ajhlovestheatre

GOD OF CARNAGE

by Yasmina Reza

translated by Christopher Hampton

directed by Nicholai La Barrie

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 30 September 2023

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/god-of-carnage/

A major hit in the West End and even more so on Broadway over a decade ago, partly due to starry casting as the quartet of urban sophisticates whose glossy veneer of civilisation devolves into savagery when challenged, Yasmina Reza’s boulevard comedy-meets-angsty melodrama has not aged well. In Christopher Hampton’s potty-mouthed but only intermittently witty English version, these wealthy, successful couples, forced together because one of their sons has attacked the other, come across as precious, out-of-touch and pretty much insufferable as they bang on about everything from Africa to fine art to whether or not a clafoutis is a tart or a cake.

For this gossamer thin material to work, it needs to be played at a lightning quick pace, with a side order of acid and a lightness of touch that can shade into the seriously macabre when the text demands it. This unfortunately doesn’t happen in Nicholai La Barrie’s leaden production which is neither funny nor stylish enough, and suffers from the bizarre decision to have Lily Arnold’s elegantly minimalist set revolve for the entire interval-less show at a snails pace, which means that there is, at least if you’re sitting in the stalls, always a lamp or a sofa or an actors back blocking your line of vision. This would matter less if the selfish characters were more sympathetic and their eclectic views were worth listening to. They need as much help as they can get to feel remotely relatable or entertaining, but instead this production alienates us from them with every turn of the revolve.

The performances are no less frustrating. Each of the actors has fine individual moments but it feels as though they are striking individual attitudes and poses but with zero connecting dramatic tissue from one sequence to the next. Accordingly the characters feel less like real people and more like a series of shouty, sweary mouthpieces. Considering that they’re supposed to be married couples, none of their relationships feel credible, so busy are the actors bowling their individual bits of shtick at the audience.

La Barrie’s staging has a multi-racial cast but, unlike in Jamie Lloyd’s brilliant new take on Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, currently at the National, the text hasn’t been adapted to reflect that. That doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but it feels a bit strange to have a particularly nasty racial slur bandied about when there are two Black actors onstage, and it goes pretty much uninterrogated. It also doesn’t help that half of the cast seem to have almost no comedy chops whatsoever, either playing the material with deadening over emphasis or throwing it away.

Dinita Gohil excels as the bilious (literally) wealth manager appalled at the social shit-show she is unwillingly cast into the middle of, and makes lovely work out of her drunken last speech evaluating what a “real man” is. Martin Hutson pushes a bit hard initially as over eager host Michael but finds some real comic gold amongst all the bellowing. Freema Agyeman brings a lot of energy to his stroppy partner, and Ariyon Bakare works hard as a lawyer who’s in constant thrall to his mobile phone. None of these characters seem particularly plausible though, and personally I was longing for them all to shut up way before the ninety minutes running time was over.

Ultimately, the biggest problem here is Reza’s text, which is irredeemably shallow, and never as funny or clever as it thinks it is. Without the magnetic brilliance of, say, Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott, who did some major heavy lifting in Matthew Warchus’s original production, God Of Carnage comes across as pretentious, self-congratulatory and, frankly, tedious. The concept of civilised behaviour being a thin veneer over roiling baseness isn’t an original one, and the descent from brittle comedy to vicious farce is handled here with an uninspired abruptness.

The Lyric Hammersmith has, with Accidental Death of an Anarchist (just about to close at the Haymarket after a triumphant transfer), The Good Person of Szechuan and the gorgeous School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play, given me some of my best theatrical nights out in 2023. I guess nowhere can have a 100% strike rate, but this one is a real dud.

FAREWELL MISTER HAFFMANN

by Jean-Philippe Daguerre

translated by Jeremy Sams

directed by Lindsay Posner

Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath – until 23 September

https://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/events/farewell-mister-haffmann/

I’m not sure which is crueller: the unexpected volte face that derails the anxious but compelling supper party scene in Nazi-occupied Paris, that is the centrepiece of this riveting drama, or the play’s final moments, which provoke sniffles and gasps from a gripped audience, where the characters tell us the conclusions to their stories. It’s a moving ending, only slightly marred by the realisation that only two of the figures depicted were actually real people.

Either way, watching Lindsay Posner’s meticulous, thrillingly acted production, it makes sense that Jean-Pierre Daguerre’s 2017 piece has become a long running staple of the French theatre scene (over 1000 performances in Paris and winner of four prestigious Molière awards). Adieu Monsieur Haffmann has been translated into umpteen languages and presented internationally, and is a study text in French schools.

What’s perhaps more of a surprise is that such an engrossing and timely play has taken this long to get an English language version. It’s set during a historical period that has social and political divisions that worryingly resonate in the present day, it has tension, humour, humanity, psychological acuity, and it speaks to the idea that evil proliferates when good people are prepared to blur the edges of what’s acceptable and right. It tackles anti-Semitism head on, and rams home the uncomfortable fact that much of France already had a shameful attitude towards Jewish people even without the input of the Nazis. Jeremy Sams provides a crisp, well-turned adaptation that crucially sounds like a new play that happens to be set in 1940s Paris, rather than a translation.

Childless couple Isabelle and Pierre Vigneau (Lisa Dillon and Ciarán Owens, both heartbreakingly good) agree to hide Jewish jeweller Joseph Haffmann (Nigel Lindsay, powerfully understated and emotionally accurate) in the basement of his own house while Pierre takes over his business, at a time when the Nazis are rounding up Jews and sending them away while seizing their art works and wealth. As if that wasn’t tense enough, the price Vigneau demands from Joseph is that widower Haffmann impregnates his wife in return for his safekeeping. I’m not sure I completely bought this plot strand, although the acting is so good it went most of the way towards convincing me, but it does allow Daguerre to sensitively explore the sadness of a youngish couple unable to conceive, and the irrationality of jealousy. I suspect the trio of actors invest the characters with more inner life than was written for them; Dillon in particular imbues Isabelle with a fascinating mixture of vulnerability and steel.

