ajhlovestheatre

WORMHOLES

by Emily Jupp

directed by Scott Le Crass

Omnibus Theatre, London – until 10 August 2024

https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/wormholes/

Monologues and thrillers are two of the trickiest theatrical genres to pull off successfully, but Emily Jupp’s Wormholes is a compulsive fusion of the two. This isn’t an exploitative thriller though; rather it’s a one-act play, a sort of confessional, infused with intelligence, tragedy, fury and humour, sensational only in that the writing, direction (Scott Le Crass) and acting (Victoria Yeates) are so damn good.

Wormholes is a story of domestic abuse, controlling behaviours and the way that one person’s mental health can be completely destroyed by a carefully calibrated combination of the two, especially when ignited by an irresistible dose of sexual chemistry. Victoria Yeates plays a cheerful, smart but essentially unremarkable young urbanite, with a decent job and social life, a positive outlook and a gaggle of supportive gal pals. She meets an unnamed man, has the most exciting sex of her life, and slowly but surely sees her self esteem, her external relationships and her sanity being whittled away.

It’s not a particularly original starting premise perhaps but the quality of Jupp’s script and Yeates’s performance plus the air of simmering unease, punctuated by moments of daylight, that Le Crass’s direction subtly brews, ensures that Wormholes is thoroughly gripping for its seventy minute duration. The breezy normalcy that Yeates’s Mary projects so effortlessly serves as a feint to draw us into the mire of the mental and physical torture this woman, who seldom comes across as a victim despite life’s efforts to cast her as such, goes through at the hands of an unstable man. The message seems to be that if it can happen to her, it could happen to anybody.

Yeates’s ability to switch between chummily anecdotal and total anguish is impressive, and the whole performance is a technically terrific example of a superb actress at the top of her game knowing exactly when and where to take her foot off the emotional pedal then when to go for absolute broke. Le Crass (who with his stunning post-pandemic production of Rose on stage and screen with Maureen Lipman, and the fascinating gay body image monologue Buff seen recently in London and Edinburgh, is a specialist in making solo plays take wing) has her talking directly to us, dancing with abandon, staring dead-eyed at a hopeless future, and, in a particularly harrowing sequence, reacting to a volley of horrible physical attacks. This is top drawer work, focussed, economical but able to go to extremes when required. The matter-of-fact-ness of roughly seventy per cent of the delivery makes the trauma of the remaining thirty per cent all the more astonishing and affecting.

The collaboration between writer, actor and director is seamless, except for one brief moment when Mary hurls abuse at a younger detainee in the facility where she has ended up after exacting a brutal, if dramatically satisfying, revenge on her tormentor. Momentarily, the play doesn’t quite ring true. Jodie Underwood’s subtle, detailed lighting, Leah Kelly’s soothing yet vaguely clinical set and perhaps especially Paul Housden’s sound and composition, full of distortion and dislocation, unsettlingly suggest being inside the head of a person who, through no fault of her own, is unable to discern which way is up.

It’s a powerfully female-driven show, as it needs to be, so it’s perhaps a little churlish to wish that the man who lays Mary so low wasn’t so sketchily drawn. I’m not sure that her dismissive mother rings entirely true either, but these are minor flaws in a sophisticated piece of storytelling that employs its red flags with subtlety and real skill. Jupp’s writing is terse, compelling, witty and, when it needs to be, utterly cruel. The wormholes metaphor that permeates the text (the parasitic guinea worm can live undetected in an apparently healthy human, the person’s increasing health niggles easily dismissed as something negligible, before exiting the body in the most agonising way possible…look it up, it’s terrifying) only occasionally feels forced, and makes a potent parallel with our heroine’s tangy but awful tale.

If Wormholes doesn’t end the way I thought it would, the ambiguity and sadness of its conclusion makes for memorable theatre. This is a haunting contemporary piece: intense and tough to take, but shot through with compassion and humour, and ultimately strangely uplifting thanks to the sheer quality of the artistry on display. Strongly recommended.

FANGIRLS

Book, music and lyrics by Yve Blake

Directed by Paige Rattray

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 24 August 2024

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/fangirls/

There’s a very dark, very funny musical screaming to get out of Fangirls, receiving its UK premiere in a co-production between the Lyric Hammersmith and Sonia Friedman (who apparently has a penchant for teen-aimed tuners with youthful female protagonists, since she’s also currently presenting Mean Girls in the West End) but this unruly Australian concoction needs more work to uncover it. As it stands, Yve Blake’s show is a cartoonish blast of lunacy that never quite has the courage of its convictions, and seems determined to hurl everything at the wall, in terms of tone, plot and emphasis, to see what sticks. It’s a boisterously entertaining mixed bag, messy and more crude than witty, as though Matilda, The Rocky Horror Show and Be More Chill had been swirled round in a blender and emerged with a dodgy Aussie accent.

On the upside, Paige Rattray’s bubblegum-bright staging boasts a diverse, talented cast, flashy production values, a banging score and gleefully energetic choreography by Ebony Williams. Conversely, the piece itself is sloppily structured, and there are plot holes you could drive a truck through (a teenager can abduct and keep captive one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, and her mates are fine with it once they get over the shock?….er, ok) plus a tone of amped-up hysteria that bludgeons you into submission, or possibly bewilderment. Sometimes it’s deeply felt whilst at others it seems like a cynical attempt to cash in on a youth market that is outgrowing Six, mourns the closure of Heathers and can’t afford the ticket prices to Mean Girls. Apparently it has been extensively workshopped since its original Australian iteration, and the mind boggles at what it must have been like before.

