ajhlovestheatre

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim 

book by Hugh Wheeler

Norwegian dramaturg: Olaf Torbjørn Skare

directed by Tomas Glans

Nationaltheatret – Amficenen, Oslo – in repertoire until 29 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval – performed in Norwegian

https://www.nationaltheatret.no/forestillinger/a-little-night-music/

There’s something delightfully perverse about mounting one of the most elegant musicals ever written at a gorgeously ornate period-appropriate theatre (Oslo’s Nationaltheatret dates from 1899, A Little Night Music is set as the nineteenth becomes twentieth century) in the same part of the world as the story unfolds (the location of Hugh Wheeler’s book is Sweden, but Norway and Sweden were technically the same country until 1905), then throwing out all historical trappings and staging the show in the venue’s modern studio space. Famously referred to by original director Harold Prince as “whipped cream with knives”, A Little Night Music emerges here in Tomas Glans’ garish, unsettling new version, apparently set in the same decade (the 1970s) as Wheeler, Prince and Stephen Sondheim were creating this Broadway masterpiece, as more Instant Whip with serving tongs. 

It’s a bold, campy reimagining boasting some nice fresh ideas, particularly for the female characters: Nora Frølich as flighty wife Anne Egerman so resembles a youthful version of her older husband’s previous lover Desirée, at least at first, that it’s remarkable nobody notices, and her lust for stepson Henrik (Ola Magnus Gjermshus) is made explicit from the outset. Hanna-Maria Grønneberg’s trousered maid Petra is aggressively bisexual, her ‘Miller’s Son’ number son less a celebration of “everything passing by” than a slightly desperate, defiant repudiation of ever being tied down. 

I’ve never seen a Countess Charlotte as sexually in thrall to her husband as Henriette Marø’s is here, nor one so pitiably craving for male attention of any kind (observe the way she cosies up to Egerman when she briefly believes he’s as lost as she is.) A brilliant comedienne with edges of mania and tragedy, Marø is so good one wishes they’d reinstate the vicious ‘My Husband The Pig’ number that got cut originally, although on reflection it’s sourness and anger might not fully work with this interpretation. She brings a Piaf-like intensity to her lament for matrimonial happiness ‘Every Day A Little Death’ that feels entirely appropriate and slightly shocking.

Lena Kristin Ellingsen is a fairly traditional Desirée Armfeldt, apart from Glans’ decision to make her a heavy drinker, and she’s pretty much perfect, capturing the glamour, warmth and humorous free spirit of the actress but also her pragmatism and underlying sense of longing. Calculated in her attempts to win back Kăre Conradi’s likeable, charismatic Fredrik, she possesses a twinkle-eyed mischievousness that makes even her worst behaviours forgivable, as does her absence of self-pity. The decision to turn off her mic for the last verse of ‘Send In The Clowns’ after Fredrik’s departure is an interesting one: she sings acoustically (and beautifully, with refreshing dramatic economy) as though all artifice and pretence has been abandoned. It’s a powerful moment.

Conradi is convincingly torn between Desirée and Frølich’s neurotic, perpetually bewildered, superbly detailed Anne, and Gjermshus finds every note and colour in his tormented, sexually pent-up son. There’s a Monty Python-esque derangement to Jacob Jensen’s drop dead gorgeous but clearly unstable dragoon Carl Magnus that sometimes jars against the more nuanced work elsewhere. Mari Maurstad is a wonderful Madame Armfeldt, looking like a broken, slightly dishevelled doll in her wheelchair, salty-sweet but prone to sudden outbursts of volcanic fury. It’s consistently possible to see the fabled coquette under the facade of disapproving old woman. 

If most of the characters are fundamentally the same, the world they’re now inhabiting looks more like late twentieth century Stringfellows night club than fin de siècle opulence: Katja Ebbel’s squat, abstract set consists of multiple slatted mirrors, horizontal neon strips and pink plush. Her eye-popping costumes are objectively hideous but undeniably redolent of the decade that taste forgot, and whoever’s in charge of hair clearly never met a fright wig they didn’t like. Location and mood are largely indicated and altered by the rearrangement of screens of mirrors (through which characters are sometimes fleetingly, intriguingly glimpsed even when not participating in unfolding scenes, in a perhaps unintended homage to Boris Aronson’s original design) and a pair of semi circular rose-coloured couches, and Oscar Udbye’s vivid, shapeshifting lighting.

Sondheim’s music is extremely well served in this production; the voices are uniformly good, and the choral singing on ‘A Weekend In The Country’ thrills the blood. Simon Revholt’s orchestrations for a five piece band are inevitably nearer to Jason Carr’s arrangements for the last London and Broadway revival rather than Jonathan Tunick’s sumptuous originals, but they wrap these divine tunes and waltz motifs with authentic sparkle and melancholy shimmer. 

Overall, there are, perhaps inevitably, a couple of frustrations. The principal one is that the outlandish visual impact and general feeling of chaos mitigates any real emotional connection, apart from Charlotte’s plucky devastation and the aforementioned conclusion to Desirée’s musical cri de cœur. A really satisfying Night Music should break your heart as well as turn your head, and this one doesn’t quite manage that. The idiocy of the characters has been dialled up to ten at the expense of any gravitas or nobility.

