Victor/Victoria - Southwark Playhouse, Tuesday 6th November 2012

Synopsis:

A penniless English soprano, Victoria Grant, auditions unsuccessfully for Labisse, owner of Cafe Luis. Toddy tries to help, but Labisse rejects her and fires him. Toddy befriends Victoria, and offers her shelter from the wet wintry night in his tiny apartment.

Richard, the ex-boyfriend, arrives at Toddy's unexpectedly to collect his things. Victoria, her only dress having shrunk in the rain, is by now wearing his hat and suit. Victoria punches Richard and kicks him out. Toddy is impressed. Richard actually thought Victoria was a man! And at that moment The Inspired Idea strikes Toddy right between the eyes. Why not? Victoria could indeed be a man - Europe's greatest female impersonator!

Toddy dreams up “Count Victor Grazinsky” - a gay Polish aristocrat. Toddy drags the reluctant Victoria to meet Andre Cassell, Paris's leading impresario, who is dubious about "Count Victor Grazinsky" until he hears "him" hit a glass-shattering high G-flat. "Victor" is in business.

His show-stopping performance at once makes him the toast of Gay Paree. The only doubter of Victor's authenticity is a dashing American gangster, King Marchan, visiting Paris with his brassy girlfriend Norma and his loyal bodyguard Squash. King is convinced Victor is a woman, and determined to prove it, but starts to doubt himself. He finds Victor attractive as a woman...but what if he's a man?

King, Norma and Squash find themselves in the adjoining hotel suite to the newly successful Toddy and “Victor”. Norma tries to seduce King, but he can’t get it up because of his worry that he is gay. Victoria bemoans to Toddy that in King she thinks she has finally found the man of her dreams, but here she is trying to convince him that she is a man, too!

“Victor” continues to take Paris audiences by storm. Norma complains to Victor and Toddy that King is shipping her back to Chicago because he fancies Victor - a man! King confronts his doubts about himself and Victor Is it possible that he, King, is falling for a man? He invites Victor and Toddy to dinner to try and find out. Labisse also has his suspicions that Victor is a woman. He invites her/him to sing. Richard's group arrives noisily in mid-song. Victor trips Richard and starts a major brawl in the club.. Outside the club, King says he doesn't care if Victor is a man, and kisses him. Victoria admits she's not a man. King says he still doesn't care, and kisses her again.

Back in the hotel, Squash barges into King's bedroom and finds King and “Victor” in bed together and stuns his boss by revealing that he, too, is gay!

Back in Chicago, Norma informs King's gangster partner, Sal Andretti, that King has dumped her for another man - and is living with "a gay Polish fairy." Sal is aghast and sets off for Paris with Norman in tow.

Toddy and Squash have become happy partners. Not so for King and Victoria, unable to be seen together in public. Victoria tells Toddy she doesn't want to be a man anymore. Toddy understands. Neither does he. Sal and the spurned Norma arrive in Paris. King admits he loves "Victor," keeping the secret. Sal, disgusted, ends their business relationship. Victoria reveals herself to Norma as a woman and is witnessed by Labisse. At Victor's “farewell performance” Labisse tries to expose him/her as a fraud. Toddy, thrilled to be back in drag, replaces Victoria in a blink.  Victoria "comes out" as a woman, and is happy. 

Cast:

Victoria Grant – Anna Francolini

Caroll Todd – Richard Dempsey

King Marchand – Matthew Cutts

Norma Cassidy – Kate Nelson

“Squash” Bernstein – Michael Cotton

Henri Labisse – Ashley Knight

Andre Cassell – Mark Curry

Creative Team

Book by Blake Edwards

Music by Henry Mancini

Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse

Director – Thom Sutherland

Choreographer – Lee Proud

Set/Costumes – Martin Thomas

Lighting – Howard Hudson

The third in my trio of flu-ridden reviews. Happily for all concerned, by this time I was feeling much better, but if anyone would like to send me grapes anyway, please feel free. I was still a bit under the weather, which is why I was fanning myself with my handkerchief while waiting for the show to start (I was hot). Why the man sitting in the row behind felt it was necessary to tap me on the shoulder and say “Buy a programme for £2 and use that instead” is quite beyond me. I should have responded that I would love to see someone try and mop their forehead with a programme, but I was far too busy gawping at the audience members who seemed to think it was a fancy dress night; one chap appeared to be dressed as a toy solider and another looked like he had found Marie Antoinette’s lost necklace and had decided to wear it looped across the front of his jacket, fastening it with a large diamante cocktail glass-shaped brooch. Perhaps he’s one of the cast, opined Him Indoors. He wasn’t. Still, I suppose it is nice when people decide to dress up to go to the theatre. The woman sitting with the man with the programme fetish was wearing a fur coat. More about her later. But not that much later – in fact, now. Why do people seem to think that, once the music starts playing, it is still acceptable to carry on talking? Woman in Fur Coat sat there quite happily nattering away (actually, she was moaning) for at least five minutes and got a couple of my special Hard Stares. Unfortunately these had no effect whatsoever until I threw a “Will you be quiet!” in her direction, at which point she wisely decided to limit herself to the occasional sotto voce remark, but not sotto voce enough that I couldn’t hear every bloody word about how cold she was and how the theatre was grubby and it was making her fur dirty.

Anyway, rude audience members aside, I had quite a good time. The dank vaults of Southwark Playhouse aren’t exactly 1930s Paris, although there is a certain sympathetic seediness. This worked fine for a louche nightclub and cockroach-infested apartment buildings (the sound of the occasional train rumbling overhead was a nice counterpoint), but didn’t really cover the five star hotel. But vaults under a mainline railway station are going to take a bit of suspension of disbelief to overcome – they may be fine for A Christmas Carol but anything else is going to be a bit of work. News is that the theatre is moving to an abandoned 60s office block just down the road in Newington Causeway. That will be interesting….. The length of the performance space causes directorial issues – best to sit the middle and play “head tennis” than sit at one end and miss a lot of the action. If you do have to sit at one end, the end away from the orchestra is better. Sit at the pricey “nightclub tables” and you will miss a heck of a lot. Not all the direction works – Act 2 is ushered in by a woeful magic act (which I came perilously near to ruining by being too thorough in my inspection of Dafydd Gwyn Howell’s equipment (no sniggering at the back please – he may be a hairy Welshman but there is no truth in any rumours you may hear). Although the Playhouse obviously operates on a shoestring, there are 8 people in the orchestra (2 more than the production of 9 to 5 I recently saw and which has Dolly Partons’ megabucks behind it), all working like stink and deservedly getting their own on-stage bow at the end.

The shoestrings are apparent in the wig and costume departments. Decent wigs are shockingly expensive to hire, and bad wigs just as pricey. Several of those sported in this production look uncannily like they have not long before been scuttling round in the darkness; I imagine the Wig Mistress rushing off into the gloom with a torch and a big stick, hearing a loud thump and a squeal and then seeing her return triumphantly holding her prey at arm’s length and beaming “Another tenner saved from the budget, chaps”. Poor Anna Francolini often has to wear two at once – a bladder over her own hair, a “Victor” wig, a “night club routine” wig and often some sort of headdress perched on top just to add insult to injury. The things one puts up with to earn a crust. Practically everyone else wears their own hair – although I couldn’t work out whether Jean Perkins, who played several small parts had subjected her personal dead rat to ministrations with a wire brush and a can of Elle-Net or was just having a terrible hair day.