Despite all that, it whips up its audience into quite a frenzy. Blake’s songs are generic but they’re rousing and attractive, the voices are fabulous and the dances are executed crisply and with real dynamism. By mixing sections of the fan fiction that obsessed Sydney teenager Edna (Jasmine Elcock) creates into the action, Blake’s book doesn’t always make it clear if what we’re watching is supposed to be taken at face value or not in this high octane examination of obsessive fandom and the societal pressures on modern teenagers. The opening is a thrillingly staged fantasy sequence where Edna and her favourite pop star Harry (Thomas Grant) motorcycle ride through a nighttime city while knocking seven bells out of sinister adversaries, and I found myself fervently wishing some of the later plot developments were also supposed to be figments of Edna’s overwrought imagination, but alas not.

Fangirls captures the abrasive sugar rush of adolescence but the production doesn’t seem clear on whether it’s embracing it or sending it up. The sinister side of obsessive fandom is alluded to, as are some of the other potential horrors of transitioning from child to adulthood (being torn between two parents, domestic abuse, self harm), but with insufficient detail or sensitivity to be properly affecting. It pales in comparison with recent Brit musicals aimed at a similar market, specifically Babies which was a beautifully realised teenage take on early pregnancy, or the current return of the joyful Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World which makes a more persuasive and heartfelt argument for female empowerment.

The staging has a colourful, hi-tech aesthetic, a simplicity and relentless energy that suits the material, although the piece as written feels a bit too long. The act two opening brilliantly captures the manufactured joy of a large scale arena concert (dazzling lights by Jessica Hung Han Yun and video design by Ash J Woodward), with fabulously OTT Max Gill and Gracie McGonigal leading some hilarious audience participation as a pair of over-emotional youngsters, and some of the songs hit pleasingly home.

Elcock makes a refreshingly quirky leading lady and she and the ever-marvellous Debbie Kurup (who is incapable of giving a bad performance in anything) provide the show with what heart it has as Edna and her overstretched mum. McGonigal has a stunning voice and there’s a fun running joke which has her turning up to belt and riff whenever there’s a scene change. Terique Jarrett is magnetic and athletic as an American fan Edna’s never met. Miracle Chance and Mary Malone work hard to inject the comedy into two of Edna’s schoolmates yet are more effective in the serious moments, and Thomas Grant has authentic pop star swagger as the focus of all their obsessions. There’s even an amusing pre-recorded cameo from a multi-award winning actor and director who happens to be the sister of one of the lead producers…

Friedman and the Lyric couldn’t have programmed this sassy rainbow-burst of a show for a better time of year, what with the long school summer holidays being upon us. Whether or not its long term prospects are as bright as the undeniable talent on display will depend on whether or not British audiences embrace it with the same enthusiasm as the Australians did…judging by the reaction on the night I saw it, Fangirls could very well find a fanbase here.

I’M GONNA MARRY YOU TOBEY MAGUIRE

by Samantha Hurley

directed by Tyler Struble

Southwark Playhouse Borough- The Little, London – until 24 August 2024

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/im-gonna-marry-you-tobey-maguire/

This cultish off-Broadway smash feels like what would happen if you put angsty teenage fan fiction, the off-kilter humane intellectualism of Will Eno and the zany/gritty aesthetic of John Waters into a blender: it’s sometimes cute but more often absolutely lethal, and sometimes impenetrable. Samantha Hurley’s jet black tragicomedy arrives at Southwark with its original star (the genuinely remarkable Tessa Albertson), director (Tyler Struble) and set designer (Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez), and proves less whimsical and considerably darker than its title, and indeed its scenic design, might suggest.

Hernandez Martinez has turned the Southwark Little space into a fairy-lit, atmospheric, all-encompassing shrine to Tobey Maguire, the Spiderman star (yes, there was another Spidey before Tom Holland) is literally everywhere: he’s plastered all over the walls, on posters, magazine covers, in a giant framed portrait. He’s also physically on stage in the person of Anders Hayward, who looks enough like the screen star to get away with playing him (just about), but is, rather alarmingly, handcuffed to a metal pole centre stage. Maguire has been abducted and he, along with this cornucopia of images of him, is in the basement of teenager Shelby (Albertson) who is taking extreme fandom to new heights, or rather depths.

What Hurley has created is a frequently funny but more often disturbing look at obsession, youthful alienation and the consequences of neglect. Shelby, in Albertson’s detailed, screechily go-for-broke performance, is clearly deeply troubled. She has a combative relationship with her unseen (but very much heard) mom, a non-existent one with her absent, lawbreaking father, and is the victim of school bullying. She’s not necessarily easy to like, but neither is she easy to write off. Albertson gives her a wild, restless energy tempered with moments of hollow-eyed despair; she’s emotionally immature, disconcertingly sexual at times, and extremely smart. It’s the intelligence that actor and writer give Shelby that renders her misplaced devotion to Tobey and the dysfunctional loneliness of her existence, so sad. It also makes her dangerous.

