Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me – Southwark Playhouse, London *****

[written for The public Reviews]

As tube trains rumble overhead it’s not too difficult to imagine the war-torn city of Beirut above the dark vaults of the Southwark Playhouse which is a powerful thought in the context of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, a play about the potency of the imagination in the face of despair. As an Englishman, Michael, says when he joins an American and Irishman in a cell in the middle of the Lebanon hostage crisis, people outside don’t like to think about their imprisonment, implying that if the outsiders don’t think about it they don’t have to imagine what it’s like. This play forces us to contemplate incarceration and this makes for an intense and sometimes uncomfortable play, the misery of which is leavened by some very fine comedy.

Three men are chained to the wall and forced to tolerate each other’s company which, despite all the arguments, is the only thing which makes the situation bearable. We only hear reports of Adam, the American, having been alone for two months before the arrival of the Irishman, Edward, and we get the impression that continued solitude would have driven him insane. When Michael arrives, the comic potential of the ‘Englishman, Irishman…’ scenario is not passed up. There are some great nationalistic gags and the Englishman’s outraged reaction to being personally blamed by the Irishman for the potato famine of ‘150 years ago’ is particularly good. The insults continue to fly when Michael, a priggish university don, says that the ‘dialect’ of the Irish would be beautiful ‘if not for their coarseness which is so self-defeating’.

There is great comedy here (watch out for the hitch-hiker and his backpack joke) but we are firmly in the realm of tragedy. There are echoes of Hamlet’s ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space’. Hamlet calls Denmark a prison even though he is empirically free; the hostages are imprisoned but can escape their confines through dreams and imagination. Despite agreeing that an actor’s life must be dull, all three men act out their escape, whether through an elaborate fantasy involving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or by imagining they are drinking together in a pub or celebrating Christmas. With not even a window to show them whether it is night or day, the men perform their attachment to the outside world by verbally composing letters home and imagining they are shooting films on the streets of Beirut.

Hamlet calls Denmark a prison which Horatio and Rosencrantz dispute, but no one can deny the reality of the hostage cell in Lebanon even though Edward can joke that it isn’t as bad as Strabane. The men cling to optimism and hope, trying to follow Hamlet’s philosophy that ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me takes us on a journey through three men’s tortured and conflicted minds and forces us to contemplate the human condition in extremis. The play isn’t always easy to watch but it feels vital and important. The script is excellent, sharp and witty with only a few minor stumblings into earnestness; it feels obvious and unsubtle for Adam to pronounce that their captors don’t need to tear them apart because they are already doing it to each other. This twentieth anniversary production showcases exactly why this play received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1993 and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. These men have personal failings in abundance but their strength and resilience is an exaltation of the human spirit.

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The God of Soho – Shakespeare’s Globe, London ***

[written for The Public Reviews]

This bold and brash play is not The Globe’s usual fare but Dominic Dromgoole, the artistic director, should be commended for taking a risk even if it the result doesn’t quite hit the mark. Chris Hannan’s play has been written specifically for this theatre and he makes a valiant attempt at bringing his original play to life in a very demanding space. Ostensibly about voyeurism and our addiction to celebrity, self-promotion and self-obsession, the performance benefits from the inclusion of the audience – a large number of whom stand fully lit in the pit laughing along and becoming immersed in the action on stage.

We are in a gaudily lit heaven and a panoply of loud-mouthed Gods, decked out in white and gold with biker flourishes, watch as Big God’s daughter, Clem, is cast to earth to learn to love the man who has damaged her pride. Clem ends up dossing with a tramp on the streets of Soho and finds that, while she was sleeping, a pink handbag stuffed with sex toys has been planted on her. This provides the link to the other strand of the play; the violent relationship between self-deprecating reality star Natty and her sex obsessed boyfriend Baz, who has snatched her pink bag away in a threat to expose her to the press. The quest to restore the missing bag brings the two strands together but there is definitely no Shakespearean master-plotting here as the two story arcs collide to very little purpose.

