Every Good Boy Deserves Favour – Tom Stoppard *****

Tom Stoppard’s play is unusual and brilliant in that it requires a full orchestra to be present on stage and participate in the action. For this reason, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is unfortunately only rarely performed. Thankfully, in response to the success of the 2009 run, the National Theatre is staging a limited run this winter with the Southbank Sinfonia. The power of its themes, of imprisonment, madness and corruption, lends this play a gravitas which stands in counterpoint to the dark humour and comic absurdity of much of the action.

A political dissenter, Alexander Ivanov (Adrian Schiller), is interred in an asylum for suggesting that the Soviet system commits sane men (his nonconformist friends) to mental institutions. Caught in a Catch 22-type situation, whereby he must admit to being cured of his psychosis in order to be freed, he refuses to bring about his own release for fear of validating the lies of the Soviet regime and corroborating in their corruption. Coincidentally, his cellmate, also named Ivanov (Julian Bleach), is genuinely insane, believing himself to be in possession and in control of a full orchestra. Apart from providing much entertainment and comedy, Ivanov’s real lunacy allows for a confusion of identities when the Corporal comes to review the two men’s cases for imprisonment. Both are freed but this is no simple solution; the psychotic Ivanov is lost and vulnerable when unleashed on the world, and Alexander has slipped through the net on a technicality when he wanted to act autonomously to expose a hypocritical regime.

The interplay between actors and orchestra is exceptionally handled with the doctor, played by Jonathan Aris, moving fluidly from his acting role into a violinist and back again. Interestingly, the audience participate in Ivanov’s delusion in being able to see the orchestra live on stage, whereas those characters within the play are oblivious to it. Just like Ivanov, we derive pleasure from this music and we feel the loss as keenly as he when the orchestra disbands in what seems to be a violent and cruel catharsis. The received wisdom that madness needs to find a cure is challenged here in a play fraught with conflicting impulses. Sacha, Alexander’s young son played by Wesley Nelson, reminds us that, in sacrificing himself to expose the regime, his father will leave him alone and miserable in a brutal world. Only sixty-five minutes in length, this play carries the weight and fullness of a three-hour production, creating a lasting impression that endures far beyond its duration in the theatre.

Three Sisters, Lyric Hammersmith ****

Irina, Masha and Olga are trapped in their small-town provincial existence, dreaming of a return to Moscow - a place which holds the promise of escape, love and life. Ultimately everyone must come to accept their lot and live the life they have been struggling against: Andrei rails against the small-minded town folk who think that working for the local authority is the pinnacle of one’s career and then boasts when he is appointed to such a post, and Irina is horrified by the thought of marrying Baron Tuzenbach instead of finding love in Moscow but then finally succumbs to the idea.

Nothing happens in this play; the sisters never make it to Moscow, Masha’s love affair comes to nothing and she returns to her husband and, although Irina is willing to marry someone she doesn’t love for the chance of escape it offers, she must abandon her plans when her fiancé is killed in a duel. It is precisely this lack of movement and plot development which makes Chekhov’s play a masterpiece in human observation. In laying bare the dreams and desires which make us human, the inevitable failures and weakening of the individual will to act, this play questions how successful we are as agents of our own destiny. The sisters are initially strong and self-determining, Irina will go to work and be useful and Masha will love Vershinin despite being unhappily married, but by the end of the play all three accept their unhappy lot, pronouncing that their fate is ‘in God’s hands’.

In this new and innovative version by Christopher Hampton at The Lyric, Hammersmith, Chekhov’s Three Sisters is brought up-to-date and made relevant to a modern audience through an inspired use of sound and staging. The open and unadorned set reaches across the wide expanse of the stage, the lighting, sound-system and wings are all in view. This lends to the action an air of unconstrained freedom; the mismatched furniture and chaotic movement makes the family’s lifestyle appear bohemian but the three-bar fires and their unhomely, unhoused condition hints at poverty. Strategically placed microphones amplify sound so that everyday noise becomes strange and disarming. The boiling of a kettle starts at a low rumble but reaches an unearthly and apocalyptic crescendo until it switches off and the audience realise that nothing has happened except that the tea is now ready to be made. Although gimmicky, this sonic manipulation does help to compound the prevailing atmosphere of tension and unease but is also witty and fun like much of the dialogue.

Despite the predictable Russian doom and gloom, this play is funny not least because of the excellent comic performances by Clare Dunne as Irina and Gemma Saunders as Andrei’s soppy but malevolent wife, Natasha. Romola Garai is excellent as Masha, her caustic wit and depressive loafing suggestive of the fact that she is the only sister to have given up hope a long time ago. While the others quarrel as to whether society will see improvement and intellectual advancement or fixity and meaninglessness, Masha believes in faith and meaning but when, at the end of the play, she reiterates the line she first spoke in good humour, ‘and round the oak a golden chain…and round the oak a golden chain…’, it is apparent that she is descending into nonsense and madness in the reiteration of this haunting image of imprisonment.

