ajhlovestheatre

SHIFTERS

by Benedict Lombe

directed by Lynette Linton

Bush Theatre, London – until 30 March 2024

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk

Dream and Destiny seem to be made for each other. They’re super-smart young Black Brits – he’s of Nigerian heritage, she of Congolese extraction – they’re both funny, creative (chef and painter respectively), self-aware, deceptively sensitive and hugely lovable. Life doesn’t always pan out the way it should though, and sometimes the scars from past trauma and loss prove almost insurmountable. Such is the central premise for Shifters, Benedict Lombe’s ravishing new play, a zingy, punchy, multi-faceted romantic tragi-comedy with a beautiful bruised heart and a handle on human yearnings and pain that delights as much as it sears.

In Heather Agyepong (Des as she’s referred to, short for Destiny), Tosin Cole (Dre, for Dream) and director Lynette Linton, Lombe has the ideal interpreters of her work. It’s tender and often hilarious, and a lot more complex than it initially appears, but it’s staged and performed with such confidence, sensitivity and skill that the material soars. It’s simultaneously a very “young” play (we see the characters between the ages of 16 and 32) yet a very wise one as it explores the concepts of loss (at the opening, Dre is mourning his beloved grandmother who mostly brought him up, and Des’s mother died when she was very young), legacy, abandonment, and the ramifications of the life roads one didn’t take.

It’s sloppy critical thinking to liken every two hander that tells a non-linear love story, to Nick Payne’s genre-busting, time-bending Constellations, but Shifters can bear the comparison better than most. While Lombe doesn’t give Des and Dre actual alternative realities, she has them consider other versions of themselves (“if you chose a different path, you’d probably have a different life, in a different world, with a different person, right? So that means there has to be more than one out there for us” says an anguished Des at one point) that has intriguing theatrical currency but also rings entirely true of young, curious, restless minds.

Lombe’s writing has a poeticism that never sounds forced, and is periodically punctured by bouts of irresistible humour. It’s also deeply touching, and I can’t remember the last time I was so invested in the joint romantic fate of two central characters in a stage play. The chemistry between the actors is like a living, breathing thing.

Agyepong and Cole are sublime. She’s energised, humorous but watchful, suggesting a chasm of hurt beneath a fiery but constantly engaging exterior. By contrast, he is laid back and totally charming, then devastating when he turns up the emotional heat. The flawless naturalism in the performances yields rich dividends as vital pieces of information about their lives together and apart are detonated like tiny explosions as the scenes switch backwards and forwards through the years, and the ability of both actors to age up or down by a change of vocal timbre and physical stance is remarkable.

It may be a very personal story but it has a universality that eventually brings a tear to the eye. Under Linton’s mighty direction, meticulously detailed yet flamboyant when it needs to be, apparently banal activities like searching for a player to spin some vinyl records on, or Des removing the knots from Dre’s hair while he luxuriates contentedly in her lap, become strangely riveting. The lightning fast changes in year come so frequently in the latter part of the play that it’s not always easy to keep up, yet it hardly matters so assured and specific are the playing and direction. Tellingly, for huge swathes of the performance, you’d be able to hear a pin drop as the audience members hold their collective breath, willing these fractured, loving, unconventional young people to make the right choices.

Linton’s production is abstract but vivid, playing out on the gleaming obsidian black of Alex Berry’s bare stage under a forest of mood-shifting, multicoloured tubes of light (design by Neil Austin) like an uncommonly enjoyable art installation. The sound score by Xana provides a constant haunted thrum of different musical styles that enhance but never detract from the text.

A fine, sparky piece of writing, thought-provoking and entirely accessible, deeply felt but also a heck of a lot of fun, in an exquisite, state-of-the-art staging…this is the sort of thing that the Bush does best. Vital, inclusive, life-enhancing theatre, featuring a pair of authentic rising stars. Get tickets while you still can.

JAB

by James McDermott

directed by Scott Le Crass

Finborough Theatre, London – until 16 March 2024

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/jab/

How soon is too soon? That’s the question I found running through my head during the brief hiatuses between scenes in this short, tense dramatic rewind to 2020 and the dark early days of the pandemic. It’s a testament to the performances, the direction and much of the writing that during the scenes themselves, it’s impossible to focus on anything else, like the fact that the Covid shutdowns and what came next are still raw in many people’s minds. Still, we’ve currently got Breathless on the telly, and now we have Jab on stage.

Partially inspired by his own parents lockdown experience, although really these characters could be anyone and everyone, McDermott presents a couple married for 29 years whose combative but loving status quo (she works for the NHS, he runs a vintage shop that never turns a profit) is undermined by being closeted together against their will. The dynamics of their relationship is conveyed in tiny, telling details, the affections, the irritations, the weaponising of words, and Kacey Ainsworth’s Anne and Liam Tobin’s Don are so exquisitely naturalistic that it feels like we’re eavesdropping into real lives.