Furthermore, reducing the all-seeing, all-commentating quintet of liebeslieder singers to just a pair doesn’t work. Sanne Kvitnes and Anders Gjønnes have magnificent voices but their presence feels pointless when they’re not an operatic Greek chorus. They’re now just unnamed characters wandering aimlessly through the action looking arch and wearing horrific outfits (he in a gold lamé suit, her in a shiny frock of excremental hue) while singing like angels.

Ultimately though, the show itself is so strong that it retains its power to entrance even in such a defiantly unusual production. Traditionalists may feel short changed in terms of scale and period elegance, but there’s no denying that director Glans has a fundamental grasp of these characters and their relationships, and the confidence to treat Sondheim and Wheeler’s work as though it is a new show. This production is exquisitely cast, but perhaps the most surprising thing is how easily the gaudy ‘70s setting and timeless classicism of the score co-exist in the same space.

SEAGULL: TRUE STORY

created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov

written by Eli Rarey

Marylebone Theatre, London – until 12 October 2025

running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval 

https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/seagull-true-story

This is surely the most audacious, inventive show on any current London stage. The brainchild of director Alexander Molochnikov, who fled his native Moscow for New York when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, Seagull: True Story is partly autobiographical, wholly bonkers, yet deeply felt, and frequently jaw-dropping to look at. It’s a genuine original, drawing on vaudeville, clowning, contemporary dance, recent history, and avant garde theatre as much as Chekhov.

Rousing, infuriating, uproariously funny and ultimately desperately moving, this isn’t really a riff on The Seagull at all, although elements of the second half satisfyingly mirror it. The title derives from the fact that the central character/Molochnikov’s avatar, director Kon (a superb Daniel Boyd) is working on a production of the Russian classic at the fabled Moscow Arts Theatre when Putin attacks the neighbours. There’s a desperately sad moment in the first half when the assembled onstage actors stop their rehearsal and stare out front, watching the chaos unfold (overwhelming, unsettling sound design by Julian Starr) with a collective expression of desolation and bewilderment.

With the velvety red curtains, lightbulb-studded dressing room mirrors and other theatrical paraphernalia (designer: Alexander Shishkin) the stage initially looks set for a shabby-chic production of Cabaret. Indeed, there are superficial similarities with that musical’s Emcee character and the more benign but still unpredictable MC of Andrey Burkovskiy (“everything is fantastic!”) whose cajoling of the audience threatens to turn into taunting. Burkovskiy, who also portrays, brilliantly, an increasingly exasperated theatre manager and a manipulative, grandstanding Broadway producer, is the real deal, a formidable stage presence with the ability to delight, unsettle, warm and warn. You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off him, if everybody else wasn’t so good.

There’s a real edge to the MC’s relationship with sidekick Anton, a poet and actor with a permanently hangdog air (Elan Zafir, utterly wonderful), and overall a whiff of Beckett about this shambling, bittersweet pair. Then there’s grande dame actress Olga, also Kon’s mother and cast as Arkadina, played with radiant elegance and an appropriately steely edge by Ingeborga Dapkunaite, all too willing to regularly remind him that he wouldn’t be directing at this level if it wasn’t for his connection to her. Scriptwriter Eli Rarey accurately conveys the flamboyant, sometimes brutal, way theatre folk speak to each other, and his work throughout is sharply funny and psychologically acute.

Molochnikov’s production is imbued throughout with rough magic, delighting in the possibilities of theatre, constantly breaking the fourth wall, seamlessly fusing music and dance with text, and creating some extraordinary stage pictures (look out for the shirtless Putin on horseback!). The Moscow-set first half has a strong flavour of the freewheeling zeal of European theatre, while the second half unerringly captures the grunge and polyglot energy of the avant garde, multicultural NYC theatre scene. The play is also very much about the differences in approach to theatre-making between the two cultures: the repatriated Kon ends up living in a Bushwick commune for artists (“all the way from Russia only to live with communists” as the MC wryly notes) with a young actress (Stella Baker, superb) who comes to the rescue when his luggage is stolen on the subway. The tantalising glimpses we see of his vision for The Seagull suggest that it’s even more iconoclastic than this year’s Thomas Ostermeier version with Cate Blanchett at the Barbican. 

Seagull: True Story also touches on censorship in a way that, sadly, is probably as relevant to the USA in 2025 as it is to Russia. Time and again, raw theatrical power sits alongside whimsical humour and the effect is captivating and, at times, absolutely devastating. It’s pretty crazy stuff but, crucially, every single person connected with the production, on stage and off, seems to share the same collective vision, which lends an exhilarating coherence even when the show is at its most off-the-wall.

Ohad Mazor, also in the cast, provides choreography encompassing everything from folk to contemporary dance and rave, that trickles through the action like a stream before suddenly bursting into an ocean of full-out dancing: it’s ingenious and as essential to the unique flavour of the production as Fedor Zhrulavlev’s rocky, exhilarating compositions. Alex Musgrave’s lighting is potent and transformative.

Ultimately, this is Total Theatre of a kind that we don’t often see in this country outside of the work of Complicité and occasional visits from European companies and Slava’s Snowshow seasons. The concept, the writing, the acting, the dancing, the design elements, the bizarre spectacle….it’s quite extraordinary and should be required viewing for anybody who admires stage work that pushes the envelope. It’s rude, raucous, wildly entertaining yet deadly serious. Go and experience it.

