Theatre Review: Sunset at the Villa Thalia

It does not bode well for a piece of theatre when the most exciting and memorable thing about it is someone in the audience.

So it was with Sunset at the Villa Thalia, currently playing at the NT’s Dorfman theatre (aka the theatre with the worth sightlines in London). A new play by Alexi Kaye Campbell, of The Pride fame, Sunset is one of those slightly irksome plays in which nothing actually happens. And, in this case, it happens particularly poorly.

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Now I don’t mind plays that are just people talking about stuff per se, as long as they have something interesting to say about the stuff said people are talking about. And this is the problem with Sunset: it just doesn’t. Its attempts at profound thinking include the observations that sometimes American foreign policy is not always completely altruistic and that a capitalist economy is not always 100% fair. Its views on the Pope’s religion were sadly omitted.

Structurally, the play seems to work very hard to actively expose its lack of depth. After a reasonably fun and breezy first half that I actually quite enjoyed, the second half is where all the ‘serious analysis’ tries to happen. It makes for one of the least subtle, most heavy handed and least engaging hours of theatre I’ve seen this year. The exchanges on American foreign policy (the lead character is a foreign operative for the Us Government) in particular are cringeworthy in their lack of sophistication. It’s like a particularly poorly written Guardian opinion piece made flesh.

The writing is ok, though again the first half is stronger, with some decent jokes and pithy observations. But again the ‘serious’ bits are weak and lightweight. Maybe someone should have upgraded the playwright’s GCSE history of Latin America textbook to an A Level one at least. This flows into the characterisation too, where portraits are very broad brush (bohemian British playwright and leftwing yummy mummy wife vs scheming American and drunk trophy wife) and motivations are almost always left unexplained. This means where character development is attempted, rarely, it really doesn’t make that much sense.

The production does have a redeeming feature, and it’s a considerable one in the shape of the reliably excellent Ben Miles in the lead role. His part - Harvey, the scheming US Government man - is by far the best written and realised and Miles is, reliably, excellent in it. He manages to make Harvey a far more relatable and sympathetic character than he really should be, even managing to pull some of the historio-political nonsense back from the brink. To continue a theme, he is even better in the first half when Harvey is at his most fun and charming. Elizabeth McGovern is fun too as his boozy wife June, the only problem being that I don’t really understand what her character adds to the play - she’s fine when she’s just providing comic relief but attempts to round her out into something fuller are at best of limited success. Simon Godwin’s direction is also, as ever, very good and mercifully pacey. I’m not sure I could’ve stood this production being much longer.

Overall, then, Sunset at the Villa Thalia is one you can afford to miss. Ben Miles being his usual excellent self isn’t enough to justify the price of a ticket, especially given the price point for an unrestricted view in the Dorfman.

And if you were wondering, it was Bertie Carvel in the audience. Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that I therefore consider the price of my ticket was entirely justified.

Sunet at the Villa Thalia plays in the Dorfman at the NT until 4th August.

Theatre Review: The Threepenny Opera

It’s very, very rare for me to see a piece of theatre and not know whether I liked it.

Occasionally I’ll see something that needs a bit of thinking or something with a production element that is best reflected on, but to be at a real loss as to what I thought even after much mulling time doesn’t usually happen.

But The Threepenny Opera, currently playing at the National, has rather confounded me. After almost a week of considering I’ve concluded, rather anticlimactically, that I thought it was ok. I can’t say I didn’t like it but I certainly can’t say I loved it. And honestly I’m struggling to explain why. Here follows a collection of thoughts that make a spirited attempt nonetheless.

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I think my main problem with this production is the show itself. It’s a piece of musical comedy-drama in which I liked neither the music nor the comedy-drama. Which is kind of an issue. For me Kurt Weill’s music is at best a poor man's Sweeney Todd (with one exception). I can remember none of it a week later (with one exception), whilst the closing folk song from 2015’s NT Beaux Stratagem is still stubbornly lodged in my head. And whilst Brecht’s original conception of an amoral satire on popular opera may strike some people as bold and subversive I am not one of those people. To me it was just all rather predictable. I can’t honestly imagine a production of this show that would make me love it, or even like it all that much.

