ajhlovestheatre

WOLVES ON ROAD 

by Beru Tessema 

directed by Daniel Bailey

Bush Theatre, London – until 21 December 2024

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/wolves-on-road/

The shady world of cryptocurrency goes under the microscope in Beru Tessema’s stimulating new play. It may be the principal subject but it’s far from the sole preoccupation of an ambitious, slightly unwieldy work that frequently engrosses, and just occasionally bewilders. Wolves On Road defies genre categorisation as it moves between sparky urban comedy, heartfelt family drama, gripping thriller…and back again. Ultimately, it’s a cautionary tale for wealth- and surface-obsessed times.

It has some of the hallmarks of Tessema’s earlier, more satisfying, play for the Bush, 2022’s House Of Ife. This new one has a similar earthy sense of humour, sometimes abrupt segues into the deadly serious, and a clear-eyed, unsentimental but heartfelt appreciation of the human and spiritual cost to Africans forced to migrate for reasons of safety and finance. It centres on best friends Manny and Abdul (Kieran Taylor-Ford and Hassan Najib), young East Londoners who get into cryptocurrency trading as a means to escape prospect-less, rudderless lives. Merry comedy gives way to something more alarming as the young men draw their nearest and dearest, as well as sizeable swathes of their community, into the unpredictable swamp of apparently unregulated wealth amassment.

Director Daniel Bailey proved with the universally acclaimed Red Pitch that his approach to staging is refreshingly unencumbered by traditional spaces and he goes one better here, utilising the entire Bush auditorium to galvanising effect. Actors enter through the house and mingle with the audience, a Ted Talk about the heady benefits of non-conventional financial practices (delivered by Hamilton’s Jamael Westman in full cockney rock star mode) has a festive, rally-like atmosphere, facts and figures in eye-catching multicoloured graphics are beamed onto the walls of Amelia Jane Hankin’s set, along with live-filmed close-ups of the actors faces. It’s flashy and high tech, which feels appropriate for the subject matter, but never at the expense of the human beings at the story’s heart.

There are a few sight line issues if you’re seated at the side, but the pace and focus of Bailey’s staging are irresistible, as is the sensory elan of Ali Hunter’s transformative, colourful lighting. The writing and production sensitively make clear the disparity between generations: while Manny and Abdul are all about getting filthy rich as quickly as possible, Manny’s mum Fevan (Alma Eno) is working slowly but steadily towards her dream of having her own restaurant, abetted by her gentle boyfriend Markos (Ery Nzaramba). 

It’s not that the elders and youngsters necessarily have such different dreams in the long term, but they have very different methods of achieving them. Markos meanwhile is also saving money to get his son, a similar age to Manny, to the UK from Ethiopia, possibly with the aid of unscrupulous people traffickers, which adds another layer of contrast and dramatic interest.

Tessema and Taylor-Ford chart convincingly the way sudden newfound wealth swiftly alters Manny from cocksure but likeable to something rather more cynical and sinister, but the gear changes in a confrontation scene with Markos, which sees the older man reveal some surprising and distressing personal details, are too abruptly done, as is its denouement which sees Fevan getting involved. It’s undeniably griping though, but not as much as a second act sequence where a family birthday party is decimated by sudden changes in bitcoin fortunes (the characters spend large swathes of the play with their mobile phones jammed in their faces….art mirroring life). 

The overlong script has a tendency to repetition that sometimes gets wearisome, and the storytelling could be clearer. It has an episodic structure -a parade of brief scenes- that might have worked better on screen were it not for the bold theatricality of Bailey’s staging. Nor did I fully buy the relationship between getting Fevan and anxious Markos. There’s still a lot here to like however, especially the sharp, timely humour, and these characters that feel authentically like people walking the streets right outside this theatre.

As Manny, charismatic Taylor-Ford looks like a real star-in-the-making, and the hugely likeable Najib impressively straddles Abdul’s opposing twin attitudes of masculine bravado and winded child. Physically and vocally, Eno reads as way too young to be mother to a twenty one year old and has a tendency to throw away her lines, which might work brilliantly on screen but becomes distractingly indistinct on stage. Nzaramba invests eager-to-please Markos with a touching sincerity and humour, but also finds a genuine gravitas when he is forced to fight his corner.

This is a viscerally exciting production of an uneven but entertaining and thought provoking script, and it’s refreshing to see a new play that feels so current and tackles a subject seldom, if ever, seen onstage. I wish its multiple thematic strands were manipulated with a little more finesse but it’s undoubtedly an ebullient evening loaded with talent. The quizzical ending feels exactly right, suggesting each of the young men has learnt quite different takeaway lessons from their tumultuous shared history, and has a pleasing ambiguity that seems apiece with Wolves On Road’s unconventional subject matter. 

