If the title makes you wince, much of the content will really make your eyes water. Let’s be perfectly clear: Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! is puerile, crude and basic. It also has more genuine laugh-out-loud moments per scene than probably anything else on the London stage right now.
Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper’s adult pantomimes for Above The Stag had achieved something approaching cult status and the team’s offering for this festive season looks set to continue that tradition of merry smut and surprisingly high production values. Perhaps the biggest shock for the uninitiated is how much respect and know-how the creatives have for the traditions of panto. Far from just being an endless parade of unbridled single entendres and jokes about anal sex (although there’s plenty of all that), Sleeping Beauty has rhyming sections, the obligatory “there’s a ghost behind you” gag, well crafted songs, plenty of opportunities for the audience to boo and hiss, and, in Matthew Baldwin as world-weary, man-hungry Queen Gertrude, one of the classiest Dames in the business.
Baldwin is the real deal: screamingly funny but with an undertone of real pathos, his Gertrude treats her fellow cast members and the audience with a haughty disdain that the roaring, enraptured punters can’t get enough of. Every withering put-down and catty aside lands, every outrageous outfit is suitably outlandish: my favourite was a LGBTQ+ bastardisation of Cecil Beaton’s creation for Audrey Hepburn in the Ascot scene from the My Fair Lady film, although the tarted-up Marie Antoinette finale look was also spectacular. Crucially though, the comedy is never overplayed, which makes it all the more delightful, and one always feels that, for all the frivolity and salaciousness, there’s always something at stake for this marvellous monarch. As in previous years, Baldwin is worth the price of a ticket all by himself.
The casting throughout is strong: Chris Lane is suitably ripe and nasty as the baddie Prince Camembert, a priapic monster with killer comic timing and, according to Queen Gertrude, quite possibly tertiary stage syphilis. Tom Mann invests Prince Arry (the gender-swapped titular Beauty) with just the right combination of gormlessness and enthusiasm, and Jordan Stamatiadis is great fun as his perpetually randy fairy godmother. There are stand out turns also from Matthew Gent as a salt-of-the-earth stable man and his better off descendant (the plot straddles several centuries for reasons too convoluted to go into here), Nikki Biddington as his spirited daughter(s) and Myles Hart as a technicolored alien with a libido as pronounced as his Caribbean accent.
Any show that features parodies of My Fair Lady’s Ascot Gavotte and Jellicle Songs from Cats is clearly put together by a team that knows their musical theatre as well as their willy jokes and pantomime. For all the on-the-nose crudity of the humour, it’s interesting that the biggest laugh is arguably a gag about Beyoncé performing in Tottenham, and, outrageous as much of the script is, it’s seldom actually cruel. Andrew Beckett’s well judged production includes nifty choreography by Carole Todd and a fabulously garish Belle Époque-meets-traditional panto flats set by David Shields.
Unless you’re exceptionally prudish (and, really, what would you be doing at a show entitled Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! if you’re easily offended?!), it’s pretty hard not to have a rollicking good time here. Swearing aside, most of the humour isn’t that far removed from what Julian Clary gets away with regularly in the annual Palladium extravaganza. Go for the dirty jokes and flamboyant performances, but you may be surprised at the amount of craft on display too. Huge fun, massive in fact.
As with any classic – and Evita, first seen on stage in 1978, is surely now regarded as a classic modern musical – echoes of earlier productions inevitably hang over any new version. So it proves with Nikolai Foster’s determinedly contemporary new staging of the Rice and Lloyd Webber rock opera at Leicester’s Curve. The use of projected images sometimes recalls the iconic Harold Prince original while anybody who saw the Jamie Lloyd open air production in Regents Park is likely here to be transported back by the modern sneakers and monochrome leisurewear of the ensemble and by Adam Murray’s muscular, angular choreography.
That said, Foster’s vision, epic and frequently laser-focused, is as remarkable for the new ideas it throws at the piece as it is for its (perhaps unintended) continuation of earlier tropes. There is little, if any, attempt to contextualise the action in Argentina or in the 1940s when the real life Eva Peron was at the height of her powers as wife of the ruling dictator. The visual aesthetic here is stark, spare and majestic: a gargantuan staircase is wheeled around the vast space, a video screen wall flies in and out, batteries of lights (stunning work by Joshie Harriette) rain down on the performers or blind the front stalls, simultaneously glamourising the action while mercilessly exposing the less admirable aspects of the Peronist regime, a stage wide gantry bearing the ruling militia descends from the flies to suggest absolute power and also constant surveillance.
Staging the waltz where the narrator Che (Tyrone Huntley) directly challenges Evita over her motives and morals as a TV interview is a brilliant idea, as is the concept of having the ruling classes, the aristocracy and the aforementioned military men, as, respectively, a bunch of trashy drunks and feckless, towel-flicking frat boys. Not everything lands, but clearly a lot of original thought has gone into this reimagining. The bare metalwork of Michael Taylor’s set is often reminiscent of the Regents Park Jesus Christ Superstar, especially under Harriette’s rock stadium lighting.
In all honesty, I’m not sure how clear the storytelling would be to somebody unfamiliar with the work, and some of the concepts feel a little half-baked. Is the frequent live filming and direct address to camera intended to suggest that Eva was a latter day equivalent to a social media star? Was she the first influencer?! Having Che emerge from the front stalls to question the status quo (“who is this Santa Evita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow?”) is an interesting choice but isn’t fully followed through, leaving the usually wonderful Huntley as a frustratingly ambiguous figure. He sings beautifully, albeit a little too cleanly, but isn’t sardonic or edgy enough to really pose an ideological threat to the Perons, and never seems clear whether he’s applauding Eva or admonishing her.
