ajhlovestheatre

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

by William Shakespeare

Directed by Simon Godwin

National Theatre/Lyttelton – until 10 September 2022

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/much-ado-about-nothing

It’s probably fair to state that Much Ado About Nothing is generally considered to be one of the most accessible, “user friendly” of all Shakespeare’s comedies: the sparring of Beatrice and Benedick, while barbed, has real affection amidst the wit and these two leads are amongst the most beloved of all the Bard’s creations, while the maltreatment and misunderstanding of Hero can be played pretty nasty, ultimately it does all add up to a case of all’s well that ends well (sorry).

Simon Godwin’s new production for the National initially seems to be going for the full-on romantic escapism, from the bougainvillea and sun-kissed (Amalfi?) coast of the front curtain to the gorgeous Art Deco-meets-Italianate Palazzo mixture of colour and elegance of Anna Fleischle’s hotel setting: the whole thing takes place in the 1930s Hotel Messina, under Leonato’s management and ownership. There’s an abundance of ravishing period costumes by Evie Gurney; one would imagine the cost of Katherine Parkinson’s wardrobe as Beatrice alone is equivalent to the budget of a half dozen fringe productions.

So far, so entrancing: what follows however is not quite what might have been expected. This is an uneven Much Ado, one that is surprisingly unfunny (there’s some very heavy handed clowning going on, and a half-baked broadening of some minor characters that feels insufficiently flamboyant) but scores strongly in the more dramatic scenes, particularly in the superior second half. Despite the opulent luminosity of the location, it’s the darkness that really captivates here.

The fake funeral for Hero, performed in murky scarlet-hued light with the entire black-clad cast performing a full throated musical lament, truly haunts, as does the inclusion of the 29th sonnet for Ioanna Kimbrook’s captivating Hero. Parkinson tears into Beatrice’s act four “O that I were a man!” speech with such ferocity that it feels like a frozen breeze passing across the stage. Rufus Wright, always exquisite, handles Leonato’s descent from debonair bonhomie to fury and grief after Hero’s discrediting, with real skill. Ashley Zhangazha’s fine Don Pedro also makes a strong impression.

John Heffernan is an earnest, relatable Benedick, the sort of bloke you’d always want in your corner, and his realisation of his feelings for Beatrice has a touching gravitas. Parkinson brings her familiar world-weary breathiness to the female lead but feels oddly underpowered and heavy-handed until she really lets rip with the anger. There isn’t much chemistry between these two, especially in comparison to the gloriously warm and eccentric performances by Ralph Davis and Lucy Phelps in the same roles in the current Globe production.

Eben Figueiredo’s London-accented Claudio lacks subtlety, and, for me, Phoebe Horn’s sexually voracious Margaret (here a senior hotel maid) and David Fynn’s Dogberry (remodelled as the hotel’s head of security) would be a lot more amusing if they stopped trying so hard to be funny. To be fair, that may be down to direction but it’s interesting to note how hilarious, by comparison, Olivia Forrest’s strong-arming Seacole is by just employing a deadpan, vaguely bewildered stillness.

I enjoyed the transformation of Leonato’s brother Antonio, into his wife and co-hotelier Antonia (Wendy Kweh) and the sheer visual beauty of the whole staging is a source of considerable pleasure: if feels like only the National can afford to put on plays at this level of budget (Jack Absolute Flies Again next door in the Olivier is similarly sumptuous), especially these days. In all honesty, I prefer my Much Ado funnier than this (the Globe version delivers that in spades) but this is still an intriguing take on a familiar text…..and it looks breathtaking.

PENNYROYAL

by Lucy Roslyn

Directed by Josh Roche

Finborough Theatre – until 6 August

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/pennyroyal/

For the second time this year, the first being Sophie Swithinbank’s sensational Bacon back in the Spring, the tiny Finborough punches up with a new work that lays a strong claim to be considered best play of the year. Lucy Roslyn’s Pennyroyal takes Edith Wharton’s 1922 novella The Old Maid as it’s initial inspiration but feels immensely immediate and relevant. It centres on a very specific theme – Premature Ovarian Insufficiency, not a Wharton issue, to be clear – but in it’s unflinching, open-hearted depiction of the stresses and dynamics of family relationships it nudges towards the universal. There’s a lot to unpack and connect with here, and it is exquisitely observed.

Sisters Christine and Daphne have a genial but sometimes fractious relationship, and when younger sibling Daphne (a terrific Madison Clare) discovers, age 19, that she is unable to have children, her older sister (author Lucy Roslyn, heartcatchingly good) steps in to help by donating her eggs. The path ahead proves far from straightforward and Roslyn’s nailing of the contradictory nature of sibling relationships is sharp and satisfying, as is her deeply moving understanding of loneliness even among apparently happy, sorted people (“I’d see my shadow and I’d be like: well, that’s proof then. There I am” says Christine at a certain point in one of several monologues that cut like knives).

