ajhlovestheatre

OLEANNA

by David Mamet

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Arts Theatre – until 23 October

https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/events/oleanna/book

If you want to see what a bunch of people who have been collectively shaken and stirred looks like, hang about outside the Arts Theatre on the fringes of Covent Garden just before 9.30pm. That is when the evening performance of David Mamet’s still-incendiary Oleanna gets out, and the expressions of bewilderment mingled with excitement and fury on the faces of departing audience members is quite something to see. Better still, get a ticket and experience this remarkable controlled explosion of a production for yourself.

First seen in New York in 1992, when the shocking ending regularly provoked outbreaks of fighting in the front Stalls, this superbly constructed two hander about a college professor being professionally and morally demolished by an apparently desperately insecure female student, feels more relevant than ever in the wake of the Me Too movement and in a modern landscape where the patriarchy is under pretty much constant interrogation. The London production was directed by Harold Pinter no less, who was famously angered by his original stars, David Suchet and Lia Williams, making explicit in an interview where their sympathies lay: Suchet felt student Carol was lying and out for blood while Williams countered that her accusations were 100% valid.

Pinter’s staging humanised the protagonists while a 2004 West End revival, with film stars Aaron Eckhart and Julia Stiles, played up the subtly heightened poetry of Mamet’s text, which is uncharacteristically unprofane right up until the very end when the obscenities rain down like missiles through the hitherto civilised canopy of academia. Lucy Bailey’s magnificent, technically flawless new production, first seen in Bath, sits somewhere between the two and may just be the best account of this punchy, provocative play I’ve yet seen.

Rosie Sheehy imbues Carol with a rich but troubled inner life and a tentative watchfulness, almost like a wounded animal…. or at least at first. I’ve never felt so invested in the character’s back story (which is never explicitly told) than here. More sympathetic but also spikier than some of her predecessors, this Carol makes the transformation from endlessly note-taking, walking inferiority complex to driven, sharply dressed, vengeful fury, constantly referring to a “group” that seem to be driving her motivation, with total credibility. It’s a terrific performance, delivered so authentically that it barely feels like acting.

Jonathan Slinger is equally good as John, the benignly patronising professor, thinking he’s helping Carol while simultaneously and unwittingly shooting himself in the foot, and negating her power. Watching him putting words into Carol’s mouth time after time, blurring the line between kindness and insensitive privilege, is as compelling as it is toe-curling, although his American accent wavers a little. His disbelief when his carefully constructed life comes tumbling down is brilliantly done, while his ultimate descent into violence is utterly chilling. The final couple of moments have never felt as brutal and unsettling.

Jon Nicholls’ sound design is subtly ingenious, the insistent but uncomfortable almost-music between scenes coming across as an aural equivalent of the gulf between what these two characters are saying to each other and what they’re understanding. Similarly, Oliver Fenwick’s lighting is naturalistic throughout but then chills down to a stark, white wash in the seismic final seconds as though we are watching specimens in a museum rather than real people. None of this is overly showy, but it all adds up.

Depending on your viewpoint, Carol’s table-turning on John could be seen as a satisfying riposte to him never letting her finish her sentences, as she and her “group” remint so much of what we, as an audience, have heard him say, and effectively put new words, or at least new meanings, into his mouth. Or is she just spiteful and mendacious? You have to see it to decide. There’s a rape allegation made and, for the first time in any Oleanna production I’ve seen, there is an ambiguity in the central relationship, and also in the work of fight director Philip D’Orleans at specific moments, that adds a whole new layer of fascination.

Every bit as relevant, if not more so, now than when it premiered nearly thirty years, Oleanna remains a peak in Mamet’s career (his more recent plays The Anarchist, China Doll and Bitter Wheat were pretty disastrous star vehicles) and has a complexity and breadth of viewpoint that exhilarates as much as it shock. I’d be surprised to ever again see it acted and directed as well as here. Unmissable.

