ajhlovestheatre

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.

THE JOURNEY TO VENICE

by Bjørg Vik

translated by Janet Garton

Directed by Wiebke Green

Finborough Theatre, London – until 25 March 2023

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/the-journey-to-venice/

Almost more moving than the depiction of a very old married couple eking out a existence in genteel poverty, which takes up most of this award-winning Norwegian play, is the small act of kindness that briefly transforms the lives of Edith and Oscar at the very end of Bjørg Vik’s quietly devastating study. In Janet Garton’s elegant translation, matched by Wiebke Green’s delicate but unsparing direction, Vik’s 1992 play emerges as a melancholic yet comical contemplation on the vicissitudes and challenges of decades long relationships, and the half truths and fantasies humans treat themselves to in order to make difficult lives bearable.

When we first encounter the Tellmans on Kit Hinchcliffe’s realistically homely but rundown set, starkly appointed and lit, they seem like a pair of amiably off-the-wall former academics, she spritely, he almost blind. They are worldly, witty, with a welter of mutual affection and minor grievances. Annabel Leventon and Tim Hardy invest them with so much detail and warmth that it’s hard to believe they’re not married in real life. Slowly the realisation dawns that they are living in the most financially straitened of circumstances, something Leventon’s luminous, troubled Edith is doing her best to keep from Hardy’s endearing Oscar, who is already plagued with guilt at not being able to give his wife the retirement she deserves, that the bills are piling up and she’s started selling off artworks and books to make money.

Almost more touching still, is the fact that this eccentric couple periodically go off on “journeys” without leaving home, whereby they run cinefilms of global locations visited when younger, while eating food from such places and wearing makeshift costumes. It’s a little bit of light in otherwise pretty dark existences. The play’s title derives from one such travelogue, where tensions and petty jealousies within their relationship are laid bare.

There are shades of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the subplot of a lost child, except that where Albee is mostly bile and bitterness, Vik is a deep well of sadness. When young plumber Christopher arrives (Nathan Welsh, utterly adorable) to sort out some domestic maintenance, Edith alights on him as a possible yet unattainable child substitute, and he finds himself at first unwillingly, but then with charmed enthusiasm, drawn into their gentle fantasy world. The contrast of Christopher’s straightforward, laddish bonhomie with the neediness of the Tellmans is heartbreaking, and it is he who, in the play’s final moments, throws some much needed joy, or at least relief, into their lives, but in a completely practical way. It’s a lovely, tear-inducing moment.

More light is provided by the arrival of a new home help (Charlotte Beaumont, winningly gauche) who bursts in like a cyclone of good intentions and sheer physical clumsiness. The balance between bleakness and little chinks of comfort is exquisitely managed throughout.

Ultimately, this is a deeply depressing play on many levels, but it is a quietly powerful one, suffused with an aching longing for better years gone by. Furthermore, for all its unflinching honesty about the difficulties of getting older, it has an innate belief in the fundamental kindness within flawed humans, and that is something to celebrate and savour. Green’s production packs a lot into seventy five minutes, almost more than can be taken in during such a short duration, but it is a feast of fine acting. Brief but with a lingering aftertaste.

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF MUSICAL

Book and lyrics by Jake Brunger

Music and lyrics by Pippa Cleary

Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 13 May 2023

https://bakeoffthemusical.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxr-_vPLK_QIVD7btCh1hWAsUEAAYASAAEgJ1gvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

This does exactly what it says on the cake tin. A joyful confection and, like the universally adored TV show that inspired it, a bona fide crowdpleaser. If it’s a little rough around the edges as a musical (and anybody who caught last years brief tryout in Cheltenham may be surprised at how little has changed), it’s still a thoroughly lovely way to spend a couple of hours in the theatre.

Creators Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary have already proved, with their razor-sharp Adrian Mole musical at Leicester, the Menier and in the West End a couple of years back, that they have an unusual ability to apply Broadway-style chutzpah and confidence to a uniquely British story and themes. Their tuneful score for The Great British Bake Off Musical has a commendable swagger and ambition: there are patter songs, power ballads, raps, rousing chorales and upbeat numbers that bring the house down. If Six’s Marlow and Moss’s work so far seems aimed more at the pop market, Brunger and Cleary’s is innately theatrical.

