It transpires that The Princess is a past her sell-by date, very much middle-aged movie star, whilst Wayne is a twenty-nine year old drifter, who is desperate to recapture his younger, more innocent self as well as his one enduring love, Heavenly Finlay.  Unfortunately for Wayne, Heavenly’s father is the local venomous facist, Boss Finlay, who, along with his son, Tom Junior, promises to do unimaginable things to the boy who, in their eyes, has done irreparable damage to the young girl.  Wayne should not have returned home.

Kim Cattrall, whilst not spellbinding, makes a credible raddled floozie, hooked on popping pills, hard liquor and the odd need for sucking on an oxygen bottle.  We saw an early preview, so I’m sure this opening scene improved by Press Night.  I hope so, because I wasn’t always convinced about the connection between her and Seth Numrich’s Chance Wayne.  Her vulnerability at having lost her sweet bird of youth, however, does shine through, although I would personally have ditched the hideous ginger wig.

The American Seth Numrich is excellent throughout.  His physique and looks are one thing but they are propped up by a superb performance.  He manages to be totally believable both as a delusional and manic self obsessed young man, intent on proving that he’s made or will make something of his miserable life and as a vulnerable boy, touchingly in love with the girl of his younger, more innocent youth.

The other stand out performance is Owen Roe as Boss Finlay.  With his purple face, crumpled linen suit and piggy eyes, he is absolutely terrifying and I totally believe that poor old Chance doesn’t stand a chance against such a villainous racist.  Praise must also be given to Brid Brennan playing an understated Aunt Nonnie.

As is often the case with a British cast tackling an American play, the accents sometimes slip.  In this production it isn’t the slip as much as the over egging.  At times, Lucy Robinson’s Miss Lucy, The Boss’s mistress, sounds like a rather bad audition for advertising Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Again, hopefully this will improve.  I’m also not sure about Michael Begley’s The Heckler. The whole thing is just too weird.

Rae Smith’s design is excellent, although I do have a slight niggle.  The opening scene shows a peeling back wall, partially hidden by a white curtain, thus giving the impression that the two leads are sharing a bedroom in some run-down motel, rather than the smarter sounding Royal Palms Hotel.  When the action switches to Boss Finlay’s house and the wall in question turns into an outside one, the reason it’s not pristine becomes clear.  It’s a shame the aforementioned white curtain doesn’t do a better camouflaging job.

This Sweet Bird of Youth isn’t the definitive Tennessee William’s revival but it is very enjoyable all the same.

Sunday 9 June 2013

Strange Interlude at The Lyttleton



The 6.30pm start for the first night preview of the latest offering at The Lyttleton was the clue, but it wasn’t until I did some research on Strange Interlude written by Eugene O’Neill in 1928 that I realised the play has been known to last five hours …. gulp!  Luckily, the Director, Simon Godwin (his first production at The National) has trimmed his version to last three-and-a-quarter hours and at no time did I wish it were shorter. My enjoyment of this marathon piece was not only down to his expert direction, but to the excellence of Anne-Marie Duff as Nina Leeds, Charles Edwards as Charles Marsden and the wonderful set by Designer Soutra Gilmour (it even got a round of applause).

Strange Interlude is O’Neill’s attempt to write a stage play as a novel, showing as he does, each character saying what is felt and what is heard, with the aid of prolonged asides.  Particularly in the hands of the wonderful Charles Edwards, this treatment works extremely well, as, thanks to his immaculate timing, many of his private thoughts are richly comic.  If only one always knew what the other person were thinking;  or maybe not!

The story centres upon Nina Leeds, the daughter of a professor who is racked with grief at the death of her fiancé.  Not only has he been shot down and killed just two days before the armistice of World War One, but she refused to have sex with him before he went off to war and now feels guilty and wretched.  So much so that she tries to cure herself by nursing wounded soldiers in such a way that it gives quite another meaning to good bedside manner!  Quite a subject for the nineteen twenties and it gets even more risqué.  Her father and older admirer, Charles Marsden, a mummy’s boy if ever there was one, are concerned for her mental health and consult a doctor, Edmund Darrell, who strangely suggests she marry an ineffectual young man and have a child.  Easy, one might say, except that the mother of this poor unsuspecting and gullible young man warns Nina that inherited insanity runs in the family and she must not, under any circumstances, have a child by him.  Whoops, too late, she is already pregnant, so an abortion is performed and she goes on to have an affair with the doctor.  The resulting son from this liaison is passed off as her husband’s who, even though his stature and wealth grows throughout the play, still doesn’t smell a rat. 

Even though the plot takes a little swallowing and the writing sometimes tends towards the melodramatic, it is easy to suspend one’s disbelief.  The emotional depth of O’Neill’s writing, truthful portrayal by the actors and gripping direction by Simon Godwin had me totally gripped and I couldn’t wait to see how everything would be resolved.

The main characters grow within the play and can never be termed one dimensional.  Anne-Marie Duff is superb as the fragile Nina, portraying her early neurosis and later fixation with her Doctor lover and then her child, with relative ease.  As mentioned above, Charles Edward’s Marsden, cannot be faulted and he is eminently believable as Nina’s surrogate father figure, affecting an old man’s gait to perfection towards the end of the play.  Darren Pettie, the one true American in the cast, has a perfect sexual swagger and he and Anne-Marie Duff have a wonderful on stage chemistry.  Jason Watkins, who plays Nina’s cuckolded husband, manages to be completely believable as the nerdish younger man who eventually becomes a successful and very wealthy businessman.

Soutra Gilmour’s wonderful set gets the round of applause when the bow of a yacht appears on stage and, understandably so, as it’s totally unexpected and totally realistic. 

Yes, the play is a marathon, but well worth the effort.