CAROUSEL

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Based upon Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom, as adapted by Benjamin F Glazer

Directed by Timothy Sheader

Regents Park Open Air Theatre – until 25 September

https://openairtheatre.com/production/carousel

With the theme of domestic violence tethered inextricably to it’s central love story, Carousel has for many a decade, but more so now than ever, resisted prettifying, despite having one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most rapturously ravishing scores. Timothy Sheader’s bold, brave Open Air production goes even further, excising abused heroine Julie’s problematically eggy assertion that being hit hard by somebody you love barely hurts (say WHAT?!), yes, but also proceeding to strip the show of it’s American setting: we get a Midlands Billy Bigelow, a Northern Nettie Fowler, a Londoner Jigger Craigin, a Welsh Carrie Pipperidge; also gone are it’s orchestral strings, most of it’s romanticism, and even it’s carousel (although we do get the bare bones of one when dead fairground barker Billy returns to see his troubled daughter, but it more resembles a revolving cage in Tom Scutt’s striking, stark circular design.). The result is a defiantly spare, unglamorous Carousel, one that cannot quite absorb the Americanisms of the original (clambakes, specifically New England references) but is almost as remarkable, in it’s way, as Nicholas Hytner’s astonishing 1992 production for the National, which is still the one that others tend to be measured against.

That version featured the last work of the late Sir Kenneth Macmillan who created dances that were seemingly light as air yet full of passion and weighty feeling. Here Drew McOnie’s choreography is more muscular and earthy, almost as though Jerome Robbins had discovered clog dancing. More angular than elegant, there is a raw dynamism that fully convinces in this gritty reinvention.

It’s Tom Deering’s brass band orchestrations that may be the single most surprising aspect of this production. Out are the soaring violins and melancholic cellos one might expect during the famous ‘Carousel Waltz’ and in are cornets, trombone, tuba and trumpet. It’s as if the Coronation Street theme tune had a musical baby with some old Broadway classics and the result is rousing, unexpected and instrumental (pun intended) in rooting Sheader’s bleak but compelling vision in it’s mid century coastal English milieu.

The ensemble are all terrific – it’s a lovely choice to transform the Heavenly Gatekeeper, traditionally played by a senior actor, into a chorus of women who, there but for the grace of God, could have ended up like Julie or may have had lives like her. The leading casting is a bit of a mixed bag however, with the women faring much better than the men. It’s a coup for Regents Park to have the National Theatre’s original Julie Jordan (Joanna Riding, incapable of giving a less-than-stellar performance) as Cousin Nettie, bringing a vitality and brisk warmth to a role that can sometimes feel a bit like the resident old banger, wheeled out periodically to impart homilies and gamely shake a leg during the company numbers,but not so here where Riding’s glorious but very real creation lights up the stage. Jo Eaton-Kent invests fairground owner Mrs Mullin with an unusual brittle dignity, grace and quiet desperation that makes her more impactful than usual.

Christina Modestou is fabulous, life-enhancing and pretty much show-stealing as a gorgeously funny but still deeply felt Carrie, in a performance that nearly equals the impact a not-yet-famous Janie Dee had in the role nearly thirty years ago. Carly Bawden’s haunting, watchful Julie is excellent but it takes a moment to get used to the fact that all her music is transposed down. Instead of the shimmering soprano notes we get a lyrical, lilting mezzo. The lack of chemistry with Declan Bennett’s somewhat wan fairground barker is ultimately disappointing however, and robs the piece of some of it’s emotional punch.

Bennett is a singer-actor of special quality, capable of remarkable intensity, as evidenced by his titular turn in Sheader’s enthralling reimagining of Jesus Christ Superstar here in the Park, or his starring role in the West End Once, but feels miscast here. The performance seems vocally thin (the notoriously difficult but potentially thrilling ‘Soliloquy’ feels like a real struggle) and dramatically a bit one-note. However, he stabs himself with such gusto that I was getting flashbacks to his Jesus having to nail himself to the cross last summer, presumably because the cast weren’t allowed to touch each other due to Covid risk, in the Superstar concert at this very address. His post-death reaction to the life struggles of the sixteen year old daughter he never knew (a very moving Amie Hibbert at the performance I saw) is genuinely affecting though.

