Good People at The Noel Coward

I defy anyone not to agree that Imelda Staunton is one of our greatest actresses and if anyone is in any doubt they should go and see her playing Margaret in Good People at The Noel Coward Theatre.

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, this American comedy with an edge explores the theme of “making your luck”, whilst exposing that, horror of horrors, America is guilty of harbouring a class system.  Set in “Southie”, a working class neighbourhood in South Boston, where Lindsay-Abaire spent his early years before escaping via a scholarship to a prestigious private school, Good People opens with Margaret getting the sack from yet another job for bad time keeping.  Her desperation is apparent from the onset. Being the sole carer of her severely disabled daughter, no wages coming in can mean the difference between a roof over their heads and living on the street. 

This desperation causes Margaret to heed the advice of her wise cracking, outspoken friend, Jean and ask an old school friend, Mike for help in the job seeking stakes.  Mike has managed to escape the drudgery of life in Southie by dint of hard work, intelligence and luck.  Enjoying a “comfortable” existence in more upmarket Chestnut Hill, Mike (the “lace-curtain Irish”) is a successful “reproductive endocrinologist” and is less than happy to see Margaret turn up in his smart, sterile office.  Guilt at being unable to add his, as it turns out, ex girlfriend to his payroll, causes Mike to grudgingly invite her to his house party.  After all, there may be someone there who can employ her.

When this party is cancelled at the last minute, Margaret smells a rat and turns up anyway.  What follows is an at times heated confrontation between Mike’s glamorous and uber friendly African-American wife, Kate and the two old flames.  Secrets that Mike would prefer were kept hidden from Kate are uncovered and we begin to doubt if either he or Margaret are “good people”.  This scene highlights the cleverness of Lindsay-Abaire’s writing, for, underneath the sparkling, whip cracking dialogue, nothing is as straightforward as it looks. I’m sorry but a spoiler alert comes into play here so I cannot reveal more about the outcome except to say that one isn’t necessarily always on the side of the underdog.  Margaret’s desperation sometimes makes her vindictive, whilst Mike’s dogged determination to better himself can’t be viewed as totally contemptible.

Imelda Staunton has some of the best lines, which she delivers with her characteristic aplomb.  She may be tiny, but is certainly not short of energy and whether she be wheedling, desperate, momentarily desolate or  wisecracking survivor, Staunton’s Margaret is above all human.

Jonathan Kent ensures that the action never falters.  The pace whizzes along and his excellent cast always come up to the mark. 
 
Alongside Staunton, Angel Coulby achieves a wonderful brittle civility as the glamorous wife to the excellent Lloyd Owen’s Mike.  The support from Susan Brown as Margaret’s ascerbic land-lady, Dottie, Lorraine Ashbourne as the outspoken friend, Jean and Matthew Barker as the bingo loving (but not gay!) dollar store manager is terrific.  Add Hildegard Bechtler’s clever design to this mix and no wonder the West End was so keen to transfer this wonderful production from Hampstead

Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies at The Aldwych

There will be those who aren’t familiar with Hilary Mantel and her two consecutive Man Booker prizewinning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, but I suspect not many.  Similarly, there will be others, a bit like myself, who, on reading Wolf Hall, had some difficulty adjusting to the novelist’s format of setting the books in the present and in the third person, thus making it tricky to work out who is speaking and when.  No dipping in and out of these highly praised tomes, charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell. But then came Saturday and now I can’t wait to finish the first book and devour the second.  Thanks for this must go to Playful Productions in coming up with the brilliant idea of adapting both novels into two stage plays, bringing the RSC on board and, following a sell out run at Stratford, transferring them to The Aldwych. 

These new dramatisations by Mike Poulton, with assistance from Hilary Mantel herself cannot be faulted.  The two almost three hour sessions sped by, gripped and transfixed as I was by the machinations of the court of Henry VIII.  The re-telling of the 1,246 pages of print has been so, so skillfully done, thanks, in no small measure to Jeremy Herrin’s direction and the mighty Christopher Oram’s set and costume design.  There is live music, dancing, and humour, whilst the actor’s move around the pared down box like grey set like chess pieces all the while portraying every character with the clarity Mantel evokes in her books.