BURNT-UP LOVE

written and directed by Ché Walker

Finborough Theatre, London – until 23 November 2024

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/burnt-up-love/

Normally the information that the author, director and leading actor of a new play are all one and the same person, is enough to set alarm bells ringing. But Ché Walker is no ordinary multidisciplinary artist, and Burnt-Up Love, his latest tranche of urban grit suffused with poetry, is no ordinary play.

Walker plays Mac, newly released from a twenty year prison stretch and on a mission to find his daughter, whose image as a laughing toddler on a photo pinned to his cell wall, was a rare source of light in an otherwise grim existence. Both as actor and writer, Walker invests Mac with a certain stoic dignity and nihilistic wit. There’s power in his stillness and a sense of a warning in the matter-of-fact delivery. It’s an impressive performance, so centred and focused it barely feels like acting.

Joanne Marie Mason plays daughter Scratch, all grown up now and with a roster of wrongdoings to her name that rivals those of her dear old dad. There’s a poignant contrast between the imaginary highfalutin careers her father mentally maps out for her, and the rather more pragmatic, predominantly illegal lifestyle she’s actually leading. Mason is astonishing, energised and unpredictable as she pivots between snarling aggression and the fight-or-flight fear of a cornered animal, and suggesting an inner life full of unanswered questions and infinite hurt. 

Neither Walker as playwright nor Mason attempt to sentimentalise or soften Scratch’s cruelty or frequently alarming behaviour, but it’s not hard to imagine the cues that set her on this hard-scrabble life trajectory. Her on-off lover, petty criminal Jayjayjay (excellent Alice Walker, persuasively multi-layered and sympathetic) describes her as having a glow, in common with other people not long for this world, which Mason fully embodies.

Ché Walker’s writing is extraordinary: foul-mouthed and brutal yet with a poetic lyricism that takes the breath away. His people speak in an expletive strewn stream-of-consciousness elevated by a unique command of language, they could have come off any urban street where there’s a pervasive sense of threat, but are simultaneously vivid theatrical creations.

His own production helps considerably with that. If the themes of nature vs nurture, and the immense difficulties of ex-convicts, rudderless and stigmatised, to keep from re-offending, aren’t particularly original, the staging truly is. Straightforward delivery of the words suddenly, seamlessly segues into expressive choreography (striking work by Billy Merlin). Uchenna Ngwe and Sheila Atim have provided a rapturous soundtrack with overtones of classical and urban dance, and Juliette Demoulin’s plain black box set is lit exclusively with candles and hand held torches. At one point sparklers whoosh and slice through the jet black air. As shows at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse repeatedly demonstrate, candlelight is astonishingly effective at providing not just atmosphere but also focus and emphasis, and so it proves again here were faces are suddenly thrown into dramatic shadow, an entire human body can disappear for the duration of a scene or the blowing out of a flame makes a potent statement. Fire and darkness run through the text, so this method of lighting is a perfect metaphor.

The visual murk and aural assaults, verbal and musical, lend a ritualistic tone to this seventy minute drama that lingers in the memory long after the brief playing time. Realistically, I’m not sure I could have coped with this trawl through a dangerous, grimy underbelly of city life being any longer than it is. Some of the descriptive passages are wince-makingly graphic, and Walker doesn’t give us anyone to truly root for, but Burnt-Up Love remains a memorable, powerful piece of work.

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER 

by Jonathan Maitland

directed by Oliver Dawe

Kings Head Theatre, London – until 24 November 2024

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/how-to-survive-your-mother

From All About Eve and Mommie Dearest on screen to The Little Foxes and the heroines of Noël Coward and Tennessee Williams on stage, and Death Becomes Her and Sunset Boulevard on both, women behaving appallingly is a longstanding stalwart of popular entertainment. It’s a bit different when the woman in question is your mum though, and Jonathan Maitland’s tart autobiographical comedy drama tackles this conundrum almost head on…with enjoyable results.

How To Survive Your Mother, a meta theatrical distillation of Maitland’s 2007 memoir, has the unique USP, in Oliver Dawe’s nimble, inventive staging, of having the author himself appearing in person. He’s not the most convincing or comfortable of stage actors but his presence is a useful conduit between the audience and the frequently outrageous antics of his self-dramatising mama, a glamorous entrepreneur whose old folks home ran into trouble when she started conning residents out of their fortunes, and who turned the family home (in Cheam of all places) into a hard-partying gay hotel. 

Maitland has created a humdinger of a starring role and bewitching leading lady Emma Davies seizes it with a gigantic dollop of camp panache, but also a surprising sensitivity. Bru Maitland was a Jewish immigrant who claimed to be French and Spanish to avoid anti-semitism, who told the most preposterous lies to get what she wanted, and discarded the men in her life when it suited her to. She was generally A Piece Of Work, the sort of woman who would crash a car to get her own way, or who would claim to have a life threatening made-up illness (“I have cancer…of the eyebrows”) to avoid uncomfortable questions from her own son.

