The York Realist at The Donmar

 

The intimate Donmar Warehouse lends itself perfectly to the equally intimate kitchen setting of Peter Gill’s play, The York Realist.  Set in the sixties, this understated, but pitch perfect play concerns a gay couple with totally different lifestyles.  George (Ben Batt), a farmer, lives with his ailing mother (Lesley Nicol) in a remote part of Yorkshire, whilst John (Jonathan Bailey), an aspiring theatre director from London, is temporarily in York directing a production of The York Mystery Plays.  They get to know one another as George has a small part in the production.  Surprisingly it is the working-class country boy who is completely at ease with his sexual proclivities from the get go (at least in John’s presence).  Whereas shy, middle-class John is more hesitant in accepting the sexual charge between the two of them. 

When the play opens, George’s mother has just died and he receives an unexpected visit from John who is back in York for a week working at the Theatre Royal.  We then go back in time to try and explain the palpable tension that now exists between the two men and why, despite the release from being at his adored mother’s constant side, George is still unable to fly his rather ramshackle nest and move to a different existence with his lover.  It’s not just the class divide that prevents the two ending up happy ever after, but the spiritual ties that tend to bind us to our roots, however much we often refuse to admit it.

Robert Hastie directs the play with subtlety and charm and, unlike so many plays with a gay theme, there is no physical sexuality on stage.  Looks and words are all that is needed to produce the obvious sexual chemistry between the two men.  And due to the short distance between audience and cast, we’re privy to every nuance between Batt and Bailey, who are so beguiling in their roles, that their chemistry doesn’t just smoulder but ignites.

Ben Batt is every inch the beefcake farm labourer who only really comes alive when his friend is around.  In the presence of his sister and son-in-law and, more importantly Doreen (the equally impressive Katie West) who so obviously carries an enormous torch for him, he retreats into his shell, becoming laconic and brooding.  At the end of the play, his repressed agony at letting John go, is desperately moving. 

The equally well cast Jonathan Bailey, perfectly captures the rather more uptight townie, all oohs and aahs at the rustic charm of the cottage kitchen, especially the old-fashioned kitchen range.  All nervous laughter and ‘rabbit in the headlight’ stares, his timidity causes the two men to swap roles and allow George to take the ‘director’ mantle.

Whether or not George’s mother realises her son’s preference for men is never entirely sure, but Lesley Nicol infuses her character with warm, no nonsense Yorkshire charm.  Equally affecting are the remaining cast, Brian Fletcher as the impudent, head in the clouds nephew and Lucy Black playing George’s obviously unfulfilled married sister, Barbara, married to Matthew Wilson’s Arthur.

The play will soon be transferring to the Sheffield Crucible, where I’m sure it will get the appreciative Yorkshire audience it deserves.  Before it does, for ninety-five minutes, we southerners are transported to the hills and dales of their county in the most realistic way possible.

Long Days Journey Into Night at Wyndhams Theatre

One wonders if Eugene O’Neil would have written such wonderful plays if his childhood had been secure and happy.  Or, come to that, whether he would have written plays at all.  For he is a playwright whose works largely rely on the dysfunctional family dynamic; none more so than Long Day’s Journey Into Night currently at Wyndhams Theatre, the play which most closely illustrates his tortured upbringing. 

With a superb cast of five, Richard Eyre directs with great style and aplomb.  Leading the way is the incomparable Lesley Manville, so very fine in everything she does, especially when period angst is required.  Here she plays Mary Tyrone, wife of James and mother to James Tyrone Jr and Edmund.  Recently returned from a stint in a sanatorium, the family are celebrating the fact that this time she has returned stronger and more positive.  Or has she?  The excellent Jeremy Irons, playing cigar smoking, Shakespeare quoting husband James, continually mentions how plump and well she looks.  But there are tell-tale signs that this imperceptibly nervy woman has problems she is trying to hide.  From the constant touching of her hair to bursts of rapid dialogue (much of it “on repeat”) the “once an addict always an addict” rings true.  As the morphine once again takes hold, the tenuous struggle to appear normal fails and the forced happiness turns to nervous disappointment and eventual drug addled blankness.  There is no doubt that she is loved by James and her sons, exasperated as they are by her inability to kick her habit, but years of resentment at never being able to call anywhere home, the loss of their middle child and constant worry that Edmund has far more wrong with him than the mere cold she insists he has, have left her vulnerable to the numbing effects that morphine brings.

The words, “Mama is back on the morphine” is never actually spoken out loud, although we’re left in no doubt that the eldest son, James, never believes she can be cured.  Edmund and his father grasp at straws that this time the sanatorium has done a good job but they eventually have to admit the truth.  Jeremy Irons perfectly captures his character’s dismay at the knowledge that he has once more lost the love of his life to the insidious drug.  The accusing glance he gives her on realising she is sliding back into her old ways is both chilling and full of sorrow.