Roslyn’s text is suffused with affection but it’s as cruel as it is loving. Her writing is gorgeous: poetic flights of fancy are suddenly undercut by pithy shards of relatable bittersweet humour as the sisters bicker, remember and pontificate. It’s very funny and also, at times, wildly eccentric, yet every line, monologue and muttered aside matters; the script is lean yet extravagant, and some of the longer speeches will inevitably crop up as audition pieces in the near future. It’s hard to imagine anybody matching the insouciant brilliance of Roslyn and Clare though: these women are phenomenal.

Josh Roche’s tender but tough production doesn’t put a foot wrong: even the way the bell jars housing tiny plants (Christine is a horticulturalist) light up at given points are little moments of magic. The chemistry between the actresses is a thing of wonder. Roslyn and Clare don’t look alike but utterly convince as sisters seven years apart, dealing with a difficult but rather marvellous sounding (unseen, to us) mother, and a long-standing childhood friend who ends up being a lot less of an ally than they would have hoped for.

Roslyn is a chummy, disarming stage presence, so natural as the innately good, kind but never cloying Christine (her hatred of the aforementioned family friend is gleefully funny) that it barely feels like she’s acting. It’s a beautiful, beguiling performance. Clare matches her, making Daphne likeable but with a convincing edge of wildness and aggression. At first the younger sister exudes an aching vulnerability but the shift of power that comes later on is completely credible, and it proves impossible not to care about these flawed but fundamentally good women. Christine’s gayness is introduced fairly late on but feels authentic and one can only hope that the unseen Carolyn is worthy of her.

The title – Pennyroyal – refers to a species of the mint family that can be used for medicinal purposes but is toxic to the liver in too high doses. It’s a fitting metaphor for a sibling relationship that nurtures and sustains but can tip over into something much less wholesome at a moment’s notice.

This quietly riveting little gem packs as much truth, illumination and sheer theatrical potency into it’s eighty minutes playing time than many other plays of double the length. It sears as it amuses, it’s a powerfully women-driven piece, and it’s a genuine emotional rollercoaster. What’s not to love? See it. Bring tissues.

JACK ABSOLUTE FLIES AGAIN

by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris

based on Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals

Directed by Emily Burns

National Theatre/Olivier – until 3 September 2022

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/jack-absolute-flies-again

Watching Richard Bean and Oliver Chris’s breezily funny, good-hearted variation on Sheridan’s evergreen comedy, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the National has found a natural successor to One Man Two Guv’nors. The parallels are clear: both are based on classic texts (One Man adapted Goldoni’s The Servant To Two Masters to a 1960s British setting), both feature sumptuous and inventive set designs, cartoon-like but gorgeously vivid, by Mark Thompson, and both temper the farcical hilarity with an undertow of gentle melancholy.

Furthermore, co-authors Bean and Chris worked on both shows (Bean as writer, and Chris as wondrously daft upper class twit Stanley Stubbers in the original NT, West End and Broadway runs of One Man Two Guv’nors.) I fully expect this new comedy to be another solid hit, something that, Follies and Small Island aside, hasn’t been hugely common on the epic but challenging Olivier stage in the last half decade.

Jack Absolute Flies Again relocates The Rivals to a bucolic Sussex village – all cut glass vowels and cut grass lawns – during the Second World War. Absolute and Lydia Languish – the Beatrice and Benedick of Restoration Comedy – are now RAF pilots (Natalie Simpson and Laurie Davidson sparkle winningly) and language mangling Mrs Malaprop (Caroline Quentin in uproariously fine form) is now a merry ‘lady of the manor’ with an unexpectedly raunchy past. The humour is more belly laughs than sophistication, but there are moments when it’s almost impossible possible to stop laughing.

The supporting cast are a delightful rogues gallery, from Kerry Howard’s knowing maid, James Corrigan as an adorable, clueless Aussie fighter pilot, to Jordan Metcalfe and Helena Wilson as an über-posh, totally crazy secondary couple, everybody scores their laughs unerringly. This applies to nobody more than Peter Forbes’s gloriously deadpan, joyously disagreeable Sir Anthony Absolute. An absolute monster of a man, insensitive, bullying, misogynist…and sheer comedy gold. Forbes plays him to the hilt.

There’s lovely, touching work from Tim Steed as a closeted RAF man, and if TV star Kelvin Fletcher seems slightly less polished than his cast mates that sort-of works for a Northern innocent adrift in rural Sussex, and I suspect his performance will grow in authority as the run progresses.

Jack Absolute Flies Again isn’t perfect: the second act could lose about twenty minutes playing time and some of the running jokes don’t so much fly as get run deep into the ground. There is a plot development late in the second half that deviates massively from the original Sheridan and it’s a bit of a gut wrencher, plus it doesn’t actually happen on stage but via a series of impressive but bewildering projections. It does also mean that a, for the most part, larky evening ends on a melancholic note and one can’t help but long for another burst of the exhilarating jitterbug number (choreography by Lizzi Gee) that lights up a flashback sequence, to round off the evening and send audiences out on an even greater high.

Nonetheless, this is a rollicking good time and may, I suspect, be around a lot longer than the current scheduled summer season. The National’s resources have seldom been thrown at such a mass populist crowd pleaser in recent years….and I’ve no doubt ticket buyers will repay accordingly. Huge fun.

