The Ladykillers - Vaudeville Theatre, Saturday 20th July 2013

Synopsis:

Posing as amateur musicians, Professor Marcus and his gang rent rooms in the lopsided house of sweet but eccentric Mrs Wilberforce. The villains plot to involve her unwittingly in Marcus’ brilliantly conceived heist job. The police are left stumped but Mrs Wilberforce becomes wise to their ruse and Marcus concludes that there is only one way to keep the old lady quiet. With only her parrot, General Gordon, to help her, Mrs W. is alone with five desperate men. 

The criminals argue among themselves and, one by one, they start to plot against each other, each ultimately meeting their deaths at the hands of one of their former colleagues and their bodies being dumped into departing trains. Mrs. Wilberforce tries to convince the local police that she has foiled the robbery plot and tries to return the money but isn't believed, instead being told to keep the money.  She uses the money to take General Gordon on a cruise in order to seek the cure for the illness that has caused all his feathers to drop out.  

Cast:

Constable MacDonald - Blair Plant

Mrs. Wilberforce - Angela Thorne

Professor Marcus - John Gordon Sinclair

Major Courtney - Simon Day

Harry Robinson - Ralf Little

One-Round - Chris McCalphy

Louis - Con O'Neill

Mrs. Tromleyton - Carole Dance

Creative Team:

Written by – Graham Lineham, based on the screenplay by William Rose

Director – Sean Foley

Set and costumes – Michael Taylor

Lighting – James Farncombe

I was looking forward to this to cheer me up.  Unfortunately the first half was completely and totally ruined by the bad behaviour and appalling manners of the middle-aged couple sitting directly behind me.   THREE times (yes, three!) I had to turn round and ask them to be quiet.  And then, in the interval, they started having  a “conversation” which was clearly directed at me so I eventually had to turn round and tell them that I thought people of their generation had better manners.  Things got rather tense so I had to move to another seat – but by this time the show was ruined for me, which was a shame because my bad experience (and subsequent bad mood) will have a knock on effect on how I review it.  I missed a lot of the dialogue in act one because of the constant stream of dialogue coming from the seats behind me.  The rest of the audience seemed to be having a good time though.

The set is marvellous – the interior of a creaky old house, rapidly being shaken to pieces by the rumble of the steam trains coming and going from King’s Cross .  Some of the scenes which take place outside the house are cleverly incorporated into the fabric of the house itself, although the heist scene, which is played out with model cars and trucks moving round on the vertical surface of the house’s exterior wall doesn’t really work terribly well.  It’s a clever idea but not done slickly enough.   There were a couple of scenes during the second act when it seemed as if something hadn’t gone according to plan – perhaps a fluffed line or a missed cue.  Particularly clunky was the scene where the two robbers attempt to throw each other off the roof.  Something got bungled somewhere and Simon Day ended up throwing himself off the roof. 

The cast do the best they can within the limited stereotypes dictated by the script.  Angela Thorne does a marvellous job of the physical aspects of being a doddery old lady (compare her walkdown and bow at the curtain when she seems positively spritely by comparison) and is genuinely touching in some of her scenes - particularly when she descends the staircase arrayed in her lovingly preserved party dress. John Gordon Sinclair manages well with the unforgiving role of Professor Marcus, haunted as he is by the ghost of Alec Guinness, but isn’t nearly “odd” enough.  But Ralf Little’s tics and twitches are overdone and get irritating very quickly.   Con O’Neill’s Louis is inaudible for most of the time because of his appalling accent. 

The script works well, sticking closely enough to that of the film to honour the source but different enough to be fresh.  Unfortunately most of the action takes place in act two so it feels uneven. There is so much going on and so many people to be bumped off that it feels over-crammed yet still rushed. 

The show deserves a better review than I’ve given it.  I was deeply, deeply pissed off with the rude people behind me and spent the second half in a black sulk at the back.  Stupid, I know, allowing other people to spoil an afternoon at the theatre – but sometimes other people can be so bloody inconsiderate.  