Posner’s production is full of striking moments – the sight of Lindsay’s Haffmann tentatively placing his outstretched hands then his whole body into the sliver of sunlight that reaches as far as his basement is almost unbearably moving, as is Owens’s increasingly frenetic tap dancing as he tries to keep his gnawing jealousy at bay – but really catches fire with the climactic dinner party and the arrival of German ambassador Abetz and his colourful wife. To further up the ante, and once again the performances go a long way to papering over the cracks in the play’s plausibility, Haffmann decides to attend the dinner, pretending to be Pierre’s restauranteur brother Jean (and of course the main dish is suckling pig, cue jokes about this being the best pork “Jean” has ever tasted).

In the dramatic equivalent to the devil having all the best tunes, the Abetz’s are fabulous theatrical company. Alexander Hanson plays Otto Abetz as witty, urbane, charming….until he isn’t. It’s a brilliant portrayal, all too credible, especially chilling as he makes profoundly nasty anti-Semitic sentiments sound like civilised social small talk. By contrast, Josefina Gabrielle makes his glamorous but ghastly wife Suzanne transfixingly vivid, but with an undertow of something else: she’s boozy, bracingly rude, often very funny, and almost entirely inappropriate, but Gabrielle intriguingly suggests a core of desperate sadness. It’s an outrageous, utterly satisfying performance.

These dinner scenes, with tensions threatening to boil over at any second, the discovery of Haffmann’s true identity a constant possibility, paroxysms of social awkwardness and a major revelation during dessert, play out like an elegant mash-up of Ayckbourn at his most mortified with a wartime thriller. It feels urgent, and familiar but fresh; genuinely gripping entertainment.

The spare but atmospheric design by Paul Wills, complemented by Tim Mitchell’s lighting and Giles Thomas’s haunting sound and music, adds to the suspense and sense of finely tuned melancholia. The play carries a real, and perhaps unexpected, emotional wallop in its penultimate scene that does make me wonder if the final, direct address section, where each character tells us what happened next, is really necessary. Despite that, this is a memorable, first rate piece of theatre, magnificently acted, and I hope it has a further life after this Bath season.

NEXT TO NORMAL

Music by Tom Kitt

Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey

Directed by Michael Longhurst

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 7 October 2023

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com

It has taken fourteen years for Next To Normal to reach the UK, despite winning several 2009 Tony Awards (including Best Score, although not Best Musical, that honour going to the Broadway version of Billy Elliot), and certain songs becoming staples in cabaret and audition rooms. Watching Michael Longhurst’s enthralling Donmar production, you can sort-of see why this didn’t traverse the Atlantic with the same speed as, say, Memphis or The Book of Mormon or Moulin Rouge! even as one marvels at its audacity and ambition (it’s also one of only a small number of musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize). For one thing, it’s a harrowing, if sometimes simplistic, look at mental health, specifically bipolar disorder, that carries enough trigger warnings to fill a whole sheet of A4.

For another, it requires a leading lady, in the role of stricken suburban housewife Diana Goodman, who can belt like a diva but with the acting gravitas of a tragedian, a gift for sardonic comedy also being a plus. It’s a big ask -certainly one of the most demanding female leads in modern musical theatre- that could potentially send somebody’s career into the stratosphere (the role’s originator Alice Ripley won every award going in NYC) but also runs the risk of exposing any faultlines in their technique and stamina. In all honesty, several of the other leading parts in Kitt and Yorkey’s angst-tastic bangerfest aren’t far behind her in terms of vocal and dramatic demands, but Diana has an emotional arc that can’t be easy to replicate night after night. When I saw Next To Normal on Broadway, Ripley’s acting was strong but she sounded so vocally exhausted that one wondered if she was going to make it to the end of the show.

Longhurst has struck gold for this London premiere, casting Broadway star Caissie Levy (previously seen here as the original Molly in the Ghost musical, and leading the last big West End revival of Hair) who gives the sort of career-redefining performance that reputations are built upon. We all knew she was a vocal powerhouse (she was the first stage Elsa in Disney’s Frozen: her skyscraping take on “Let It Go” is iconic) and her singing doesn’t disappoint, a soaring clarion that sounds as though it’s being pulled from her very soul, fusing rock, blues and a melting sweetness with moments of breathtaking power. Dramatically, she’s equally devastating, exploring every colour in Diana’s troubled life, while also making her intensely likeable. She’s raw, witty, haunted, fragile yet implacable, capturing with painful precision the manic vitality then the bone-weary blankness, the jagged catapulting between despair, euphoria and terror that can be part of a bipolar person’s existence. She also finds a warmth in Diana I haven’t seen before; it’s almost impossible to tear your eyes away from her.

Diana’s husband Dan Goodman (and the name is no mere coincidence -“good man”- any more than are the names of her psychologists, Dr Madden and Dr Fine – both played by a dynamic, swaggering then sensitive Trevor Dion Nicholas) isn’t so much acted as embodied by Jamie Parker, who matches Levy in emotional commitment and blazingly fine technique. He draws an unforgettable portrait of a human driven to limits of himself that he didn’t even know existed, sinews, veins and muscles straining as he tries to keep his family together. If there are moments where Parker’s singing also seems a little strained, that entirely works for a man all too aware that he and the people he loves are constantly on the brink of the abyss. These Goodmans read as younger than in the original version, which adds to the tragic urgency of their plight.

