Theatre Review: The Deep Blue Sea

As nice as it is to be surprised, it’s also nice when you think you’re going to love something, you see the something and you actually do love the something.

It’s also probably quite a spoilery way to start a review, but ho hum.

Case in point: the National Theatre’s current orgasm of a production of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea.

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Telling the story of Hester Collyer and her tangled, messy love life, The Deep Blue Sea is really a classic study in love, loss and longing. It’s a beautiful play full of fucked up people and feels as relevant, fresh and relatable today as the day it was written. I thought I was probably a fan of Rattigan’s work after seeing the fluffy, funny, wry Harlequinade last year and, whilst it’s certainly not fluffy and only occasionally funny and/or wry, The Deep Blue Sea has confirmed it. Just call me a Ratti-fangirl. Or preferably don’t, actually.

Moving on... I was certainly a (Ratti-)fan of this stunner of a production. Director Carrie Cracknell (fully redeeming herself after her pretentious nonsense of a Macbeth earlier this year) delivers a sexy, beautiful, desperate but ultimately hopeful production, dripping with style. It’s paced perfectly with each scene being given the space it needs to breathe without slowing down the action too much. You very much get the feeling that Cracknell knows she’s assembled one of the best casts in London on her stage and is quite content to just sit back and let them do their thing; exactly how it should be.

She is of course correct in her assessment of her cast too. First of all, holy fuck I love Helen McCrory. She’s excellent in literally everything she’s in and here she’s on blazing form as Hester, a perfect mix of clipped Englishness, desperate longing and, ultimately, steely bravery. I rather suspect that Hester Collyer is one of those parts that every theatrical generation has ‘their’ incarnation of and I’m more than happy if McCrory is mine.

As her conflicting love interests, Tom Burke is an excellent lovable, sexy, disaster zone as Freddie whilst Peter Sullivan is understated brilliance as a repressed and quietly desperate Sir William. Sullivan is genuinely outstanding in this part actually and almost - almost - upstages McCrory in what is, in the context of this play, a rather thankless part. I desperately wanted Hester and Sir William to kiss and make up because of his performance. Nick Fletcher also deserves a mention for a humane, inspirational-but-not-sugary Mr Miller. The rest of the small cast, who I’m not going to go through and name (jeez, just Google it), round out an incredibly strong ensemble. Even the people whose role is literally just to walk up and down the stairs in the background of the set are fab.

Speaking of the set, it’s amazing. Designer Tom Scutt has developed a section of an authentic, period three story apartment block and plonked (technical term) it on the Lyttelton stage. If that sounds rather techy and boring then it’s really not; it’s beautiful. It almost looks like a film set more than a theatre one, certainly the sweep of the design is very cinematic. The blue toned lighting and authentically crackly-record soundscape help create a suitably sexy atmosphere. It’s a great looking - and sounding - piece. Some of the best design I’ve seen for a very long time.

This production is a must see, simply. Miss it and regret it. Go and see it and go and see it now.

The Deep Blue Sea plays at the Lyttelton at the NT until September 10th, with very limited ticket availability. It gets the NT Live treatment on September 1st.

Theatre Review: Strife

An annual pilgrimage to the Chichester Festival Theatre is one of the highlights of my summer these days.

Last year it was big glossy musical Mack and Mabel, this year a rather different kettle of theatrical fish: Strife, a gritty Edwardian political morality play.

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Written by The Forsyte Saga’s John Galsworthy, Strife tells the story of a strike at a South Wales tinplate works. The mine’s board, shareholders, Trade Union and many of the workers want the strike to end but this would mean compromise and to both the company’s owner John Anthony and strike leader David Roberts that is worse than failure. Compromise, as it inevitably does, eventually wins out. No one tell Jeremy Corbyn.

There is so much that is contemporary in this play, something which this production is slightly too at pains to stress, but neither the ideas it plays with nor the analysis it offers are particularly exceptional. Neither really are the characters, none of whom are fleshed out beyond their role in the strike. And the attempts at ‘Welsh dialect’ - ie adding the phrase ‘look you’ onto the end of every third sentence - are so ridiculous to my (Welsh native and therefore biased) ear that they made me laugh.