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jul/10/the-ladykillers-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10169485/The-Ladykillers-Vaudeville-Theatre-London.html

Passion Play - Duke of Yorks Theatre, Saturday 29th June 2013

Synopsis:

Eleanor is  a chorister whose marriage disintegrates when her husband James embarks on an affair with someone she had considered as a friend and confidante.  James, a leading restorer of paintings, agrees to a clandestine meeting with the couple's sultry young friend Kate, the widow of a former colleague. An affluent photographer, Kate ostensibly needs James' professional input for a book she plans to write; but her real motive for meeting Eleanor's husband is to convince him to take her as his lover.

James needs little convincing, and slowly the lies mount up. The revelation that her husband of twenty-five years is being unfaithful comes as a tremendous shock to Eleanor, who feels compelled to reveal secrets of her own. With the marriage at crisis point, both she and James develop alter-egos  who give voice to the troubled spouses' innermost thoughts.

Cast:
Eleanor -   Zoë Wanamaker
James ... Owen Teale
Eleanor's alter-ego  ... Samantha Bond
James' alter-ego  ... Oliver Cotton
Kate ... Annabel Scholey
Agnes ... Sian Thomas

Creative Team:

Director: David Leveaux
Producer: Tali Pelman
Set Designer: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson
Sound Designer: Fergus O'Hare
Costume Designer: Laura Hopkins

With apologies for the delayed posting - Passion Play will have already closed by the time you read this.  Things have been a little hairy on the domestic front at RTR Towers (to say nothing of the slightly gammy leg still which is driving me up the wall). In fact, I did wonder whether we would ever make it home after the performance, seeing as how some bright spark at Westminster Council had given permission for the EDL to march through central London on the same day as Gay Pride.  Now there's a riot in potentia. Still, at least things have not been so hairy as they were for Eleanor and James, the main characters in this play. 

It wasn't selling well, and its easy to see why.  This was not a pleasant evening out at the theatre.  I found it quite distressing at times, and I wonder about the psychological effect it would have on an actor to be playing it 8 times a week.  I wouldn't have recommended going to see this to anyone who was in any way depressed - and certainly not to anyone struggling with the effects of marital infidelity.  In fact, I was chatting away to the woman in the seat next to me who was on her own and obviously desperate for someone to talk to during the interval and we both agreed that, amusing though aspects of the play were, both of us would probably go home and slit our wrists with a razor blade if it got any darker. 

You do have to pay close attention because, with four people on stage but only two characters (both main characters have an "alter ego" who speaks their thoughts) it can get fairly confusing.  It could, of course, have got even more confusing - the chap in front wondered whether Zoe/Samantha and Owen/Oliver would swap roles after the interval and I thought "if that happens I'm totally lost".  What kept me relatively sane during Act 1 was that the alter egos didn't actually speak directly to anyone else on stage.  And then, during Act 2, the prediction from the row in front was more or less fulfilled and the alter egos not only started interacting with other characters on stage but also with each other and I thought my head was going to go off pop.  It wasn't too bad with the men, because despite being a character and his alter ego, Owen Teale and Oliver Cotton don't really look that much like each other.  Oliver Cotton, for example, has a lot more hair.  But with Zoe Wannamaker and Samantha Bond looking like the pair of slightly demented twins in Gormenghast, with the wigmaker's art having been pushed to its limit, the only way I could easily tell them apart was becuase Wannamaker has a retrousse nose (if anyone knows how to type an accented e in Blogger, I would be grateful for the tip) and Bond was wearing a necklace and slightly different coloured trousers. 

It did, of course, feel like there was somebody missing from the stage, and that was Kate's alter-ego.  Mind you, there probably wouldn't have been much room for it - her personality is (perhaps deliberately) rendered as so manipulative and horrible that any other point of view would probably have got in the way.  You are left in no uncertain terms as to who is the villain of the piece and that James is simply a middle-aged fool flattered into destroying his marriage.  It becomes less and less easy to sympathise with either Kate or James, who seem to act without any thought of the possible consequences.  

The entire play does feel a little dated with its references to records, letters (remember those?) and telephone boxes. Apart from those references, it could be anywhere, anytime, and the spare, pared back set did a good job of being nicely non-specific.  It does all get terribly, terribly confusing (particularly when one is a Bear of Very Little Brain) in the second half when the alter-egos start interacting with the "real people" - a real acting challenge I should imagine to spend half the play saying lines directed at nobody and to whom nobody reacts, and then to spend the second half interacting normally, and it does all get terribly, terribly bleak as things spiral out of control.  Not a play I would recommend to anyone feeling emotionally fragile in any way, or indeed anyone who has ever been in a relationship breaking down because of someone's infidelity.

