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Posts Tagged ‘Stephanie Street’

Deciphering

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I loved everything about this play and it’s extraordinary production. Inspired by a recent discovery of cave paintings in Indonesia, it’s part life story, part history lesson, part detective story and a commentary on education and cultural appropriation. It packed a lot into ninety minutes whilst managing to be funny, moving and entertaining.

We start in a primary school in Indonesia where a new young keen Scottish teacher’s creative methods look set to clash with the conservatism of the Head Teacher. He begins to inspire 8-year-old Elise. We meet Elise again when she’s 25, and here we’re offered a number of alternative futures, some inspired by her parents, French mum and Indonesian dad, some by her teacher. One of them is as a paleo-archaeologist seeking to research across boundaries that also include linguistics, which brings about a conflict with her French university professors. Finally we meet her at 43, reconciled with Marie-Claude, her university professor, who seeks to use her, but ends up learning from her.

There are so many threads interwoven in its non-linear narrative. Given it doesn’t have a single writer – it’s a collective – it’s dramaturgically very clear, though I didn’t clock that the characters included Elise’s parents. The staging too is very effective in presenting the structure of the story, with people on and above the stage who descend like climbers. There is much use of projection and you wear headphones throughout, which helps create the atmosphere of locations like caves, but also aids concentration. I was enthralled throughout; it didn’t lose me for a moment.

It’s a collaboration between the UK’s curious directive and Indonesia’s Bombo under the impeccable direction of Jack Lowe. It’s beautifully performed by Amanda Hadinghue, Asha Sylvestre, Lewis Mackinnon, Mohamad Faizal Abdullah, Sarita Gabony and Stephanie Street with an extraordinary performance from Farah Qadir as 8-year-old Elise. The excellent design by Zoe Hurwitz constitutes the eighth performance.

It finishes at the New Diorama this week, but work of this quality must surely have a life beyond this.

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Quiz – Minerva Theatre, Chichester

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2017| 2 Comments »

This is the third new play by the prolific James Graham in four months, the other two (Ink & Labour of Love) still running in the West End, perhaps soon to become a trio with this. He’s cornered the market with recent history plays and what I love most about his work is that he recalls history you’ve lived through, illuminates and educates, but never forgets to entertain.

This has stylistic similarities with his underrated Monster Raving Loony, where he used British comedy shows to tell the story of that indispensable political party led by Screaming Lord Sutch. Here, the focus is on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire cheating scandal through the history of quiz shows, with examinations of the psychology of, and motivation for, participation and that very British obsession with fairness and equality along the way. It’s got the same playfulness (an audience quiz, with prizes, voting and even participation) and sense of fun, enhancing the storytelling and guaranteeing the entertainment.

We move from the creation of ITV, it’s earlier game shows and the pitch for this one to the entry and preparation by a network of very determined and thorough individuals to the show itself and the court case which followed, which itself became a bit of an entertainment in a life-imitates-art sort of way. It was fascinating on so many levels and always entertaining. Robert Jones’ terrific set takes you right into the TV studio, but also becomes the court and other locations. Lights, music, live projection and recorded video all add to the authenticity.

Gavin Spokes and Stephanie Street are excellent as the Ingram’s, the couple at the centre of the storm that became an (untelevised) courtroom drama and international media circus. Nine other actors play over forty roles between them, from three to seven each. Keir Charles gets to be Chris Tarrant, Des O’Connor, Jim Bowen, Leslie Crowther and Bruce Forsyth in quick succession; five terrific turns! We even get a Corrie cameo to illustrate a question, with Sarah Woodward and Nadia Albina bringing the house down as Hilda Ogden & Elsie Tanner respectively. The audience voted on their guilt twice and the verdict changed from one to the other, as it had in the vast majority of previous shows (but not me!)

Daniel Evans’ production zips along, captivates and entertains, but you also get an intriguing story within a frame of recent social history, this time popular culture. The return trip to Chichester was twice as long as the play, but it was well worth it.

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Even though its four months before Rufus Norris takes the helm at the NT, this may well be a sign of things to come. Though playwright David Hare has had 17 plays at the NT, everything else about this production seems to be saying ‘new broom’. It’s also the best in-house production in the Olivier since Norris’ Amen Corner last year.

