ajhlovestheatre

DEATH BECOMES HER

Book by Marco Pennette

Music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey

based on the Universal Pictures film written by Martin Donovan and David Koepp

directed by Christopher Gattelli

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://deathbecomesher.com

Not ANOTHER stage musical based on a movie!?! Actually yes, but Death Becomes Her is unusual…here’s a new tuner that isn’t just a fabulous night out, although it most assuredly is that, but one that actually manages to improve on its source material, the 1992 Robert Zemeckis film starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. The set-up, story and characters are so preposterous and overwrought that it feels entirely appropriate that these people (best frenemies Hollywood actress Madeline and writer Helen, in constant rivalry and now in thrall to a potion that has given them immortality, but no sense of decency or restraint) would burst into song at moments of extremity, and this extravaganza sees them in full cry. It’s a darkly humorous fairytale for adults and if the movie didn’t get the flowers it deserved, despite a venomously camp turn from Streep, this gorgeous musicalisation looks set to make up for that. 

This is a musical that knows exactly what it is and who it’s for, from the moment Michelle Williams bursts all a-glitter through the floor at curtain-up, as the mysterious glamazon Viola Van Horne, leading her scantily clad acolytes in the staccato, anthemic ‘If You Want Perfection’, a sensual yet sinister paean to eternal youth (“I have a secret you would die for”) reminiscent of the title song from Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, which feels appropriate. And that’s before we get to “For The Gaze” (say it out loud), Megan Hilty’s opening number as Madeline which sees the Broadway star morph into Judy, Liza and even Julie Andrews’s drag persona from Victor/Victoria. Self-referential in a house full of theatre fans? Well yes. Screamingly funny and ruthlessly well executed? Oh hell yes.

Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s score is gloriously showbiz, sampling everything from Broadway to big band to disco, and if not necessarily all that memorable at first listen, it’s rollickingly theatrical, with a tang of real unease underneath all the brassiness. The lyrics are genuinely witty too and the segues into song from Marco Pennette’s book suggests that the creatives at work here really know their craft. Pennette has done a terrific job of distilling the macabre lunacy of the screenplay into stage form and has created in Madeline and Helen (“Mad” and “Hel”…geddit?) what will probably be the most sought-after roles in years for musical theatre actresses who have aged out of being ingenues (although Madeline would have you believe otherwise). 

Whoever inherits these parts will have their work cut out to match the brilliance of Hilty and Jennifer Simard though. A luminous stage presence, Hilty can apparently sing anything, employing her sweet power belt and stratospheric soprano notes to magnificent effect, and charting with bravura comic skills Madeline’s journey from monstrous self-regard to despair then back out the other side. Check out her hilariously affected mid-Atlantic accent when Mad is at the height of her powers. Hilty is such a barnstormer that a lesser performer than Simard might risk being seriously upstaged.

Simard plays Helen with devastating deadpan, and finds a bruised melancholy under the bitchy asides (of Madeline she says “I love her like a twin….who stole my nutrients in the womb”). A peerless clown with an immense voice of pure steel, Simard makes something sharp and unsettlingly funny out of Helen’s mania after her former bestie steals her boyfriend, and her transformation into wise-cracking uber-camp glamazon is a particular joy in an evening stuffed full of them. She’s breathtakingly good.

The essential thing about both of these remarkable central performances is that the more appalling and self-serving these women become, the more we adore them. Christopher Sieber as Ernest, the cosmetic surgeon torn between these, er, ladies, is also wonderful, coming close to stopping the show with a drunken second half number in which inanimate objects in his study start singing back to him. There’s terrific, crowd-pleasing work too from Josh Lamon as Madeline’s long suffering assistant and Taurean Everett as Viola’s statuesque manservant. 

Christopher Gattelli has numerous international credits as a choreographer but unbelievably this is his first outing as a Broadway director and honestly one wonders why it took so long. This is an elaborate production but Gattelli marshalls it with pinpoint focus, dynamism and panache, lending equal weight to the comic and gothic horror elements, and giving full rein to the special effects (Tim Clothier’s illusions have been seriously beefed up since the Chicago tryout) but never letting them overtake storytelling and character development. There’s a breadth and consistency of vision here that feels like vintage Broadway, right through to the stunning design work (sets by Derek McLane, costumes by Paul Tazewell, purple-heavy lighting by Justin Townsend), the big bold choreography and orchestrations, and sound by Peter Hylenski that’s suitably bombastic but allows us to catch every lyric and zinger. This is a deluxe staging, and it feels like money very well spent.