Sam Mackay is a terrific talent but doesn’t find sufficient darkness in the villainous Jigger, not helped by some uncharacteristically inappropriate choreography that substitutes camp for threat in a key number, while John Pfujomena’s amusingly uptight, palpably ambitious Mr Snow could afford to show more authentic affection for Modestou’s sparkling Carrie.

Timothy Sheader’s thoughtful, visually monochromatic rendering won’t be for everyone, it’s too tough and unsentimental for those after a bit of summery escapism – indeed, some of the preview reports were so damning I wondered if we might be in for another divisive production along the same lines as Sheader’s 2012 Ragtime – but it has a lot to commend it, and lingers in the memory. Rodgers’s tunes are indestructible, and Deering’s novel musical approach is a welcome opportunity to re-examine them, and hearing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ performed as if by a (particularly accomplished) Northern community choir, brings a real thrill to the blood. I would absolutely buy/download a cast album of this uncommon Carousel. It’s not traditional but neither is it as radical an overhaul as Daniel Fish did with his bluegrass Oklahoma! in NYC a few years back. Go and judge it for yourself.

PARADISE

by Kae Tempest – a new version of Philoctetes by Sophocles

Directed by Ian Rickson

National Theatre/Olivier Theatre – until 11 September

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/paradise

The title may be ironic but there is much to enjoy in Kae Tempest’s poetically embittered, anachronistic retelling of one of the lesser known Sophocles Greek dramas. It’s impossible to imagine it presented better than in Ian Rickson’s spare but impassioned staging, featuring a uniformly magnificent all female cast (at least, I think everybody in the acting company identifies as female, and I’ve scanned the programme for information to the contrary, but if I’ve made a mistake then I apologise). The Olivier is still in it’s in-the-round configuration and upon entry, as members of the Chorus wake up, greet each other and wander about looking a little like some of the denizens of the street that exist in real life just yards away from the hallowed concrete of the NT, Rae Smith’s cluttered, intentionally random set suggests we’re in for a sort of tropical Mother Courage.

Women existing in a war-torn environment is actually what this angry but measured script, where speech shades into poetry which in turn gives way to chanting and song to often hypnotic effect, is partly about. The Chorus are brilliant, healers who can turn into pragmatic looting vultures when the opportunity arises and privations make it necessary. Tempest’s muscular, gritty text draws alarming, if essential, parallels with the modern world, referring to a series of environmental disasters that have further ravaged the Earth, and it’s not much of a stretch to see post-Brexit Britain in some of the speeches decrying racism, pettiness, violence (“a shadow of her former might”).

Lesley Sharp’s bull-headed, damaged, oddly sympathetic Philoctetes, simultaneously clear-eyed and deluded, clutching his famous bow like it’s a life raft, is a masterpiece of character acting. She’s matched by a wildly impressive Anastasia Hille as a brutal but stiff-upper-lip Odysseus, the man who left Philoctetes for dead on this island non-paradise a decade earlier. Gloria Obianyo makes something affecting out of the young soldier caught between the two, the idealistic glow palpably dying in the eyes as the play progresses.

Grim and confrontational as much of this is, Paradise is also shot through with a sort of irresistible gallows humour that both relieves the gloom and further points up the darkness at the plays core. At one point, when the women prescribe wild garlic and oregano to treat a potentially fatal open wound, Hille’s Odysseus bellows at them in agonised frustration “I’m not a fucking pizza!”

All in all, Tempest, Rickson and this fine cast succeed in revitalising a little known classic and mining it for all of it’s modern day relevance in an evening that manages to be both thought-provoking and exciting, and not entirely without hope. It’s still sad to see the National as only partially open -hopefully the bookshops, restaurants and all three auditoria will be at full throttle soon- but it felt so good to be back.