There are production-specific things I didn’t like as well, principally that it had all the subversive power of an M&S jumper. I think this must be the most middle class interpretation of subversive I’ve ever seen. It was the theatrical equivalent of a Home Counties yummy mummy thinking she was being awfully larky by using an Aldi bag for life in Waitrose. My understanding of Brecht going into this production, whilst limited, was that the whole point of it was subversion. And without delivering that, Simon Stephens’ new translation of the book and lyrics - which are the main culprit here - all felt rather unnecessary. The attempts to up the subversion with a Family Guy (unfunny episode) sized dose of vulgarity don’t work either. Vulgarity and subversion are not the same and vulgarity is not automatically funny or entertaining.

I wouldn’t normally mention it in a review but the other thing that really pissed me off related to this production, and which has certainly informed my view of it regardless of whether it was in any way linked to anyone involved with it, is the programme. Normally so good at the NT, the essays in this one are devoted to spouting the sort of uber lefty, nonsensical bullshit that would make even the most dedicated Corbynista blush. A particular highlight: ‘is thinking for yourself a Marxist idea?’ It is beyond the scope of this review to address everything that is wrong with that sentence.

But there are things to like in this production, some of which you can like very much. Rory Kinnear takes the lead role of Macheath - or Mack the Knife if you prefer - and makes his debut as a musical theatre actor. His voice is startlingly good; like sort-of-makes-you-hate-him-a-little-bit-for-being-such-an-allrounder good. It almost goes without saying that his performance is top drawer in all other ways too. He’s not an immediately obvious choice to play a murderous badboy but he really works it, in a sort of understated, dry, wryly funny way. Loved the guyliner too.

He has ample support in a talented cast, especially from Rosalie Craig as his less innocent than she seems new wife. Again, it goes without saying that she has a knockout voice and her solo numbers are undoubted highlights of the production, even if the songs aren’t that great. George Ikediashi (aka cabaret star Le Gateau Chocolat) is a glorious scene stealer who delivers a cracker of a Mack the Knife - my “with one exception” to how I don’t like the music - to open the show and descends on the moon to save Macheath’s life to close it. His mischievous performance is possibly the one thing that feels genuinely subversive here too.

Vicki Mortimer’s design is fun and effective. Sets are comprised almost entirely of brown paper on wooden frames, which allows characters to enter and leave around or through them. It gets slightly overused but it is effective. The use of the Olivier’s beautiful old revolve is great throughout too. The costumes and makeup design echo this self-consciously artificial atmosphere. It all adds up to look like a great big Victorian cartoon. I was a fan.

So to sum up, I sort of liked The Threepenny Opera in as far as you can ever like a production of a show you’re not a fan of. Or at least I think I did. I’m still not really sure.

The Threepenny Opera is on in the Olivier Theatre at the National (in rep) until 1st October.


 

Theatre Review: Romeo and Juliet

Call me a heretic, but I'm not a big fan of Romeo and Juliet.

One of the greatest love stories ever told? No. Two annoying rich kids falling in love with the idea of being in love and fucking up everything they touch in the process? Yes.

With the arguable exception of the Baz Luhrmann film version, most productions of this play don’t seem to share my view. It’s always played so straight and earnestly that I slightly want to vomit almost continuously. And, when the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company season was announced, the inclusion of this piece was the thing I was least excited about. I was pretty convinced that not even my oft stated and increasingly ardent Branagh obsession could make me love this play.

And indeed it didn't. I still think Romeo and Juliet is over hyped, over sentimental and over cooked. So in some ways it slightly irks me to have to report that, despite all that, I thoroughly enjoyed this production.