What the critics thought:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/may/12/passion-play-zoe-wanamaker-review

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/may/07/passion-play-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10041727/Passion-Play-Duke-of-Yorks-Theatre-review.html

Normal service resumed shortly

Dear Readers

Apologies for the lack of reviews lately. I have had to take a bit of time off from blogging due to being in a bad place vis a vis a terrible bout of depression.  Lack of funds have also had a knock on effect - money is tight and there has been little to spend of theatre tickets.  Over the next couple of days I hope to be able to bring things up to date with a series of mini-reviews.

The Audience - filmed performance shown at Greenwich Picturehouse, Wednesday 19th June 2013

Synopsis:

 

For sixty years, Elizabeth II has met each of her Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace - a meeting like no other in British public life; it is in private.  Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said, not even to their spouse. The Audience breaks this contract of silence and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen.  

From young woman to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan age.  Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

 

 

HM The Queen – Helen Mirren

Anthony Eden – Michael Elwyn

Margaret Thatcher – Haydn Gwynne

Harold Wilson – Richard McCabe

Gordon Brown – Nathaniel Parker

John Major – Paul Ritter

David Cameron – Rufus Wright

Winston Churchill – Edward Fox

James Callaghan/Private Secretary – David Peart

Equerry – Geoffrey Beevers

Princess Elizabeth – Nell Williams

 

Creative team:

Written by Peter Morgan

Director – Stephen Daldry

Designer – Bob Crowley

Lighting – Rich Fisher

 

I sometimes worry about Him Indoors.  Firstly, this show completely failed to register on his radar.  Given that he is often to be found crouching over the PC like some kind of demented puma at 0859hrs waiting for the booking season for something obscure to open at 0900hrs, this is in itself a matter for some concern (although when this was brought up in conversation, the story subtly changed to “I saw it mentioned and didn’t think it would be the kind of thing you would be interested in”  Personally I think this is a poor attempt at trying to get out of not having realised it was opening.  He always was a terribly poor liar).  Secondly is that he seemed to think that Mary Hopkins was in this.  I think he is losing his mind.  It comes to us all, some earlier than others. 

 

Every time the show has been mentioned in the media over the last couple of months, I have made vaguely distressed whimpering noises, which markedly increased in volume and frequency when I found out that, due to Ms Mirren’s contractual obligations elsewhere, The Audience would be closing shortly.  So it was with considerable relief on both parts that he managed to get tickets for a filmed relay of this into Greenwich Picturehouse.  Not live, unfortunately, because the show has already finished its run.  But still a performance, nonetheless; hey, sometimes we have to take what we can get. 

 

So, it was on a hot, sticky and very sultry lunchtime that we headed off on the bus down to Greenwich, humming “Those were the days, my friend”, and finding that we were the youngest people in the auditorium by a long shot.  Well, I was, anyway.  I wasn’t best pleased to find that we were in the front row; granted there was space for me to stick my still poorly old foot out (apparently I will never dance Giselle again, according to my GP), but it did mean that we were so close I could see that some of the actors hadn’t plucked their nose hair recently and I ended up with a major crick in my neck).  One of the disadvantages of watching a filmed performance is that you have to look at what the director wants you to look at; I would have preferred it if there had been a fixed camera somewhere offering a complete view of the entire stage (so you could watch the show from the point of view of an audience member in the stalls).  Needless to say Him Indoors disagrees; he does this now and then but I try to ignore him as best I can.  Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad had we not been so close to the screen. It can be quite disconcerting looking up the Queen’s nose.  I couldn’t see Mary Hopkins though, however hard I tried. 

 

It cannot be denied that Dame Helen gives a tour de force performance as HM.  After a six-month run of this eight times a week, the poor cow must be exhausted as, apart from a couple of short exits for costume changes, she is on stage for the entire 2 ½ hours.  Even so, I did notice a couple of slightly fudged lines.  For obvious reasons, she is somewhat less convincing as Queenie in the very early days of her reign – even an experienced actress like her cannot make a mature voice sound young. As Queenie from the 1960’s onwards, however, the performance is astonishing, helped (of course) in part by remarkable wigs and costumes.  From a distance, it would be incredibly difficult to tell the Dame and the Queen apart – although the Dame has a bit of a conk on her which is obvious in profile.  Every gesture, every facial expression, every posture – its truly uncanny.