Albertson never sentimentalises Shelby’s struggles, has wonderful comic instincts (“I’ve seen Misery” she sullenly tells Maguire at one point) and fully inhabits the character’s lightning fast changes in mood and focus: it’s an exhausting but multi-faceted performance, that constantly threatens to go slightly too far but never quite does: she’s brilliant. Hayward’s Tobey convincingly goes through the various stages of being held hostage, Stockholm syndrome apparently being the predominant one in this instance. He skilfully manages a rather pointless audience participation section, but can’t disguise the fact that the role feels underwritten in comparison with his captor. Kyle Birch is gorgeously funny as Brenda Dee Cankles, a cartoonish real estate agent who’s a jolly amalgam of every Strong Black Woman cliché, but performed with such life-affirming over-the-top relish that it’s hard to take offence. Birch also doubles improbably but gloriously as an impish Toby Maguire alter ego who bursts through the walls at regular intervals to mock, or commiserate with, the stricken screen star.

Struble’s staging is in tune with the eccentricities of Hurley’s script, but sometimes doesn’t feel punchy or pacy enough. The writing and the premise suggest that the piece should come at us with a furious urgency, but too often here the show seems a little hesitant and languid. Ultimately, beyond the not-terribly-original revelation that parasocial relationships and teenage obsession make toxic bedfellows, it’s hard to grasp what Hurley’s point is with this strange, overlong combination of soured sitcom, psychological thriller and rampant absurdism. I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire provides equal amounts of good, nasty fun and “wtf is going on” bewilderment, but it does at least feel refreshingly original.

SLAVE PLAY

by Jeremy O Harris

directed by Robert O’Hara

Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 21 September 2024

https://slaveplaylondon.com

Black writers have seldom been as well represented in London theatre as they are at the moment. The National has Katori Hall’s acclaimed The Hot Wing King in preview and is about to move Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s Death Of England plays cycle to Sohoplace, while Faith Omole’s My Father’s Fable at the Bush and the Donmar’s UK premiere for Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew are two of the finest, funniest, most satisfying nights of drama on any current stage. They’re joined in melanised excellence by this import from New York, which enjoyed Broadway seasons either side of the pandemic, was nominated for a record number of Tony awards for a straight play, and for many London theatregoers will be the biggest must-see of the summer, if only to discover what all the fuss is about.

Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play explodes into the West End as a noisome, wild, confrontational thing, hauling taboos into the unforgiving light, examining prejudices and kinks with rare, ripe humour, buckets of vitriol, and a humanity and intellectual rigour that take the breath away. I can imagine it’s possible to be offended, confused or shocked by this unique, unforgettable fusion of coruscating social, sexual and spiritual commentary, high camp and sheer fuck-you (literally at times) outrageousness, but remaining indifferent to it is surely not an option.

The antebellum-inspired opening sections appear calculated to wrong-foot and potentially upset viewers, regardless of colour, age or sexual preference. A mixed race straight couple Kaneisha and Jim (Olivia Washington and Kit Harington) act out a preposterous slave-and-master scene: the wayward accents suggest that something is a little off, an impression reinforced by the anachronistic music and Kaneisha witheringly pointing out that the fruit Jim has provided as a prop is in fact a cantaloupe not a watermelon. Next up is an older white lady (Tony nominee Annie McNamara) in ringlets and hoop skirt (until she isn’t) sexually humiliating her manservant (Aaron Heffernan), and finally a violent bi-racial gay coupling (Fisayo Akinade, and James Cusati-Moyer, another Tony nominee for his work in the Broadway original) atop an old cart amidst cotton bales. It’s all provocative, often riotously funny, and constantly on the verge of tipping over into something deeply troubling, although Harris makes us wait for that.

The title “slave play” turns out to have more than one meaning as the piece explores multiple themes as well as the relationship between people of different skin colours. It interrogates sexual fantasy and how potentially damaging it can be when the deepest, darkest ones are acted out. It looks with scorn on the ‘white saviour complex’, and has some very unsettling insights into interracial unions. It is mindful of Black history, but not didactically so, and inherited trauma, and savagely satirises therapy culture. The central, slightly overlong, scene is a particularly outlandish couples therapy session presided over by a pair of enthusiastic but thunderingly crass practitioners (Irene Sofia Lucio and Chalia La Tour, holdovers from the Broadway cast and both amusing if lacking in nuance).

Some of the grievances and revelations that come to light in this section are fascinating, and Harris’s writing is unflinching, witty and brutal. It also showcases some terrific acting, especially from Akinade whose simultaneous breakdown and breakthrough is really moving, and from Cusati-Moyer opposite him as the bewildered partner forced to abandon his flamboyant histrionics and really listen. Heffernan delivers nuanced, deliciously funny but also deeply touching work as the sexy but blunt mixed race youngster who has a startling revelation over how much his sexual identity and race are intertwined. McNamara is great value, if hardly subtle, as his older lover, working herself up into paroxysms of middle class white guilt.

Given how much Slave Play has on its mind, it’s a remarkably unpreachy piece; Harris never tells us what to think. This proves especially challenging in the final, very disturbing sequence between the first couple we saw. It’s an apotheosis of the ‘play’ that kicks off the play, but so much more. It’s sexual but not necessarily sexy, and it’s unclear whether we are witnessing the relationship imploding or a genuine breakthrough; either way it is tremendously uncomfortable to watch, and Harington and Washington play it full throttle, unsparingly and brilliantly.