That said, look you, there is some lovely writing on display, mostly given to Roberts and the other workers, and actually this is a much more subtle play than many of its contemporaries - god awful Waste, for example - in that there is relatively little judgement meted out on either side. The added dynamic of men vs Union is also an interesting touch, one which any production of this play could benefit from examining more closely. It’s a much more interesting theme than labour vs capital for my money. I also enjoyed the frequent statements about how the middle class is terrible, something which would feel quietly radical being said in any British theatre but in Chichester is positively revolutionary.

But let’s be honest here, the play itself was approximately 0% of the reason I came to see this production. Approximately 100% of that reason was sat in the director’s chair: Bertie Carvel, making his directorial debut. And though I may disagree with his choice of play, there aren’t many more of his decisions in this production that I would question. Biased as I undoubtedly am, this is a terrifically assured, technically impressive and subtly distinctive piece for any director to have under their belt, debut or otherwise.

There is definitely the beginnings of a Carvel style on show during this production and it’s a very interesting one. This comes across most strongly in the aesthetics. Chief amongst the things that make this production work is the bleak but beautiful design (courtesy of Robert Jones). Vaguely reminiscent of The Hairy Ape in its sparsity and harshness, and also in its use of all of the senses to conjure an atmosphere, there are a number of very memorable, visually arresting scenes. The majority of these rely on one very clever and very multitasking prop: a giant slab of molten metal which is transformed first into the boardroom table for the mine’s owners’ meeting and later into a platform for the men to stand on whilst speaking at their meeting (this latter scene enhanced by liberal use of fake snow). As both an image and a metaphor, set against an all grey and empty performing space, all of these uses work so well. Director, designer and large slab of metal can justly consider themselves the stars of the show. (Though hopefully the latter is not sentient enough to do so.)

This is doubly true since the quality of the acting is frankly a bit patchy. Whilst the actors in lead roles are generally excellent, particularly Ian Hughes and his amazing moustache as a principled-without-caricature Roberts and Tomos Eames as his firey-est critic from amongst the men, a proper scenestealer of a performance actually, the quality in the smaller parts and ensemble isn’t always so high.

Ultimately Strife is a play that was unlikely to ever get me that excited but this production is very definitely worth your time and money, even if you only go for the near faultless visuals and impressive direction. And here’s hoping this is the first of many for actor/director Bertie Carvel too. It certainly deserves to be.

Strife is at the Minerva at Chichester Festival Theatre until 10th September.

Theatre Review: Hamlet

Guilty confessions of a Shakespeare fan: until this year I had never seen Hamlet live.

Even worse, I’d never seen it in any format all the way through in one go. I’ve seen various film versions (including to the surprise of literally no one the epic Branagh version) but never made it all the way through without having to take a ‘holy shit this really is long’ tea break.

My Hamlet live v plates were recently removed courtesy of the RSC’s brilliant current production, starring Paapa Essiedu in the title role.

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The exciting and noteworthy thing about that casting is that Essiedu is actually the right age to be playing Hamlet who is after all supposed to be a student. Understandably given how huge the part is it’s normally played by someone considerably older and with more experience under their belt, but giving it to a (relative) youngster newbie breathes new life into the whole production. It feels edgier, more current and more dangerous.

It of course helps that Essiedu is spectacularly good in the part. His Hamlet is a sassy, electric, maniac; all quick wit, sharp tongue and twitchiness. There’s not so much as a hint of the stately grandeur that Hamlet is usually afforded (and the same goes for the whole production, not just this central performance), he is played exactly as he should be: an angry, intelligent, vengeful young man. The big soliloquies benefit from this particularly as there’s a real effort from Essiedu to concentrate on their meaning and not their world famous language (quoth my mother, who did Hamlet in school: “I’ve never really understood ‘Alas poor Yorick’ until tonight”). It’s more revelatory than it probably should be.

Essiedu is backed up by a strong ensemble of whom my personal favourites were the ever excellent Cyril Nri as a funny but not pantomime Polonius and Clarence Smith as a pleasingly nasty and dramatic Claudius. As seems to be the pattern with my theatre trips at the moment, I also saw a brace of understudies stepping effortlessly up to the plate in leading roles but as I lost the sheet telling me who they were somewhere on the Chiltern mainline train route I can’t credit them. They were all very good - understudies rock.

