ajhlovestheatre

IDA RUBINSTEIN – The Final Act

Book, direction and choreography by Christian Holder

Original scenarios by Iryna Ioannesyan and Natella Boltyanskaya

Playground Theatre – until 16 October

https://theplaygroundtheatre.london/whats-on/

Disparaging somebody else’s passion project is a bit like telling a doting parent that their baby is ugly. This stage tribute to Art Nouveau darling Ida Rubinstein – the early twentieth century dancer, art patron, actress and all round Renaissance woman, a Russian Jewish heiress who also served as a wartime nurse – is one such endeavour. It is abundantly clear that the creatives involved here have an encyclopaedic knowledge of, and love for, their subject and equally clear that she was a remarkable woman, an artist, philanthropist and trailblazer who also ran an extremely complicated personal life alongside her controversial professional one. Unfortunately though, good intentions, meticulous research, boundless respect and affection, nor even a fascinating central figure, do not automatically make great theatre.

If it takes a star to convincingly portray a star, then The Final Act is in very safe hands in this respect at least. The show is built around the considerable talents of Naomi Sorkin, herself a former principal for American Ballet Theatre and Lindsay Kemp amongst others. On a side note, I remember her as a haunting, grief-stricken, entirely wordless villager and quite the best thing about a late-1980s Brigadoon revival at the Victoria Palace. With her lithe dancers physicality, expressive hands, heavily made-up flashing eyes and shock of gorgeous Titan hair, she is utterly mesmerising here, swanning around in an array of glittering kaftans, evoking Belle Époque glamour, a slight edge of danger and an underlying well of deep melancholy.

She is an imperious, eccentric yet oddly sympathetic presence, so bewitching that it almost becomes possible to overlook the ineptitude of much of the rest of writer-director-choreographer Christian Holder’s flattening hotchpotch of drawing room confessional, dance drama and home movie. Rubinstein did have several forays into film so this last element isn’t completely random, although it could have been interpolated into this genre-melding show with a little more finesse. Similarly, the terpsichorean sections, despite the majestic Sorkin, feel grafted on and, unfortunately, a little risible, particularly the bizarre second half sequence depicting Ida as a nurse in what would appear to be an oblique reference to her signature role of Salome, except here instead of the Dance of the Seven Veils we seem to be getting the Dance of the Single Bandage. Not gonna lie, I found it hard to keep it together for that one.

Despite an impressive contribution from Darren Berry, a fine pianist and a suitably histrionic Maurice Ravel (Bolero was written for Rubinstein) I tend to think the show would work better as a solo show for Sorkin, as when she is down front centre stage she is compelling and authentic enough to (mostly) deflect attention from the clunky script, and the aimless shuttling on and off of Rubinstein’s lovers and artistic associates such as Romaine Brookes and Gabriele D’Annunzio, both of whom are performed with a frustrating lack of specificity and conviction.

Apart from the opportunity to see a major talent embody another major talent, perhaps the most welcome thing about Ida Rubinstein – The Final Act is that it may make you want to go away and read up about its astonishing subject.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Book by Bob Gale

Music and Lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard

Based on the screenplay by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis

Adelphi Theatre – open ended run

https://www.backtothefuturemusical.com

The arrival of a trio of splashy big new musicals in the West End at roughly the same time – the others being Frozen and the ALW Cinderella – feels both like a brave move by producers but also, most importantly, a triumphant V sign (and I don’t necessarily mean ‘victory’) to the pandemic and the chaos, misery and uncertainty it has caused. The last of the three to open, this hyper-caffeinated stage version of, and homage to, Robert Zemeckis’s beloved 1985 time-travelling, sci-fi comedy, may turn out to be the biggest crowd pleaser of the lot, even if it’s probably the least satisfying when judged by the standards of well-crafted stage musicals.

It is certainly the most astonishing in technical terms: I can’t think of any other show in recent memory that has combined computer generated imagery and physical sets to such overwhelming effect. Throw in a stage revolve in near perpetual motion, and a complex lighting rig that extends outside the proscenium and across the auditorium resembling the innards of a computer crossed with a multiple lightning strike, and you’ve got a visual feast. Then there’s the famed DeLorean car, retooled by eccentric scientist Doc Brown to allow 17 year old Marty McFly to travel back and forth in time to avert potential family disasters in small town America, and it’s quite a sight to behold. The frantic, eye-popping time travel sequence near the end of the show is genuinely thrilling. You’ll believe a car can accelerate to such an degree that it smashes through time, that it can fly and even, in a departure from the movie, that it can talk. Well, a bit.

