PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Phèdre

Phèdre - NT Live
National Theatre, Waterloo

The National Theatre’s latest initiative to bring theatre to the masses sees a live version of Jean Racine’s Phèdre broadcasted to cinema audiences worldwide.

King Theseus, the King of Athens, has been missing for months. His wife Phèdre is left to look after their children and, believing Theseus to be dead, her nurse Oenone convinces her to admit her rampant lust for stepson Hippolytus. However, Hippolytus is in love with Aricia, the grand-daughter of Erechteus, the former King of Athens─ who Theseus despises. When Theseus returns from the underworld, this collection of guilty passions rear their ugly head.

Dominic Cooper plays the implacable Hippolytus, who rises to the challenge of conveying some of the play’s most complex emotions: seething hatred, stifled passion and sombre austerity. Still young in years, Cooper definitively illustrates that his repertoire can extend to more mature roles. The imposing authority of his father Theseus is captured effectively by Stanley Townsend’s incredible booming voice. However, any hint that this figure could have had numerous female conquests and slain yet more monsters, is somewhat mitigated by his rather incongruous attire.

The lady of the moment is evidently Dame Helen Mirren. As Phèdre, she has to play the fine line between anguish and madness, without letting it seem histrionic. For the most part, I think she does this and excels in heightening the emotional intensity of the long monologues to maximum effect. As her aid, Margaret Tyzack’s Oenone is suitably witty in places. Ruth Negga also plays Aricia with a perceptive understanding of both the character’s tenderness and emotional fortitude.

In the pre-theatre introduction, Phèdre’s director Nicholas Hytner comments that NT Live affords an audience the luxury of seeing the actors close up, of witnessing their every move. Certainly, every expression, every tremble, every grimace, even every intake of breath, is on display. However, although Ted Hughes’ translation is a magnificent achievement, rendering Racine’s words readily accessible to audiences, the overall production is let down by lack of pauses and lack of an interval. As an incredibly intense piece of theatre, there is the sensation that much of the power and visceral emotion that each actor so carefully builds up, becomes lost. This is illustrated by John Shrapnel’s final monologue as Thérmène. Having recounted with great vigour Hippolytus’ death, the power of Shrapnel’s performance loses some of its magnitude as the story goes on, just that bit too long, particularly for cinema audiences’ to bear.

NT Live has pioneered a wonderful project to bring theatre to the cinema and a talented cast render a compelling production of Racine’s powerful work. Hytner describes the project’s aim “to convey something of the excitement of live theatre to the world.” This is certainly where the project succeeds, although it would be interesting to see the production in the theatre itself, as there is no denying that expectations and experience would be different─ and certainly more powerful ─when an audience sees these actors in the flesh.

Ruth Collins

Phèdre will run at the Lyttleton Theatre until 27th August

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: A Skull in Connemara

A Skull in Connemara - Love & Madness: The Madness Season
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith

The ensemble is one of the most creatively perfect states in which to develop true works of theatre. Sneer as much as you want as you advocate the constant change around of casts bringing in a breath of fresh air, but Konstantin Stanislavski was definitely on to something as he preached the unique and rich experience of devising pieces surrounded by those you are familiar with, those you know deeply, and those whose feelings you know almost intuitively. A Skull in Connemara, the third offering from Love & Madness' season at the Riverside Studios, gives us an insight into just how effective an ensemble can be. It also shows us that it is not only the actor's familiarity with each other that propels the performance forward, but also the audience's familiarity with the actors.

For the latest installment in The Madness Season, the ensemble turns to the violent writings of Martin McDonagh with his tale of smashing skulls and swilling poitin set in the rural wilderness of Ireland's Galway. Living in the small, insular community is Mick, a widower who has the unenviable job of digging up skeletons from the local graveyard and disposing of the skulls as he sees fit. For seven years he has been fighting off rumours that rather than accidentally kill his wife in a drink driving incident, he, in fact, murdered her in cold blood and as her grave is unearthed to reveal no skeleton, suspicions are raised once again.

Dan Mullane is excellent as the dark, brooding Mick, dividing opinions and making it impossible to tell whether he is a wife butcherer or merely the victim of harmful gossip. His troubled face is deeply intriguing as it appears to hide many secrets and can transform from a light smile into a tormented grimace within a matter of seconds. Playing a side-kick of sorts is Jack Bence as Mairtin. Bence first enters the stage with an accent more reminiscent of Father Ted's Mrs Doyle than a genuine Galway boy and a facial expression all too similar to David Platt when he was going through the terrible teens. But as the play progresses, you really warm to his portrayal of the young tearaway. Bence manages to aptly convey the dark humour of McDonagh's text playing with both the comic and morbid sections - massaging skulls as if they were breasts is not for the fainthearted. He's clearly better suited to the comic timing than the more serious pieces making up the remainder of the repertoire.