She’s also irresistible theatrical company, especially as embodied by Davies as a foul-mouthed, extravagantly accented amalgam of Joan Crawford, Norma Desmond and a younger Betty White. Bru was not, by most conventional standards, a “good” person but Davies gives her an indomitable life force, a dancers physicality, and breathtaking comedy timing. It’s a glorious portrayal, over-the-top but rooted in a somewhat tragic reality. There’s a strong sense that this woman is bigger and more vivid than the humdrum suburban life she’s supposed to be fitting in to, like a proverbial square peg into a round hole, and that she is just too much for the conventional men who are getting in her way.

If Davies mines her role for every last nugget of comic gold and histrionic temperament, the rest of the cast have a lot less to get their teeth into. Despite the flimsiness of the roles, Peter Clements does strong work as adult Maitland in his middle years (two young actors alternate as the author as a child) and John Wark raises seething resentment into an artform as his father. Stephen Ventura is excellent as the homophobic neighbour reduced to a gibbering mess after a showdown with Bru at her most viciously withering.

Dawe’s production makes effective use of music to denote which decade we’re in story wise, and features some strikingly effective staging, using only a couple of moveable furniture pieces and a minimum of props in a bare space. It’s a shame Jason Taylor’s overly bright lighting isn’t more instrumental in evoking time and place, and that the production budget didn’t spring for some slightly more opulent costuming for its leading lady (although Davies wears animal print like an old school screen siren).

It’s a tremendously entertaining ninety minutes, but a framing device of having the real Maitland discuss the genesis of the play with his wife (also played, with acerbic grace, by Davies) feels mostly surplus to requirements. The storytelling moves through important developments in the Maitland family’s life with almost indecent haste and a sometimes bewildering lack of specificity. The trauma that the writer dealt with as a result of his unusual relationship with his mother, even from the earliest age, is given lip service but not much analysis. It would also be interesting to know why Bru behaves as extremely as she does, but we get little background detail (“it’s a drama, not a diagnosis” as Maitland points out when challenged), having to settle for bathing in the not inconsiderable glow of Davies’s barnstorming central turn.

Some stories are so strange they could only be true, and here’s one, even if we don’t get that much of the actual story. Still, How To Survive Your Mother is poignant and often downright hilarious, plus it offers an opportunity to see an authentic diva performance at very close quarters. 

BARCELONA

by Bess Wohl

directed by Lynette Linton

Duke of York’s Theatre, London – until 11 January 2025

https://barcelonatheplay.com

With Camp Siegfried at the Old Vic in 2021, American playwright Bess Wohl gave London audiences a two hander that starts out pretty innocuously before becoming deeply unsettling. Now she’s at it again with Barcelona, which predates the other play by several years but packs just as potent a punch, served up with a side order of intrigue, a lot of humour, some menace, and, in Lynette Linton’s exquisitely calibrated, shape-shifting production, irresistible star power.

This UK premiere features the stage debut of Netflix smash Emily In Paris’s Lily Collins, once again playing a kookie, sometimes crass, American adrift in an unfamiliar European city, in this case the capital of Catalonia, home to Gaudi and Miró. La Sagrada Família is just something Collins’s Irene has read about in a guidebook though: when we first see her, visiting Barcelona as part of a bachelorette party, she’s hammered, bursting into an apartment, wrapped around Manuel, a local guy she picked up in a bar. This production is also the British stage bow of Spanish star Álvaro Morte, best known here as a lead in another Netflix show Money Heist, and his performance turns out to be just as much of an event. The sexual tension between the two actors is combustible, and so is the sense of implied threat when required (there’s a moment where Manuel informs Irene that there are no other people in the building, and it’s like an ice cold wave briefly breaking over the stage).

Initially, Irene is every European’s worst nightmare of vulgar Americans abroad -puke drunk but motormouthed, using Italian instead of Spanish phrases, constantly calling Manuel “Manolo”, harping on about being proud to be an American without giving concrete reasons why- and she’d probably be pretty unbearable were it not for Collins’s innate likability. Collins displays the comic instincts and physicality of a true clown (“I nearly fell” she mutters, having ended up spreadeagled on the floor). Morte’s Manuel watches her with a detached mixture of amusement and exasperation. 

One of the principal pleasures of the early section of the play is observing the wildly differing energies of these two characters: Irene’s a caffeinated ball of self-absorption while Manuel has a panther-like sensuality and off-handed charisma. They could almost be human metaphors for their respective continents of origin. The sparky banter about cultural and political differences -her sunny eagerness contrasting with his laconic bemusement- is pretty predictable but the charm of the actors and the steady eroticism keep it interesting. Wohl laces her text with surprises; Irene is more perceptive and less of a naïf than she first appears, and Manuel is nursing a deep well of hurt. It’s a love story of sorts, but not in the way one might presume.