It says much for the performances of Olly Dobson, hugely likeable in the Michael J Fox role, and especially Broadway veteran Roger Bart, as a joyously eccentric Doc Brown, that the car doesn’t feel like it deserves star billing. Dobson carries the show with laidback charm and a pleasant voice, but Bart is the real deal, in a gorgeously funny display of physical quirks, vocal tics and formidable comic timing. He’s outrageous but with an underpinning of truth that pushes this Doc into the realms of the unforgettable. It’s a masterclass in musical comedy performance, and may even improve upon Christopher Lloyd in the original movie.

There is a lot to love in the supporting cast too: Cedric Neal brings formidable comedy chops, delightful stage presence and a glorious, roof-rattling voice to the Diner owner who ends up Mayor of the local town. Rosanna Hyland does really lovely, subtle (for this show) work as Marty’s Mum, world weary and vodka soaked in the 1980s, plausibly morphing back to a more optimistic but still feisty version of herself in the 50s, and again with a voice to die for. Hugh Coles and Aidan Cutler are great fun as, respectively, Marty’s Dad and the town bully.

Where Back To The Future on stage falters slightly is that, for all the flash and spectacle, it never feels like there was ever a really strong reason to turn it into a musical. Certainly not Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard’s pastiche heavy score, which is enjoyable but largely unmemorable, all the songs paling beside the Huey Lewis classic ‘The Power Of Love’ which brings the house down in the second half. Nor Bob Gale’s script, adapted from the screenplay he co-wrote with Zemeckis, which ensures that the audience get all the big moments, laughs and plot points they paid for but never achieves a distinct theatrical life of it’s own. It does exactly what it says on the tin, no more, no less, but, like the DeLorean, it has a disconcerting stop-start quality that impedes tension and flow, before suddenly taking flight into moments of sheer exhilaration.

John Rando’s direction doesn’t as yet smoothly marry the hi tech stuff with a cartoony go-for-broke, anything-for-a-laugh aesthetic: it’s like watching two shows pull in different directions at once, the lavish spectacle ultimately winning. Structurally, Back To The Future eschews convention (no opening number, an overly busy first half closer that feels like it should have cropped up half way through the preceding act, the much loved “big number” – the aforementioned ‘Power of Love’ – not ending the show but paving the way for a much less distinguished finale) but doesn’t replace it with anything exciting or even coherent. Tim Hatley’s designs, Ethan Popp and Bryan Crook’s orchestrations, Finn Ross’s video design and, above all, Tim Lutkins’s lighting are all world class however.

The whole show is a technicolour eyeful and, even at West End prices, you’ll really be able to see where your money has gone. If it’s not even the best screen-to-stage adaptation of this year, I’ve still no doubt this will make a lot of people very happy, and will keep the Adelphi nicely filled for quite some time. Also, this must have one of the hardest working stage management teams in London; it’s seriously spectacular and a lot of fun.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/

BLITHE SPIRIT

by Noël Coward

Directed by Richard Eyre

Harold Pinter Theatre – until 6 November

https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/blithe-spirit/harold-pinter-theatre/

Written and premiered in the early 1940s while WW2 raged on and the prospect of losing a precious loved one at short notice felt like a very real possibility, Noël Coward’s ghostly comedy is, perhaps not surprisingly, the first of ‘The Master’’s plays to be seen in the West End post-pandemic. To be fair, Richard Eyre’s Theatre Royal Bath revival was playing, with most of the current cast, at the Duke of York’s when everything shut down in March 2020, so was ripe for reopening. Here it is again then, in a different venue, and maybe with an added piquancy and relevance.

The ostensible centrepiece of the production remains Jennifer Saunders as Madame Arcati, the medium who conjures up Elvira, the dead wife of sceptic novelist Charles Condomine, much to the consternation of his current wife Ruth. Saunders is magnificent: this heroically eccentric woman is absolutely convinced of her own powers, and is genuinely affronted by the indifference and mockery of the posh Kent brigade she’s confronted with in the Condomine household. Got up like a chronically flatulent, Blyton-esque Head Girl gone to seed, she’s predictably hilarious, but Saunders also projects a wounded pride that lingers in the mind after the laughs have faded.

This Arcati’s delight at encountering another person with “the gift” (the Condomine’s fabulously bizarre, awkward maid Edith – Rose Wardlaw in a surprising, scene-stealing turn) is oddly touching, and the resemblance between the two women – an insight I’ve never encountered in any earlier staging of the play – makes for a satisfying symbiosis.

