Uncle Vanya –Arcola Theatre, London ****

[written for The Public Reviews]

Hopeless. Despair. Endless. Bored. These are some of the words used by the characters of Chekhov’s melancholic play, Uncle Vanya, which is a meditation on the purposelessness of life and a wasted existence. At the centre of the play is the failed murder of Professor Serebreyakov by his brother-in-law, Vanya. The professor returns home to his country estate with a young and beautiful wife, Yelena, in tow and the pair proceed to disrupt the steady work ethic and routine of the inhabitants. Vanya and the doctor fall in love with the enchanting Yelena and are ruined by it: Vanya driven mad by jealousy of the doctor and the doctor himself overlooking his duty to his patients by being at the estate every day. The professor’s daughter, Sonya, despairs at her unrequited love for the doctor when her only chance for happiness is taken away from her by the intruding Yelena. Finally, the old way of life on the estate is restored when the professor and his wife leave but they have taken all sense of hope with them and Sonya is left consoling the broken Vanya.

You are never in for light entertainment when watching a Chekhov play but this production did have some comic moments, a result of the excellent new translation by the director, Helena Kaut-Howson, and Jon Strickland who plays Vanya. The language is pared-down, untheatrical and colloquial – just as someone might speak today. Yelena’s diction is relatively heightened to show that she is an otherworldly being, ‘with mermaid blood’ as Vanya says. In contrast, the doctor, played by Simon Gregor, is by far the most humorous character, a plain speaker and an excellent drunk. Cleverly, the way the characters express themselves actually prefigures their downfall; the doctor is least hurt by his experiences despite his dalliance with Yelena, but Sonya is almost destroyed by the doctor’s rejection. The doctor is aware that the country is in decline just like his own body – the play opens with him discussing having aged with the family nurse, Nyanya. Later, he shows Yelena the maps he has drawn of the district which record the destruction of the forests. He bemoans the fact that nothing has been built in the spaces the forests once occupied and so his project is to restore them by planting trees. Sonya is inspired by the doctor and finds his voice gentle and mesmerising. She says that his project is genius and beautiful but this high praise is rendered empty when we come to understand that the doctor’s project is as futile as Vanya and Sonya’s work on the estate. Sonya has a harder fall than the doctor because she believed in redemption and beauty whereas the doctor knew all along that the world would come to inevitable destruction.

Destruction is at the heart of the play and it is in Vanya that the drive to extinguish is embodied. Yelena comes across a drunken Vanya attempting to shoot himself with his rifle; he is duly castigated by Nyanya and sent to bed. This urge to destroy shows itself again when the professor suggests selling the estate which Vanya and Sonya have worked hard to maintain while the professor has been away. Vanya’s despair tips him over into madness and he chases the professor, brandishing a gun. He misfires the last bullet so that when he comes to aim at the professor he fires a blank shot and so despairingly shouts ‘bang’, which is funny in its feebleness. All of this is excellently done with Jon Strickland’s Vanya seeming loveably hard-done-by and ferociously despairing by turns. Marianne Oldham’s Yelena is the embodiment of indolence as she slowly moves around the stage like an overfed cat. Hara Yannas deserves special mention as Sonya – she played the character with a very insightful hint of hysteria, always on the brink of tears or laughter or both which I thought summed up the mood of the entire play. The set was carefully put together but there were some extraneous elements such as the red-lit trees on the back wall. Similarly, the music, composed by Boleslaw Rawski, was beautiful but felt overly loud and out of place at times. The substance of the play was too great to be overtaken by the style but it did feel at times that the set, storm effects and music were too prominent. Overall I was impressed by this fresh version in the new Arcola Theatre, which has recently moved into new premises; this is a great quality production with which to usher in a new era of the Arcola.

Runs until 4th June

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Funk It Up About Nothin’ –Theatre Royal Stratford East, London *****

[written for The Public Reviews]

There are numerous modern versions of Shakespeare in film and theatre which attempt to bring the plays to a younger audience; often they simplify the plot so it becomes unrecognisable and the poetry of the plays is almost always sacrificed. This hip-hop version of Much Ado About Nothing could easily have been an empty gimmick and I was bracing myself for an uncomfortable hour of dumbed-down theatre. Luckily Funk It Up is fresh and clever; it preserves the main elements of Shakespeare’s plot but it also translates the rich humour and electric wit that characterises the language of the original play. The achingly cool GQ & JQ bring Much Ado bang up to date in a production which matches the ethos of the Theatre Royal Stratford East: to draw inspiration from the community which the theatre serves and then reflect that in the plays it stages.