 

Most of The Audience is played strictly for laughs, and I thought it would have been better had it been less funny.  The Prime Ministers are, almost without exception, played as pantomime caricatures (mostly villains).  Richard McCabe plays Harold Wilson as a genial, bumbling fool and Hayden Gwynne’s performance as Mrs. Thatcher and Paul Ritter’s as John Major have  both seemingly been lifted straight from Spitting Image. Gwynne’s is a star turn – a cross between Cruella de Vil and Iago.  I was somewhat shocked at the sheer lack of physical resemblance depicted by some performers; Nathaniel Parker doesn’t really look very much like Gordon Brown at all, and Rufus Wright bears no more than a tangential  resemblance to David Cameron (he’s got the hand gestures right, but looks too sharp-angled and ferret-like; Mr. Cameron has got slightly pudgy-faced over the last six months).   Robert Hardy was to have played Winston Churchill but was taken ill during rehearsals so Edward Fox can be forgiven for not looking very much like him.  David Peart looks even less like James Callaghan, but is only on for a couple of minutes or so and does us all the favour of announcing that he is James Callagham, so no worries there. 

 

Again, a full company bow with a solo bow from the star.  I do so hate all this “communist bowing” as Him Indoors calls it – I fully believe that every member of the cast deserves their own bow and their own applause.  I was slightly shocked that Dame Helen didn’t take her bow in character – it was all that was needed to make the illusion complete (perhaps apart from the sudden appearance of Mary Hopkins). 
 

What the critics said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/mar/10/audience-helen-mirren-daldry-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9910160/The-Audience-Gielgud-Theatre-review.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/review-the-audience-gielgud-theatre-london-8521370.html

The Cripple of Innishmaan - Noel Coward Theatre, Friday 14th June 2013

Synopsis:

 

Set on the remote island of Inishmaan off the west coast of Ireland just before the outbreak of WW2,  word arrives that a Hollywood film is being made on the neighboring island of Inishmore. The one person who wants to be in the film more than anybody is young Cripple Billy, if only to break away from the bitter tedium of his daily life.  Billy forges a doctor's letter saying that he has TB and only months to live in order to get sympathy from Babbybobby and a ride in his boat over to Inishmore, where he is spotted by the Director and taken to Hollywood for a screen test.  Having failed the test, Cripple Billy returns home to find that life will probably never be the same.  Finally finding  out the truth regarding his parents' apparent suicide, Fate has a couple of surprises still in store for him.

 

Cast:

Kate Osbourne - Ingrid Craigie

Gillian Osbourne, her sister - Gillian Hanna

Johnnypateenmike - Pat Short

Billy - Daniel Radcliffe

Bartley McCormick - Conor MacNeill

Helen McCormick, his sister - Sarah Greene

Babbybobby - Padraic Delaney

Doctor - Gary Lilburn

Mammy, Johnnypateenmike's elderly mother - June Watson

 

Creative Team:

Written by Martin McDonagh

Director: Michael Grandage

Set and costumes - Christopher Oram

Lighting - Paule Constable

I think if you were any member of the cast other than Daniel Radcliffe, you would be really quite peed off with both the Noel Coward Theatre and Mr. Grandage.  Not only is Mr. Radcliffe’s mug plastered up all over the outside of the theatre and all over the programme cover (just him, mind you), but he is the only member of the cast given a solo bow at the end of the show.  Full company bow, solo bow by Mr. Radcliffe, full company bow, solo bow by Mr. Radcliffe, curtain.   Yes, I know he’s young, pretty and Harry Potter (there were at least two sad middle-aged women having their picture taken outside the theatre of them draping themselves over the pictures of Mr. Potter) and a very bankable star name, but this play is very much an ensemble piece (and, frankly, the role of Billy is not actually a very big one).  There are other people in it, is what I’m getting at.  But you wouldn’t know it. 