MIke Oldfield’s TUBULAR BELLS – LIVE IN CONCERT

The 50th Anniversary Experience

Original composer: Mike Oldfield

Directed and choreographed by Yaron Lifschitz

Musical direction and arrangements by Robin A Smith

Featuring Circa Contemporary Circus

Royal Festival Hall – until 15 August, then touring internationally

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/performance-dance/tubular-bells-live-concert

Released in 1973 when Mike Oldfield was a mere 20 years old, Tubular Bells was both a technically pioneering project (using multi-track recording to capture the composer playing all the instruments himself, then layering the different sessions together to create the now-epoch-making whole) and a global phenomenon, standing at the crossroads between rock and classical instrumental music. Simultaneously earthy and other worldly, it still exerts a haunting, fascinating pull, with it’s juxtaposition of delicate Celtic influences, thunderous rocking exhilaration, magical bells (tubular, of course) and an unparalleled sense of aural wonder that shades into melancholy and/or sinister at key moments. Not for nothing did one of the sections become the instantly recognisable theme tune to the seminal horror movie ‘The Exorcist’.

This fiftieth anniversary concert is described as an “Experience” and so it proves. Defiantly defying categorisation, it is an exhilarating, hugely satisfying combination of circus, recital, dance theatre, celebration and event. Fans won’t want to miss it but anybody else lucky to be there is likely to be converted.

Perhaps in an attempt to make it into more of a full evening’s entertainment, and to justify the ticket price, the first half of Fiery Angel and Senbla’s co-presentation is a more straightforward concert rendering of a trio of Oldfield’s other works, performed with great panache and sensitivity by Robin A Smith’s magnificent nine piece band. The last number before the interval is a kicking arrangement of the dreamy, memorable 1983 single ‘Moonlight Shadow’, Lisa Featherston’s dramatic, striking rendition a fascinating contrast to Maggie Reilly’s more ethereal original vocal.

The second half is the real event here though, and what an event it is: Smith’s musicians flawlessly perform the entire Tubular Bells album while Australian-European band of gymnasts-acrobats-dancers-superhumans, Circa Contemporary Circus, under the direction and choreography of Yaron Lifschitz, add a soaring, visionary physical dimension. The result is one of the most exciting hours of entertainment you’re likely to experience.

The tricks and feats of the extraordinary ten person ensemble are authentically breathtaking, often astonishingly, starkly lovely to behold, and meld seamlessly with the driving, enthralling music, complementing but never overshadowing it. The mention of interpretive dance can strike hysteria in many theatregoers, often with good reason, but never once does the work here threaten to become risible. It’s impossible not to marvel at the apparent contempt for the law of gravity or the sheer, exuberant athleticism of these human wonders, and the great, gorgeous walls of sound coming at you feel truly enhanced by the tumbling, hand-to-hand work, silks, flying (well almost). Like the performers themselves and like Tubular Bells itself, it’s muscular, beautiful and effortlessly commands the attention.

It’s a hell of a thrillride and a fitting way to commemorate the half century of a cultural phenomenon. Do not miss.

PARK BENCH

by Tori Allen-Martin

Act 1 (digital) directed by Christa Harris

Act 2 (live) directed by Sarah Henley and Timothy O’Hara

Park Theatre – until 14 August

https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/park-bench

Tori Allen-Martin is a luminous, one-in-a-million talent: an instinctive, funny, truthful actor with presence and authority but also a remarkable warmth and relatability, she is also an astute writer well alive to the idiosyncrasies of modern speech and the sheer, sometimes beguiling strangeness of apparently ordinary people. These skills reach an apotheosis of sorts with this delightful, often moving, piece of writing.

The idea of Park Bench is so simple, neat and clever that you wonder why nobody’s done it before. A play in two acts, it’s about Liv and Theo, a youngish urban ‘sort-of‘ couple who aren’t quite together (in any sense of the word) but who also care too deeply about each other to leave each other alone. They describe themselves as friends but, as Allen-Martin’s intensely engaging, vulnerable but never pathetic Liv tells Theo in a particularly bruising moment: “I don’t fuck my friends”. The play’s USP, beyond the sheer quality of the writing, acting and direction, is that the first act is only available to watch digitally, in a tense but amusing, scarcely conciliatory Zoom call between the pair. The second act, a park bench meeting set up during the filmed section, takes place live onstage, and it’s a bit of a treat.