The performance of the night though turns out not to be Saunders, nor Madeleine Mantock’s impressively assured West End debut as a ravishing, unusually sexy Elvira, nor even Geoffrey Streatfeild handling Charles’s coming apart at the seams with incredible panache. In what is generally considered to be the least rewarding of the four lead roles, Lisa Dillon spins comedy gold out of insecure, passive-aggressive Ruth, eternally in unfavourable comparison (literally, as it turns out) to her more exotic predecessor, driving every scene she’s in. Proof that the greatest actors also make the best comedians, and also something of a Coward specialist (Design For Living at The Old Vic, Present Laughter at the NT, the Kim Cattrall Private Lives in the West End), Dillon brings a nervy charm and fragile elegance to the role, blending just the right notes of realism and camp (watch her flounce out of the room clad in dark glasses and a chiffon scarf leaving her husband to frolic with his phantom wife), this is a lesson in high comedy playing. Janie Dee’s Ruth was, for me, a highlight of the 2014 Angela Lansbury revival: Dillon turns out to be even better.

Elsewhere, Eyre’s production, played out on a handsome set by Anthony Ward that feels a little too big for the Pinter’s stage, and exquisitely lit by Howard Harrison, is a frustrating mix of inspired insights and an inability, or unwillingness, to let the Coward text speak for itself. It feels about twenty minutes too long, the use of incidental music is way too strident, and the pace drags considerably in the last half hour before the interval. Given that the last occupant of the Harold Pinter was Sonia Friedman’s presentation of a trio of exciting, diverse new plays and talent (Walden, J’Ouvert, Anna X), Blithe Spirit feels a bit like a retrograde step, theatrical comfort food. That said, it’s maybe what many people feel that they want right now.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/

By Jason Robert Brown

Directed by Jonathan O’Boyle

Garrick Theatre – until 17 October

https://www.nimaxtheatres.com/shows/the-last-five-years/

They say lightning never strikes twice: I beg to differ.

Jonathan O’Boyle’s inspired actor-musician take on Jason Robert Brown’s song cycle-cum-musical felt like an eye-opening reinvention of a fascinating but conflicted piece (one half of the doomed love story between a pair of engaging, volatile creatives runs in chronological order while the other runs backwards; the two strands connect at the wedding) when it premiered at Southwark Playhouse in early 2020. It seemed then that O’Boyle, in tandem with a crack creative team and terrific duet of performers, had found a way of making this technically breathtaking but sometimes frustratingly cerebral piece achieve genuine theatrical fire.

The actors (Molly Lynch and Oli Higginson, both still here and, almost unbelievably, even better than before) accompanied each other at the piano, swapped each other’s props and clothing out, and generally felt like an authentic team which then meant you felt as heartbroken as they did when their relationship fell into ruins. Watching it now in the cream and gold opulence of the West End’s Garrick however, it almost feels like a whole new show. I didn’t think you could improve on perfection, but it would appear that you actually can.

This is more moving, funnier yet more tortured, and more visually satisfying than the earlier iteration. Aurally and musically, it also feels more variegated: Adam Fisher’s pin sharp sound design, swelling but never distorting the volume for a larger space, ensures that we in the audience get every timbre in George Dyer, Leo Munby and Nick Barstow’s orchestrations and almost every one of Jason Robert Brown’s witty, devastatingly acute lyrics. Musically, it’s lush, yet spiky, and always endlessly delightful. “The new Sondheim” is a term that gets bandied about loosely and it would feel appropriate to apply it to JRB until you check out his resumé and realise that he is actually just THE Jason Robert Brown, and that will more than suffice.

Lee Newby’s set, beginning with a grand piano spinning in space and ending as a petal strewn fusion of battlefield and celebration, benefits from having more space to work with, and is lit with painterly panache and precision by Jamie Platt. The stage morphs from glitzy to stark in the blink of a tear-filled eye. It looks utterly gorgeous.

The last London edition of the piece, at The Other Palace and directed by JRB himself, starring Samantha Barks and Jonathan Bailey, was superbly performed but felt a bit inert. This version, rendered with forensic sensitivity by O’Boyle with brilliant movement direction by Sam Spencer-Lane, was always full of invention but has now acquired a gloss and dynamism that makes it worth every penny of your West End ticket money.

It also succeeds in making the self-absorbed characters rather more sympathetic than usual. That has a lot to do with the innate likability of Lynch and Higginson: insufferable though both characters can be – he the arrogant, preternaturally gifted novelist, she the needy, insecure actress – you inevitably find yourself rooting for them.

