Theatre Review: The Entertainer

In most plays there is a single moment that manages to somehow capture and summarise the whole show. Whether it’s a line, a visual or a special moment in a performance, it’s the one thing that always resolutely sticks in my memory.

In the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s production of The Entertainer, which I’ve been looking forward to for about eighteen months, it’s a song. Unfortunately, that song is called ‘Why Should I Care?’ and sums up in four words pretty much every feeling I had about this crushing disappointment of a show.

The Entertainer tells the story of faded musical hall star Archie Rice, through both his increasingly depressing on stage performances and his increasingly depressing homelife. Set against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis, it’s also a timely representation of a country in irreparable decline. Hashtag Brexit.

This production does a reasonable job of tying up all three parts, mostly through Christopher Oram’s suitably bleak-but-beautiful design that places a proscenium arch as the backdrop to all of the scenes, including those in the Rice family home. Any attempts to milk the contemporary parallels with Brexit are also mercifully side stepped, with the production content to let its audience make the connection for themselves. And the music hall scenes, complete with dancing girls and live band, are impressively done in an Ed-Balls-on-Strictly-but-with-a-knowing-wink sort of way. I enjoyed the Branagh take on Frankie Howard and would gladly see him do some kind of ironic stand up tour with it.

The family scenes, though, are close to the definition of tedious. Where in this family of terrible, boring people is the blistering anti-hero to root for that playwright John Osborne is supposed to be the master of? Is it supposed to be Archie? His daughter? This production left me with no idea and frankly little motivation to try and work it out. The fact that the entire family is some degree of drunk for most, or in some cases all, of the show also didn’t help for me. Drunk people are boring unless you’re one of them. (I had a glass of wine at the interval and enjoyed the second act more - coincidence?)

In the main, the acting is really nothing to write home about but thankfully there is a strong central performance from KenBran to anchor it. He delivers the only real emotional depth in the show, including the sole genuinely poignant moment as Archie disappears into the quiet darkness at the end of the show. His tap dancing is also impressive, as an aside. Even he has been better elsewhere this season though.

It’s really sad to see the Plays at the Garrick season go out with such a whimper rather than the bang it otherwise deserves. Because I’ve really enjoyed the rest of it. Some of it - The Painkiller, The Winter’s Tale, Harlequinade - has been amongst my favourite theatre of the past couple of years and even those that haven’t quite made that list - Red Velvet, Romeo and Juliet - have been eminently enjoyable and great productions.

It’s also been a real thrill to see Kenneth Branagh back on the stage, or at least immediately behind it, and cracking open his address book to deliver some genuinely top drawer casts. And his commitment to keeping ticket prices low - I paid £90 for the entire season, which is just astonishing when you stop and think about it - and capping the fees that agents could charge on them is incredibly admirable. I hope the rest of the West End takes note but suspect that it will not.

But more than anything I hope that the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company season two is announced very soon. Like, yesterday preferably.

The Entertainer is part of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s Plays at the Garrick season and plays until 12th November.

Theatre Review: Young Chekhov

Saturday was a glorious, sunny day in London; possibly the last real day of summer. Because nothing says summer like angsty Russians, I decided to spend it sat inside watching over seven and a half hours of Chekhov.

Unless you’ve been living under a theatrical rock, you’ll have realised by now that I’m talking about the NT transfer of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Young Chekhov, and a three show day thereof to boot.

I’m not a natural Chekhov fan tbh. I find I have to work quite hard to be engaged in ‘period’ Russian drama, as my achingly slow progress through my current quest to read War and Peace will attest. However Young Chekhov is utterly brilliant, living up to its considerable hype completely. The three plays presented - Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull - show that there’s much more to Chekhov than suicides and people with undecipherable names, though there are plenty of both, and I was really pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed (possibly the wrong word) the whole day.

The first play in the trilogy is, perhaps slightly unfortunately, also the best: Platonov. For me, this was a revelation. Bluntly, I didn’t know that Chekhov did comedy or at least comedy that isn’t just satire. There is satire in Platonov - notably around the corruption and greed of the older generation - but mostly the comedy is much broader, occasionally even slapstick. More importantly though, it’s very, very funny. I had no idea I could love a Chekhov play but, man, I loved Platonov.

Platonov also gives us our first introduction to what is arguably the star of Young Chekhov: the absolutely sky high production values. I don’t like throwing around the P word in reviews, but I think these productions might actually be, technically, perfect. The staging in particular is extraordinary. I’ve seen some amazing things done on/with/to the Olivier’s stage but filling it with water to create a series of lakes and streams under an elevated set is by some measure the most amazing. The staging is particularly dramatically used in Platonov, with the rapid arrival of a railway line in logic defying speed. Director Jonathan Kent and his team of designers must win some/all of the awards.