That specificity and recognition is vital because when everything is ripped apart (which it will be, quite devastatingly) it’s all been set up with so much care that the emotional fallout carries genuine weight. Scott Le Crass’s direction is remarkable, mining the script and actors for every nuance, and making even the most trivial of activities (eating a bag of crisps, counting bank notes, studiously ignoring each other while watching TV) quietly riveting, and loaded with a significance that pays off later on.

The title is ambiguous. A jab is of course another word for vaccination, the receiving of which becomes a huge bone of contention between these Anne and Don, but it also could mean the short, staccato blows that fighters land on each other. The blows here may be predominantly verbal (“non-essential. You’re non-essential” says Anne witheringly to Don near the beginning) but they get more and more vicious as the resentments and discontentments pile up. In that sense what McDermott has written here is as much a study of a marriage breaking down as a response to Covid, as though Strindberg had set one of his plays in the North of England. The text is studded with oblique references to the current death toll as time goes on, (“twenty thousand now…”, “sixty five thousand”), that also feel like jabs.

Le Crass employs just the two terrific actors and Leah Kelly’s set of four mismatched chairs and a curtained window to convey easy domestic intimacy, then marital crisis, social distancing, and finally the unimaginable. It’s simple but extraordinarily effective, punctuated by Jodie Underwood’s malleable lighting and a nightmarish sound score by Adam Langston that sounds like an aural equivalent to the paranoia that was roiling through most of our minds at the time.

The play is structured as dozens of short scenes (or jabs?), some wordless and lasting barely a minute, that collectively build up to a picture of ordinary people in a crisis not of their own making, and struggling to maintain control of increasingly fractured lives. If Anne’s trajectory is marginally more convincing than Don’s, that’s partly because she has more stage time, but also that the text requires some shifts into aggression, sexual and otherwise, for him that don’t entirely convince, despite Tobin’s superb performance. Ainsworth’s unforgettable Anne is a masterclass; so human and relatable, whether raging, sobbing or just getting on with her life with a dogged resignation that will be familiar to so many who can bear to cast their minds back nearly three years.

If this isn’t always an easy watch, it is often a surprisingly entertaining one. The humour is keenly observed, and the use of pop music (particularly Eurythmics, who are always worth a listen) and dance is very intelligently done. The production ends with a low-key coup de theatre that suggests hope, renewal and healing. This is powerful, engaging stuff.

HIR

by Taylor Mac

directed by Steven Kunis

Park Theatre, London – until 16 March 2024

https://parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/hir

Long before she became an award-winning television star as flawed high achiever Lynette Scavo in Desperate Housewives, Felicity Huffman was primarily a theatre actress. Amongst other achievements, she was part of the team that founded acclaimed NYC new writing powerhouse Atlantic Theater Company and she took over from Madonna in the original production of Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow on Broadway. Watching her mighty performance in this rare revival of Taylor Mac’s muscular, absurdist genderqueer black comedy is a forcible reminder that she is one hell of an actress, and what the stage has been missing.

Huffman plays Paige, controlling matriarch of a deeply unconventional family living in a plasterboard house atop landfill in the suburb of an unnamed American city. Eldest son Isaac (Steffan Cennydd) returns home following a dishonourable discharge for drug use after three years of active service, to find that his teenage sister Maxine is now Max (using the pronouns “hir” and “ze”) and educating Paige in all manner of things about the whole new rainbow-coloured world. Meanwhile, their Dad Arnold has suffered a massive stroke, communicates mainly in moans and monosyllables, is made up like a clown, and is kept under control by Paige with meds and regular blasts of liquid from a handy plant watering spray. The Waltons this ain’t.

Mac’s characters are nearer in tone and bearing to the creations of Sam Shepard at their most dysfunctional, and this sort-of hate letter to the small Californian town Mac grew up is at its strongest when it explores just how eccentric people can get when reacting to unusual circumstances. Tellingly, the most grounded, and arguably the most likeable figure is teenage Max (beautifully played by Thalía Dudek), flaunting hir newly developing facial hair with glee, proudly proclaiming a sexual attraction to men and, most touchingly, trying to make sense of the family battlefield exploding on all sides.

Kunis’s well judged, if occasionally over-emphatic, staging gives us a glimpse of the literal battlefield that haunts Isaac as Ceci Calf’s fabulous, almost disgustingly well realised house set (Paige has put a ban on housework since Arnold’s stroke, as a sort of two fingered salute to the patriarchy) undergoes a transformation. It doesn’t really add anything to the trajectory of the play but it’s a striking theatrical moment.

The conversations around gender identity are more familiar to mainstream audiences now than they were when Hir had its London premiere at the Bush, in a rather less nuanced production than this one. Mac’s script now fascinates mainly as a portrait of a family in freefall, how changing circumstances and the passage of time can drive an insurmountable wedge between people. Simple things like using a kitchen blender or controlling the temperature of a room with a/c or indeed leaving everything in a (possibly metaphorical) mess seen as weapons of control and domestic war. The attempts at home entertainment (including shadow puppetry and banjo playing) that this bunch get up to have to be endured to be believed, but you wouldn’t wish them on your worst enemy.