If Robert O’Hara’s production seems deliberately rough round the edges (set pieces judder haltingly on, some of the acting in the central therapy scene reads as broader than it might be, lighting and sound effects jar and alarm), that feels apiece with Harris’s text which eschews multiple established tenets of playwriting to create something unique and vital. Anyway, there’s nothing about Slave Play that suggests it should ever be a smooth theatrical journey.

There’s no linear storytelling and no easy answers. Even Clint Ramos’s mirrored set feels like a provocation: it confronts us in the audience (with our prejudices? our proclivities?) and it gives the characters nowhere to hide. Slave Play dazzles, sears and confounds; it also makes the current theatrical landscape a considerably more stimulating place.

SKELETON CREW

by Dominique Morisseau

directed by Matthew Xia

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 24 August 2024

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/17/by-dominique-morisseau/skeleton-crew

“How am I going to help anyone else if I can’t help myself?” This question, posed by working class factory foreman Reggie justifying his not-always-sympathetic behaviour while the Detroit car plant he works at hurtles towards foreclosure, runs like blood flow through Dominique Morisseau’s cracking, essential drama.

Skeleton Crew premiered at New York’s Atlantic Theater in 2016, and was seen on Broadway in 2022. It now receives a stunning, note-perfect UK premiere courtesy of director Matthew Xia and a cast so in tune with the material that it’s less like watching acting than eavesdropping on a compelling slice of real life, and humanity in it’s bruised, fallible magnificence.

Morisseau’s play, the final tranche of a trio of plays entitled The Detroit Project but the only one to get a British staging so far, takes place entirely in the break room of a car plant on its uppers. Bolshy all-seeing senior worker, lesbian Faye (Pamela Nomvete, heading for another Olivier nomination if there’s any justice) is hanging in there until she has completed thirty years service whereby her severance money will increase greatly; she’s also, unbeknownst to her co-workers, homeless. The detail in Nomvete’s performance is extraordinary, from her off-hand line delivery, unwavering but not unkind stare, the total absence of self-pity and then the sloppy yet determined walk, like a woman on a difficult mission but determined not to give in.

The other characters are equally fascinating and are given performances to match. There’s pregnant Shanita (a luminous but heartcatchingly real Racheal Ofori), thrilled to be following in family footsteps and taking great pride in being a vital part of the production line (“Love the way the line needs me. Like if I step away for even a second and don’t ask somebody to mind my post, the whole operation has to stop”). Then there’s young Dez (American screen actor Branden Cook in a terrific stage debut) who has big dreams but carrying an unseen mark on his back to match the all-too-visible one on his neck. The chemistry between Ofori and Cook is a shifting, fluid but ultimately scorching thing; both young actors are utterly brilliant, making their tough but tender characters entirely sympathetic yet never giving in to easy sentiment. It’s almost shocking how much we come to care about them.

That’s also true of Reggie, party to unwelcome information about the factory’s fate and always and uneasily aware that his promotion is largely due to Faye’s influence. Tobi Bamtefa, in another devastating performance to complete this sublime quartet, invests him with authentic kindness, but leaves us in no doubt that everything he does is underpinned by an ongoing, borderline ruthless need to provide for his young family. When Reggie’s roiling rage comes to the surface it is chilling yet undeniably understandable. The four actors play together like musicians negotiating a rich, complex score, and not a single false note sounds.

Xia’s production is flawless: pacy, sensitive, dynamic but with moments of telling stillness: the silences are as revealing as the dialogue sections. Ultz’s setting, putting us right into the factory, opens up the Donmar space, exposing more brick and metalwork than usual. Literal sparks fly, steam billows, lights flash….the scene transitions are like music: clanking, dehumanising, galvanising, but music nonetheless: it’s exciting but vaguely terrifying.

The point here, I think, is it that these characters could be any one of us, in line with the old adage that many working people are just one pay check or dispute away from disaster, or as Faye puts it, “any moment any one of us could be the other. That’s just the shit about life. One minute you passin’ the woman on the freeway holdin’ up the ‘will work for food’ sign. Next minute you sleepin’ in your car.” Morisseau writes with gritty precision, but also massive heart and humour. Her love for these flawed, struggling humans, looking out for each other sometimes at personal expense, is palpable, and it rubs off on us in the audience. Her mastery of plot is subtle and gripping, and ultimately the play is deeply moving. Morisseau is known to British audiences mainly as the book writer for the Temptations musical Ain’t Too Proud seen in the West End last year, but Skeleton Crew confirms her easily as a writer of equal stature to Lynn Nottage or Katori Hall.

Affectionate yet tough, and finally supremely satisfying. This is an absolute must-see.

STARLIGHT EXPRESS

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe

Creative dramaturg: Arlene Phillips

Directed by Luke Sheppard

Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, London – booking until 16 February 2025

https://www.starlightexpresslondon.com

Look, neither Andrew Lloyd Webber nor Trevor Nunn, the shows original director, ever made any claims to Starlight Express being a great musical. It was always about the fun, the spectacle and the roller skating….and it still is.