Martha Kirby’s Eva gets better as the evening progresses. As the youngster desperate to escape her hicktown existence for the bright lights of the big city, she lacks the requisite fire, but she convinces later as a smooth operator capable of manipulating her way to the top, even if the staging doesn’t really give her many opportunities to demonstrate this. It’s a very passive interpretation of a role that can, and probably should, be a performance-driving firecracker. Still, she works the camera like a real star and meets the considerable vocal demands of the role with ease and sweetness, maybe a little too much sweetness: when she belts at the top of her range, as in the rabble rousing sections of the ‘A New Argentina’ act one closer, she’s authentically thrilling, mainly because she, for once, sounds dangerous and raw. Foster’s direction does so little foreshadowing of the illness that kills her (the real Eva Peron died of uterine cancer, aged 33) that anybody who didn’t know the story might find her very swift deterioration somewhat bewildering.
The only one of the three leads who is fully inhabiting their role at present is Gary Milner as Juan Peron. He’s dashing and charming on the surface but suggests a core of bullying, ruthless darkness and also a fundamental weakness, as though acutely aware that the lions share of his popularity is down to his charismatic wife. Since the 1996 movie version, the pleasant but hardly essential ballad ‘You Must Love Me’ has become part of the standard stage score and it works better here than ever before by turning it into a duet for the Perons, Eva in failing health and Juan attempting to comfort her but with one eye on his dwindling power.
Dan Partridge’s swaggering Magaldi, the tango singer who seduces the underage Eva and unwillingly takes her to Buenos Aires, is like a boyband reject in this modern iteration, and it’s a highly effective take. Having Peron’s Mistress appear much earlier than usual (she’s on Peron’s arm at the charity concert where he meets Eva) is another inspired idea, and makes her rejection all the more cruel, a point reinforced by Chumisa Dornford-May’s exquisite, powerfully emotional rendition of the beloved ‘Another Suitcase In Another Hall’ number.
The choral singing throughout is exciting, although Adam Fisher’s sound design would benefit from upping the volume several notches, and using teams of youth performers to swell the crowd scenes is an intelligent move, adding to the monumental feel of the production. Foster has the ensemble stationed all over the auditorium at points which adds to the general feel of us all being collusive in the Peron’s rise to power, and it’s just a shame that the musical performance is so aurally underwhelming on the whole, which is no fault of the the fine singers but rather that a nine piece band inevitably sounds a bit thin given the scale of the staging and the symphonic demands of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s galvanising, fascinating score.
Fans of a traditional Evita will mourn the period trappings and glamour (even the Jamie Lloyd version gave us the iconic white ball gown and scraped back peroxide blonde, albeit only in the final moments) and it’s a shame that the music doesn’t always sound as powerful as it should, but this is an undeniably fresh, bold look at a familiar piece. Here it’s less about Eva Peron as a historical figure and more about the corrosive, changeable nature of fame and mass manipulation. It may miss some of the notes one has come to expect but it has its own dynamism, and is frequently astonishing to look at.
Here’s a pre-Christmas treat to freeze the cockles of your heart. Rightfully acclaimed and sold out at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and now ensconced at the Bush Theatre for a six week run, Marcelo Dos Santos’s hour long solo play is an exhilarating exercise in zestful nihilism, elevated by a truly astonishing central performance by Samuel Barnett.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is presented like a stand-up comedy routine, one where the unnamed comedian (Barnett) stops and starts, snarls and kvetches, as he filters his existential crisis through a selection of modern day gay neuroses that are likely to strike a chord in many onlookers. He gives us emotional disconnection to the point of sociopathy, slavish worship of the body beautiful, feelings of ongoing inadequacy, the mixed blessings of online connections, self hatred and more… it’s mostly blisteringly funny, and when it isn’t, it’s just blistering.
The subject matter really isn’t that original, but the treatment is, especially in Matthew Xia’s stylish, technically adroit production. The design (Kat Heath), lighting (Elliot Griggs) and sound (Max Pappenheim) are spare and elegant but get flashy when they need to be. The comedian’s microphone is used like a weapon or a defence as Barnett screams and sasses into it, and the isolated moments where he puts it aside to speak, or sob, acoustically are powerfully telling.
The central character is desperate to be loved: he even puts a smiley face on a mental health questionnaire where he makes some startlingly dark admissions, in the hope of getting his therapist (“not a real therapist…a nice girl from the NHS with no detectable shoulders”) to like him. His problem, or at least a big part of it, is that he doesn’t even like himself very much. Barnett’s performance and Dos Santos’s writing do a remarkable collective job of conveying a person whose propensity for self-sabotage is immense, and who uses his undeniable wit as a constant form of self-defence. In all honesty, he’s not easy to like, despite the humour and the sometimes painful vulnerability that peeps through the motor-mouthed sarcasm, but that’s not really the point. He’s certainly thrilling theatrical company. When he gets into a sort-of relationship with an American hunk who seems too-good-to-be-true until it’s revealed that he has a medical condition that potentially makes him an unlikely match for a comedian, it’s clear that the wheels are going to come off, and part of the grim fun to be had is in predicting how that might happen (it’s pretty surprising but not entirely implausible).