It’s a little exhausting and relentless, despite the efforts of a very fine cast. Huffman is sensationally good. If at first her innate elegance might seem a little at odds with the grungy surroundings, she totally nails this woman’s bizarre combination of wacky eccentricity, implacable righteousness and ice cold vengeance. It’s a complex, psychologically astute, technically brilliant performance and one that will probably see her on every Best Actress award shortlist if this production transfers.

Cennydd, who if there’s any justice should be heading for major stardom, is equally impressive as the young soldier returned home to total bewilderment. He veers between astonished child and macho posturing with seamless, credible assurance, and his breakdown near the end is heartrending, despite everything we’ve seen and heard. I adored Dudek’s wide-eyed, wired Max, vacillating between indignation, compassion and casual teenage cruelty, and Simon Startin invests stricken Arnold with a haunting desolation but offers tantalising, unsettling glimpses of the bullying monster he once was.

There’s a naivety and rawness to Mac’s writing that doesn’t always gel with the finely tuned observations of the dynamics between human beings, but the acidic dialogue and sheer off-the-wall bonkersness of it all ensures that boredom at least is never an option. It’s a messy, scattershot piece of work with moments of genuine power and featuring some unforgettable characters. It’s hard to imagine it being acted better than it is here.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

by Henrik Ibsen

adapted by Thomas Ostermeier and Florian Borchmeyer

English version by Duncan Macmillan

directed by Thomas Ostermeier

Duke of York’s Theatre, London – until 13 April 2024

https://anenemyofthepeople.co.uk

Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama is a play that speaks to us more urgently now than ever. Hence as well as this modernised adaptation, first seen at Berlin’s Schaubühne Theatre in 2012 but only now receiving its English language premiere, a separate production, directed by Sam Gold and starring Succession’s Jeremy Strong, is about to go into previews on Broadway. The play’s ongoing relevance is both bracing and depressing, dealing as it does with potentially life threatening lies being told by those in high office, the challenges of living a morally spotless life in a world powered by status and money, and the way the mass populace can be manipulated by the few.

Thomas Ostermeier and Florian Borchmeyer’s version is to the Ibsen as Simon Stone’s Yerma and Phaedra were to Lorca and Racine, or Jamie Lloyd’s deconstructions of everything from Cyrano de Bergerac to Sunset Boulevard are to their source materials. In other words, this Enemy of the People distills the essence of the original but reinvents it almost as a new play, complete with modern dress and references to social media and present day politics. It’s a polarising approach, as initial press reviews have already proved, and anybody going in expecting heavy Victorian-style drapery and period costumes is in for quite a surprise.

So are people who come along expecting it to be the Matt Smith show. He is brilliant as the good-hearted, highly strung doctor who discovers poison in the waters of the town spa that is the primary source of local revenue, but the contemporary German theatre style that this production represents tends to favour ensemble over star turns, and that is very much the case here. Paul Hilton brings a compelling mixture of pomposity and aggrievance to his condescending older brother, who happens to be the town mayor. The dynamic between the two siblings, politically and socially opposite to each other yet entirely credibly of the same blood, is superbly fleshed out.

Jessica Brown Findlay makes Katharina, Dr Thomas’s wife, a fiercely intelligent, complex modern woman, impassioned, funny, sometimes ambiguous and hard to read in certain situations…in other words, a completely real person. She’s tremendous. Nigel Lindsay gives her factory owner father an intriguing air of low level menace that comes to fruition when he throws a moral crisis-inducing spanner in the works at the eleventh hour. There’s further sublime work from Shubham Saraf, Zachary Hart and Priyanga Burford as a trio of vested interest journalists whose allegiance-switching pragmatism is extremely funny …until it absolutely isn’t.

The acting never hits a false note. The line deliveries throughout have a throwaway, almost improvisational feel that draws us in while paving the way to what is arguably Ostermeier’s biggest coup de theatre where the opening of act two becomes a Question Time-style debate with the Duke of York’s doubling as the town hall, roving mics and audience members encouraged to have their say. Without breaking character, Burford moderates from the stage with a fascinating mixture of authority, unspoken opinion and barely concealed contempt.

In that same scene, Dr Thomas Stockmann has a coruscating speech-cum-rant about modern life – the environmental crisis, the gaslighting, the failing infrastructures, the perils of social media, the greed, and so much more – that cuts to the heart of what Ibsen was saying but refracts it back through the prism of our own time, and it takes the breath away. Smith delivers it with an energy, precision and white hot fury that matches the words. It’s impossible to be unaffected.

Elsewhere, Ostermeier’s staging is filled with quirks – scene changes are indicated by words on a chalkboard, a beautiful German Shepherd dog makes repeated appearances, Hart’s inspirationally gormless Billing gets an impromptu beatbox moment – that might be enervating if they weren’t executed with such commitment. Technically, it’s flawless, from Jan Pappelbaum’s angular, transformable set to Urs Schönebaum’s stark lighting and Ben and Max Ringham’s haunting aural creations.