Costumes, in the main, looked similarly tired. The only properly fitting dinner suit in the entire production is obviously Mark Curry’s own, and his own properly polished black shoes stuck out like a sore thumb. Ms. Francolini’s dress shirt looked as if it had been used to wipe up a spillage out in the bar, and a judiciously applied damp sponge and hot iron wouldn’t go amiss on her dinner suit either. In the awful “Louis says” number (which was jettisoned for the film and no wonder, because its dire), poor Miss F has to wear what are meant to be Marie Antoinette’s expensive silks and satins but which actually look like a badly made-to measure sofa cover and a pile of slowly unravelling cotton wool. Yes, I know, I know. Costumes are expensive to hire or make. But frankly, if someone outside had been rattling a collection tin in aid of the Costume Department, I’d have gladly dropped some money in. Perhaps Mrs Fur Coat could have wafted her Platinum Card in their direction – she certainly moaned enough. About 20 minutes into the show, one character coughs several times and blames “the damp”. Mrs. Fur Coat chimed in “DUST!” very loudly. The closing number is woefully underdressed and Richard Dempsey has to wear a feather head-dress that looks like an ostrich with alopecia that has been savaged by an overly-protective mother meerkat.

Wigs, costumes and rude audience members aside (Mrs. Fur Coat and Mr. Programme left in the interval, thankfully), there is a good show going on here with some fine performances. Its just sad that they are fine performances seen in a production with lacklustre values; they deserve better. Anna Francolini works her tits off in the title roles, making the daft plot seem believable and bringing a warmth to the role that rather eluded Julie Andrews in the film. She has a lovely mellow speaking voice and a great vocal range. Richard Dempsey, although perhaps a little too young for the pivotal role of Toddy, is so sweet and charming that he just makes you want to ply him with nourishing chicken soup and organise his sock drawer. Basically, he is everyone’s Best Gay Friend – Dispenser of Good Advice, Shoulder to Cry On, Provider of Waspish One-Liners in a Crisis. I must remember the line “There is nothing so inconvenient as an old queen with a head cold” for future use. Kate Neilson rather lets the character of Norma Cassidy go begging, however – what could have been a great comic turn is rather thrown away. One wonders what Mark Curry is doing here at all – Cassell is a “nothing part”, and although Curry is not exactly “A List”, its still bizarre to see him on stage in this. The dancers all work their socks off and the choreography is wonderful. Again, they deserve to be in a show with higher production values. They certainly deserve better costumes. There’s not a soul on stage who isn’t pulling more than their weight – this company is the dictionary definition of the phrase “Teamwork”.

Anyway, this is a good little show. Buy a ticket well in advance (like air fares, the closer to the date of the performance you buy them, the more expensive they are), wrap up warm, don’t wear your fur coat, get there early (unreserved seats!) so you can sit in the middle of the row, don’t chatter to your companions once the music has started, enjoy the performances, don’t compare Ms. Francolini with Julie Andrews if you can help it, compare her favourably with Julie Andrews if you must, blank out the “Louis Says” number if you can, put a few coppers in the collecting tin for costumes if you see one, and try not to ruin any magic tricks if you are asked to rummage in a cloth bag.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9659097/Victor-Victoria-Southwark-Playhouse-review.html - Telegraph reviewer can’t count the number of people in the orchestra.

http://www.standard.co.uk/arts/theatre/victorvictoria-southwark-playhouse-se1--review-8276715.html

http://thegoodreview.co.uk/2012/11/victorvictoria-southwark-playhouse/

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/victorvictoria-southwark-playhouse-london/

http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2012/11/03/theatre-review-victor-victoria-at-southwark-playhouse/

Not in the original production, but written for the film to replace "Louis Says". 

9 to 5 - Wimbledon Theatre, Thursday 25th October 2012

Synopsis:

As the clocks ring and the workers wake up, Violet, Doralee, and Judy prepare for another mundane and hellish day at work at Consolidated Industries . Judy Bernly is a naïve new employee, a recent divorcee whose husband, Dick, left her for his secretary. On her first day, Judy meets Violet Newstead, the supervisor of her department. Violet trains Judy and introduces her to Franklin Hart, Jr, the arrogant and sexist Head of Department. Judy soon learns that Violet, an employee for over 10 years, has been passed over consistently by those who could promote her.

The buxom Southern belle Doralee Rhodes is Hart's personal secretary. Despite the fact that Doralee is a happily married woman and Hart is married to a very emotionaly troubled woman who is never in town, Hart continually makes inappropriate advances toward Doralee, pushing her patience and tolerance to the limit. Hart has also been lying to his colleagues that he's been sleeping with her anyway, causing office gossip to go wild. The women in the office treat her rudely as a result

Violet is once again passed over for an important promotion, even though her ideas are good enough that Hart passes one off as his own and takes all the praise for it. When Violet protests to Hart that he passed her over for a promotion because she is a woman, Hart bluntly tells her that the company would rather have a man in the position, and Violet storms off on her own, but not before she reveals to Doralee that her “affair” with Hart is common knowledge. Doralee threatens to use her gun on him the next time he makes an indecent proposal. Judy is humiliated by Hart in front of the entire department. All three women go to Violet's house and smoke a joint which Violet has confiscated from her son, fantasizing about the ways in which they would take their revenge.

The next day, Violet accidentally and absent-mindedly puts rat poison in Hart's coffee, mistaking it for an artificial sweetener. Before Hart can drink it, he falls from his unstable desk chair and knocks himself unconscious in his office. He is rushed to hospital. The women discover that Hart wasn't harmed at all, but their discussion about the incident is overheard by Hart's nosy personal assistant, Roz, and Hart tries to use the information to blackmail Doralee into having an affair with him after all. Doralee loses her temper and ropes Hart with telephone wires, and Judy fires on Hart with Doralee's pistol when he escapes his bonds.

With Hart's wife away on a lengthy cruise, the women decide to kidnap Hart and imprison him in his own home until they can somehow get him to co-operate and forget the whole incident. But Hart refuses to listen to them and vows to kill them. Looking for a way to blackmail Hart to keep quiet, Violet discovers that Hart has been embezzling money from Consolidated by illegally selling inventory from a Consolidated-owed warehouse on the black market and keeping the profits for himself. The girls plan on using the information to blackmail Hart to keep quiet from calling the police, but have to tie Hart to his bed to prevent him from leaving the house and exposing them. Violet sends for an order of the warehouse inventories as proof of Hart's embezzlement scheme; because of a computer system change, the office will not send them the invoices for at least four weeks.

The three women work together to make Hart's absence from the office as inconspicuous as possible, and they send Roz to Europe on a ruse to learn a foreign language to keep her away from the office. During the weeks of Hart's confinement, the three ladies take a number of liberties in improving the workplace in ways that they see fit.

One night, Hart almost escapes. Judy, who is staying nights in Hart's house is surprised when her ex-husband shows up at the house after following her there after work and he asks to reconcile with her. But when Hart makes a noise, Judy is forced to restrain him, and her ex-husband, seeing the captive Hart tied up, mistakenly assumes that Judy is having an affair of her own with her boss and leaves, claiming that they are now over and will never get back together.

Hart is accidentally freed when his wife returns early from her cruise, and for three days, he quietly buys back all the items he sold on the black market and puts them back in the Consolidated warehouse.