If Oli Higginson was sensational before, investing author Jamie with a Manhattan intensity, a lithe athleticism and the arrogance of youth, topped off with an exhilarating, skyscraping rock tenor, he has now acquired an extra sheen of vulnerability. This interestingly redresses the sympathy balance somewhat between him (he does cheat on her first, as far as we know) and Molly Lynch’s bewitching Anne Hathaway doppelgänger Cathy.

Lynch’s performance, previously utterly exquisite, feels like it has changed even more radically. As her side of the story plays out/unravels, she infuses the frustrated actress with a new bitterness and fury that throws her earlier joy into even starker relief (Cathy’s story moves backwards, so her enraptured final number “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” as she contemplates a first date with Jamie is almost unbearably poignant given that we know what’s coming). Irresistibly funny and with a powerful but sweet voice that can apparently sing anything, Ms Lynch is the real deal, the kind of musical theatre talent they used to write shows for. They still should.

If you saw this gem of a show at Southwark and thought you didn’t need to go again, treat yourself to another visit: time, space and perspective has lent it a significant upgrade. If you didn’t see it before….what are you waiting for?! Any musical theatre fan that doesn’t experience this is missing a major treat; it enriches the West End. I can’t wait to go back.

SMALL CHANGE

by Peter Gill

Directed by George Richmond-Scott

Omnibus Theatre – until 2 October

https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/small-change-2021/

First presented at the Royal Court in 1976 and last seen in London in a starry 2008 revival directed by the author, Peter Gill’s knotty, elegiac text is a dense, tense jumble of memory play, kitchen sink drama, poetry and gay love story. Dipping back and forth in time between the mid 1950s and the mid 1970s in working class Cardiff, it still packs a powerful punch as it raises questions of where do you come from versus where you are now, and what it emotionally cost you to get there. In it’s uncomfortable meditations on the holds mothers have over their sons, Small Change is sometimes redolent of a Welsh accented take on D H Lawrence’s Sons And Lovers, while the intriguing device of replaying the same scenes with different emphases and perspectives presages Nick Payne’s work on the internationally acclaimed Constellations.

The simultaneous sense of claustrophobia while longing for the wider world informs much of the play, and the casual cruelty that occasionally breaks through innocuous family exchanges rings true and painful. Much of the writing is extraordinary, although a late scene lurch into psychobabble and gay longing between the two men, boyhood friends now reunited after a long absence from a city they now barely recognise, feels clumsy and a little implausible, despite the brilliance of the acting.

It is hard to imagine a better version than George Richmond-Scott’s delicate but muscular revival, which, perhaps surprisingly, manages a more vivid theatricality and sense of time and place than Gill’s own Donmar staging thirteen years ago which, despite a higher profile cast, wasn’t as well acted as this one. As the two boys, then young men, in thrall to their surroundings, their mothers and each other, Andy Rush and Toby Gordon deliver beautifully detailed, vital, moving work. Sioned Jones is terrific -warm but steely- as a Welsh matriarch as capable of implacable stubbornness as she is of great kindness. Tameka Mortimer is very affecting as another working class mother suffering in not-quite silence at a time when mental health wasn’t as openly talked about as it is now.

The quartet of actors seldom leave the stage, as though bearing witness or silently commenting on the intimate action unfolding within Liam Bunster’s endlessly flexible set of rust coloured beams, which evokes at times a gladiatorial combat ring, at others an art installation, even a climbing frame. The near constant use of movement (Rachel Wise, excellent work) is outstanding and makes the moments of stillness all the more potent. The contributions of Ali Hunter (lighting) and especially Lex Kosanke (sound) are also invaluable to this hugely accomplished, atmospheric rendering that brings clarity and passion to what can be a tricky text. Highly recommended.

IS GOD IS

by Aleshea Harris

Directed by Ola Ince

Royal Court Theatre – until 23 October

https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/isgodis/

One of the Urban Dictionary definitions of “nasty” is a word to describe something that is ridiculously good. Between that and the more traditional meaning of the word, I have no hesitation in proclaiming that Aleshea Harris’s literal firecracker of a play is one of the nastiest shows in town. Acclaimed and awarded upon it’s 2018 Off-Broadway premiere, it’s not hard to see why, especially in Ola Ince’s boldly inventive, fabulously cast new production for the Royal Court. It’s astounding.

Imagine, if you dare, a younger, Black riff on a female-led Road Movie such as Thelma & Louise, crossed with a Jacobethan Revenge Drama then overlaid with strips of particularly bitter domestic sitcom, and even Spaghetti Western, but alchemised into something profoundly, essentially theatrical… and you’ll have some idea of what’s going on here. A set of twins, disfigured in an unexplained fire, receive a letter from their presumed-dead mother (a very much alive, almost deified, and magnificently terrifying Cecilia Noble, screaming blue murder from a hospital bed and with a face damaged beyond recognition in the aforementioned conflagration), which lights the touch paper for a vengeful adventure that sees the young women head across America in search of their no-good Dad and to avenge Mom.