I assume it’s deliberate that the style, musical structure and chord sequences of blockbusters such as Hamilton and Wicked sometimes hang heavily and incongruously over this score, but the weaving-in of Tom Howe’s TV music is ingeniously done. Brunger and Cleary’s incisive, witty lyrics ensure that this show has it’s own unique, tart flavour. It’s unashamedly sentimental at times, but also pretty hard to resist.

Rachel Kavanaugh’s attractive staging, seasoned with simple but entrancing choreography by Georgina Lamb, finds that sweet spot where it simultaneously sends up the TV show that inspired it, while also paying an affectionate homage. The physical production is basic but colourful – sets, costumes and cakes (!) designed by Alice Power, lighting by Ben Cracknell, admirably clear sound by Ben Harrison – but with a cast this good that’s pretty much all that’s needed.

Structurally it’s nearer to a revue than a traditional musical, perhaps inevitably given that it has to encompass an octet of contestants, a pair of presenters (Scott Paige and Zoe Birkett, both fabulous) plus two judges (John Owen Jones gleefully capturing serving up essence of Paul Hollywood, now joined by a hilariously haughty Haydn Gwynne as Prue Leith stand-in, Dame Pam Lee, who gets a glittery full production number to open the second half), and, for a show based upon a TV series rather than a single story, I’m not sure one can ask for much more than that. Not every gag lands (a ponderous opening number that sees Birkett and Paige got up as cave people discovering the origins of cake is a real headscratcher and a couple of running jokes feel belaboured), and the tonal shifts between hilarity and heartbreak could be slicker and subtler. There are perhaps rather too many songs, though most of them are smashing.

There is a sliver of plot involving Damian Humbley’s sweet widower and Charlotte Wakefield’s self-effacing full-time carer from Blackpool, the conclusion of which one can see coming a mile off, but it’s sold with so much charm, as well as sensational vocals, by these two fine performers that it is impossible not to care. Humbley in particular, already very good last year, has now developed his study in selfless grief into a finely wrought portrayal.

The entire cast is terrific. Cat Sandison delicately convinces as an Italian baker who has substituted cake making for the children she can’t have, Aharon Rayner is impressive and multi-layered as streetwise but lovable Hassan, unsure of how much of hIs Syrian heritage he can bring to the TV screen. Jay Saighal nails the swagger and fragile masculinity of a toe-curling hipster and Grace Mouat is a lot of fun as a ragingly ambitious spoilt princess. Michael Cahill sparkles as camply stylish but sensitive Russell.

Claire Moore, one of the most astonishing musical talents of her generation, initially seems a tad underused as sassy, thrice-married Eastender Babs but then gets an explosive act two number, pitched half way between Music Hall and Broadway showstopper, that finally justifies such luxury casting. It’s a rollicking, full-throated ode to unrequited love, and Moore’s barnstorming rendition of it – hilarious, deeply touching and vocally enthralling – is the stuff theatregoers memories are made of. It may be extraneous to the plot, such as it is, but it’s worth the ticket price all by itself. If there’s a problem with it, it’s that it’s such a great number, and put over with such star power, that it slightly takes the shine off what I think is supposed to be the real eleven o’clock number, the soaring and melodic Wicked-esque power ballad ‘Rise’. Wakefield performs it thrillingly but it just feels too soon after Ms Moore has all but ripped the roof off the theatre.

Despite some minor quibbles, this is the theatrical equivalent of the finest baked goods: fresh yet comfortingly familiar, warm, a bit messy but a feast of fun. It’s life-affirming big heartedness, unashamedly British revelry in puns and double entrendres, and sugary familiarity may just be the nourishment we all need right now. I smell a big fat hit.