It’s not just Mary’s state of mind that is sliding.  The whole family is hurtling downhill and their unloved holiday house is full to the rafters in lost hope.  The men reach oblivion by drinking far too much, everyone picks holes in everyone else and the unhappiness that pervades this dysfunctional quartet is palpable.  And it’s not just this long day that brings forth such disappointment.  It has been brewing for some time.  Cheapskate James senior has a lifetime of regret that his acting career, although lucrative, was filled with mediocre work.  His eldest son’s self-loathing is never far from the surface, whilst Edmund (for his character read Eugene himself) retreats from his illness into the world of morbid poetry.  

And it’s not just Mary who exists within a bubble of emotional inconsistency.  It’s the family's default button. James senior, having decided that Edmund be assigned to a cheap state sanatorium, declares that, as money is no object, “within reason”, he will have the best treatment possible.  James junior praises his younger brother’s literary efforts in one breath and in another derides them.  For the Tyrone’s life is an allusion.

What is real is the fact that there is no weak link in this production of O’Neil’s autobiographical masterpiece. Manville and Irons have terrific support from Rory Keenan as the boisterous degenerate James and Matthew Beard as the romantically inclined Edmund, who looks so skinny and pale that it takes no leap of faith to believe he has TB.  The former fails to take on board anything anyone says, whilst Beard turns attentiveness into an art form.  Add the welcome touch of comedy from Jessica Regan’s Irish maid, and the three hours, twenty, whilst not actually flying by don’t drag for a minute.

Girls & Boys at The Royal Court

It’s quite something for a lone actor to hold an audience’s attention for a whole play and for a playwright to provide the material to make it work.  Girls & Boys, Dennis Kelly’s latest offering, now playing at The Royal Court ticks both boxes.

Carey Mulligan, barefoot and dressed in smart trousers and silk shirt, is a tour de force.  Affecting an estuary accent, she opens proceedings, almost in the guise of a ballsy, stand-up comedienne who uses her lifetime experiences as material.  Her dialogue throughout isn’t so much splattered as deluged with expletives as she treats us to a very witty, frank and rude account of her life thus far.  We lean forward, anxious not to miss one snippet from this superb story teller.  

Firstly, we learn how she met her husband in the queue to board an Easy Jet flight and took an instant dislike to the man.  Following the transformation from dislike to love and marriage, children Leanne and Danny arrive to make her life pretty near perfect, especially as her career trajectory has risen until she ends up a successful documentary maker.  In the meantime, her husband’s furniture importing business goes bust.  And this appears to be the catalyst for her cosy existence going belly up.   On arriving at the point where everything goes catastrophically wrong, the gleam in her eye fades, her upbeat façade crumbles and we long for her not to share with us the horrors she has had to endure.

Every so often Mulligan moves from downstage to Es Devlin’s magnificent set behind the curtain.  In the couple’s modern designer home, we are treated to Mulligan, the mother, going about the daily grind of trying to manage her two young, unseen children.  The whole set is shrouded in an icy blue light and thanks to the narrative and Lyndsey Turner’s subtle ratcheting up of the tension, we begin to realise that maybe something terrible has happened.

I’m not going to give the game away by letting you in on the plot.  Just suffice it to say that this play may be short in length but this doesn’t stop it hitting home with incredible and shocking force.

Lady Windermere's Fan at The Vaudeville Theatre

Following on from his tenure as Artistic Director at The Globe, Dominic Dromgoole has formed a new company.  Entitled Classic Spring, it is currently producing a season of Oscar Wilde’s plays at The Vaudeville Theatre, the second of which is Lady Windermere’s Fan.  For this show, this most enterprising of theatrical stalwarts has assembled a great mix of talent, from Kathy Burke as Director to Samantha Spiro and Jennifer Saunders as Mrs. Erlynne and the Duchess of Berwick respectively.  All three do not disappoint.

It is quite an undertaking to put on a Wilde play, which is probably why it rarely happens, but here it is done with aplomb.  Kathy Burke handles the large cast with ease and one of the several scene changes is accompanied by Saunder’s character moving slightly out of character to sing an hilarious ditty entitled “Keep your hands off my fan, sir!”.  Unmissable!