Barnett is one of the most immediately likeable actors of his generation, possessed of an open-faced warmth, relatability and understated fragility that compellingly draws you in. Given that, it’s all the more astounding how much he disappears into the damaged, devious, wired figure at the heart of this play. He almost alters himself physiognomically, which of course isn’t possible especially at such close quarters but such is the magic of theatre and this electrifying performance. He’s hilarious and edgy, but when the mask of sardonic comic confession slips, he’s truly devastating. He also offers skilful brief but vivid sketches of the other figures in the comedian’s life.
Dos Santos’s script has a laser sharp precision and brilliantly walks a tightrope between comic showboating and laying bare the despair at the heart of so many super-busy youngish urbanites whose frantic activity may just be an attempt to keep the darkness at bay. It achieves a lot in a short space of time, and almost feels like it’s invoking a modern day, gay British Lenny Bruce. It’s frequently borderline obscene, and proves a much more satisfying piece of work than the same author’s current West End hit Backstairs Billy. Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is brutal and brilliant, with a bittersweet aftertaste that lingers long after the sixty five minute playing time is over. Just go.
“It’s not like we’re going to be winning any theatre awards any time soon” says Laurie Kynaston’s debauched modern day fop, improbably disguised as a Russian oligarch visiting a dilapidated stately home on the North East coast of England, in a meta moment from this strange but appealing new comedy at the Royal Court. “I highly doubt we’ll be nominated” rejoinders Natalie Dew as his Sloane Ranger-ish heiress girlfriend, also in disguise as an oligarch, this one the bearded, seafood-obsessed brother of Kynaston’s. They’ve got a point….well, unless this years illustrious ceremonies add a category for ‘Weirdest Play of the Year’.
Rory Mullarkey’s comedy starts out like latter day Oscar Wilde with upper crust characters making epigrammatic pronouncements about themselves and each other in information-stuffed language heightened to several levels above realism (“So I have you to blame for the ignominy of my son being referred to as a transitive verb” “I’d better be on my way. I have a late badminton appointment and I’m anxious to make the East Coast mainline before the clientele start getting too inebriated”). It’s often very funny, especially when the toffs are contrasted with Amy Booth-Steel’s lugubrious, Communist housekeeper, even though taking the mickey out of the self-regarding, spendthrift upper classes feels a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Mullarkey’s way with language is a thing of considerable joy, but Sam Pritchard’s production, and some of the acting, doesn’t feel sharp or savage enough as yet, although I suspect that will come as the run progresses.
The action moves from Theodore ‘Tug’ Bungay’s split level Chelsea pad (striking set design by Milla Clarke) to the family pile, Dimley Grange in Northumberland, which Tug’s mother, the fearsome Lady Agrippina (Fenella Woolgar, finding pleasing layers in what might have been a one note characterisation) is selling off to the oligarchs to replenish the coffers, leaving her free to run off to South Korea. It’s all quite bonkers, especially when a couple of Russian assassins, a ton of explosives and a lesbian love affair between Agrippina and her account manager are thrown into the mix. While it’s never less than entertaining – think Spitting Image without the puppets as reimagined by an unholy triumvirate of Tom Stoppard, Ray Cooney and Monty Python – it doesn’t ever quite lift off the ground the way farce should, and is too frantic and unfocused to allow the more serious elements (and yes that are some) to really hit home.
Technically, Pritchard’s staging is a bit messy and uncertain in tone, but manages to create a real sense of forlorn devastation in a final sequence where a newly impecunious Tug complains to his mother that he’s scared, and uncertain of his identity. Her response – “your grandfathers fashioned the whole world, just so you could be exactly as you are. It was everyone else who always had to pretend. Maybe it’s your turn now” – strikes me as the crux of Mullarkey’s play, a wishful, two-fingered gesture to a UK governed and dominated by over-privileged, under-civilised posh boys. It’s genuinely, and unexpectedly, illuminating and touching.
As the show doesn’t fully cohere at present, it’s best to enjoy it as a series of frequently inspired individual elements. For instance, George Fouracres, in the performance of the night as Tug’s deeply eccentric, globe-trotting, lovelorn best friends, gets a brilliant second half monologue, a surreal masterpiece of storytelling and comic pathos about a misremembered Soviet Union childhood, that turns out to be a total red herring, but is still something to savour.
Fouracres is sensational as a character whose antecedents can be traced all the way back to the outrageous, irresistible fops of Restoration Comedy. His Charlton Thrupp is spoilt, as childlike as he’s sophisticated, and quite mad. Fouracres invests him with a wide-eyed, debauched charm, and a baroque vocal delivery that delights in the language and finds the strangest of emphasis on words and syllables. In short, he is an unforgettable comic creation and worth the price of a ticket by himself. Kynaston and Dew are both fine actors and have some great moments but, as yet, seem a little tentative where they should be fearless. Booth-Steel is a hoot, and a welcome touch of reality amongst all the campery, and there’s nice work from Karina Fernandez and Philipp Mogilnitskiy as a couple of understandably bewildered outsiders.
The overriding sense of Mates In Chelsea is that not everyone connected creatively with the production seems to be on the same page. It’s too clever and entertaining to write off, but too scattershot to be fully satisfying. I’m tempted to go back late in the run to see if it has coalesced a little more, as at present it’s neither rollicking nor vicious enough. Still, it’s an intriguing, intermittently hilarious, evening that’s equal parts head-scratcher and side-splitter.
What with Back To The Future The Musical continuing to pack them in on both sides of the Atlantic, and the ecstatic critical and popular reception to the Old Vic’s breathtaking Groundhog Day, it would seem that time travel and musical theatre are a match made in heaven. And now we have another example of this unlikely subgenre with this likeable adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s much loved sci-fi-meets-romance novel which has already spawned a movie and a TV series.