Punch’s theatre critic, the late and often acidic Sheridan Morley, writing about the 1984 London premiere, famously likened it to being invited to watch a multimillionaire playing with some ingenious but ultimately wasteful toy engines. Arlene Phillips (who choreographed the original) and Luke Sheppard’s retina-searingly colourful reimagining for a whole new audience (although admittedly the first production ran so long that several generations of theatregoers cut their musical teeth on it) probably wouldn’t have convinced Mr Morley otherwise, but for the less lofty-minded, it offers a couple of hours of fast-paced, escapist euphoria.

It feels like An Event. It was always closer to a Disney Theme Park ride rather than a coherent piece of musical theatre, but there’s something about Starlight, and particularly this expensive reboot in a venue transformed to house it, that feels appropriate for the stylish soullessness that now characterises Wembley Park, with its upmarket chain shops, hotels and skyscrapers. Compared to the original, this version makes it even more explicitly clear that we are watching a child playing with their model train set: when you enter the Troubadour’s reconfigured auditorium there’s a kids bedroom and a litter of toys in the centre of Tim Hatley’s set, and we are introduced to the child (Cristian Buttaci on opening night, but there are six young performers in rotation) in whose imagination the toy trains come to life as campy, roller skating glamazons of often indeterminate gender, engaged in racing for supremacy.

Where John Napier’s previous setting was a staggering feat of imagination and engineering that culminated in a gigantic railway bridge that tilted, spun and connected up the multiple levels of race track set that snaked all over the Apollo Victoria, Hatley’s is sleek, glossy, futuristic, suggestive of the decor for a particularly hi-tech TV game show (of course the Troubadour used to be a television studio). It’s visually impressive but because it’s more modest in scale, the individual personalities of the performers stand more of a fighting chance of breaking through the pyrotechnics, dry ice and acrobatics than in the earlier productions.

Chief amongst these is Al Knott in an irresistible professional debut as Greaseball the diesel engine, transformed from the Elvis-style male rocker of old into a stroppy, self-obsessed she-engine who’s tougher than her male rivals yet strangely likeable despite the hard time she gives Rusty the steam engine. Jeevan Braich and Kayna Montecillo bring an appealing wide-eyed freshness and fabulous vocals to the romantic duo of Rusty and new coach Pearl, despite their big reconciliation duet being the blandest song in the score. Jade Marvin is a deeply lovable powerhouse as Momma, the old steamer whose soulful common sense gives the show what heart it has. Ashlyn Weekes and Renz Cardenas are great fun as a pair of cheerful coaches, as is Emily Martinez as a villainously smiling race saboteur. Jaydon Vijn is a swaggering sensation as new character Hydra, a green (literally) alternative to the rust and smoke of the old steamers (“it’s not a matter of if/it’s a matter of when”), and is noticeably one of the strongest skaters in the cast.

Andrew Lloyd Webber has his detractors but you’d have to be pretty mean not to admit that his music for Starlight demonstrates his gift for a tune, and they’ve seldom been as well sung or played (Laura Bangay’s seven piece band sounds better than the original sixteen pieces ever did, playing spiffy new orchestrations by Matthew Brind with ALW) as they are here. There may not be much of a coherent style to the score as a whole, apart from insistent dance beats some of which are clearly inspired by the clickety clack of a train on a track, but it’s a zesty, boppy, propulsive collection of songs. It’s arguably even more eclectic than his score for Cats, taking in Country & Western (Dinah the Dining Car’s Tammy Wynette-inspired lament ‘U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.’, performed with disarming histrionics by Eve Humphrey), electronica for ‘AC/DC’, Electra the electric engine’s spinetingling mission statement and the first bona fide showstopper of the night as led by an icily graceful Tom Pigram, R’n’B, lashings of good old fashioned rock’n’roll and the kind of uptempo numbers (Rusty’s super-cute ‘Crazy’, the newly added empowerment anthem ‘I Am Me’) that would sound equally at home in Eurovision or on the dancefloor at G.A.Y. Then there’s the thunderously rousing gospel ‘Light At The End Of The Tunnel’ finale. The popular music styles invoked tend to be broadly American which sometimes renders ponderous the English accents used throughout in this version.

Because there isn’t a governing style, anybody unfamiliar with the show’s earlier iterations (substantial rewrites and whole new numbers were added for the Broadway production, the London relaunch in the ‘90s, and the still-running Bochum version) won’t necessarily be able to detect what’s new and what isn’t. It doesn’t hang together particularly well as a score but then I’m not sure that matters; this is majorly loud theatrical pop designed to get the blood pumping and in that it’s highly successful. Richard Stilgoe’s lyrics veer between witty and clunky but mostly work fine.

Gabriella Slade’s gleaming costumes are garishly inventive, although the coaches look more like the queens of Six (which she also designed) on wheels rather than railroad stock, and crucially give the cast ample scope to execute Ashley Nottingham’s dynamic, often exciting choreography. Howard Hudson’s transformative lighting is completely sensational, and Gareth Owen proves once again why he is the go-to sound designer for any stage production with rock and pop elements: his work here is at once precise and bombastic, matching his outstanding efforts on MJ The Musical on both sides of the Atlantic and the glorious Alicia Keys tuner Hells Kitchen currently tearing up Broadway.