The women’s final number, ‘Alive Forever’, a belty, soaring duet with an almost operatic intensity as the women grimly acknowledge their eternal codependency, is a gleefully venomous riposte to Wicked’s ‘For Good’ or Side Show’s ‘I Will Never Leave You’ and gets the exhilaratingly full-throated treatment from Hilty and Simard. It segues into a surprisingly touching final scene, which I won’t spoil here, that differs from the film and is a perfect button on a supremely satisfying evening.

I caught Death Becomes Her during its Chicago tryout and it was already a thumping good night out, but now it’s a truly memorable one. Savagely funny and garishly beautiful, it’s sensational entertainment and joins Hells Kitchen and The Outsiders as a current example of mainstream Broadway at its absolute best. It’s a big fat hit and one imagines that the plans to roll out international productions is already underway.

MY FAIR LADY

Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Music by Frederick Loewe

adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and the screenplay by Gabriel Pascal

The Curve, Leicester – until 4 January 2025

https://www.curveonline.co.uk

Lerner and Loewe’s beloved classic gets trotted out fairly often (Opera North and Leeds Playhouse co-produced it earlier this year and the New York Lincoln Center version played a summer season at the London Coliseum in 2022 before touring extensively) and its choice as Leicester Curve’s 2024 Christmas musical seems like a sure fire bet to get bums on seats. Director Nikolai Foster and an outstanding creative team don’t treat My Fair Lady like a museum piece however, breathing vibrant life and projecting interesting insights at a show that, while exquisitely crafted, runs the risk of over-familiarity. There is clearly a lot of respect for the original material here but also a bracing freshness that interrogates it with intelligence and affection.

Any production stands or falls by its Eliza Doolittle, the Covent Garden flower girl who transforms into a society lady, and Professor Higgins, the phonetics expert who navigates that transformation, and Foster’s new version has struck casting gold. Molly Lynch’s dazzling Eliza has unique passion and fire tempered with the suggestion that she is already a somewhat damaged soul (observe the way she reacts when she thinks she’s about to be hit) desperately clinging to this one-off opportunity to rewrite the story of her life. She’s tremendously loveable but also tough, it’s the most complex and satisfying reading of the role I’ve seen to date, and watching her progressing empowerment is exhilarating. Vocally she’s absolutely thrilling, seamlessly traversing from chest to head voice with sweetness and power. It’s a demanding sing, nearer to opera than musical theatre with the demands it makes on the soprano, but Lynch makes it seem easy. This is a genuine star performance.

Equally sensational is David Seadon-Young as a more youthful than usual Higgins. Seadon-Young plays him like a restless child, petulant and impetuous, somebody who lives entirely in the moment, regardless of the consequences for himself or others. This doesn’t excuse the character’s frequently appalling behaviour but it certainly makes it fully credible. Unlike many of his predecessors in the role, Seadon-Young sings the role as written and does so exquisitely. He’s also surprisingly moving, turning the song ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face’, usually merely regretful and reflective, into a full blown cri de cœur to stunning effect. His physical relationships with two of the senior women in his life is very telling: note the way that, energy spent following a tantrum, he rests his head on the shoulder of his housekeeper (a wonderfully warm Sarah Moyle who also doubles as a hilarious society matron), or how his mother (Cathy Tyson, coolly commanding) freezes when he initiates comforting contact with her. 

Foster finds other fascinating perspectives on a show that has been done to death but can have real bite when looked at as smartly as it is here. Minal Patel’s superb Pickering is played as actually Indian rather than an old colonialist returned to London, and he is explicitly portrayed as being in love with Higgins. Housekeeper Mrs Pearce is a member of the suffrage movement, which makes sense given the man-child she is dealing with on a daily basis, and Eliza has a forthright sensuality which I’ve never seen before and lends an intriguing ambiguity to her dealings with Djavan Van de Filert’s fresh-faced, gorgeously sung Freddie.

Steve Furst’s magnetic, amoral rough diamond Alfred P Doolittle is a terrific creation and authentically stops the show with the second act crowd pleaser ‘Get Me To The Church On Time’, staged with barnstorming panache by choreographer Jo Goodwin, whose work throughout is glorious but verges on the rapturous in this number. Foster spreads the action generously throughout the auditorium, and he and Goodwin make delightful use of Curve’s youth theatre members (having them as galloping jockeys in the Ascot scene is particularly inspired).