On paper, The Time Traveller’s Wife’s biggest selling point, aside from the inbuilt fandom inspired by the book and the film, would seem to be a score by Dave (Eurythmics) Stewart and Grammy and Brit award winner Joss Stone. It’s a surprise then that the contribution of Stewart and Stone probably turns out to be the weakest aspect of the project. The songs are certainly pleasant but lack the theatrical propulsion required to really make a musical take flight: it sounds like a middle-of-the-road pop album, not a bona fide stage score, despite being magnificently sung throughout. The underscoring is suitably haunting and dramatic but there are few memorable tunes.
That this matters surprisingly little overall speaks to the intelligence and fluidity of Bill Buckhurst’s modestly scaled but frequently dazzling staging, and a pair of lead performances that soar and sparkle over and above the material. It also helps that Lauren Gunderson’s script presents Niffenegger’s fanciful narrative – budding artist and all-American girl Clare meets Henry, a boy with a unique genetic mutation forcing him to unexpectedly travel through time at the drop of a hat – with admirable clarity, further aided by explanatory projections on the walls of Anna Fleischle’s set. The smart storytelling of the first act gives way to a certain clunkiness in the second half that the bounce and invention of the staging goes some way towards covering up. Probably best not to dwell on the fact that Clare is only 10 years old to Henry’s 28 when they first meet, thanks to the messed up chronology of this tall tale. The whole thing is such a preposterous proposition that emotional connection might prove challenging, if it weren’t for the presence of David Hunter and Joanna Woodward in the leading roles.
Hunter and Woodward give us a hero and heroine worth rooting for: warm, relatable (despite the bonkers nature of the story), multi-faceted and entirely human. The central premise may be unlikely but the two stars play it like they’re in Ibsen, albeit with humour, and make something genuinely affecting out of this bizarre love story ricocheting through time. Hunter is one of this country’s most endearing leading men and brings his characteristic charm, unexpected vulnerability and off-kilter comedy, as well as a terrific singing voice, to a character that could so easily be an angsty cypher in lesser hands.
Opposite him, Woodward is astonishingly good. Similar to Gabriel Vick’s barnstorming turn in Mrs Doubtfire over at the Shaftesbury, here’s a performer finally achieving deserved West End star status following years of fine supporting work. There’s a hint of Emma Stone in Woodward’s full throttle acting choices, bright-eye feistiness and extraordinary emotional transparency, and her vocals are exhilarating. She ages up and down convincingly, is vulnerable without ever turning sappy, blazes into righteous anger with real power, and achieves an almost classical level intensity towards the end when Clare realises that the love of her life is destined to be lost forever in time. This is a performance that should put Ms Woodward at the top of every casting director’s wish list, and if she’s not headlining as Sally Bowles within the next two years, it’ll be a travesty. In the meantime, she and Hunter are worth the price of a Time Traveller’s Wife ticket all by themselves.
Tim Mahendran and Hiba Elchikhe – both fabulous singers – are adorable as the spiky secondary couple who are lifelong friends of the principal pair and there’s sensitive, nuanced work from Ross Dawes as Henry’s resentful, borderline alcoholic father. At the performance I saw, Holly-Jade Roberts, who alternates with a trio of other young performers, played childhood Clare and then Alba, Clare and Henry’s daughter, with a mature, winning combination of innocence and scrappiness.
Buckhurst’s production makes good use of the revolve, some striking projections and, best of all, old fashioned stage magic – disappearances, body doubles, levitations – that will be familiar to seasoned theatregoers but still provide a ripple of pleasure. Henry’s traversing between time zones is achieved with a white hot flash of light (Rory Beaton and Lucy Carter’s lighting is impressive throughout, as are Andrzej Goulding’s impressionistic video designs) and a crack of ear-splitting sound, and is exciting every time.
As a play with songs, it works pretty well, in no small part because it is so well acted, but it comes a bit unstuck when it tries to play by the rules of traditional musical theatre: for example, a comedy argument number set at Clare’s art gallery opening suddenly, pointlessly breaks into dance, presumably because this is a tuner and we apparently we need choreography, however inappropriate. The line-dancing wedding act one closer has a similarly over-staged feel, and the anthemic finale is stirringly sung but feels generic with the cast gazing into the middle distance while belting their faces off with the assertion that ‘Love Wins The Day’.
Less bombastic and technically virtuosic than Stewart’s earlier Ghost musical, The Time Traveller’s Wife works best when it leans into its quirks, or when there’s the anticipation of magic (illusions by Rick Fisher), and whenever the leads are front and centre. The songs are insufficiently distinctive to lift this into the realms of great musical theatre, but it’s an undeniably enjoyable night out, and Hunter and Woodward are the real deal.
Immersive theatre gets a boozy kick in this adaptation of the 1989 Keith Waterhouse smash hit, celebrating Soho’s favourite dissolute son Jeffrey Bernard, based on his weekly columns chronicling the drinking, gambling, and other nefarious activities of central London’s most notorious quarter. First seen in 2019, James Hillier’s version shaves the original play down to a one hour monologue with bits of audience participation and, in a stroke of genius, is performed in the very pub, the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, where the real Bernard (1932-1997) hung out. That authenticity is key to its success, with the audience standing or sitting all around the unflatteringly lit, slightly rundown saloon bar as Robert Bathurst’s Jeffrey regales us with alcohol-infused philosophies and tales of his sundry misdemeanours.
