ajhlovestheatre

FAT HAM

by James Ijames

Directed by Saheem Ali

American Airlines Theatre New York City – booking to 25 June 2023

https://www.fathambroadway.com

Hamlet takes time out of his melancholic schedule to express his ongoing discontentment by performing a roof-raising karaoke version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ while Gertrude serenades her volatile new husband with an eye-poppingly suggestive rendition of the Crystal Waters dancefloor classic ‘100% Pure Love’… I mean, sure, why not?! You might have thought that Hamlet is the last of Shakespeare’s plays that could bear a high camp, high energy treatment (I mean, even Lear has a Fool), but you’d have thought wrong.

The bard’s most popular tragedy gets a modern Black American makeover in James Ijames’s rambunctious, Pulitzer-winning piece, newly arrived on Broadway following a critically acclaimed sell out season at the Public Theater downtown, and it proves a life-enhancing addition to the season. It may be more spangles than subtlety, and uses a number of well-worn tropes to hit the comedy home, but it undoubtedly compounds it’s clichés with aplomb and a vitiating showbiz flair, and you are pretty much guaranteed to leave the theatre feeling a hell of a lot better than you did when you went in.

Ijames has transplanted Hamlet to an unspecified Southern state (“not Mississippi, or Alabama or Florida” as the Playbill and published script assure us) and the Danish royals are now a squabbling family looking to possibly sell their barbecue restaurant to alleviate their financial woes, and Elsinore is their back porch. Central to the success of Saheem Ali‘s brash, delightful production is a star-making performance by Marcel Spears as Juicy, the likeable, thicc, damaged queer college student at the heart of Ijames’s loquacious, go-for-broke script.

Spears has a magnetic, witty but sincere stage presence and understated comedy timing that proves irresistible. Crucially, as a troubled young man trying to find the strength in his own softness and struggling to break the family cycle of macho bullshit and bullying, he’s the human bridge between the audience and the frequently wild characters and goings-on elsewhere in the play. However crazy it all gets (and it does get pretty crazy), Spears, clad in a sparkly T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Momma’s Boy”, gives us a central figure to really root for and relate to. He has a way with Ijames’s salty, joyfully bonkers language, especially the wry, askance asides, that almost makes it sound like he’s improvising on the spot. When he tackles actual Shakespeare (or “that dead old white man” as he’s described by one of the characters), such as the famed “what a piece of work is man” speech, it’s a thing of real beauty; he owns it to such an extent that one longs to see him play the original role in full in the near future. This is an irresistible Broadway debut.

If Spears is working on a palpably different energy level to the rest of the company, that feels like a measured choice to demonstrate Juicy’s “otherness”. One of the joys (and there are many) of Ali’s staging is that, in spite of this, all of the characters seem to be inhabiting the same warped, colourful universe, and each of the actors achieve a similar state of blissful, caffeinated energy. Perhaps the most successful is Nikki Crawford, doing utterly gorgeous work – wildly funny but with undertows of tenderness and deep unease as Tedra – Fat Ham’s ‘Gertrude’ equivalent. The newly widowed Queen of Denmark is reimagined here as an ebullient, gleaming, undulating glamazon (“I need noise. Commotion makes me happy”), of whom Crawford makes you believe that underneath all the bling, make-up and flagrant sexuality, here is a woman who genuinely adores her son but finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place.

An unexpected bonus of Ijames’s writing is that he actually gives Tedra more agency, or at least more justification for her actions, than Shakespeare afforded Gertrude. When Juicy quizzes her as to whether she misses his father (depicted as a far more savage figure here than anything envisioned for Hamlet), she responds that “my memory of him won’t allow me to miss him….if you think about something everyday…you not really remembering it. It’s just there. Like heartburn.” She further notes “I went from my Daddy’s house to my husband’s house. I ain’t never been alone.” Her behaviour is sometimes crass but it is fundamentally understandable and, in Crawford’s barnstorming performance, she’s hard and sassy, then she’s soft and conflicted, but she’s seldom less than lovable.

The other women are terrific too: Ophelia becomes feisty, gay Opal (Adrianna Mitchell, seething in a sparkly frock, screamingly funny but also multi-layered…she’s not messing around when Juicy asks her if, as queer kids, they can survive the tough road ahead: “I will. I’m not sure about you.”) Benja K Thomas comes close to stealing the show as the somewhat clichéd God-fearing grande dame. If the revelation concerning her past doesn’t fully convince, it’s an undoubted crowd pleaser, like so much else about this show.

Billy Eugene Jones brings manic glee but also a chilling unpredictability to the dual role of both of Tedra’s husbands (unlike in Shakespeare, this Ghost has plenty to say for himself). Chris Herbie Holland is a glorious comic find as Juicy’s sex-mad, pot-loving, endlessly inappropriate cousin/sidekick, and he gets a monologue near the end that brings the house down, delivered with exactly the right combination of roguish charm and wired mania. Calvin Leon Smith completes the cast as Opal’s button-up military brother, and if he initially appears to have the most thankless role while everyone else is firing on all cylinders, well, just you wait. Smith turns out to be a shape-shifting sensation…

Ijames has a tremendous gift for heightened dialogue rooted in real life, and a beguiling grip on theatricality, which Ali’s production embraces and exploits. However, the show could safely lose around fifteen minutes running time: there is a point about three quarters of the way through where tension and interest flag. If ultimately neither the staging nor the script, for all their snap and pop, makes us truly believe that Juicy is on the verge of killing his horrible stepdad/uncle, there is still plenty here to relish.