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Rope by Patrick Hamilton *****

I would always recommend Rope the stage play over the Alfred Hitchcock movie version. Atmospheric and nail-biting though that film is, the experience of seeing the action live on stage is far more suspenseful not least because of the dramatic intensity of having the body of the undergraduate, Ronald Kentley, (or at least the illusion of it) interred on stage throughout. Patrick Hamilton’s play works; it captures that mercurial essence of theatre which is to convince the audience that they are witnessing an event, that something vital is unfolding in the present moment. This is what I hope to discover every time I visit the theatre and I am often disappointed, but it would be hard to come by a more satisfying production than Roger Michell’s Rope, currently at the Almeida theatre.

The setting is the recognizable post-war jazz age of Brideshead Revisited, populated by aristocratic undergraduates at Oxford making mischief while they are down in London for the holidays. But while the mischief is innocuous enough and the tenets of Catholicism the primary source of doubt in Brideshead, Rope has its students questioning the value of life itself leading to cruel and motiveless murder. Based on a real case, this play brings alive the true horror of the crime but, that said, it also has a tremendous comedic force. Phobe Waller-Bridge delivers a faultless turn as the irrepressibly energetic and vacuous Leila. However the truly show-stealing performance is Bertie Carvel's Rupert, with an eccentric turn of phrase and biting wit reminiscent of Brideshead's Anthony Blanche; he is the voice of experience bringing his shambling gait and incongruous tales of war into the centre of the Mayfair party scene.

The rest of the cast are strong: Alex Waldman is suitably nervous and hysterical as Granillo, Michael Elwyn is pitiable and vulnerable as Sir Johnstone, and Emma Dewhusrt brings great comic timing to the role of monosyllabic Mrs Debenham. Blake Ritson is strong as the bombastic Brandon but his delivery was slightly overdone in the opening scene. Similarly, the play closed on a weak note with the body of Ronald being revealed jack-in-the-box-like, bursting through his chest-coffin in a cloud of confetti. Perhaps it was a gesture towards the idea of Ronald's revenge but it failed and left behind an atmosphere of absurdity which did not do justice to the rest of the performance which was spirited, horrirfying edge-of-your-seat stuff.

Innocence by Dea Lohr ***

Appearing as part of the Arcola Theatre’s January season of German plays, Dea Loher’s Innocence , translated by David Tushingham, is just the thing to strip away any lingering festive merriment or excess. It is an astringent black comedy with a cast of strange, mad and disturbed characters. The story of two illegal dock workers witnessing a woman drowning and doing nothing to save her is played out in a dystopian set of corrugated metal walls where the detritus of modern life, books and a television set, are strewn and surrounded by sand, fragments shored up against ruin.

A crazed old woman (Ellen Sheean) intrudes on the bereaved relatives of recent murder victims, claiming to be the mother of the criminal and apologising for her left-handed poet son pleading that she ‘wasn’t being evil’ forcing him to use his right and noticing that the stab wounds show he used his left. Rosa (Caroline Kilpatrick) is trapped in a loveless marriage to an undertaker who takes more care of the cadavers he brings home than of her. Her diabetic amputee mother (the hilarious Ann Mitchell) moves in and stifles Rosa’s attempt at independence. The overarching narrative of the dock workers poses an interesting question of moral culpability but it is the strangeness of the whole ensemble and the creepy atmosphere of the suicide-prone town that really steals the show. This tone is best represented by the blind pole-dancer, Absolute, played by Meredith MacNeill; a feisty but needy and vulnerable waif who picks up one of the dock workers off the street.

In a town where all voices collaborate to shout ‘JUMP!’ at a person threatening to commit suicide from a bridge, because they are holding up the rush hour traffic, strong human bonds are in fact forged. Absolute finds refuge with her new friends, even Rosa’s mother finds a devoted carer in the crazed old woman. Yet it is Rosa’s return to the sea at the end of the play which reinforces the duality at the centre of the play - she is at once free and bound, as she escapes life she is ensnared by the universal compulsion to commit the self to death.

Ellen Sheean gives the most genuine and moving performance; her every move speaking the anguish of her mind. Maggie Steed is great to watch but the part is not a good one, seemingly tacked on without much bearing on the rest of the play. Requiring the characters to frequently narrate their actions and to prelude their lines with introductions, ‘Rosa said…’, the play loses immediacy and realism but this does add to its project of de-familiarisation. Bitingly funny but not afraid to show that suffering often lies at the heart of existence, this is an extraordinary play with which to start the new year.