The Hothouse at The Trafalgar Studios

I wasn’t familiar with The Hothouse, Harold Pinter’s second play, written in 1958, but not performed until 1980, so had no preconceived ideas on going to see this revival starring, amongst others, Simon Russell Beale and John Simm.  As far as I’m concerned Director Jamie Lloyd’s production is excellent, imbuing this ‘tragic black comedy’ with laughs galore, whilst also illustrating that beneath the comedy something very sinister is happening.

The play is set on Christmas Day in what appears to be a secure ‘hospital’ establishment somewhere in rural England.  At least that is what we assume it to be (Pinter keeps us guessing as to the exact nature of the place) aided and abetted as it is by Soutra Gilmour’s shabby Soviet inspired office.  Ex-military man, Colonel Roote, the puffed up, extraordinarily physical, Simon Russell Beale, is in charge, or would be if he even knew what day it is, but all is not well.  Patient  6457 has died, whilst another, 6459, has unexpectedly given birth.  Roote panics (no change there it would seem) and orders his overly ambitious second-in-command, Gibbs, the wonderfully smarmy but with increasing hints of menace, John Simm, to discover who did what to whom.  Roote, too, is a violent tyrant underneath his genial exterior and as the play goes onto portray the insidious corruption of power, he becomes increasingly cornered, thus unearthing the rat within. Simon Russell Beale and John Simm are two actors at the top of their game .... wonderful.

The fall guy for the impregnation is the way too eager to please security man, Lamb, who ends up a gibbering, catatonic wreck.  Another suggestion of what really goes on behind closed doors in this unpleasant building, as one is under no illusion that he’s not the first to be subjected to such rigorous psychological tests. The obviously vulnerable inmates are never seen, just periodically heard in the distance.  Pinter leaves it up to us to imagine what kind of treatment they’re enduring.

Simon Russell Beale sets the comic pace and the rest of the cast brilliantly follow suite, from Indira Varma’s sultry, unhinged and overtly sexy nurse, clothed in a bra of gigantic push-up proportions to John Heffernan’s mutinous Lush, the dandy in a purple suit constantly baiting Roote.  We're also treated to a cameo performance by Christopher Timothy as a man from the ministry.  I haven't seen him in ages!

As usual, Simon Russell Beale is a comic joy but it isn’t he alone that makes The Hothouse a wonderful second choice for the Trafalgar Transformed season.

The Cuious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time at The Apollo

I loved The Curious Incident so much first time round when I saw it performed at The Cottesloe that I jumped at the chance of seeing it again.  Not only did I relish the chance of watching Luke Treadaway’s mind-blowing performance as Christopher Boon once more, but also I was intrigued as to how it would transfer to a proscenium arch stage.

The answer to the latter is that it does transfer very, very well, thanks to the brilliance of Designer Bunny Christie, Director Marianne Elliott and Lighting Designer Paule Constable.  For anyone who is seeing this magnificent play for the first time, as were three of our party, it still stands out as a wonderful piece of theatre and richly deserves its recent Olivier Awards.  However, having seen the original, I inadvertently found myself comparing the two productions and the in-the-round version wins by a nose.  This is mainly because the intimacy of the Cottesloe and the configuration of that set made one feel so much more part of Christopher’s world.  I was still incredibly moved by the whole thing, but, unlike last time, didn’t feel the urge to rush and help when Christopher has his fit towards the end of Act One.  My daughter was mightily relieved I must say.

Luke is still magnificent, the rest of the cast excellent and, although I did miss Paul Ritter’s more rounded performance as the father, Ed and Nicola Walker’s heartbreaking portrayal of Judy, Christopher’s mother, I am so thrilled to have seen Curious again.

Beg, borrow or steal a ticket to see it.

Peter and Alice at The Noel Coward Theatre

When I heard the wonderful Michael Grandage was directing a new play designed by Christopher Oram and starring Judi Dench and Ben Wishaw, I had no hesitation in booking seats.  Having seen it, I’m glad those tickets were booked, but the play, I’m afraid, is disappointing.