There’s stunning work too from Eleanor Worthington-Cox and Jack Wolfe as the Goodman’s teenage children. Worthington-Cox, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Levy, conveys all of Natalie’s prodigious intelligence (“my daughter, though a genius, is a freak”) and the maturity she unwillingly embraces due to her mother’s condition, also her isolation and awkwardness; it’s a profoundly accomplished performance. There’s also a subtle hint that Natalie carries around a fear that she may be headed in the same direction as the mother who will always be more in thrall to her sibling than to her.

If Wolfe has less to work with as Gabe, there’s a very good reason why he’s less defined as a character (no spoilers here). On Broadway, Aaron Tveit played him as a sunny, shiny, all-American jock but Wolfe delivers something altogether more ambiguous and intriguing, a manipulative, wry, needy cross between an angel and an emo rock star. Jack Ofrecio is delightful as the stoner kid who falls for Natalie and might just be her lifeline out of dysfunction.

Tom Kitt’s tuneful, galvanising rock music is reminiscent at times of the equally bleak but more user-friendly Rent and the all-out nihilistic fervour of The Who’s Tommy. It’s also infused with sections of Brecht and Weill-adjacent spikiness, and an aching, shimmering loveliness during more tender moments. Chief among these is the bittersweet ballad “I Miss The Mountains”, given a heart-catching rendition here by Levy, Brian Yorkey’s lyrics conveying with a piercing accuracy what’s lost as well as gained by the use of medication in the treatment of mental illness.

The structure of the score is probably closer to modern opera than a conventional musical, with the use of recitative and snippets of melody and lightning fast changes of tones sitting alongside complete numbers. There are a couple of moments where the flash and crowd pleasing bombast come close to trivialising the subject matter, and Yorkey’s sometimes overwrought lyrics don’t help: “I’m no sociopath, I’m no Sylvia Plath….I’m no princess of pain”. The universal attitude to mental health has, thank goodness, evolved considerably since the beginning of this century when Feeling Electric (the original title) was being workshopped and indeed since Next To Normal opened on Broadway, and inevitably the show occasionally feels dated as a result. Ultimately though, it remains deeply moving, refreshingly bold, and the score, the characters and many sequences in Longhurst’s staging linger long in the memory.

Rock in a small theatre can be tricky -have the volume too low and the music lacks balls, have it too high and you risk inflicting actual physical discomfort upon your audience- but sound designer Tony Gayle has pretty much got it right here. The score thrills as it should but it’s possible to really enjoy the harmonies, the glorious voices and Nigel Lilley and Alessandra Davison’s band, arranged on the upper level of Chloe Lamford’s pristine house set like a series of floating musical ghosts. This production wisely retains Michael Starobin and Kitt’s Tony-winning orchestrations: there’s a particular melancholic magic to the sound of a rock band augmented by classical strings.

Next To Normal isn’t flawless (although this cast and production pretty much are) but it’s likely to haunt you after seeing it for much longer than many more conventional tuners, and the courage to tackle this sort of subject matter in a musical, and the unwillingness to tie it all up in a neat, pretty bow is pretty remarkable. A cathartic triumph, likely to be talked about for years to come. Upset has seldom been so uplifting; take tissues.

A MIRROR

by Sam Holcroft

directed by Jeremy Herrin

Almeida Theatre, London – until 23 September

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/a-mirror/

Bold, unsettling and shockingly entertaining, A Mirror feels like an authentic theatrical event. There’s a specific thrill when something happens in theatre and you realise that you could only experience that particular moment ‘live’, as opposed to being at the cinema or watching it on TV. Jeremy Herrin’s hair-raising staging of Sam Holcroft’s darkly funny new play at the Almeida is full of such moments. This is a veritable cornucopia of coups de theatre, culminating in a real jawdropper, ultimately as exhilarating as it is deeply disturbing and dislocating.

The acclaimed Islington playhouse has been transformed into a wedding venue, all pastel coloured balloons, chocolate box-y floral displays and an abundance of fairy lights, while half of the stalls seating has been replaced with the sort of buttock-challenging plush-covered metal structures we’ve all endured at hotel and civic hall ceremonies. It’s kitschy but enchanting (designer Max Jones, lighting by Azusa Ono); look closely at the walls though and between the fake ferns and roses you’ll see disturbing signage. “Do you know how to report illegal cultural activities?” demands one, while another invites us to participate in helping to “stamp out treason in the Motherland”. The ante of unease is further upped when an almost unrecognisable Jonny Lee Miller takes the mic and thanks us all for being here, and acknowledging that we’re putting ourselves at risk, before asking us to stand to welcome the bride and groom.

A Mirror is an act of social, political and artistic rebellion that interrogates the nature of free speech and the liberty of artistic freedom, and by being present, we are all complicit. Holcroft, Herrin and team have created an all-too-recognisable alternative universe where creative voices are silenced if they don’t fall in line with the values and opinions of the ruling regime, and it’s not hard to find parallels in the UK at the moment (remember when the arts organisations that received government hand-outs during Covid lockdowns were required to express their thanks across all social media platforms?). The othering of people who don’t look and think like us is a theme here with another unwelcome resonance.

The title might suggest a reflection of our own society, or at least where it could be heading, but also invokes a hall of mirrors, as scenes play out then get discussed, discarded or expanded upon, and you find yourself questioning what is real and what isn’t. It’s tricky to describe without spoiling it for anybody who already has tickets (the Almeida run is sold out, but this screams West End transfer as long as they can retain a similar intimacy in a central venue) but if you can envision a swirling together of Pirandello, Kafka, Orton and Pinter, with maybe a sprinkling of current West End smash The Pillowman, you’ll have some idea of the tone.

