Another Country at Trafalgar Studios

Another Country could do for Rob Callender and Will Atteborough what it did for Rupert Everett and Colin Firth after they appeared in the first production back in 1981.  These two young actors are playing Bennett and Judd respectively and, although I have only seen this latest version at Trafalgar Studios, so can’t compare them to their predecessors, I can comment that they are excellent in their roles.

The play, written by Julian Mitchell following Anthony Blunt’s exposure as a Soviety spy, is set in a public school in the thirties and centres around friends, Bennett and Judd.  The former is a blatant homosexual, whilst the latter a fervent Marxist, making them both outsiders, a difficult path to follow within the confines of an establishment that can’t tolerate anything other than what it considers the norm.  Or at least anyone brave enough not to keep their nonconformity hidden. 

Loosely based on the spy, Guy Burgess (Bennett in the play), Another Country hints that maybe the reason he and some of his contemporaries eventually betrayed their country was down to pure revenge at the hypocrisy and cruelty they endured during their schooldays.  Bennett even utters the line, “you can’t beat a good public school for learning to hide your true feelings”.

The play opens with the discovery of the suicide of Martineau, a young pupil who has hanged himself after being discovered by a teacher having sex with

another boy.  The effect of this shocking act manifests itself in different ways with different boys, as we discover as the play unfolds.

The language is dated and interspersed with public school jargon but this only adds to the period feel.  And whilst it is at times wordy and slow paced, the director Jeremy Herrin perfectly captures the stifling atmosphere of an English public school with all its inflexibility and hierarchies.

The cast is exemplary with Rob Callender brilliant as the nonchalant, witty loose-canon, Bennett.  Full of cunning and with the fluidity of a dancer, this talented young actor also captures the pain of realizing that his homosexuality will always make him an outsider.  Will Attenborough’s Judd, the earnest boy who reads Das Kapital by torch light under the bed clothes, is equally believable and there is great support from the rest of the cast, in particular Julian Wadham as the gay Vaughan Cunningham.

Another Country is a play with humour and pain.  Who said schooldays are the happiest days of your life?

Privacy at The Donmar

The young James Graham is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to script writing, with his last play, This House, garnering much critical acclaim. 

His latest offering, Privacy, currently showing at The Donmar is equally accomplished and certainly different.

The uniqueness of the play becomes apparent on entering The Donmar when everyone is asked to keep their mobile phones switched on, albeit in silent mode, and are handed a laminated sheet parodying aeroplane safety instruction cards.  And it doesn’t end there.  The back wall of the stage is turned into a giant screen, which eventually allows us to see what the young man sitting upstage right is plugging into his computer.  This turns out to be a very useful device in visually explaining the techno bits of the play, of which there are several.  It also soon becomes apparent that we, the audience will spend part of the evening interacting with the actors on stage. Curiouser and curiouser.

Privacy, cleverly directed by Jose Rourke, is very topical, dealing as it does with the way we voluntarily upload loads of information about ourselves on a daily basis, often not realizing what this can and does mean. Big Brother in Internet form.  So far, so spooky, especially when various facts are highlighted of which I for one knew nothing.   And so thought provoking because of course security is of the utmost importance since 9/11 but at what cost to our privacy?

James Graham tackles this tricky subject by centering his play round a self-effacing playwright with relationship hang-ups who needs to ask questions in order to write the play he’s being badgered to write.  During the course of the evening he encounters journalists, politicians, lawyers, defenders of civil liberties and the like, variously played by members of the cast.  Their thoughts on the threat posed by the omnipresent scrutiny of us all via social media, regular internet shopping etc is for the most part verbatim and sometimes tricky to comprehend.  But, despite the seriousness of the subject under discussion, the play does possess a lightness of touch and is, at times, hugely entertaining.

The entertainment factor is cranked up by the casting of the excellent Gunnar Cauthery, Paul Chahidi, Jonathan Coy, Joshua McGuire, Nina Sosanya and Michelle Terry.  They skillfully switch between characters, real and imagined and Lucy Osborne’s clever techno screen works a treat.

The final piece of audience participation takes place during the final few minutes of the play when we’re sworn to secrecy about something we’ve seen.  And that’s all I’m going to say.

Other Desert Cities

There were quite a few empty seats when I went to see Jon Robin Baitz’s blistering new play, Other Desert Cities at The Old Vic, which definitely should not be the case.  This play is a real corker and I urge people to go and see it.  I was hooked from the word go.  It is the most believable production, rooted in realism with well developed and rounded characters.  The whole cast and script are sublime.

The play centres round the Republican Wyeth family, Mr, Mrs, son, daughter and mother’s sister.  The grown up children, Brooke and Trip (could this be a hint that the parents were something to do with Hollywood?) are home for Christmas, so all should be set for a wonderful family get together. Despite the fact that they’re now sharing their plush Palm Springs home with the reformed alcoholic sister-in-law, Silda, Polly and Lyman Wyeth are determined that nothing will spoil their holidays.  After all Trip seems happy enough in his LA world of reality TV shows, strange as that may seem to his retired film star father and ex screen writer mother.  And Brooke seems to have recovered from her depressive phase and is settled in New York, despite Polly’s determination that she move back West.  So all seems set for the best Christmas ever starting off with a Christmas Eve dinner at the local country club.  