There are clues from the get-go: watch the subtle projections (by Gino Ricardo Green) as they dance on the back wall of the stage before the play even begins, as well as at certain points in the performance. Frankie Bradshaw’s detailed apartment set poses its own questions; it’s cosy yet strangely discomfiting, especially in tandem with Duramaney Kamara and Xana’s complex, doomy soundtrack. Lighting designer Jai Morjaria bathes it in the warm orange of a Catalan night, which changes tellingly over the course of the hundred minute duration. It’s a play that refreshingly defies categorisation and Linton has assembled a team fully alive to its quicksilver shifts in mood, power and focus. Visually the show shimmers, dramatically it alternates between balm and sizzle, and at the centre of it all is a pair of note perfect performances, playful but deeply felt.

Lynette Linton also helmed the previous occupant of the Duke of York’s, the marvellous Shifters, another inspired two hander, which transferred from the Bush Theatre, where she is artistic director until next year. This exquisite production demonstrates the same flair, freshness and loving attention to detail in an unabashedly commercial project, as she brings to homegrown ventures at the West London venue she has transformed into a powerhouse of artistic integrity and effortless cool. 

Wohl’s dialogue is snappy and funny, but taps into rich veins of feeling when necessary, and Collins and Morte inhabit it fully. Barcelona is ultimately a fairly slight play, but it’s genuine entertainment, and such care and talent have been lavished on it for this West End premiere that it feels like a deserved popular hit. I hope this isn’t the last we see of Collins and Morte on the British stage.

WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Sanaz Toossi

directed by Sepy Baghaei 

Gate Theatre, London – until 23 November 2024

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/wish-you-were-here-uk-premiere/

Iranian-American writer Sanaz Toossi is having an excellent year on UK stages. The RSC premiered English, her exquisite meditation on diaspora and the power of language to connect and alienate, at Stratford-upon-Avon before moving it to London’s Kiln for a sold out season. Now there’s Wish You Were Here, first seen off-Broadway in 2022, a honey-sweet, bitter-as-herbs study of female friendship against a tumultuously changing political and social landscape in Iran between the years 1978 and 1991. In Sepy Baghaei’s beautiful staging for the Gate, this remarkable five hander turns out to be as wise and engrossing as its predecessor, and even more emotionally engaging. 

When we first meet the quintet of friends, in party mode as they prepare for the wedding of one of their number, it’s 1978, the year that saw the Iranian revolution that would strip women of many of their fundamental rights and deny them the opportunities to take up careers they’d studied for. Toossi’s dialogue refers to the impending change (“there’s static in the air”) but these women are mostly having fun; they swear, smoke, discuss sex and the human anatomy with eye-watering frankness, and snap at each other.  

Initially, the group seems to divide too neatly into archetypes: there’s laidback, flighty Zari (Maryam Grace), straight laced Shideh (Isabella Nefar), diplomatic, sweet Salme (Emily Renée), intelligent, acerbic Nazanin (Afsaneh Dehrouyeh) and her best friend, too-cool-for-school Rana (Juliette Motamed), who happens to be the only Jew amongst these Muslims. This being Iran before it became a theocracy, that’s not an issue…at first. The years pass and the relationships, and these women’s lives, change, but what could otherwise be an engaging but not necessarily very original story of female friendships is lent urgency and piquancy by the setting.

The acting has a lovely, naturalistic quality that precisely matches Toossi’s writing, balancing delicacy and nuance with moments of real dramatic meat and some pretty outrageous humour. If at first you feel like you’re eavesdropping, as the play draws on, it becomes quietly riveting, and very very moving. Wish You Were Here celebrates friendship while lamenting that time and circumstances can rend asunder even the strongest of connections. “Change is good. Right?” asks one of the group, before the seismic events in their country have fully kicked in; in fact, for these vibrant young women, it’s hardly a good thing at all. The yearning for a different life in America prompts the question of how differently these lives would pan out in a different setting.

Baghaei’s production, played out in traverse, steers a cool, clear path between the realistic and the fanciful: a wedding dress lifted from the body of one woman onto that of another denotes the passage of time and a shift in attention; an intimate long distance phone call between two of the friends is wryly observed from the sidelines by the others. It’s a compelling mix of dreamlike and harsh reality. Tomás Palmer’s set design is a masterpiece of plushly carpeted late twentieth century kitsch that simultaneously cocoons the five characters while casting them adrift in a larger, not always benign, void.

The maturing, in some cases hardening, of the women is meticulously done, and so are the powershifts, changes in allegiance, and the subtle -and not so subtle- cruelties within their relationships. “I used to be so dumb. I would give anything to feel dumb again” declares Zari wistfully, and one fully understands her longing. Each of the actresses fleshes out her character’s journey with infinite skill. Grace’s Zari and Dehrouyeh’s Nazarin are perhaps the most contrasting of the women and have the most volatile big swings to play, and they make it real edge-of-your-seat stuff. It’ll be a long time before I forget the look in Motamed’s eyes as Rana realises just how far removed she is from her best friend, or Dehrouyeh’s final, cathartic breakdown before pulling herself together and getting on with her life. Really though, all the acting is flawless, so good it barely feels like acting at all.