MAD HOUSE

by Theresa Rebeck

Directed by Morris von Stuelpnagel

Ambassadors Theatre -until 4th September 2022

https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/mad-house/ambassadors-theatre/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpbOvjOrU-AIVC4BQBh2vvgLGEAAYAiAAEgIGjPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

If conflict be the essence of great drama, then American writer Theresa Rebeck is serving up something akin to a modern masterpiece with this world premiere. While not a masterpiece perhaps – there is a jarring gear change near the end of act one, the second half veers towards sentimentality, and some of the structure and plotting is a little predictable, while the end feels too abrupt – Mad House is still a tremendously engrossing and satisfying tragicomedy, given a flawless, blazingly well acted production by Moritz von Stuelpnagel.

Although primarily known for US TV and film roles, David Harbour and Bill Pullman field an impressive array of theatre credits between them: Harbour was previously in the West End in 2006 in the Kathleen Turner Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (and Rebeck’s writing at it’s most caustically brilliant here sometimes recalls the bile and bite of Albee) and Pullman starred opposite Sally Field in the Old Vic’s 2019 All My Sons. They bring formidable technique, fascinating physicality and a thrilling command of the stage to a father and son relationship etched in loathing, guilt and mutual recrimination.

If Joe Keller as played by Pullman in the aforementioned Miller revival was a flawed patriarch, Mad House’s Daniel, bed bound, permanently attached to an oxygen machine and offensively determined to make his final days as hellish for everybody else as they are for him, is broken beyond repair. He knows it – his frequent screams of “I’m not dying!” are more of a hectoring threat than anything else – and he isn’t so much raging against the dying of the light as screaming blue murder at, and spitting in the face of, it. Pullman is barely recognisable, decrepit but possessed of a malevolent energy, relishing the sheer nastiness of the character but also delivering lethal comic zingers with grim precision: it’s a hell of a performance.

At one point, he literally spits in the face of Harbour’s hulking, emotionally challenged elder son Michael, recently released from long term psychiatric care and now looking after his poisonous dad partly because he has no place else to be, as Daniel frequently delights in reminding him. It’s a powerful moment, one of several in a script that, while seldom actually surprising, so ingeniously dripfeeds information that it feels fresh even when the situations depicted aren’t particularly original. Rebeck is a skilled storyteller but her handle on vividly drawn characters and incendiary dialogue is even more impressive, as is her compassionate understanding of the mentally ill, and a tacit acceptance of the awfulness of some people’s old age.

End of life care, bereavement, suicide and mental health are potent subjects and Mad House pulls no punches in dealing with them, yet the script is shot through with irresistible gallows humour and punctuated with moments of unexpected but authentic sweetness. Most of these moments involve Akiya Henry’s luminous but tough hospice nurse Lillian, brought in to look after Daniel but suddenly thrust into the role of lynchpin for this fractured family. Henry sensitively evokes a woman whose almost angelic kindness and strength has been hard won, and her second act recollection of the loss of her child carries a devastating emotional punch.

Equally fine is Stephen Wight as the Manhattan-dwelling, hedge fund manager son who plays the city slicker upon arrival back at the Massachussetts homestead but is soon reduced to impotent mumbling after a couple of hours of toxic family crossfire. Sinéad Matthews has an innate likability which creates an interesting tension against Rebeck’s writing for ruthless, also largely absent, sister Pam, nursing a longstanding resentment at their late mother’s care for the troubled Michael to the detriment of her other kids. In a brave, full throttle performance, Matthews invests her with an intriguing brittleness which ensures that a moment of almost unbelievable psychological cruelty towards her distressed brother, makes absolute sense.

Ultimately though, the play belongs to David Harbour’s sardonic, physically imposing, psychologically fragile Michael. Harbour delivers exquisitely detailed work: tender but brutal, witty and flamboyant but unflinchingly truthful. He entirely convinces as a flawed, kind individual capable of a fury that can only be managed by absenting himself from a situation and raging at the sky, but also an unrefined sensitivity: note the way he repeatedly tries, yet fails, to physically reach out to Henry’s Lillian as she pours her beautiful heart out to him. There’s psychological authenticity too in the way Harbour’s Michael follows extravagant pronouncements of anger with a subtle physical jerk-back of the neck, as though in a state of constant self-censorship. This is a magnificent sucker-punch of a performance, and one that ought to feature on every Best Actor award nomination list for this year.

Frankie Bradshaw’s gorgeous set of a grandiose period family home fallen into disrepair is an appropriate metaphor for the relationships of the principal characters. There’s even an unnecessary but entirely pleasing revolve, further indicative of the Rolls Royce swagger of von Stuelpnagel’s assured, world class staging.

This may prove too dark for those after a night of West End escapism, but it is an undeniably fine piece of theatre. Rich and complex, yet accessible, it’s a thumping good night out that’ll give you plenty to talk about afterwards. Rebeck’s works usually premiere on Broadway so this is a real gift for London….and you’d be mad to miss acting of this calibre.