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Mostly this is because - finally - here is a production of Romeo and Juliet which treats the story with the irreverance it deserves. This is the first production of this play I've ever seen which treats the silly teenage 'lovers' as exactly that, playing up the comedy and the ridiculousness in a text which is riper with the potential for laughs than most directors seem to realise. Occasionally it's slightly overdone (I had some issues with Meera Syal's Nurse who once or twice tipped a bit too far into pantomime territory for me) but by and large the tone is subtly struck. Huge kudos to KenBran and his co-director/choreographer Rob Ashford for their quietly revelatory approach.

The best scene of the piece sums up this approach perfectly: the famous balcony scene ('Romeo, Romeo' etc etc) played between a slightly pissed Juliet swigging a bottle of wine and a wryly nervous Romeo, fawning over her every hiccup. It turns the supposedly most romantic scene in the play into mild, but very funny, farce and I absolutely loved it for doing so.

This is also a very sexy production, aesthetically and atmospherically. Christopher Oram's design borrows heavily from a compilation of every Fellini film ever and suitably evokes a dangerous fringe of La Dolce Vita. The 1950s setting definitely works in the production's favour, especially in the underplayed cool of the costumes. I'm 100% in favour of anything that puts Richard Madden in a slim fitting suit and/or a leather jacket.

Speaking of whom, a lot of the print reviews really stuck the rapier, as it were, into Madden's Romeo but for my money he's one of the highlights of the cast. He's particularly strong when there's more comedy for him to play with but is certainly no slouch in the heavier, more dramatic moments either. In a strong ensemble, Ansu Kabia's Tybalt, all dangerous bravado and swagger, and Michael Rouse's violent and threatening Capulet are the scene stealers; the latter in particular providing one of the production's most striking and effecting scenes when he brutally enforces his will on his daughter that she will marry the nonentity that is Count Paris. Derek Jacobi's Mercutio is entertainingly cynical and Lily James' Juliet suitably beautiful (and irritating) but neither, for my money, warrant the hype they've received in the proper reviews.

There are bits of this production that don't work - the distracting sound design, the slightly cringeworthy ball scene, the random insertion of songs and bursts of Italian - but overall it's really great fun. And it made me not hate Romeo and Juliet as a play, which is worthy of note enough on its own, frankly. I would recommend it, even to my most cynical of friends. And I have some very cynical friends.

Romeo and Juliet is part of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company's Plays at the Garrick season and is on until 13th August. It has a live cinema broadcast on 7th July.

Theatre Review: Jekyll and Hyde

I don’t know anything about dance.

Anton and Erin tours aside, I've never seen any live dance before. I don’t know the terminology, I don’t know what makes it objectively good or bad and I don’t have any idea how to review it.

I think you can see where this is going.

Jekyll and Hyde is a two act ‘dance thriller’ choreographed by Drew McOnie and staged, at the Old Vic, by his eponymous company. And because I have no idea what I'm talking about beyond that, I’ll say right now that I think it’s fantastic and a real treasure of a show.

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For a non-dance person, probably the most striking thing about this production is the clarity of the storytelling. Admittedly, Jekyll and Hyde is a story that I think most people would say they know reasonably well. It’s also a story that seems peculiarly susceptible to being overcooked though, as ITV demonstrated so dramatically in their recent 1920s-set version. McOnie’s take is refreshingly clear, updating the action to the 1950s and recasting Jekyll as a botanist but otherwise keeping the story untouched and unornamented. The production contains no lyrics or spoken script, bar the occasional guttural moan or death throe, but it is impossible to lose the thread of the action (again unlike the ITV version where this was very much possible). And I think this would still be the case even if the story was entirely new to you.