Much Ado is centred in the feisty Beatrice and her nemesis, Benedick, who indulge in constant sparring and verbal jousting, cleverly transmuted into a rap battle. Here verbal prowess and the ability to speak wittily are respected and shown to be a positive part of today’s youth generation. This tendency to praise hip-hop culture is leavened by gratuitous but hilarious sexual explicitness (Benedick is a ‘cunning-linguist’ who just dodges the expected rhyme, ‘a genius, with a really big…vocabulary’) and, more jarringly, an uncomfortable recourse to emphasising the desire for women to know when to be quiet and a strong, almost violent, reaction to alleged female indiscretion. Hero is vilified and publicly humiliated by Claudio when he believes her to have slept with another man, in this version, just as much as in the original Shakespeare. It is a powerful message, hidden within an overtly funny production, that attitudes to women troublingly still resemble those of 500 years ago.

What made this production really enjoyable for someone who knows Shakespeare well is that, by using the vehicle of rap, it preserved the verbal alacrity of the original and also was very self-aware when making jokes about the conventions of Shakespearian drama. The excellent GQ, playing Leonato, has to stifle a laugh as he firstly shows incomprehension at how Claudio can be both himself and the judge then secondly has to admit to the audience that he is also the Governor of Messina so, in that capacity, he can marry the happy couple and bring the play to a happy end. All of the cast were skilled rappers with great comic timing and engaging physical presence on stage. The only character with a slight weakness, although played admirably by Jillian Burfete, was Hero who was conceived of as gratingly fey and had possibly the worst line of the play: ‘I’m Hero, the heroin, not the drug but the main character of this play I’m in’. Erick Ratcliff was strong as Beatrice with an accomplished delivery which had the audience gasping at her verbal acrobatics.

The most impressive thing about the production was that it attracted an audience which was predominantly young and from a mixed background and ethnicity, so unlike the theatre audiences I have observed in the West End which are predominantly middle class, middle-aged and white. Although by no means for children, I can certainly see the appeal to a younger theatre-goer and to anyone who enjoys intelligent comedy. Ultimately Shakespeare was a fan of words, wit and sex and Funk It Up About Nothin’ has all of these things in riotous abundance.

Runs until 7th May

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Mogadishu – The Lyric Hammersmith ****

[written for The Public Reviews]

Vivienne Franzmann’s modern morality play won the Bruntwood Prize in 2008 and has now transferred from the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to The Lyric. Mogadishu is an examination of culpability and victimization where the distinction between right and wrong becomes troublingly indistinct. The traditional morality play is updated here; the fight of good against evil, and the journey from transgression to redemption is re-cast in a new mold where there are no simple resolutions.

Amanda, a white middle class teacher, intercepts a fight between two pupils and Jason, a black pupil, retaliates by pushing her to the ground. An instinctive attempt to protect the boy condemns Amanda to a nightmarish circle of accusation and counter-accusation which threatens not only her career but also her family. Jason also moves to protect himself, not just from the consequences at school but also at home.

Tom Scutt has designed an effective set which transforms from a school yard into a family home and back again but is always encircled by a wire fence which defines the area of play, of move and counter-move. For the most part the scenes alternate between the school yard, the headmaster’s office and Amanda’s kitchen. Those scenes with the gang of kids led by Jason, who aren’t unanimously bad, are the most energetic and well-crafted of the play. Hammed Animashaun’s Jason brings enormous humour and charm to the relatively small part of the wittiest kid in the playground. Both Chloe and Dee are well realized and the dynamic between them has the authenticity one would expect from a playwright with years of teaching experience.