NOT YOUR SUPERWOMAN 

created and written by Emma Dennis-Edwards 

created and directed by Lynette Linton

Bush Theatre, London – until 1 November 2025

running time: 85 minutes no interval 

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/not-your-superwoman/

A lot is written about the patriarchy but here’s a stimulating new play about the matriarchy. Emma Dennis-Edwards and Lynette Linton’s engrossing creation looks at nurture versus nature, inherited trauma, the tensions and similarities between generations of women from the same family. It also appraises the perceived role of women, in this instance particularly Black women, to be all things to all people, carriers of emotional and spiritual burdens, even to the detriment of their own wellbeing. 

That’s a lot to unpack, and a tall order to cram into less than ninety minutes stage time, but Not Your Superwoman is imbued with an irresistible sense of humour, and is deeply touching while seldom lapsing into sentimentality. Also there is a true universality to this tale of two British Guyanese women – mother Joyce and daughter Erica – re-evaluating their relationship following the death of Elaine, the mother/grandmother who effectively raised them both, as they travel to the land of their ancestors to scatter the matriarch’s ashes. 

They’re not exactly estranged but they’re diametrically opposed to each other in multiple essential ways, and the text employs the witty device of sometimes having a character repeat precisely what the other just said but loaded with a completely different emphasis and point-of-view. The comedy writing here sparkles, but is rooted in a palpable pain and truth, and it’s gloriously well observed. Watch the way Golda Rosheuvel’s brash, no-nonsense Joyce tips back the free welcome drinks on the aircraft before siphoning the glasses into her hand luggage, or the absolute mortification of Erica (Letitia Wright) when her mother accidentally activates her phone to blare out the music of the rap star who has just boarded the plane. Some of the serious aspects of the play are rendered more generically but it’s never less than engaging. 

Bearing an unexpected vocal resemblance to Catherine Tate’s foul-mouthed Nan character at moments of high comedy, Rosheuvel makes a magnificent return to the stage as multi-layered Joyce, who prioritised earning money and providing material comforts for Erica over connection and empathy. She has her share of understandable demons but it’s Erica who is journaling and in therapy, much to her mother’s bewilderment and annoyance. Wright is deeply lovable as a young woman trying to make sense of her upbringing, fettered by the nagging realisation that she may be more mature than the parent she’s travelling with. The sense that the late Elaine was the glue binding the two of them together is keenly felt: both actresses take turns to embody her, and she is evoked with lovely, rich detail, and a compelling combination of warmth and steel. 

Lynette Linton’s note-perfect direction has marvellous fluidity and an unerring ability to turn on a dime from dreamlike to sitcom matter-of-factness, and from deadly serious to rambunctiously comic. As well as being a heartfelt examination of motherhood and legacy, Not Your Superwoman is also very much a celebration of strong but vulnerable, sometimes flawed, women, and this production does not stint on the joy. Linton uses several previous collaborators here, including Alex Berry (set and costume), Jai Morjaria (lighting), Gino Ricardo Green (video design), and there is a fabulous sense on this show that everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet.

Green’s work is particularly effective, hypnotically conjuring up epic tropical waterfall, domestic kitchen, hotel rooms, Caribbean town square, and the fevered inner workings of the women’s minds, with economy and expressionistic vividness. In one especially striking sequence, we see generations of women and children in shadowy silhouette, all silently bearing witness to these family travails and torments. 

Linton’s tenure as artistic director of the Bush has been a scintillating one, punctuated by a succession of accomplished new plays putting Black women at the centre of urgent stories with powerful modern resonances but mindful of often troubled pasts  – Lava, Sleepova, My Father’s Fable, House Of Ife, The High Table were all major highlights – and Not Your Superwoman feels like an appropriate coda. There is an unmistakable feeling of going out on a proper high with this one. It’s probably a couple of minutes too long and doesn’t necessarily tell us anything revelatory but it’s beautifully crafted and has the vivifying tang of authenticity. Absolutely superb.

THE CHAOS THAT HAS BEEN AND WILL NO DOUBT RETURN

by Sam Edmunds

directed by Sam Edmunds and Vikesh Godhwani

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Little, London – until 27 September 2025

running time: 80 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-chaos-that-has-been/

Although modest in scale, this little show with an epic title is mighty in terms of ambition and agenda. The Chaos That Has Been And Will No Doubt Return received critical acclaim and sold out houses at the Edinburgh Festival, and watching it now in its London transfer, it’s pretty easy to see why: this is a cracking piece of theatre.

Sam Edmonds’s script is like a mash-up of Slam Poetry and the world building of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. A whole community (in this case a socially deprived part of Luton, around twenty years ago, judging from the pop soundtrack and references to Motorolas and BlackBerrys) is evoked with just a trio of fabulous actors (Elan Butler, Nathaniel Christian, Leanne Henlon), wired energy and a relentless, stimulating barrage of words. 

