A Doll's House at The Duke of York's Theatre

I can perfectly well understand why Hattie Morahan received the Evening Standard Best Actress Award for her portrayal of Nora Helmer in Simon Stephen’s electrifying English Language Version of A Doll’s House, which, after two sell-out runs at The Young Vic has transferred to The Duke of York’s Theatre.  One is transfixed watching her transform from the skittish, child-like captive little bird into a young woman determined to escape the confines of her husband, Torvald’s, claustrophobic grasp.

Carrie Cracknell’s production of this Ibsen classic is powerful, thrilling and, at times, even humorous and gives more of an understanding as to why Nora finally slams the door on her family. The revolving set, designed by Ian Macneil, is very clever, as it conveys perfectly the dolls house of the title.  Like a fly on the wall we’re privy to the comings and goings in every room, including a touching game of hide and seek between Nora and her two sons. We’re aware of life going on within the house beyond the scenes we see.  Another masterful addition is seeing Nora cuddling her youngest child, a baby daughter.  I’ve never seen that young a member of the cast in previous productions but it helps to make the ending even more shocking.  Is there a chance that Nora, on realizing what she’s left behind, will eventually return to her family, but on decidedly more equal terms with her husband?

Although the evening belongs to Morahan, Dominic Rowan is excellent as Torvald.  He starts off as the besotted, if possessive and patronising husband, indulging his “little chaffinch”.  But give him a drink or three and he turns into an unpleasant lecher, who regards the wife he totally misunderstands, as his property.  So self centred, he is totally unaware of where he’s going wrong.

Ibsen’s plays often, if not always, centre around underhand financial goings on and A Dolls House is no exception.  In this instance, Nora has forged a signature in order to get a loan to help Torvald through a period of ill health.  The one time that she asserts herself and it all goes belly up, because the lender, Nils Krogstad, creepily played by Nick Fletcher, threatens to reveal all if she doesn’t pay up forthwith.  Oh what a web we weave ….. and the worry of it all, explains her frantic dancing of the tarantella, leaving us in no doubt at the end of Act 1 that this Nora is spinning out of control.

There is also strong support from Nora’s friend, Elise, played by Mary Drake and although Steve Toussaint is believable as the besotted Dr Rank, his size is rather at odds with the set.  If he were an actual doll in that revolving dolls house, he would always need to be seated.  He is very, very tall!

The explosive, final scene is exemplary.  When Torvald’s true colours are revealed, Morahan drops the wheedling, childish voice and takes on the tone of an adult.  Bravo, Nora we feel like saying, you can escape from your bird cage.

This definitive version may last three hours but there is not one minute that drags.  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

The Same Deep Water As Me at The Donmar

Nick Payne’s wonderful Olivier Award winning play, Constellations, was one of the reasons I booked to see his latest offering and, although The Same Deep Water As Me isn’t as complex structurally, or as clever, it is very amusing.

It centres around an airless and soulless office in Luton belonging to Scorpion Claims, a personal injury legal firm.  Andrew (Daniel Mays), a solicitor in his thirties who has left London under a cloud, works here for the good-hearted Barry (Nigel Lindsay).  Everything points to the fact that they’re not inundated with work, so when Andrew’s old potty mouthed school friend, Kevin (Marc Wootton) turns up offering a get rich quick route of making claims for scam crashes, he is easily persuaded to take it.  Barry, the honest plodder with more interest in visits to Greggs and trying his hand at scratch cards, is less inclined to enter into the fraudulent goings on but succumbs nevertheless, well he kind of has to!  The original scam results in a visit to the courtroom when the witnesses who are so obviously lying somehow manage to convince the judge (a very witty, Peter Forbes) that they’re not.  How can a judge be so naive?

If Nick Payne is highlighting the serious issue of the “no win, no fee” compensation culture, which he has obviously carefully researched, the play doesn’t quite hit the message home hard enough. Plus the play’s outcome both legally and emotionally isn’t particularly plausible. However as a piece of theatre, providing brilliantly witty one-liners and an excellent cast, The Same Deep Water, hits the nail bang on the head.

Much of the hilarity emanates from the “fucking this, fucking that” yobbo, Kevin.  Marc Wootton’s comic physicality softens Kevin’s unrelenting use of the “f” word and such is Nick Payne’s skill at natural dialogue that his speech patterns never seem contrived.  The always excellent Daniel Mays says so much when he’s saying nothing at all.  This is especially true when his character is unable to admit lying to the patriarchal Barry; the guilt is etched all over his malleable face.  Kevin’s wife, Jennifer a nervy, simple soul is very well brought to life by Niky Wardly and Nick Payne’s brilliant one-liners are highlighted when she comes out with, “I feel like I’ve been caught wanking at the vets“.  Another cast member well worth a mention is Isabella Laughland, as the Tesco’s van driver blamed for the accident; she is definitely one young actress to watch out for.

Roll on Nick Payne’s next offering.