Directed by one of my favourites, Simon Godwin, on reliably excellent form, the pace of this production is perfect. The three hours positively fly by - which when you consider the first act is an arse numbing one hour forty five is no mean feat - and putting the interval in the middle of a line is a ballsy move that pays off with an increase in tension and shove of momentum into the second act. Paul Wills design is lively, anarchic and beautiful. I defy you to find a more colourful production of Hamlet, in any medium, anywhere. The use of music is great and the whole production combines with the performances and treatment of the text to give a refreshingly irreverent take on this most classic of plays. It feels genuinely modern, not in a gimmicky way, but in a natural way that gives the real impression that the play could have been written yesterday.

I was a big fan of this production and, if you can get to Stratford Upon Avon between now and Saturday when the production ends its run, would very highly recommend it. It has been filmed for cinemas so watch out for encore screenings too. Genuinely top drawer stuff.

Hamlet plays at the RSC’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon until Saturday 13th August.

Theatre Review: Groundhog Day

The last time composer Tim Minchin and director Matthew Warchus collaborated a beautiful thing was created: Matilda.

Combining that level of genius with the much loved classic film Groundhog Day is a tantalising prospect which has generated a metric fuck tonne of hype.

But also a fair amount of wobble (technical term). The early previews of the new production, currently playing at the Old Vic, have been beset with problems to the result that many have been cancelled. I understand there have been issues with the financial backing for the proposed Broadway transfer. And Tim Minchin has been doing the rounds of the media giving the usually quite telling ‘I’m not sure what people will think of it’ interviews. Not encouraging signs. Had something gone horribly wrong in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania?

No, is the short answer. This production is a joy.

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Telling the story of weatherman Phil Connors who’s forced to repeat the same day over and over again (does anyone not know this?), Groundhog Day doesn’t seem to me to be an obvious story for a musical. Or not a good musical anyway. It seems to lend itself to a lazy shows where a version of the same song just repeats in different styles. Thankfully, this production is anything but lazy. It is incredibly ambitious.

For a start, the show looks absolutely incredible. The staging is astonishingly busy and complex incorporating frequent by-hand set changes, trapdoors (I assume), elements of puppetry and shadow puppetry, a revolve consisting of at least four concentric mini-revolves and a lot of people on stage at almost every moment. It’s not surprising to see why they’ve had so many problems in getting it going during early previews. That said, now that it is going it is phenomenally impressive and the staging itself is undoubtedly one of the stars of the show in its own right. I would love to sit through a dry run of this show just to see how everything works, which is not something you can say of many shows.

The music is fantastic, which goes without saying since Tim Minchin wrote it. It’s grand, it’s funny, it’s touching when it needs to be and the lyrics are inventive and brilliant. My favourite number, the name of which I sadly don’t know, was the one where the procession of quack doctors and priests trying to ‘cure’ Phil Connors of whatever they perceive his illness to be but ultimately admitting that they have no idea what they’re doing and their interventions are pointless. It’s funnier than I’ve managed to make it sound. Also the song about how depressing small town USA is is a beautiful hymn to cynicism which I for one am wholly on board with. And though there is obviously repetition it’s done in such a way that it is largely non-annoying. Plus the music stands up to repeated listens anyway.

Though the, reasonably small, ensemble is fantastic and hard working this is in many ways a one man show. It certainly relies on its leading man extremely heavily which, added to the fact that the iconic Bill Murray of course played the lead in the film, makes for what must be one of the more high pressure jobs in theatreland. Broadway import Andy Karl is the man on whose shoulders this all falls and, thankfully, he is more than up to the job. His is an absolute belter of a performance; genuinely outstanding. Dripping with charisma, he is a joyously enjoyable dickhead who transforms into a touchingly enjoyable Nice Man as the show progresses with a plausibility and emotional range that the show utterly depends on. He makes you invest in the story and root for Connors even when he’s awful. He also has a great voice, which helps in a musical. Meaty supporting characters are few, but Carlyss Peer is a great foil for Karl as his idealistic love interest and another stellar voice.

I loved this show. It’s a huge, ambitious, silly, dirty, funny, joyful riot of a thing that deserves to be a smash hit here and on Broadway and make a huge star of its leading man. Snap up one of the final remaining tickets quickly.

Groundhog Day plays at the Old Vic until September 17th.

Theatre Review: Show Boat

They say the best theatre teaches us things about ourselves that we didn’t know.

Well I learned something about myself whilst watching Show Boat and that is that I cannot hear the song Ol’ Man River sung live without bursting into tears. And not like gentle, ladylike tears; like full on wracking sobs.