The amount of pain and truth, as well as rollicking good laughs that Allen-Martin packs into this beguiling fifty minutes is a wonder to behold, as Liv and Theo unpack a heck of a lot of things: the realisations about themselves that isolation and lockdown have  prompted, jealousy, mental health, miscommunication, much more, but perhaps most potently a tidal wave of mutual affection …. it carries an authentic ring of truth, not least because Allen-Martin’s writing generously spreads the foibles and the (often brilliant) one liners amongst the two characters.

Tim Bowie is terrific as feckless, tentative Theo. He’s not exactly a loser but he’s not a winner and there’s something deeply touching about watching him trying to articulate feelings that are coming as a surprise even to himself. Perhaps the most appropriate thing one can say about Allen-Martin’s marvellous performance as Liv is that when Theo describes her as gold, somebody whose very presence in other people’s lives enriches those lives, is that one can see exactly what he means. Her speech describing her temporary descent into very dark mental health terrain is heartbreaking.

Sarah Henley and Timothy O’Hara’s punchy, pacy staging is so natural and exquisitely calibrated that it genuinely feels like eavesdropping on a conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed this little gem of a play as I was watching it but the more I thought about it afterwards I realised that, like Theo with Liv, I basically loved it.

by Shaun Kitchener

Directed by James Callàs Ball

Kings Head Theatre – until 21 August

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/all-that

The gay attitude to monogamy isn’t particularly original dramatic fodder, but Shaun Kitchener’s engaging comedy of bad manners feels truly fresh in at least one way: he has created a life-loving, fragile but fun gender fluid character called Parker (winningly played by Matt Greenwood) and not made them the sidekick, the “you go, gurrrl” best friend, but instead placed them right at the epicentre of some pretty sticky sexual/social shenanigans. It’s never clear whether or not Parker is a master manipulator which in turn imparts a potent dose of extra interest into what is an eminently watchable, if not otherwise particularly original, script, the centrepiece of the Kings Head 2021 Queer Festival.

Parker and their sexy, sullen-at-first boyfriend Jamie (Imran Adams) are moving into a house share with uptight Taylor and friendly Riley (Jordan Laviniere and Chris Jenkins convincingly conveying the dynamics of a couple who have been together a decade), and things take a turn for the comic when Parker excitedly recognises Riley, now a successful insurance broker, as a former boy band member. If the plot that follows doesn’t exactly surprise, the relationship breakdowns sort-of do, to the point of slightly straining credulity. The characters are contemporary and crisply drawn.

James Callàs Ball’s production mines Kitchener’s text for all it’s comedy, pathos and slight shock value, and it is very well acted. Jenkins in particular does superb work as the fundamentally decent Riley, and impressively, affectingly charts his descent into disillusionment and fury. Adams’s Jamie stays strangely unknowable but entirely plausible, and amusingly contrasts with the judgemental but fascinated-despite-himself Taylor of Laviniere who, at least at first, has a lot of trouble getting his head around the sexually open nature of his new lodgers’ relationship. Greenwood gives Parker a brittle, vital edge that hints at untold reserves of hurt but also strength, and a slight tang of danger.

All That may not be a modern gay classic, but it’s an enjoyable, thought-provoking slice of Queer life with a whiff of authenticity and a spiky wit that make it well worth ninety minutes of your time.

ANYTHING GOES

Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter

Original Book by P G Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

New Book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman

Barbican Theatre – until 31 October

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/anything-goes

“Musical comedy, the most glorious words in the English language!” bellows big shot Broadway producer Julian Marsh at a climactic moment in that quintessential backstage musical 42nd Street. It’s a preposterous claim of course but after encountering this delightful, transporting revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, now ensconced at the Barbican, it’s hard not to agree with him. This is the kind of show, and production values, that helped create Broadway’s reputation as the ultimate musical theatre wonder factory. A madcap farce set on a luxurious Transatlantic cruise ship, it’s as slick as oil, camp as Christmas and as joyous as a rabble of Labrador puppies.