Maruti Evans’s house-porch set is fascinating, looking realistic at first, but becoming more and more artificial the longer you scrutinise it, and appears a useful metaphor for Fat Ham’s relationship to Hamlet, but then undergoes a stunning (and, one would imagine, costly) transformation which has to be seen to be believed. Dominique Fawn Hill’s costumes and Brad King’s lighting are equally vivid and ingenious. Skylar Fox’s illusions add a layer of authentic magic. The crowd pleasing ending is the stuff theatregoers memories are made of, so much so that it seems a little churlish to point out that it feels more like the writer wasn’t quite sure how to end the play rather than a natural or credible conclusion to what we’ve watched. It’s pretty wonderful as a theatrical moment though.

Less confrontational and easier to follow than Jordan Cooper’s underrated Ain’t No Mo from earlier this season or Michael R Jackson’s masterpiece A Strange Loop from the last, and a better piece than Douglas Lyons’s Chicken And Biscuits, Fat Ham, despite its faults, feels like a Black American play that could, and should, succeed on Broadway. It’s intelligent, warm, wild, and a rollicking good time in the theatre. No, it’s not perfect, but this cast sell it for everything it’s worth, and then some. Adorable.

WHITE GIRL IN DANGER

Book, Music and Lyrics by Michael R Jackson

Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz

Tony Kiser Theater at Second Stage, New York City – until 21 May 2023

https://2st.com/shows/white-girl-in-danger

It’s hard to believe that this bizarre confection is from the same pen and mind of the artist who gave us the Pulitzer and Tony-winning A Strange Loop, one of the most exciting, ambitious and iconoclastic musicals in decades. Following a preview period and, one would imagine, earlier workshops and readings, Michael R Jackson’s new musical hits the stage, in a desperately unfocused nproduction by Lileana Blain-Cruz, looking more like a first draft than a fully realised piece.

Where Jackson’s masterly earlier piece had a wild but razor sharp vision and a refreshing, fearless honesty, White Girl In Danger gets bogged down in a mire of confusion, unsubtle tropes and unfunny camp as it attempts to examine Black characters fitting into predominantly white narratives in popular entertainment (specifically trashy day time soaps), and the concept of Black womanhood as a whole. At least I think that’s what it’s about, because it’s far from easy to follow, an issue exacerbated by an execrable sound design that renders approximately seventy five per cent of the words completely unintelligible.

It doesn’t seem like Jackson is all that clear what he’s on about either, hence a scene near the end where he appears as a God-like character with an extended monologue (performed brilliantly, to be fair, by Strange Loop alumnus James Jackson Jr) that attempts to unpick and explicate what we’ve all been watching for the best part of three hours. It’s too little and too late, sloppy storytelling that suggests a playwright not at all in charge of his creation.

Musically, there is some exciting stuff here. Jackson builds on his talent for sophisticated pastiche, demonstrated so brilliantly in A Strange Loop, and here gives us a selection of persuasive earworm bangers covering everything from soul to disco and gospel. I’ve no idea what most of the lyrics were but there are some great tunes.

Given that White Girl In Danger predominantly lampoons bad TV dramas, one might expect it to reference a lot of television (there’s a random nod to Sex And The City at one point) but, presumably because it’s a musical, it tends to riff more on other tuners, including Little Shop of Horrors, Into The Woods and Caroline (Or Change), which makes little sense, and has the unfortunate further side effect of forcibly reminding one how much better all those shows actually are. Blain-Cruz’s staging, all cartoon-like zaniness but little coherence, makes the fatal mistake of sending up “bad” acting and performance styles badly. What should be sharp and hilarious feels self-indulgent and amateurish. The “soap opera” plot has elements of Heathers and Mean Girls, and this show, with its cacophonous excess and charmless meandering, makes their respective musical adaptations feel like Sondheim.

The cast work their socks off but are required for the most part to perform at such a full throttle energy level that any nuance goes straight out of the window. Raja Feather-Kelly’s manic choreography is performed with admirable commitment but, at least at the performance I saw, appallingly sloppy pacing and placing. The central role of Keesha Gibbs, suddenly promoted to a best friend role in an otherwise all-white TV soap (Jackson makes a number of eye-rollingly obvious plays on the word “white” throughout), is played with real skill by LaToya Edwards, who is clearly very talented. She has terrific stage presence and a powerful voice, but is saddled with a role with such whiplash fast changes in attitude and intent that it’s almost unplayable.

As Nell, her Everywoman mama who rapidly and inexplicably rises through every strata of society and profession in the course of the show, and gets a deafening 11 o’clock long on riffing but short on everything else, Tarra Conner Jones is shrill, committed and about as subtle as a steamroller in a frock. Molly Hager, Alyse Alan Louis and Lauren Marcus play with gusto a trio of mean girl type Caucasian protagonists from the soap all of whose character titles are variations on the same name (and of course White is in the surname), and clearly all have considerable performing chops, despite the exaggerated obviousness of what they’ve been tasked with, and the crass “jokes” about topics like self-harm and eating disorders.

It’s just all so lacking in real wit and originality. There’s an over-abundance of ideas and concepts that never get followed through and the sheer length of the show coupled with a cast of characters from which we are (presumably deliberately) kept at arms length, means that boredom eventually sets in. There are moments where it seems to be aiming at being edgy and shocking but the really shocking thing here is that this script ever got beyond the first table read or that anybody looked at Adam Rigg’s threadbare set design or Montana Levi Blanco’s hideous costumes and thought they were ok. Visually, this is an ugly and cheap looking production that feels less redolent of the daytime TV drama it’s sending up than the least imaginative, underfunded am-dram.

White Girl In Danger is, at least at this stage of its development, a confused and confusing hot mess. I can only hope it’s a blip and that the sizzling A Strange Loop (coming to the Barbican this summer and on no account to be missed by anybody with a genuine interest in musical theatre) represents the authentic artistry of Michael R Jackson, rather than the other way round. London critics gave the satirical Berlusconi musical at Southwark a really rough ride recently….well, that show, over-ambitious as it is, wipes the floor with this.