The writing is at times poetic and extravagant, and at others brutal and spare, but never hits a false note. It’s full of fascinating detail, quirks and apparent non sequiturs that add up to a wonderfully vivid picture of an only intermittently civilised world spinning off it’s axis.

Probably not for the faint-hearted, but a rollicking good time for everybody else, Harris’s script is particularly impressive because it transitions between these ostensibly mismatched genres almost seamlessly. She, and her resourceful director, have created a modern America that is at once recognisable, relatable even, but also so crazy that it feels like anything could happen. And it pretty much does. Chloe Lamford’s eye-popping, picture-postcard-meets-your-worst-nightmare sets help hugely, as does a uniformly brilliant cast.

Nobody in this company drops the ball: as Racine and Anaia, Tamara Lawrance and Adelayo Adedayo convincingly convey the connection and rapport between identical twins while also making vivid and fascinating some specific differences. As the more outgoing of the pair, and the one less fire damaged, perhaps not coincidentally, Lawrance projects a sunny confidence that masks a breathtaking capacity for brutality. Adedayo is more bruised and watchful, and ultimately very moving as the kinder of the two, or at least the kinder until circumstances put that particular character trait out of her grasp. They are both terrific.

Vivienne Acheampong’s barely suppressed fury as a taken-for-granted, upwardly mobile Mum is both hilarious and unsettling, while Ernest Kingsley Jr and Rudolph Mdlongwa are glorious as her obnoxious twin boys, the former especially funny as a kid so transfixed by his own literary genius as a poet that he can’t find time to help with the chores. Mark Monero is excellent as a father figure who at first seems not quite what was expected…and then….well, come see for yourself.

It’s a bonkers theatrical thrill ride, and one that anybody with an interest in new writing ought to see. Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply troubling, is it a bit early in Harris’s career for her to have created a modern masterpiece? Well….here it is. This is a truly nasty show, and I liked it very very much.

NW TRILOGY

Dance Floor by Moira Buffini

Life of Riley by Roy Williams

Walking/Waking by Suhayla El-Bushra

Directed by Taio Lawson and Susie McKenna

Kiln Theatre – until 9 October

NW TRILOGY

This is community theatre in the truest sense. The Kiln is right in the heart of North West London, and it’s autumn offering is a trio of short plays set in the immediate vicinity, albeit at two different points in modern history. Educational and richly entertaining, NW Trilogy emerges, in Taio Lawson and Susie McKenna’s vibrant production as a sparky, moving valentine to what is traditionally one of the capital’s most diverse neighbourhoods.

Given that not only are there two directors but a trio of writers (Moira Buffini, Roy Williams and Suhayla El-Bushra) involved in the project, it is remarkable how consistent the tone of the entire evening is. Although each short piece is discrete from the others, the overall sense of shared history and cumulative experience, across history, race and gender, is superbly done, the whole company sweeping on to effect scene changes, or act as supernumeraries. Certain themes echo and weave tantalisingly through each text: the commonality of music, the breakdown in communication between men and women, the struggle immigrants have often had to receive acceptance in London, the way an act of unfathomable kindness or cruelty can have a transformative effect on individual lives…. This is powerful, thought-provoking stuff that may occasionally teeter on the brink of sentimentality but is, for the most part, a riveting couple of hours, shot through with some genuine belly laughs and more than a few tears.

The opener, Moira Buffini’s delicate but tough ‘Dance Floor’, set out-of-hours in a 1950s Irish dance hall, is a real beauty. Two women, the older one authoritative but not unkind (Aoife McMahon, perfection) and the younger newly arrived from Donegal, deeply homesick and in trouble (exquisite work by Claire Keenan, who also has the most ethereally lovely singing voice), clean up after the preceding night’s revelry. It’s impossible to describe the plot without spoilers but suffice it to say that it’ll leave you with a real lump in your throat, and includes a terrific turn by Emmet Byrne as one of the guests who imbibed well but not wisely the night before. Vastly more ambitious than it initially appears, ‘Dance Floor’ packs more joy and gentle devastation into it’s brief running time than many plays four times it’s length can manage.

