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.

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

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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.