Anything Goes is hardly an unknown property: although it dates from 1934 when Ethel Merman first blasted “I Get A Kick Out Of You” , “You’re The Top” and the title number across Manhattan, there have been at least three London revivals, the most recent being the terrific 2002 National Theatre staging by Trevor Nunn with an on-fire Sally Ann Triplett as brassy cabaret singer/unlikely evangelist Reno Sweeney. This Barbican staging was first seen to great acclaim in New York in 2011, but it couldn’t have come at a more welcome time for a pandemic-exhausted London. As with Hairspray and Joseph, both also enjoying never-better remountings in the West End, what stuns most right now about this happiest of shows is just how damn moving it is when the joy really kicks in. It’s like medicine for the spirit.

Well, that’s the second most stunning thing actually….. the predominant one is Sutton Foster as Reno, giving the kind of performance musical theatre students should go and watch as part of their curriculum.

Adorably goofy one moment and implacably elegant the next, she is the living embodiment of the idea of somebody having “funny bones”: her performance is a rare combination of inspired clowning, exhilarating belting and sheer old fashioned razzmatazz stage presence, all the stuff of which theatregoers memories are made. It’s also heartwarming to note her onstage generosity to her co-performers, owning the spotlight but joyfully willing to share it. She repeatedly finds that elusive musical theatre ‘sweet spot’ where a character expresses themselves through dance and song because that is the only way they can express themselves. It’s both heightened yet rooted in a euphoric reality, and it’s a rare pleasure to behold. She won a Tony for this role on Broadway a decade ago, she’s even better in it now.

There’s always a danger, when the headlining turn is as captivating and magnetic as this one, that the star is missed whenever they’re off stage, and it says much for the quality and talent of the rest of this magnificent company that this doesn’t even prove to be the case here. Robert Lindsay brings a gorgeous, James Cagney-like swagger to gangster Moonface Martin and comes pretty close to stealing every scene he’s in, or at least he would if his co-stars weren’t such dazzling pros as Gary Wilmot as a permanently drunk Ivy League money man and Felicity Kendal as a clueless socialite, hell bent on betrothing her daughter (a luminous Nicole-Lily Baisden) to the wealthiest possible match.

Samuel Edwards skilfully negotiates the thin line between cocky and confident and makes an attractive triple threat male lead. Carly Mercedes Dyer and Haydn Oakley are flat out sensational as, respectively, a hilarious, man-eating gangster’s moll and an adorably buffoonish English aristocrat, bringing the house down with their individual numbers.

There has been some grumbling about the high seat prices but from Derek McLane’s gleaming ship setting to some of the most opulent costumes (by Jon Morrell after the late Martin Pakdeniz) to grace a London stage in many a year, you can really see where your money has gone. Broadway veteran Kathleen Marshall directs and choreographs with such showmanship and panache that you’ll have trouble wiping the grin off your face. When the whole company rips into the title song led by the thrilling Ms Foster, it’s like tap dance heaven. The second act showstopper “Blow Gabriel Blow” even out-tops that, it’s utterly glorious.

Just cannot recommend this highly enough, it’s a life enhancing triumph and you should do whatever it takes to get a ticket…I can’t wait to go back.

JOHN & JEN

Music by Andrew Lippa

Lyrics by Tom Greenwald

Book by Tom Greenwald and Andrew Lippa

Directed by Guy Retallack

Southwark Playhouse – until 21 August

https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-whats-on/john-jen/

If you go and see this -and if you’re interested in musical theatre as an art form then you really really should- then you may want to take tissues…. a whole bunch of them actually, as there are likely to be tears. Many tears in fact. Although it couldn’t be more different in scale and ambition, this engrossing chamber musical scored by one of America’s most interesting but underrated composers, Andrew Lippa (best known here for The Addams Family, touring again shortly) packs an equal emotional punch to any of the traditionally ‘weepy’ shows such as Les Mis or Rent. Or at least it will to anybody who’s had a sibling, borne a child, fallen out with a family member, or suffered a loss.