John Logan has written about the real-life encounter in 1932 between the then eighty year old, Alice Liddell Hargreaves and thirty five year old Peter Llewelyn Davies, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan respectively.  Their imagined conversation takes place in a musty, dark bookshop and we’re soon whisked back in time as they recall their past lives.  As one would expect, Christopher Oram’s design is superb, contrasting the claustrophobic nature of the bookshop, with a huge, old-fashioned pop up book design, depicting fairy-tale illustrations of Alice’s Wonderland adventures and Peter Pan’s nemesis, Captain Hook.

Dame Judi and Ben Wishaw are also wonderful.  Her mink clad Alice starts the play stiff with age, depression and disappointment but as she relives the happy past, the girl within escapes, the stiffness only re-appearing when the tragedies of the war cloud her memory.  Ben Wishaw’s Peter, however, never seems to lighten.  His memories are dark and his anxious, vulnerable state at the beginning of the play is always there.  This is an intelligent, articulate man who is haunted by his childhood.  A man uncomfortable in his own skin, for whom the notoriety of being the inspiration for Peter Pan is the worst thing that could have happened to him.  This contrasts with the much more self assured Alice.  Unsurprisingly their deaths, which are alluded to but not shown, are also polar opposites, Liddell dying peacefully and Davies committing suicide.  As you can probably tell, this is quite a bleak play!

There are other characters to be seen.  We meet a rather cruel Barrie played by Derek Riddell, Nicholas Farrell portraying Carroll, in my interpretation at least, a closet pederast, Ruby Bentall as the po-faced, sneering Alice, a fey, leaf clad Peter Pan portrayed by Olly Alexander and Stefano Braschi as the wheelchair bound Arthur, Davies’s cancer stricken father.

Despite Michael Grandage’s sterling efforts, I’m afraid nothing can stop this play about growing older and how we are all shaped by our childhoods, from being a bit of a jumble, switching as it does from the present, to the past, via memory and fantasy.  It is also too wordy and leaden and I found myself losing concentration on more than one occasion. 

Still, no matter, it was wonderful to see the eighty years young Dame Judi in her usual glowing form and the wistful presence of the excellent Ben Wishaw who never plays a wrong note whatever he does.

The Weir at The Donmar

-->

A few days later, with jet lag a distant memory, we headed off to The Donmar to see an excellent production of a wonderful play. My companions and I all breathed a sigh of relief, having witnessed a spate of not such good choices at this great venue.

The Weir written by Conor McPherson in 1997 had me spellbound for the whole of its 1hr 40minutes and I was really sorry when it ended.  The play seems most unprepossessing at first look, centred as it is in a lonely pub deep in the Irish countryside, where four old blokes spin yarns to try and compete for the attention of an attractive female newcomer.  But this couldn’t be further from the truth because it is a modern classic.  It helps that all five of the cast are faultless from start to finish and the audience is gripped, not just by the stories they tell, but how they tell them.  Through their telling, one glimpses how the storytellers’ lives have not exactly panned out how they would have hoped.  Incredibly moving, especially because the whole thing is so understated.  Realistic, too, thanks to the brilliant set design by Tom Scutt.  I felt as if I were actually sitting in an Irish pub eavesdropping on the locals.

The play opens with the sublime Brian Cox as Jack, an elderly unmarried small-time garage owner and pub regular entering the bar.  The scene is set and several small, but golden touches Mr. Cox brings to this entrance set the seal on the evening being a good one.  In fact the whole play is infused with silent, magical pauses and business by the entire cast.  The barman, Brendan, portrayed by the excellent Peter McDonald, appears and is immediately dispensed wisdom based loosely on what would appear to be Jack’s limited knowledge of the opposite sex.  Jack is obviously the bombastic joker of the pack and Brendan the strong, silent type. Next to appear is handyman Jim, wonderfully played by Ardal O’Hanlon, who joins them for a short one (read this as several).  Jim still lives with his mother who “has been fading for years” and is a little on the dim side.  Their talk soon turns to Finbar, a married man who has been seen escorting a woman around the village, their main grievance being, why, when he is wed and they are single, should he be the one performing this duty.  When he eventually appears alongside ‘the woman’, Valerie, one realizes that this establishment is not used to female customers.  One of the funniest sights is Brendan dispensing a half pint glass of wine (retrieved from his living quarters out the back) to Valerie, but not before holding it up to the light as though waiting for it to form a head.  Risteard Cooper, excellent as Finbar is at once shown to be a bit of a wide boy, dressed as he is in a pale linen suit.  He’s in sharp contrast to the dress code of the other regulars.