Wilde once again proves his empathy for the position of women in polite society where certain sacrifices have to be made.  The main character of the play, Mrs Erlynne highlights this.  This attractive, social climber, who to all intents and purposes has her claws well and truly embedded in Lord Windermere, is actually hiding her true raison de’etre.  And Samantha Spiro perfectly encapsulates both the “scarlet” and “maternal” aspects of a woman who is scorned by the likes of the Duchess of Berwick.  Never cloying when the true nature of her attempt to return to polite society is revealed, she also manages to imbue this so-called fallen woman with dignity and humour.

But I guess the evening ultimately belongs to the magnificent Jennifer Saunders.  Treading the boards for the first time in over twenty years, she is a joy as the blousy, bossy Duchess, bossing and flouncing to all and sundry, but especially her “little chatterbox” daughter who never gets a word in edgeways.  Always the gossip, Saunders relays everything that’s happening within her social circle (and plenty that isn’t) through scarcely parted lips and her bits of business with her walking cane are inspired.  Why speak when you can convey everything with a look and point of a stick?

Grace Molony as Lady Windermere equips herself very well.  She highlights the young woman’s youth and susceptibility very well and in so doing, squashes the girl’s priggishness.
Unfortunately, the men don’t fare quite so well.  ‘Tis true Wilde has given the best lines to the women but, even so, the males in the cast didn’t really inspire, especially Kevin Bishop as Lord Darlington.  I certainly couldn’t see any reason why Lady Windermere might risk all by running off with someone so lacking in charisma.  But no matter, I left the theatre with a smile on my face, having witnessed a couple of hours of delightful (and at times laugh out loud) entertainment.  A fan of Lady Windermere?  Most certainly.

Mary Stuart at Duke of York's Theatre

In Robert Icke’s adaptation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart at The Duke of York’s Theatre, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth 1 are interchangeable – literally – because Juliette Stevenson and Lia Williams know both parts.  The decision as to what part they will play on any particular night is down to the toss of a coin at the beginning of the production, the result of which is portrayed in close-up via a video screen.  Clever or gimmicky?  Definitely the latter, because it ultimately highlights that destiny can change in the blink of an eye and that the two women are arguably two sides of the same coin. One Catholic, the other Protestant but when it boils down, both imprisoned by the circumstances of their birth.  Just a cruel twist of fate enabled one to become the first famous English monarch and the other to suffer at the hands of an executioner.

On the night I saw this excellent production, it was down to Juliet Stevenson to portray the doomed Mary.  Because each actor had their own separate rehearsals, each one portrays each character differently, whether in mannerism or bits of business.  The one abiding similarity is their look.  Hildegard Bechtler has dressed both actresses in matching velvet trouser suits and white shirts, which, along with their short hair likens them to identical twins.  They even appear to walk as one when approaching the stage on either side at the start, before facing one another as if looking into a mirror.

This arresting production started life at The Almeida at the back end of 2016, so Stevenson and Williams have had plenty of time to inhabit both roles.  This they do with aplomb.  The play itself centres around an imaginary meeting between the two women.  One showing an uneasy command as a reigning monarch, the other with the unerring composure of a blue-blooded would-be queen eventually accepting what fate has in store. Whether or not this fate is the worst outcome is questioned at the end of the play when Elizabeth is stripped of her androgynous garb and laced into the trappings of period costume, along with ruff, wig and make-up.  Exhibited thus, she is ready for the rest of her life to be played out in private isolation and public scrutiny, whilst Mary, stripped down to simple shift, is finally on her way to lasting contentment.  She, the Scottish queen with a heart, will no longer have to deal with worldly problems and woes.  This is all played out to the background melancholy refrain of a song by Laura Marling, so bravo to her and Paul Arditti, the Sound Designer.

As expected, there is much political argument within the play, but Director, Icke, after the initial solemn coin tossing, makes sure the action ratchets up a notch or three, with both actresses often encircling each other as predator after its kill.  Their declamations have the light and shade needed to hold the audience in their thrall and although everyone is aware of the outcome, Mary Stuart’s death is still a body blow.

My only wish is to see these two brilliant actresses inhabit the other role

Belleville at The Donmar

James Norton is becoming the go-to actor for portraying outwardly normal, caring guys who have hidden depths.  As Zack in Amy Herzog’s play, Belleville, currently playing at The Donmar, he once again brings this skill to the fore.

Zack, a doctor, is newly married to Abby (Imogen Poots).  They have decamped from America to Paris, where he has a job doing research to prevent children contracting Aids and she, once a promising actor, is now teaching yoga.  So far so good, but scratch the surface and hidden imperfections appear.  The possible frailty of their relationship is hinted at almost from the start when Abby, returning from a cancelled yoga class (no-one turned up) discovers Zack furtively holed up in the bedroom with his computer.  It’s not just that he should be at work, but that his laptop is tuned into a porn channel.  And it seems that it’s not just their marriage which might crack at the seams, for underneath her bubbly exterior, Abby is mentally fragile.  Having recently lost her mother, she is now obsessed with ringing home, day and night, to discuss her sister’s pregnancy with her father; a source of irritation for Zack, who finally hides her mobile phone. This aura of uneasiness ratchets up as the play progresses and the couple discover things about one another with which they find it difficult to cope.