The use of music is interesting: at the beginning the Stockmanns are jamming in a band with their friends, but by the end there are no more tunes; a character puts on headphones to drown out an unwelcome tirade by a colleague and we in the audience also hear just the banging rock music not the bellowed speech. It’s music as a motif, as a balm and a distraction, and when the proverbial shit hits the fan, the music stops.

It’s almost needless to say that this won’t be to everyone’s taste. It’s the theatrical equivalent to having a bucket of ice thrown over you, and it feels urgent, alive and thrilling. It’s dark yes, but also unexpectedly hilarious, and it ends on a low key, quizzical, troubling note. Expect to be thinking about it long after the performance is over. Love it or hate it, this breathes life into the West End, and you need to see it if only to know what everyone is talking about. I was absolutely riveted.

DOUBLE FEATURE

by John Logan

directed by Jonathan Kent

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 16 March 2024

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2023/double-feature/

Anybody interested in the creative process behind movies is going to be fascinated by Tony and BAFTA winning American writer John Logan’s new play. Double Feature has taken a decade to pen, and accordingly has matured like a fine wine, full of complex notes and intriguing aftertastes, as it hits the Hampstead stage in Jonathan Kent’s classy if static production.

Alfred Hitchcock and his sinisterly controlling relationships with assorted leading ladies still exerts a horrifying fascination, and was explored to fine theatrical effect in Terry Johnson’s 2003 Hitchcock Blonde. Logan covers some of the same thematic ground here, specifically with Tippi Hedren, the actress Hitchcock held under personal contract having elevated her to film stardom from appearances in TV commercials. This is a less flashy piece than that Royal Court smash hit, but it is quietly shocking in its contemplative explorations of power abuses, coercion and artistic differences in an industry with more than its fair share of problematic individuals.

Double Feature, true to its title, juxtaposes an uneasy combination of power play and confrontation between the director and star of his 1964 movie Marnie, with a comparable, but differently accented, encounter between actor Vincent Price and his enfant terrible director Michael Reeves while they’re working on the 1968 horror flick Witchfinder General. Theatrical piquancy is added by having both meetings play out simultaneously and on the same set (a luxuriously appointed, faux rustic lodge, in an atmospheric, detailed design by Anthony Ward).

In a fun extra layer, the set may look the same but it actually represents two separate locations, as well as two differing time periods: Witchfinder General was shot in East Anglia while Hitchcock had a replica English cottage built on his Hollywood film set for him to use while filming. Hugh Vanstone’s complex lighting does a lot of heavy lifting here to differentiate between the two locales.

The amount of research and veracity of detail means this is a play that will appeal primarily to the nerdiest of cineasts, but the production values, the sheer quality of the acting and much of the writing ensure that it more than commands the attention even for people less film-obsessed. Furthermore, the Hedren-Hitchcock portion of the play addresses centuries of male on female abuse that extends far beyond the reaches of Hollywood.

Logan’s script and Kent’s staging get off to a cracking start with Rowan Polonski’s nervy, mercurial Reeves alternately cajoling and attempting to bully Jonathan Hyde’s magnificently grand but playful and affronted Price into not abandoning the film project. It’s riotously funny, and meticulously well observed as the power balance shifts between the two men apparently at opposing ends of their career trajectories (tragically, the real Michael Reeves died aged only 25 not long after Witchfinder General came out). Both actors handle the whip-smart dialogue and lightning fast changes in mood and attitude brilliantly, and Hyde offers up an uncanny Vincent Price with a rare mixture of high status grandiloquence and innate warmth.

The temperature cools perceptibly with the arrival, albeit taking place half a decade earlier and thousands of miles away, of Hitchcock and Hedren. This section occasionally proves pretty hard to watch, such is the accuracy and truth in the performances of Ian McNeice and Joanna Vanderham. The latter, abetted by Ward’s period-perfect powder blue suit, captures exquisitely the on-edge poise of the young star covering up her desperation with a veneer of sophistication, and she’s ferociously authoritative in a tense worm-turning scene that may have you silently punching the air in approval.

It’s essentially a very talky piece, and a small amount of research into the figures involved and the movies in production, would definitely benefit the lay viewer. There’s a beguiling symmetry in the way individual spoken phrases ricochet and replicate between the two separate scenes, as though to suggest, depressingly, that some things never change. The convention of having both sets of actors on stage even when half of them aren’t engaged occasionally creates a vacuum of energy that threatens to detract from the scene being played out, but the magnetism of the actors mostly overcomes that. Similarly, the decision to shakily (and loudly) revolve the set by a few degrees to expose the messy bed chamber that never gets used, feels a little ponderous and unnecessary.