Where the first production had an unreconstructed twentieth century attitude to gender (male engines and freight trucks, female coaches) and a 1980s budget (i.e. excessive), this one has a much more loose approach to the former (I mean, it’s 2024 and these are toy trains anyway) and possibly didn’t, in real terms, cost as much to mount but it still looks a million dollars…several million actually. The updates and adjustments have been sensitively done, so as not to put the noses of fans of the original out of joint. Realistically, the median age of the core youthful audience for Starlight Express is probably younger now than it was forty years ago as older teenagers used to a diet of TikTok and sundry other social media might find it all a bit, well, wholesome.

Luke Sheppard has proved repeatedly (& Juliet, Just For One Day, the Adrian Mole musical) that he is the perfect director for whipping up a frothy, fun-filled confection into something with a satisfyingly true emotional centre, and that impression is further confirmed here where you find yourself genuinely caring about a love story between inanimate objects. Having Control, the young child (young Mr Buttaci is a sassy delight, undercutting the soppier bits of the show with the unselfconscious brutality of the very young), physically in the centre of the action at key points is a very useful emotional conduit and helps give this version a charm that the original production never achieved (the train set owner was a disembodied voice). Overall, this is less a nostalgia-fest revival than a complete rethink.

The final word (almost) goes again to Sheridan Morley who witheringly compared Starlight #1984 to the Eurovision Song Contest. Back then, that was an insult. Funnily enough, Starlight #2024 really DOES resemble Eurovision…. but as Eurovision is perceived now: joyful, exhilarating, good-natured, frequently nonsensical and stunningly well produced. There’s also still such a thrill and entrancement at the fleet gracefulness of the skating. Check your brain in at the door, and you’ll have a ball, and you won’t be able to get the tunes out of your head for a week; take a child under ten, and you might just create a theatregoer for life.

MY FATHER’S FABLE

by Faith Omole

directed by Rebekah Murrell

Bush Theatre, London – until 27 July 2024

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/my-fathers-fable/

Not content with being one of acting’s rising stars, Faith Omole proves with this astonishingly assured debut that she’s also a tremendous playwright. In fact Omole already won the Alfred Fagon award for an earlier piece but My Father’s Fable is the first time she has had anything professionally produced. I doubt it’ll be the last.

Rebekah Murrell’s engrossing staging continues the Bush’s house policy of world class drama premieres with a multiethnic flavour: this is an absolute belter. The command of character, dialogue, plot development, humour and suspense is outstanding. On the night I saw it, a diverse (both in terms of race and age) crowd were alternately on the edge of their seats or roaring with laughter, and culminated in one of the most spontaneous standing ovations I’ve seen even at this venue, where the audience tends to be vociferous.

Omole gives us a family tragicomedy with London-based British Nigerian teacher Peace (delightfully natural Tiwa Lade) preparing for the arrival from Nigeria of Bolu, the long lost brother (from another mother) she’s only recently discovered she has, while also still mourning the loss of her father. Theo Ogundipe makes Bolu a charismatic, slightly unknowable figure, his motivations and intentions not immediately clear. Roy, Peace’s supportive boyfriend (Gabriel Akuwudike, note-perfect and deeply lovable), initially thinks Bolu is on the make, but quickly falls under his spell.

Then there’s Peace’s mother Favour (Rakie Ayola), deeply suspicious of Bolu and nearly as sceptical about Roy, and a real piece of work. Omole has created here a theatrical maternal monster to rank alongside such unforgettable figures as Lady Bracknell, Bernarda Alba and Cocteau’s Yvonne from Les Parents Terribles, and Ayola matches the writing with an exquisite, detailed study of poised venom and manipulation, the kind of person who becomes mysteriously unwell every time she doesn’t get her own way. “I don’t enjoy always being right” she purrs at her exasperated (almost) son-in-law, while brandishing a fan like a weapon, her eyes constantly widening in disdain or mock horror. Ayola is too fine an actress, and Omole too skilled a writer, to just give us a simple domestic villain though, so Favour is a vibrant, multi-layered creation, with intriguing otherworldly connections and above all else a real love for her child. It’s pretty impossible to take your eyes off, despite the brilliance of the other three cast members. The acting throughout is flawless.

The play is top heavy, with act one nearly twice as long as act two, but there turns out to be a valid reason for that. My Father’s Fable pulls the rug out from underneath the audience in the second half in one of the most effective dramatic volte faces I can remember. Bolu’s character is explained, as is Peace’s almost disconcerting childlike essence, her fear of flying and the dark… on the night I saw it, the audience’s vocal reaction to the revelation was thrillingly immediate and unguarded.

There’s more to the play than just the family story though. Omole astutely tackles the uncomfortable tension, snobbery almost, between Africans who left the continent to live elsewhere and those who remain, and touches sensitively on how the diasporan experience can result in a dilution of culture and language. “Shall I tell you what I see when I look at your life?” Bolu says to Peace, “you are rootless”. He has a point, but the play is wonderfully even-handed in its examination of how differently from each other people can live, and is ultimately rather moving.

The relationship between Peace and Roy is beautifully articulated, even when under severe strain, and brought to delicate but vivid life by Lade and Akuwudike, and the showdown between Favour and Bolu which closes the first act is electrifyingly played by Ayola and Ogundipe. Interestingly, director Murrell is, like Omole, a fine actor in her own right, and the detail, pace and specificity in this sublime production demonstrates the work of a multi-disciplinary artist. TK Hay’s modern house set, with a symbolic crack bisecting the ceiling, Simisola Majekodunmi’s playful, mood-shifting lighting and the mysterious sound and music contributions of XANA and Ayanna Witter-Johnson complement the overall vision seamlessly.