From the same pen as The Beauty Queen of Leenane, this is  quite a slight play, but with similarly dark overtones and lots of the same kind of comedy.  Like Beauty Queen, there are several points where the plot turns on a sixpence, and you are sit there thinking “Oh my god [this] is going to happen” but then it suddenly doesn’t and the plot twists away in another direction, and you are left sitting there feeling that you have been taken up the garden path and then dumped among the hydrangeas feeling stupid.  There seemed to be very little actual plot, and I’m not entirely sure what the audience were expecting but there were an awful lot fewer people in the auditorium after the interval.  I could have done with two fewer people in the auditorium all the way through – the two idiot teenage boys sitting next to me.  One of them tried to get past on his way to his seat and then barged by before I had managed to get up (narrowly missing poorly foot) and had not yet learned how to blow his nose on a handkerchief and treated everyone in the vicinity to a loud and bubbly nasal symphony every five minutes or so, and neither of them had worked out how to get sweets out of a small cardboard box quietly nor how to drink through a straw without a) blowing bubbles in the drink first and  b) making that loud slurping noise you get when the drink is running out and you are chasing the dregs of fluid around the bottom of the cup.  Needless to say, one of them had a mobile phone which went off during a quiet bit in the second half. 

Most of this play is very, very funny – leaning towards the “Craggy Island” style.  And a certain amount is very, very dark.  And the stage is very, very dark for a lot of the time as well – off towards the wings everything fades into obscurity  - thankfully most of the action is well centred on stage but there is at least one (non-essential but funny) part involving a bible that you may well miss unless you have been eating all your carrots.  The funny lines come so thick and fast that you could miss a lot of the jokes because you are laughing so much, and then it all gets very serious, and then very funny again and then very serious – leaving me feeling rather like I was sitting on a rollercoaster.  It gets a little tiring eventually.  Mr. Radcliffe's accent wanders a bit now and again.

It would be invidious to pick out any individual performance because, as I said before, this is an ensemble piece – unless you are Daniel Radcliffe – and everyone is very good.  Sometimes the Irish brogues are a bit too thick to be penetrable and sometimes the dialogue goes too fast for comfort, but overall its well-paced and slick throughout, which is fortunate because it could become self-indulgent at a slower pace.  The lighting  could be better at times, but all in all it’s a fun evening out, even if the plot is essentially unrealistic.  Why people walked out at the interval I don’t know – perhaps they were expecting Mr. Radcliffe to be whizzing round the stage on a Nimbus 2000?  Apparently he was handed a pile of scripts by Mr. Grandage and told “pick one you fancy being in and we’ll do it”.  It is to Mr. Radcliffe’s credit that he picked something which didn’t supply him with a  “star vehicle” to the detriment of the rest of the cast.  I would still have liked to see everyone get their own bow at the final curtain, however. 

What the critics thought:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/jun/18/the-cripple-of-inishmaan-review

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/theatre-review-daniel-radcliffe-gives-an-admirably-honest-performance-the-cripple-of-inishmaan--but-his-irish-accent-isnt-quite-there-8663412.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10127301/The-Cripple-of-Inishmaan-Noel-Coward-Theatre-review.html

http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/cripple-inishmaan-no%C3%ABl-coward-theatre





 

Whodunnit [hobbling] - Greenwich Theatre, Monday 10th June 2013

Synopsis:

Act 1

A collection of characters, apparently drawn directly from classic English detective fiction, arrive for a party in an old country house. Among them there is a Rear-Admiral, a lawyer,  a pair of "Bright Young Things" , a lady archaeologist,  and a flamboyantly eccentric butler who keeps trying to serve up his own cocktail creation, the "Zombie Whammy". There is also Andreas Capodistriou, a smooth talking serpent of a man who demonstrates to each guest in turn that he knows something compromising about them and is intent on blackmailing each one.

The act climaxes as each guest, having a reason to want Capodistriou dead, conceals his or her self on the set to lie in wait for the victim, who arrives alone and kneels to perform his evening prayer. As he does so, a collection of sword-wielding hands appear around him. One blade falls, removing his head, and the curtain falls.

Act 2

The act opens on an incongruous scene. Policemen in modern dress mingle with the archaically dressed guests. They are investigating the murder that ended the first act. The Rear Admiral sneezes and loses his fake moustache in the process. He reveals that he is actually an actor, and was hired to participate in a role-playing party for the owner of the house, who would act as detective and solve the mystery. It transpires that all of the "guests", and the butler, are also hired actors. The entire affair has been orchestrated in order to murder the man who played "Capodistriou", who in turn is revealed to be Gerry Marshall, a theatrical agent who held the contracts of all the actors. Each actor hated Marshall, but all deny knowing it was him playing Capodistriou. The organizer of the party was apparently Marshall himself. It is up to Inspector Bowden to unravel the tangle of relationships, real and unreal, to unmask the killer.