NO PARTICULAR ORDER

By Joel Tan

Directed by Josh Roche

Theatre 503 – until 18 June 2022

https://theatre503.com/whats-on/npo/

With over forty characters, seventeen locations and a timespan of more than three hundred years packed into his script’s ninety minutes running time, nobody could accuse playwright Joel Tan of lacking ambition.

No Particular Order eschews a linear narrative in favour of a procession of tense, brief scenes offering snapshots into life under a number of unspecified totalitarian regimes: a married couple, wreathed in sadness, discuss a lost son; a liaison between soldiers turns nasty; protestors shelter from an unseen attack; a refugee pleads with a guardsman for her and her daughter’s lives; a head teacher’s warning to one of her subordinates becomes more sinister with every sentence… It’s an elliptical epic that’s at times reminiscent of Pinter at his most forbidding and obscure, but ultimately proves haunting and troubling on entirely it’s own terms.

The title could apply equally to the dramatic structure as to the fact that ruling parties and geographical locations are never named, as the piece explores humanity in the face of almost insuperable odds.

If Tan’s text is a lot, director Josh Roche matches it with a staging of elegant austerity. A superb cast of four play all the roles, with minimal changes in voice, appearance or even attitude. It’s an interesting choice that certainly bears out the concept that human beings and, accordingly, the way history tends to play out, never fundamentally changes…but it can get a little confusing. There is little humour and a lack of variety in pace and tone that may be a deliberate choice but doesn’t help in demystifying the text.

Despite these reservations, the cumulative effect of these scenes, many of which are pretty grim, stays with you some time after leaving the theatre. Sarah Sayeed’s compositions and sound designs – ranging from jagged to insistently hypnotic – enhance the text immeasurably. Some of Tan’s writing is remarkable though as he drops little thematic timebombs into apparently unconnected scenes set across vast swathes of time – birds and flowers are a recurring motif, to sometimes surprising effect – that serve as portents, reminders and, occasionally, emotional life rafts back to peaceful, less complicated lives. It’s interesting work, brutal but sophisticated, that often threatens to tip over into the pretentious but never quite does.

The four actors – Jules Chan, Pandora Colin, Pia Laborde-Noguez and Daniel York Loh – are terrific, investing each discrete moment with the requisite truth and conviction. The playing is naturalistic, as it probably needs to be in such a small space, which further adds to the sense of brewing dread.

No Particular Order isn’t perfect, and may prove too depressing for some, but some of the sections speak relevantly, scarily, to current world events, and it is invigorating to encounter a new play with this level of ambition and breadth of vision.

THE HAUNTING OF SUSAN A

Written and directed by Mark Ravenhill

King’s Head Theatre – until 26 June 2022

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/the-haunting-of-susan-a

Ghost stories are a much loved theatrical genre – The Woman In Black has been in the West End for over thirty years and shows no signs of moving on – but can be fiendishly difficult to get right: go too horrific and you run the risk of alienating your audience, overdo the melodrama and you end up with inappropriate laughter in the auditorium. Mark Ravenhill’s tense new piece avoids these pitfalls, providing some authentic chills even if it fails to completely satisfy as a piece of supernatural storytelling.

Actually, the storytelling here is skilfully done, seamlessly bleeding real life into fiction as Ravenhill himself gets up before the performance officially begins (or at least before it APPEARS to have begun) to regale us with facts about the Kings Head Theatre. Regular visitors to this venue won’t find this unusual, since every performance here is prefaced by a heartfelt appeal for funds. Ravenhill is interrupted mid sentence by an audience member who has performed as an actor at this theatre in a previous production and is still haunted by a supernatural experience she had during that run.

In all honesty, this conceit would work better if Suzanne Ahmet, in that role, weren’t so obviously acting at the outset. Ravenhill is much more successful at apparently making his lines up on the spot, possibly as a result of having written them himself. That said, Ahmet gets into her stride as the piece draws on, compellingly recalling her brush with a vengeful ghostly presence that feels unsettlingly plausible in the dimly lit, muggy back room of this historical Islington pub. She also interacts winningly with a couple of game audience members, drawing all of us further into the eerie theatrical mire.

Without giving away spoilers, Ravenhill’s text is so bound up with the venue itself that it’s basically a piece of immersive theatre. It even works as a useful, if slightly heavy-handed, advertisement for the venue’s future plans as the King’s Head prepares to move to their new home in an adjacent new Upper Street development (Ravenhill is the co-artistic director).

Ahmet’s haunted Susan accused Ravenhill at one point of being “another white man” trying to control the narrative, which she then wrestles from him. That’s all well and good, but the irony still stands that this piece is still the creation of a white man, albeit an extremely talented one, and one who creates convincing female characters. If the play’s conclusion is a bit of a letdown given the shuddering suspense and carefully brewed atmosphere of what has gone before, that is a frequent weakness of this genre, and one that the aforementioned The Woman In Black only avoids by deviating quite drastically from its original source material.

Jo Underwood’s lighting and Roly Botha’s lighting are flawless however. Botha’s contribution is particularly invaluable, a foreboding soundscape that ratchets up the tension to pleasurably unbearable levels.