So far in 2024, the Bush has already given us one of the contenders for best play of the year with Shifters (soon heading into the West End, and on no account to be missed). Four months later, here’s another one: My Father’s Fable is a terrific piece of work, infused with that rare tang of pleasure that happens when everyone involved is at the top of their game. Cracking theatre.

DRAG BABY

by Grace Carroll

directed by Joseph Winer

Pleasance Theatre, London – until 22 June 2024

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/drag-baby

It’s not often that you come out of a show wishing it was twice as long, but that’s the case with Grace Carroll’s Drag Baby, which is just concluding its run at the Pleasance’s Downstairs space in North London, following a 2022 presentation at the Kings Head. As it stands, it feels very much like a work-in-progress, a sliver of a play (even with a lot of music the whole thing clocks in at barely 75 minutes) wrapped up in a ton of glitter, attitude and some glimpses into contrasting drag performance styles.

The brevity of the piece is unfortunate as the basic premise of the piece commands attention but doesn’t get enough room to breathe or explore: estranged childhood sweethearts Dan and Sally, both now gay or at least bi-sexual, he now a drag queen in a liaison with a fellow performer and she in a lesbian relationship, meet to explore possibility of having a child together. It throws up a lot of intriguing factors -jealousy, family expectations, shared history, party lifestyle versus domesticity- but hasn’t the time or the depth to really examine them.

Carroll’s dialogue mostly lacks flavour, and the characters feel so perfunctorily drawn that it’s hard to empathise with them, despite the valiant efforts of the cast. More time to establish who these people are and why they matter so much to each other, and why they should matter to us, would pay off rich dividends in terms of making this into satisfying drama.

Only one performer, charismatic, witty Ché as Nathan, the avant garde drag performer in love with Dan and whose tough exterior conceals a young lifetime of hurt, rises above the script’s limitations, creating a fully rounded character with authentic presence and edge. Furthermore, the extended taste we get of Nathan’s outrageous onstage antics are so exciting and bizarre that it’s a bit disappointing when we have to go back to the play itself. Stephen Cheriton’s Dan is likeable and natural, without ever quite suggesting why everybody’s falling at his feet, and doesn’t feel ruthless enough. The subplot about his upcoming TV break seems curiously under-explored.

Nicole Evans fares better as overeager, insecure Sally, making her compellingly needy yet manipulative. As her partner Amelia Parillon has a nice line in aggrieved disapproval but is given far too little to do. The ending, which sees the two women sort-of making up, is such a dramatic non sequitur that the audience isn’t sure whether to clap.

Joseph Winer’s production is highly watchable but suffers from pacing issues – there are a couple of ponderous gaps between scenes that not even the disco bangers being played over the sound system can fill – and doesn’t fully master the wide, shallow playing space, resulting in some lost laughs and fudged emotional moments. Olivia Heggs’s movement direction is spot on, as does Lu Herbert’s suitably glitzy but dingy set.

This feels like an appropriate theatrical offering for Pride month, but falls between two stools: in its present form, Drag Baby is too weighty to be a frivolous curtain raiser to a night out on the town, but too brief to really work as a complete play. Promising but frustratingly flimsy.

Alan Bleasdale’s BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

by James Graham

directed by Kate Wasserberg

Garrick Theatre, London – until 3 August 2024

https://nimaxtheatres.com/shows/boys-from-the-blackstuff/

There’s something both invigorating and deeply depressing about watching this blistering stage adaptation of Alan Bleasdale’s seminal 1980s TV drama and realising not only does it still feel relevant but that in fact it resonates more powerfully now than it would have done, say, a decade ago. Make no mistake, this is a deeply Left Wing piece of work, filled with humanity and rage, despair and vitality.

Perhaps it could only have sprung from a city that had the guts ripped out of it by the Tories under Thatcher, and Bleasdale’s all-too-credible tale of working class Liverpudlians doing their best not to get crushed by a societal system not designed to help them, now screams like a clarion call to a nation once again decimated by a bunch of uncaring, dishonest elitists. That this coruscating piece of theatre is playing in the West End as the UK heads into a General Election feels particularly apposite.

Originally commissioned by, and produced at, Liverpool’s Royal Court before a brief stint at the National, Boys From The Blackstuff arrives in the West End like a blast of fresh air. Kate Wasserberg’s staging, performed in front of a projected backdrop of the perpetually rippling waters of the Mersey, has an appropriately warm-hearted community theatre feel, with the actors trundling on set pieces and furniture while forbidding-looking rusty metal frames pivot and position overhead, and is perfectly matched by James Graham’s episodic but bold adaptation of the television scripts. It’s scrappy and a little rough around the edges, but it has tremendous focus, irresistible Scouse energy, moments of surprising lyricism, and a raw, ferocious theatricality that captivates and soars.

Unless you’ve a working knowledge of the original series, it’s hard to know where Bleasdale ends and Graham begins, although the latter adds a heartbreaking coup de theatre concerning the children of one of the leading characters that leaves us winded. As writers they share a flair for channelling politics and history down through the lived experience of individuals we can identify with. If you spend the first half of the stage play marvelling at the ongoing relevance of the themes, in act two the drama moves into a zone where you find yourself caring desperately about the people. The writing is terse, bleakly funny, sometimes overtly sentimental, and ultimately desperately moving. The conflicts between these flawed, angry, frightened people makes for riveting theatre but feels like a challenge to humanity at large to just do better.