Following their entrance the banter turns to the spooky storytelling, with each one trying to outdo the other and Dervla Kirwan’s nervous Valerie almost succeeds in outdoing them all.  Her tangible grief on recounting her own ghost story is all the more effecting, told as it is without the blather of the men’s. Then when it’s Jack’s turn to recount how he let the love of his life slip away, the sadness takes your breath away.  Humour and a sadness that’s never overdone, thanks to Josie Rourke’s delicate direction, marks this production out as a masterpiece.

I loved it and felt aggrieved when ‘last orders’ came and went.

Othello at The Olivier

I don’t recommend going to see Othello a couple of days after arriving home from Australia, even if the wonderful Nicholas Hytner is director and Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear are Othello and Iago respectively.  Try as hard as I might not to, I still (I’m ashamed to say) nodded off on a couple of occasions, although, thankfully not during the “juicy bits”.  I felt somewhat exonerated on reading a note by Mr. Hytner in the programme when he says, “I hardly ever go to a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays without experiencing blind panic during the first five minutes.  I sit there thinking:  I’m the director of the National Theatre, and I have no idea what these people are talking about”.  If even the great man himself experiences this feeling of inadequacy, then maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad about periodically not having a clue last Monday night and subsequently letting my head nod.

It doesn’t actually help that Othello is not one of Shakespeare’s plays with which I’m terribly familiar.  Alright, before Monday I knew the plot. Iago, Othello’s best friend, encourages him to kill Desdemona, his new wife, but the why’s and wherefores were not familiar to me.  Trying to determine these whilst fighting jet lag wasn’t easy and the fact that this version is set in modern day, actually didn’t help.  Not that this take on the play doesn’t work, especially when the action moves to the Moor’s military camp in Cyprus and we see it has become a British Army garrison.  It works exceptionally well.  Vicki Mortimer’s realistic design is wonderful and how ingenious to have Othello hiding in a lavatory cubicle when he overhears the innocent Cassio apparently boasting about his affair with Desdemona.  This modern military encampment complete with the sound effects of overhead aircraft is very, very real.

Rory Kinnear, always brilliant, doesn’t disappoint here.  He actually makes Iago evilly amusing; a cunning bloke, intent on wreaking havoc and scarily believable.  His Iago is one of those Crimewatch mug shots of a man wanted for a hideous crime.  He looks perfectly normal but is obviously anything but.  This is an actor who says much when not saying anything at all.

Adrian Lester’s Othello starts off as an immaculate and dignified presence, confident in his own skin. However, this confidence is mere pretense.  He is all too ready to believe that his young wife is betraying him and is not able to understand that his ensign, Iago, may harbor resentment at being passed over for promotion.  Gullible?  Possibly, although former paratrooper, Jonathan Shaw, a military adviser on the production, says in the programme that, “trust is the basis of all soldiering.  Othello and Iago have clearly been in many fights together, life-and-death situations in which each has probably entrusted their life to the other and at some time saved the other’s life.  Iago has proved his ‘honesty’ on battlefields around the region; Othello has every reason to trust him implicitly.  Betrayal is the most heinous of military sins so it is the last to be suspected”.  The confidence may be pretense but this Othello’s military bearing and presence stays in tact.  Even in the gravest of circumstances, he still stands erect, hands clasped behind his back.  His mind may be a mess but it’s not shown outwardly.  Adrian Lester also has a wonderful voice for Shakespeare.  Clear, concise, a joy to behold.

The women, didn’t enthrall me so much.  Olivia Vinall’s Desdemona didn’t really do anything for me at all and, although Lyndsey Marshal as Emilia, Iago’s wife, was far more spirited, her anger spilled over into screeching.  Still at least she prevented more head nods!

What on earth will we do when Hytner leaves the National Theatre in 2015.