 

Cast:
Perkins, the Butler: James Pellow
Andreas Capodistriou, an oily Levantine: James Murphy
Silas Bazeby: Paul Cleveland
RearAdmiral Knatchbull Folliat; Robert Hannouch
Lady Tremurrain: Ellen Verenieks
Lavinia Hargreaves, a Bright Young Thing: Stephanie Wilson
Roger Dashwood, a Young Man About Town: Thomas Barron
Dame Edith Runcible, an archaeologist: Lillie Collier
Inspector Bowden: Damien Tracy
Sergeant: Andrew Beckett

Creative Team:
Written by Anthony Shaffer
Directed by Paul Taylor-Mills
Designer - David Shields
Produced by Kyle Vilcins

Him Indoors was in a lather of anticipation - he had seen the original production of this at Her Majesty's Theatre back when God was a boy, and when it was called The Case of the Oily Levantine. Apparently the cast was reasonably stellar for the period, the set was enormous, the production values slick - and it sank like a stone. 

I think this production would best be described as "endearingly awful". It did rather smack of a wet afternoon in Frinton-on-Sea watchng the local repertory company die on its arse in front of an audience of about 2 dozen punters, most of whom have only bought a ticket to get in out of the rain for a couple of hours.  The play smacks of "repertory company" anyway, with a vast array of parts for people of wildly differing ages.  That is no bad thing in itself - being "in rep" was a true apprenticeship which taught you your craft through long hard slog and experience; rehearsing one play during the day and appearing in another during the evenings every week really honed your expertise.  You developed your acting muscles and could play the leading man one week and a walk-on with three lines the next.  If there wasn't a part for you, you either helped out backstage, manned the box office or took a wildly unsuitable part if nobody else was available.  There were a couple of instances of people taking on wildly unsuitable parts in this show.

Whodunnit? is very much a "repertory company play" anyway - the "detective thriller" genre was one of the rep system staples.    And this play calls for each person to demonstrate two very distinct acting styles - in the first act, the audience has to be tricked into thinking that they are watching a "period thriller" in the style of the early stories of Agatha Christie, whereas in the second, it becomes apparent that the setting is contemporary.  This was actually pulled off very well in this production.  What wasn't so successful was that a couple of roles taken by people decades too young to play the parts convincingly, which could do nothing for the credibility of the production or the actors concerned.  White makeup plastered all over your hair does not make you look old - it makes you look like someone with white makeup plastered all over your hair.  Playing an old person and bounding about the stage like a boisterous puppy is not convincing - just embarassingly amateurish.  If you are going to use a walking stick, watch someone who has to use one and observe how they move.  Don't just flail it about. 

This is a well-crafted and intelligent play, and better production values and considerably better direction would have helped it immensely. The constraints of the set did not help the production but merely showed up its deficiencies.  I am not entirely sure that the Director was entirely up to speed with what was needed at several points.  Scrutinising the set, I could only make out one reflective surface (the glass of the French windows) when, at one point, every character on stage needs to be looking into one - no mirrors were in evidence, nor shiny silver trays, nor powder compacts.  When someone pours a drink, unless it is whisky or port (and most certainly if it is referred to as orange squash), more than an inch of fluid needs to be put in the glass.  The "voiceover", which narrates the viewpoint of the murderer, and which must not be identifiable as any member of the cast, was so garbled and obscured that it was supremely difficult to make out what was actually being said.  When your entire cast are meant to be holding swords, it looks daft to give one of them a golf club.