Director Herrin manages it all brilliantly, giving the humour and the nastiness full measure, but also honouring the humanity pulsing under the fear and lunacy. The entire performance is punctuated by Miriam Wakeling’s live cello playing, beautiful but unsettling, another character in itself.

Holcroft’s dialogue is wonderful: elegant, witty, on edge and, when it needs to go there, absolutely brutal. From a dramaturgical point of view, the play and the whole concept are so unusual that it’s hard to work out if the storytelling is ingenious or a bit messy. I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt as, like the aforementioned The Pillowman, part of the point of A Mirror is the power and importance OF storytelling, and this mostly feels like world class creatives at the absolute top of their games.

This is especially true of the acting. Jonny Lee Miller is terrific as the government man, trying his best to stick rigidly to the rules while unable to fully contain an innate humanity and child-like enthusiasm for theatrics. He’s simultaneously sinister and sympathetic, all mirthless laugh, uncomfortable body language and fragile pomposity. Micheal Ward as the writer who appears to be the major thorn in his side is compelling and disarmingly natural. Geoffrey Streatfeild nails unerringly the preening flamboyance of another writer far more in sync with State thinking, but gives him an intriguing marbling of kindness and decency.

Tanya Reynolds excels as a new recruit to the sinister ministry, who becomes an unexpected, unwilling epicentre for the male machinations. When she claps back, it’s extremely potent: she points out that when a woman is listening, wrapt, to a much more powerful man, it’s usually due to fear rather than adoration. Reynolds is an extraordinary stage presence, gawky yet in control, vulnerable but tough. Aaron Neil appears only briefly at the end but is a funny, troubling figure who focuses and revitalises everything we’ve already seen.

This is a piece of theatre that is simultaneously deeply serious, maybe a warning, but also a lot of fun. A Mirror exists to be both. The wedding set-up felt like a bit of a gimmick initially but by the end of a two hour interval-free performance, intense but also intensely entertaining, it felt like an absolute essential part of the overall experience. Chilling, thrilling stuff: it’ll be worrying me for a long time I suspect.

Of course, everything I’ve just told you could be a lie, and you won’t know unless you see A Mirror. That’s not a spoiler. Or is it?

THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL

conceived by Tina Landau

book by Kyle Jarrow

based on the Nickelodeon series by Stephen Hillenberg

directed by Tara Overfield Wilkinson

Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre London – until 27 August 2023 then touring to Plymouth and Newcastle

https://www.spongebobstage.com

As happened previously with the now indispensable musicalisation of the Shrek animated movie, there was some surprise that SpongeBob turned out to be an unexpectedly decent tuner when it hit the Broadway stage in 2017, courtesy of doyenne of the avant garde NYC theatre scene Tina Landau. That gargantuan original staging, stuffed to the gills (pun intended) with quality pop songs written for the project by everyone from Waitress’s Sara Bareilles through Cyndi Lauper and Aerosmith to John Legend, turned the cavernous Palace Theatre on Times Square into an underwater wonderland.

From the moment you walked through the foyer doors you were immersed in all things Bikini Bottom, the happy-go-lucky, garishly coloured ocean floor hamlet where the bonkers cartoon is set, and a live foley artist dressed as a pirate punctuated every moment of the show from an elaborate booth set up in one of the boxes. It was astonishing, and deflected attention from some of the storytelling plot holes in Kyle Jarrow’s zany, often very funny but not always coherent, script, something that a slightly more modest staging like this one can’t quite manage.

Still, if Tara Overfield Wilkinson’s joyously caffeinated touring production, decked out in suitably vivid designs that marry objects aquatic with environmental awareness and sci-fi (Steve Howell – set, Sarah Mercadé – costumes) and choreographed to within an inch of its life by Olivier nominee Fabian Aloise, doesn’t match the Broadway level of extravagance, it captures precisely the combination of lunacy and benign anarchy that defines the cartoon franchise. It may not be as visually overwhelming as Landau’s – and that foley booth is reduced to an inconsistently used solo microphone on the edge of the false proscenium – but it still has an awful lot going for it.

Principally, there’s the performance of rising star Lewis Cornay in the title role, nailing the distinctive vocals – somewhere between a kazoo and a gurgle – that will be required by fans of the original, while investing the beloved, endlessly optimistic sea sponge with an impressively athletic, angular physicality, real heart and oodles of off-beat charm. It’s a winning central turn, impossible not to warm to, and when he lets rip with the songs it’s pretty thrilling stuff.

Then there’s Aloise’s glorious, rousing choreography, which combines trad Broadway moves (look out for the second half tap number for Squidward and a troupe of über-camp anemones) with street dance and the constant ripple movement of undersea currents. Other pleasures include Irfan Damani, adorable as Patrick Star, SpongeBob’s endearingly clumsy starfish sidekick who suddenly develops an ego the size of a house thanks to the adoration of a school of sardines, and Richard J Hunt as the robustly mercenary crab restauranteur Eugene Krabs, more preoccupied with making a buck than preserving the common good. Hannah Lowther is great fun as a villainous sentient computer (called Karen because, you know, this is Bikini Bottom), and the diverse ensemble of kookie eccentrics are a hardworking, multi-quick changing bunch of superb singer-dancers. The production is lit with flair and invention by Ben Bull.