This crystal clear narrative is facilitated mostly by the innovative characterisation that breathes through the choreography. Jekyll and Hyde, played by two different dancers which really opens up the story, move differently: Jekyll has a sort of sweeping ballroom set of moves whilst Hyde is much spikier with more rock and roll swagger. Jekyll is awkward, gentlemanly and funny, Hyde is sexy, brutish and thrusting (great word). Hyde, as usual, is better dressed and much cooler but it’s Jekyll who has the bigger, more bravura part.

All of this is reinforced by Grant Olding’s brilliant, eclectic and evocative earworm of a score; surely one of the best examples of storytelling through music out there. Five days later and I still have Hyde’s theme dancing round my head. Soutra Gilmour’s clever design, with the production’s handful of sets on a revolve made of chain-link fence which is manually pushed around as necessary by the cast, is so effective. I especially liked the care that had gone into ensuring that the whole stage is used, not just the bit that forms the current set. Because the ‘walls’ of every set are, essentially, see through then people sat at certain angles can see what’s going on in the background. This had been considered and accounted for really well, even if it only meant simple things like ensuring that cast members entering and exiting did so in keeping with both their character and the current mood of the music. It’s sadly rare to see so much thought going into sightlines and it really paid off.

I have no idea how you talk about the relative merits of dancers beyond what I've heard on Strictly. With that in mind, I have one word for the super talented cast of Jekyll and Hyde: uh-may-zing. In a small but perfectly formed cast almost everyone is a standout, but the biggest praise must go to the simply brilliant Daniel Collins’ sublime Jekyll. As good an embodiment of a character as almost any I've seen on stage this year which is all the more remarkable given it was all delivered via dance. Hurrah also for yet another of the West End’s super understudies, Jason Winter, on as Hyde on the night I was in - which also happened to be the first preview so, y’know, no pressure. He was great, a perfect swaggering Hyde, and if no one had told me he was an understudy I’d have never guessed in a million years.

To summarise, you should see Jekyll and Hyde. Regardless of what you know or don’t know about dance or about the story, this is a genuinely great production. It’s easily one of my favourite things this year. A ten from Len, if you will. Get your skates on though - its run is tragically, if understandably, short.

Jekyll and Hyde plays at the Old Vic until 28th May. AKA this Saturday. Hurry up.

 

Theatre Review: Lawrence After Arabia

There are few things more frustrating in my theatrical book as a wasted premise, especially when the premise is really interesting.

What became of Lawrence when he is no longer Of Arabia is a great premise. Super interesting, super politically relevant and with a hefty dollop of historical controversy chucked in for good measure. It should make for a great play.

And perhaps it does, somewhere. But Lawrence After Arabia, currently playing at the Hampstead Theatre, is not that play. Really, really not.

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In many ways the production deserves credit for taking such an interesting premise and making it so tedious. It’s genuinely quite impressive. I'm not someone who can fall asleep in the theatre but this had me very close.

I think the biggest problem seems to be that the writing, by Howard Brenton (of whom I am generally speaking a fan), is so literal, unsubtle and, in places, just clunky. A key bugbear of mine, and an example of some of the play’s issues more broadly, was the constant dismayed references to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Now, it’s absolutely valid to make the point that the way the British and French divided up the Middle East with literal rulers on a literal map is one of the biggest factors leading to the geopolitical clusterfuck that that region sadly is today. To make that point by having several of your lead characters wail the names of the three most contemporary and brutal examples of this again and again is not the way to make that point. I'm pretty sure that even the most dull witted audience doesn't need that level of exposition to get what’s being driven at.  There are frequent examples of this - of the audience being told in big, flashing, neon lights that a contemporary reference is being made - and for me it does both cast and audience a huge disservice. It becomes annoying very quickly.