Most of the play is set over one fateful night, where teenage leading character, named just Voice (Christian), and best mate Lewis (Butler), are headed to the birthday party of Lakesha (Henlon) the girl the former fancies. First they have to dupe an adult to buy booze for them, negotiate their parents, relatives and terrifying local yobs…then the evening takes an unexpected, gut wrenching turn. It sounds formulaic in theory but in practice it has an urgency and freshness that captivates and thrills, sometimes reminiscent of the early plays of Jonathan Harvey, but without the camp. The writing is at once salty and poetic, high flown yet real, and the underlying threat of violence adds an additional piquancy. It’s clever yet wholly accessible; it’s also very funny but full of heart and soul, and this terrific young cast revels in it.

Edmunds sets up neglected Luton as a sort of microcosm of multicultural Britain, giving Voice a rather beautiful speech appreciating the various colours and creeds of humanity living harmoniously side by side. The text is also full of wry social observances and a sizzling youthful vitality, underpinned by a layer of shuddering threat. Voice repeats the phrase that he is “standing on the precipice of choice” and in that he is a sort of ‘every-youth’ for whom the path they select will determine how the rest of their lives play out. The three actors are so engaging that it’s impossible not to invest in what’s going to happen to their characters.

Edmunds co-directs with Vikesh Godhwani against a constant background of banging music, and the whole staging fairly throbs with invention and grit. The outstanding movement work is by Jess Tucker Boyd. The pace is commendably swift and sure, though there are moments when the dialogue is delivered at such breakneck speed that clarity is sacrificed. For the most part the potty-mouthed humour and the intelligence and audacity of the storytelling win through however, and the final moments carry one hell of an emotional wallop. The piece ultimately serves as a warning about the fragility of human life, and the dangers of knife crime, but is remarkably non-preachy.

Christian beautifully conveys Voice’s combination of bravado and vulnerability, and has a winning ability to directly connect with the audience (avoid the front row if you don’t like interacting with the cast). The charismatic Butler displays the comic skills of a master but matches Christian’s depth at key moments. Henlon morphs between female and male characters with formidable dexterity but especially shines as two contrasting mums, and, as Lakesha, demonstrates exactly why Voice would fall for her.

This is something very special: a playful, punchy mirror up to the pitfalls of modern life, but also an eloquent lament for the loss of youth and innocence. See it, and you’ll roar with laughter…but you’ll probably leave with a lump in your throat. Essential theatre.

REALLY GOOD EXPOSURE 

written and performed by Megan Prescott 

direction and dramaturgy by Fiona Kingwill

Soho Theatre London – until 13 September 2025

running time: 70 minutes no interval 

https://sohotheatre.com/events/really-good-exposure-by-megan-prescott/

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to high profile child actors once they fade from the public eye, Megan Prescott’s partly autobiographical solo show provides some answers, but not necessarily ones you might expect. Megan and her twin sister Kathryn were teenage leads in the seminal Channel 4 series Skins which ran from 2007 to 2013, and Molly, Really Good Exposure’s main character, was similarly a youngster thrust into the spotlight in an edgy mainstream TV show. This is no lament for past fame though; rather it is a look at the objectification of women, abuse of power and the brutal way some members of the general public assume ownership over a human that they used to watch on the telly. 

At the curtain call, Prescott points out in a speech that what we’ve witnessed in the preceding seventy minutes, some of it witty but most of it downright gruelling, is a composite of her own experiences and those of others she has interviewed. Indeed, Really Good Exposure probably works best seen as an act of defiance, a testament to survival, than a traditional one person show. The writing is pedestrian and lacking flavour, but it’s the palpable unease and low level fury that lends this monologue what power it has.

Although we witness her go from lisping, high energy childhood show-off to fledgling TV actress – the chronology is conveyed via a series of alternating projections of fictional newspapers on the back wall – the story is framed by a 30-something Molly recounting her past to an unseen director in an audition situation. Her recollections are prompted by the enquiry of how she got into porn, and what follows is a gradual breakdown of how a chirpy, ambitious young woman is repeatedly exploited by men, by turns let down then supported by other women, and ends up reclaiming a degree of power and agency in an industry commonly perceived as deeply misogynistic. It’s also about what people have to do to get by.

Some of this is very uncomfortable to watch – there’s full frontal nudity which, in all honesty, doesn’t feel entirely necessary – but Prescott’s Molly recounts a litany of disrespects, disappointments and outright humiliations with a remarkable lack of self-pity. Her matter-of-factness sometimes obfuscates just how grim a lot of what happens to Molly is, and there are times when it seems that she is baring her body to us but not her soul. Her unwillingness to succumb to victimhood is undeniably admirable and, although nothing here feels revelatory, her lightness of touch as narrator of her own story means that Really Good Exposure never quite plumbs the depths of depression a different treatment of such a tawdry tale might reach.

Fiona Kingwill’s music-punctuated staging is over-reliant on having Molly reacting to unseen voices or speaking on the phone, but keeps up an insistent pace. Men, unsurprisingly, don’t come out of this well -even the sympathetic director Molly is reminiscing to turns nasty- but several of the women are not much better: Molly’s deadbeat alcoholic mum and an exploitative snake of an agent are presented with little nuance but plenty of distaste.

The episodic structure and sometimes rudimentary storytelling suggest that this is a couple of drafts away from being something really special; it could be punchier and more inventive. There’s something haunting and raw about Prescott though, and her ability to project toughness and vulnerability almost simultaneously is remarkable.