SLEEPOVA

by Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini

directed by Jade Lewis

Bush Theatre London – until 8 April 2023

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/sleepova/

In the week which saw the Bush Theatre pick up two out of a possible five nominations in the Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre award category in this years Oliviers, the excellent West London venue has further cause for celebration with the opening of this sassy delight. As refreshing and spicy as an ice cold ginger beer on a sunny day, and as warm and lovely as a hug from a treasured friend, Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini’s irresistible sugar rush of a play already looks like a strong contender for feelgood show of 2023. It’s a study of female friendships among four Black East Londoners in their late teens turning into early adulthood. It’s suffused with authenticity, affection, and irrepressible humour…and the dialogue is terrific.

Every performance during its run is designated a relaxed one, and Jade Lewis’s rambunctiously enjoyable production is such a party that, for much of it, watching in total silence wouldn’t even feel appropriate. That said, at least on press night, the spell woven by script, staging and above all the quartet of fabulous performers, is such that it means that when Ibini’s script turns serious and demands more thoughtful attention, the entire audience is utterly riveted, engrossed into silence. You find yourself caring very deeply about these four young women pretty much from the get-go.

Sleepova opens with Shan (Aliyah Odoffin) preparing to host an overnight party to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, with her best friends: there’s devoutly Christian Elle (Shayde Sinclair), mouthy gay mixed race Rey (Amber Grappy), constantly financially manipulating her hapless offstage stepmum, and super-smart, endlessly horny Funmi (BAFTA Rising Star Bukky Bakray, proving she’s every bit as wonderful on stage as she is on screen). Odoffin’s Shan is an open-faced gem: witty but innately nice, with a vulnerability borne of having the shadow of inherited Sickle Cell Disease looming heavy over her young life.

One of the many marvellous things about Ibini’s writing is that it acknowledges the seriousness of this, and several later situations, but never devolves into sentimentality: these young women are too vital and brilliant for that, joyfully, noisily, looking to find and take their places in the world. Nary a morsel of dialogue or a funny line (of which there are so so many) rings false, and the love, support and occasional sharpness between them convinces entirely. If there is a small issue, it’s that, particularly in the first scene, some of the dialogue is delivered so naturally, thrown away almost, that it’s not always possible to hear.

Structurally, the piece is episodic as the characters talk about their parents, about boys, about their long term prospects, and how their cultures and heritages (variously, Nigerian, Jamaican, Grenadian…) impact on their modern London lives. They bicker, support each other, share confidences – the overall effect is of eaves-dropping on some unusually entertaining conversations – and, in a particularly fun sequence, we get to see them going to their final school prom (“we’re moving closer to becoming our real selves, fulfilling our potential. We get to set the agenda now”) and really partying it up: it’s a gorgeous button on a tumultuously good first half.

The second half is more serious and genuinely very touching, but proves marginally less successful and satisfying as big themes are batted about -bereavement, a sudden health emergency, the reaction to homosexuality in a religious family- then resolved a little too quickly in order to get the play to its finish. The biggest casualty of all this is the deeply disturbing subject of gay conversion therapy, a topic that is well documented in the USA but much less talked about here. Ibini has created a potent, heartrending scene between Grappy’s compellingly feisty Rey and Sinclair’s steadfast but conflicted Elle, but then all but abandons this compelling, troubling strand of the story: it’s a little frustrating. On a side note, these two performers are making astonishingly fine professional stage debuts here.

The play concludes with an uplifting scene which sees the four women putting together and burying a “time capsule” of beloved objects, while speechifying about their future hopes and dreams. It may be a bit of a trope but it’s leavened with the humour with which Ibini excels, and carries authentic emotional weight. Ultimately, this feels like a very “young” play, and that is not a criticism. It’s full of heart, hope and wonder, and it’s a privilege to watch a quartet of upcoming acting stars at close quarters (though the gloriously droll Ms Bakray is already well on her way to stardom). This is ensemble playing of the highest order. Truly life-enhancing stuff, and a female driven riposte to the universally acclaimed, West End-bound For Black Boys…, it deserves a similar level of success. One to love.