It’s typical of Overfield Wilkinson’s crazy but witty vision that the tallest person in the cast is playing the tiniest character on the ocean bed (the statuesque and authentically fabulous Divina De Campo clearly having a ball as Bikini Bottom’s nemesis, the spiteful single celled organism Sheldon J Plankton). At the performance I saw, associate director Blair Anderson covered, rather splendidly, for Tom Read Wilson as lugubrious mollusc Squidward Q Tentacles, and I enjoyed Chrissie Bhima’s powerfully sung, if overly manic, scientific squirrel Sandy Cheeks. Her costuming is puzzling, giving little indication of being permanently in a diving suit (the friend I saw the show with assumed she was a jellyfish until there were references to her being a land mammal).

Enjoyable though most of it undoubtedly is, the whole enterprise suffers drastically, at least in this London tour stop, from a truly ghastly sound system that renders a minimum of fifty per cent of the words completely unintelligible, flattens the harmonies and generally makes the music pretty underwhelming. That’s such a shame as this eclectic, dynamic score, ranging from rap to glam rock, from disco pop to country, there’s even a joyous sea shanty for a bunch of disgruntled pirates at the top of act two…, is full of absolute bangers, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that from the way they sound here. It’s simultaneously muffled and never quite loud enough, as though the whole thing were taking place, well, underwater.

It may be that the Queen Elizabeth Hall just isn’t a suitable space for musicals (Dolly Parton’s Smokey Mountain Christmas Carol and Bring It On! both felt occasionally underpowered in here): there’s no theatrical atmosphere, it’s extremely wide (the SpongeBob set occupies far too little of the space, rendering huge portions of the side seating blocks as restricted view) and the acoustics are deadening. I wish I had seen this in a traditional venue, more sympathetic to a show which relies so heavily on deranged charm and throwaway humour, such as either of the Theatre Royals of Plymouth or Newcastle where SpongeBob is travelling to in September.

Those reservations aside, this remains a highly original, delightfully flamboyant piece of musical theatre. It’s apocalyptic premise (SpongeBob, Sandy and pals are in a race against time to save Bikini Bottom from complete extinction following a forecast eruption by an underwater volcano) felt rather more far fetched in 2017 than it does now unfortunately, but the gallery of weird and wonderful characters, the refreshingly uncynical belief in the power of friendship and the dynamite collection of songs (if only we could hear them properly) ensure that this is still predominantly a feel good night out. If it sometimes feels a bit relentless, that’s a reflection on the source material, but it remains a well cast, potentially migraine-inducing, high camp spectacle with a satisfying balance between sentimentality and comic nuttiness, and several memorably inventive moments.

BLOODY ELLE

written and performed by Lauryn Redding

directed by Bryony Shanahan

Soho Theatre, London – until 29 July 2023; then Edinburgh Fringe Festival – 8-13 August 2023

https://sohotheatre.com/events/bloody-elle/

https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/bloody-elle-festival-23

Even if the individual elements of Lauryn Redding’s captivating solo show aren’t particularly original – first love, coming out, class divide, gig theatre – they are whipped up into a fresh, funny confection that showcases a singular talent while sweeping the audience along on a tide of affection, poignancy and genuine exhilaration. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.

Redding plays Elle (full name Danielle, but only her Mum calls her that), a mouthy but loveable and mostly self aware young woman working in a fast food joint up North and songwriting and gigging on the side. Her world is turned upside down by the arrival of Evelyn, from a wealthy family and marking time with a temp job amongst the chips and dips they’re serving before heading off to University. Plot wise, that’s pretty much it, apart from a conclusion that feels predictable even though it provides a satisfying emotional button on the whole ninety minute show.

The real pleasure here (and there’s a lot of it) is in watching Redding morph like a chameleon into the different figures in Elle’s world, from her raucous mother, her monosyllabic but unexpectedly heroic male co-worker, another who is a swaggering, womanising jerk, their patient but eccentric Welsh boss, and of course Eve herself, a posh kid with “eyes the colour of guacamole” who could so easily become a one-note caricature but never does. Redding is a brilliant physical comedian and vocal impressionist, and her rapport with an audience is a thing of immediacy and joy.

Then there is her singing. She has a voice full of guts, soul and sweetness, somewhat reminiscent of the hallowed Adele, with an extraordinarily wide range. There are times when it sounds as though it’s being ripped out of her very soul, and it is spellbinding. The songs, and fragments of songs, have a haunting, insistent quality, as they throb with longing or joy-filled uplift, and work in perfect counterpoint to, and in tandem with, the salty, enjoyable, rhyme-heavy text.

Gritty yet enchanting, Bloody Elle is a winning combination of storytelling, standup, outstanding actor-musicianship (Redding is a superb guitarist) that unerringly captures the sugar rush of new romance and the greyed-out disillusion that can sometimes follow it. If the difference in social strata that Elle and Eve originate from is painted in somewhat crude brushstrokes, the principal characters, as embodied by Redding under Bryony Shanahan’s immaculate, energised direction which sees her ricocheting around a bare stage before stopping for sudden moments of exquisite, riveting stillness, are so irresistible it barely matters.

Bloody Elle is a total delight. At the performance I saw, a young woman near the front yelled “we love you” just as the show was drawing to it’s close, and it wasn’t clear if she meant Lauryn or her alter ego Elle: doesn’t matter, that audience member was speaking for all of us.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

Directed by Adam Penford

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester – until 3 September 2023

https://www.cft.org.uk/events/the-sound-of-music

Aside from The King And I and Yul Brynner’s indelible flawed monarch on screen, on Broadway originally and in countless international revivals, nothing else in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon of classic musicals is as inextricably tied to one star performer as The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews never played Maria Von Trapp on stage (the show and role were created for American showbiz sweetheart Mary Martin, who had previously starred in the same team’s South Pacific) but mention The Sound of Music and the first image in most people’s minds will be of the youthful Julie in the film version, arms outstretched and hands splayed, twirling ecstatically atop an Alp as she soars through the rapturous title song. It’s a long shadow to escape from, and Adam Penford’s captivating new production at Chichester simultaneously celebrates that popular vision of this beloved property while also throwing up a few surprises of its own.