Mick and Mairtin are joined by local busybody Maryjohnny, Lucia McAnespie, whose obsession with bingo is seen right down to the marks of highlighter pen decorating her hands. Once again McAnespie takes on her role with true eloquence, as she plays the doddery old woman without a hint of a caricature. Likewise, Iarla McGowan's useless village policeman Thomas is both hilarious and menacing as he tries to prove Mick's guilt, but ends up appearing more like PC Plum than Columbo. With perfect comic timing, McGowan is sublime right down to his asthma pump.

With a detailed, clear and concise direction from Catriona Craig - with the exception of a couple of long-winded and rather over-complicated scene changes - A Skull in Connemara is a gripping, entertaining and deeply macabre production.

Phil Burt

A Skull in Connemara runs in rep until 26th July

PERFORMANCE OVERVIEW: The Bridge Project

A Winter's Tale & The Cherry Orchard - The Bridge Project
The Old Vic, Waterloo

“O, call back yesterday, bid time return” is the quotation which lines the safety curtain of The Bridge Project’s premiere year’s offerings. This rather apt quotation from Richard III alludes to central themes in both plays: the passing of time and regret. Choosing to direct an Anglo-American cast in a production of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, is an impressive undertaking for director Sam Mendes, and certainly promises to be something special.

Combining Shakespearean and Chekhovian repertoires has long been a favoured challenge to theatre directors, for, despite living and writing centuries apart, on opposite sides of Europe in different languages and even alphabets, a number of parallels can be drawn between the playwrights’ works. Indeed, the broadness of the scope is indicative of The Bridge Project’s overarching aim to create a transatlantic partnership which transcends the boundaries of theatre and enriches the stage with the best of what UK and US acting has to offer.

Simon Russell Beale heads the all-star line-up, playing Lophakin in The Cherry Orchard and King Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. As Lopakhin, Russell Beale exudes a suitable sense of exasperation as he watches Ranevskaya and her clan fail to save their estate from soon passing into other hands. As a descendant of the peasantry and serfs, the tables are turned when Lopakhin himself buys the estate, both usurping the wealthy landowners’ status and depriving them of their most prized possession: the bountiful cherry orchard. Russell Beale draws out Lopakhin’s vengeance in a cathartic scene where he storms around the stage flinging chairs left, right and centre, as Ranevskaya, superbly played by Sinéad Cusack, looks on in dismay.

Yet it is as the brooding Leontes that I feel Russell Beale’s vitriol is well and truly unleashed. Consumed by jealousy, he believes his wife Hermione, played expertly here by Rebecca Hall, is having an affair with his childhood friend Polixenes, played by Josh Hamilton. Leontes banishes Polixenes, throws Hermione into prison and orders his menservants to dispose of the baby daughter who he believes is Polixenes’ child, not his own. In contrast to the resigned and somewhat powerless Varya in The Cherry Orchard, Hall’s beguiling Hermione shows strength as she stands up to her husband. The trial scene, which sees Russell Beale and Hall confront one another from opposite ends of a long wooden table, is at once powerful and visually effective. Both actors gauge the level of visceral emotion perfectly, holding it back to make every line uttered retain the necessary resonance Shakespeare originally intended. As Varya, Hall’s quiet exasperation is equally entrancing and the audience feels her frustration at the almost absurd nature of Lopakhin’s amorous indecisiveness─ a man of business, when it comes to love he is almost as hopeless as the ungainly Yepikhodov played by Tobias Segal.

For although this may not be the most popular of Chekhov-Shakespeare pairings, the comic and tragic elements of both plays are drawn out and certainly neither play falls into a single genre: both have elements of intense tragedy, inane comedy and even farce. Sir Tom Stoppard’s commissioned translation of The Cherry Orchard is based on a literal translation by Helen Rappaport. Without doubt, Stoppard’s version draws out the satire of Chekhov’s work, illustrating that these characters’ concerns are not so far removed from our own in the twenty-first century. Indeed, as Mendes’ interpretations of both these plays capably illustrate, the issues of economic uncertainty, bereavement, jealousy, regret, love and desire are emotions of everyday life very much in the here and now. Moreover, as both Paul Jesson, as Ranevskaya’s loquacious brother Gaev, and Richard Easton's bumbling old serf Firs, skilfully highlight, what Stoppard and Mendes´ collaboration definitively succeeds is in revealing the characters’ myopic view of the world and how none of the characters listen to anyone but themselves. It is only a shame that Morven Christie’s Anya lacked the necessary emotional intensity and vigour originally conceived by Chekhov.