Fraser James was excellent as Jason’s disciplinarian father; the scenes between them had the audience wincing at James’ quietly menacing demeanor which hinted at a much larger threat behind his controlled exterior. Some scenes weren’t as effective: Shannon Tarbet as Becky perhaps overdid the teenage angst and she had a habit of playing to the audience, stepping outside of the scene with her body angled away from the other characters on stage. Rather tryingly, each meeting between Becky and her mother followed a similar pattern with Amanda tolerating her daughter’s tantrums as she railed against the passive approach her mum was taking towards Jason. Becky’s character is obviously there for a reason; a bit of a misfit, she too has ‘issues’ in what is a rather too deliberate attempt to show that middle class white kids have problems just like working class black kids.

There is perhaps too much of an attempt to tread carefully here. Amanda, being middle class and white, must have a black husband to counteract any doubt in the audience’s mind about her motivations behind protecting Jason; as if her having a white partner would somehow preclude her from understanding or having any sympathy for ‘black’ problems. There seems to be a suggestion that despite all the symmetry, the black with white, the two families who have lost someone to suicide, there is an inherent incompatibility which prevents the troubled black teen and the middle class white woman from co-existing. The resolution to the play is that there can be no resolution without complete destruction. Amanda can’t forgive even the well-meaning pupils and so gives up teaching, and Jason re-enacts the self-destruction he has witnessed in his past. This is a powerful play which has at its centre a very real and contemporary story but the themes it draws upon are timeless and I think this will ensure the play’s enduring success.

Runs until 2nd April

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By Jeeves – The Landor Theatre, London *****

Written for The Public Reviews

Although well-loved by many, the Jeeves and Wooster novels are an acquired taste; you really have to go in for their particular brand of silliness to enjoy them fully. I thought it would take a fan of the novels to appreciate this stage version by Alan Auckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber, but my plus-one, who has never read a Wodehouse book and has only glanced at the televised Fry and Laurie take on the buffoonish Wooster and his inimitable gentleman’s gentleman, was entertained and completely won-over by this production.

The play follows the story of one of the Jeeves novels, or may take elements from a number of them – it is hard to tell when they are all so similar. It inevitably involves mistaken identities, twisted love triangles and layer upon layer of confusion and farcical nonsense which presents an impossible mess. The confusion can only be straightened out by the logical Jeeves who always seems to step in a few moments later than he could have; Paul Meston gives us a Jeeves who enjoys his role as arbiter and the power this gives him to make Wooster suffer, just a bit, for his rather perfunctory treatment of him.

It may stick closely to the content of the books but the play is significantly different from them in that it uses the clever device of narrating a story within the frame of an entertainment at the parish hall, which re-enacts the events of Wooster’s visit to the house of Sir Watkyn Bassett. This allows the characters to be self-aware; they refer to props, dramatic convention and the arrival of the deus ex machina which will conveniently arrive to help Wooster out of a tricky plot cul-de-sac. By being self-referential in this way, Wodehouse’s plots and characters are presented as being knowingly contrived. The novels, in comparison, are somewhat naïve in that they invite the reader into the farcical world of the story but never shift the focus out again – we appreciate Wodehouse’s story craft but the characters must be a bit simple never to see past the ludicrous disguises and the extraordinarily unbelievable turn of events. By Jeeves celebrates Wodehouse’s comic genius and the brilliance of his ridiculous plots; the dramatic form allows the characters to become shrewd but retain their silliness, so that we see that their naivety is just a performance and we can credit them, and the audience, with some intelligence.

The cast performed with verve and energy and a special mention must go to the choreographer, Andrew Wright, who had to work with the challenges of such a small space but managed to accompany the songs with great comic movement. The stage really was too small and, although conducive to the setting of the parish hall, the actors would have benefitted from having more room to maneuver: there was an unfortunate incident where a dance routine resulted in someone in the front row receiving a cracking blow to the shin – luckily it came at the moment of Stiff and Stinker’s clumsy love dance and so was totally in context. There were a few bloopers and fudged lines but these added to the cobbled together charm of this village entertainment. Rather than a straight dramatisation of the novels, this is a new approach which brings something extra to the original books and characters as well as being great fun.

Runs until 5th March

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Water – The Tricycle Theatre, London ***

Written for The Public Reviews

Water played at the Lyric Hammersmith in autumn 2007 and here it is again at the Tricycle in association with the Lyric. The themes this play tackles are still fresh and very now: climate change is something which can’t be ignored when can no longer escape the ever increasing frequency of freak weather conditions and natural disasters afflicting the planet.