I love the pace of the two plays.  Every move, every speech economically moves the plot forward and keeps the tension taught.  There is no need for a lavish set, a minimalist one, that by clever lighting becomes at once home, court, prison cell, even a boat on the Thames, wonderful period costumes and brilliant actor portrayals are enough.  The whole experience reawakens our acquaintance with this part of British history and makes us rethink the personalities and motivations of the likes of Thomases Cromwell, Wolsey and More, Henry VIII and his first three wives.

The main thrust of the plot is the fact that King Henry still has no son, always a problem for the English monarchy.  Poor old first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is now too old to produce another child, let alone a male one to go with her religiously resentful daughter Mary, so, what now?  Enter Anne Boleyn, an intelligently ambitious and sexy young thing who promises she has what it takes to produce a male heir, but only with a ring on her finger.  Be careful what you wish for springs to mind, for, before long, Henry’s eyes wander to the even younger Jane Seymour, whose family home gives the first book/play its title.  Mantel’s main character,Thomas Cromwell, the lowly blacksmith’s son, by dint of his hard work, low cunning and quick humour, quickly becomes Henry’s right hand man, picking up enemies along the way.  In England’s Tudor Court, the walls definitely did have ears and we quickly realise that the volatile Henry, swiftly changing from charm to alarming rage has to be handled with the softest of kid gloves.  Even though we all (at least I’m assuming all) know the outcome, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies still have the ability to have us gripped.

Several of the actors take on multiple roles and it is to their credit that we are never in any doubt as to which character they are portraying.  It seems rather churlish to single out any performances but because they inhabit the major roles, I will mention Ben Miles, Nathaniel Parker, Paul Jesson and Lydia Leonard.  Ben Miles is Thomas Cromwell, “is” being the operative word.  Charismatic, quick witted, kind, but also chilling at times, the emotional man we see within the pages of the book is also brought into focus on stage following the death of his wife, Lizzie.  The production doesn’t linger on her untimely demise, but depicts it by having her vanish from the stage.  Likewise Ben Miles doesn’t linger on his grief and doesn’t have to.  The initial pain and grief etched on his face is palpable.

Nat Parker makes an excellent Henry VIII.  Lulling us into a false sense of security with his charm and good humour when things are going his way, when they’re not his fearsome temper is even more terrifying.  His Henry is a living, breathing king, vulnerable, spoilt, regal and dangerous.

Lydia Leonard is responsible for bringing Anne Boleyn to life and we’re aware of who she is and what she wants right from the word go.  The play opens with a lively dance and we see her suggestively stroking Henry’s fur collar.  There is no doubt as to what is on her mind and when we eventually hear her speak, we are also in no doubt that this is one intelligent, if peevish young woman.

Clad in scarlet, Paul Jesson’s Cardinal Wolsey is sublime.  Hedonistic and with a wonderful sense of humour, his exchanges with Cromwell are a joy.  How glad I was that his ghost kept returning, the voice of his and the other apparitions in Cromwell’s mind turned into disembodied echoes by the Sound Designer, Nick Powell.

These two plays can be watched separately but I am so glad I was lucky enough to watch both on one day.  The cliff hanger ending of Wolf Hall certainly left me wanting more and, wow, the evening performance did not disappoint.  Please hurry up and finish The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel.  I can’t wait to see how you complete your trilogy.

Birdland at The Royal Court

There was one aspect of the staging of Simon Stephen’s new play, Birdland, at The Royal Court that left me slightly nonplussed.  I mean, why all the water towards the end?  I’m afraid I couldn’t work out the metaphor for that one.  But really that is my only quibble, perhaps because the brilliant Andrew Scott takes the title role of rock star, Paul and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  Charming, nasty, dangerous, intelligent, sexy, outrageous and electrifying. He is all of these things and much, much more. And my, oh my, what a mover.