Most stage revivals tend to incorporate the changes and additions made for the movie (the inclusion of “I Have Confidence”, written specifically for Andrews in the film, the iconic “My Favourite Things” as a mood lifter for the frightened Von Trapp children during a thunderstorm, “The Lonely Goatherd” presented as a puppet show by the kids to impress Elsa, their potential new stepmum…). This version however goes back to the first 1959 stage iteration, honouring the original (and meticulously crafted) book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crowse, and the result is a show more sophisticated, less sugary sweet and altogether more dramatic than I remembered.

Back in are “How Can Love Survive” and “No Way To Stop It”, the tart, cynical duets for Elsa and her friend Max, the former dealing with financial expediency versus romance, and the latter with the rise of Nazism, while “My Favourite Things” is, as in the original, a duet at the top of the show for the Mother Abbess (Janis Kelly, exquisite) and Maria, and the yodel-happy goatherd number is returned to its positioning as the children’s storm distraction, complete with joyous, thigh-slapping choreography by Lizzi Gee. The London Palladium version that followed the game-changing BBC How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? TV casting contest tried to meld together elements of the Broadway original with the movie version and resulted in something messy and unfocused, if enjoyable. This is infinitely more satisfying.

Penford and team aren’t trying for a wholesale reinvention like the current Daniel Fish Oklahoma!; it’s not even as much of a rethink as Daniel Evans’s terrific South Pacific for this venue a couple of years ago, with which it shares a leading lady, the luminescent Gina Beck (and more on her in a moment…) but a rare chance to see the piece as first written rather than mashing up the original work with the film. This is still the same sentimental, open-hearted, family friendly creation that has delighted musical lovers for generations: the songs continue to transport and bring a lump to the throat, the kids are still adorable; but the shadows are fractionally darker and the emotional ante is a little more elevated.

I suspect the main reason for this is that it is, for the most part, superbly acted. Edward Harrison’s Captain has a heartbreaking, borderline disturbing, detachment and edge of darkness borne of genuine loss: watching him respond to hearing his children sing for the first time is deeply moving. The Elsa of Emma Williams is more warm and likeable than usual, she’s not just some snooty sophisticate trying to drive a wedge between a man and his inconvenient kids, but a fully rounded woman who cares very deeply about her possible new family yet is acutely aware she is like a fish out of water; some of her martini-dry line readings are extremely funny, and humanising her makes the unspoken contest between her and the adored Maria all the more fascinating.

Lauren Conroy invests older daughter Liesl with intelligence and a subtle toughness that is miles away from the saccharine portrayals of yore, suggesting the pain of a young woman who unwillingly has had to be many things to many people following the death of her mother. Opposite her, Dylan Mason’s delivery boy Rolf is ardent and graceful, then convincingly undergoes a chilling transformation before a final moment of tormented nobility. Opera star Janis Kelly suggests a real woman underneath the Mother Abbess’s robes and rightfully brings the house down with the legendary “Climb Every Mountain”.

The beating heart of the production though is Gina Beck’s Maria, a creation of such magnetism, musicality, emotional depth and irrepressible good humour that she almost succeeds in obliterating memories of most previous interpreters of the role. Whether standing up to the Captain in defence of his children, befriending the lovelorn Liesl, or engineering the family escape from the impending threat of the Nazis, she’s strong, centred and entirely credible. Her rapport with the kids feels genuine, her deadpan comedy is pretty wondrous and she makes something deeply affecting out of Maria’s crisis over her feelings for Von Trapp versus her commitment to God. She’s sunny but rock solid, the kind of woman you would always want on your side. Her acting is so vivid and her singing so organically tied to her character choices that it is almost a surprise when she suddenly produces fearless, crystalline top notes….but it’s an exhilarating surprise, or rather a reminder that she’s played several classic soprano roles, including Christine Daaé, Wicked’s Glinda and as an entrancing Magnolia in Daniel Evan’s flawless Sheffield then West End Showboat. Beck’s Maria is so breathtakingly fresh that it feels a shame that the design team decided to give her a wig, admittedly a very convincing one, that recalls Andrews’s hair from the film. It inevitably invites unhelpful comparisons and is a rare misstep in a production that otherwise gets so much right.

Musical supervisor Gareth Valentine’s fourteen piece band occasionally lack the orchestral sweep that this score ideally needs, but for the most part wrap Rodger’s famed melodies in the glint and sparkle of a mountain stream, and the choral singing from the fine company of female voices (the nuns!) is absolutely gorgeous. No stage production can realistically expect to replicate the astonishing Alpine vistas of the movie, but Robert Jones’s handsome granite-like sets have a sculptural quality that works beautifully, especially when atmospherically lit by Johanna Town, and some of the interiors that swing on and off are attractive and opulent. The overall visual impression of the production is perhaps darker than one might have expected, but it feels lush and dramatic.