Hare has adapted the reportage of Katherine Boo, who spent three years regularly visiting the shanty town of Annawadi at Mumbai airport and published their story as non-fiction in the book of the same name. This mostly Muslim community is screened from visitors, business people and the Indian middle-class by barriers, on some of which posters advertise ‘Beautiful Forevers’, whatever that is / they are. The play centres on three strong women, who between them represent life in these slums. Zehrunisa Husain’s family have become relatively wealthy by collecting rubbish, thanks to son Abdul, the best sorter, and his friend Sunil, the best collector. Asha is the local fixer – the ‘go to’ woman who, for money, can make things happen. Fatima Shaikh, who has lost one leg, sells her body in the afternoons to keep her family. These are the people you don’t see if you visit India. The government tries hard to hide or remove them. The police and other officials exploit them. Upwardly mobile Indians, benefitting from globalisation, ignore them, a bi-product and consequence of this globalisation.

This community is a microcosm of a society with unwritten rules and norms. There is much conflict between them as they strive to better themselves and better their peers. The conflict between The Husain’s and Fatima reaches a new level when Fatima sets herself alight and blames them, but she has gone too far and, with health standards as they are, does not survive. Three Husain’s end up accused and we’re then propelled into the world of hospital cover-ups, police corruption and judicial incompetence. At the same time, Sunil crosses the line from collection to theft, a world occupied by another group of very violent men, yet another society within a society.

There’s a great epic sweep to the story and Norris’ staging, with design by Katrina Lindsay, makes great use of the Olivier stage and its resources. Occasionally, scene changes slow down a well-paced production, but the overall impact is captivating. It’s very inventively done, with the rubbish centre stage and brilliant recreation of the planes landing. Sunil’s climbs and walks over the metal gantry took my breath away more than once. When Time Out reviewed Norris’ Death & the King’s Horseman on the same stage five years back, they said ‘if you’re a black actor and you’re not in this, get a new agent’. One could say something similar about this, a fine ensemble of 23 British Asian actors. The three matriarchs – Meera Syal, Stephanie Street & Thusitha Jayasundera – are all excellent, but its Hiran Abeysekera as Sunil and Shane Zaza as Abdul who steal your heart with two natural and very moving characterisations.

The play makes you think a lot about the real consequences of escalating economic change, particularly in the so-called BRIC countries, but it does so by telling the true story of real people unwittingly caught up in it. This is great theatre and hopefully an example of what’s to come at the NT.

 

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Double Feature 2

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , on August 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

Chalk and cheese. The writing of this second pairing of new plays at the National’s ‘pop-up’ theatre is nowhere near as good as the first, I’m afraid. It’s hard to see how they went through the same editorial process as they feel like the writers needed help turning interesting ideas into plays.

Given that I don’t really like monologues and can’t stand cricket, Nightwatchman was always going to be a struggle. Abirami is a British Sri Lanka female cricketer about to represent England in a test match at Lords and her monologue takes place at an indoor practice crease the day before. Prasanna Puwanarajah’s play explores the Sri Lankan Tamil situation and in particular the attitudes of British Sri Lankan’s. Much of her monologue is directly spoken to her deceased father. The problem with it is that it is more of a ramble than a narrative and occasionally becomes a rant. It desperately need some structure and editing. Actress Stephanie Street works wonders with the material she’s got to work with and the cricketing effects are excellent.

Tom Basman’s There Is A War is an absurdist surreal fantasy during a war between the blues and the greys. New doctor Anne is trying to make her way to her post in a military hospital. Along the way she meets a host of peripheral participants including a dance therapist, clown, chaplain and entertainer as well as some soldiers. Basden’s point seems to be the pointlessness of war with participants not even knowing what they are fighting for and why. When she arrives, she finds that the hospital itself is now a war zone where the orange are fighting the reds. This is a mass of ideas downloaded without much attempt to create an effective narrative. It’s sometimes intriguing, sometimes funny but often irritating. There’s nothing wrong with the staging or the performances, it’s just a work that isn’t ready and therefore rather a waste of c.20 performers and the NT technical resources.

It’s almost as if the NT wanted to show us a pair of stage ready plays and a pair that are work-in-progress, because that’s how different they seem to me. A great shame DF 2 didn’t live up to the promise of DF 1.

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