James Pellow really rather walks away with the acting honours in a stand-out turn as Perkins the Butler, transmogrifying into an evil old queen much in the style of Derek Jacobi in Vicious.  Paul Cleveland as Bazeby showed a complete inability to do anything with his arms - in fact, for at least the first ten minutes of Act 1, I was convinced that, for some reason to do with the plot, he was wearing false arms inside his jacket (he wasn't, but it looked like it).   Robert Hannouch, who cannot be out of his 20s, did not make a terribly convincing Old Sea Dog, and wearing a false moustache over a real one is just bizarre.  Mr. Hannouch, the Court finds you guilty of putting white makeup in your hair. Likewise, Lily Collier is far, far too young to play Dame Runcible (a role that was taken on Broadway by Hermione Baddely - Mrs. Bridges to you and me - when she must have been well into her 60s).  Thomas Barron is smoothly plausible as Roger Dashwood - full marks, Mr. Barron for correct period hair and pencil moustache.  And bonus points for wearing calf-length socks; nothing is so "unperiod" as being able to see a bit of white leg over the top of a short sock when a man is sitting down - at least two male cast members guilty of this.  Andrew Beckett gives a nice comic turn as the outrageously camp Police Sergeant, but the team is let down badly by Damien Tracey's Inspector Bowden, who looks like he needs a hairbrush, a razor, an ironing board, a needle and thread and a good night's sleep, as well as closer and more detailed direction - at several points I felt he was just wandering aimlessly and rather pointlessly about the stage.  Better direction would certainly have helped in the second act which is very wordy and liable to drag for the audience if they are not being visually entertained. 

I enjoyed this play, but am afraid that I didn't enjoy this production of it.  I stick by my claim of "endearingly awful".  It could have been so much better. I wanted it to succeed and be funny and sharp and slick and make me laugh and pack in the punters.  As it is, I found it all faintly embarrassing.   And I have to take issue with the "programme". One sheet of folded A4 paper inside a cover made of one sheet of folded A4 card does not constitute a programme, in my mind, particularly when a) it covers three plays being performed over a 12-day season, b) it contains nothing but cast and creative team biographies and mentions nothing whatsoever about the plays, their production histories and so on and c) it costs £2.  I've had more informative bus tickets and feel somewhat ripped off. 

The Amen Corner [shortly coming off crutches] - National Theatre, Wednesday 5th June 2013

Synopsis:

The Amen Corner takes place in two settings: a ‘‘corner’’ church in Harlem and the apartment dwelling of Margaret Alexander, the church pastor, and of her son, David, and sister Odessa. After giving a fiery Sunday morning sermon, Margaret is confronted by the unexpected arrival of her long estranged husband, Luke, who collapses from illness shortly thereafter. Their son, David, along with several elders of the congregation, learn from Luke that, while Margaret had led everyone to believe that he had abandoned her with their son years ago, it was in fact Margaret who had left a dysfunctional Luke and pursued a religious life. This information precipitates confrontations between Margaret and her son, her congregation, and her estranged husband, regarding what they perceive as the hypocritical nature of her religious convictions, and the breakup of her family.

After an important conversation with his dying father, David informs Margaret that he is leaving home to pursue his calling as a jazz musician. On his deathbed, Luke declares to Margaret that he has always loved her, and that she should not have left him. Finally, Margaret’s congregation decides to oust her, based on their perception that she unjustly ruined her own family in the name of religion.

Cast:
David - Eric Kofi Abrefa
Ida Jackson - Naana Agyei-Ampadu
Brother Washington - Delroy Atkinson
Sister Rice - Katrina Beckford
Brother Boxer - Donovan F Blackwood
Sister Boxer - Jacqueline Boatswain
Sister Douglas - Miquel Brown
Odessa - Sharon D Clarke
Margaret - Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Luke - Lucian Msamati
Sister Moore - Cecilia Noble

Creative team:
Director - Rufus Norris
Set Designer - Ian MacNeil
Costume Designer - Joan Wadge
Lighting Designer - Paul Anderson
Music Supervisor and Vocal Arranger - The Rev Bazil Meade

Tickets to preview performance kindly supplied by Jenny Woods at AKAUK.com

 

Praise de Lawd, I am soon going to be off these crutches.  Actually, at a couple of points in this show, the gospel singing was so goddamned wonderful that I could happily have got up from my seat, hurled them into the aisle and shouted "Its a miracle! I can walk!"  But perhaps that might not have gone down too well with the rest of the audience, certainly not with the couple to my right who stank of cheap wine to the high heavens, or the couple to my left who quaffed pints of lager all the way through.  I came out afterwards smelling like I had spent the evening in a brewery (yes, I know wine isn't made in a brewery, but work with me on this one, brothers and sisters, and forgive me the sin of mixing metaphors).  I like gospel singing - its so jolly, even when its mournful (I once lived round the corner from a gospel church, and I used to run a hot bath on Sunday afternoon and open the bathroom window so that I could listen to the singing and soak away my sins. The odd glass of wine and rubber duck would feature sometimes - in the bathroom, that is; I don't remember any songs about wine and rubber ducks.  In fact, I think it was probably only the prospect of some gospel that got me to go to this play, because on paper it sounds downright depressing.  But hey, free tickets and all that. The life of a theatre review blog writer, eh?  Its a tough life but someone has to do it. 