This may not be a classic of the ghost story genre, being too tied to the venue and the surrounding area to have serious legs, although future productions could possibly see portions of the script rewritten to reflect alternative locations. It is however a creditable and often gripping attempt to marry contemporary issues with Islington’s somewhat grim past, and an interesting, evocative way to commemorate fifty years of the King’s Head Theatre.

PASSION

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by James Lapine

Directed by Michael Strassen

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester – until 5 June 2022

https://hopemilltheatre.co.uk/events/passion

“Love as pure as breath, as permanent as death, implacable as stone” – yep, Sondheim. While other, lesser, wordsmiths define love in terms of hearts, flowers and June moons, only Stephen Sondheim would equate it with mortality, finality, something hard and unyielding. Sure, there are lyrics in Passion that more conventionally celebrate the abandon and madness of amore (“love that fuses two into one, where we think the same thoughts, want the same things, live as one…”) but it’s that deep vein of rapturous despair that runs throughout and characterises Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1994 musical. It has seldom, if ever, been mined so richly and with such, well, passion as in Michael Strassen’s shattering new production. It’s sexy, dark and riveting.

Strassen and his world beating team also find the comedy and the heat in a piece that can sometimes come across as cold and lacking in humour. That is emphatically not the case here, where the dramatic stakes feel extraordinarily high, and the show plays out with a rare urgency and white hot intensity. Set in 19th century Italy, this tale of an older woman’s obsessive love for a dashing, emotionally conflicted soldier in a remote garrison town is fleshed out with an exquisite attention to detail, and an unerring balance between the melodramatic elements of the book and score, and the harsh realities of these people’s lives.

Sondheim’s music shimmers and soars, with a kind of soured romanticism that is at once enchanting and vaguely creepy. It seldom breaks out into full standalone numbers, dealing instead in a mixture of recitatives, tantalising snatches of heartmelting melodiousness and brief moments of operatic flamboyance. It may not be immediately accessible perhaps but it more than repays the effort we have to put in as audience members. Yshani Perinpanayagam’s superb five piece ensemble tempers the score’s delicacy with moments of genuine power (excellent orchestrations by Ed Zanders), and the singing throughout is thrilling. If Dan Sansom’s sound design is a bit overwhelming at times, the ominous background rumble is a fitting aural metaphor for the emotional turmoil at play throughout, and the sudden ear-splitting off stage screams of heroine (antiheroine?) Fosca unsettle and wrongfoot exactly as they should.

Ruthie Henshall is delivering some of her finest work to date in this complex, fascinating role. The way she vocally shapes ‘Loving You’, Fosca’s desperately sad yet steely declaration of her feelings for soldier Giorgio (“loving you’s not a choice, it’s who I am”) is a masterclass in acting through song, but it is her performance in the book scenes that may surprise audiences the most. Subtly subverting her innate charisma, she brings an almost classical depth to this conflicted, needy, melancholic woman, but finds a brittle, bitter lightness to some moments that rings entirely true. She’s as infuriating as she is pitiful, as though passing through life with several less layers of skin than other human beings.

There are multiple references throughout the text to Fosca’s extreme ugliness but, intriguingly, this production doesn’t go down the grotesque make up route (Henshall cuts a starkly beautiful figure whereas Donna Murphy and Maria Friedman were barely recognisable in the original Broadway and West End productions respectively) preferring instead to suggest that, at this point in history, being a lonely single woman over a certain age was “ugly” and hopeless enough, and that much of Fosca’s unattractiveness is both in her own head and in the role society has cast her.

This choice is borne out by having the equally lovely looking Danny Whitehead portray, hauntingly, the young Fosca in the nightmarish flashback sequence where Tim Walton’s striking Colonel (Fosca’s cousin) fills Giorgio in on the woman’s tragic past. The simultaneous looks of utter desolation on both Whitehead and Henshall’s faces upon realisation that Fosca’s been duped by Juan Jackson’s swaggering Count is pretty hard to forget.

If Fosca is confined by societal expectations as much as her own mental and physical ill health, Clara, the urbane married woman Giorgio is embroiled with in Milan, is equally trapped by her own sex and lack of independence. In Kelly Price’s revelatory performance, you watch the sunshine slowly drain out of the character as she realises that the other woman is far more of a rival than she imagined and that her less than complete commitment to Giorgio will never be enough for him. Price’s gorgeous, full-bodied soprano soars but it’s the layers and the truth in her acting that takes the breath away. This is the most satisfying and complex reading of the role that I’ve encountered: she’s profoundly sympathetic but with a real edge. Her final appearance, tear-soaked, on her knees, in a mirror image of a pleading Fosca from the first act, surrounded by fragments of a torn up final letter from the man she loves, however inappropriately, and contemplating a future devoid of passion, is supremely affecting.