A LITTLE LIFE

based on the novel by Hanya Yanagihara

adapted by Koen Tachelet, Hanya Yanagihara and Ivo van Hove

directed by Ivo van Hove

Harold Pinter Theatre London – until 18 June 2023

Savoy Theatre London – 4 July to 5 August 2023

https://www.atgtickets.com/search/?q=A%20Little%20Life

The thought that repeatedly struck me when reading Hanya Yanagihara’s dazzling literary masterpiece of human cruelty was “how much can one person take?”. I was reminded of that again and again watching the punishingly lengthy stage drama fashioned from it, but this time, as the playing time surged well past the three hour mark, I was thinking about the audience almost as much as poor Jude, the beaten, abused, irreparably damaged soul at the heart of this grim but compelling epic.

This is a very difficult watch: in adapting her epic opus, Yanagihara, in collaboration with Koen Tachelet and Marmite Dutch auteur Ivo van Hove (who also directs), spares us, and Jude, very little. There’s graphic self harm, rape, child abuse, violence, attempted suicide, amputation, and enough existential despair to sink a whole flotilla of ships of dreams.

Remarkably, A Little Life is also a study in enduring friendship, even though its conclusion seems to be that love is not enough to tether a person to life when their very existence means so little to them. Jude has a wonderful circle of friends – adopted father Harold (Zubin Varla), self-involved artist JB (Omari Douglas), Park Avenue trust fund beneficiary Malcolm (Zach Wyatt), and charismatic actor Willem (Luke Thompson) whose love goes above and beyond all reasonable expectations – and a privileged Manhattan lifestyle, funded by his successful legal career. None of it is enough, and as he imparts his horrifying backstory, it becomes apparent why.

Jude (known to his friends as ‘the Postman’: “post-sexual, post-racial, post-identity, post-past”) is an orphan forced into child prostitution by a predatory monk, before enduring a succession of brutalisations that leave him physically disabled and mentally disturbed, finding brief respite from the horrors in his head by regularly slashing at his forearms with a razor. He’s also a renaissance man with a delicate appreciation of the arts, the singing voice of a top chorister, and a brilliant legal mind.

Nearly as tragic as what Jude has to put with his in his young life, is the classic victims self-blame he carries around with him like an immovable boulder: he fundamentally believes that he is the engineer of his misfortunes, that he is forever tainted, and unworthy of love or even basic human consideration. This may just be the cruellest challenge Yanagihara imposes on him, and is all the more powerful because it bears the unmistakable ring of psychological truth.

Not everything else feels as authentic, at least not on stage. Upsetting as the book is, the piling on of misery and trauma across 700+ pages of often exquisite writing with a compelling narrative sweep, feels measured, plausible, compulsive, even as it’s utterly horrendous. Performed live, it starts to resemble a relentless catalogue of horrors where on more than one occasion you may find yourself wondering just what you’re getting out of watching this unfold. There’s no hope, no joy, little humour, zero redemption, apart from a genuinely beautiful final speech, delivered with exquisite restrained emotionalism by Zubin Varla, exhorting us all to find and spread compassion everywhere. Ultimately though, the message is life is shit, and then you die…horribly.

When reading the book, the implausibilities in the plot don’t seem as glaring as they do when played out on stage. Personally, I had a hard time believing that, for all his intelligence, Jude could achieve such high status within the legal profession, and nor did I buy that Willem, for all his love for Jude, would have actually become sexually attracted to him. Tellingly, in the novel, Willem continues sleeping with women, initially at least, because Jude is understandably unable to have sex. By taking that out of the script, Willem seems a bit too good to be true, despite the warmth, charm and intensity of Luke Thompson’s performance.

There are times when van Hove’s production is reminiscent of The Inheritance, another long-winded NYC-set study of gay angst and trauma across decades, but without the humour or the catharsis. Stephen Daldry’s staging of that Matthew Lopez two parter had a similar chilly-chic minimalism but also a piercing focus and intelligent theatricality somewhat lacking here, where van Hove’s blocking is often clunky, verging on the banal when it seeks to be literal.

A section of the audience are on stage, which gives Jan Versweyveld’s chilly, spartan set the look of a courtroom, although what they’re there to reach a verdict on is unclear….that life sucks maybe? Either way, so much of the play is directed out front, with the view further impeded by furniture and a free standing sink, that one can’t imagine it’s a very satisfying experience, unless watching one of this country’s most bankable actors enacting self-mutilation is your particular bag.

That star is of course James Norton, best known for his screen work but here giving a performance of such utter fearlessness, craft and commitment that, even if he never sets foot on a stage again, he deserves his place in the pantheon of highly regarded theatre actors. Seldom off stage for the best part of four hours, he invests Jude with a shy, watchful dignity that makes it all the more affecting when it is ripped away from him. He’s covered in blood for much of the latter part of the show, as though the inner taints Jude is nursing are becoming manifest on his face and body. He subtly suggests the character’s different ages with breathtaking economy, just a change in gait, or a tilt of the head. When he lets us glimpse his anger, it is bleakly well done. If he can’t quite make Jude into a fully rounded character that may be because somebody who has suffered to this degree probably stopped functioning as a fully rounded human some years ago. It’s a hell of a performance.

None of the acting strikes a single wrong note, something of an achievement in a show of this ambition and sheer length. Elliot Cowan is astonishing as the trio of men who wreak such devastation on Jude, and Nathalie Armin brings such nuance and depth to the sole female role that you can almost overlook that she’s little more than a plot device. Emilio Doorgasingh is compelling as a doctor driven by a combination of exasperation, pity and fury.

Anybody who’s read the novel and goes to the play will have some idea of what to expect, but anybody who comes to this cold may be astonished at the sheer nastiness of much of it, and wonder quite what the point is. Yes, it’s gripping and yes it’s magnificently performed but ultimately the law of diminishing returns means that as the atrocities pile up, there’s a danger of some viewers becoming oddly desensitised.