Wary of being too critical about the blend of accents in this multi-national cast, it will suffice to say that occasionally the American accent, and at times regional UK accents, seem somewhat out of place. However, any jarring detected does not detrimentally detract from the overall effectiveness or fluidity of the performance. Taking Dakin Matthew - Simeonov in Chekhov's play - as a prime example, there was no attempt to hide his American accent, but in a strange way the prevalence of the accent itself succeeded in accentuating the almost caricature-like figure of this old brazen fool. Overall, Stoppard’s translation works for this production but occasional references, such as when the hopeless Yepikhodov is nicknamed “catastrophe corner”, seem rather misplaced and perhaps not the most judicious of translation decisions.

The Winter’s Tale also presents some problems, particularly in Act Four when the pastoral scene disintegrates into a farcically anachronistic affair involving erotic dancing with balloons. However, a certain measure of modernisation also works well: Ethan Hawke’s Autolycus comes across as a mix between Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and Dickens’ Fagin and he certainly gets his fair share of laughs. Also playing Chekhov’s perpetual student Trofimov, Hawke is perhaps in one sense one of the most prevalent examples of how this project proves to be an exercise in which actors can show off their range and rise to different challenges. Sinéad Cusack also deserves particular mention for her utterly captivating performances: proving to be a compelling Paulina in The Winter´s Tale, she really shines in reflecting all the forlorn sadness of the grieving and emotionally unstable Ranevskaya whose dwelling on the past prevents her from coming to terms with the present.

This exciting venture, although not without its faults, certainly lives up to expectations and the combination of the calibre acting, creative stage design and judicious direction creates two very fine productions. Although logistically challenging, with a 50:50 split between cast and a production team spanning the British Isles and the USA, perhaps it is innovative ventures like this which are exactly what will keep the theatre industry afloat during these difficult times.

A Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard run in rep until 15th August

Ruth Collins

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: S-27

S-27
Finborough Theatre, Earls Court

Drawing on prison records and interviews with inmates at Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia, playwright Sarah Grochala depicts the bleak reality of the totalitarian Khmer Rouge regime. Inspired by Nhem En’s photographs of Tuol Sleng prisoners and the works of Van Nath, whose commissioned paintings of dictator Pol Pot ensured his survival in Tuol Sleng, the play challenges human reactions towards something as deeply inhumane as genocide.

May, played by Pippa Nixon, is a prison photographer, charged with the unpleasant task of photographing prisoners shortly before they are executed. The play sees May take picture after picture, her sense of compassion towards the prisoners increasingly tested as personal relationships come into play. She and fellow prison worker, June, here played by Brooke Kinsella, spare no emotion: for they know that they are there to get the job done and if they fail, or are seen to fail, they will be accused of sabotage by ‘the Organisation’ and subject to the same fate as these inmates.

Nixon delivers a strong performance as May, from the cold-hearted way in which she confronts the first prisoner, the audience gradually sees her cold exterior crumble as she is reminded of guilt and family loyalties. On seeing her former boyfriend Col, played by Tom Reed, this emotional detachment gives way altogether as she tries to prevent him from exiting the room to meet his inevitable death. Her fear of the regime subsides and realising the chemistry still between them, their frantic sexual encounter signals her decision to escape the confines of the prison.

With great deftness, Kinsella shows the trajectory from June’s role as May’s obedient subordinate to being the powerful one behind the camera as May sits in the chair, awaiting her fate. Extremely intimidating when confronting Col, Kinsella straddles him as he sits defenceless and head down and she nonchalantly burns his arm repeatedly with the butt of her cigarette. The small space is a suitably intense environment, but Kinsella also achieves in drawing out Gronchala’s humour by showing her ineptness with the camera such that May, now in the role as the prisoner, has to show her how to use it properly.

It is not difficult to see why Grochala’s play won the first Amnesty International Protect the Human Playwriting Competition in 2007 and the Finsborough triumphs again in bringing an important issue to the stage and playing host to one of the country’s most promising young playwrights.

Ruth Collins

S-27 runs until 4th July

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: The Bay

The Bay – Fragments
The Space, Isle of Dogs

At times of social unrest and political disputes, it is often left to the stage to become society's mouthpiece, voicing discontent and providing a forum for a variety of stories and opinions. And so, with questions of what it is to be British coming to the political fore over the last few weeks, no time is more apt for Fragments to be presenting this response to the 2002 murder of a New Age traveller.