BORN WITH TEETH 

by Liz Duffy Adams 

directed by Daniel Evans 

Wyndhams Theatre, London – until 1 November 2025

running time: 85 minutes no interval 

https://www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/whats-on/born-with-teeth

“We are not the stuff of tragedy” says Ncuti Gatwa’s Kit (Christopher) Marlowe to Edward Bluemel’s Shakespeare at the emotional and dramatic climax of this fleet, verbose two hander which sets a romantic/sexual, as well as a creative, collaboration between these literary titans against a dangerous backdrop of intrigue and treachery in Tudor England. In Liz Duffy Adams’ 2022 script, first seen at Houston, TX’s Alley Theater, Kit and Will may not be tragic figures but they are participants in a sharp, playful comedy that shades into political thriller with a lavish helping of rampant homoeroticism. It very much feels like imagined history filtered through a decidedly twenty first century prism.

Daniel Evans’ flashy production, co-presented by the RSC who have another American riff on Shakespeare on the go at the moment with the riotous Fat Ham up in Stratford, is often wildly entertaining, and Duffy Adams’ premise is fascinating, but it doesn’t quite add up to a fully satisfying evening. There is scholarly evidence to suggest that Marlowe and Shakespeare might well have joined forces to write Henry VI Parts One and Two, the text they’re working on here and from which this play’s title derives (“the midwife wonder’d and the women cried ‘O Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!’” in reference to the birth of the vicious Richard of Gloucester). Duffy Adams takes that as a given, swirling it all together with same sex attraction, a power play and duel of wits between the two men, and sinister machinations during Elizabeth I’s politically unstable reign. 

Duffy Adams has clearly done a formidable amount of research and, when not directly quoting from Shakespeare, displays a useful ability to fuse together modern profanity and bluntness with an elegant approximation of Elizabethan language. Born With Teeth works best as an extended sketch with pretensions rather than a fully fledged play. It’s frequently hilarious -“we’re the same age” points out the naive Will, to which the more sophisticated Kit snaps back “not in stage years”- and watching the power shift between the two men is gripping: at the beginning, Marlowe is a lauded professional and sexual predator while Shakespeare is a wet-behind-the-ears neophyte ripe for patronisation and seduction. By the end of the play, our perceptions of both of them change drastically. 

The script has Will step out of the action to comment upon it, which at once draws us in while keeping us at an emotional distance so that the less than happy conclusion (the real life Marlowe was killed, aged 29, in a tavern brawl, two decades before Shakespeare’s death) packs less of a dramatic punch than it might. Evans’ eye-popping staging features anachronistic, exciting use of video design by Andrzej Goulding and shuddering, omnipresent sound by George Dennis. Neil Austin’s batteries of lights dazzle the audience from the length and breadth of Joanna Scotcher’s square box set. It’s technically impressive and stylish, but feels more concerned with providing empty thrills than real substance, an accusation one might also level at Duffy Adams’ writing which occasionally tends to the self-consciously long-winded.

Gatwa and Bluemel attack their roles with formidable energy and commitment, brilliantly negotiating the gear changes between facetious and heartfelt. Gatwa has a rockstar swagger and louche danger that threatens to repel as much as it compels, but finds an authentic darkness and gravitas in the latter part of Kit’s journey. Bluemel nails Will’s raw intelligence and uncertainty at first, and then impressively conveys a chilling ambiguity once the proverbial worm has turned. The actors also share an undeniable, and essential, sexual chemistry.

The play is simultaneously slight and overblown, but it’s also sexy and dynamic, at least as staged and acted here. Indeed, casting and production aside, the most gratifying thing about Born With Teeth might just be that it makes one want to see, or at least, read the original Shakespeare (or Shakespeare/Marlowe!) again, which is no bad thing. It may also, partly due to the starry casting for this production, inspire a new audience to check out the Bard and his contemporaries….and that is a great thing.

JUNIPER BLOOD

by Mike Bartlett 

directed by James Macdonald 

Donmar Warehouse – until 4 October 2025

running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including two intervals 

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/juniper-blood-n8df

Mike Bartlett takes on sustainability, climate change, and the tension between living an authentically virtuous life and remaining relevant in, and connected to, the modern world, in this absorbing but perplexing new play. Juniper Blood premieres at the Donmar in a magnificently acted production helmed by James Macdonald and, if it isn’t Bartlett at his peak, it’s certainly a huge improvement on his wan open marriage drama Unicorn seen in the West End earlier this year. 

Bartlett sets up Juniper Blood with a quintet of characters that initially seem like stereotypes but some of whom, on closer inspection, reveal unexpected layers and foibles. Having relocated to a remote rural farm from a privileged London life, good-hearted middle class Ruth (Hattie Morahan) occupies the middle ground between her intense, monosyllabic partner, the ironically named Lip (Sam Troughton), and wealthy, potty-mouthed neighbouring farmer Tony (Jonathan Slinger). There’s a further culture clash with arrival from town of Ruth’s stepdaughter from a previous marriage, fragile, self-obsessed Milly (Nadia Parkes) and her intellectual student pal Femi (Terique Jarrett). 