The 1990 scene where Nazarin acquires a new friend (played by Nefar but so closely to her main character as to be confusing) feels like a bit of a non sequitur, but that’s a tiny misstep in a rich and rewarding evening. Wish You Were Here channels individual life experience through the broader canvas of turbulent recent history; it’s about love, loss, what binds people together outside immediate family. Humanity, intelligence and theatricality meld almost seamlessly together in this affection-infused piece…it’s very special.

Stanley Kubrick’s DR STRANGELOVE 

Adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley

directed by Sean Foley

Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 25 January 2025

https://drstrangelove.com

An artistic response to the nihilistic hysteria and dread of the Cold War era, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film feels horribly relevant as it hits the stage today as an absurdist black comedy full of belly laughs but infused with a very real sense of danger. At a time when the global sabre-rattling around nuclear weapons is louder than at any other period in recent history, Dr Strangelove, as reimagined for the theatre by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley, is as unsettling as it is hilarious in its caricature-esque depiction of the various maniacs, cowards, diplomats and fanatics who hold the keys (literal and metaphorical) to mutually assured destruction. 

Steve Coogan inherits Peter Sellers’s multi-role mantle, even adding an extra character to the roster of parts he gets to perform: like his celluloid predecessor, he plays Mandrake, the British RAF man stuck between the rock and hard place of having to placate John Hopkins’s lunatic General Ripper (“we don’t want to start a nuclear war unless we really really have to”) while also realising the impending danger, plus the American President, and titular Strangelove, a wheelchair-occupying scientific adviser with a camply preposterous Teutonic accent and nefarious links to the Third Reich. 

On screen, Slim Pickens was deranged American bomber pilot Major TJ ‘King’ Kong when Sellers sustained an injury but here Coogan also gets to don the cowboy hat and sunglasses, gleefully riding pillion atop a nuclear warhead to light the touch paper on Armageddon. It’s a tour de force quartet of roles and Coogan is thrillingly up to it, making each character vivid, specific and plausible within the bonkers, high stakes confines of Foley’s bombastic staging. Strangelove is a particularly glorious creation, part man, part machine, sibilantly decrying the Nazis at every available opportunity while constantly trying to stop his recalcitrant electronic right hand from raising in an involuntary ‘Heil Hitler’ salute. 

Brilliant though Coogan is, Dr Strangelove is far from a one man show. Hopkins is alarmingly funny as the gung-ho, machine gun-toting American General drunk on pure grain alcohol diluted with rain water, as is Giles Terera as a war-mongering Presidential advisor who’d rather annihilate the human race than admit defeat. Tony Jayawardena is wonderfully wired as an appalled Russian ambassador in fear for his life after spilling the beans on his own country’s Doomsday plans, and Mark Hadfield delights as the forlornly inadequate Faceman, trying with fake cheer to convince the US President that things aren’t as hopeless and terrifying as they appear (“we’re offering the Russians an American city to destroy. It sounds bad but it’s not.”) Ben Turner’s fierce but astonishingly dim Colonel (his name Bat Guano literally meaning Bat Shit as in “bat shit crazy” as other characters are constantly at pains to point out to him) is another blast of comic inspiration. 

The apocalypse-with-slapstick nature of Dr Strangelove entirely suits Iannucci’s signature style of the deadly serious frothed up with sharp satire and rollicking entertainment value, and Foley’s innate comic flair, as director and writing collaborator, catapults the whole extravaganza into the stratosphere. The sense of the ridiculousness of these puffed-up, self-important men (“you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!” bellows one of them as diplomatic tensions boil over into actual physical violence at one point) is tempered with the creeping, dreadful realisation that these suited and booted fools have access to weaponry that could be curtains for all of us. If black comedy is your vibe, then what’s on offer here is pure jet.

The pace and dynamism slackens off a little after the interval and the law of diminishing returns means that the fun of watching Coogan re-emerge transformed into a new character every couple of minutes, decreases as the evening wears on. Still, the production is handsomely mounted, Hildegard Bechtler’s monumental sets gliding and soaring into place, strikingly and inventively lit by Jessica Hung Han Yun, with extensive projection design by Akhila Krishnan. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design and music are suitably terrifying.

The austere opulence of the show’s overall look and the gleaming slickness of the staging sometimes feel at odds with the cartoon-made-flesh manic pitch of the performances but maybe that is the point of an evening that seeks to be a biting comedy, an earnest warning and an apocalyptic vaudeville, and frequently all at the same time. It’s certainly a thumping good piece of theatre, but don’t be surprised if that smile freezes on your face and the laughter gets stuck in your throat.