My other major complaint about this production is not one that I get to make very often, thankfully: it just wasn't very well acted. I took a particular dislike to Jack Laskey in the title role, who for my money was wooden and stilted all evening (and also looks about 20 years too young for the part). Jeff Rawle was an entertainingly diverting G B Shaw, but his wandering accent started to grate quite quickly. Geraldine James, whose Charlotte Shaw was generally a merciful highlight, had the occasional wobbly moment, particularly in the climactic confrontation with Lawrence towards the end of the play. Mind you that confrontation contains some particularly wobbly dialogue - my favourite being a cringe inducing exchange on sexuality - so perhaps that’s to be expected. Khalid Laith as a charismatic Prince Faisal was the only actor who consistently won me over, impressive given some of the leaden dialogue he was given. Perhaps it was just an off night or perhaps I'm just spoiled these days, but I really expected better.

Other than Price Faisal there are a few other bright spots in this production. As always at the Hampstead, it looks fantastic and the staging is characteristically clever. The seamless transitions between Arabian desert and English manor drawing room are very well done. There are also quite a few good gags hiding away in the script. I particularly enjoyed the exchange between Lawrence and the Shaws about whether or not they really know anything about working class people, which elicits the response from Charlotte that ‘of course we do, we’re Socialists’. Got a very knowing laugh from the Hampstead crowd that one…  And John Dove’s direction keeps things clipping along at an admirable pace, bringing what is quite a complicated story in at just over two hours (including an interval, how unfashionable). Mind you if it was any longer I'm not sure I would've coped.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t recommend that you should spend any of your hard earned cash on Lawrence After Arabia, unless you suffer from insomnia and have tried everything else. Perhaps wait until Ross opens at Chichester, since from what I can tell it covers very much the same ground in a hopefully less soporific manner.

Lawrence After Arabia plays at the Hampstead Theatre until June 4th.

Theatre Review: Les Blancs

This year has so far been rather short of genuine must see shows for me.

Guys and Dolls, The Rolling Stone and The Painkiller certainly qualify but beyond that I would struggle to say anything else I've seen so far in 2016 is so outstanding. The serious drama front in particular has felt lacking and it’s high time this was remedied.

Enter the National Theatre’s production of Les Blancs.

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Les Blancs tells the story of Tshembe Matoseh, who returns home from London to an unspecified African country to bury his father. The country is on the brink of civil war with the final white settlers, some of whom helped raise Tshembe and his brothers, about to be violently driven out. The struggle tears Tshembe’s family - biological and otherwise - apart leaving a trail of tragic consequences in its wake. Light entertainment this is not.

Written, though never definitively completed, by Lorraine Hansberry (of A Raisin in the Sun fame), Les Blancs is a phenomenally powerful piece. And the NT’s production, directed by Yael Farber, is a phenomenally powerful production of it. In short: you should see this play.

Thematically, Les Blancs is a huge thing. Race, identity, family, guilt, religion, prejudice and more all get a good, complex airing. Set against this, the writing and the language itself are pleasingly straightforward. The writing pulls no punches and offers a brutal condemnation - through the voices of both African and settler characters - of colonialism and its racist accessories. For all that, though, it remains a complicated and nuanced portrayal of the motivations and attitudes, good and bad, of everyone involved - black, white and everything else.

This is also an extraordinary beautiful production. Soutra Gilmour’s stripped back design contains only one set - the skeleton of the settler run clinic - but is striking nonetheless in its use of a rich colour palette of ochres and reds, the ever present smell of burning wood and smatterings of sand across the stage. The use of, for want of a better word, authentic music sung and played by four extraordinarily versatile female African ‘matriarch’ musicians is exceptionally atmospheric. If this all sounds a bit Disney then that’s the fault of my description not the production. The overall effect is hugely evocative and gives the production a distinctive voice before a single word of dialogue is even spoken.

The production is also exceptionally well acted across the board with an absolute belter (technical term) of a lead performance from Danny Sapani. In his hands, Tshembe is a conflicted riot of love, anger, sadness, tradition and modernity; basically a character study in the question of where our identity should and does come from. It’s masterful stuff, as physically powerful as it is emotionally raw, and certainly the best single performance I’ve seen so far this year. He has strong support throughout the cast, but Sian Phillips and Gary Beadle are particularly good as the flawed embodiment of well intentioned white settlers and Tshembe’s Catholic convert brother respectively.    