Despite these reservations, this is nonetheless a Rolls Royce piece of theatre, one that deserves to have a further life beyond this brief premiere season. It’s worth pointing out that a production of this world class quality is happening at a venue which lost both its Arts Council funding and Artistic Director within the last eighteen months. Hampstead Theatre has come out swinging with what looks like one of their most exciting seasons for years, off to an impressive start with this intelligent, elegant offering. This North London institution remains an essential destination for discerning theatregoers, it’s imperative that it’s supported and Double Feature, for starters, is well worth your time and money.

DINA MARTINA: SUB-STANDARDS

Soho Theatre, London – until 24 February 2024

https://sohotheatre.com/events/dina-martina-sub-standards/

When they commemorate the great chanteuses of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – Barbra, Liza, Bette, Cher, Madonna, Gaga, and so on – the name Dina Martina probably won’t be on the list ….and that’s a bit of a shame. For her, mainly.

Anyway, moving swiftly along, Seattle (she pronounces it “Seettle”) resident Martina is currently wow-ing (using that term loosely) London audiences in the basement space of Soho Theatre with a residency of her barbarically poignant new show, Sub-Standards. Ignore it at your peril.

Although now Seattle-based, Dina Martina originally hails from Vegas and there is undeniably something of the Glitter Gulch in her sparkling insensitivity and irrepressible good humour in the face of technical issues, wardrobe malfunctions and an audience that seems hell bent on laughing hysterically at some of her most heartfelt anecdotes. Dina’s equal parts inspiration, desperation and perspiration.

Blessed with a sound that is somewhere between a comforting caress and a cat that’s just had its tail trodden on, her vocal stylings have the kookie panache of Carol Channing and the brassy assurance of Bette Midler, with just a pinch of Walter Cronkite and somebody in the midst of having a very loud nervous breakdown. With dance moves that would alarm St Vitus, a face like a heavily made-up cement mixer, and wardrobe choices that suggest a collision between a small tank and a large pile of sequins, Martina would be a lounge singer… if said lounge was in a lunatic asylum, and what she lacks in dignity she makes up for in enthusiasm.

Her vocal range may be limited but commendably she doesn’t let that compromise her song options, resulting in renditions of such modern classics as Janet Jackson’s ‘When I Think Of You’ and Duran Duran’s ‘Girls On Film’ that feature notes and phrasing that the lyricists and composers could never have envisioned. Being the consummate artist that she is, Martina frequently rewrites the original lyrics, uncovering the dread, awkwardness and sheer misery that you may not have realised was lurking just beneath the surface of these bouncy pop favourites. What she does with Vanessa Williams’s signature ballad ‘Save The Best For Last’ really needs to be heard to be believed but suffice it to say that it’s probably just as well that Dina will be safely back in Seettle before the Grammy-nominated star arrives in the West End for The Devil Wears Prada.

Whether talking about her now defunct (due to lack of interest) charity, the Dina Martina Foundation for Conjunctivitis, or bestowing the admirable mantra that you should never regret what you didn’t do in life, only what you actually did, or regaling us with stories from the sunny car crash of her existence, including one about finding her long lost daughter in her own house while filming a documentary about hoarders for American TV, Martina is beguiling company. She’s a fragrant performer and a seasoned human: she’s lived, she’s travelled (she knows a handful of words in French), she embraces Steampunk, she’s unfeasibly triggered by audience members lying about having been to Niagara…

Every aspect of Grady West’s creation, from the cheeky bastardisations of scenes from movies, all doctored to include La Martina, that punctuate, or stem the flow of, songs and anecdotes that are really more extended non sequiturs, to the maquillage that looks like it’s been done by a beautician with severe psychological problems, is objectively terrible, and that is where the genius comes in. Dina is so exuberantly un-self aware, so caught up in her own showbiz maelstrom and determined to sweep us all along, that resistance is futile. A couple of the songs slightly outstay their welcome, but the twisted joy and glitter-spattered unease of the performance carries it through.

Who knew angst and jollity could co-exist so harmoniously? Ok, maybe more cacophonously than harmoniously, but you get my drift. At times, Dina Martina reminded me a little of Dame Edna, and at others of Justin Vivian Bond’s Kiki (of Kiki & Herb), but mainly she’s just bracingly original, biliously funny, and as unexpectedly lovable as she’s inept. This is 75 minutes of comic bliss and musical hell. I’d like to go back, once I’ve recovered.

DEAR OCTOPUS

by Dodie Smith

directed by Emily Burns

National Theatre/Lyttelton – until 27 March 2024

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-octopus/

A major West End success before and after the Second World War, Dodie Smith’s 1938 dramedy family saga has seldom been seen since. This opulent National Theatre re-evaluation shows us what we’ve been missing while intriguingly suggesting why the piece has been neglected for decades. Theatre historians and completists will surely flock to Emily Burns’s long but luscious staging, but it may prove a harder sell to theatregoers who prefer their shows flashier and more dynamic.