Even more than Peter O’Toole who famously originated the stage role, Bathurst genuinely resembles Bernard, with his craggy, handsome face, floppy blonde-grey halr and lumbering but never graceless gait. He has perfected the slightly dead-eyed stare of the perennially drunk, and the rapid energy changes from languid to almost manic that can occur in the blink of a bloodshot eye. This Jeffrey Bernard seems to be at the point where joie de vivre has curdled into hopelessness, and, while he’s exasperating, he is, crucially, never malicious. If there are times when his speaking of the lines sounds a little like somebody rattling off a list, a quick Google search will reveal that this is pretty much how the real Jeffrey spoke, as though words are something to get through before the next slug of vodka.
Bathurst superbly captures the (often self-deprecating) wit, although the foggy, imprecise delivery sometimes obscures some of the laughs. Either that, or the concept of somebody drinking themselves to death (John Osborne famously referred to Bernard’s Spectator column as “a suicide note in weekly instalments”) just isn’t that amusing in 2023.
Just as the Coach And Horses pub itself seems stuck in the past, so the play feels like a throwback to a different era. The women in Bernard’s life are reduced here to a series of increasingly infuriated answerphone messages, and his casual indifference to them seems cruel until you realise that he’s indifferent about, well, almost everything. Removing all the other live actors and turning the play into what is essentially now a monologue makes it feel more than ever like a study in loneliness, however un-self pitying the central character. Still, this is a soured, ash-stained love letter to a Soho that’s now mostly lost to coffee shop chains, unaffordable apartments and other signs of urban gentrification.
Hillier’s staging consists mainly of having Bathurst circling the bar so that everybody can see him, and might benefit from more periods of stillness, although that could be difficult in such an idiosyncratic space. It undoubtedly nails the sense of seedy grandeur that attended Bernard and his ilk however, and has the unmistakable feeling of being a unique event. I saw the original production and, despite the magnificence of O’Toole, found it a bit overlong and self-indulgent; I actually preferred this one. It’s a celebration of, and lament for, a Soho that will never return, and one of its most unashamedly notorious denizens.
Great theatre and great sport: two things that bring people together. We get both in James Graham’s new masterpiece, which, in Rupert Goold’s staging, is equal parts state-of-the-nation docudrama, national celebration/examination and magnificent populist entertainment. A total sell out after a slew of rave reviews at the National earlier this year, Goold’s stunning production swaggers into the Prince Edward (where, fun fact, it’s the first non-musical to play since the 1977 Christmas season of Peter Pan with Susannah York and Ron Moody, when the theatre was called the London Casino) with justifiable bravado.
Like this author’s other masterpiece to date, the politically charged 2012 This House (and also his more recent Labour Of Love, Ink and Quiz), Dear England is ostensibly about one specific thing (in this case the pressure upon England football manager Gareth Southgate to revivify an ailing team since his accession to the job in 2016) but actually addresses much more urgent, universal topics. It covers national identity, toxic masculinity and its opposite, the fragility and resilience of the human spirit, British exceptionalism, and the place of England in Europe as a whole. To be fair, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t get a look-in, but, come on, it’s football Graham is writing about, not rugby. It’s also about the importance of love (“and yes I did just use that word” to quote Denzel Baidoo’s Bukayo Saka at the play’s tearstained conclusion) and emotional support in a frequently tough environment.
It’s interesting that the character instrumental in effecting a transformation in moribund English team spirit (a luminous Dervla Kerwan as psychologist Pippa Grange) has had her Aussie-ness slightly amplified by Graham; the real Grange only moved to Adelaide in 1996. It smacks a bit of contrivance but it brings a satisfying global complexity to the storytelling. Lord knows, Australia has its issues right now (where doesn’t?!) but the schematic neatness of the New World chivvying up the Old is irresistible from a dramatic point-of-view.
Goold’s production has a carnival-esque vigour, breadth and joy. It feels almost more choreographed than directed (I wasn’t this excited about football onstage since contemporary dance’s Meryl Tankard’s soccer ballets for the almost forgotten Andrew Lloyd Webber flop The Beautiful Game), with Ellen Kane and Hannes Langolf’s dynamic work creating unforgettable stage pictures. But then you stop and consider the attention to detail in the characterisations and in Graham’s gritty, lovely, life-affirming dialogue….
Graham’s writing here is mind-blowing; expansive in its command of themes, meticulously researched, warm and compassionate in its depiction of the real life people being portrayed onstage, and frequently killingly funny. Some of the humour is pretty low hanging fruit – there’s a ghastly dancing Theresa May, an impromptu fashion show for England managers, a suitably repellent Boris Johnson – but it becomes irresistible when all swirled up and served with this level of brio and dazzle.
What’s so beautiful is that, even though he is a formidable intellectual and artist, Graham refuses to patronise or look down his nose at regular people who don’t happen to have a brain as big as a planet. Unlike some of the so-called ‘urban elite’, Graham’s innate love for his fellow human and massive generosity of spirit shines through. It’s in so many scenes here, such as striker Harry Kane’s distress when he feels he’s let his team mates down. Kane – played, winningly (!) at the performance I caught by brilliant understudy Ryan Whittle – is famously not a great talker but the writer gives him a gruff honour and sensitivity that quietly engrosses. Similarly, there’s a grave, everyday poetry to the speech Kel Matsena’s Raheem Sterling gets, expressing his doubts about being a Black man expected to pledge allegiance to the same St George’s Cross that is the mascot of many who would happily see him banished back to the land of his ancestors. If you come see it, which you undoubtedly should, expect to be wiping away frequent tears.