After taking them to the office to meet with Violet, Hart plays his final card boasting that women never can defeat him. Just when it appears as if he is going to send the girls to jail, a sudden visit from the reclusive and ruthless Chairman of the Board, Russell Tinsworthy interrupts him. To the cold and unfeeling Hart's chargrin, he finally sees that Violet, Judy, and Doralee have made some radical changes in the office while keeping him imprisoned, and it seems as if the sudden surge in productivity has caught the attention of Tinsworthy.

Since the women did all of it under the false approval of Hart, they can take no credit for it, but fate seems to be on their side: Tinsworthy "rewards" Hart for his good work by immediately removing him from his position and sending him to work on a special project in Brazil, much to the amusement and delight of Violet, Doralee, and Judy as now they are free from Hart who will never try to destroy them without destroying his own career

Violet is promoted to Hart's place as vice president of Consolidated, Judy Judy is single and loving it and writes a bestselling book, Life Without Dick. and Doralee moves back to her Tennessee hometown where she became a country music singer. Hart is kidnapped by natives and is never seen or heard from again 

Cast:

Violet Newstead: Jackie Clune

Doralee Rhodes: Amy Lennox

Judy Bernley: Natalie Casey

Franklyn J. Hart: Ben Richards

Roz Keith: Bonnie Langford

Joe: Mark Willshire

Dick/MrTinsworthy: Marlon Moore

Creative Team:

Music and lyrics: Dolly Parton

Book: Patricia Resnick

Director/Choreographer: Jeff Calhoun

Scenic Design: Kenneth Foy

Lighting: Ken Billingstone

Huddled in my jumper, coat, gloves and scarf when I should, by rights, have been wearing an 80s power suit with a nipped in waist and lots of padding in the shoulder area, I made my way to Wimbledon, heavily mucoid and streaming sweat from seemingly every pore, shocked to see what a dump Central Wimbledon has become since my last visit. Tatty and boarded up shops line the streets, and fast food wrappers and empty cans blow across the pavements. Where are the Wombles when you really need them? Yes, it seems that the recession has come to town – so what better to troll out and see than a musical about when times were so good that even the humblest secretary had a bulging filofax (mine had a red leather cover with a blue strap fastened by a natty yellow press stud) and mobile phones were so big they could be used to prop open a door. Nouvelle cuisine was just about to hit us, proving beyond all doubt that lunch was for wimps, and Reagan, Thatcher and Gordon Gekko were extolling the virtues of greed. Hair was big, the credit was unlimited, the working hours punishing but the good times were starting to roll. Cue the music!

Wimbledon Theatre seems to be carving itself out quite a nice niche in naff. So it seemed inevitable that, for a few short nights, it would become a Temple to Dolly. And my, did the audience come in their droves. Coach parties of Women of a Certain Age, well tanked up and ready to tell their boss where to shove his Tippex, along with quite a few Gentlemen of a Certain Age who had probably spent at least 10 minutes earlier that evening gyrating in front of the mirror holding a hairbrush and pretending to be Doralee Rhodes. The Chestily-Endowed one actually “appears” in the show to narrate, thanks to the wonders of technology – and as soon as she did, the whoops were so loud that several decades of dust fell off the proscenium arch’s reclining figures and I swear that at least one bat was dislodged from the ceiling. I do wish Wimbledon’s management would spend a bit more on cleaning – the entire place feels grubby and smells a bit like your grandma’s front room. Not that most people in the audience seemed to care. If the lyrics of the opening number had suddenly descended from the flies on a screen, I swear that people would have been ripping up the seats in their enthusiasm to join in. Everyone (save a few obviously unwilling husbands) seemed out for a good time. And, in the main, what people wanted was more or less what they got – a penny plain, tuppence coloured night of feel good entertainment. No Brechtian angst, no Chekovian misery, no soul-searching Ibsen – Dolly is in town! 9 to 5 is unsophisticated, brash, more than a little cheesy – but hey, bread and circuses, right?

In the main, the musical numbers aren’t all that great, even though they were penned by the Chestily-Endowed one, and I see from the Internewt that a lot of them don’t seem to have made it on the journey over from Broadway – several of them have been cut, including great swathes of the “dream sequence” numbers. Apart from the theme tune, not a single one can I hum a snatch of a couple of weeks afterwards. But they were delivered well enough for everyone to enjoy them – save one solo from Natalie Casey which was strangely underpowered and rather wobbly all the way through. Bonnie Langford (an exact contemporary of Him Indoors – one of them can don fishnets, suspenders and a basque and bring the show to a total halt by doing the splits upside down on a sofa while belting out a number, and it ain’t Him Indoors, although personally I wouldn’t put it past him to have a go) brought the show to a total halt by doing the splits upside down on a sofa while belting out a number and damn I just wrote myself into a corner didn’t I? Slightly scarily, the Langford Clan seem to be challenging the Redgraves for the title of Greatest Theatrical Dynasty – not only does Ms. Langford boast Summer Strallen and Scarlett Strallen as her kin but there’s another one in the chorus of this show, Sasi Strallen. Watch out for the forthcoming debuts of Samantha Strallen, Sarah Strallen, September Strallen, Singalong Strallen, their adopted sister from the Far East Sushi Strallen and their only brother Derek.

Auntie Bonnie makes the best of a “nothing” part that she can (although her solo is a gift and rightly stops the show, Amy Lennox makes a game stab at being Dolly Parton but doesn’t quite manage to bring it off, Ben Richards isn’t quite old enough to play Franklyn J. Hart - I forgive him because he’s got a buff bod and a hairy chest (neither of which unfortunately one gets to see until 2 minutes before the final curtain - but the acting honours are walked away with in their entirety by Jackie Clune as Violet Newstead, who plays the Lily Tomlin role better than Lily Tomlin played it in the film. As mentioned above, Dolly herself appears high above the stage, peering out from the face of an office clock and providing the role of narrator/greek chorus/fairy godmother, although until the colour levels were worked out, she looked so green that she looks like the lovechild of Kermit the Frog and Elphaba. I didn’t hear much of what she said because every time she popped up like the Genie of the Clock, she was completely drowned out by whooping.

A truly frightening amount of this show is clicktracked – pre-recorded and played as backing – mostly for the ensemble numbers, when there are 20 people on stage but apparently 60 people singing, which is a rotten cheat. Its glaringly obvious that fraud is being perpetrated when there are only principals on stage but still apparently 60 people belting out at full throttle. This is lazy costcutting and unfortunately more and more prevalent in the theatre, as is having a tiny orchestra sweating away in the pit playing 4 instruments each. Yes, having an electronic keyboard saves you from having to put an ad in The Stage looking for a sousaphone player, a second trombone and someone to who can play the harmonica and help sell ice-creams in the interval, but its putting people in the profession out of work, as is clicktracking. Both practices should be frowned upon, as should charging people £3 for a bottle of lukewarm water. Theatre management take note, and dust your allegorical figures please, Wimbledon.