There will be no beating about the bush in this review: the Sheffield Crucible’s West End transfer production of Show Boat is genuinely exceptional and you - yes you - need to see it. I’m being unusually direct (meandering jokes and unrelated asides will resume next post) because, for whatever reason, this show doesn’t seem to have found an audience. And that’s an absolute travesty. It genuinely makes me quite angry.

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Directed by the Crucible’s outgoing (and, excitingly, Chichester Festival’s incoming) Artistic Director Daniel Evans, Show Boat is just a huge, glitzy, old Broadway joy of a show. For the uninitiated, it tells the story of the cast of characters who live and work aboard and around a traditional Mississippi floating theatre boat - a Show Boat, if you will. What must have made the show revolutionary in its day is that it deals with both the white and the black characters within that story equally and honestly. It is a show that, for all its old school charm and hokey marketing (and herein one suspects lies the problem in it finding an audience), is depressingly relevant in its portrayal of race relations and black rights. For this reason alone it deserves to be seen.

And then there’s the music. Ol’ Man River is of course the big number (I’m tearing up just writing the title, this is ridiculous), and reprised several times, but there is so much glorious music in this show that it makes my head spin. Can’t Help Lovin Dat Man is another highlight, as are Bill and Life Upon the Wicked Stage. But this show shares with Gypsy a feeling of a Broadway Greatest Hits album. If you know your musicals a bit you’ll recognise so many of the songs, even if you didn’t know they came from this show. They are beautifully arranged, sung and played in this production too. Musically, I this is the best show I’ve seen this year and in the top three of shows I’ve seen ever.

The staging of this production is also outstanding. The set revolves around a life size (ish) three story recreation of the back of the titular boat which retracts when the action moves onto land, as it does in act two, and is otherwise fairly simply dressed. It’s so effective and the lighting in particular is just flat out beautiful. As anyone who’s seen a Crucible musical production before will have come to expect, the choreography (courtesy of Alistair David) is amazing, especially in the big group numbers. The costumes are perfect.

Finally, this superlative production has a superlative cast. Show Boat is sort of an ensemble piece and there is strength in depth on view all over the place here. Gina Beck, owner of one of the best voices in the West End, and Broadway import Chris Peluso are on superb form as the doomed lovers at the centre of the story, even if Peluso’s character must be one of the least likeable ever written for a musical. Danny Collins, more often seen in Matthew Bourne ballets, shows off considerable comedic chops as well as the fantastic moves you’d expect in one of the less serious lead roles. Sandra Marvin is an outstanding Queenie. And, on the night I saw it, superstar understudy Tosh Wanogho-Maud was a stunning Joe, squeezing every inch of feeling out of Ol’ Man River.

So, yeah, I loved this show. I loved everything about it. And you need to see it before it closes early (ridiculous) at the end of August. There are excellent ticket deals around. Use them.

Show Boat plays at the New London Theatre (nicer on the inside than it looks!) until 27th August.

Theatre Review: No Villain

What do early Arthur Miller play No Villain and Conservative party conference have in common?

I’ll tell you. They are two of the only situations in life into which I feel like I could be dropped with no explanation and still instantly know where I was.

Tory conference is, as a sociological experiment, an amazing place. So many suits, so much champagne and so many hyphenated surnames. It’s the most frighteningly homogenous place I’ve ever been (for work, I hasten to add) but there is a sort of reassurance in the fact that it’s basically the same as it has always been and will always be.

(Stick with me here I am going somewhere with this.)

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No Villain, currently playing in the dinky Studio 2 at the Trafalgar Studios, gave me a similar feeling of reassuring familiarity. A recently discovered piece, No Villain is the first play Miller ever wrote and is, fairly obviously, semi-autobiographical. It is also a prototype for almost every play he wrote subsequently, especially Death of a Salesman. Had I been dropped into that theatre with no explanation, I would certainly known I was watching Miller. I may well have thought that it was Death of a Salesman. Thankfully, here the similarities with Tory conference begin and end.