You can also expect to be utterly exhilarated and transported, in a way more usually associated with epic ‘feel good’ musicals, such is the sheer breathtaking stagecraft on display. The flashy showmanship recalls the visual aesthetic of some of Goold’s most acclaimed productions (Enron, American Psycho, and especially last year’s The 47th for The Old Vic) but has a cool spareness that allows focus to rest effortlessly on individual figures and moments, before exploding again into yet another orgy of theatrical bravura. The pace is exquisitely managed, and there’s a palpable sense of excitement coursing through the house during the tournament sections that even gives a total footie ignoramus like myself heart palpitations. Cumulatively, Goold and Graham’s work cuts to the heart of the English obsession with football being part of the fabric of the nation, and draws a direct line between each player on the pitch and every one of their predecessors. It’s a mind-blowing achievement.
An almost unrecognisable Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate far transcends mere impersonation in a quietly magnetic portrait of human decency and kindness that never cloys: it’s a remarkable achievement. He leads a huge cast without a single weak link. This is very much a company show and I can’t resist singling out the delightful work of Lloyd Hutchinson, John Hodgkinson and Paul Thornley as senior team staff and Darragh Hands’s finely observed Marcus Rashford, but really everybody is wonderful.
The technical elements represent the National at the top of their game (sorry, had to): Es Devlin’s set sandwiched between two vast discs, dressed only with lockers that double as portals or hiding places, has a clean almost futuristic feel, etched in neon bright light and slick video. The revolve is brilliantly used, and Evie Gurney’s costumes look like real life only more so. Great tsunamis of sound (Dan Balfour and Tom Gibbons) and light (Jon Clark) rise up and crash pleasurably over the audience, so that it’s impossible not to react to it on a physical and emotional level. Ash J Woodward’s elegant monochrome video designs against the expanse of the cyclorama contrast repeatedly with the vividly colourful humanity disporting before it. This is Total Theatre… it’s almost overwhelming but it never quite is.
If somebody had told me that two of the plays I would love most in 2023 were going to be centred on football (the other was the Bush Theatre’s Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams) I would never have believed it, but here we are. Do not miss Dear England though, it’s great art and great entertainment. A thundering triumph.
Madeleine Mantock and Tom Varey, photograph by Manuel Harlan
HAMNET
by Maggie O’Farrell
Adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti
Directed by Erica Whyman for Royal Shakespeare Company
Garrick Theatre, London – booking until 17 February 2024
First seen as the reopening production of the newly refurbished Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Hamnet arrives in London feeling simultaneously like an old and a new play. In truth, nobody does these drama-cum-pageant historical pieces better than the RSC, and Hamnet is vintage work, with its economical but stylish production values, intelligent theatricality, and fine performances from a diverse cast. It’s not going to set the world alight maybe, but it’ll nicely warm up the winter nights for many.
Lolita Chakrabarti’s play is based on the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell which imagined what happened when Hamnet, William Shakespeare and Agnes’s (after reading the will of Hathaway’s father where he refers to her as Agnes, O’Farrell is convinced that she has been misnamed for over 500 years) eleven year old son died, and the effect this would have had on his grieving parents and family.
First seen flying her pet kestrel, watched by a smitten Shakespeare (Tom Varey, excellent), Agnes is a feisty, unconventional, fascinating young woman, unfashionably (for the time) free-thinking, and in connection with otherworldly forces, a seer, a herbalist, a hearer of voices. Madeleine Mantock, in a ferociously good performance, invests her with enormous warmth, emotional directness and a compelling fearlessness. William falls for her unconventionality, and so we. Her grief after the death of her beloved son is authentically difficult to watch, and her regret and bitterness when it looks as though her marriage will be the next casualty after her child, is beautifully, painfully expressed.
One of the virtues of Chakrabarti’s script is that it seldom feels like an adaptation. So many stage versions of novels suffer from a somewhat frantic necessity to cram in beloved sections of the book so that the cumulative effect is less theatrical and more like box-ticking, but not so here. It is, by necessity, episodic as the location switches between Stratford and London, and it’s hardly dynamic. However, it has clarity, a measured theatricality, and the story and characters get full rein to breathe. It also feels relatable in this post-Covid era, as the Shakespeare household is forced to quarantine when the twins Jude and Hamnet succumb to the fever that will eventually carry the latter off.
The detail in Erica Whyman’s production is impressive: minor characters seem vivid and fully drawn, the subtle adjustments in sound and lighting evoke interior or exterior, a simple repositioning of the blocks on Tom Piper’s glorious timbered set transform the space into “this wooden o” of Shakespeare’s Globe where the final scenes take place. Prema Mehta’s lighting design is particularly effective: autumnal, evocative. Simon Baker’s sound is complex and transporting, although I could barely make out what the “voices” that haunt Agnes were saying.
In a large cast, there’s superb work from Peter Wight, doubling as Shakespeare’s abusive father and a fruity Globe actor, and Sarah Belcher and Liza Sadovy as a pair of contrasting female family members with suitably strong opinions on the relationship between William and Agnes. Ajani Cabey and Alex Jarrett are very affecting as the Shakespeare twins, as is Phoebe Campbell as their older sister. Gabriel Akuwudike is magnificently understated as Agnes’s world weary, likeable brother. The use of Midlands accents is a nice, unforced touch.