So it is a disappointment that Water doesn’t engage with the urgency and immediacy of the issues it sets out to address. The project here is to reduce these global problems down to a personal level – and using this reduced scale, Filter hopes to show us that these issues impact on all of us and that it is within our power to make a change.

A man hears that his estranged father, a professor at a Canadian university, has died and he must travel to his funeral and meet his half-brother. A woman works for the coalition government and attends a summit on climate change in Canada; she is fighting for the creation of a law to enforce the reduction of emissions, but her commitment to her work is destroying her relationship with her cave-diving boyfriend. Both characters converge in the same hotel yet pass each other without ever connecting, but during the course of the play they learn important lessons about compromise and the need to understand others.

If it seems that this play is about everything but climate change then you need to read the programme which includes interviews with the cast, and a disquisitional couple of paragraphs on the purpose of the project, without which I’m not sure the play would have held together for me. There should be no need for textual backup – the play should be complete of itself and make sense without recourse to outside information. So they play germinated from the memory a cast member has of being in a boat on a lake with his father. This then leads to the idea of togetherness, someone’s idea to create a piece about ‘water’, and the politics of climate change. These all seem very disparate, and they are, until drawn together by the notion that water molecules are unique in that they don’t repel each other like most others. Like water molecules, people need to connect, see the bigger picture, and compromise their individuality for the greater good, just as countries across the world need to set aside their particular economic and political agendas and agree to cut emissions at their own expense. So far, so very liberal.

The message is admirable but how realistic is it? I came away feeling that this was rather a naïve way of looking at such an important global issue but I was engaged by the experience, even incensed, and so Filter did succeed in that respect. It must also be said that the performance was visually arresting and innovatively performed. The set, with its large flat screens and laptops, realistically conjured slick modernity and acted as a counterpoint to the more banal uses we put technology to such checking an online inbox on Match.com. The three actors switch between characters with consummate skill and, in a short amount of time, make us care about each one of them. Filter creates a unique and ingenious theatrical experience which doesn’t seek to hide the mechanics of theatre, but their special effects did all seem to come at the beginning of the play and then taper off making their efforts feel gimmicky at times.

I couldn’t not enjoy a performance which transformed the stage into a magical aquarium with floating balloon fish, but despite Filter’s efforts to produce a meaningful meditation on climate change, the stark contrast between the political and whimsically philosophical ultimately didn’t pay off.

Runs until 5th March

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Madam Butterfly (or Bangkok Butterfly) – The King's Head Theatre, London ****

The bright lights of a modern day, tacky Bangkok replace 19th century Nagasaki as the setting for this famous tragic opera in a new production at The King’s Head Theatre. OperaUpCLose is the resident company at the King’s Head and has the mission of bringing opera to life to a wide audience, through new English translations in an intimate setting. And this has been achieved here with a vibrant reinterpretation of a classic.

In this retelling, Geisha Cio-Cio San becomes Butterfly, a Thai ladyboy who craves the love and protection of Pinkerton, a visiting American pilot. Butterfly is surrounded by an entourage of trashy ladyboys who, along with their pimp uncle Bonzo, renounce her when she gives herself up to the American. The ingenious libretto, by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, is fresh and feels modern but manages to keep impressively close to the essence of the original. It’s surprising how many of the nuances of the classic narrative are retained and how well it fits with the modern story. The words resonate with tragedy by the end, as they should, but there is an entertaining lightness discernable in the first act: Goro praises Pinkerton’s new apartment, ‘It’s great for parties!’ Pinkerton: ‘That’s awesome! Really awesome! (Noticing some dodgy electrics) Those wires there?’ Goro: (Hastily) Decorative!’

The Bangkok ladyboy theme could have been gimmicky if it were not so well conceived; the story really does hold together and brings out the tragedy of the original to a modern audience. Of course, the marriage between an American and a Japanese Geisha would have been out of the ordinary 150 years ago, and his abandonment of her a much more destructive act that it would perhaps be today. By transforming Butterfly into a transvestite, the relationship with Pinkerton is invested with some of the original exoticness and her abandonment by him and her pimp really exposes her to the poverty and desperation of the Thai underworld. Butterfly’s love for Pinkerton is placed second to her desire to reach America; she isn’t a romantic who has fallen hopelessly in love with the Western man, rather she sees him as her only escape route from a life she will eventually be broken by. All she has to look forward to is the fate of her sister, a premature death from Aids.