Beyond raving about the note-perfect cast (Rachel Tucker and Lewis Cornay, and it’s hard to imagine anybody else inhabiting these roles) or Guy Retallack’s terrific, truthful staging which strikes an exquisite balance between showy, naturalistic and inventive, or Lippa and Greenwald’s surging score -only intermittently melodic perhaps but never less than expressive- finely played by Chris Ma’s superb, string-heavy quartet, it’s difficult to recommend this too overtly without spoiling the story. Set across decades, it begins as a touching tale of smalltown American Jen and her fractious but loving relationship with her much younger brother John in the face of a troubling family background.

So far, so simple, but what unfolds becomes a quietly fascinating look at the timeline of US history from the 1980s to the present day (the original New York production set the show between the 1950s to the 1990s, but the update here is seamless) taking in the ‘endless war’ in the Middle East, 9-11, even the pandemic, all charted against a deeply intimate story of the effect two contrasting siblings have on each other. It’s also about the deep bond between a mother and child, and the dangers of bringing the expectation of past familial tensions to bear on younger generations. It’s ingenious and involving, but never feels heavy handed, even in a bizarre second act Game Show send-up where two of the lead characters air their grievances to a baying crowd. Here the sheer aplomb and accuracy with which Cornay and Tucker nail the TV genre deflects attention from the fact that it’s quite a radical departure from the main, rich meat of the piece.

Given her impressive musical theatre track record on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s hardly a surprise that Tucker sings this rangy, challenging score with fearlessness and an exhilarating soprano-edged belt, but it’s her acting that proves the real knockout here. She moves so convincingly from wide-eyed youngster to impassioned radicalism to early middle aged American Mom, that you almost forget it’s the same actress, although it is very much a consistent portrayal of a flawed but lovable young woman. Her innate warmth and relatability have seldom, if ever, been shown off to such powerful effect as they are here. Try and forget the look on her face when she realises that her beloved younger brother is on the brink of going off to fight in a war she is so passionately opposed to, or watch her physicality break open in her cathartic, healing 11 o’clock number, the stirring “The Road Ends Here”. She’s utterly brilliant.

Lewis Cornay matches her every step of the way. He spends more of the show playing a child but does so endearingly, with absolute wit and economy, never once tipping over into the panto-like excesses some grown-up actors are prone to when playing a pre-teen. A superb comedian, Cornay also makes chillingly convincing the sequences when he turns on his idealistic sister. It’s a very accomplished performance.

It’s highly likely that Rachel Tucker will return to the New York production of Come From Away to resume ripping the roof off the Schoenfeld Theatre when Broadway reopens this autumn, and Lewis Cornay deserves to be heading for great things: don’t miss the chance to see them up close and together in this extraordinary little-but-mighty musical, their chemistry is magical. But don’t forget those tissues.

I COULD USE A DRINK – The Music of Drew Gasparini

Garrick Theatre

one night only – Monday 2 August 2021

Originally released as an album in 2013, Drew Gasparini’s collection of songs charting aspects of youth and young adulthood from crushing hard to unwanted pregnancy with lots in between, has acquired cult status, exacerbated further during the last year by a much loved online presentation. On the basis of last night’s raucously well received concert version, it’s not hard to understand all the love.

Gasparini’s house style is like the love child of Jonathan Larson and Jason Robert Brown, with invigorating slugs of funk and soul thrown in for good measure. It’s rocky, mostly upbeat and pleasingly melodic. It’s also unmistakably American. There’s even an attractive, if slightly ponderous, meander into Country & Western with a lugubrious all male trio examining the motivations behind mass high school killings, not something one would necessarily expect to hear on a musical stage outside of the next Carrie revival.

For this one-off concert, producers Liam Gartland and Alex Conder (who, due to a last minute indisposition, actually performed, and did so rather superbly) assembled a formidable, diverse team of young singer-actors, representing the cream of young performing talent, some fresh out of college and a couple of rising stars who are already developing fan bases on a par with Gasparini’s. Flynn Sturgeon’s versatile, instrument-hopping six piece band are also hugely impressive.

