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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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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