Shane Dempsey's autobiographical story of a group of Romany Gypsies settling in idyllic coastal Ireland, is born out of a number of improvisations with students from East 15 School of Acting which have been formalised here in Hannah Burke's script. The story, - based on the aforementioned true incident - tells a tale of the human need for “somewhere to call home” . Territorial nature leads to the murder of a local man after he returns from prison to find his beloved taking part in a drug-fueled new age marriage ceremony with a Romany man.

The Space is intimate and, for this production, set in the round meaning there's little room for escape. From the outset there is an incredible intensity and energy from the actors without exception, breathing heavily into the silent space as the audience enter.

The play is made up of large physical set pieces involving most of the cast with recorded music being pumped loudly through the theatre, interspersed with a mainly duologue-based text. The physical theatre aspects create a spectacular effect, given the audience a feeling of chaos, but, importantly, chaos that is controlled. Burke's text is at times witty and beautiful but unfortunately, I feel as though the two are never quite married.

It feels as though there is a gap between the two elements - the actors channel the manic energy gained from the physicality into most of the text, making it difficult to keep up with and comprehend. A greater variety of levels would have given the text more room to breath. However, saying that, a special commendation should be given to Conrad Sharp's grounded and cutting portrayal of Asis, a Romany elder, which brought a much needed level of control to the proceedings.

The company's economical use of set is commendable and innovative. Four car tyres provide parameters for settings, chairs, toys and a vat of magic “mushy brew”. The use of music is personal to the director's real life experiences of the story and works well. It does seem a shame not to use the guitar and djembe drum more often. They do make brief cameos and appear to fit succinctly with the 'Total Theatre' style of the rest of the show.

The lengthy finale of this show is an interpretative movement piece leading to the climactic murder scene as played through the eyes of a young man having his first trip on magic mushrooms. It is a remarkable performance piece created by the company and manages to draw your eye to all the right places while telling the story in minute detail.

I was shocked to learn the entire show was put together with just seven days rehearsal. Taking this into account, and the freedom director Shane Dempsey allows his cast, it is clear this piece will continue to grow, and is well worth watching.

Sean Turner

The Bay runs from the 9th-18th of June at The Space and then joins the Big Green Gathering programme from 30th July - 2nd August.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: The Homecoming

The Homecoming
York Theatre Royal

I went to The Homecoming with the optimistic hope that Damien Cruden, accompanied by the team at York, would manage to convince me that Harold Pinter is not baffling and confusing but is in fact worthy of the major playwright label he has been given. I came away from the play baffled and confused.

The basic premise of the play is that Teddy brings his wife Ruth home to meet his family after spending six years in America. Still living at the family home are his father, uncle and two younger brothers as well as the ghost of his mother Jesse who is still very much present. Obviously things do not go well and, one thing I will say for the play, it is like nothing you could ever expect. However, this is not necessarily a good thing. If I can be shocked by the content now, the reactions of a 1960s audience must have been unique.

The set plays upon the image of life as a picture, with a huge gilt frame acting as the proscenium arch, and the living room walls being slanted as if in 2D perspective. Certainly an interesting concept, it is decorated in the same pastel palette of colours that seem to feature in most of Dawn Allsopp’s set designs and appears deeply ironic, underlining that what the audience see is anything but a picture of a normal family home. But, after the first act I ceased to care about any underlying cleverness and began crying out for anything obvious to grasp onto.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for the actors. In his Director’s Notes, Cruden calls the experience a ‘richly creative opportunity’. Maybe so in rehearsals, but onstage none of that is in evidence. The performances feel stilted, all becoming stuck in the same intense, dramatic gear which the friend accompanying me described simply as ‘Eastenders acting’. For me, it was personally frustrating to see Robert Pickavance, who I recently saw on superb form in Eichmann in Jerusalem - same director - give such an unimpressive performance.

Perhaps, this production hit an off note. It may be possible to stage the play without my reaction being "The best bits were when one of the actors unintentionally walked into a lamp and the bit about the cheese roll because the dialogue sped up to something approaching normal". Perhaps I am ‘missing the point’ of Pinter, and that his work is meant to be full of unanswered questions. However, I know that my group were not the only perplexed audience members. After the stunned silence of the first act, the second was only punctuated by nervous laughter and the curtain-call applause was luke-warm at best.

The Homecoming has not put me off Pinter or York Theatre Royal, I will certainly persevere with both. I am simply confused and saddened as to why a production that looked so promising, can strike such a bum note.