BOOTYCANDY

by Robert O’Hara

Directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu

Gate Theatre London – until 11 March 2023

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/bootycandy/

Receiving its UK premiere nine years after bursting onto the off-Broadway theatre scene, Robert O’Hara’s multi-faceted, zesty, fierce chefs kiss of a play bowls in like the cheeky elder sibling of Michael R Jackson’s Pulitzer and Tony winning A Strange Loop and this Broadway season’s succès d’estime Ain’t No Mo’. All three pieces in turn owe a debt of gratitude to, and can trace a throughline back to, George C Wolfe’s 1986 The Colored Museum, which was epoch-making in its depiction of what it means to be Black in contemporary America. All four shows are essentially ambitious collages rather than traditional plays, and make their potent points with rollicking good humour, vibrant theatricality and moments of shock engineered explicitly to discomfort and wrongfoot their audiences.

O’Hara’s text, in common with Jackson’s masterpiece, also explores, with fabulous flamboyance, bracing intelligence and a willingness to chart dangerous waters, the intersection between being Black and gay. The result is something fiery, troubling, wildly entertaining, and occasionally impenetrable. If Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s high-spirited staging initially seems to be intent on keeping us at one remove from the text by specifying neither the locations nor the scene titles the playwright provides (“Drinks And Desire”, “Conference”, “Ceremony”), and filling the open playing space with designer Milla Clarke’s vast, unadorned platform through, upon and around which, the variety of characters burst, sparkle and slay (the original production had multiple detailed sets), this abstract “less is more” approach eventually pays off.

For a start, the deliberate lack of specificity forces us to engage and listen, although that’s not easy at first: the acoustics of the Gate’s new Camden home aren’t the best, rendering significant portions of early parts of the show at best sixty percent intelligible, at least from where I was sitting. More importantly, it encourages the audience to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, and that, in tandem with bold performance choices, constant breaking of boundaries between cast and audience, and O’Hara’s extraordinary writing, freebasing between cerebral and outrageous, is where Bootycandy acquires its genuine power and specialness. If you don’t know what the title means, well…just you wait.

In a stroke of satirical brilliance, O’Hara binds together the bewilderingly disparate strands of the first half into a Black writers workshop, presided over by a blithely insensitive white moderator (“I’m wondering what you are hoping the audience comes away with after seeing your work?”), where it appears that everything we’ve so far seen has come from the pens of these people. It’s an intriguing, illuminating conceit that brings us up short.

Mainly though, Bootycandy is a splintered, meta-theatrical trawl, part celebratory, often brutal, through a variety of life experiences for Sutter, a Black gay Candide-like figure, seen in a variety of states and situations, ranging from questioning child to opinionated writer to sexual adventurer, that interrogate his place in the world and the way that this world perceives him. Prince Kundai, in a hauntingly impressive London stage debut, acutely charts Sutter’s progress from wide eyed innocence to hurt, rage, cynicism…it’s a hell of a role and it gets a hell of a performance. Kundai nails the comedy and the pain, and unflinchingly conveys Sutter’s dangerous edge alongside his cuddlier side, but is also unafraid to make the character fascinatingly unknowable when required. He’s a star in the making.

Just as inspired is Luke Wilson in a variety of roles, but especially joyous as a preacher whose audience-baiting sermon explodes in a riot of unexpected camp, and deeply touching as Sutter’s potty-mouthed and surprisingly switched-on Grandma. He’s worth the ticket price by himself. Roly Botha emerges as a thrilling shapeshifter, funny and chilling, and DK Fashola is a firecracker presence in a variety of roles, but nowhere better than as a mouthy, spicy maternal figure who attempts to shame Sutter into “manning up” in a scene that starts out as lethally funny but ends up just being lethal. At the performance I saw, assistant director Tatenda Shamiso was on with the script in place of an indisposed Bimpo Pachéco and was utterly fabulous, barely glancing at the script and matching the bravura of the other performances.

Exhilaratingly original and pleasingly ambitious in scope and execution, this is the theatrical equivalent to having a bucket of cold water thrown over you: it takes you out of your comfort zone, it’s refreshing, a bit shocking and might leave you trembling. Enthusiastically recommended, this Bootycandy is sweet and salty.