REYKJAVIK 

by Richard Bean

directed by Emily Burns

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 23 November 2024

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2024/reykjavik/

Imagine a fusion between Conor McPherson’s The Weir, where the regulars of a rural Irish pub sit around scaring each other with ghost stories, and the gritty, character-driven idiosyncrasies of Jez Butterworth. Leaven that with ripe low comedy, and further enrich with trenchant social commentary and a unique evocation of recent history… then you’ll have some idea of what to expect from Richard Bean’s engrossing if uneven new play.

Set in the late 1970s in the aftermath of the UK referendum on membership of the Common Market (Bean wisely doesn’t beat us over the head with modern parallels but they’re certainly there) Reykjavik begins in the offices of a Hull fishing trawler firm, rendered spookily dusky in Anna Reid’s detailed set. One of the company’s fishing fleet has come to grief off the coast of Iceland and owner Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth, excellent) is working a late night dealing with the fallout from that. He’s disturbed by the arrival of Lizzie, one of his workers wives (Laura Elsworthy, all blazing eyes, querulous dignity and aggrieved fury) and an almost-seduction surprisingly occurs. Hollingworth and Elsworthy have palpable chemistry, but that turns out not to be the point of the play.

Actually the first half is more of a milieu-establishing curtain raiser for the much longer second half which relocates the action, such as it is, to the lobby of the Reykjavik hotel (another period-specific masterpiece of sublime grimness by Reid) where the survivors of the fishing ship disaster are temporarily lodging. These include Jack, Lizzie’s bullying, possibly unstable “nasty bastard” of a husband (played with alarming intensity by Matthew Durkan, in impressive contrast to the mild-mannered young vicar he portrays in act one). Claxton arrives to check up on the men and the play becomes  an interesting exploration of the division between management and workers (a point powerfully underlined by a quietly haunting final tableau) and, by extension, class. 

Bean’s script touches on traditions within the coastal communities, and the mysticism and treachery of the sea, and the characterisations of the men are vividly drawn. The women, which also include a gauche secretary to Claxton, and Einhildur, a comically fierce Icelandic hotelier (both played with considerable skill and glee by Sophie Cox), feel less fleshed out. Elsworthy and Cox are so good that the somewhat trite way Bean has their characters drop their defences and change their attitudes doesn’t really hit home while you’re actually watching the play unfold, but it’s the men who carry the bulk of the somewhat static text.

Emily Burns’s staging is longer on atmosphere and garrulousness than action, but it is superbly acted, and beautifully augmented by striking lighting, sound and compositions by Oliver Fenwick, Christopher Shutt and Grant Olding respectively (the sea shanty singing is authentically stirring). If most of the second half consists of the men telling a selection of tales (of varying levels of interest, to be honest) to keep each other amused, the tension and suspense ramp up satisfyingly when required. 

This being a Richard Bean play, there is a welcome vein of comedy running through the play. The section where the fishermen conflate and mansplain, with mounting frustration and incoherence, the common phrases regarding pissing on chips and pissing on someone when they’re on fire, is hilarious, and culminates in an unexpected bit of stage business. There’s even some macabre comedy involving a deceased seaman and his coffin that wouldn’t look out of place in Joe Orton.

Despite the comic flair of Cox’s performance, I didn’t quite buy sceptical Einhildur’s capitulation to Adam Hugill’s gormless romantic chancer, nor his decision to remain behind in Reykjavik after the other men have returned, but the drip-feeding of information throughout is very nicely done. Bean’s ear for salty, sparky dialogue (Lizzie self describes as “I’m thirty three. I look older. It’s the wellies” when asked her age) and bold use of language remain a frequent delight.

Bean’s writing and Hollingworth’s performance are too intelligent to make a villain out of Claxton’s capitalist trawler owner, and the other men are similarly nuanced. Paul Hickey delivers a quietly astonishing double as critical Claxton Sr. and Quayle, a loquacious Irish sea dog with a gift for tall tales and an ambiguous connection to the supernatural. 

That ambiguity hangs over Reykjavik like a sea mist. It’s a slightly overlong evening, but an enjoyable, intermittently intriguing one that depicts a community and a tranche of humanity seldom seen on stage. 

THE FEAR OF 13

by Lindsey Ferrentino

directed by Justin Martin

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 30 November 2024

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/36/by-lindsey-ferrentino/the-fear-of-13

Oscar winner Adrien Brody making his theatrical debut at one of London’s most prestigious boutique venues was always going to be big news. The Fear of 13, one of three 2024 world premieres from American writer Lindsey Ferrentino, turns out to be an event for other reasons as well. Firstly it’s an astonishingly assured opening production for Tim Sheader’s inaugural season as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse; it also marks the London stage debut of acclaimed screen multi-hyphenate Nana Mensah, in a role and performance almost as pivotal and certainly as impressive as Brody’s.