Although seldom bored, I found myself becoming exhausted by the sheer nihilism of it all. Many others will disagree. I was truly moved only once: when Willem hauls his lover’s desperate, broken body up to dance, screaming heavenwards at an unforgiving God to notice what’s happening; it’s a cry of rebellion and a last ditch attempt to hold back the dark that constantly threatens to engulf Jude. It’s a heartrending moment amongst many where I found myself feeling mainly appalled.

THE DRY HOUSE

written and directed by Eugene O’Hare

Marylebone Theatre London – until 6 May 2023

https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/the-dry-house

Maybe it’s because he’s a successful performer himself, one with an impressive array of top flight stage and screen credits, but Eugene O’Hare feels very much like an actors writer. He creates meaty, flawed, mighty characters and fills their mouths with the poetic and the profane, in plays that don’t flinch from the grimy underbelly of human existence but are shot through with jet black wit and unexpected moments of devastating tenderness. In short, he gives his colleagues some great stuff to get their teeth into. His astonishing three hander, The Dry House, premiering at the new Marylebone Theatre in a well nigh perfect production by the author himself, continues to demonstrate his remarkable ability to pan beautiful gold from ugliness.

Set in an Irish border town, The Dry House is an excoriating study of the effects of alcoholism: the shame, deceit, self-abasement. It’s also about bereavement, family, and the little lies, self-delusion and tough love employed to allow under-examined lives to make it through to the next day.

Mairead McKinley is alcoholic Chrissy, whose life fell apart and whose drinking spiralled upwards when her teenage daughter Heather (Carla Langley) died in a car accident. Chrissy’s sister Claire (Kathy Kiera Clarke) arrives to get her sibling into a recovery facility (the “dry house” of the title), which she herself is paying for. Chrissy, in her drunken reveries, speaks to Heather, constantly replaying their final conversation. The play is a riveting fusion of naturalism and the fanciful. It intriguingly suggests that alcoholism is a sort of club, and that membership isn’t dependent on being from any particular stratum of society, however low or high, and acknowledges how hard it is to break the addiction: Chrissy is in the process, with Claire’s help, of tapering down her consumption, taking just the four cans of lager for breakfast(!).

It also amusingly depicts the snobbery and denial amongst boozers. Claire herself likes a drink or several but because she quaffs premium wines, instead of the supermarket spirits that are all Chrissy can afford, and keeps a clean house, she is automatically less at risk than her flailing sister. Interestingly, for all the hold that alcohol clearly has over her, Chrissy is a woman of some wit and considerable insight. If an additional thematic strand regarding the dangers of the internet initially seems to belong to another play, it turns out to have a surprising but plausible pertinence to Heather’s lost young life.

The writing is sensational: raw, non-judgemental, spare then suddenly and deliciously baroque. Each of the characters gets an illuminating monologue, and the combination of storytelling, insight and sheer acting skill from all three brilliant performers fair pin you to your seat. Remarkably, the play ends on a sort-of optimistic note, but prepare to have the wind knocked out of you.

O’Hare’s earlier plays The Weatherman and Sydney and the Old Girl were seen at the Park Theatre pre-pandemic and gave acclaimed actors such as Alec Newman (in the former), Miriam Margolyes (in the latter) and Mark Hadfield (in both) roles to revel in. The Dry House affords similarly challenging but satisfying opportunities to a trio of magnificent actresses, and McKinley, Clarke and Langley are delivering breathtakingly good work. Niall McKeever’s appropriately grim, fully realised set and Robbie Butler’s deceptively ingenious lighting design are further elements to savour in a virtually flawless piece of theatre.

All in all, this is a bracing, brutal, bruising and beautiful ninety minutes, and I suspect it’ll turn out to be one of the best new plays of the year. I can’t see the pubs in the Marylebone area doing much of a trade every night after performances of this though.

BETTY BLUE EYES

Book by Ron Cowne and Daniel Lipman

Music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drew’s

Based on the Handmade film ‘A Private Function’ and the original story by Alan Bennett and Malcom Mowbray, adapted from the screenplay by Alan Bennett

Directed by Sasha Regan

Union Theatre London – until 22 April 2023

http://uniontheatre.biz/show/betty-blue-eyes/

I’ve tried so hard to love Betty Blue Eyes. When Cameron Mackintosh’s original production was in the West End back in 2011, directed by Richard Eyre and starring Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith, I went back more than once to try and pinpoint the magic and joy so many of my friends and colleagues were finding in it. To no avail: despite a handsome production, a strong company and a particularly beautiful central bit of non-human casting (more on that shortly), I found this workmanlike musical distillation of the post-war set film comedy A Private Function, remained, for me anyway, resolutely earthbound. Sure, it had some catchy tunes and amusing moments but the adoration it inspired in many other people who also really know their musical theatre pretty much eluded me.

To be honest, it still does, although Sasha Regan’s lovely new production makes a far more convincing case for it than the big budget original. If I still find it hard to get invested in the socially upward preoccupations of snobbish Joyce Chilvers and her milquetoast husband Gilbert (roles immortalised on screen by Maggie Smith and Michael Palin) or the shenanigans around a contraband pig (the titular Betty) being reared to feed local dignitaries at a feast to celebrate Princess Elizabeth (later QE2)’s wedding to Prince Philip, this new iteration has a lot of charm. It also tethers the show more closer to the uniquely English musical making traditions of Lionel Bart, Sandy Wilson and the Stratford East shows of Joan Littlewood rather than taking on Broadway at its own game, as the first production seemed to be doing.