Overall then a standout production and one that is quite simply a must see. And with this production and The Suicide running concurrently, it finally feels like Rufus Norris’ NT has hit its stride; a very exciting, very overdue, prospect.

Les Blancs is playing in the Olivier theatre at the NT until June 2nd.

Theatre Review: The Suicide

For my money there’s something immediately funny about a comedy called The Suicide.

But perhaps that’s just me.

Updated by Suhayla El-Bushra from a Russian original by Erdman, The Suicide (currently playing at the NT) tells the story of Sam whose aborted attempt to kill himself goes viral after it’s caught on someone’s mobile phone. In the aftermath, rather than trying to help him, it seems that the world and his wife want Sam to reconsider and when he agrees to a high profile public suicide hilarity ensues. Which I appreciate is an odd sentence.

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From what I understand, the original Russian version of The Suicide was hugely subversive and landed its playwright a forced holiday in Siberia. And if something similarly subversive is what you’re looking for then this updated for 2016 production is not for you, though quite what in current London theatreland is for you I'm not sure.

Even though it tries very hard - too hard - to be subversive, or at least edgy, this production just isn't. Some of its attempts feel curiously dated too. I mean, is there really not a new bete noir for lefty types since Margaret Thatcher? Have we really not moved on from the stereotype chav living in a high rise? Other attempts at edginess feel strained - I didn't in any way understand the need for a live drummer, as good as he was - or gratuitous; and the one fleeting and bizarre instance of nudity is very much both.

But for all that this Suicide is still a very entertaining and crucially very funny production. No, there’s nothing earth shattering in jokes about vegan food, Tinder or organic community cafes but I don’t actually care as long as those jokes are funny. Yes, the characters are almost all caricatures rather than fully formed people but, again, they’re all very funny (and some of them ring truer than is comfortable). In other words, if you judge this production on its own merits rather than hold it up against its revolutionary original then there’s much to recommend it. Chill the fuck out and enjoy it is I suppose what I'm trying to say.

If you are insistent on finding the political point that this play does successfully make then its skewering of various well meaning lefty tribes is very astute, something that can be attributed to the funny and ballsy cast as much as the writing. Paul Kaye in particular is great - not a phrase I use often - as an ‘activist’ filmmaker desperate to record Sam’s last moments and kickstart a new Arab spring. He conjures up a particularly unpleasant mixture of vanity, self righteousness and BO (that anyone who’s ever been to Brighton will definitely recognise) with the sort of conviction that makes one wonder how much of this is just Paul Kaye without dreadlocks playing Paul Kaye with dreadlocks. Either way it’s very funny. Kudos also to Pal Aron as a distressingly believable, mercilessly entertaining local (Labour) councillor with questionable morals and deep pockets.

This is Sam’s play though and on the night we saw this production that role fell, for the first time by the look of his curtain call reaction, to understudy Adrian Richards. And frankly he smashed it, giving a believable, funny but ultimately quite tragic performance of a young and confused Sam. Keep an eye on that name because on the evidence of this performance he deserves some considerable success in the not too distant future.

Technically, this production looks great too. There is excellent use of video projection, lighting and music (even if some of this does occasionally slip into the ‘trying too hard to be edgy’ category). The most impressive aspect of Ben Stones’ design though is its use of sliding screens and blocks to portray the shifting cityscape as well as provide a suitably fluid and neutral backdrop for all the noise and colours happening around it. It’s really well done as well as looking very funky. I love that word.

I really enjoyed The Suicide. Even if it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, or some reviewers would evidently like it to be, it’s still an entertaining, funny show done very well. Definitely worth your time.

The Suicide plays in the Lyttelton at the NT until 25th June.