A Season In The Congo at The Young Vic

Chiwetel Ejiofor was the main incentive for me buying tickets for A Season in the Congo.  That and the fact that I was curious to see how Joe Wright tackled his second foray into theatre direction following his Trelawny of the Wells at The Donmar.  And then came a couple of reviews, which were less than complimentary and, despite me being well aware of the vagaries of theatre appreciation, I was not as excited by the prospect of a night at The Young Vic as I should have been.  Silly me, I’d forgotten my Mum’s mantra, “stick to your original decision”, because As Season in the Congo, although not perfect (but then what is) is an intoxicating piece of theatre.

Aime Cesaire’s play, written in 1966 is flawed, mainly because it comes across as a one man monologue, with plenty of tell but not a lot of show, especially at the beginning.  However, Joe Wright’s take on it, bringing in as it does, a cacophony of colour, sound and movement, makes it so much more, especially once we are shown the real Lumumba, brilliantly executed by the stunning Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The story centres around Patrice Lumumba who rises from beer salesman and political activist in the Belgian Congo of 1955 to the first prime minister of the newly independent state in June 1960.  A meteoric rise and even bigger fall, as by 1961 Lumumba is dead, murdered by Belgian and Katangan (the southern state of the Congo) military police, with his body subsequently (or so we believe) dissolved in acid.  An untimely end for a man so obviously revered as a prophet by many of the Congolese people. 

Lumumba had many flaws and Ejifor doesn’t shy away from highlighting them.  He humanizes the man, brings to life his many contradictions and shows us his bravery and passion.  We feel his pain on realizing that his dream for a free and peaceful Congo is lost and, whilst a lesser actor would have rendered his many impassioned political speeches, over long and boring, Ejifor delivers them with wonderful insight.

The production is imbued with a heavy dose of satire.  Among other things, puppet heads portray the Belgian politicians and the entire black cast don pink pig style noses when playing whites. These affectations work most of the time but not always.  However, instead of highlighting the weaknesses I think Wright should be applauded for his bravery in trying something different.  He manages to elevate an extremely political play from being too earnest and dull.

The rest of the multi-talented cast should also be commended.  The majority of them taking on multiple roles, act, sing and dance with aplomb, starting as soon as the audience take to their seats in what appears to be the bottom of a drained, run down swimming pool.  A dialogue with audience members sitting nearest the action, is continuous and ensures that you’re on the side of the Congolese people right from the beginning.

Particularly worth a mention are Daniel Kaluuya as Joseph Mobuto, Joseph Mydell as the Congo’s smooth talking President and Joan Iyiola as Pauline Lumumba, Patrice’s long suffering wife.  The choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, fills the production with African dance, Lizzie Clachan’s design is a delight and the slow motion massacre scene, choreographed to within an inch of its life, is a major highlight.  A nice touch, also is the Likembe Player, Kabongo Tshisensa who acts as a shaman-like chorus.

A Season In The Congo maybe flawed but it is an extraordinary and extremely entertaining piece of theatre.

Private Lives at The Gielgud

If Noel Coward were alive to see this production of his 1930 play, Private Lives, at The Gielgud, I’m pretty sure he would be impressed.  Anna Chancellor and Toby Stevens as Amanda and Elyot have such a wonderful chemistry and the whole evening sparkles and highlights Coward’s skill with the witty one liner and the hint of cruelty beneath the laughter.

The play brings into sharp focus how certain couples find it hard to live with and, more importantly, live without one another.  Although perfectly in tune in the bedroom, post-coital they irritate the hell out of one another. Elyot and Amanda, having therefore decided that being without is the better option have subsequently re-married; Elyot to Sibyl (Anna-Louise Plowman) and Amanda to Victor (Anthony Calf).  This would seem to be a normal enough solution if it weren’t for the fact that both couples are not only honeymooning at the same time, in the same hotel, but also in adjoining rooms.  On realizing this somewhat sizeable error, as well as the fact that the second marriages were maybe less than sensible, Elyot and Amanda do what only couples of their ilk can do – they run away.  What follows is, in this production at least, a hilarious expose of why they split up in the first instance and why the rebound marriages were ill advised.

Anna Chancellor proves what a superb actress she is.  She captures perfectly Amanda’s manipulative nature, hidden beneath her playful sexiness.  All legs and arms, she lounges, dances and cavorts to the manor born and I defy any full-bloodied male not to be entranced.  Toby Stephens certainly is, but then he makes it perfectly clear why Sibyl and Amanda are both in thrall to his charms.  He may be a tad shorter than his ex-wife, with but no matter, what he loses in inches he more than makes up for in personality.  Even when not delivering Coward’s pitch perfect script, his facial expressions speak volumes.  I have never seen him give a better performance and this is one of the funniest adaptations of a Coward play I’ve seen.  Especially as the two leads feed off each other so brilliantly.  They are the perfect double act.  What also helps is that the clipped speech, so associated with “the Master” is nowhere to be seen, bringing the play bang up to date.

The two unfortunate new spouses are well played and Anna-Louise Plowman, especially, makes an excellent job of portraying the irritating, younger new wife, who eventually shows she possesses some steel behind the frothy exterior.

Jonathan Kent, who is doing such a marvellous job as Artistic Director  at Chichester shows why the Sussex theatre is doing so well.  I’m just thankful that the producers decided to transfer this, his latest triumph, to the West End.  As you’ve probably gathered, I loved it.

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.

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.

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.