There’s a considerable thrill to be had from seeing, at very close quarters, a cast of eighteen, unmic’d on a tiny stage, roaring through the production numbers, and Aaron Clingham’s slick three piece band brings a freshness and precision to George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s toe-tapping tunes. The voices are uniformly magnificent. Kasper Cornish’s choreography matches the score in that it compounds every cliché in the book, but it does so with real flair and invention, and is some of the most striking work of it’s kind I’ve ever seen on a fringe stage. Reuben Speed’s split level set makes excellent, focussed use of the limited space available, and is atmospherically lit by Alastair Lindsay, conjuring up suggestions of parlours, pubs and barns out of the darkness and swirls of dry ice.

If Ron Cowne and Daniel Lipman’s book remains a bit of a plodder, and still has jarring inconsistencies in tone between gentle comedy, crudity and cruelty, Regan’s account of it is sensitive and smart, skilfully navigating between full company sections and more intimate sections. The mid-second act metamorphosis into domestic farce is particularly nicely done. The bewitching Betty, a sow with stunning blue eyes and a chronic wind problem, and the story’s catalyst, is embodied here as a rather beautiful, patchwork puppet (handled by Georgia Boothman), just lifelike enough to be relatable but not so real that the threat of her imminent demise verges on the distressing, although the constant meat references may turn the more delicate vegetarians stomach. The original production shot itself in the foot by having an animatronic Betty that was so cute, and responsive, that it pretty much voided any empathy one had for the human characters. This works so much better.

The cast do smashing work. Sam Kipling finds real emotion under Gilbert’s meek exterior, investing his second act cri de cœur solo “The Kind Of Man I Am” with authentic power. Amelia Atherton has star presence and a belting voice as Joyce. If she reads as a bit too young and uncomplicated, it does go some way towards excusing the woman’s unsympathetic behaviour. Already very good here, I suspect she’d rip the roof off a theatre in a more age appropriate role. Stuart Simons is hilarious as a particularly spiteful member of the local top brass, and David Pendlebury gets a lot of comic mileage out of Inspector Wormwold, all bent out of shape with his own importance and unresolved bitterness. Josh Perry is hugely likeable as a townsman whose devotion to the titular porker is pretty bizarre, and goes curiously unacknowledged.

The terrific 2015 Union production of the Viv Nicholson bio tuner Spend Spend Spend managed to improve on the overblown West End original, the snug confines of the venue helping to focus and amplify the piece’s strengths. The Union has since moved across the road but a similar thing has happened here, although it’s worth noting that anything that happens on the unraised stage floor (and there’s quite a lot) may be invisible if you’re not sitting in the front couple of rows. Betty Blue Eyes as a show is a bit parochial for my taste, but this is a very fine version of it, and the idea of famished Little Britainers turning on each other feels arguably more relevant now than it did back in 2011. I found it a cracking production of a so-so musical but fans of the original are unlikely to be disappointed.

EUGENIUS!

Book, music and lyrics by Ben Adams and Chris Wilkins

Directed by Hannah Chissick

Turbine Theatre, London – until 28 May 2023

https://www.theturbinetheatre.com/whats-on/eugenius

Get your leg warmers out and prepare for blast off, Ben Adams and Chris Wilkin’s adorable pop musical Eugenius! is back. This ridiculous, feel good sweetheart of a show marries together comic strip capers, sci-fi, 1980s nostalgia, earworm songs, obvious but irresistible comedy, and high camp in a caffeinated confection that is about as subtle as being beaten about the head with a rolled up copy of Smash Hits, but a lot more fun. Even when presented in a less-than-ideal space.

The premise is simple: High School geek Eugene (a deeply loveable Elliott Evans, who fields a terrific high rock tenor voice) escapes his dislocated existence by drawing sci-fi cartoons inspired by dreams he’s been having. They get picked up as the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster, Eugene’s life is transformed… then fact and fiction start to collide to broad comic effect. If Hannah Chissick’s staging is less successful overall than Ian Talbot’s original Other Palace production, for reasons I’ll get to shortly, the storytelling certainly feels clearer.

Aside from the wackiness, there’s also a lot of heart here. Eugene’s Mum is dead and his uneasy relationship with his well-meaning but over-stretched Dad is conveyed with surprising sensitivity. So too is the bond between Eugene and his best friends, the endlessly priapic Feris and adoring fellow-geek Janey. Anybody who saw the original production will probably miss the sheer brilliance of Dan Buckley and Laura Baldwin, but James Hameed and Jaina Brock-Patel inherit these roles with considerable charm, attack and strong vocals.

The unreconstructed attitude to women firmly roots the show in the past (Maddison Firth is great glamorous fun as a cartoon then film character named simply ‘Super Hot Lady’ and the air-headed actress who portrays her, but the lack of agency and intelligence in the characterisation as written may not sit well with many viewers) but it’s worth noting that it’s Brock-Patel’s quietly strong Janey who is the heartbeat and resolution of a story that, on paper, looks pretty male-centric. In fairness, Super Hot Lady’s male counterparts, the hunky Tough Man and the Schwarzenegger-lite actor who plays him, are also thick as mince. Dominic Andersen is hilarious as these terminally confused himbos.

Additionally, this new version redresses the male-female power balance even further by making the villainous film mogul who corrupts Eugene’s artistic vision and drives a wedge between him and his friends, into a woman. Lara Denning delivers a bona fide star performance, all high hair, high belting and high camp, she’s worth the price of admission all by herself. Rhys Wilkinson is magnificently vivid as her comically spiteful sidekick/underling, and is gloriously double cast as a clarion-voiced Space Diva. Joseph Beach offers great comedy value as a vengeful space villain, chewing the scenery like a tall version of Shrek’s Lord Farqaad.