The script has a lot of fun pitting the precious, judgmental townies against sceptical country folk for whom bullshit is what you fertilise a field with not what comes out of your mouth. Bartlett brilliantly nails the differing rhythms, vocabularies and speech patterns of this disparate group of people. The dialogue crackles and fizzes, and each character, for the most part, sounds plausible, even though some of the situations they put themselves in during the course of the play, which takes place over the across several years and three acts, strain credulity. 

Personally, I didn’t buy Milly’s drastic volte face in terms of her attitude to the land, despite the conviction of Parkes’s performance. Also, the brutal choice facing Lip and Ruth regarding their very different attitudes to the future, although conveyed with passion and truth by Morahan and Troughton, doesn’t fully ring true. The symbolism of taking a hammer to a mobile phone sure ain’t subtle. The third act is the least satisfactory, partly because the characters start to talk like mouthpieces rather than real people. 

Despite these quibbles, it is refreshing to see a play with serious ambition, and a concept of the world beyond the limited confines of its setting. Bartlett detonates little dramatic bombs throughout each act, including the very final moment, that send shock waves through a script that engrosses as much as it frustrates. Juniper Blood is bold, knotty, imperfect, but weirdly haunting. I found myself processing it for hours and days after watching.

It helps that the performances and James Macdonald’s visually stark staging, played out under house lights that never dim as though we are all in some kind of giant hothouse (which we probably are), seldom strike a false note. Like the Broadway import Stereophonic just down the road, Juniper Blood dares the audience to buy into the minutiae of its characters lives. Macdonald isn’t afraid to take his time, so we get to watch Troughton staring thoughtfully into the middle distance for minutes on end, or an increasingly stressed Morahan juggling phone and laptop as she manages farm business, and if you invest, you’ll be riveted, but equally this won’t appeal to everyone. 

Few actors project innate goodness as clearly as Morahan and she is just tremendous here. So is Troughton, who makes all too convincing the extremities of Lips’s views. Slinger is a formidable but playful presence as swaggering but strangely lost Tony, and gets to deliver a rather beautiful middle act speech interrogating the concept of a flawed but not cruel England lost and never to return, tonally reminiscent of Bartlett’s earlier work in the Almeida’s earlier Albion. 

The set by Ultz, all wood, earth, grass and white panelled walls, is aggressively ugly. There’s no attempt to suggest a rural idyll, but then the play is hardly an ode to a bucolic existence, more an acknowledgment of the hard graft involved in farming, and a repudiation of the romanticism, usually by clueless urban types, of country life. If Bartlett offers no solution to the myriad of existential problems that Juniper Blood is juggling, well, there really aren’t any. If it feels bleak, he seems to be saying, then suck it up. 

This is a challenging, unwieldy piece, by turns richly entertaining then dismayingly clumsy. It’s not an entirely satisfying evening, but it’s too intriguing and urgent to write off. Cautiously recommended.

INTERVIEW

adapted for the stage and directed by Teunkie Van Der Sluijs

based on a screenplay by Theodore Holman and the film by Theo Van Gogh

Riverside Studios, London – until 27 September 2025

running time: 90 minutes no interval 

https://interviewplayonstage.com/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22829649589&gbraid=0AAAABAIZZMvhSu_FRHIURMtbTe64bzUs_

Films being adapted into stage musicals are all too common, but screenplays becoming theatrical dramas are a much rarer proposition. Theo Van Gogh’s 2003 Dutch movie Interview later given a 2007 American makeover by Theodore Holman has an advantage over other such projects as it’s essentially a two hander in a single powderkeg setting, thereby lending it an inevitable theatrical tension from the getgo. Teunkie Van Der Sluijs‘s stage version takes a while to warm up but when it does it’s compulsive, thought-provoking stuff.

Middle aged former war correspondent Pierre (Robert Sean Leonard) is reluctantly interviewing popular actress Katya (Paten Hughes) in her swish Brooklyn loft apartment (chic, gorgeous set design by Broadway’s Derek McLane). They’re both on the defensive, but in different ways: he’s dismissive of her brand of fame and feels he’s slumming it, she bristles when she realises he has done zero preparation or research. Furthermore, he’s distracted by a breaking White House scandal involving the impeachment of the (fictional) VP, which is the type of story he’d much rather be covering, dismissing Katya as the kind of person who “thinks impeachment is a sort of moisturiser” in one of the script’s best jokes. 

Van Der Sluijs updates the story by making Katya a social media influencer as well as an actress (“we all want to be seen, not watched, not followed, seen”) which adds to Pierre’s initial disdain. Visually, the production assaults us with text messages, social media posts and live filming projected up on the walls of the set, which at first seems distracting but ends up potently paying its way in the storytelling. Drinks are poured, drugs inhaled, opinions hammered out….the dialogue is provocative, sometimes frustratingly elliptical, but seldom less than compelling.

Interview has interesting, if not necessarily hugely original, things to say about the power and the fragility of celebrity. As Pierre asks Katya “What are you going to do when we decide we’re done watching and just turn you off?” The script skilfully alters the audience’s perception of Katya -first seen stalking on with designer shopping bag, outsize sunglasses and mid cellphone conversation- just as Pierre becomes disarmed by her. Hughes, in a sizzling UK theatre debut, nails the disaffected drawl and too-cool-for-school attitude but also conveys vulnerability, fierce intelligence and a quirky sense of humour under the glossy facade. Hughes leaves us in no doubt that this young woman is a grafter and the architect of her own success, impressing Pierre with her commitment to acting classes (“I’m good at crying”) and embodying a youthful perspective quite different from that of Pierre’s but not untinged by life’s harsh realities.