Sheader doesn’t direct, handing the reins to Justin Martin, a sometimes collaborator of Stephen Daldry with whom he shares a gift for deceptive simplicity melded with bold theatricality, and an almost alchemical ability to seamlessly fuse text with sophisticated technical elements. Martin also has form for coaxing remarkable stage performances out of screen actors, having steered Jodie Comer through the internationally acclaimed Prima Facie. 

Brutal yet tender, The Fear of 13 takes place simultaneously in a barbaric American Death Row prison, where inmates sometimes wait for decades or more for the inevitable, and in the minds and imaginations of the two principal characters. It’s based on the true story of a spectacular miscarriage of justice that cost Nick Yarris decades of his life. If it doesn’t make you angry, check your pulse.

Brody proves an authentic stage creature. He is terrific as Yarris, bowed but unbroken, imbuing him with a grace that’s ethereal yet earthy, conveying every nuance of his enquiring, optimistic personality, and a sweetness under the bad-boy attitude that may or may not be a put-on. His vacillations between embodying his sloppy misspent youth, himself as a timid nine year old and finally a disillusioned but not-quite-hardboiled longterm prisoner are compellingly done. When he explodes in anger it’s genuinely unsettling even as it’s understandable, and when his hope is finally extinguished it’s almost unbearable to watch. He manages Ferrentino’s exquisitely crafted monologues like a champ, especially the deeply moving final one which is a clarion call to grab every last morsel of life available to you. This is undoubtedly one of the performances of the year.

Equally brilliant is Mensah as Jackie, the benignly spiky prison visitor who begins as Nick’s confidante but becomes a beacon of love, light and hope to him. She’s a complex young woman and Mensah brings her to shimmering, watchful life in a performance that’s as selfless as it’s technically adroit. If initially I was disappointed that the trope of prisoner and visitor finding a romantic connection was introduced, it yields powerful emotional fruit as the play progresses. 

Martin has assembled a fine supporting cast, surrounding the two leading players on all sides, sometimes as observers, sometimes as judges and participants, and sometimes like pack animals waiting to pounce. Ferdy Roberts is particularly impressive switching between vicious warden, cowering inmate and Nick’s bewildered, straightforward dad, and Cyril Nri brings gravitas and breathtaking range to a variety of roles. The incarcerated men play people from Nick’s past and Jackie’s future, abusive guards and even an angelic-voiced choir. It could easily tip over into whimsicality but Martin’s staging is infused with a sort of grim magic that keeps us spellbound, even as we are alternately appalled, upset and totally riveted by what we are watching. 

Miriam Buether’s all-encompassing set suggests both a stark prison house and a playground for the imagination, and is thrillingly augmented by Jon Clark’s piercing lighting and Ash J Woodward’s multi-faceted video designs. DJ Walden’s music and Ian Dickinson’s sound, both omnipresent, also contribute invaluably to the simmering tension and atmosphere. All in all, this is a beautiful staging, full of edge and fury, and just magnificent theatrical storytelling.

If you haven’t already seen David Sington’s documentary about Yarris but plan to experience the play, I strongly advise going in cold: without wishing to sound callous, the drama plays out like a taut dynamic thriller with an extraordinary and authentic emotional punch when you don’t know what the conclusion is going to be. 

Ultimately, it’s difficult to know if Ferrentino’s text would stand up as well as it does without the controlled firepower of the performances and the austere flash of Martin’s overall vision, but really it doesn’t matter, this is a triumph and it achieves the considerable feat of being hugely entertaining while never losing sight of the harrowing human cost at core. In short, The Fear of 13 is a tremendous piece of total theatre, haunting, stirring and vital. The run is unsurprisingly already sold out but any serious theatregoer who doesn’t already have tickets needs to keep an eye out for returns. Be prepared to think, feel, marvel and get thoroughly knocked out.

GINGER JOHNSON BLOWS OFF!

written, directed and performed by Ginger Johnson 

songs by Bourgeois & Maurice

Soho Theatre, London – until 12 October 2024

https://sohotheatre.com/events/ginger-johnson-blows-off-2/

Not content with winning the fifth season of Drag Race UK and building up a devoted following, it turns out Ginger Johnson, the self-described “seven foot millennial Lucille Ball”, also harbours a deep seated desire to be a stunt woman, ever since being on a childhood trip to the circus and witnessing the glamorous, and not at all camp-sounding, Zaza being shot out of a cannon. That’s the starting premise for this riotous, ribald and altogether bonkers new show from the Geordie firebrand who bowls on atop a motorcycle like a garish amalgam of Evel Knievel, Denise Welch, Corrie’s Rita Fairclough and a Christmas tree. She’s a lot, the show’s a lot, the fun quotient’s a lot…the whole thing is a lot.