Chissick’s well paced but underpopulated production (it badly needs at least four more cast members) leans heavily into the cartoon aesthetic: Andrew Exeter’s unit set is repeatedly augmented by colourful, impressive video designs (co-created with Andy Walton; the show’s authors Adams and Wilkins even pop up at one point, to delightful and unexpected effect). Inventive and eye-catching as this all is, the whole show feels frustratedly hemmed-in on the Turbine’s tiny stage. This applies especially to Aaron Renfree’s inspiredly derivative choreography, which recreates signature moves from sundry music videos of the 1980s. It needs room to breathe but that seldom happens. The playing space is so small that the company gets few chances to really cut loose without possibly banging into the scenery, inevitably robbing Eugenius! of some of its euphoria. So does the tinny sound design, only a couple of the numbers really taking wing, largely due to the epic voices. Musically, the show pastiches the sounds of the 80s with considerable wit and flair, and produces a bunch of exhilarating, genuinely memorable tunes, but the music of that period was all about excess and bombast, and it’s hard to recreate that with just two musicians. Still, anybody who hears the title song will be humming it for days afterwards.

Despite the aforementioned reservations, the pure joy and affection of Adams and Wilkins’s off-the-wall creation remains. Eugenius! is still a good night, but the confounding thing is, as any fan will tell you, is that it has the potential to be a really great one.

HAY FEVER

by Noël Coward

Directed by Tam Williams

The Mill at Sonning, Sonning Eye near Reading – until 13 May 2023

https://millatsonning.com/shows/hay-fever/

Allegedly inspired by Noel Coward‘s weekend visits to the country home of legendary American actress Laurette Taylor, where any unwillingness or inability to participate in increasingly bizarre parlour games resulted in relegation to social pariah, this classic is a comedy of manners….bad manners.

Hay Fever’s humour derives primarily from its characters. Coward’s text doesn’t have the epigrammatic sparkle of, say, his Private Lives and Present Laughter, nor the dramatic intrigue of Design For Living or The Vortex. Neither does it have the macabre originality of Blithe Spirit. Yet it remains one of the most frequently produced of all the Master’s plays, partly I suspect because it features a ham-bone humdinger of a female lead role in Judith Bliss, the histrionic, hilariously self-obsessed retired actress who treats her soignée rural life like it’s just one more of act of high drama for her to sashay flamboyantly through. In the West End alone, she has been embodied by such luminaries as Dame Judi Dench, Felicity Kendal, Maria Aitken, Lindsay Duncan and the late Geraldine McEwan.

It’s a cracking star role and Tam Williams’s new staging fields multi Olivier award nominee Issy Van Randwyck, who gives us a captivating Judith equal parts honey and steel, utterly convinced of her own allure but blithely unaware of how ridiculous she’s often being; she’s the kind of woman who has camp running through her veins. She could afford to ramp up the ruthlessness a notch but this is generally a very funny, satisfying performance.

Williams’s solid production lacks finesse at times but mostly plays to the strengths of the cast, which are considerable. The eccentric, artsy Bliss family – father David is a novelist and the grown-up children Sorrel and Simon are gleefully highly strung – who have all invited weekend guests unbeknownst to each other thereby setting what plot there is in motion, are also very musical in this reading. Cue a delightful segue from act one to two which sees the entire family donning costumes and instruments to entertain their not necessarily welcome guests. Williams gives his leading lady more opportunities to sing than most of her predecessors in the role, and she seizes them with relish.

Otherwise, this is a fairly straightforward reading of the play, entertaining but with nothing particularly radical or illuminating about it. If you’re after the theatrical equivalent to comfort food, here it is. A bit more edge wouldn’t go amiss however. For Hay Fever to truly fly one has to understand just how outrageous these people are being. It’s maybe a reflection of the modern day obsession with social media, reality television etc. whereby bad behaviour is all too often presented as popular entertainment. By comparison, the shenanigans of these theatrical types feels less spicy and naughty than once it did.

Furthermore, there is a tendency throughout to sacrifice the precision of high comedy playing to sheer volume. There is very little variation in pace, and enjoyable though it remains, the ultimate euphoria of proper comedy lift-off is seldom fully achieved.

The central quartet fully convince as a family. Van Randwyck’s Judith and Nick Waring’s nicely bumbling yet cranky David seem to share a tacit understanding of the absurdity of much of their behaviour and together make total sense of the way they throw themselves wholeheartedly into the domestic playacting much to the consternation of the assembled guests. There is an intriguing suggestion that daughter Sorrel (Emily Panes) is the most mature of the bunch and that she truly sees how ridiculous they are all being. As her brother, hair permanently a-mess and daubs of paint randomly all over him, William Pennington makes a beguiling man-child.

The idea that Clara the maid, who was formerly Judith’s West End dresser, is every bit as theatrical as her employers, is not particularly new, but I’ve never seen it taken to the extremes that Williams allows Joanna Brookes to get away with here. It’s very broad comedy shtick but it really works and Ms Brookes comes pretty close to running off with the show. I also really liked Aretha Ayeh’s vampish Myra, who a clearly threatened Judith cattily describes as being the sort of woman who “goes about using sex as a sort of shrimping net”. Ayeh gives her a sloe-eyed sophistication, but it’s hilarious when her bemused facade cracks, and she has a full on temper tantrum, while berating the mystified Bliss tribe. Also wonderful is Beth Lilly as the most socially awkward of all the guests, brought down from London by David so that he can study her for a character study in his latest book, although she is not aware of this. Lilly beautifully judges this poor young woman’s constant battle between angsty hysteria and complete mortification.

Seeing Hay Fever at the lovely Mill at Sonning, not far from the Thames-side village Cookham, where Coward’s play is actually set, feels almost like immersive theatre. It also feels a little like stepping back in time to a gentler era. Some people may find it a little staid, but it’s not hard to see why it proves so perennially popular.