Jane Williamson

The Homecoming runs at York Theatre Royal until 20th June

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: The Moon The Moon

The Moon The Moon
Southwark Playhouse, London

Stay and let them heal you. Or go with the Moon and live. That’s the choice for The Man in Unlimited Theatre’s enigmatic and compelling production of The Moon The Moon which is brought to the Southwark Playhouse this week.

The Man, suffering from a profound trauma, is found by a stranger, aptly named The Older Man, on the edge of the water front of the Firth holding a plastic bag full of roast dinner, about to commit suicide. The stranger, alongside his companion The Young Woman, take him in, seemingly eager to help him and cure him of his problems. We see what at first seems like good will, soon morphs in to abuse and incarceration before our eyes. It is here, in his imprisoned state, that he is visited by The Moon, looking uncannily like his dead wife, who tempts and wills him to follow her toward redemption and peace.

The play is beautifully poetic, with the script ebbing and flowing like the tide itself while contrasting brilliantly with the cold, hard actions inflicted by the tormenting couple. It is this juxtaposition that is most interesting and forces us to question what is genuine reality when our own comes in to question and, crucially, who decides what is right for us when we don’t seem to know ourselves?

With recurring references to storms and rain, you are never far from the sense of the ruggedness and wilderness that surrounds them and the emotion that lies within all of us. In contrast the set, like a cold clinical cell, seems almost like a representation of society itself and its vain attempts to tidy and compartmentalise chaotic emotion.

All four cast members shine brilliantly in this production, creating a sense of sadness and desperation without becoming too emotive. The pathos is equalled with humour and tragedy and a special nod needs to be made to the music which was both moving and stunningly performed.

The play is complicated as it attempts to discuss varying and difficult themes within 90 minutes, containing a plot full of twists and turns that are never fully explained. But, because of the plays beauty, this is not important. What is interesting here is the plays’ touching and subtle discussion of love, death, remorse, and the messiness of real human emotions, and ultimately how we use them when it is of most importance.

Ailsa Ilott

The Moon The Moon runs until 20th June

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Aunt Dan & Lemon

Aunt Dan and Lemon - Wallace Shawn Season
Royal Court Theatre

What a lemon. Yes that is precisely correct, Jane Horrocks plays a right Lemon in this production at the Royal Court. If I can ‘squeeze’ another joke out of this I’ll be happy.

Lemon, played wonderfully by Horrocks, who appears more childlike than ever, opens the play explaining that she is sick, drinks nothing but fresh juices for sustenance and enjoys reading the political theories of the Nazi’s. Her imagination and memories become the main focus for the narrative, creating one large stream of consciousness set in and around 1960s London. The action is eloquently continuous, with each character using extensive monologues to guide us through Lemon’s childhood, and leaving us to make our own assumptions about the position she's now in.

Lorraine Ashbourne's Aunt Dan, appearing as a more mature Jessica Hynes, has arguably the toughest role in the production with hefty monologues and stories of politics, relationships and her love for Henry Kissinger. However, Ashbourne manages to enthrall the audience and, save for a few accent and line slips, glides through with relative ease.

After an array of entertaining monologues by Lemon, Dan and Father - Paul Chahidi - the narrative begins to focus on the elusive Mindy, an outrageous one-time friend of Dan's, which Scarlett Johnson (AKA Vicky Fowler in Eastenders – yes her with the confused Anglo-American accent) portrays with elegance and naivety, if a little too cutesy at times. These scenes appear with a cinematic quality complete with musical crescendos creating a stark difference to the events of Lemon's life. And please look out for the best bed ever: not wishing to ruin the fun, but there's a bed that allows a murdered Raimondo (Rene Zagger) to slip through the mattress therefore providing a seamless new scene without any interruptions. Well, I told you the action was continuous.

You are reminded of this play's writer with many of the male roles, such as Father and Nathan Osgood's Jasper, combining recognisable aspects of Wallace Shawn himself, in both look and in sound. It's not surprise that Shawn played these roles at the Royal Court premiere of this production in 1985 - thank you Royal Court for your wonderful programmes, you make my life ‘easy peasy’.

Where largely dialogue based productions sometimes leave me wandering off into my own world, Aunt Dan and Lemon keeps me enthralled and entertained. Being a relative newcomer to the work of Wallace Shawn (aside from his acting roles in US hits The Princess Bride and Gossip Girl) this production has left me wanting to learn more. Luckily for me, the Royal Court's Wallace Shawn season has now been extended until the 27th June. I hope you ‘pip’ along! (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

Izzy O'Callaghan