Ginger Johnson Blows Off! features just the divine Ms Johnson, a grimly unsmiling accomplice called Jen who’s only really there for health and safety purposes (think Dame Edna’s Madge Allsopp but with a much worse attitude) and the unsuspecting audience member that Ginger deems to be the bravest of the night, and who becomes embroiled in a potentially life altering trick. By the way, if you’re terrified of audience participation, don’t assume sitting at the back will save you, that’s not how Johnson operates. 

Her singing is like her appearance: loud, unsubtle and hugely enjoyable. Ginger’s stage persona is infused with a grim joie de vivre (even when facing possible death or at least permanent facial disfigurement, this game glamazon is always ready with a cheeky quip, bitchy aside and triumphant if somewhat misplaced air punch) and she’s completely adorable in a vaguely terrifying sort of way. 

The original songs by Bourgeois and Maurice have all the catchy, bombastic glam rock cynicism associated with that gloriously twisted duo, and they are performed with aplomb. The final cri de cœur, a power ballad entitled ‘How The Fuck Did I End Up Here’ is a mini masterpiece of dark musical comedy writing.

Johnson does indeed attempt to recreate the mythical Zaza’s cannon-firing trick, with hilarious results, and along the way we get Russian Roulette, confetti, ignited farts (hence the title of the show)….and a lot of sweat, swearing and, er, drawing pins. Ingeniously, for all the glitz and humour, there’s a very real sense of danger (try watching the Russian Roulette section without getting sweaty palms) and even some pathos. Ultimately, Ginger says she’s just doing it for the attention, but, you know what, she deserves it. Give it to her. 

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

Music and lyrics by Neil Bartram

Book by Brian Hill

directed by Robert McWhir

Stage Door Theatre, London – until 19 October 2024

https://www.stagedoortheatre.co.uk/the-story-of-my-life-4-sept-19-oct/

Not every musical needs to be on Broadway and it’s rather sad that the reputation of this two handed tuner has gone down in the annals of the Great White Way as being a notorious flop (it lasted a mere five performances) when in fact it has a lot going for it. The charms of The Story Of My Life are amplified by being seen up close in this intimate new venue above a Drury Lane pub, in an exquisitely modulated production by Robert McWhir, whose lengthy tenure at the much missed Landor Theatre repeatedly demonstrated his adeptness at creating musical theatre magic on a stage the size of a postage stamp.

Neil Bartram and Brian Hill’s show inhabits similar territory, pitched half way between traditional musical and song cycle for two players, as Jason Robert Brown’s acclaimed The Last Five Years, which is set to finally have its Broadway bow this season, over twenty years after it was first seen. However, where Brown’s work has an unusual time structure and some potent emotional punch, Bartram and Hill’s is a more whimsical, less histrionic affair. It’s a study of friendship between two men, grief, and the art of storytelling, with just a hint of unrequited love. I can imagine that in a venue much larger than this it could register as a bit insipid, but up close and personal it’s pretty lovely.

On an all white set by David Shields that simultaneously evokes a blank page (one of the friends is a writer) and the heavenly plane to which the other friend has ascended (the story turns on the former attempting to eulogise the latter), Markus Sodergren and Tim Edwards convincingly age up and down, soliloquise, bicker, and deliver a series of nicely crafted songs. Bartram’s elegiac numbers, which do become a little samey in all honesty, sound heavily Sondheim influenced with their shimmering elegance and sometimes unexpected melodic hooks. As played by Aaron Clingham’s exquisite three piece band (keys, woodwind and cello) it sounds absolutely beautiful. The programme doesn’t specify if the orchestrations are the original ones by Jonathan Tunick (they certainly have the flavour of his work) or if they’re newly created by Clingham, but they are perfect for this space and this delicate material, crucially never overwhelming the often excellent lyrics.

If Hill’s script doesn’t offer anything particularly revelatory or even dramatic, it sketches the two men (Sodergren’s dynamic writer Thomas and Edwards’s quirky, puppyish bookstore owner Alvin) with efficiency and a large dose of affection. Sodergren has a natural likability that mitigates somewhat against his character’s self-centred nature, but he could possibly find a little more stillness in the role, particularly as a more mature man. Edwards draws a tender portrait of a vulnerable but bright young man who never got over the loss of his mother. Both sing superbly.

There are suggestions that Alvin’s feelings for Thomas extend beyond the platonic but this isn’t fully explored. That’s symptomatic of a show that washes pleasantly over you without ever throwing up anything particularly distinguished or confrontational, even the details of Alvin’s death are left non-specific. Anybody who likes their musicals with a healthy side order of bombast will be disappointed. The constant allusions to It’s A Wonderful Life get a little repetitive.

Still, this is a very agreeable eighty minutes, suffused with genuine talent. It won’t rock your world but it might make you appreciate the friendships in your life, and the music is tremendously enjoyable.