Another common theme of Young Chekhov’s success that also emerges in Platonov is the strength of the cast; across the three plays surely the best ensemble in London right now by some distance. In Platonov though it’s James McArdle in the title role who runs away with the show; a perfect (there’s that word again) mix of self loathing, sass and lazy charisma who handles the comedy like a pro. If his performance doesn’t make it into my top ten come the end of the year I’ll be very surprised. Nina Sosanya provides another highlight as a fiery, feisty and fierce Anna Petrovna, one of Platonov’s many love interests and a perfect foil for McArdle’s chaotic charm. The whole cast is a riot of energy and fun though and Platonov is a genuinely outstanding production.

Ivanov comes next in the trilogy and, for my money, is by far the weakest of the three plays. It’s very much a play of two halves: a raucous satire on the morals of ‘modern’ Russian society which is written with so little subtlety that I came very close to hating it and the more angsty, pensive drama which the titular character embodies and which I found much more effective, if a little ‘Chekhov by numbers’. A slightly simpler staging, though still with the fantastic water effects, and a much stiller energy pervade here framing a fantastically strong central performance from Geoffrey Streatfeild, one of my absolute faves. Working with a character who is surely one of the least well rounded and least sympathetic in all of theatre, Streatfeild captures Ivanov’s sense of impotent rage and self disgust so well. The scene where he finally explodes at his long suffering wife (Sosanya’s second iteration of Anna Petrovna) is electric. There is strong support from Jonathan Coy as Ivanov’s friend/new love interest’s father and by far the most interesting character in the play, caught between a wife he can’t stand and a society that won’t let him escape her, desperately trying to do the right thing for his daughter and his friend. I will never love Ivanov, the play or the character, but I’m glad that I got to see this production of it. A production this good can really elevate any source material.

And finally, The Seagull. For me, this was the nearest to what I was expecting Young Chekhov to be: angsty but intelligent and with the sort of interesting ideas behind it that I felt were missing in Ivanov. Primarily, this is a play about the old crushing the hopes and prospects of the young - depressingly relevant in Brexit Britain. It’s also a play about people refusing to realise their own mediocrity, insert your own Andrea Leadsom/Michael Gove joke here I suppose. Again, fantastic production values and acting abound with the sublime Anna Chancellor stealing scenes left, right and centre as the manipulative, arch and ultimately quite tragic Arkadina. Geoffrey Streatfeild is also great again, completing his double header of unsympathetic men as the really quite unpleasant but nonetheless compelling Tregorin. And shoutout to Olivia Vinall who clocks up her third romantic lead of the day - someone get that woman some wine! - with her best performance as an achingly sad Nina.

Overall, then, three fantastic productions - one genuinely outstanding - that are all 100% worth your time. Even if you think, like me, that you don’t really like Chekhov these productions are technically good enough to merit seeing them anyway. But hurry up, tickets are almost gold dust at this point. And justifiably so.

Young Chekhov is at the Olivier Theatre at the NT until October 8th.

Theatre Review: Kenny Morgan

Play-ja vu: the feeling you get watching a play that’s very similar to something you’ve seen before.

I wonder if there’s a separate faux French term for the feeling when you’re watching a play the story of which is actually the basis for something you’ve seen before?

Kenny Morgan, currently playing at the Arcola Theatre, tells the true story of the titular character and his ill fated relationship with the playwright Terence Rattigan. More interestingly, maybe, it is the real life inspiration for Rattigan’s masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea. Actually inspiration is probably not quite the right word, because DBS (as I shall henceforth be calling it because laziness) tells Morgan’s story to the letter. With one major plot change and the obvious difference in the gender of the central character, there are precious few difference between the two plays. So it’s not that surprising that, despite playwright Mike Poulton’s protestations to the contrary, a good chunk of Kenny Morgan is a scene-for-scene remake of DBS. Whether you think this is a bad thing or not will depend on your view of DBS; as previously noted I love that play and so seeing it in its ‘true life’ form was fascinating.

For all that the plot is near identical, Kenny Morgan does well to draw out some different thematic points. In contrast to the NT’s huge, glamorous DBS the Arcola uses it’s bijou performance space to create something much grimier. This emphasises Kenny’s ‘fall’ from Rattigan’s glamorous toyboy to slumming it in a bedsit in Camden and brings class as an issue into this piece in a way it isn’t in DBS, opening up another philosophical angle since the exploration of gender is removed. The destructive nature of secrecy and shame (and a lack thereof) is also played up as a major theme in this piece. The way that Rattigan’s secrecy (and shame?) around his gay relationships and Alec Lennox’s - Kenny’s new boyfriend - lack of any discretion and certainly any shame around his variously-orientated affairs conspire to destroy Kenny is a really interesting idea that is beautifully explored.