This is not sophisticated entertainment in any way, shape or form. The unlikely “plot” is full of holes and the characters paper-thin. It is unashamedly trashy, no-brain, feel-good entertainment, perfect for a girl’s night out with the boys, even though comparing it with clips from the original Broadway production, a lot of bits and pieces seem to have been thrown overboard with the musical numbers en route across the Atlantic. Interestingly, there are some quite thought-provoking and intelligent articles in the programme, although I suspect most of the audience will be reading Dolly Parton’s three-page biography on the train home. As the production is going on tour, overbearing bosses should make sure that they employ a Taster to check their coffee for rat poison if any of their staff are going to see the show.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9630966/9-to-5-Wimbledon-Theatre-touring-review.html

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/354516/Musical-review-9-to-5-The-Musical-New-Theatre-Wimbledon

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/9-to-5-the-musical-new-wimbledon-theatre-london/

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/9-to-5-the-musical-new-wimbledon-theatre-london

Twelfth Night - Shakespeare's Globe, Wednesday 3rd October 2012

Synopsis:

Viola has been shipwrecked in a violent storm off the coast of Illyria; in the process she has lost her twin brother, Sebastian. She disguises herself as a boy and assumes the name Cesario for protection. Thus disguised, Viola becomes a page in the service of Orsino, the Duke. It seems that Orsino is having little luck courting Olivia, who is in mourning for the death of her brother. As Orsino's proxy, Viola is sent to Olivia with love letters. Viola refuses to budge until she is let in to see Olivia; Olivia, intrigued by the impudent young "boy," contrives to get "Cesario" to return by sending her steward, Malvolio, after her with one of Olivia's rings. Viola realizes to her dismay that Olivia has fallen for her Cesario rather than Duke Orsino—further complicated by the fact that Viola has had stirrings herself for Orsino.

Sebastian (Viola's twin, presumed dead) comes ashore in Illyria thinking that Viola has drowned in the shipwreck. A man named Antonio rescued him from the surf, and continues to aid him—at some risk to himself, as Antonio fought against the Duke at one time. Meanwhile, in Olivia's house, Sir Toby Belch (her uncle) has hoodwinked a foppish Sir Andrew Aguecheek into supporting him by convincing him that he could be a suitor to Olivia. There is a running feud between Malvolio , the House Steward, and Belch; with the help of Maria, Olivia's maid, and Feste, a clown, Belch plots to make a buffoon of the steward. Maria writes a love letter to Malvolio that will make him think Olivia has fallen for him. Malvolio falls entirely for the sport, which eventually leads to his confinement as a madman.

All the while, Belch is egging Sir Andrew into a duel with Viola's "Cesario" character as she departs from Olivia; Olivia is now entirely smitten with Cesario, even though Viola continues to press Orsino's cause. As Viola and Sir Andrew prepare for a duel that neither one wants, Antonio happens upon the scene. Believing Viola to be Sebastian, he intervenes and is arrested. Viola, of course, does not recognize Antonio. Later, Belch and Sir Andrew encounter Sebastian, who doesn't back down from Aguecheek when challenged and resoundingly beats him. Olivia intervenes in the matter, and - mistaking Sebastian for Viola/Cesario - presses her suit for him. A bemused Sebastian agrees to marry her. Antonio is brought before the Duke for questioning, and Viola relates the events of the duel. Antonio tells everyone how hedragged "this man" from the surf, saving his life. Then Olivia enters, searching for her new husband—who she thinks is Viola (as Cesario).

Adding to this confusion, Belch and Aguecheek enter claiming that Viola/Cesario has violently assaulted them. In the midst of Viola's denials, Sebastian appears. The brother and sister recognize one another and are reunited; Sebastian helps to clear the confusion as to who fought who and who married who. At the end, Orsino and Viola pledge their love, Olivia and Sebastian will remain satisfactorily wed, and Olivia rebukes Belch and Maria for their abuse of Malvolio, who vows his revenge upon the whole lot. Belch agrees to wed Maria to make up for getting her in trouble, and all—except the disgruntled Malvolio—will (apparently) live happily ever after

Cast:

Sebastian – Sam Barnett

Orsino – Liam Brennan

Maria – Paul Chahidi

Antonio – John Paul Connelly

Viola – Johnny Flynn

Malvolio – Stephen Fry

Fabian – James Garnon

Feste – Peter Hamilton Dyer

Sir Toby Belch – Colin Hurley

Andrew Aguecheek – Roger Lloyd Pack

Olivia – Mark Rylance

Creative Team:

Director – Tim Carrol

Designer – Jeremy Tiramani

Choreographer – Sian Williams

Disclaimer: half this review was written before I went down with the flu. Not man-flu, you understand, but real “Oh my god I feel like I’m dying” flu, and which has laid me low ever since. In fact, at one point I coughed so long and so hard that it caused a problem that I soon have to go into hospital for. So there. So my apologies for the delay, and if some of the details of the performance are a bit sketchy in my memory by now. I’ve seen two more shows since then, and hopefully reviews of these will be winging their way to you soon. So…….

I wasn’t really sure I wanted to see this production. For at start, it was at the Globe, and I have issues with the Globe (mainly because I usually end up sitting behind a pillar so I can’t see, the acoustics can be terrible so I can’t hear, and the seats are hard and have no back so I can’t get comfortable and my bum hurts after about an hour). And it was raining. And I was coming down with a cold. And Stephen Fry was in it (I hate Stephen Fry). And Roger Lloyd Pack was in it (I loathe Roger Lloyd Pack). And although Twelfth Night is my fave Shakespeare play, I’ve seen it murdered many times, so I’m generally wary about seeing it again, just in case. Nothing is as unsatisfying as a bad Twelfth Night – unless it’s a cheese sandwich made with really cheap, miserable, white sliced bread. So, if anyone had cut open a fowl and examined the entrails, the omens probably wouldn’t have been that great for this outing.

The omens were wrong! I liked it! It was funny! I even laughed a couple of times, despite my aching back, snotty nose and numb bum. I even liked Stephen Fry in it! Of course, this wouldn’t be a review written by me if I couldn’t find fault somewhere, and I loathed Roger Lloyd Pack even more than usual, and there were a couple of things I didn’t like about the production but hey, in the main, that dead chicken was wrong! (Maybe I paid too much attention to its gizzard when I should have been examining the contents of its crop). Huzzah! OK, I was still sitting behind a pillar for the first half, so was ducking and weaving like a flamingo doing a mating dance, fully aware that David Attenborough is pointing a camera at it and thinking that here is its chance to get an audition for Strictly, so perhaps I had best cash in a savings policy and buy a really expensive seat next time – but hey, at least I wasn’t getting pissed on by the torrential rain like the Groundlings (the Globe Stewards, most of whom left the SS in disgust because it was too liberal for them) won’t let you put up an umbrella and one does tend to look a bit of a tit with a plastic bag on one’s head. And being a Groundling makes your feet hurt).

I did like the fact that you could hear Every. Last. Bloody. Syllable. of Liam Brennan’s Count Orsino. Perhaps not the greatest actor ever to have trodden the boards at the Globe, and perhaps not exactly the most lovelorn Orsino I’ve ever seen, but at least you could hear him. Perfect projection, even when right at the opposite side of the stage and facing away from me. But perhaps not the most flattering costume silk puffy trunks and glittery pumps are really not a good look, particularly when the actor sporting them has made no effort to give himself a period haircut or wear a wig. I didn’t initially take very kindly to the fact that Viola was being played by a man using a kind of throaty, irritating treble but I got used to it after a while. What really hacked me off was that there was no indication of there having been a shipwreck which would explain her presence on the coast of Illyria. In fact, if you weren’t familiar with the play, you could have been left mightily confused as to what she was doing there. Neither did Viola look like she had been thrown up on the beach by the waves – I was almost tempted to shout out “You don’t look very wet, love”. And I didn’t really like the way Mark Rylance played Olivia either, not for a long time. Rylance plays Olivia like one of those dolls children used to make out of wooden spoons, with a bit of circular material tied underneath the bowl for a dress, moving about the stage as if on wheels in the fashion of one Mrs. Honeyman of Camberwick Green. It got a laugh the first time he did it, but what is funny once and vaguely amusing twice is boring by the 17th time you see it. The kabuki make-up didn’t really help, and I really resented Olivia being played as an out-and-out comedy character, muttering darkly that it went against the spirit of the play. But I warmed to it and grudgingly admit that Twelfth Night is supposed to be a comedy after all, even though I still think Olivia is one of the few “real” people in the entire play and it cheapens the part to try and scene-steal by over-acting at every possible opportunity.