Aaaaaanyways, I didn't realise that this play was going to be funny as well. I'm not entirely sure that its meant to be funny, but sometimes the inflexion of a line or phrase can make something funny when the playwright didn't mean it to be.  Sometimes, however, I think that one of the lead peformances tipped very dangerously towards the line that divides humour and parody, actually crossing that line several times, to the character's detriment.  At least one of the lead performances wasn't very good at all, but there were three stunning performances to compensate for this, and the singing was fecking amazing. And one of the lead performers acted like a dream and sang like a saint, so double bubble.  And the theatre was packed.  Which is nice.

Now, I'm going to be contentious here for a moment.  And some of you are going to raise your eyebrows and some of you are going to say nasty things and I'm telling you here and now, brothers and sisters, that any nasty comment is going to be ignored and deleted so save yourself the bother.  My comment is about black people at the theatre.  Not on stage; in the audience.  Theatre audiences, in my experience, are predominantly white.  In the main, black culture has not (until relatively recently) really embraced theatre; there are historical and cultural reasons for this which are beyond the scope of this blog.  My point is that this is a play by a black writer, featuring a black cast of characters and which deals with black issues and gospel music.  And yet there were so few black faces in the audience.  I counted a dozen, maybe.  Why?  If the remit of the National Theatre is to present theatre for everyone, why can I find no publicity for this production in The Voice?  Why isn't the National reaching out to black audiences and saying "come and see this play"?  Yes, yes, I know - you are going to wonder why I think black audiences would be particularly interested. Well, I think they would be.  And I was slightly bothered that there seemed to be so few black faces in the audience. And that, brothers and sisters, is the end of the contentious paragraph. 

I swear that a lot of the scenery from this show was recycled from the Lenny Henry version of The Comedy of Errors from 2011 - which I saw but cannot see that I reviewed, for some reason.  Possibly because it was so bad I couldn't bring myself to experience it again by writing about it.  Certainly a lot of the architectural backdrop I am sure I have seen before somewhere.  Still, it is nice to see the National re-using stuff. 

The central performance of Pastor Margaret is stunning. Marianne Jean-Baptiste takes on a character which, when you sit back and think about it, is terribly unsympathetic; cold, intolerant, inflexible, unforgiving, unheeding of those nearest to her.  And yet I wager that there was not one person last night who wasn't 100% on her side by the end of the play.  The play is essentially about a power struggle and even I sat there thinking "Oh lordy, is she going to pull this one off?  Or not?"  She is magnificently supported by Sharon D. Clarke, who gives one of the "realest" performances of the evening - understated (not really that difficult when surrounded by caricature, granted) and focussed, and when she sings, I am sure that there are angels above weeping with joy.  Jeez, can this woman give it some. I am still not entirely sure what her character is actually making in the kitchen in the second half - three eggs, a good slosh of milk and what appears to be salt and pepper are whipped up with an egg whisk and then returned to the fridge.  Scrambled eggs perhaps - but would you put them back in the fridge uncooked?   Lucian Msamati is also amazing in the small but pivotal role of Luke.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Eric Kofi Abrefa as David - probably the least convincing performance of the evening.  Cecilia Noble's performance as Sister Moore is going to divide people, I think.  Some will love it, some (like me) will think that her performance tips over the line into caricature just that once too often.  Jaqueline Boatswain hasn't yet managed to cover up her London vowel sounds, which keep popping through her accent; this is annoying.  There was one point where I swear her accent went completely for an entire paragraph.  Naana Agyei-Ampadu does an extremely good job with an extremely small role. 

Chapeau to the London Community Gospel Choir who provide the music.  Amazing. Simply amazing.  And worth the price of the ticket alone (it was free, but you know what I mean).