Leonard matches her with a performance of apparently effortless naturalism. He gives Pierre a relaxed charm but a tough edge that entirely convinces. The script is equally fascinating on the sometimes questionable ethics of journalism, and sexism rife in the media and public eye, and Leonard’s Pierre stands as in an intriguingly ambiguous figure in the midst of several raging storms.

For people unfamiliar with the film, it’s best not to reveal too many plot points but suffice it to say that the piece segues satisfyingly into thriller territory as well as some areas with a pretty high ick factor. The acting is so good and the staging so slick and accomplished that the ride, however uncomfortable, is nonetheless pleasurable, and the conclusion authentically chills. Bernat Buscato’s costume design (carelessly elegant but funky for her, slightly shabby for him) is appropriately understated, while Jackie Shemesh’s atmospheric lighting, Ata Grüner’s doomy sound and compositions and extensive video design Idontloveyouanymore, are all top notch. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

THE GATHERED LEAVES

by Andrew Keatley

directed by Adrian Noble

Park Theatre, London – until 20 September 2025

running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval 

https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/the-gathered-leaves/

Fractured families have long been a staple of stage drama. Andrew Keatley’s saga of an upper middle class English clan congregating for a tempestuous birthday weekend at their country pile, is reminiscent of the kind of thing seen on Shaftesbury Avenue three or four decades ago, especially as staged by former RSC artistic director Adrian Noble. The Gathered Leaves probably seemed dated when it premiered here at the Park back in 2015, and it feels positively antediluvian now. 

That original production had the benefit, for a family drama, of fielding two sets of actual family members (Jane Asher and daughter Katie Scarfe, and father and son Alexander and Tom Hanson) playing various members of the embattled Pennington tribe, which may have lent a certain frisson. This revival doesn’t have that but boasts some serious luxury casting (Jonathan Hyde, Joanne Pearce, Olivia Vinall, Chris Larkin, Zoë Waites) with collective credits that read like a who’s who of high quality legit British theatre. 

Initially, from director to cast list to Dick Bird’s opulently muted drawing room set with its creamy upholstery, antique furniture and chandelier, this has all the trappings of the classic ‘well made play’…but then, unfortunately, we get into the script which has aged like milk. In the present climate it’s a pretty big ask for an audience to invest in a bunch of self-involved, privileged monsters with reactionary views on race (the youngest daughter had a child out of wedlock with a Black man – shock horror!) and mental health (the eldest son is autistic). Keatley has the younger and/or more enlightened characters attempt to correct the blinkered opinions of their elders/less advanced thinkers but those moments come across like a sort of rudimentary beginners guide to social progress.

It doesn’t help that the younger family members  look and sound like a middle aged person’s bland idea of what a teenager or young adult was like in the 1990s (the play is set just as New Labour was coming in). They just don’t ring true. Keatley explores the idea of the ‘old guard’ moving aside in a scene where ageing lawyer William Pennington (Hyde), now in the early stages of dementia, lectures his 22 year old grandson Simon (George Lorimer, in a creditable stage debut) on the importance of carrying on the family line. Simon is suitably appalled but the writing is so flavourless that it’s hard to know who we’re supposed to root for.

It’s all too asinine to be really offensive, but it’s a mystery why anybody thought this was worth reviving. The tricky dynamics of familial relationships are laid out with all the sophistication and originality of a particularly uninspired episode of Crossroads. Keatley certainly nails the tedium of family gatherings: we get to watch the Penningtons play board games, discuss what they’re going to have for dinner, where they bought a particularly nice sort of gift wrap….if you find this sort of thing riveting in the theatre, then the best of British to you, but I thought my brain was going to melt. 

An affair is revealed while mopping up spilt tea, one of the brothers hits the bottle (can’t say I blame him), the teenage girls illicitly down huge quantities of white sambuca in the middle of the night with no apparent effect, William ups the ante by periodically becoming irrationally enraged….and it all plods on for the best part of three hours. In one particularly excruciating sequence, estranged daughter Alice (Olivia Vinall, very likeable, to be fair) discovers the piano she hasn’t played in years and has a little tinkle…cue the entire family drifting on from different directions and sitting around in spotlights with beatific looks on their smug faces. Ah, the power of music….then everybody goes back to talking As Though They Are In A Play.

Lots of speeches are clumsily inserted purely for exposition, so that the audience is clued up on the back stories of this dull lot, but the characterisations are pretty muddy and one-note despite the efforts of a game cast. Richard Stirling delivers sensitive, committed work as the autistic older brother and Chris Larkin finds real warmth and layers in the middle sibling whose professional success as a doctor is in stark contrast to his fractured personal relationships. Joe Burrell and Ellis Elijah are excellent as the younger versions of the brothers in the extended flashback sequences. It’s lovely to see Hyde and Pearce back on stage but one can’t help but wish it was in a stronger vehicle. 

Maybe this is intended to be the theatrical equivalent of comfort food and will perhaps satisfy people of a certain age who yearn for the dramas of times past when issues were thrashed out by characters sitting around on comfy armchairs and chaises longues, untroubled by the greater world at large. It absolutely wasn’t for me.