Despite the external constraints on these women’s lives, Giorgio is as much of a victim as they are. There is a very telling moment where Fosca has coerced him into sharing her bed and while she caresses his face, Clara simultaneously hovers above, placing her hands on the top of his head: for a fleeting, chilling second that image conveys so much about the way that this man is being controlled and manipulated, even as it is a rare moment of table-turning in a particularly misogynistic time in history. Dean John-Wilson is a genuine, and marvellous, surprise in the role, capturing every note, colour and conflict of this fundamentally decent man, eager to please but caught between desire and duty, occasionally exploding into a rage that feels raw and authentic, and with a fatal undertow of a depression that may just be a match for that of Fosca. Musically and dramatically this is a flawless and fresh account of the role, all the more remarkable and unexpected when one considers that John-Wilson’s most high profile job to date was probably as Disney’s original West End Aladdin. This nuanced, intelligent performance deserves to open a whole new set of casting doors for him.

There isn’t a weak link in the supporting company, each one of which reads as a fully realised character, from Charlie Waddell’s fresh-faced company cook to Adam Robert Lewis’s extravagantly vocalising Lieutenant and Steve Watts as a delightful trumpet playing Major. Ray Shell brings a compelling mixture of insinuation and kindness to the Doctor treating Fosca, and Tim Walton, for the first time in any production that I’ve seen, makes one realise how much the Colonel genuinely loves his cousin.

Elin Steele’s impressionistic designs are simple but gorgeous, an array of panels traversing the set to give a sense of almost filmic motion. Charlie Morgan Jones’s painterly lighting is another plus, transforming the limited space with an astonishing precision and mood manipulation.

Make no mistake, this is a world class Passion, and one which any Sondheim nut, or indeed anybody who wants to see a collection of remarkable talents at the top of their game, would be mad not to make the journey to Manchester for. One can only hope that it receives the further life it so richly deserves. I’ve seen five different versions -six, if you count the dvd of the original Broadway production- of this darkly intoxicating piece but have never been as gripped or ultimately as moved by it as I was here. Utterly brilliant. Loving it is not a choice, it is the only choice.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA!

Music by Richard Rodgers

Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Based on the play “Green Grow The Lilacs” by Lynn Riggs

Directed by Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein

Young Vic – until 25 June 2022

https://www.youngvic.org/

Ah OKLAHOMA! That sunny, optimistic paean to community, New Frontier-ism and just good ole wholesome Americana. The original version (New York 1943, London 1947) transformed musical theatre with it’s use of songs to illuminate character and propel the plot forward, and in it’s creation of a ballet sequence to express subtext. A winning combination of tonal simplicity and artistic sophistication, it galvanised and comforted wan theatregoers in the wake of WW2, the songs became standards, and the film version further cemented it’s reputation as a classic. This is the sort of theatrical comfort food that post-pandemic, post-Brexit audiences facing spiralling bills and uncertainty about the future will be craving, right? A chance to kick back, relax and bask in the company of familiar characters and well-loved songs. Yes?

Er, well, not exactly. At least not in Daniel Fish’s sexed-up, pared-down version (co-directed for London by Jordan Fein), less a revival and more a full blown deconstruction of the original material, that is likely to infuriate as many people as it enchants. I first saw it at a matinee on Broadway in 2019 and suspected that my impression that it was more to be admired than enjoyed may have been influenced by the big Joe Allens lunch I’d had immediately beforehand (!) than any shortcomings in Fish’s bold reimagining, so I was keen to look at it again. In all honesty, my impression didn’t change that much re-encountering it at the Young Vic: it’s a remarkable, mould-breaking production by turns breathtaking and brilliant, but also at times perversely impenetrable. The score is given a Country & Western/Bluegrass makeover that only occasionally makes one long for the orchestral swell of yore, and the singing is sometimes a little ragged as befits the gritty, non-glamorous setting.

This Oklahoma! interrogates the whole concept of America as an inclusive Land of the Free, and the idea that community is a force for good takes a real battering: the marginalisation of Jud Fry, the misunderstood farmhand, has never been as powerful or brutal as it is here. In a heartbreaking performance, Patrick Vaill -one of two holdovers from the original cast- invests him with a childlike openness shading into alarming aggression. He is a haunting, haunted figure of tragic stature and not inconsiderable sympathy. Vaill is extraordinary. The so-called ‘hero’, Curly, on the other hand, in Arthur Darvill’s commendably brave reading, is a dead-eyed, manipulative chancer capable of turning on the charm for sure, but with a streak of ruthlessness that chills the blood. There’s a strong hint of homoeroticism in the cruel scene, usually played for at least some laughs but here in almost total darkness with the actors faces in night vision scope being filmed and projected onto the back wall, where Curly visits Jud in his living shack and tries to persuade him to commit suicide.

Anoushka Lucas’s Laurey is a fascinating combination of resignation, fury and fear, a far from uncomplicated heroine, and the music sits most exquisitely in her voice. The performance closest to the spirit of the original is perhaps Marisha Wallace’s sexy-as-hell, vocally thrilling Ado Annie. It’s a gift of a role anyway but Wallace gorgeously remints it, presenting a sexually voracious, fiery diva with an irresistible combination of fun and naivety. James Davis and Stavros Demetraki are terrific as the men understandably in her thrall.