Michael Taylor’s handsome set, imposing for Covent Garden and mind-bogglingly cluttered for Higgins’s study, is generally effective (the mood-shifting lighting is by Mark Henderson) and his costumes are lovely. The sound design by Adam Fisher is more boisterous than one would normally expect on a Golden Age musical like this one, bringing to the fore the percussion in George Dyer’s adapted orchestrations. This is far and away the loudest Fair Lady I’ve encountered, and while it sounds punchy and vital there are moments when the relentless volume has a slightly flattening effect. The ensemble singing is wonderful though. 

That sound quibble aside, this is a superlative production that will delight traditionalists but provides sufficient innovation and excitement for anybody who might have thought of My Fair Lady as a bit staid. The two leads are worth the ticket price by themselves, and a festive trip to Leicester is essential for musical theatre fans. 

SUNSET BLVD

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Book and Lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton 

Based upon the film by Billy Wilder

Directed by Jamie Lloyd for the Jamie Lloyd Company

St James Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://sunsetblvdbroadway.com

The transformation of Sunset Boulevard, the overblown, scenery-heavy Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza that burned through money and leading ladies on both sides of the Atlantic in the 90s, into Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Blvd (nowhere in any of the promotional or advertising material is the full word ‘boulevard’ ever used now), a sleek, edgy tranche of Regietheater, completes with this Broadway transfer. When this sensorily overloaded onslaught of monochrome multimedia, bravura staging, lush musicianship and thrillingly unhinged performances premiered at the Savoy last year it was an experiment and a risk, eschewing the lavish spectacle that made the original so compelling and presenting in Nicole Scherzinger a Norma Desmond so different from the screen incarnation of Gloria Swanson and the bejewelled divas who succeeded her on stage as to be unrecognisable. Although fundamentally the same show, it now swaggers into New York on a cloud of awards and critical hosannas and American audiences are going expecting An Event, whereas initial London audiences went in wondering what the hell was going to happen.

Does it deliver? Well of course it does, especially in Scherzinger’s feral yet captivating star turn, which has become even more wildly eccentric in its fusion of camp, panicky hysteria and silky, feline sensuality. Vocally, she remains truly extraordinary, finding a guttural growl in the lower notes then a roof-raising high belt that seems exhilaratingly as though it might go on forever. Dramatically, she’s a broken goddess, equal parts imperious, impetuous and pathetically needy. This is the very definition of “leaving it all on stage” and unquestionably one of the defining musical theatre performances of our age, one that ought to presage a golden new chapter in Scherzinger’s career (provided she can refrain in future from apparently supporting MAGA lunatics on social media). When she gasps “I. Am. The. Greatest. Star. Of. Them. All”, like something demonically possessed, each word spat out in isolation from all the others, it’s impossible to disagree…or look away.

Broadway’s St James Theatre is considerably larger than the Savoy and the drastic alteration in scale has its pros and cons. Scherzinger, whose enthralling grandstanding could probably fill Madison Square Garden if required, is unaffected but the only other one of the four imported London principals whose work seems undiminished by the cavernous new space is David Thaxton’s glowering, compellingly grim Max (“I was the first husband”), his near operatic voice soaring spectacularly and his saturnine presence retaining its original impact. Tom Francis’s opportunistic writer Joe Gillis, in thrall to this Norma’s sexuality as well as her money, is still a fine performance but is so laid back that it’s only when his face is beamed up huge on the pivoting screens of Soutra Gilmour’s austere set that it registers how nuanced he is, and that he’s actually working really hard. He has a haunted quality that’s very effective, and the role has never been sung as well as this. Grace Hodgett-Young’s smitten but gritty Betty suffers similarly in terms of projecting much personality in a house this big, apart from on screen, but she’s likeable and vocally pleasing.

The chief beneficiary of the bigger stage appears to be Fabian Aloise’s brilliant choreography, owing more to contemporary dance than traditional musical theatre, which has the youthful, leisure wear-clad ensemble hurtling, tumbling and gyrating through the space to genuinely exciting effect. He also gives the young Norma (Hannah Yun Chamberlain recreating her outstanding London work) a unique physical language that expresses a child-like wonder and beauty while hinting at darker distress. The idea that Hollywood is a machine that chews up then spits out the young and vulnerable is a constant in Lloyd’s overall vision. The moments in Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom’s game-changing video design where young Norma’s flawless features morph into older Norma’s still gorgeous but more mature visage remain heartstoppingly affecting and effective.