Roy Williams’s ‘Life of Riley’ flashes forward to 1976 and depicts an edgy meeting between mixed race Paulette and her successful reggae musician father, who left the family home when she was three. Paulette is repelled by her father’s selfishness and resents his abandonment of her as a mixed race child in an intolerant city, but is drawn despite herself to his talent and the perceived glamour of his connections (“I knew Bob Marley before he was Bob Marley!”) Williams’s writing is fresh and salty, with a lot to say about the race relations and sexual politics of the time, and Harmony Rose Bremner and Chris Tummings mine it for all it’s pain and humour. When they sing together it’s authentically magical. Again, here is a short, but far from small, play that is completely satisfying.

If Suhayla El-Bushra’s final section ‘Waking/Walking’ is less impressive than It’s companions, that is because it’s the only part of the trilogy that really feels as though it ought to be a full length piece. Inspired by the Grunwick dispute, it filters the turbulent tale of female East African Asian workers striking for better working conditions in the late 1970s, through a domestic comedy drama that seems a little hemmed-in but still repeatedly and pleasingly confounds expectations in terms of character and plot development. The lurch from the nicely observed, often very funny, family tragi-comedy of the first scene to an impassioned, increasingly disillusioned monologue for the family matriarch (delivered with excoriating emotional dexterity by Natasha Jayetileke), forced by financial circumstances to defy the strike and return to work (“These were the women who cried for me when I could no longer cry myself”), is dramaturgically clumsy, although it paves the way for a rabble rousing final tableau that fairly yanks the audience out of their seats.

All of the acting is first rate, and directors Lawson and McKenna skilfully balance the ferocity and vitality of the texts with genuinely poignant moments – note the way Tummings’s hard-bitten Riley gently reaches out to touch his daughter’s hair while she is otherwise engaged writing her phone number on his inner arm – and the whole night moves at a cracking pace. Designer Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey ingeniously makes the extended Kiln stage look simultaneously immense yet claustrophobic, and Richard Howell’s lighting is very successful, evoking a past bathed one moment in a nostalgic glow and in the next, in a harsh, uncompromising reality.

NW Trilogy is steeped in the stories and energy of North West London, but it is worth travelling from any postcode for. A magnificent evening.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/

CAMP SIEGFRIED

by Bess Wohl

Directed by Katy Rudd

The Old Vic – until 30 October

https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2021/watch-at-the-theatre/camp-siegfried

The human urge to create something beautiful or at least worthwhile from the ashes of cruelty and catastrophe is an extraordinary thing: witness the phenomenal global success of Come From Away, which would never have happened without 9-11 yet never feels opportunistic or inappropriate. The genocidal horror of Nazi Germany continues to provide a pivot point for art and probably always will as long as humanity tries to process how upwards of 17 million souls were lost while the rest of the world stood by. Currently on the London stage, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt and Paula Vogel’s Indecent, masterpieces both, grapple with this unconscionable evil. They are joined now by the world premiere of Bess Wohl’s slippery, engaging two hander which appears to start off in much less doom-laden territory but ends up being arguably the most disturbing of this trio of remarkable plays.

Proving that real life is often stranger than fiction, Camp Siegfried actually existed: a sort of Butlins with swastikas, it was a family retreat on Long Island, NY, for American-Germans with Nazi sympathies to engage in outdoor activities, live music, dancing… and fascist indoctrination. Wohl’s play is set over the summer of 1938 and sees a pair of unnamed youngsters (the programme refers to them only as “Her” and “Him”, presumably to force home the point that nobody is ever insusceptible to bad influences) who meet at Camp Siegfried, and share an intense, troubling intimacy before going in very different directions.

In Katy Rudd’s spare, witty and ultimately terrifying production, punctuated by newsreel footage of the period, Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon further consolidate their claims to be among this country’s most exciting younger stage actors. Mesmerising to watch, they subtly, ingeniously uncover layer upon layer of these misguided, fitfully likeable, ultimately repellent individuals. The depth and qualify of the performances and Wohl’s writing, leavened with moments of dazzling humour, mean that while this is not an easy piece to sit through at times, it is undeniably riveting.

The idea that extreme political views appeal to the outsider, to people not fully comfortable in their own skin, may not be a revelatory one but it remains topical, and is handled here with extraordinary conviction. Watching Ferran go from a timid little mouse, comically nervous of almost everything, to a rabble rousing, exalted speech maker is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Thallon matches her with a nuanced portrait of a strapping Aryan-type youth whose enthusiasm seems constantly on the verge of tipping over into mania and violence.