Paul Chahidi’s Maria was a revelation. On paper, a very minor character, with nothing much to say and very little to really do. But Chahidi plays her like a real person – stately and dignified, aware of her position but human enough to show the occasional spark of mischief. Peter Hamilton Dyer’s Feste was another revelation – if you’ve read this blog for a while you will know exactly what I think about Shakespeare’s fools, particularly the ones that do little but ponce around the stage being verbose – and usually as funny as haemorrhoids. But this Feste is played completely straight – to such an extent that the verbiage becomes a shield, used as protection against all the lunacy happening around him. In fact, the audience is left in no doubt that Feste is probably the one sane person left in Illyria. I can’t comment on Colin Hurley’s performance as Sir Toby because, to be perfectly honest, I cannot remember a single thing about it – not even what he looked like – from which, dear Reader, you must deduce that it’s a fairly underwhelming performance.

I hate Roger Lloyd Pack. Loathe him. Sorry, but I do. The man has about as much talent for comedy as a plate of rice pudding and what is worse cannot project his lines to save his life. Oh, he starts them OK, but halfway through his timbre gives out and the words just disappear into thin air like the morning mist. His Sir Andrew was possibly the dreariest and uninspired I have ever seen, and lines which should be funny or endearing are just thrown away for absolutely nothing. I hate Stephen Fry equally, but I was intrigued by the lack of histrionic over-acting that I expected, and eventually quite impressed by it. I was actually, genuinely sorry for this Malvolio when the revenge plot against him begins to take on a dark and vicious turn (another revelation – the prison scene is usually presented as Malvolio’s comeuppance, something deserved because he has been pompous, something for us to laugh at. But here I was left wondering whether things had gone too far, and if it was the three aggrieved plotters had become more vicious than was necessary – while bringing a candle for Malvolio’s prison beneath the stage Maria spitefully flicks a gob of hot wax down onto his head. It gets a laugh – it’s a clever directorial detail – but it made me wonder about such casual cruelty).

There were some other very nice directorial touches too – we get to see some of Malvolio’s stewarding duties as he sits next to Olivia and selects bills and invoices from a folder for her to sign during their first scene. Olivia’s increasingly risible attempts at “casual flirting” show a spot-on interpretation of the text (the gardening scene is particularly funny) and there is a horrible, awkward subtext of the fear of being thought homosexual in the scene where Orsino begins to feel attraction for “Cesario” which I have never seen done so well. And it’s the first time that the weather has played such an integral role in the play – far from being sun-drenched Arcadia, Illyria is more likely to be rain-drenched England than ever before. The poor groundlings groaned and applauded in equal measure Feste’s final lines “and the rain it raineth every day”.

So, why have you not heard more about this production in the press? Its all explained here:

http://www.thestage.co.uk/columns/shenton/2012/09/no-first-night-for-twelfth-night/

- for some unknown reason, the Globe have decreed that there were to be no press reviews for the entire run, until the production re-opens in the West End later this month, presumably hoping that a blanket moratorium on reviews would whip up interest for the West End run. The cynic in me feels that perhaps they were unsure of what the critical reaction might be and were playing safe accordingly, not least because Mr. Fry apparently walked out of a production after a bad first night review, never to return. To me this is unsporting on many levels. But, of course, the bloggers have had their revenge on the whole pack of you, and, as the Telegraph review points out, not even the Globe can prevent paying punters from putting their thoughts online (if they happen to be a writer for a national newspaper during the day, that is the Globe’s tough luck).

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/review-twelfth-night-shakespeares-globe.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/oct/01/stephen-fry-twelfth-night-all-male

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9562248/Stephen-Fry-in-Twelfth-Night-Globe-Theatre-first-review.html

urrgghhhh!

No, dear readership, this is not the name of some experimental off-West End show that I went to see recently, but an indication of how I am feeling!


I've been down with the flu (not the man-flu type but the real "urgghhhh I am hot and sweaty/freezing cold, bunged up, snotty nosed, headachey washed out no energy" type for at least two weeks and things have got all behind like the cat's tail as a result. I went to see Twelth Night at the Globe over three weeks ago and the review is still sitting on my PC half finished, and 9 to 5 at Wimbledon a couple of days ago and havent even had the energy to think about writing anything.

Hopefully, normal service will be resumed shortly/soon/eventually/when I feel like it.

The Judas Kiss - Hampstead Theatre - Monday 10th September 2012

Synopsis:

Oscar Wilde’s dangerous philosophy leads him on a path to destruction. The Judas Kiss describes two pivotal moments on that path: the day Wilde decides to stay in England and face imprisonment, and the night, after his release two years later, when the lover for whom he risked everything betrays him.

Cast:
Moffat - Alistair Cameron
Galileo – Tom Colley
Oscar Wilde – Rupert Everett
Bosie – Freddie Fox
Arthur – Ben Hardy
Robbie Ross – Cal Macaninch
Phoebe – Kirsty Oswald

Creative Team:
Director - Neil Armfeld
Writer - David Hare
Designer - Dale Ferguson
Costume Designer - Sue Blane
Lighting Designer - Rick Fisher
Composer - Alan John
Sound Designer - Paul Groothuis
Casting - Cara Beckinsale

Don’t take Grannie to see this. There’s more tits, arse and cock than I think I have ever seen on stage since I began this blog. Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with tits, arse and cock, and I imagine that Rupert Everett is very appreciative of the fact that he is getting paid while looking at it all. For the entire second act, he has nothing to do except sit in a chair centre stage and watch arse and cock all night (oh, and come up with quite a few lines, as well). And if you like your plays complete with tits, arse and cock, you will have a wonderful evening. But don’t take Grannie, OK?

I’m going to start with the performance of one of the minor characters When your sole function in a play is to look good with your kit off, make a bed and lay a table,, you should at least learn how to make a bed and lay a table properly. Ben Hardy looks great with his kit off, but when you watch him make the bed after shagging the Chambermaid (OK, he is wearing distractingly tight trousers and has a gorgeous backside so you might miss the actual process of bedmaking), you can see that he has never studied how to make a bed. An Edwardian bed, with a bolster, pillows, sheets, blanket and counterpane. In this age of duvets, bed making is very much a dying art, but Hardy’s bed looks like a dog’s dinner by the time he has finished with it. It is probably a minor quibble (although I do quite like minor quibbles) but in the Cadogan Hotel, in which Act 1 is set, a manservant would not make the bed anyway. It would be done by a chambermaid. Kirsty Oswald is so underused as Phoebe the Chambermaid that I wonder why the Director couldn’t have got her to do it. In fact, one of the backstage staff could have come on in a chambermaid costume and the two of them could have made the bed. Properly. Said manservant then proceeds to place a large, heavy trunk ON the bed – which again would have been unthinkable. I’ve seen enough episodes of Downton Abbey to know that an Edwardian suitcase goes on one of those fold out springy table things with webbing instead of a tabletop, which you carry in, unfold, put at the end of the bed and put the case on it. You don’t put the case on the bed, for petes sake. Particularly if you have just made the bed.