Hannan’s use of language is to be savoured, though. Natty rather heavy-handedly draws attention to the burden of this play having to live up to what has very recently passed on the very same stage – a Shakespeare play. The language must be bold but also poetic – it must work hard to weave its magic in such an unforgiving space. Luckily Hannan’s larger-than-life characters are more than up to it. Phil Daniels’ Big God is a great pronouncer of truths. One of his best lines, ‘she’s the Afghanistan of love – best left in peace’, is paradigmatic of Hannan’s genius of translating big observations into even bigger jokes, thus avoiding any deflating earnestness.

And there are some excellently acerbic observations in this play which, with Hannan’s lightness of touch, avoid leaving a judgemental aftertaste. There is no judgement here as everyone is exposed as equally troubled and cast adrift in a world of which they fail to make any sense. But this doesn’t mean that everyone’s amoral behaviour isn’t riotously funny. Baz says the morning birds, singing away energetically, sound like they have been ‘on the Charlie’ all night long and Natty is pursued by a publicist who would rather see her client go to prison than being reconciled with her boyfriend because it would attract more column inches.

There is some very astute staging here which is as impressive as an optical illusion; look again at the classical columns of the Elizabethan stage and they are the garish marble pillars of a celeb’s Essex mansion. This fakery is cleverly echoed by Natty’s sister Teresa deriding her taste in her ‘mock Tudor’ décor which ‘looks like a copy of something’ – the air-headed Natty counters that every column is a ‘genuine replica’. Despite the sometimes excellent writing and the brilliant performances, especially from Iris Roberts as Clem, for all its self-conscious comparison to Shakespeare, The God of Soho fails to deliver on plot. Both a fabulous spectacle and a treat for any connoisseur of the English language, this play has many highlights but the story fails to cohere into either a meaningful satire on modern day celebrity or a deeper exploration of the human condition.

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Le Cirque Invisible – Southbank Centre, London *****

[written for The Public Reviews]

There seems to be a renewed interest in circus performance - now a legitimate artistic endeavour and a far cry from the tawdry big tops of our childhoods. Having attended numerous shows of this particular brand of performance art since the memorable circus festival at the Roundhouse in spring 2010, it would seem to me that these shows aim for entertainment and pretension in equal measure. Compagnie XY: Le Grand C at the Roundhouse, performed by 18 acrobats, was a breath-taking and gut-wrenching aerial display but the Aussie Propaganda was a bit too earnest when it came to ascribing deep existential meaning to the entertainment on stage. The French penchant for circus-style performance is in evidence again with Le Cirque Invisible; a delightfully cheeky double act whose triumph is their infectious sense of humour, their obvious life commitment to their art and their lightness of touch.

French whimsy is much in evidence here, we have the background accordion music and the obligatory surrealism, but Le Cirque Invisible is uniquely charming even if it does take us to familiar territory. Chaplin and Thiérré are less of a double act and more a pair of solo artists: they rarely inhabit the stage space at the same time. Victoria Chaplin’s ethereal costume manipulations are clever and mesmerising (she does something amazing with umbrellas and fans and has a skill for metamorphosing into any shape or creature) in contrast to Thiérré’s slapstick gags and visual comedy. And it is Thiérré who is the most original performer here; he has created character who is foolish and loveable, who wants to please and entertain. Never before has there been such a benevolent and happy-go-lucky clown.

Thiérré’s character is a poor excuse for a magician; his tricks fail or have unexpected consequences, he inadvertently shows the humble workings behind his shop-bought magic tricks and he can’t even juggle. His poor attempts at magic had the kids in the audience in fits of giggles. These episodes were the most surprising because, with the plethora of props it would seem that the act relied upon all the objects Thiérré pulls from his many suitcases but it is in fact his delivery and constant crowd-pleasing ‘hup, hups’ which really entertain. The highlights of the show included a musical number with a quaking duck, a skilful high wire performance from Chaplin, and a huge French horn which, after much blowing, omits only a feeble whistle.

It must take one hell of an effort to put this show on the road – there are so many extravagant props which are wheeled or brought on for a 10 second gag – no sooner has Thiérré walked on stage with a teapot marionette puppet and poured himself a cup of tea, he is off again and from the wings emerges an elaborate inversion of what we have just seen - someone dressed as a huge red teapot with a Thiérré puppet in tow. After a lot of enjoyable nonsense with rabbits, Thiérre drives across the stage in monumental motorised vehicle in the shape of a bunny. The scale of the gags is ludicrous but we get the impression that Thiérré and Chaplin are doing all they can to amuse rather than astonish.