MARJORIE PRIME

by Jordan Harrison

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole

Menier Chocolate Factory, London – until 6 May 2023

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/Online/default.asp

When we first encounter the majestic Anne Reid as the titular character of this highly original American tragicomedy, she’s sitting in a state-of-the-art living facility chatting through reminiscences and shared memories with an elegantly suited man (Richard Fleeshman) many decades her junior. Strangely though, they talk like an old married couple, except that he sometimes needs clueing-in with certain facts ….and what’s with his ongoing air of amused detachment? The reason for that detachment becomes clear soon enough… Fleeshman’s Walter is in fact an Artificial Intelligence avatar for Marjorie‘s late husband, and he is the physical manifestation of how she wants to remember him, which is in his prime. ‘Prime’ is also the name for these ingenious, robotic creations, designed to help with the grieving process and Walter’s Prime is here to spoil Marjorie with endless time and patience.

A 2018 off-Broadway success, Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime has arrived at the Menier Chocolate Factory with a powerhouse cast, in an immaculate, subtly unsettling production by Dominic Dromgoole that’s shot through with moments of piercing human pain. Perhaps most surprisingly, given the subject matter, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny, although the humour is definitely more bitter than sweet.

Sci-fi on stage can be tricky: Mike Bartlett’s otherwise wonderful epic Earthquakes In London came unstuck during its dystopian futuristic sections, where the heartfelt brilliance of what had gone before was sacrificed to fanciful material that verged on the risible. If Ayckbourn was more successful in his late 1980s/early 1990s Henceforward and Comic Potential, that may be because they were comedies, however twisted. Harrison’s piece avoids the pitfalls by keeping the setting and terminology low-key and not too far removed from the familiar (for instance, at one point, the idea of somebody still having an iPhone is floated as something rather quaint and archaic). He renders it even more relatable by making Marjorie’s anxious daughter Tess (Nancy Carroll, utterly sublime) mistrustful of the technology that has inserted into her life a forever version of the Dad she lost years previously.

Harrison suggests that the Primes, with their bland lack of jagged edges and conflict, and who have to be drip fed information in order to interact with their humans, can be more comforting and agreeable to deal with than the real thing, but never suggests that is actually a good thing. His text questions the whole notion of truth and the reliability of memory; it’s big complex stuff but boiled down to this family, these issues, this time.

It’s those human aspects that really makes this strange yet compelling piece fly. The conflicted, guilt-infused relationship between Marjorie and Tess is exquisitely handled, and almost unbearably poignant. So is the depiction of the marriage between Tess and her kind, endlessly affable husband (Tony Jayawardena, providing unshowy, heartbreaking proof that good doesn’t necessarily mean boring): he’s a lot more optimistic than she is, and doesn’t understand the full extent of her turmoil, although eventually he can’t escape it.

The acting is flawless throughout. Fleeshman never overplays Walter’s benign blankness and it’s fascinating watching the calculated, carefully calibrated way he moves. Reid has seldom been better, suggesting a likeable but frequently spiky mother figure, matter-of-fact, sometimes unkindly so, and unwilling to accept the encroaching of the dark.

Jayawardena makes something fine and selfless out of Jon’s big-heartedness and is desperately moving in the penultimate scene where he is essentially priming Tess’s own Prime with some very painful memories. Carroll inhabits every nuance and beat of Tess’s warmth, dark humour, exasperation…it’s an astonishing performance that gets if anything even more impressive when she reappears as the Prime, where the uprightness is replaced with a serenity that unnerves but fascinates: even her face looks subtly different, smoother, glossier, yet blanker.

If you’re in the grip of an existential crisis, or are generally feeling a bit low, this is maybe not the play for you. However, it’s a riveting, thought-provoking, and ultimately haunting meditation on identity, getting older, what we leave behind, and the effect we have on those we love and those who love us. It’s a reminder to ensure that life isn’t just something to be endured while waiting for death. It also deals very intelligently and presciently with the idea of A.I. and the thorny subject of humanity versus the brilliance of science.

There’s an engrossingly eerie final scene involving all the Primes that lingers in the memory after the play is over, simultaneously funny and chilling. You need to see it for yourself. Although running at a fleet 80 minutes, Marjorie Prime is more profound and troubling than many plays twice its length.

GUYS AND DOLLS

Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser

Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows

based on the stories and characters of Damon Runyon

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Bridge Theatre, London – booking until 2 September 2023

https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/guys-and-dolls/

I can’t imagine it ever not being a pleasure to encounter Damon Runyon’s gallery of petty criminals, gamblers, loafers, cops, sweethearts and showgirls, especially when filtered through Swerling and Burrows’s beautifully crafted script and above all the brassy brilliance of Frank Loesser’s score. Guys And Dolls is one of the all-time great Broadway musicals, a much-revived kaleidoscope of memorable characters, barnstorming numbers, rambunctious dialogue and sheer irrepressible joie de vivre tinged with just enough real feeling to make it fully satisfying. It’s also deceptively complex.

For any theatre enthusiast who has been living under a rock, Nicholas Hytner’s new production is unique because it is immersive, in the manner of this venue’s previous acclaimed versions of A Midsummer Nights Dream and Julius Caesar, with the auditorium floor turned, by designers Bunny Christie (set) and Paule Constable (lighting), into a facsimile of 1940s Times Square, with neon signage overhead and New York cops marshalling audience members between hydraulic platforms rising and set pieces being pushed on to create sundry locations, from Salvation Army mission to garish Hot Box nightclub to the sewers beneath the bustling sidewalks to a colourfully festive Havana. Whatever else, it’s a fantastic feat of stage management and looks set to become the biggest hit in the Bridge’s history so far…and it hasn’t even got Laura Linney or Maggie Smith in it!