Neither, unfortunately, can Hardy lay a table in the correct way. He makes such a dog’s dinner of it that any well brought up dog would probably refuse to eat its dinner off said table. You don’t put the spoon ABOVE the plate, you put it to the RIGHT of the plate, with the knife further out with the blade facing TOWARDS the plate and the fork on the left. And then you put the wine glass to the RIGHT of the knife, in line with the tip. And you put the vase of flowers on the table LAST, not FIRST. Honestly, has Neil Armfield never watched Downton Abbey? Apart from that, I didn’t notice much of Hardy’s performance as Arthur because I was too distracted by his arse in those trousers. He can come and turn down my top sheet any time, and afterwards I will teach him how to make the bed and where to put a suitcase and how to lay a table. If there is sufficient time before Him Indoors gets home.

It cannot be denied that Everett makes a fine Wilde. I was thankful that Hare avoided the trap of having him speak in endless aphorisms. Unfortunately this cannot be said for act 2, when the bon mots come thick and fast, (probably the best is (in describing an incredibly buff Italian fisherman ) “All the native arrogance of his race and a cock like a length of rope dipped in tar”, and the script loses all its urgency Having Everett confined to a chair centre stage for the entire act does focus your mind on the fact that there is an awful lot of verbiage. I noticed with great amusement that it seemed to be Everett’s eyes that followed Tom Colley’s (again very fine) naked arse across the stage rather than Wilde’s.

Freddie Fox does an excellent job with an extremely unsympathetic character. “Bosie” seems to have been so shallow that he made a puddle look deep and a petulant little queen to boot, and Fox captures this so well that it was as much as I could do from stomping onto the stage and giving him a damn good smack in the face. Cal Macaninch was very good as Robbie Ross (although I would raise the point that the actual Ross had a moustache whereas Macaninch’s Ross doesn’t. It was annoying to see him appear in Act 2 in the same costume he had worn in Act 1 – an Edwardian gentleman would NOT travel down to Naples wearing full morning dress.

Dale Ferguson’s set makes The Cadogan Hotel seem dark and claustrophobic, and having an enormous drape forming the canopy of the bed and then cascading down to cover all the rest of the furniture and the floor struck me as a) practical in that it did away with the need for period furnishings and b) daft because it obviously makes the stage incredibly slippery and, when you are hopping about on one leg trying to get your trousers back on after being caught fucking the chambermaid, quite dangerous. I imagine that the haberdasher from whom this enormous length of cloth was purchased had an attack of the vapours when it was ordered (“Doreen, gentleman from the Hampstead Theatre wants to buy 40 yards of the dark brown sateen with the paisley pattern. And quite a lot of that stuff you put under rugs to stop them from creeping”) and then smiled slowly and went online looking for villas in Tuscany when they realised how much the invoice was going to be. The second act, the Neapolitan house is, by contrast, basically white walls, a few odds and ends of battered furniture, a lot of carefully directed lighting and an awful lot of cock and arse.

This is what I would call a wordy, worthy play. It’s quite long and full of speechifying. Not much happens. I think I dropped off for a couple of minutes (it had been a busy week) and I can honestly say I don’t think I missed anything of import. I do wonder why David Hare wrote it. It tells us nothing new that we didn’t already know about Wilde. Its very, very wordy. And the entire point of the play comes in the last 20 seconds and you could save yourself a good two hours just by popping in at the end for the last line. Hare’s point, delivered through the mouthpiece of Wilde, is the irony that Christ was betrayed by Judas, the disciple he knew and cared about the least. To make a better story, says Hare/Wilde, Christ should have been betrayed by John, the man he loved best. That, as far as I can see, is the sole message of this play. The stupid thing is, the play is called The Judas Kiss but Wilde is betrayed by the man he loves best. So it should rightly have been called John’s Kiss. So there. And don’t take Grannie.

What the critics said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9541289/The-Judas-Kiss-Hampstead-Theatre-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-judas-kiss-hampstead-theatre-london-8134582.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/judas-kiss-hampstead-theatre

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/345848/Theatre-review-The-Judas-Kiss-Hampstead-Theatre-London

http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/naimakhan-6622/review-the-judas-kiss-at-hampstead-theatre-7240/

Hedda Gabler - The Old Vic - Thursday 6th September 2012

Synopsis:

Hedda Gabler, daughter of an aristocratic general, has just returned from her honeymoon. Her husband is Jørgen Tesman, an aspiring, reliable (but not brilliant) academic who has combined their honeymoon with research for his next book. The reappearance of Tesman's academic rival, Ejlert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Løvborg, a writer, is also a recovered alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), Løvborg shows signs of rehabilitation and has just completed a bestseller in the same field as Tesman.

The critical success of his recently published work transforms Løvborg into a threat to Tesman, as he becomes a competitor for the university professorship Tesman had been counting on. The Tesman's are financially overstretched, and Tesman tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that Gabler had been expecting. Upon meeting Løvborg, however, the couple discover that he has no intention of competing for the professorship, but rather has spent the last few years labouring with Mrs. Elvsted over what he considers to be his masterpiece, the "sequel" to his recently published work.

Apparently jealous of Mrs. Elvsted's influence over Løvborg, Gabler hopes to come between them. She provokes Løvborg to get drunk and go to a party. Tesman returns home from the party and reveals that he found Løvborg's manuscript, which he has lost while drunk. When Gabler next sees Løvborg, he confesses to her, despairingly, that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Gabler encourages him to commit suicide, giving him a pistol. She then burns the manuscript and tells Tesman she has destroyed it to secure their future.

When the news comes that Løvborg has killed himself, Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted are determined to try to reconstruct his book from the comprehensive notes, which Mrs. Elvsted has kept. Gabler is shocked to discover from Judge Brack (a friend of Tesman's), that Løvborg's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental.  Worse, Brack knows the origins of the pistol. He tells Gabler that if he reveals what he knows, a scandal will likely arise. Gabler realizes that this places Brack in a position of power over her. Leaving the others, she goes into her room and shoots herself in the head.

Cast:
Darrell D’Silva - Dr. Brack
Buffy Davis - Bertha, the maid
Daniel Lapaine - Eilert Loevborg
Anne Reid - Aunt Julie
Adrian Scarborough - Tesman
Sheridan Smith - Hedda Gabler
Fenella Woolgar - Mrs. Elvstead

Creative Team:
Director - Anna Mackmin
Designer - Lez Brotherston
Lighting - Mark Henderson
Music - Paul Englishby
Sound - Simon Baker
Casting - Sarah Bird

Once upon a time, when the world was young, you went to drama school and then learnt the nuts and bolts of your craft in the theatre. You started out playing maids or butlers, progressed to small supporting parts, and eventually played the lead. Then your agent sent you off to audition for a TV programme or a film, and you took all that you learned in the theatre and hopefully made a success of your latest exciting venture. Now it seems that you finish drama school, do a soap or a sitcom, become an overnight success and then head back to the stage to show how in touch you are with your artistic roots. Unfortunately, what you learn dong a soap or a sitcom often doesn’t stand you in very good stead for the rigours of the stage. There are no retakes, no opportunity to cover up your lack of stage experience, no technique to fall back on if something happens in the auditorium and distracts your attention. Stage fright? Tough. You are on your own. If you are lucky, you are part of a cast of experienced actors who can support your performance and help you look better than you really are. If you’ve got any common sense, you don’t tackle the classical repertoire until you’ve got a good few years stage experience under your belt, at which point you may decide that you have always longed to play Hamlet and that now is the time.