The phenomenally successful Trevor Nunn version for the National in 1998 -with Maureen Lipman as an unusually spiky Aunt Eller and where Josefina Gabrielle’s beautifully melancholic, multi-layered Laurey was the perfect ying to the yang of Hugh Jackman’s confident, charismatic cowboy – found an unexpected darkness in the material that threw the joyous moments into glorious relief (the ‘Farmer And The Cowman’ section fair exploded with vitality all over the Olivier stage). But Fish goes darker here, many many tones darker. If Lipman’s Eller was tough, Liza Sadovy’s is pure granite, which makes perfect dramatic sense in this hardscrabble environment where guns seem easier to lay hands on than money. The constant use of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s names in all the branding might be a requirement of licensing from their estate but it’s also quite useful as a reminder for the uninitiated who might be under the misapprehension that they’re watching Sam Peckinpah’s or, Gawd help us all, Ivo van Hove’s Oklahoma.

In Laura Jellinek and Grace Laubacher’s immersive design, the Young Vic, like the Circle In The Square on Broadway previously and Brooklyn’s St Anne’s Warehouse before that, has been transformed into a community hall set up for a celebration somewhere in rural, present day America. A monochrome mural suggests the wide open plains outside, trestle tables sit atop a plain hardboard floor, guns line the walls, and the whole thing is lit harshly, as though there is nowhere to hide. The house lights never dim except for moments when the whole space is plunged into discombobulating darkness. The costumes are deliberately low budget and low key. The gingham dresses traditionalists might expect to see make a sort-of appearance in the box social scenes of the second act but they seem tawdry and garish, as though commenting mockingly on audience expectations of what Oklahoma! is supposed to look like.

In one of the biggest departures from the original, Laurey’s famous Dream Ballet has been transformed into a solo dance, shrouded in dry ice and half of it in pitch darkness with, once again, live-filmed images projected onto the back wall. It’s menacing, athletic, nightmarish… and Rodgers’s music is distorted into a sort of deafening Progressive Rock. Marie-Astrid Mence, diminutive and dynamic, delivers John Heginbotham’s splayed fingered, angular limbed choreography, pitched somewhere between horseplay and eroticism, with authentic commitment. At one point, a dozen or so cowboy boots drop from the flies, presumably to signify male upon female oppression (the constant references to women “belonging to” men in the script really rankle in a modern setting, which is of course the point), but the whole section may prove too esoteric for many.

At times aggressively ugly and only intermittently uplifting, this is inevitably not going to be everybody’s idea of what they want from this particular musical. It’s worth noting though that Fish and collaborators don’t alter a single line of dialogue or note of music, they simply repoint almost everything to sometimes devastating effect. The cover-up surrounding Jud’s murder at the end is grimly pragmatic and leads into a final, blood-spattered blast of the (usually) celebratory title song (“we know we belong to the land / and the land we belong to is grand”) where the increasingly traumatised and desperate body language and expressions on the faces of the characters, suggests that their lives will never be the same again. Fish and Fein have succeeded in making this show seem even more tragic than Carousel, which is something of an achievement. I love a “dark” musical and, watching this, vacillated between feeling it was reminiscent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and then being pinned to the back of my seat with astonishment at the audacity and sheer ingenuity of what they’ve achieved.

Love it or hate it, this is one of the main talking points of theatrical London right now.

LA BOHÈME

Score by Giacomo Puccini

New English libretto by David Eaton and Philip Lee

Original concept by Adam Spreadbury-Maher and David Eaton

Musical Direction by David Eaton

Directed by Mark Ravenhill

Kings Head Theatre – until 28th May 2022

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/la-bohme

If you imagined that Jonathan Larson’s RENT was the last word in giving a radical overhaul to this operatic masterpiece then think again. In fact, former Kings Head artistic director Adam Spreadbury-Maher already made bold updates to Puccini’s bittersweet portrait of tragic lives in the Parisian artistic quarter with his 2009 version for the now defunct Cock Tavern in Kilburn, garnering awards and a West End transfer as it reimagined the struggling bohemians in a hip but grungy contemporary London.

This edition though, libretto by Philip Lee and musical director David Eaton based on an original concept by Spreadbury-Maher and Eaton, and first seen pre-pandemic in a shorter form as part of a double bill entitled Opera Undone, goes even further in adapting the beloved staple of opera houses around the globe. Here, the seamstress heroine, she of the tiny frozen hand, is Lucas (nicknamed Mimi), a HIV+ gay man with a drug problem and a job flogging fragrance in Libertys, who meets lovelorn poet Rodolfo (now Robin, struggling to write his masterpiece on a battered-looking iPad) on Grindr, and fiery secondary couple Musetta and Marcello have become Marissa and Marcus who shop at Lidl and address each other in the saltiest of language when having a row.

All other characters are cut, and director Mark Ravenhill has distanced this version even further from the original by having the whole thing played at as a sort of last gasp fever dream in Lucas’s head just as he dies in a medical emergency room with all the other performers clad in hospital scrubs throughout as they embody figures from Mimi’s gritty, intermittently unhappy past. Anybody in search of old school sentimentality and lush orchestral swell will be sorely disappointed (Eaton plays the score, quite beautifully, on an upright keyboard at the side of the stage). The concept-cum-framing device of the hospital setting takes a while to get used to, and slightly muddies the water in terms of the storytelling.