It isn’t perfect: some of the blocking feels as though it hasn’t quite been adjusted from the (quite differently shaped) Swan, which makes a few moments frustratingly unfocused. There’s not much humour, and the pace is sometimes lacking in energy. It’s a shame also that Chakrabarti’s depiction of the relationship between William and Agnes is presented in a more linear, less quirky manner than in the book, and the connection between Hamnet the boy and Hamlet the play that Shakespeare may or may not have written as a posthumous tribute to him isn’t really explored.
These cavils aside, this is a predominantly spellbinding piece of theatre, classy, intelligent and satisfying. Warmly recommended, whether or not you’ve read the book, and a solid West End hit for the RSC. I also think culturally minded foreign tourists will love it.
For the second time this month the West End has seen the opening of a musical production that will be talked about for decades. But where Cameron Mackintosh’s ravishing tribute revue Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends feels like a warm hug from a best mate, Jamie Lloyd’s technically breathtaking reinvention of Sunset Boulevard, starring an incandescent Nicole Scherzinger, is the theatrical equivalent of having a bucket of icy water thrown over you.
This might be retitled Deconstructed Boulevard as it simultaneously refocuses and comments upon both the 1993 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the Billy Wilder film classic, with live filming (brilliant, game changing work by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom) an essential part of the experience, and an elegant, brutally spare visual aesthetic in an almost exclusively black and grey colour pallet. The most obvious comparison is to the multimedia work of European auteur Ivo van Hove: the meta staging of the title number is particularly reminiscent of an outdoor filmed section of his National and Broadway smash Network from a few years back, but Lloyd and team go bigger and even more remarkable here.
The overall effect is of watching a beautiful nightmare unfold. The figures move in dreamlike slow motion through blasts of dry ice then suddenly, stunningly break into Fabian Aloise’s dynamic, jagged choreography. It’d be anachronistic if they’d been dressed in the 1950s fashions of the original but here it looks appropriate given that everybody is attired as though they’d ramraided an All Saints store. Meanwhile, a giant, stage-filling screen pivots, tilts, raises….and turns out to be the only set (design by Soutra Gilmour) that we get. Somnambulistic characters only occasionally address each other directly, mostly delivering their lines out front.
This is especially true of Scherzinger’s Norma Desmond – less a faded film star and more a free-floating, sensuous wraith, equal parts attitude and neediness – who often seems the only person onstage aware of the encircling cameras, and plays up to them or to “my people in the dark” (specifically, us in the audience) as though the adoration of fame and fandom is the oxygen upon which her life depends, which it just might. This version feels less about a reclusive actress deludedly trying to reclaim her stardom and more the pressure on women in the public eye to stay relevant and desirable in a world where, increasingly, youth and surface are all. Tellingly, a lot of the references to old time film stars in Christopher Hampton and Don Black’s script and lyrics have been excised.
Instead of inheriting the gowns and jewels of previous Normas, Scherzinger’s is bare footed, raven locks tumbling free, her bone slender dancers body clad only in a sheer black shift. She’s still gorgeous, astoundingly so, even when juxtaposed in unforgiving close-up with Hannah Yun Chamberlain’s ghostly, athletic youthful iteration of the character. Vocally, she’s exhilarating, going seamlessly from gently breathy to full out diva belting, and observe the way she physicalises the big numbers ‘With One Look’ and ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’, pleading yet imperious, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her.
She’s also irrepressibly camp, but not in the Grande Dame manner of LuPone, Close, Buckley, or Elaine Paige (the only Norma from the original production to bear a resemblance to Gloria Swanson in the movie): this Norma is all finger-snapping, eyebrow-arching, pouting-to-camera “yassss kweeen” camp, and it works brilliantly. Some of her asides and moues to camera are as hilarious as they’re provocative, and she has an irresistible eccentricity tempered with a fragility that tears at the heart. She’s weird and self obsessed, but it’s impossible not to like her. The descent into madness (which includes an unsettling, rollickingly unhinged dance section courtesy of Mr Aloise, featuring multiple Norma’s) is more painful to watch than that of any other actress I’ve seen in the role, and Scherzinger finds an animalistic, elemental rawness that stuns. Her Norma exists at the axis between iconic and vulnerable, and she’s unforgettable. This is a career redefining performance from an artist at the very height of her powers.
Opposite her as struggling writer Joe Gillis, Tom Francis catapults himself into the top bracket of young West End leading men. He’s sexy yet tormented, and detached, with a wariness behind the eyes that suggests a deep-rooted hurt, despite his comparative youthfulness. It’s a tremendously nuanced take, abetted by the (literally) in-yer-face camera work, and his singing has an agreeably gritty edge. He’s magnificent.
David Thaxton’s devoted Max is another performance that completely remints a familiar role, and benefits from the detail afforded by playing straight to camera. He’s a saturnine, powerful presence with a palpable sense of longing and pain, that can suddenly, disturbingly flip into snarling aggression when he perceives a slight upon his beloved star. Thaxton’s voice has never sounded finer, and he pulls out money notes that make you hold onto the arms of your seat and gasp. Grace Hodgett Young as Betty is appealingly direct, with an intriguing steely edge, a palpably ambitious young woman rather than an idealistic neophyte: she’s a wonderful find, and a perfect foil to the streetwise lost boy of Francis’s multi-layered Joe.