This is how Butterfly ends up with a child, not her own, but her adopted nephew who has an inherited sickness from his mother. Although this is a clever and logical reinterpretation of the original, the use of a puppet to stand in for the child is distracting. Operated by three stage hands, I found it visually disruptive even though the cast handled it convincingly. Similarly, the presence of a dog on stage, in the handbag of a ladyboy, was an unnecessary diversion from the action on stage and, what with canine super-sensitive hearing, I was concerned that it may have been unkind to subject him to the powerful voices of the singers at such close range.

But it was the closeness that I most enjoyed with this production. It was a real treat to be so near to a great cast of talented performers. Margaret Cooper deserves special mention in the role of Butterfly; she invested each word with heartfelt emotion and her voice was a pleasure to listen to, making the proverbial hairs stand up on the back of my neck when delivering the famous Un bel di aria. The standard of singing was universally and impressively high across the cast, and despite the unavoidable problems of staging in a small space with a low budget, this is a production which brings something excitingly new to a familiar classic.

Runs until 23rd January

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The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan – Theatre Royal Haymarket ****

[written for The Public Reviews]

Following quite closely on the heels of another comedy of manners, London Assurance at the National Theatre earlier in the year, comes Sheridan's The Rivals. Rivalling Fiona Shaw in the lead role of that former play is Penelope Keith and she, like Shaw, will prove a crowd-pleaser. Perhaps there is something about a romantic farce which we find appealing – it isn't a realistic reflection of the world, nor is it biting political satire, but rather a gentle poking of fun at human nature. The Rivals offers something we can all relate to, and laugh heartily at, without having to consider too deeply the social and moral ills afflicting the characters.

The Rivals transports us to eighteenth century Bath where Captain Jack Absolute woos Lydia Languish in the guise of a lowly ensign, Beverley. Taking her example from trashy romantic novels, Lydia has come to perceive romance only in a match which ill pleases her guardian, Aunt Malaprop. There must be impediments to her love for her to take any interest in it; hers must be a 'sentimental elopement' resulting in the 'prettiest distress imaginable'. From sending up the romanticism rife in the literature of the period, the target of the play's satire quickly switches to the purely mercantile view of marriage with Sir Anthony Absolute in the vanguard for marrying his son off for money, despite having wedded for love himself. Indeed he counsels the reluctant Jack on accepting whoever happens to come attached to a fortune: 'if you have an estate you must take the livestock with it as it stands'. Luckily for Jack, the very woman Absolute is proposing he shackle himself to is Lydia; happily he can fulfil his filial duty whilst bagging the woman of his dreams.

With its various subplots, romantic pairings and confused identities, The Rivals is classic farce and, as such, is a great platform for some excellent comic turns from the cast. Although Penelope Keith was an amusing Malaprop, delivering her characteristic linguistic singularities with the deliberate unconsciousness necessary for them to really work and be funny every time ('he's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile' raised a particularly loud laugh), Peter Bowles’ Sir Anthony Absolute stole the show. His repeated threats that he would work himself into a 'frenzy' (threatening indeed from a man who is restrained and seemingly emotionally constipated, but also quick to anger) were accompanied by deadpan wit and brilliantly timed nods to the audience. Keiron Self's Bob Acres was also supremely funny as a country bumpkin and loveable buffoon. Tony Gardner was an excellent Faulkner; his body language and facial expressions enough to fill a stage left empty when he succeeds in finally chased the ever-suffering Julia away.

The only disappointment was Robyn Addison's Lydia, played opposite Tam Williams' Jack (looking very much like a young Tom Cruise). This was her professional stage debut and, although she looked the part, some of her delivery lacked animation and character. Surrounded by such extraordinary talent Addison was bound to look the novice. And everything here is beautifully done; the costumes are lavish and the set, designed by Simon Higlett, is as crisp and bright as an aquatint. In the hands of Peter Hall, what appears to be a convoluted plot on paper is in performance a neat comic entertainment touching on all the familiar themes but in the most expert and opulent way imaginable.

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