Before taking on this part, Sheridan Smith freely admitted in a Time Out interview that she had never heard of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. In fact, she had to look it up on the internet, and was almost put off playing the title role by what she read. Would that she had listened to that inner voice that said “Now is not yet the time”. A reasonably competent actress she may be, but now is not the time that she should be playing Hedda Gabler. She should have left it to someone with a bit more training, a bit more experience, a bit more technique. She should have taken a supporting role (there is an ideal role in which she could have excelled in this play), watched the actress playing Hedda carefully and learned from what she saw. And then waited her opportunity to play the role with all guns blazing. She certainly shouldn’t have admitted to her ignorance in an interview. But what the heck, the Casting Director must have thought. She’ll fill the theatre with people who liked her in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps or Legally Blonde and who will come to see her rather than those who have come to see Hedda Gabler. In terms of bums on seats, it’s a winner. In terms of artistic success, it’s a definite maybe.

In terms of the audience, it’s a mistake. Yes, the theatre was full. But (as an apocryphal story about a returning WW1 solder goes) “My dear, the people! And the noise!”. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in such a badly behaved audience. There were those who can’t sit for 15 minutes without checking their mobile and those who didn’t have the intelligence or the courtesy to turn them off before the performance started (of course, their phones always start ringing just when the drama is at its height). There were the sniffers without handkerchiefs, the constant fidgeters during the wordy bits, the people who think its appropriate to chat to their friends during the performance. The sweet wrapper rustlers. Those who think that the leading lady should be roundly “whooped” at the curtain call. You know, those people who think that going to the theatre is the same as watching something on the TV. All, without exception, under 30. There to see Sheridan Smith and with little or no appreciation or understanding of the play. Thankfully, Him Indoors explained their presence with the immortal line “She [Ms. Smith] has a large following among The Youth”. Honestly, all that was missing was a string of pearls and a lorgnette.

Now, before the Sheridan Smith fans give me the same treatment as the James Corden fans, I’m not saying that she didn’t make a game stab at the role. But the role of Hedda has been described as “the female Hamlet”. The role belongs to the Juliet Stephensons, Maggie Smiths and Maria Ewings of the acting world. You need the solid weight of experience behind you to fully make it yours. And, as yet, she doesn’t have it. There are times when she is on very uncertain ground, and its evident. Playing a role is not merely following your Director’s instructions and learning the lines, and there are many occasions when Ms. Smith is simply doing both. Her inexperience and uncertainty shows. Now is not the time. OK, this was a preview performance and Ms. Smith may have the good luck and/or the nous to follow a very steep learning curve during the run, but the work should be evident at the first performance, not the last. Her projection needs a lot of work (but then, to be fair, so does the projection of a lot of the cast. Anne Reid, in particular, should know a lot better because a lot of the time she is barely audible). Hedda is a power-player, a manipulator, but on many occasions Smith’s Hedda is a pawn, not a queen. She’s a bit frigid as well; there is no evidence of sexual tension between her character and Darrell Da Silva’s Judge Brack. When Fenella Woolgar is on stage with her, Woolgar is the one you are watching, because she can act with her body as well as her voice. She doesn’t need to even open her mouth before you can tell that she is pulled taught as a bowstring and is ready to snap. Woolgar knows how to fiddle with the handle of a bag, smooth back an errant lock of hair, stand there in awkward embarrassment. This is the role that Smith should have been cast in; a role which makes an impact but doesn’t have to carry the full weight of the play. One gets the feeling that when Smith hasn’t been told to do something, she doesn’t do anything, and the performance dips and peaks accordingly. Woolgar, in comparison, doesn’t stop. If she’s on stage, she’s acting.

Adrian Scarborough gives a full throttle Tesman – bumptious, tedious, irritating and petty, and its obvious why Hedda comes to loathe him; she’s like a clever canary which has the cat right where she wants him. Daniel Lapaine does his best with the difficult and near-impossible role of Loevborg (a part that is given such a build up before he appears on stage that it is apparently an uphill struggle to justify it afterwards). Anne Reid is a competent Aunt Juliana, but was practically inaudible in many places (particularly the second act). There is, however, little you can do with the part I would imagine other than be a fussy old spinster. I was shocked that she was not given a second costume; at the end, when her sister’s death is discussed, Aunt Juliana should be in full mourning. In this production, however, the character is simply wearing a black paletot (a kind of three-quarter length jacket worn over the bodice of an Edwardian day-dress) over the costume she wore in Act I. This is particularly noticeable as Smith is at that point dolled up to the tens in a slinky mourning dress worthy of Scarlett O’Hara – or perhaps Vampira.

Him Indoors accuses me of never noticing or commenting on direction, but even I noticed various points where direction was awkward or superfluous. There are many doors on the set, which is designed to be a “room within a room”, and several times characters seemed to do a full tour of the entire set to reach a particular door when in reality they would have simply entered or exited by the nearest one to hand. There is a certain “filmic” quality to some of the direction, particularly that before the dialogue starts; the play is almost told in flashback so that what you see at the very beginning is actually the very end. The lighting is very pretty and effective, but to me it felt as if the lighting technicians hadn’t quite mastered their “daylight quality” until the second act.

The Brian Friel version of Ibsen’s text is a bit clunky and peppered with constant references to Americanisms, along the lines of “What a corker, as I think the new-fangled American expression is”. Do I suspect a certain sense of wishing to amuse our Colonial Friends in the audience, or is it something to do with the fact that a trip to the Old Vic is now more or less a corporate experience with “American Airlines” plastered all over the building in various guises? Whoever decided to put that “American Airlines Bar” in the main foyer, right at the bottom of the stairs is a fool; it obstructs what is already a very cramped space (you really do have to fight your way through the champagne quaffers before the performance) interrupts the flow of the audience coming down the stairs afterwards. In case you miss your opportunity to buy a vastly overpriced drink in the foyer, there is another “American Airlines Bar” on the lower ground floor which obstructs the queue for the toilets. I doubt whether Lilian Baylis, founder of the Old Vic, would have approved, and I certainly disapprove of her portrait being relegated to the very top of the staircase where only the brave souls mountaineering up three floors to go to the toilet will ever see it.

And now, let us stand back and wait for the Sheridan Smith fans to pour scorn and vitriol on my review of their heroine.

This was a preview performance, pro reviews posted after opening night.

The Doctor's Dilemma - National Theatre, Friday 20th July 2012

Synopsis:

The story opens on the day that Ridgeon, a prominent research doctor, is knighted. His friends gather to congratulate him. The friends include Sir Patrick, a distinguished old physician; Walpole, an aggressive surgeon; Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, a charismatic society doctor; and Blenkinsop, a threadbare but honest government doctor. Each one has his favorite theory of illness and method of cure. These are incompatible--one man's cure is another man's poison. Nonetheless, they all get along.