Paul, you see is an extremely successful rock star.  He is adored by the fans who go and watch him sing in huge arenas around the world, and can have anything he wants.  Anything that money can buy.  But when it comes to things spiritual he is bereft.  Drugs and adulation have left him wondering who on earth he is.  He has lost his ability to empathise, which costs him the friendship and love of those he once held dear, especially his best friend, Johnny.  He does and says things we will him not to.  His off switch doesn’t function, which ultimately results in the suicide of Johnny’s girlfriend and his cringingly tactless meeting with her grieving parents.

Loneliness drives him to take Jenny, a girl working in one of the many hotels in which he stays, with him on the last leg of his tour, but he ultimately drives her away with his appalling behaviour.  It’s when we see his awkward backstage encounter with the father for which he has lost total regard, that we understand the reason for the title, Birdland (Simon Stephens says that the play was charged by the spirit of the Patti Smith song of the same name).

This is when we begin to realize that there is no way back.  And here’s the rub.  The man who has acquired everything but lost his soul ends up with nothing at all.

The remaining cast, who take on various roles, are exemplary.  Ian MacNeil’s spartan design of plastic chairs and not much else, highlight Paul’s cold and meaningless existence and Carrie Cracknell’s direction is spot on.  But it is Andrew Scott who amazes.  Dead behind the eyes and toxic his Paul may be, but we still somehow feel pity for this poor creature.  What price fame?

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The Silver Tassie at The Lyttleton

Sean O’Casey had a bit of a blow to his self esteem in March 1928, when his play, The Silver Tassie, was rejected by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.  All his previous plays had premiered here but not this one, thanks, in no small measure, to the theatre’s founding director, W.B. Yeats.  In a letter to O’Casey, Yeats stated “You are not interested in the Great War; you never stood on its battlefields or walked its hospitals, and so write out of your opinions.  You illustrate those opinions by a series of almost unrelated scenes as you might in a leading article”. 

A rather imperious response to the playwright’s new offering but, having seen this latest adaptation at The Lyttleton, I do have some sympathies with Mr. Yeats. 

The Silver Tassie consists of four Acts, the first of which is set in a Dublin tenement.  So far so O’Casey.  We are introduced to two old codgers, Sylvester Heegan and Simon Norton who are awaiting the arrival of the jubilant local football team and their hero, Sylvester’s son, Harry.  Joshing with each other, whilst ignoring the protestations of religious crusader, Susie Monican and the domestic violence going on upstairs, their life is worlds away from that to which the footballers will soon be returning.  For they are all too briefly on home leave and will soon return to the horrors of the trenches.  The raising of the victory cup, the silver tassie of the title, and Harry’s loving embrace with his sweetheart, Jessie Taite, will soon be a sweet memory.

And then we have Act Two where everything changes …. completely.  And cohesion is lost.  We are now in a bombed out monastery near the frontline and the realism of Act One has become total surrealism.  Whilst Vicki Mortimer’s visual transition from tenement to battlefield is superbly done, with the design a total onslaught on the senses, the introduction of biblical chanting, music hall rhythms and angry satire left me completely unimpressed.  The pyrotechnics amaze, the explosions startle but the whole scene left me curiously detached.

Acts Three and Four revert to naturalism with touches of black humour and unbearable sadness.  Harry Heegan is now wheelchair bound and has lost his girlfriend to Barney, his friend who won the VC for saving his life.  Bible basher, Susie Monican has become a nurse and falls for the amorous charms of a hospital surgeon, whilst Teddy Foran, the abusive husband is now blind and totally reliant on his previously abused wife.  A little touch of surrealism rears its head in the final few minutes of the play but this time to devastating effect.  The setting is an Armistice Day dance where the women are seen dancing.  But their partners aren’t the actual returning soldiers, but dummies depicting them.  For me the most moving part of the whole play and wonderfully realised by the director, Howard Davies.

Whilst The Silver Tassie disappoints, the performances do not.  Worth a particular mention are Ronan Raftery as Harry, Aidan McArdle and Stephen Kennedy as the two old buffers and Judith Roddy as bible basher turned flirty nurse. 

There is humour to be found during the 2 hours 20 minutes but the bleakness overrules and left me strangely unmoved.

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.