The ensemble is outstanding, a glorious cacophony of fine individual voices that collectively thrill the blood when they coalesce. Aloise has them hurling themselves about, tumbling, rolling, posing, like an organic whole from which soloists periodically extract themselves to powerful effect: it’s visceral, striking work, sublimely theatrical in amongst all the cinematic high tech.
There are moments when the cool, stark style of Lloyd’s overall concept works against the lushness of Lloyd Webber’s music (which has never sounded better, by the way, not even in the bigger orchestrated Coliseum version of 2016) but that also creates a tension that gets closer to the dark acidic heart of Wilder’s legendary movie than Trevor Nunn’s lavishly literal original production ever did. This Sunset is expressionistic and demands that we use our imaginations, and Lloyd has a stronger handle on this material than he did on Evita in his bold but occasionally bewildering 2019 Regents Park staging. It’s playful too, sometimes perversely so, as when we are shown a Jamie Lloyd Company mug, Pussycat Dolls photos and a cut out of ALW in the live streamed backstage sections. I’m not sure that really adds anything to our perception of the show, but it’s a lot of fun.
Musically, it remains a sometimes overblown fusion of surging, soaring melodies and operatic dissonances, pitched somewhere between pop opera and Hollywood film score. It still doesn’t quite hang together but, packaged up in Lloyd Webber and David Cullen’s fine orchestrations, with a crystal clear sound design by Adam Fisher that gives the bombast full measure but never sacrifices intelligibility to volume, it registers mightily here. Hampton and Black’s partially revised, generally impressive lyrics are very well served, and Jack Knowles’s sophisticated, thriller noir-ish lighting is undeniably classy.
Inevitably there will be fans who mourn the loss of the grand staircase, the frocks (the turban!) and the dead monkey, but what’s in their place is so exciting and inventive, it’s pretty much impossible to resist rising to your feet and bellowing superlatives. This astonishing onyx-black production and its mesmerising leading lady really have, to quote one of the songs, “found new ways to dream”. Shatteringly good.
Jenna Russell is a bona fide theatrical treasure. She’s incapable of giving a bad performance; furthermore, she never strikes a false note musically or dramatically, a brilliant technician with heart, nuance, warmth and truth, whether it’s Sondheim, Ayckbourn, Hare, Jason Robert Brown or more avant garde fare. She’s once again delivering perfection, this time as Mrs Ada Harris, a post-war widow who works as a cleaning lady in big London houses and whose eyes are opened to the potential richness of life when she discovers a stunning Dior gown in a wealthy employer’s closet. Russell conveys Ada’s essential straightforwardness and kindness without ever patronising or commenting on her, finding in this lovely woman a sharp humour and wistful longing that never cloys, augmented by sensitively powerful vocals.
She’s exquisite. So is the show’s central message about the importance of art and beauty, and it’s gentle but firm insistence on not writing people off just because they’re packaged a little differently from what you’re used to. There’s a kindness and humanity at the core of Paul Gallico’s original novel, it’s subsequent screen adaptations and now this likeable musical (first seen in Sheffield in 2016 then in Chichester, but only just receiving its London debut) that is deeply unfashionable but undeniably tugs at the heartstrings. Bronagh Lagan’s production is very nice to look at and listen to, and, like the material itself, feels like a throwback to a simpler time. What it lacks in dynamism, it makes up for in charm, although theatregoers who look for a little more oomph and drama in their musicals may find themselves perplexed, despite the consummate craft on display.
Certainly, there’s no faulting the cast. As well as the glorious Jenna, there’s Annie Wensak delivering feisty, funny work as Ada’s best friend and Hal Fowler is a winning mixture of humorous common sense and warm steadfastness, with a voice like sweet molasses, as the late Mr Harris. Kelly Price is utter comic perfection as the self-obsessed aristocrat whose posh frock starts Ada on her journey, then finds remarkable colours and layers in the elegant Parisian guardian of Dior who unexpectedly thaws out when faced with our heroine’s innate goodness. Nathanael Campbell makes much of lovelorn accountant André, and quicksilver-voiced Charlotte Kennedy is affecting and brings more complexity than is present in the script, to the flaky but entrancing model he adores. If Kennedy is less convincing as the West End soubrette who employs Ada in London and proves a liability in more ways than one, that’s down to the intractability of the writing.
Rachel Wagstaff’s book does an excellent job of establishing Ada’s relationships with her deceased husband and her very much alive best friend, but skirts with too much haste over significant plot developments and changes in characters attitudes. I found myself less moved than I’d hoped and more bewildered by the whiplash changes in direction. Taylor’s attractive but samey score, constantly easy on the ear but never throwing up anything exciting or truly memorable and saddled with a couple of howl-worthy rhymes in the lyrics, doesn’t help. I like that it breaks the trad musical theatre rules (there are few standalone songs…no number to open the show, just a note of music and we’re straight into the first scene…no big finale) but was frustrated by the lack of anything innovative to replace them.
Mrs ‘Arris Goes To Paris, the 1958 novel that is the source material, is written by an American and there is a sense of working class Brits being romanticised through rosey transatlantic specs that pervades into this stage version. It feels like a fairy tale for middle aged people, and Nik Corrall’s gorgeous multi-doored set and Sara Perks’s costumes further add to that impression. The whole thing is ravishingly lit by Adam King. I can’t help feeling the show would play better in a chocolate box-y intimate theatre than in the rather charmless wide open space of the Riverside Studio’s larger auditorium.
Ultimately, this is a pleasant bit of escapism, elevated to something distinguished by the sheer brilliance of the central performance and by a fine supporting cast. Definitely worth a trip out to Hammersmith.
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