It does however feature a London stage debut by Andrew Richardson as Sky Masterson, the suave professional gambler who unexpectedly falls for Salvation Army officer Sarah Brown, that has a similar impact as when Hugh Jackman first exploded onto the NT Olivier stage in the 1997 Oklahoma!, and would alone be worth the price of a ticket, even if there weren’t so many other things to enjoy here. He is sensational: funny, charming, effortlessly commanding the space, finding a warmth beneath the swagger, and suggesting, before meeting the luminous Ms Brown, a fast-paced life but with a vital piece missing. He then movingly projecting a sense of devastating, almost nihilistic, loss when he thinks Sarah is out of his life for good. He also has a gorgeous, authentic croon of a singing voice that recalls Harry Connick Jr or vintage Sinatra. I’ve seen some terrific performers in this role (Clarke Peters, Ewan McGregor, Adam Cooper, Jamie Parker) but, to quote one of Loesser’s songs for Sky and Sarah, “I’ve Never Been In Love Before”. Seriously though, don’t miss this new star.

Opposite him, Celinde Schoenmaker is an entrancing Sarah, capturing unerringly the character’s unusual mixture of religious fervour and romantic longing. It’s all too easy to see why Sky falls for her. Schoenmaker’s voice is utterly glorious, so rich and full in its lower register that it’s almost a surprise, albeit an exhilarating one, when she moves seamlessly into her soprano range, which is equally lovely (she was a long-serving Christine in the West End Phantom and Jenny Lind in the Menier Barnum). She also has some delightfully off-beat comedy instincts. It’s a marvellous performance. More than any other production I’ve seen, this Guys and Dolls puts this particular couple front and centre, and when this pairing is in focus the show soars.

Richardson and Schoenmaker are so good they manage to rise above one of this staging’s more glaring missteps. Where usually the pair’s Cuban sojourn culminates via Bacardi and a jealous punch-up (initiated by Sarah) in their first full embrace, here Hytner and his choreographers Arlene Phillips and James Cousins have the couple head to a raunchy gay dive, where a bunch of moustachioed, muscled young men who look as though they’re about to launch into the Village People’s “YMCA” when not trying to get off with Sky (who could blame them?) disport sexily. It’s certainly different but it makes no sense. Why on earth would Masterson think it appropriate to bring Sister Brown here, especially if, as this production seems to be implying, he leads some sort of double life. Furthermore, however funny it is to watch the magnificent Ms Schoenmaker knocking seven bells out of the male chorus, it does risk casting Sarah in an unappealing homophobic light, thereby losing much of the audience’s sympathy. It’s a puzzling choice.

As Nathan Detroit, the fixer habitually on the lookout for a venue for “the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York”, Daniel Mays has exactly the right air of a man-child weighed down with both sweaty desperation and a genuine love for the leading lady of the Hot Box, “the famous fiancée” Miss Adelaide. Marisha Wallace is tremendously likeable in this gift of a role, even if she seems a little uncomplicated and vivacious to ever endure a fourteen year engagement or to suffer from a permanent psychosomatic cold as the result of her romantic dissatisfaction. It’s a sexy but surprisingly low-key reading of the part (except for the unexpectedly fierce nightclub numbers) and personally I missed the pathos that arises from the fictionalised home life Adelaide has created for herself and Nathan in a series of letters to her mother. She should break your heart, as well as be screamingly funny, and this Adelaide isn’t quite there yet for me, although that may well come as the run progresses.

Guys and Dolls does of course feature the showstopper of all showstoppers in the legendary “Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat” and Cedric Neal’s roof-scraping Gospel belt and caffeinated joy makes a gargantuan meal of it. His warm, funny Nicely Nicely Johnson also has a palpable camaraderie with Mark Oxtoby’s fellow hustler Benny Southstreet, and the title song has seldom seemed so irresistible. Other golden performances in the supporting cast include Anthony O’Donnell as a Sally Army elder whose gentle, lilting “More I Cannot Wish You” to a lovelorn Sarah brings a genuine tear to the eye, and Katy Secombe doubling up as a redoubtable General and as the Hot Box’s sassy, androgynous MC.

Arlene Phillips’s supercharged choreography, created with James Cousins, nicely mixes traditional showbiz flamboyance with something tougher and more aggressive. Performed with energised grace and gusto by the tightly drilled ensemble, it sometimes feels compromised by the environmental staging (“Lucky Be A Lady” is a whirl of restless movement rather than a laser-sharp statement of intent, and it feels staged that way mainly to ensure that the entire house gets a look at Richardson’s Sky). It’s worth bearing in mind also that, if you book the promenade tickets, you may struggle to see everything and the dances are probably the biggest casualty of that.

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but, beyond the initial wow factor of walking into the Bridge’s reimagined auditorium and the nice use of standing patrons as table-seated guests at the top of act two (it’s worth getting back into the auditorium early, as there’s a unique treat, especially if you’re a fan of Cedric Neal, and tapdancing), I didn’t love the immersive element. For me, it renders Nicholas Hytner’s frequently splendid production slightly uneven, compromising the flow and focus of the piece. Shakespeare, or a musical like Here Lies Love, which was based on a concept album, are better suited to this sort of treatment, rather than a meticulously well constructed, fully integrated musical comedy crafted with Swiss watch-like precision.

Nevertheless, when it fully works, it’s wonderful: that’s basically almost any time Richardson and Schoenmaker are onstage, in the irresistible connection between Neal and Oxtoby, in the audience-slaying exhilaration released by Neal’s big number, in the detail in some of the supporting performances, so vivid you can almost sense their feet aching, and in the uproarious “Marry The Man Today” duet for the female leads, the conclusion of which is one of the few times when Wallace’s thrilling vocals are able to be given full rein. This is the most ambitious production that the Bridge has undertaken so far, and it’s scheduled to play throughout the summer, and no autumn show has been announced: despite my reservations I would, if I were a betting man, put my shirt on this perennial crowdpleaser extending indefinitely.