This is a show for adults and children alike. Le Cirque Invisible is so compelling because it reignites the sense of wonderment we associate with out childhood. We aren’t convinced by the magic itself, not least because the magician is so incompetent, but we share the sense of amazement, so powerfully communicated by Thiérré, at the possibilities concealed within everyday objects and the utter joy of doing silly things with props for no more meaningful purpose than to raise a smile. And the cute rabbits are an added bonus!

Runs until 21st August

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Little Eyolf –Jermyn Street Theatre, London ***

[written for The Public Reviews]

Little Eyolf is one of Ibsen’s lesser known plays but it is powerful nonetheless and perhaps even more so when presented in the intimate studio space of the Jermyn Street Theatre. Echoing the fairy tale tone of the earlier play Peer Gynt, Little Eyolf has the strange mythical character of the Rat Wife intrude on the Allmers family to wreak destruction. In this way, the play is more overtly presented as a parable than Ibsen’s other works, such as A Doll’s House, which may disguise similar moral lessons with a more conventional or realistic setting.

Michael Meyer’s translation does not seek to modernise the play and this is crucial as the entire set-up of the family, the very circumstances which precipitates its destruction, are specific to the period in which it was written. Rita and Alfred are affluent and can afford to please themselves; Alfred goes off to the mountains to concentrate on writing his book, The Responsibility of Man, while his wife Rita languishes at home. Both are free to neglect their crippled son, Eyolf, as parents of their class often did. Indeed, Alfred accuses Rita of passing days without seeing Eyolf (after he suddenly decides to devote his life to the boy, realising his own responsibility as a man and father), leaving him to his aunt Asta who is the only one to show any real affection for the boy despite being the only one not duty bound to do so.

These circumstances may have been the norm but Ibsen’s play exposes the corruption at the heart of this particular family by having an outside influence reveal them to the world. The Rat Wife comes to the house asking if the family need ridding of any nuisances and it becomes obvious that both Eyolf and Asta are the nuisances which Rita would like to be rid of. In a dramatic realisation of the saying ‘be careful what you wish for’, Eyolf follows the Rat Wife into the sea and drowns as the other boys look on helplessly, leaving Rita and Alfred to contemplate the overwhelming guilt they feel. As well as guilt at their neglect of their child they also feel a sexual guilt and sexuality is presented throughout as troubling and sinful: Eyolf was crippled as a result of falling off a table when he was a baby, having been left there sleeping while Alfred and Rita made love. Even the sibling relationship between Alfred and Asta isn’t as sacred as they imagine and comes very close to corruption when Asta discovers that she and Alfred are not related. Asta must leave and accept Borgheim’s romantic advances, which she has been resisting vehemently, in order to prevent Alfred committing a sin and indulging in his love for her.

The most magnetic performance is given by Imogen Stubbs as Rita and yet there is something about her uninhibited anguish and hysteria which overpowers the play and makes it less subtle than its themes deserve. Jonathan Cullen’s Alfred is always in Stubbs’ shadow; thankfully he doesn’t try to match the fever pitch of her performance but his attempts at anger and passion only appear feeble as a response to the strenuousness of Rita’s emotions. The set was fit for purpose but I was unsure whether the bright blue walls were an intentional part of the set or just the usual décor of the playing space – whatever the intention, it was distracting and didn’t seem to fit the piece.

This play is a curiosity; with the strange Rat Wife and the horror of the death of a child at its centre, it is almost macabre. It peels back the layers of the closed domestic scene to reveal something disquieting and corrosive underneath. Ultimately the resolution of the play feels unsatisfactory, especially as Stubbs’ Rita has been played as so fervently jealous and uncompromising. It perhaps stretches credibility to think that she will devote her life to bettering those of the poor children who live nearby. This performance is muscular in its interrogation of the selfishness of humanity but bleak in the way it punishes people for that selfishness without offering much in the way of redemption.

Runs until 28th May

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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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