All in all, The Sound of Music isn’t perhaps the strongest in the R&H portfolio: South Pacific is probably more intelligent, Carousel more emotionally resonant and Oklahoma! more vibrant, it has moments of irredeemable tweeness, and some of Hammerstein’s lyrics sacrifice clarity and concision to syrupy mawkishness: “like a lark who is learning to pray”?! Nevertheless it remains a fine example of musical theatre from the Golden Age of Broadway. This is a truly lovely production of it, and Ms Beck reconfirms her position as one of this country’s most irresistible musical theatre leading ladies. Well worth the trip to the South Downs.

THE WIND AND THE RAIN

by Merton Hodge

Directed by Geoffrey Beevers

Finborough Theatre, London – until 5 August 2023

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk

The Finborough’s house policy of programming interesting neglected plays of yesteryear alongside their regular roster of new writing and UK premieres is an admirable one. It has thrown up several treats over the years (2013’s London Wall got a West End transfer and last year’s female-driven Scottish costume drama The Straw Chair was an enchanting rediscovery) but, my goodness, the wheels have come off with this tedious disinterment.

Merton Hodge’s The Wind And The Rain (the title is taken from Feste’s song in Twelfth Night, quoted in the text) was a major popular hit in the 1930s, clocking up over a thousand performances in the West End, six months on Broadway and becoming a staple of repertory theatres up and down the land. However, tastes change, attention spans shrink, hope withers and the will to live can get lost: watching The Wind And The Rain in 2023, in it’s first staging in eighty years, it is pretty hard to see what the appeal was.

Set entirely in the study of an Edinburgh students boarding house, overseen by the dour but not unkind landlady Mrs McFie (played with exactly the right level of grimly unsmiling fortitude by Jenny Lee), the play centres on trainee doctor Charles Tritton (Joe Pitts) whose initial plan to get back to London and his needy mother and on-off sweetheart as soon as possible, is scuppered when he meets New Zealand sculptor Anne (Naomi Preston-Low). Charles and Anne are terribly dull company however, and his fellow student lodgers are not so much characters as non sequiturs made flesh.

There’s a lot of mind-bendingly inconsequential chatter, no action to speak of and Charles spends an eye-rolling amount of time bellowing into the telephone at the corner of the set, presumably to ensure that everyone in the audience is clued up on what little plot developments there are. It’s all a colossal bore, despite the efforts of a game young cast to breathe life into it…. and what’s worse, it lasts nearly three hours including the interval.

Clearly Hodge couldn’t construct a plot like his contemporaries Priestley and Somerset Maugham, but neither could he at least create words for audiences to luxuriate in, à la Coward. The language in The Wind And The Rain is colourless and flaccid, rarely elevating to anything approaching wit, and the very brief suggestion of bisexuality (which the advertising blurb makes mention of, thereby making one wonder if the Trade Descriptions Act needs invoking) is suggested with a quick hand on the shoulder: this is hardly Design For Living.

Geoffrey Beevers’s stolid production isn’t helped by the fact that few of the younger members of cast, while enjoyably vital even when their script isn’t, seem to be able to capture the period style. A notable exception is Helen Reuben as Tritton’s London girlfriend, a perennially tipsy, glamorous flapperish type with a rich inner life, a tartly shrill giggle, an intriguingly ambiguous attitude, and a bit of a temper; she’s quite wonderful and lights up the stage whenever she’s on.

Carla Evans provides a warmly observed, richly detailed set and Edward Lewis’s evocative sound designs (everything from period music, offstage cacophony and apparently never-ending Edinburgh rain) is a valuable component in what appeal the show actually has. Writer Hodge’s “day job” was as an anaesthetist in a London hospital and it’s tempting to imagine that he put some of his patients out by reading sections of this play to them.

MODEST

by Ellen Brammar

Directed by Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith

Kiln Theatre London – until 15 July 2023

https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/modest/

Deliberately jarring in tone as it smashes together a plethora of performance styles and theatrical genres, Ellen Brammar’s new piece is a compelling demonstration that it’s possible to create a show that is simultaneously very angry while giving its audience a rollicking good time. With a contemporary music score by Rachel Barnes, Modest is a sort of queer pantomime infused with agitprop, peppered with anachronisms, using the story of painter Elizabeth Thompson, later Lady Butler, who in 1879 came within two votes of being the first woman elected into the Royal Academy, to examine male dominance and privilege, while employing drag king fabulousness, snarling attitude and rambunctious humour as its weapons of choice.

Not everybody will buy into the baroque extravagance of the script and of Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith’s staging, which combines songs, lip synch routines and elements of stand-up comedy, but is surprisingly strong on historical detail and dramatic tension, though short on subtlety and formulaic discipline. If the tidal wave of rainbow-coloured joy and indignation doesn’t sweep you along, you may feel rather as though you’re at a party to which you haven’t been invited, such is the roaring engagement of the majority of the audience. To the show’s immense credit, the more outrageous, frequently laugh-out-loud moments don’t obscure the fury and fire in its soul, or the really superb writing for Elizabeth and her sometimes antagonistic sister Alice (Meynell, the poet and suffragist, reimagined here as a trans woman, played with considerable sensitivity and brilliance by Fizz Sinclair).

Emer Dineen, a vision of statuesque shimmer in a hot pink ballgown, is a commanding, thrilling voiced Thompson, often hilarious and commendably not afraid to point up some of the character’s more obnoxious traits (fiercely ambitious, with a rock solid confidence in her own abilities and no particular interest in elevating other women at a time in history when it was most sorely needed: she’s not always easy to root for; the show’s title is ironic). Sinclair’s Alice is a far more sympathetic figure, as is Libra Teejay’s non-binary, teenage fan and would-be artist Bessie, whose admiration for Elizabeth is disillusioned and all but extinguished by her idol’s selfishness.