Some of the blocking is awkward: the Kings Head stage is tiny but this production makes it feel smaller still by using just a square space in the centre of it, which works brilliantly when the four performers are simulating being in a crowded Nags Head pub on Christmas Eve, but seems perversely limiting the rest of the time. Also, Ravenhill has Philip Lee as Mimi facing upstage for the entire final section as he’s dying in front of Daniel Koek’s ardent Robin, which makes any emotional connection virtually impossible from an audience point-of-view.

The concept has a couple of other built-in issues: the melodramatic excess of some of the more extreme moments are harder to pull off in a contemporary setting, and the music dictates acting choices that can sometimes come across as stilted or slow-moving. This isn’t the fault of the performers or the director, but can prove a little frustrating to watch at times.

Despite these caveats, there’s still much to savour here. For starters, there’s the humour -particularly with regards to the histrionics and jealousy of Marcus and Musetta- which has way more bite and sparkle than in a conventional version; Matt Kellett and Grace Nyandoro bring real dynamism and sexual chemistry to these roles, while also achieving glorious vocal performances. The singing throughout, as one would hope in an opera, thrills the blood, and it’s impossible to overstate how wonderful it is to hear voices of this calibre at such close quarters. Daniel Koek’s golden, ringing tenor contrasts pleasingly with Philip Lee’s lovely, but more vulnerable, maturer sound, and when they sing together it’s utterly magnificent.

If I was left less emotionally wrung out than I would have hoped, there are undeniable merits in bringing this story bang up-to-date. Not one for purists perhaps, or anybody who thinks that innovation in opera should stop with the ENO, but a treat for anybody who wants to hear Puccini’s swooningly gorgeous music stripped right back but still sung with authentic heat and passion.

PRIMA FACIE

By Suzie Miller

Directed by Justin Martin

Harold Pinter Theatre – until 18 June 2022

https://primafacieplay.com/ticket-information/

The term ‘prima facie’ means “accepted as correct until proven otherwise” and it’s a fitting title for this harrowing but galvanising monologue in which an incandescent Jodie Comer portrays an ambitious criminal barrister whose life is transformed when she is the victim of sexual assault.

When we first encounter Tessa, she’s supremely confident in her stellar abilities not just in the court room but in life generally, having taken the Oxbridge route out of a working class background, and revelling in the fact that she’s one of three graduates who statistically forge a career in law (the others fall by the wayside). She’s funny, cocky, likeable, she swaggers, shaking her blonde mane like a lioness…..there is a troubling downside though and that is a willingness to discredit a rape victim’s story in order to win a case, her reasoning being that a stronger defence lawyer would have prevented this from happening. To say that this assertion comes back to haunt her is an understatement. Author Suzie Miller was a lawyer in Australia (the play won awards when it premiered there, with a different lead actress, in 2019) so understands both the mechanics of the legal system, and the inherent theatricality of the court room performance.

The script has been seamlessly anglicised (Tessa now hails from Liverpool, as does Comer, and works in chambers in London) and is an accomplished piece of storytelling. It does almost abandon any attempt at coherent drama by the end, as Tessa becomes less a character in her own right and more an understandably outraged mouthpiece at the gender inequalities within the legal system, wondering aloud if female victims of sex crimes can ever receive truly impartial justice in a set-up that sometimes seems exclusively set up to protect the interest of men. Director Justin Martin raises the house lights at this point, as though to indict us all, and while it is undeniably powerful, that’s largely because of Comer’s transfixing delivery.

The earlier sections of Miller’s script work better from a theatrical point-of-view, drawing a witty, vivid picture of successful urban young lives contrasting with the hardscrabble existence from which Tess hails. Martin’s staging – played out on Miriam Buether’s sombre setting of heavy wooden desks and towering, casefile filled bookshelves that miraculously disappear – is dynamic, leavened by flashes of light and the ongoing thrum of music and sound ranging from exciting to increasingly oppressive (Rebecca Lucy Taylor – composer, Ben & Max Ringham – sound design). All of this theatrical artifice throws the starkness of the second part – and the brokenness of Tessa herself following the sexual assault, which is described in uncompromising but never exploitative detail – into a sharp relief. Despite the flaws, it is heartening to see accessible popular writing that takes on a very important subject without ever one trivialising it. The night I saw it, the audience were breathing as one.

It’s a tremendous piece of theatre, explosively angry and richly detailed. The big news though, and why tickets sold out ahead of even the first preview, is the West End debut of Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer. She is utterly magnificent, not so much acting the script as living it, morphing with complete conviction and precision into various figures in Tessa’s life – her straightforward Mum, work colleagues ranging from the suave to the flakey, a combative then kindly cab driver – she hits not a single false note. Her transformation from strong, capable, driven young barrister to a woman so bowed that she can barely put one foot in front of another, to a fascinating, flawed combination of the two by the end, is literally breathtaking. There is a section, while making a police statement, that she delivers directly to camera as it then gets projected to the back wall of the set, and the look in her eyes, the facial tics, the clenched mouth….it’s unforgettable. She’s unforgettable.