The title Dear Octopus refers to the ties that, tentacle-like, bind a family together, however geographically far removed they are, and Smith’s play is not so much plot driven as nudged in different directions by shared memories and mutual grievances. The setting is the gaslit country pile (gorgeously designed by Frankie Bradshaw) of the moneyed Randolph family, four generations of which are gathered to celebrate the golden wedding anniversary of eccentric, religiously devout matriarch Dora (Lindsay Duncan) and her benign, doting husband Charles (Malcolm Sinclair).

Tensions rise, reconciliations happen, two unrequited loves get contrasting solutions, it’s all tremendously civilised. How interesting it is will depend on how invested one can get in the tribulations of the privileged few, and also perhaps on how easy it is to draw parallels with the Randolphs and one’s own family. The detail in the production is a thing of considerable beauty, from the muted flair of Bradshaw’s costumes to the richly atmospheric lighting by Oliver Fenwick and Nico Muhly’s delicate underscoring, which gives the whole thing an almost filmic quality. There’s even an etiquette consultant employed (Lucy Cullingford).

That detail doesn’t extend to all of the casting. Most of the leads are spot on, but there’s some alarmingly wooden acting from some of the supporting company. Sinclair is in fine fettle as doting, contended Charles, and Kate Fahy brings a brittle edge to family friend Belle whose joie de vivre masks an inner hollowness that quietly tugs at the heartstrings.

Lindsay Duncan is brilliant as Dora, as kind as she is deliciously withering (“she’s always been very honest about her make-up. Dear me, it must be worrying to take a face like that out in the rain”). Duncan even convinces in the ponderous sections where Dora discusses her faith with her non-believing husband, moments which in lesser hands could easily become a lot of theatrical dead air. Bethan Cullinane, Jo Herbert and Amy Morgan do striking, slyly funny work as three contrasting daughters, and Bessie Carter makes something vivid and true out of long standing ladies companion Fenny’s fixation on Billy Howle’s apparently confirmed batchelor son Nicholas. Herbert’s OCD suffering estate agent Hilda is especially delightful.

There’s an elegant savagery to much of Smith’s dialogue (“only a very happy woman could dare to trust to nature as your mother has”) that genuinely stings and entertains, but the whole play is so dated that it sometimes shocks for the wrong reasons (there are several references to the weight of Morgan’s Margery that take the breath away with their sheer insensitivity).

Realistically, only somewhere like the National would have the resources nowadays to stage a play like this, and the whole enterprise reeks of quality. Whether or not the play itself was really worth the effort and the money is a question. It’s gently enjoyable, but you may come out thinking that there’s a reason why Dodie Smith is best known for 101 Dalmatians…

THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA

by Jez Butterworth

Directed by Sam Mendes

Harold Pinter Theatre, London – until 15 June 2024

https://hillsofcaliforniaplay.com

Jez Butterworth sure likes a long play. His latest, directed by Sam Mendes, clocks in at a full three hours, which makes it shorter than his acclaimed earlier offerings Jerusalem and The Ferryman…but not by very much. Like its siblings, The Hills of California has a fascination with storytelling and the power of invagination to create an escape from frequently fraught lives. Unlike them, it’s a strongly female driven piece, set across two time periods – the 1950s and the freakishly hot UK summer of 1976 – depicting a quartet of sisters, each pretty damaged in their own way.

Despite the title, it isn’t set in California at all, but rather in a rundown Blackpool hotel owned by the sisters’ formidable mother, where every guest room is named after an American state. It’s a theatrical premise ripe with possibilities, and Rob Howell’s gorgeous ramshackle set with multiple staircases rising vertiginously up into the flies offers ample opportunities for eavesdropping or stalking off in a huff. It’s unfortunate though that this is opening so close to another play, and an absolute belter at that, about sisterly relationships in turmoil, Beth Steel’s unmissable Till The Stars Come Down over at the National.

The Hills of California isn’t unmissable: but it contains a lot to enjoy, as well as a certain amount of head-scratching stuff. It’s an unwieldy piece with the bulk of the drama and, to be honest, most of the enjoyment arriving after the interval which comes at the one hour mark. That first sixty minutes aren’t exactly hard to sit through but neither are they particularly compelling. This is a real slow burner, but stick with it as the second and third acts really up the dramatic stakes.

Some of Butterworth’s dialogue is brilliant (Ophelia Lovibond’s Ruby has a bracingly bitter, expletive-strewn speech about the challenges of parenting, observing amongst other things that having four year olds is like living with drunk dwarves, that verges on genius) and the delineation between the way the characters speak in the different time periods is exquisitely done, as is the correlation of personality traits between the older and younger versions of the central sisters. The young women are aspiring singers (excellent work on the musical aspects from Nick Powell and Candida Caldicot) and the play touches on the seedier side of showbiz, and sets the girls mother Veronica (Laura Donnelly) up as a sort of Northern Mama Rose.

The script is at its most intriguing, and most harrowing, when it deals with suggestions of child abuse and the way it stunts lives. The dynamic between the contrasting sisters is convincingly done (and beautifully acted) but there are a couple of details and scenes, usually involving the male characters, that feel extraneous. The Ferryman felt similarly baggy, unless you were a fan of all the Irish tropes, and of all Butterworth’s longer works, I feel that Jerusalem is the only one that truly justifies the punishing running time.