However we know that nothing is ever what it seems and as the play unfolds skeletons come bounding out of their custom built closets threatening to strangle each and every one of them.  And who brings this all about?  Why, the daughter, who is getting her life back on track by penning an explosive memoir.  You see, there was another sibling called Henry who, it turns out, committed suicide following the firebombing of an army recruitment centre several years previously.  The whole episode has always played on the mind of his devoted younger sister who now that she’s got her writing Mojo back, wants to set the record straight.  But at what cost?  Brooke knows the book won’t receive a totally positive reaction from her parents but she doesn’t envisage Polly’s shattering threat that she, the selfish, disloyal daughter will be disowned should the book actually be published.  Neither can she nor, I believe anyone else, foresee the bombshell that Polly and Lyman eventually drop towards the end of Act Two.

As in life, each character in this play shows their strengths and weaknesses. I found myself sympathizing with each and every one of them during the course of the evening and, as a result, swapping allegiance several times.  They are flawed, but not bad and brought to life by a flawless cast.

Polly Wyeth, the icily elegant and steely matriarch, is magnificently played by Sinead Cusack, who lets it be known from the outset that she takes no prisoners.  Her crisp one liners are fired in machine gun style and it isn’t until the revelations in Act Two that a heart starts to shine through.  Peter Egan is wonderfully moving as Polly’s less caustic and more reserved husband, whilst Clare Higgins is a wonderfully exuberant, but flawed sister.  The only American in the cast is Martha Plimpton and she brings out all of Brooke’s insecurities but also inherited steeliness to wonderful effect.  Daniel Lapaine as Trip Wyeth completes the quintet and doesn’t disappoint either. 

At the risk of repeating myself, all in all this is an exemplary cast portraying an exemplary piece of writing.  And when one reads Jon Robin Baitz’s Biography and sees that he penned the US TV Series Brothers and Sisters it begins to make sense.  This man is an expert at portraying families, warts and all.

Add to all this the excellent idea of portraying Other Desert Cities in the round, giving it a wonderful intimacy, and having Lindsay Posner as Director and The Old Vic has a production which should have full houses every night.  There really should be no need to hand out flyers outside The Donmar Warehouse this week advertising the play.

A Small Family Business

The extremely prolific playwright, Alan Ayckbourn always has a streak of grey running through his plays, but A Small Family Business, written specifically for The National’s Olivier Theatre in 1987 and now being revived in that same space, has an enormous band of black.  As usual when watching an Ayckbourn play we laugh because the brilliance of his dialogue ensures we do, but here the laughter could easily be followed by the question, “is it morally wrong to find humour in something so dark”?

The play’s themes are corruption and greed, prevalent in the Thatcherite Eighties and not exactly absent nowadays.  It centres around the extended Ayres family who run a furniture business.  The founding member, Ken, in the early stages of dementia, appoints his son-in-law Jack McCracken to take over as Managing Director.  Jack is determined to introduce a regime of total honesty;  no stealing of paper clips now that he is at the helm, and he leaves us in no doubt that he is a man of high moral fibre.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the rest of the family.  They have all been on the take for years (some more than the others) and make no bones about the fact that Jack’s whiter than white stance is a source of much irritation and incomprehension.  As Poppy McCracken says, “fiddling’s not dishonest – it’s just a little fuzzy around the edges”.  Unfortunately for Jack his honesty changes from white to a murky shade of grey as soon as the shop lifting exploits of his teenage daughter results in him becoming entangled with the private detective who helps to get her off the charge.  He is forced to employ this creepy and incredibly seedy private eye to investigate the family business and a tsunami of corruption ensues, turning the light hearted beginning into something far, far darker.

The performances for the most part are excellent, with Nigel Lindsay in top form in the role of Jack, effortlessly turning from honest and decent to ruthless and somewhat sinister. Poppy, his giddy wife, is beautifully played by Debra Gillett, whilst Niky Wardley is extremely funny as her oversexed sister-in-law, Anita.  Coincidentally, Nigel Lindsay and Niky Wardley were both equally brilliantly cast in The Donmar’s recent production of The Same Deep Water As Me.  Benedict Hough, the private investigator made my flesh creep, which obviously means that his portrayal by Matthew Cottle is spot on.

Much of Ayckbourn’s skill is the ever ingenious way he has of staging his often complicated plot lines and this play is no exception.  The Designer, Tim Hatley gives us a revolving 3D house, both exterior and interior, and this soulless two-storey suburban “box” is used for the homes of all the main characters.  This ensures that the story can seamlessly play out at exactly the same time in various locations.

Adam Penford, has done a sterling job with this revival of one of Ayckbourn’s least lovable plays, not the easiest task when you’re following in the footsteps of the great man himself who directed the piece back in 1987.