A young woman (Mrs. Dubedat) desperately seeks help for her husband, a talented artist,  from Ridgeon, who has apparently found a way to cure consumption. Ridgeon initially refuses, but changes his mind for two reasons - Dubechat is a fine artist and Ridgeon is smitten with his wife.

When the doctors meet Dubedat, however, they find that he is a dishonest scoundrel. Ridgeon eventually decides to treat Blenkinsop (who also has consumption) and refer the artist to Bloomfield Bonington, this insuring that he will die. In the end Ridgeon justifies his behavior as a plan to let Dubedat die before his wife find out what an amoral cad he actually was. This, in fact, happens and Dubedat's artistic reputation soars.

Cast:

Redpenny - William Belchambers
Dubedat- Tom Burke
Sir Patrick Cullen - David Calder
Sir Colenso Ridgeon - Aden Gillett
Minnie Tinwell - Amy Hall
Dr Schutzmacher - Paul Herzberg
Dr Blenkinsop - Derek Hutchinson
Emmy - Maggie McCarthy
Mrs Jennifer Dubedat - Genevieve O’Reilly
Mr Cutler Walpole - Robert Portal
Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington - Malcolm Sinclair
Newspaper Man - Samuel Taylor
Mr Danby - Richard Teverson

Creative Team –
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Director - Nadia Fall
Designer - Peter McKintosh
Lighting Designer - Neil Austin Music - Matthew Scot
Sound Designer - Gregory Clarke

Verily, we must give thanks. The sun is finally shining after months of rain and gloom (although personally I would prefer the heat to be slightly less ferocious, thank you very much). The Olympics will soon be over, leaving only a team of rubbish collectors chasing plastic bottles and cardboard cups around Stratford and Greenwich Park to get on with the long process of being dug up, built on, trampled all over and generally abused. The Accounts Department will serve Lord Coe with the final bill (“Well, that will be fifty six trillion, two hundred million, four hundred and eighty seven thousand, four hundred and eight pounds and 26 pence please. And no, we don’t take Visa”) who will then gesture towards Joe Public and say “My friends are paying”. And the National are once again showing a classic play, given it a lush production and a good cast and (for once) a decent poster.

This really is the kind of thing the National should be doing all the time (or at least a good deal more often). Presenting plays that may have fallen slightly out of fashion for various reasons, but which are worthy of being wheeled up from the morgue, being given a shot of something in the arm to perk them up a bit and exposure to the oxygen of applause. Voila, we have brought a classic play back to life, simply by stimulating its phagocytes. I mean, look at how successful London Assurance was a while back. People like this kind of stuff. It sells. And it’s a bloody good piece of writing. Its intelligent, addresses important points and is very funny, Yes, it might show signs of its age by being a bit wordy on occasion, but it honestly didn’t feel like it had a 2 ½ hour running time. In fact, the interval took me completely by surprise. And honestly, people can concentrate for that long because we’re not all idiots with the attention span of – sorry, I have to go check Facebook for a second.

Part of the productions’ appeal is its grand set design, which is wonderful. Before curtain up, a chap in the row behind us was reading the programme and gasped “Oooh look, each of the scenes is set in a different place” (perhaps he doesn't go to the theatre very often, bless him). I don’t think he was disappointed either, because no seemingly no expense has been spared. Sir Bingelybat Picnic-Hamper’s consulting rooms (really, Shaw outdid himself with stupid names in this play) are extremely grand, even if the windows do need a bit of a scrub. It’s the first time I’ve seen a dining table rise up out of the floor in the Lyttleton auditorium, even if the candelabra should have been placed parallel with the long sides rather than the short ones. And all the artist’s studio needs to make it perfect is a trio of merrily starving students (preferably a poet, a painter and a playwright) and a consumptive needlewoman expiring on the chaise lounge (which sounds like it needs to be a very big chaise lounge in order for them all to expire on it, but you know what I mean). The only gripe I have is that, in the final scene, the paintings are more or less obscured by the dropped in wall – although this does allow for some nice bits of direction as Aiden Gillet and Genevieve O’Reilly spar verbally while viewing them.

Although the lead character is ostensibly Sir Colenso (which to me sounds like something you would pour down a drain to unblock it), he is actually somewhat of a minor character in the play. Most of the best lines are given not to him but to one of the other three medical men – personally I think that Malcolm Sinclair walks away with the entire evening purely because he has the most perfect comic timing, and looks like he has just stepped out of an Edwardian painting of a doctor (I initially thought the one I was seeing in my minds eye was that by Sir Luke Fildes, but it turns out I am wrong.  The one I am thinking of can be seen in the Hogwarts Infirmary with its companion piece called "The Nurse" but I can't remember who it is by.  Answers on a postcard please). There is the opportunity for a number of minor characters to have their time in the spotlight – notably Emmy, Sir Colenso’s housekeeper, lumbering up and down like a kindly old elephant. All that Maggie McCarthy is missing in this role is a glass of warm milk and some digestive biscuits on a tray (I did wonder whether it was implied or whether I just imagined it that this character was once Sir Colenso’s Nanny?). There is a fine cameo of an incredibly insensitive reporter by Samuel Taylor and Tom Burke is louche, caddish, completely reprehensible but devilishly sexy as Dubedat, handling the switch from pathos to bathos and back again particularly well in his deathbed scene. The only weak link is Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mrs. Dubedat – I found her shrill, unconvincing and far too “theatrical” in her performance – if she had been playing an actress her performance would have been great, but to me she seemed both shallow and completely over the top. In fact, I would say that in her case, you could actually see her acting. Listen for the susurration from the audience when she slips off her robe and strides about naked – its very funny and sounds like the audience are not entirely sure whether they should be scandalised by her nudity but then decide that its ok for a woman to get her baps out because this is a play by GBS, after all, and therefore acceptable.

I do have a gripe about her costumes, too. They are extremely pretty and very “period” – but she wears them at incorrect times. In the first scene, which takes place mid-morning, she is wearing pretty walking outfit, but appears in it again (with the addition of a long motoring coat) at the evening dinner party, when she should be in evening dress. She finally appears in an evening dress at the end of scene four – but has apparently managed to lace herself into a corset and a tight fitting bodice without any human assistance. Yes, yes, I know, I’m a nitpicker. Live with it.

And finally, finally, run to the roof and shout hurrah; the National Theatre Publicity Department have seen the light and have designed an appropriate poster/programme cover for this production. A couple of years ago, if not more, the decision was taken (I believe by Nick Hytner) that all NT production posters would henceforth be photographic, in an “in house” style and with a standardised, sans serif font in gaudy paintbox colours. This has led to many hideous, boring images that really have very little to do with the productions they advertise. Thankfully this policy has been rescinded and the production is graced by an appropriate, painted image. However, one wonders, as the production was planned two years ago, and casting presumably sewn up shortly after that, why the image doesn’t actually show Genevieve O’Reilly? As one of the themes of the play is Dubedat’s almost obsessive need to draw and paint his wife, surely an image of the actress playing her would be appropriate?

Aaaaanyway, minor carps aside, this is a good solid production which achieved the practically impossible – it cheered me up after a major domestic the night before and for that alone it is worthy of commendation. People who haven’t rowed with their Other Half will still enjoy it.

What the critics said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9426772/The-Doctors-Dilemma-National-Theatre-review.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/doctors-dilemma-national-theatre

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831343208959/The+Doctor's+Dilemma.html

http://oughttobeclowns.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/review-doctors-dilemma-national-theatre.html