There is a hint that there may be some redemption for Ferran’s character after she receives great kindness at the hands of a Jewish doctor and his family, but Thallon’s is a very different story, and watching the darkness enter him is chilling in the extreme. Rosanna Vize’s stark, expressionistic set and Rob Casey’s lighting – which starts off with a warm, wholesome glow before devolving into a hellish monochrome nightmare – provide suitable foils for this grimly impressive piece of work. Highly recommended, but I wouldn’t bank on getting a good nights sleep afterwards. Evil in plain sight is a real chiller, and that’s exactly what Wohl is serving up here. Disconcerting, essential stuff.

INDECENT

by Paula Vogel

Directed by Rebecca Taichman

Menier Chocolate Factory – until 27 November

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=FA6A2A98-C9F4-464C-BFEC-25A2A4937DC2

This may be a sweeping statement, but if you’re not profoundly affected by Paula Vogel’s provocatively titled powder keg of a play, as staged here in Rebecca Taichman’s Tony Award-winning production, then can you really call yourself a theatrelover? I’m quite serious: it’s hard to think of any other show in recent memory that is quite so steeped in the seedy magic, the graft, the mechanics, the egos, the passions and eccentricities, and the sheer storytelling of live theatre.

Taichman’s dream-like, occasionally eccentric vision, played out on an almost bare stage under Riccardo Hernandez’s gorgeously tarnished false proscenium arch, revels joyfully in the myriad of possibilities, and the visual and emotional shorthand, that theatrical staging affords. In conjunction with Vogel’s dynamic but weighty script, the show also rams home the importance and relevance of the performing arts in day-to-day life, something so many of us have been uncomfortably aware of during the last eighteen months.

Both Vogel’s writing and Taichman’s production are delightfully and deceptively simple, with a laser sharp precision, but also richly textured, sublimely witty, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly moving. It’s a history lesson – the true story of a controversial 1920s Broadway play that saw the entire company charged under obscenity laws for depicting lesbian love on stage – but one with passion, fire and heart, presented against the broader backdrop of the treatment of Jewish people throughout history. While there are countless plays, films and books depicting the latter, few do so as hauntingly and inventively as Indecent.

The numerous locations, time zones and even languages are beamed up on the bare brick wall at the back of the stage, and the story is contextualised further by the inclusion of projections listing the complete works of Sholem Asch (author of the “offending” play God Of Vengeance). We even get a compendium of 20th century Jewish creatives at the helm of the golden age of the Broadway musical, with the mock-rueful caveat that they don’t tend to write in Yiddish any more.

When the audience enters, the seven actors and three musicians are already seated on stage facing out front. When they start to move, notice how rivers of dust pour from their swirling limbs. It’s an enchanting, but unsettling, effect, and one that will acquire a terrible significance as the story gathers pace and we return to a similar visual near the show’s conclusion. Taichman’s production is filled with instances of similar ingenuity (the moment when the infamous yellow stars appear, is like a shock of icy air blasting through the house) but only ever at the service of the play, never just to be a striking gimmick. The humanity here is all, and it’s beautiful and frequently unsettling.

Almost the entire Broadway creative team has reassembled for the Menier version because, really, why mess with perfection. All of their contributions (David Dorfman’s choreography, Emily Rebholz’s costumes, Christopher Akerlind’s lighting, the aforementioned Hernandez’s set) are seamless and invaluable. Everybody here is working at the top of their game, and the results are spellbinding.

The same is true of the onstage company, who emerge as figures from the mind and imagination of stage manager Lemml (a mesmerising Finbar Lynch). This is truly an ensemble piece, with endless doubling up of roles, and it’s not always clear where the boundaries between actors and musicians exist: they really feel like the troupe of wandering players they represent. Apart from Lemml, all other roles are listed in the programmes simply as “Actor”.

Beverley Klein and Peter Polycarpou as the senior actors are so effortlessly accomplished that you’re only made aware of the brilliance of their technique at the exact moment where they want you to see what they’re doing. Joseph Timms and Molly Osborne – both magnificent- bring multiple layers to the playwright, his wife, and several other roles.

An astonishingly good Alexandra Silber invests the leading actress with a beguiling neuroticism and brittle glamour that gets swept away in moments of high emotionalism: it’s an unforgettable performance, deeply felt and exquisitely detailed. Corey English, known in London perhaps most for his terrific, high energy musical theatre work, proves what a devastatingly fine actor he is, impressively transforming from garrulous Irish-American cop to righteously ranting rabbi in the space of one speech.

Indecent is a Jewish story – the final, rain-soaked scene is actually performed in Yiddish, and it is one of the most moving things you’ll find in any theatre in the land right now – but in it’s clear-eyed compassion, it’s gorgeous theatricality, and it’s quiet but powerful insistence that attention be paid to the past and the departed, this is a play for everyone. This production was closed in preview by the first lockdown but proves a hell of a powerful reopening for this mighty venue. An unmissable, breathtaking piece of theatre, pitched somewhere between a ritual and a seance, I will be experiencing it again as soon as I feel emotionally robust enough. A shaynem dank to everyone involved.