Mendes’s staging includes some surprisingly clumsy blocking, but is flawlessly performed right across the board. Lovibond is a multi-layered revelation as witty but deceptively delicate Ruby. Her comic timing is magnificent and when she ups the emotional ante she sears the heart: it’s a truly wonderful performance. Helena Wilson draws a tender, haunting portrait of the sister left behind to tend to mother and Leanne Best makes something vivid, vital and often hilarious out of flashy, vulgar, opinionated but strangely likeable Gloria. Playing dual roles, Donnelly impressively suggests the steel and the desperation in their flinty mother and captures unerringly the drawling wildness of an Americanised, long absent family member, despite the slightly clichéd ‘1970s hippie chick’ nature of the writing Butterworth has given her.

Lara McDonnell, Nancy Allsopp, Nicola Turner and Sophie Ally do lovely work as the younger versions of the sisters, and are all fabulous singers. Bryan Dick and Shaun Dooley make strong, humorous impressions as the sometimes unfortunate men who loom large in their lives. There isn’t a false note in any of the performances from a large cast.

Hugely watchable though it is, one of the ultimate take aways from The Hills of California is that there’s no essential point to it. There are more urgent dramas about family relationships and the passage of time, and the whole thing could benefit from losing about half an hours playing time. Still, the characters and especially the performances command the attention. It’s not the soaring triumph that the name of the playwright and director might have led one to expect, but it’s certainly not a dud either. Approach with managed expectations and you’ll have a good evening.

TINA – THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL

Book by Katori Hall, with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

Aldwych Theatre, London – open-ended run

https://tinathemusical.com/uk/

While regular theatregoers get a lot of mileage out of bragging about seeing the original casts of various legendary shows (and I am definitely one of those people!), there are several examples of long runners that have actually improved over time, as the creatives get a chance to rethink and finetune their work, and new performers become available to fill the iconic roles. A case in point is Tina, which opened at the Aldwych in 2018 and since then has seen replica productions spring up on Broadway, on tour across America, in Australia and in Europe. The London production isn’t just in great shape, it’s arguably the best it has ever been.

Of course, there is an extra emotional frisson to the show now, following the death last year of the beloved music industry icon, born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee in 1939, whose life story is the basis of this musical, on which she also served as executive producer. Seeing it originally, it was impossible not to be moved by the music and impressed by the energy of Adrienne Warren’s Tony-winning performance in the title role, which is a rollercoaster of highs and lows, requiring prodigious vocal and physical stamina. The role is now split between two actresses, currently Karis Anderson and Elesha Paul Moses, who perform four performances apiece per week, which seems like an intelligent choice given the extraordinary demands of becoming Miss Tina Turner. I saw Karis Anderson and, if it takes a star to portray a star, then Tina and the audience is in very safe hands. She’s spellbinding.

First time around, I was disappointed by Katori Hall’s book which felt bloated and soap operatic, and Phyllida Lloyd’s production which struggled to reconcile the horrifying scenes of domestic violence with the adrenalised exhilaration of the musical sequences, resulting in an uncertain tone. Fast forward five years, and the subtly retooled show is sleeker, sharper, more engrossing and coherent. The depiction of Turner’s abusive treatment at the hands of Ike remains shocking but feels integrated better, as do the juxtapositions of gritty realism with the spiritual mysticism that guided Tina through her adult life.

Similarly, the interpolations of the dead Grandmother Georgeanna and Anna Mae as a child, into moments of stress or indecision for adult Tina, who was usually cross-legged on the floor at this point doing her Buddhist chanting, no longer seem risible or overdone. As a script, it isn’t Katori Hall’s finest work, and there are still a couple of moments where the transitions into song are a little clumsy. But overall it is an earnest, fast-moving musical drama that explores the mercurial nature of fame, and celebrates the tenacity of Tina Turner rising from the poorest of backgrounds to global superstardom, and her glorious musical legacy.

That legacy is honoured with outstanding care by Ethan Popp’s orchestrations, skilfully blend the raucousness of rock’n’roll with an irresistible and essential theatricality, and Nicholas Skilbeck’s musical supervision and arrangements. The show sounds magnificent, nowhere more so than in the thunderously uplifting climax which recreates Tina’s legendary 1988 Rio De Janeiro concert, complete with onstage band, live video-filming and dazzling rock stadium lighting courtesy of Bruno Poet.

For all the slick professionalism of Mark Thompson’s design and Anthony Van Laast’s choreography, a show like this stands or falls by its leading lady. Karis Anderson is astounding, an electrifying presence and a sensitive, instinctive actress. She recreates the full range of the Turner voice, from the thrilling raspy growl up to a roof raising belt that makes you hold on to your seat and gasp, also the unique combination of tough, tender and joyful that defined this extraordinary star. She was part tigress, part Earth Mother and Anderson gives us all that, capturing the essence of a woman whose success really did come against all odds, except her God-given talent. Describing her daughter, Tina’s mother – played with real passion by Carole Stennett – observes that “you can’t hold fire”, and that feels entirely true of Anderson…she’s pure charisma and you cannot take your eyes off her.