The much ballyhoo-ed act two opening which sees Francis’s Joe backstage then out on the street before marching down the length of the auditorium to finish the title song on stage, all relayed in real time on the gigantic screen, is still a thrill but isn’t quite as effective as it was in London, the geography of West 44th Street and nearby Shubert Alley meaning that he has to double back on himself, and now accompanied by most of the company. In all honesty it was only ever about the sensationalism anyway, but the underground layout of the Savoy worked better. Jack Knowles’s moody, sculptural lighting design retains its power, but Adam Fisher’s booming sound design now has a tendency to sometimes favour Alan Williams’s (undeniably magnificent) orchestra over the singers voices, although Scherzinger’s instrument can cut through anything. 

Lloyd Webber’s seductive, memorable Puccini-meets-Hollywood with pop and jazz overtones has never sounded so persuasive, but it’s a shame Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s deft, sometimes acidic lyrics are no longer fully intelligible. Ultimately though, Lloyd’s deconstruction both of the story and of the musical itself is astonishingly effective, if inevitably divisive. Sunset Blvd remains a night of dark, unsettling magic and a production that will be talked about for decades. The word stunning gets bandied around a lot when discussing theatre, but here is a show that truly lives up to the description. 

[TITLE OF SHOW]

Music and Lyrics by Jeff Bowen

Book by Hunter Bell

Directed by Christopher D Clegg

Southwark Playhouse, Borough – London, until 30 November 2024

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/title-of-show/

With its self-prescribed requirements of just four chairs, a quartet of performers and one keyboard, this show must feel like catnip for economically minded producers, but in practise [title of show] still feels like an odd choice for a revival. For starters, it really is for the musical theatre obsessives: a knowledge encompassing the smallest minutiae of the Broadway scene and an unslakable interest in the process of making a show are definite advantages when approaching this material. 

Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell’s 2006 Off-Broadway hit about a pair of creatives (named Jeff and Hunter, with Bowen and Bell themselves assuming these roles in the original production) devising a new musical from the ground up, was received less enthusiastically on the Great White Way a year later, but it’s stuffed with Easter Eggs to delight the most ardent and knowledgeable of MT fanatics. If you don’t know your Stephen Schwartz from your Stephen Sondheim, you’ll have to work harder to have a good time. Actually, this ninety minute meta-musical is even more niche than that, name-checking names of jobbing Broadway actors (“did you hear that Mary Stout got hit by a hot dog cart?”) and constructing a whole number out of the titles of obscure Broadway flops. 

It’s relentlessly self-referential but if you can get past that, it’s quite a lot of fun. Bell’s book and Bowen’s lyrics are mostly very witty. The tunes are easy on the ear but undistinguished, reminiscent of a host of middling small scale American tuners from the last couple of decades, although maybe that is kind of the point. 

The original production had a certain lightning-in-a-bottle USP in that the four-strong company was completed by Broadway actress Heidi Blickenstaff and gifted singing comedienne Susan Blackwell playing versions of themselves. Every subsequent iteration is inevitably at one further remove from the material in that you get a cast performing characters called Heidi, Susan, Jeff and Hunter rather than replaying actual lived experiences of the insecurities, disappointments and exhilarations of getting this project off the ground, and the frustrations and joys of being jobbing creatives.

Christopher D Clegg’s new production, first seen in a simpler two nights only version at the Phoenix Arts Club in the summer, has a lot going for it. Principally, there’s Jacob Fowler and Thomas Oxley as Hunter and Jeff, bringing charm, superb comedy timing and a pair of fine, rangy voices to the neurotic twosome at the centre of the piece. Fowler is more driven and bitchy, Oxley goofier and more affable: they’re a terrific team. The female roles aren’t as well written but TikTok star Abbie Budden proves again, after an excellent debut earlier this year in the Cruel Intentions musical, that she is bona fide leading lady material as a likeable, occasionally spiky Heidi. Mary Moore brings stirring vocals to wise-cracking, eternally self-deprecating Susan but reads as way too young and fresh. All the American accents are spot on.

Clegg’s well-judged staging is frenetic but still when it needs to be, and plays out on an attractive set by Hazel McIntosh that, with its multiple raised platforms, Stage Door sign and assorted showbiz bric-à-brac (check out the vintage vinyl cast albums on the shelves), is probably more elaborate than Bowen and Bell originally envisioned. Alistair Lindsay’s lighting design is colourful, malleable and highly effective. Keyboard player and MD Tom Chippendale even gets a few lines of script and is a total delight.

If ultimately [title of show] sometimes threatens to outstay its welcome, it still feels less self-indulgent than the Marlow and Moss’s infinitely more bloated Why Am I So Single? which is covering some of the same thematic ground, only much more loudly, across the river at the Garrick. Clegg’s production of this esoteric, cheeky, intermittently adorable mini-musical is probably as good as it gets, and MT completists should hasten along. 

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.