The script, for all it’s sparkle and originality (Teejay also doubles as a magnificently unconventional Queen Victoria, popping Skittles like they’re ecstasy tablets and in command of a human-sized S&M lapdog…the men of the Royal Academy are Black Adder-ish grotesques portrayed with real relish), becomes frustrating as it throws up interesting ideas but then doesn’t do anything much with them. One such is the vast inequality between Elizabeth and Bessie’s incomes which means that the former can explore an artistic life whereas the latter is forced to languish in obscurity and servitude, which is something that certainly speaks to prospective artists in the present day. Another is the brief championing of Thompson by established painter Millais (Jacqui Bardelang, excellent) which comes out of nowhere and then stops with the life-changing vote which saw the female artist just miss out on entry to the RA membership. Thompson’s marriage is given just a cursory mention and the “I feel like burning some shit / I have matches” finale feels a bit like Emilia-lite. Some of the songs are authentic bangers but a couple of them unhelpfully stop the show in its tracks, especially if Dineen isn’t singing.

The cast are a versatile, talented bunch, doubling and tripling roles to exhilarating comic effect. Isabel Adomakoh Young is a joy as a particularly dim man from the RA, and a naive painter who follows Thompson, and watching Sinclair switch from Alice to a wonderfully awful old codger (“most women’s brains, are too small for intellectual or creative pursuits”) is astonishing. At the performance I saw, Madeleine McMahon was reading in for an indisposed LJ Parkinson as the senior, and probably most ghastly, of the Royal Academy gatekeepers and the sweet painter Alice falls for, and did a jaw-droppingly fine job of nailing every laugh in both characters and finding nuances of vulnerability in the latter: really terrific work.

Visually, the show could benefit from a little more flamboyance and style in terms of set design and lighting, and the storytelling could be clearer at times. Still, this is an inventive, thought-provoking and refreshingly unconventional piece of music theatre with organic fire in its belly and a lot on its mind. It also made me go away and look at Elizabeth Thompson’s paintings. In a particularly striking moment in the show, Dineen “paints” on a stretched out canvas of almost see-through film using various colours, and a pair of boxing gloves in lieu of a brush. It’s a punchy (literally), memorable image that effectively encapsulates what Thompson, and Modest, tries to do.

THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A BROADWAY BABY: An Evening with Melissa Errico at Crazy Coqs

Melissa Errico with special guest Isabelle Georges 

and James Pearson Band: James Pearson – Piano/MD Sam Burgess – Bass Chris Higgenbottom – Drums Graeme Blevins – Sax/Flute

Le Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel, London – 10 July 2023

A quick glance at Broadway star Melissa Errico’s theatre resumé – Eliza in My Fair Lady, Cosette in Les Misérables, Maria in The Sound Of Music, Betty in White Christmas, Tracy in High Society – gives one an expectation that her cabaret is going to be something pleasant, melodic, easy to sit through, maybe a little bland. The Life And Loves Of A Broadway Baby turns out to be rather more than all that thought, due to the sheer, unexpected force of Ms Errico’s personality and her gloriously off kilter sense of humour.

Having only ever seen her playing (exquisitely) the role of Clara in John Doyle’s 2013 off-Broadway revival of Sondheim’s Passion, I knew she has a gorgeous voice and that she’s wholesomely beautiful. But I wasn’t prepared for her innate sense of camp, her self-deprecating humour and her earthy sensuality and physicality (the way she moves to music is something joyful to behold) when working through a set list heavy on Michel Legrand (she starred in his short-lived Amour musical on Broadway and is clearly a major Francophile), but also encompassing Porter, Gershwin and a fair bit of Sondheim, Her voice is honeyed and rich in the lower register before soaring effortlessly into soprano territory, and remaining miraculously sweet even when at full belt, it’s the sort of sound you don’t tend to hear much of in modern musicals.

With her tumble of brown curls (“well, most of it’s real” she quipped after being complimented), cherubic face and hourglass figure poured into a sparkling gown (“I came dressed as a saxophone”), she’s old school glamorous but delightfully off-the-wall funny as she talks about some of the Broadway flops she’s appeared in, or the showbiz history in her own family (some of her Italian American antecedents were Ziegfeld girls, and her great aunt was in the original cast of Showboat), or when dealing with an impromptu wardrobe malfunction. Her stories ramble a bit, but she’s so engaging and witty that it’s half of the pleasure of the evening. What she doesn’t talk about in the show is her burgeoning second career as a writer, but it helps explains why even at her most eccentric and apparently spontaneous she’s still razor-sharp, and why the spoken parts of the show are as enjoyable as the beautifully jazzed-up versions of such standards as Legrand’s “The Windmills Of Your Mind” or an unexpectedly glorious swinging mash up of My Fair Lady’s “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” with The Sound Of Music’s “My Favourite Things”.

James Pearson’s quartet provide fine back-up, and Errico’s surprise guest, Parisian theatre and cabaret star Isabelle Georges who comes bowling on like a French Carol Burnett before unleashing a sensational, rangy voice and fabulous comedy chops, is likely to have picked up a whole legion of British fans after this performance. In fact, the women – who clearly adore each other – work so well together it would be amazing to see them co-star in a full length show.

Ultimately, Errico is the real deal. An ageless singing actress (she talks about being a barmaid in London in the late 80s and being married for twenty five years but she’s so youthful and vital, it barely seems conceivable) with deceptively rock solid technique, an irrepressible joie de vivre but genuine depth and an innate, unforced likability. More than anything, I now wish I’d seen her Dot/Marie in Sondheim and Lapine’s Sunday In The Park With George (she does a lovely version of “Move On” here)….could somebody please revive that again for her?!