The role of Ike Turner must be one of the most thankless in musical theatre, literally nobody who isn’t a psychopath is going to root for this womanising wife beater. Orezie Morro commits to the character with admirable, even terrifying ferocity and delivers the raw, upsetting speech where Ike describes the brutality he witnessed in his youth, with real skill. That, and the idea that he had an innate talent that went unappreciated due to his race and hot headedness, doesn’t excuse his behaviour but goes some way towards explaining it. Morro is very very good, and makes him seem less one-note than written.

Irene Myrtle Forrester, with a voice that could awaken the dead, is wonderful as Tina’s beloved GG, and Emma Hatton makes something truthful and likeable out of the underwritten role of Tina’s loyal manager. There’s lovely, sensitive work from Jonathan Carlton as Erwin Bach, the man Tina found long term happiness with and he and Vanessa Dumatey, gloriously feisty as the older Bullock sister, provide most of what humour the show has.

Now that the undisputed ‘Queen of Rock’n’Roll’ has left us, this long standing West End fixture is the next best thing. The story is inspirational and full of drama, the songs remain unsurpassed, the staging is more dynamic and engaging than previously, and in Karis Anderson, Tina – The Tina Turner Musical is fielding a sizzling, authentic star talent. I’m so glad I went back.

TILL THE STARS COME DOWN

by Beth Steel

directed by Bijan Sheibani

National Theatre/Dorfman, London – until 16 March 2024

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/till-the-stars-come-down/

As it’s only February, I’m wary of trumpeting Till The Stars Come Down as best play of the year, but I’d be prepared to wager it’ll be on every critic and regular theatregoer’s shortlist for 2024. In earlier works like Wonderland and The House of Shades, Beth Steel has proved repeatedly that she has a unique talent for mixing up the gritty realities of day-to-day lives with a bold melodramatic theatricality. This wonderful new play has elements of all that, but also a rich seam of humour, a clear-eyed take on the state of the UK today, and a cast of vivid characters drawn and played with truth and compassion. It is tremendous entertainment but it’s also more than that.

Set in Steel’s native Nottingham area, which probably explains the sometimes painful authenticity of every aspect of this script, the piece centres on a wedding, the sort of event that is frequently a catalyst for emotions boiling over and ancient resentments coming to the fore. Steel further enriches this by making the family gathered to celebrate the nuptials of delicate Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) to Polish Marek (Marc Wootton) a microcosm of the UK today. Thus Dad Tony (Alan Williams) is a former miner who hasn’t spoken to his brother Pete (Philip Whitchurch) for years over an issue with the strikes in the 1980s. Pete’s wife Carol (Lorraine Ashbourne) is joyously lairy but has an opinion, however controversial, on everything. Meanwhile, Sylvia’s brother-in-law (Derek Riddell) can’t find work due to the industries shutting down while his wife and Sylvia’s older sister Hazel (Lucy Black) views immigrants with suspicion. Their daughter Leanne (Ruby Stokes) is a bit of a lost soul…..

It sounds a lot to take in, but Steel drip feeds the information and the revelations with so much skill, the characters are so engaging (even when they’re being appalling) and the dialogue is so funny, salty and sharp that it washes over you as a couple of hours of utter, if occasionally painful, pleasure. Bijan Sheibani’s production plays out in the round under a giant glitterball that suggests not just a party but the size of a planet, as if to put into perspective the human difficulties, joys and fury this onstage family is going through. It’s a show packed with fine things.

Not least is the acting, so real that it almost doesn’t feel like acting at all. Ashbourne’s comically rambunctious Aunty Carol and Black’s in-denial older sister with some pretty ugly viewpoints, are probably the showiest roles and both actresses inhabit them fully and marvellously. I was particularly drawn to Lisa McGrillis as arguably the most relatable of the sisters, a kind but flawed woman whose placid outer strength masks some a heart piercing vulnerability….she’s warm, funny, entirely convincing, it’s a beautiful performance. Sinéad Matthews’s childlike but tougher-than-she-looks Sylvia is exquisitely done. Really though, there is no weak link in this glorious company, every actor inhabiting the same crazy yet recognisable universe.

All in all, this is one of those sublime evenings where every element – writing, direction, design (Samal Blak – set and costumes, Paule Constable- lighting, Gareth Fry – sound), acting – is working in perfect harmony, and to utterly satisfying effect. It ends on a cathartic but quizzical note, and leaves the rapt audience wanting more. Ultimately, Till The Stars Come Down is a unique achievement: a superior situation comedy meets riveting family saga meets state-of-the-nation drama, all sprinkled with just a bit of theatrical magic. It deserves to be a big fat popular hit for the National. Do not miss.