Because unlike Tory conference, I actually really enjoyed No Villain. Admittedly, if you’ve seen Death of a Salesman you do get a slight sense of deja vu, both from the writing and the characterisation. If you don’t like Death of a Salesman I can see that this would be an issue for you, but I fucking love that beautiful bleak thing so for me it wasn’t at all. And the work is no less powerful for being something slightly less than original. There’s the same sense of middle aged anguish at hard work amounting to failure and of youthful idealism and yearning for change in Villain as in Salesman and in both cases the inevitable collision between the two is heartbreaking and dramatic. I’ve always felt that the emotional heart of Miller’s writing comes from the fact it’s rooted in ordinary, plausible human experience. No Villain is, for my money, the most ordinary and plausible of his stories and for that is all the more powerful. Some of the more lengthy crow-barring in of Marxist theory could quite happily be cut - whoever heard of a new writer delivering a perfect play anyway? - but strip that away and the story at the heart of this piece is incredibly strong.

Some slightly wandering accents aside, this production is helped in its power by a fantastic, small, ensemble cast. There’s really nowhere to hide in Studio 2 - a stage the size of a small kitchen with three rows of seats around three sides - and the cast work with that really well. George Turvey as Ben, the non-intellectual son who nonetheless is won over by the appeal of his intellectual brother’s Communism, is a particular highlight turning in a performance of real emotional conflict. Nesba Crenshaw is also great, and exceptionally watchable, as his highly strung mother. I found David Bromley’s Abe (Villain’s proto-Willy Loman) a little bit more hit and miss, but when he did hit he was excellent and had the perfect air of impotent rage and confusion that this character requires.

Necessarily for such a small space, on the face of it there’s not much to the design of this show but what there is is done very well. I found the simple, quick changes between the play’s two sets - the family home and the family factory - very impressive given the confines in which they had to work. It’s low key amazing what they manage to achieve with a table, a couple of chairs and some curtain rails of ‘fur’ coats.

I really enjoyed No Villain and would recommend it to anyone, especially given the ticket price range and the fact it’s only 80 minutes long. However, if you hate Death of a Salesman there’s nothing for you here (and also you’re dead inside).

No Villain plays at Studio 2 at the Trafalgar Studios until 23rd July. Be quick.

Theatre Review: Into the Woods

It is very rare these days that I go and see something at the theatre that I genuinely haven’t seen before.

That’s not to say that I don’t see some innovative and original stuff, but something altogether different from anything I’ve ever seen before? Very, very rare.

Enter stage left(field), the Fiasco Theatre Company. An American (where else?), actor led company, Fiasco have rocked up to the Menier Chocolate Factory with a transfer of their extraordinary - in every sense - production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

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And I have just never seen anything like it.

To say this production is stripped back would be something of an understatement. There is no scenery, no orchestra, minimal props and costumes. The eleven-strong cast play multiple parts, provide all the music and sound effects and create the scenery. Most strikingly of all, Sondheim’s rich score is distilled down to its bones, played on a single piano with support from the various instruments the cast play. It sounds so beautiful, completely fresh and utterly magical.

The way that the company work within these confines is remarkable. The use of a handful of props to create so many different characters and story threads is brilliant. The way that ‘special effects’ are created using basically nothing is incredible (the shadow show that creates the death of the giant is particularly beautiful). Each of the multiple parts that each actor plays is wonderfully brought to life with the change of perhaps one item of costume, a change of accent and a smile.

After a while you start to wonder what the fuck other musical productions are doing with all of their sets, costumes and fancy ornamentation. And still not resulting in anything half this wonderful. This production is all about the music and that is such a revelation.

The other thing this production about is pure, sheer joy. You can tell that every single member of Fiasco’s company loves this show and loves performing. The wonder of putting on a show like this in a venue as teeny tiny as the Menier is that the audience is close enough to really be able to appreciate that. Though quite honestly I think you could put this company in Wembley Stadium and their joy would still shine through. And I would argue that at the moment we could all use some more joy. There’s hardly a surfeit of it around.

That said, this version of Into the Woods isn’t the Disney version. It is dark, it is sad and it is tragic. The way the more sombre moods are portrayed through the music is heartbreakingly beautiful.

I would normally now list the performances that I particularly enjoyed but this is a genuine ensemble piece and I particularly enjoyed every single person’s contribution. All eleven cast members are incredible. I refuse to believe that there is a more hardworking or more talented cast anywhere in theatreland. There just can’t be. They act, they sing, they dance, they move props around, they play instruments, they direct the production (well two of them do); I’m surprised they didn’t sell the programmes and ice creams as well. And they enjoy it so fucking much, which really is rather more revolutionary than it should be.

I can’t praise or proselytise about this production enough. There aren’t the words for it. Go and see it yourself and I guarantee you’ll fall as much in love as I have.

Into the Woods plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 17th September.