“Tell the guards to open up the gates”, it’s finally here… and Frozen is big, bold, beautiful, bombastic…and better than Broadway! A lot better actually. On almost every level, this West End iteration of Disney’s entertainment juggernaut is a considerable improvement on the rather wan spectacle – not magical enough for kids and insufficiently meaty for the grownups – that opened to muted reviews in New York three years ago. At the Broadway performance I saw, the small children sitting behind me started angling to leave as soon as the intermission lights came up following Caissie Levy’s roof-rattling rendering of the belting ‘Let It Go’, before whining loudly throughout the second act about how bored they were.

It’s hard to imagine that being the case in the West End, where Frozen London proves an infinitely more enchanting proposition: more spectacular, more emotionally engaging, funnier, faster paced, it’s a lovely time in the theatre. Most of the original creative team is still attached (Michael Grandage directing, designs by Christopher Oram, Rob Ashford choreography, sound by Peter Hylenski, truly sensational video and puppet design by Finn Ross and Michael Curry respectively) but a lot of the work feels new and fresh. There’s even a couple of superb new numbers that blend seamlessly into Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez’s eclectic, stirringly memorable score.

You know you’re at a Disney musical when it’s set in a fictional Nordic country but almost everybody speaks with American accents, and Frozen suffers from a similar inconsistency of tone to the one that afflicts The Lion King, whereby cartoony comic shtick (in this case lovable snowman puppet Olaf, forever craving warm hugs and wondering what summer must be like) sits uneasily alongside soaringly beautiful serious stuff (in some of the interior scenes, Oram’s designs, moodily lit by Neil Austin, resemble neo-classical paintings come to life). It’s all massively entertaining but it never fully coalesces in Jennifer Lee’s book, adapted from her own screenplay, which staggers schizophrenically between pratfalls and portentous.

Few will care, when the production values are so extraordinary and the performances are so high octane. Samantha Barks’ ice queen Elsa has presence, elegance and powerful but sweet vocals, carving showstoppers out of the aforementioned ‘Let It Go’ and also ‘Monster’, the cri de cœur second act power ballad. Lee’s script doesn’t require her to do much beyond wander about looking troubled however, and the show’s emotional and comic heavy lifting falls mainly to her younger sister Anna. In this role, Stephanie McKeon is a thoroughly satisfying “tornado with pigtails” and could well turn out to be the production’s break out star. She’s very very funny, completely endearing and with a gorgeous voice. On press night, Sasha Watson-Lobo and Summer Betson respectively played Young Elsa and Young Anna so delightfully it could have been a disappointment when the adult versions of the characters took over, had Barks and McKeon not been so winning.

Although he feels like he belongs in a different musical entirely, Craig Gallivan is tremendous fun as Olaf, and Richard Frame is a comic joy as a conniving potential Royal suitor with a nasty case of short man syndrome. Obioma Ugoala, last seen in the West End as a stunning George Washington in the original London cast of Hamilton, is absolutely wonderful as Kristoff, the feisty, big hearted ice harvester who befriends Anna. Physically imposing but with an off-the-wall wit and warmth, and a beguiling lightness of touch, he commands the stage, with buckets of charm, killer moves, and some serious vocal chops. Sven, his reindeer companion, is an astonishing puppet creation that needs to be seen to be believed: think Joey from War Horse meets Disney cuteness and you’re part of the way there.

The vocal arrangements are exquisite, and magnificently sung by a large cast, and Dave Metzger’s orchestrations sound richer and fuller than we’re generally used to hearing in the West End these days. Personally I could have lived without the excessively kitschy second half opener, ‘Hygge’, a bizarre production number extolling the joys of cosiness in the face of extreme weather conditions, and featuring a chorus line of sauna-loving, nearly naked Ensemble members protecting their modesty with outsize tree branches. In all fairness, the audience went wild for this section, but it reminded me of something that might have scored “nul points” in the Eurovision Song Contest back in the 1980s.

Regardless of my reservations, Frozen is most assuredly a show to see: an epic, dazzling, transporting extravaganza that fits the gorgeously restored “new” Theatre Royal Drury Lane like an exceptionally sumptuous new winter coat. It’ll probably run for years and, what’s more, in this excitingly revamped version, it deserves to. “Do you want to build a snow man?” Yes, yes I do.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/