It isn’t perfect: the bond between the tarmac-laying men (hence the title) drawing the dole while still taking on manual labour in an attempt to makes ends meet, isn’t as strongly felt as it might be. The storytelling is a little uneven, and, from a design perspective, the wigs for the female characters are pretty awful, while having a young actress playing, however skilfully, a much older woman smacks of drama school end-of-year shows.

These are small cavils though at a rousing production that evokes time and place with such vivid specificity and bold stagecraft. Movement director Rachael Nanyojo’s striking work reaches its apotheosis with the slo-mo ballet, at once brutal and graceful, where the police violently take down poor, mentally incapacitated Yosser (Barry Sloane, inheriting Bernard Hill’s iconic “gizza job” with stunning commitment). Amy Jane Cook’s gritty set, Ian Scott’s lighting and Jamie Jenkin’s video design all contribute to the show’s devastating overall impact. The humour is tart, dark and much needed in what could otherwise be a night of unremitting depression.

Sloane is more physically striking than one might expect somebody in such dire straits as Yosser, abandoned by his wife and apparently unemployable for any length of time, to be, but he nails the swagger, aggression and broken masculinity of a human whose life has spiralled so far away from what he presumed it would be that he barely recognises himself. It’s a tremendous performance. As his pal Chrissie, equally impecunious but managing to hang on to his family…for now, Nathan McMullen delivers a flawless, heartcatching account of a genuinely decent man (“you’re too good!” Yosser constantly rails at him) and his scenes of marital strife with despairing wife Angie (Lauren O’Neill, thrillingly impassioned) are electrifying.

Philip Whitchurch is brilliant as frail, older George, haunted by memories of a more affluent, less desperate Merseyside, and there are potent contributions from Mark Womack, Aron Julius and George Caple as men old before their time and desperately clinging on to what’s left of their sanity and dignity. There’s excellent multi-rolling work from Dominic Carter, Jamie Peacock and Hayley Sheen as a variety of clerks, officials, priests and family members who emerge from the nightmarish landscape to challenge or ameliorate the struggling protagonists’s lives.

Male mental health is more widely discussed than it was forty years ago, so the characters, but especially stricken Yosser, read slightly differently now than they did when the tv series first appeared. Wasserberg’s production wisely doesn’t comment on this but allows the situations and the people to speak for themselves. The result is a piece of theatre that pays tribute to its epoch-making source material but which packs one hell of an emotional punch of its own. See it, and come out simultaneously angered by its resonances and exhilarated by its theatrical bravura. On screen and now on stage, Boys From The Blackstuff proves unforgettable. Bleasdale’s legacy is vindicated.

THE BLEEDING TREE

by Angus Cerini

directed by Sophie Drake

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 22 June 2024

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-bleeding-tree/

Poetic beauty and unmitigated revulsion coexist in this remarkable 2015 Australian play, receiving its British premiere in an abstract, note-perfect production by Sophie Drake. A trio of fine actresses (Mariah Gale, Elizabeth Dulau, Alexandra Jensen) play a mother and two daughters who take the ultimate revenge on the drunk, abusive patriarch that makes their home life a domestic hell.

It’s not a particularly original premise but it’s the raw, bare bones that fuels classical tragedy, and the execution -a tantalising combination of revenge thriller, verse play and female empowerment at its most extreme- makes it horribly, compulsively watchable. Angus Cerini’s writing sometimes feels hemmed-in by his decision to have the women speak in verse, but for the most part is vivid and compelling. It runs for a mere hour but that is all we need, and possibly all we can take.

The acting is unflinching and truthful. Southwark’s smallest auditorium doesn’t allow for much in the way of artifice, and there is a ruthlessness yet also a grace about the work of Gale, Dulau and Jensen that takes the breath away. Gale and Dulau are particularly impressive with simplicity and detail at morphing into the men who intrude on the story, the latter excelling as the rural policeman who discovers the women’s crime, and whose reaction comes as a bit of a surprise. There’s a grim satisfaction in the fact that the last living being to come into contact with the bodily remains of the appalling man whose demise lights the touch-paper on the whole drama, is the canine parent of a litter of puppies this human monster kicked to death….and of course she’s female.

Every ounce of horror (be warned that the descriptions of a decomposing human body are extremely graphic) and dark humour is extracted from Cerini’s text, and the overall impression created by Drake’s staging is that we are watching a sort of dark ritual as much as a piece of storytelling. The oppressive, dusty heat of rural Australia is powerfully evoked, as is the sense of elemental fury that is unleashed when women are pushed to breaking point.

Iskandar R Sharazuddin’s movement direction is an important component to the general air of sweaty threat: note the way all three women flinch simultaneously as a violent noise ricochets through the auditorium (outstanding sound and composition by Asaf Zohar). Jasmine Swan’s design, redolent of earth and blood, feels exactly right, and is moodily lit by Ali Hunter.

The Bleeding Tree is strong stuff: brutal, essential, and highly theatrical. It’s a feast of terrific acting, intelligent production choices, bold writing and female-driven righteous rage. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but if you go you’ll probably be processing it long after it’s over.