This is a fantastically classy, evocative production too. The set may be, as previously noted, smaller and less ambitious than the NT’s equivalent but it’s no less effective for that. Sound and lighting are cleverly and sparingly used to emphasise the sparseness and coldness of the flat - and the relationship - that Kenny has found himself in. Director Lucy Bailey paces the production consistently well without rushing it, particularly in the big confrontation scenes. And Poulton’s writing is great, creating not only a faithful homage to Rattigan but also a clipped, formal, bleak and tragic world all of its own.

The production also benefits from a first rate cast, from which Paul Keating and Simon Dutton particularly standout as Kenny and Rattigan respectively. Keating creates a painfully relatable, conflicted Kenny desperate for love and acceptance and finding it, as far as he can see, nowhere. Dutton’s Rattigan is a great contrast, achingly charismatic but just hinting at a secret sadness somewhere behind the public image. George Irving also deserves a mention for a pleasingly unreadable Mr Ritter, the mysteriously struck off doctor character who is given a rather more rounded role in this than his DBS equivalent to great effect. (Also he was Mr Meyer in Holby City and for this I will always love him.)

I really enjoyed Kenny Morgan and would go as far as to say it is worth trekking to fucking Dalston for (to the extent anything ever is). A really interesting piece in its own right, moreso if you’ve seen The Deep Blue Sea as well, and a great production. Also try the orange and polenta cake in their cafe. It’s lush.

Kenny Morgan plays at the Arcola Theatre until 15th October.

Theatre Review: Iron

In a game of word association based on the phrase ‘the Lake District’, ‘taut prison drama’ may not be the obvious response.

How many theatres have this on their doorstep?

It is currently a valid one though, thanks to the excellent Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. A fucking adorable theatre - or theatres actually, since it has a small main auditorium and a teeny tiny studio - which is 100% worth a visit if you’re in the area (for the lemon meringue cake alone, frankly), TBTL is currently staging Iron. Written by Rona Munro, of The James Plays fame, Iron tells the story of Faye, a woman serving a life sentence for murdering her husband, and Josie, her long lost daughter who comes to visit her in prison for the first time in 15 years in an attempt to learn the truth about her mother and her past. What follows is a fantastic few hours of genuinely gripping, surprisingly non-bleak, psychodrama and one of the most exciting pieces of acting I’ve seen all year.

Performed on the traverse in the aforementioned teeny tiny studio, to say Iron is minimally staged would be something of an understatement. Appropriately so, though, given the entire piece is set in a prison. The performance space (approximately the size of a couple of large dining tables) is cleverly used as, variously, Faye’s cell, the prison yard and for most of the action the visiting room. The bare concrete, harsh white lighting and prison bars at both ends of the space are simply done but very effective and the sparse use of props is distressingly realist. The very occasional use of music, such as for Faye’s euphoric dance of joy at the end of act one where it looks like mother and daughter will live (relatively) happily ever after, is an interesting punctuation that works really well. There is nowhere to hide in this space, for audience or actor.

The play itself is great too. Munro has a great ear for dialogue, especially ‘Scottish’ dialogue, and this piece is no exception. It is sparky, quick, earthy and real; dealing with the moments of humour as well as the (much more numerous) moments of drama and anger. The plotting is razor sharp; twisty without losing its grit or its grounding. She has created some fantastic characters too, not just Faye and Josie but the two prison guards who have much less to do but are rounded and interesting characters nonetheless.

This is Faye’s play though, or more accurately Elizabeth Marsh’s who plays her. ‘Plays’ is something of an undersell in this case actually because holy hell this is a performance and a half. I can’t think of a performance I’ve seen all year that was as exciting as this. It’s one of those rare occasions where you watch someone in a part and it feels like they are that part. And it’s magical. Marsh doesn’t shy away from Faye, a huge part who never leaves the stage and has well over half of the lines, and doesn’t shy away from presenting her as a complicated, morally ambiguous, figure. She doesn’t play up for sympathy or try to present her as in any way evil. She’s just human, for all her issues and problems, and this is something that’s not as easy as it sounds to achieve with this part in this play. Marsh owns this production thoroughly. It was a privilege to trespass into her world for a few hours.

She is supported ably by Helen Macfarlane as a naive but nuanced and fiercely protective Josie. Roger Delves-Broughton and Rebecca Carrie round out the cast as the two prison guards that constitute Faye’s social world, the latter of whom has an irritatingly wandering accent that rather takes the sheen off an otherwise good performance.

I loved this show. A lot. It’s as good as almost anything you’ll see in London but because it’s not in London it’s infinitely cheaper and has better cake portion sizes (huge). Should you be in the area, or if you fancy a break to the stunning Lakes, then you must see this.

Iron plays in the Studio at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, in rep until 4th November.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.