The flat they rent belongs to Alioune (Malachi Kirby) and his wife, Amina (Faith Alabi), a Senegalese-French couple who live downstairs.  He and Zack often share a spliff together when their respective wives aren’t around.  Although the two men seem to have a friendly relationship, the same cannot really be said for Abby and Amina, the latter not bothering to hide her disapproval of the two Americans.  Another disquieting aspect of the couple’s ex pat life in Paris.

It is as much to do with the skill of the cast as with Herzog’s script that the cracks which are continually revealed are realistic and subtle. A flaw in Zack is highlighted when he strongly disapproves of Abby wearing a sexy see-through blouse to go on a night out with their landlords.  The reason?  She last wore it when they went out with her ex-boyfriend.  Ha, ha, could this seemingly placid and caring husband, actually have a jealous and manipulative streak?  And does Abby actually enjoy goading him?  Is their relationship toxic or are they desperately in love with one another? The way Director, Michael Longhurst steers the production ensures that the accumulation of Zack and Abby’s passive aggregations towards one another, although shocking, is believable and somewhat surprising.

Although the play belongs in the main to the magnificent James Norton and the equally accomplished Miss Poots, there is also excellent support from Malachi Kirby and Faith Alabi.  The straight through hour and forty minutes fly by and I dare anyone to slacken their concentration at all during this time.  Some may quibble that it is too melodramatic but not me!

Network at The Lyttleton

Bryan Cranston has gone from Breaking Bad to Breaking Mad in Lee Hall’s adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s movie, Network, now showing at The Lyttleton Theatre.  Except that Cranston brings an integrity to his troubled newsreader, Howard Beale, that shows that even during his rages, we’re witnessing someone who is perfectly sane rather than deranged.  For his frequent anguished cry of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more”, read “angry as hell”.  Cranston’s nuanced performance ensures that his seventies prophet (the movie was made in 1976 and remains in this era here) has the audience in his thrall from the start.

Lee Hall’s adaptation of this Oscar winning satire is pretty much true to the original, apart from the toning down of the terrorist subplot and the affair between Beale’s colleague, Max Schumacher (Douglas Henshall) and the overly ambitious TV executive Diana Christensen (Michelle Dockery).  He has made Beale the total focus and with such a strong actor in the title role, this is no bad thing at all.  News anchor-man, Beale, a coiled spring, thanks to falling ratings and his own inner turmoil, finally breaks on air.  Looking straight to camera, he announces that everything is “bullshit” and that he plans to kill himself live on air, in a week’s time.

It seems the viewing public love nothing more than a disaster happening on live TV, so that, combined with the collective view that something is rotten within the heart of America (no change there then) ensures that falling ratings start to rise.  The suicide doesn’t happen; instead Beale’s popularity reaches epic proportions, which the News Network exploit to the full.  They see a way to revive their flagging programme; why not make news more show bizzy even if it is at the expense of one man’s near descent into a nervous  breakdown.

Ivo van Hove directs with his usual panache and uses his “techy” skills to accomplished effect in this production.  The huge Lyttleton stage is transformed into a hyperactive TV studio complete with huge backstage screen that at times shows multiple videos at once (slightly distracting until one gets used to it, but then I guess that’s the idea).   Cranston and various other members of the cast are often shown on screen as if we’re viewing them on television.  Up close and personal, the craggy, slightly battered image of this great American actor leaves us in no doubt that he is perfect in the role, perfect even before he opens his mouth!  Slightly strangely, situated stage left are several theatregoers enjoying dinner (all included in their ticket prices).  I say strangely but actually it works, giving as it does, a visible audience to whom Cranston can direct many of his speeches.

Choreographing this “mayhem” on stage must have been a logistical headache, but it works like clockwork, even on a preview night when I went.  The only sticking point for me is that I couldn’t quite believe in Michelle Dochery’s character, Diana.  She shows perfectly well that this is one very pushy, ambitious young woman, but it is all so one dimensional and the real-time filmed walk outside between her and Max feels gimmicky and artificial.  Let’s hope it has improved now previews are over.  

This, however, is a minor fault which is more than overshadowed by the overall production and in particular, Bryan Cranston’s masterclass performance.  Please don’t let it be too long before he returns to the London stage; I will be first in the booking queue.