All of the voices here are good, but a couple of them are astonishing. Billy Nevers sounds like a bona fide soul star and brings real warmth and vulnerability alongside the fiery vocals. Luke Bayer’s gorgeous ringing tenor and charm to spare continue to cement his reputation as one of UK musical theatre’s most likeable young leading men, and Maiya Quansah-Breed’s sass and charisma light up the stage. Olivia Lallo and Ahmed Hamad bring real depth of feeling as well as terrific voices to one of the only sections of the show to have a through-narrative: an engaging young couple falling in love before an unwanted pregnancy brings on the angst and doubt.

Roxanne Couch and Caroline Kay display vocal power and versatility, and both sound like potential future Elphabas, for when Wicked is next recasting, and Callum Henderson brings some much needed comedy to the proceedings, again fielding a fine singing voice.

Richly enjoyable though most of the ICUAD songs are, the concert format does unfortunately render them a bit relentlessly samey by the end of almost two hours, as each one heads towards the same ear-splitting, full-throated conclusion, however magnificently managed by cast and band. This is a real belters paradise, but the overall effect becomes a little numbing, like watching endless rounds of very good audition pieces for a particularly overwrought new musical. The muddy sound design didn’t help, with well over half the lyrics rendered unintelligible when more than one person sang. The lyrics that I could make out though seemed heartfelt and incisive, if not particularly original.

There is so much talent here though, and it would be fascinating to see what a strong director, say a Luke Sheppard or a Jonathan O’Boyle or a Paul Foster, could do to hammer the material into a coherent theatrical shape. As it is, I went straight home and sought out Drew Gasparini on Spotify.

ANNA X

by Joseph Charlton

Directed by Daniel Raggett as part of the Re:Emerge season

Harold Pinter Theatre – until 4 August

https://sfp-reemergeseason.com/the-plays/anna-x/anna-x-ticket-calendar/#/

Here it is then: the last offering in this truly excellent season of new writing, and I for one will be extremely sorry to see it end. Far and away the worst thing about producer Sonia Friedman’s inspired initiative to give new/new-ish writing an auspicious West End start is how short the runs are…. just three weeks for each production. I guess the plays were unknown quantities so maybe the thinking was that if one or all of them had been unmitigated disasters then at least the casts wouldn’t be staring out at empty houses for too dispiritingly long a period of time. Of course, that did not happen though – I mean, Sonia does have form: Leopoldstadt, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour – and we’ve been treated to a diverse trio of sparkling, exciting new pieces any of which would have looked like an oasis of theatrical achievement even in an artistic landscape considerably less barren than the one we’re currently facing post-pandemic.

Inspired by the real life case of ‘fake heiress’ con-woman Anna Sorokin who was convicted of grand larceny after running financial and social amok in mid 2010s Manhattan, Joseph Charlton’s Anna X is an ultra-modern morality tale. It’s a breathless but steely meditation on the fragility of the ‘virtual world’ and the ease with which it facilitates dishonesty and disengagement. The two actors – The Crown’s Emma Corrin and Nabhaan Rizwan, both excellent – portray not just icy Anna and her eager-to-please but cocky “new millionaire” quarry Ariel, his wealth deriving from the creation of a high end, eye-watering lot elitist dating app, but also everybody else who enters their orbit.

Anna passes herself off as an art curator, so it feels appropriate that Daniel Raggett’s flashy, punch staging (Mikaela Liakata and Tal Yarden’s set and projection designs are genuinely dazzling) feels as much like an art Installation as it does a conventional theatrical production. Like the acting performances, it is effortlessly cool and technically flawless, and, in all honesty, probably more remarkable than Charlton’s gripping but occasionally pedestrian script, though it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to create a play where both of the protagonists are essentially so unlikeable.

Few will care, I suspect, preferring to luxuriate in the shimmering, transformative visuals, the pumping soundtrack (sound design by Mike Winship), and the bursts of biting wit. It may be my least favourite of the Re:Emerge Season but it’s still a scintillating way to spend eighty minutes, skilfully evoking the excitement yet increasing dehumanising of global cities as electronic online living threatens to supersede actual lived existence. I’m keeping everything crossed that in the not-too-distant future, this, Walden and J’Ouvert each get extended return engagements. They all deserve it.