FAT HAM

by James Ijames

directed by Sideeq Heard for the Royal Shakespeare Company 

original direction by Saheem Ali

Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon – until 13 September 2025

running time: 100 minutes no interval 

https://www.rsc.org.uk/fat-ham

Arguably Shakespeare’s most popular tragedy, Hamlet gets a modern Black American makeover in James Ijames’s rollicking, Pulitzer-winning 2022 Fat Ham. It now receives its UK premiere at (where else?!) the RSC in a production based on, but subtly and surprisingly different to, the one that played at New York’s Public Theater then on Broadway where it was a Best Play Tony nominee. Ijames transplants the story to contemporary North Carolina and the Danish royals are now a squabbling family looking to possibly sell their barbecue restaurant to alleviate their financial woes, and Elsinore is their back porch. 

Shakespeare’s “sweet prince” is now Juicy (Olisa Odele), a likeable, thicc, troubled queer college student trying to find the strength in his own softness and struggling to break the family cycle of macho bullshit and bullying. Gertrude is now brash glamazon Tedra (“I need noise. Commotion makes me happy”), played with go-for-broke joy but real heart by Andi Osho, torn between her sensitive son and volatile new husband (Sule Rimi, proving that comical and terrifying are not mutually exclusive) but determined to have as good a time as possible. An unexpected bonus of Ijames’s writing is that he actually gives Tedra more agency, or at least more justification for her actions, than Shakespeare afforded Gertrude. When Juicy quizzes her as to whether she misses his father (depicted as a far more savage figure here than anything envisioned for Hamlet), she responds that “my memory of him won’t allow me to miss him….if you think about something everyday…you not really remembering it. It’s just there. Like heartburn.” She further notes “I went from my Daddy’s house to my husband’s house. I ain’t never been alone.” Her behaviour is sometimes crass but it is fundamentally understandable and Osho makes every aspect of her ring true.

Anybody familiar with the Shakespeare (or “that dead old white man” as he’s described by one of the characters) will get a kick out of seeing the way Ijames’s script dovetails with the original: Horatio is cheerful stoner Tio (Kieran Taylor-Ford, fabulous), perpetually lusting after Tedra, and Ophelia becomes hard-nosed, fledgling lesbian Opal, played with a seething, inspired mix of weirdness and awkwardness by Jasmine Elcock. The play-within-a-play that unseats the new King becomes here a karaoke party (Juicy/Hamlet expresses his ongoing unease with a roof-raising karaoke version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ while Tedra launches into an eye-poppingly suggestive rendition of the Crystal Waters dancefloor classic ‘100% Pure Love’ aimed at her new hubby) and a game of charades. Ijames has a tremendous gift for heightened dialogue rooted in real life, and Fat Ham is raucously funny but never quite loses sight of the truth beneath all the outrage and volume.

Director Sideeq Heard, who was associate director to Saheem Ali on the original production, matches the text with a staging that is flashy and slightly surreal. If he still can’t solve the problem that the writer can’t quite seem to decide how to end the play, the slight lag in focus and tension about seventy five per cent of the way through that marred the New York version is no longer evident here. Undoubtedly inspired by the Swan’s apron stage, Heard and Ijames have amped up the direct connection with the audience in comparison to the original. The fourth wall isn’t so much ignored as gleefully demolished, giving the show the occasional impression of being an American panto for adults, and I don’t mean that as a criticism.

Fat Ham UK also feels like more of a team effort than the NYC original. Where the Broadway production was dominated by the exquisite melancholy of Marcel Spears and a barnstorming performance by Tony nominee Nikki Crawford as Tedra, this superb ensemble all carry equal weight. Odele doesn’t have the vulnerability of his predecessor but makes true and vivid Juicy’s self-effacing intelligence and his frequent disbelief at the behaviour of those around him. 

Sandra Marvin delivers an irresistible comic tour de force as opinionated family friend Rabby: think Polonius reimagined as a church lady, a human hurricane in a flurry of purple and sequins. She’s a Jesus-obsessed delight and the late revelation about her character, while still far fetched, makes more sense than it did in the previous staging. Another improvement is Corey Montague-Sholay, who makes something really touching out of her son, an uptight Marine hiding a couple of secrets of his own and who gets a bizarre but crowd-pleasing conclusion.

Fat Ham may be more spangles than subtlety, and uses a number of well-worn tropes to hit the comedy home, but it compounds it’s clichés with aplomb and a vitiating showbiz flair, and you are pretty much guaranteed to leave the theatre feeling a hell of a lot better than you did when you went in. It also has a robust intelligence underneath all the shouting and bawling. Maruti Evans’s house-porch set looks realistic at first, but becoming more and more artificial the longer you scrutinise it, and appears a useful metaphor for Fat Ham’s relationship to Hamlet. Dominique Fawn Hill’s costumes and Bradley King’s lighting are suitably flamboyant and Skylar Fox’s illusions add a layer of authentic magic. 

You might have thought that Hamlet is the last of Shakespeare’s plays that could bear a high camp, high energy treatment (I mean, even Lear has a Fool), but you’d have thought wrong. This is a great time in the theatre, and has transferred over here way better than I would have expected. Another popular hit for the RSC.