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Posts Tagged ‘Wyndhams Theatre’

Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I love it when theatre tackles the issues of the day. I particularly liked Nicholas Kent’s ‘tribunal plays’ at the then Tricycle Theatre – Bloody Sunday, Stephen Lawrence, Arms to Iraq and others……and last year the Grenfell Inquiry, all verbatim from transcripts / presence at the inquiry, but edited. This is in the same vein, though a libel trial, less depth and less forensic, but very entertaining.

As an avid theatre-goer, when I walked into Wyndhams Theatre I knew I was not with ‘my people’. This show, originally scheduled as a one-off but now at least seven, has attracted the twitterati and the media. There were whoops, cheers and gasps, but then again we were witnessing a distilled version of one of the most preposterous cases even to be heard in a British court. Whatever possessed Rebecca Vardy to bring her libel action I don’t know, but it misfired even more than could have been predicted. The winners, as always, were the lawyers, with total costs of something like £3m, all paid by a very rich Vardy to very rich legal eagles. Just think how many hospice beds or food banks that would fund. Obscene.

Liv Hennessy’s editing and adaptation seems to have captured the key points and essence of the case, confirming the limited amount I’d read. Lisa Spurling’s staging is very clever, employing two football pundits to act as narrators / commentators. The stage floor is even laid out in green with pitch markings. Lucy May Barker as Vardy and Laura Dos Santos as Rooney are both terrific. The pundits double up to play smaller parts, notably Nathan McMullen as Wayne Rooney. They have small tablets which double up as character tools and actor scripts. For something put together quickly for what was meant to be tonight only, it’s very well done.

I will be amazed if seven doesn’t become a much bigger number. You move from disbelief (mostly at Vardy’s lost documentation) to admiration (of Rooney’s detection strategy) to anger (at the waste of time and money and the damage both the gutter press and social media do daily) to the guilty pleasure it brings. Vardy and The Sun come out of it badly – nothing new with regard to the latter, but the former was just foolhardy and / or badly advised & single-minded in her quest for fame. Yet I left the theatre feeling sorry for both of them.

Go see for yourself. You’re unlikely to regret it.

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The Best Theatre of 2021 (well, the last half)

Posted in Classical Music, Dance, Opera, Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I didn’t bother with a ‘Best of’ last year as my theatre-going, apart from a handful of open air shows, came to a standstill after just over two months. 2021 started as badly as 2020 had ended, but I managed to see something like 65 shows in the last half of the year, so it seems worth restoring the tradition.

There were nine new plays worthy of consideration as Best New Play. These include Indecent at the Menier, Deciphering at the New Diorama, Camp Siegfried at the Old Vic and Best of Enemies at the Young Vic. Something that wasn’t strictly speaking a play but was a combination of taste, smell and music, and very theatrical, was Balsam at the Greenwich & Docklands International Festival. Out of town, in the Reading Abbey ruins, The Last Abbot impressed. Three major contenders emerged. The first was Grenfell: Value Engineering at the Tabernacle, continuing the tradition of staging inquiries, verbatim but edited, very powerfully. The remaining two had puppetry and imaginative theatricality in common. Both Life of Pi, transferring to Wyndham’s from Sheffield Theatres, and The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage at The Bridge were adaptations of books, but were thrilling on stage, and both had star performances from Hiran Abeysekera and newcomer Samuel Creasey respectively – I couldn’t choose between them.

The leanest category was New Musical, where there were only a few to choose from. I liked Moulin Rouge for the spectacle, but it was really just spectacle, and I enjoyed Back to the Future too, but it was the sense of tongue-in-cheek fun of What’s New Pussycat? at Birmingham Rep and the sheer energy of Get Up Stand Up at the Lyric Theatre, with a towering performance by Arinze Kene as Bob Marley, that elevated these jukebox musicals above the other two.

More to pick from with play revivals, including excellent productions of Under Milk Wood and East is East at the NT, The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the Lyric Hammersmith and two Beckett miniatures – Footfalls & Rockaby – at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre. GDIF’s Belgian visitors staged Blue Remembered Hills brilliantly on wasteland in Thamesmead, and Emma Rice’s Brief Encounter had a great new production at the Watermill near Newbury, but it was Yeal Farber’s Macbeth at the Almeida, as exciting as Shakespeare gets, that shone brightest, along with Hampstead’s revival of Alan Plater’s Peggy For You, with a stunning performance from Tamsin Greig, which ended my theatre-going year.

The musical revivals category was strong too, probably because we needed a dose of fun more than anything else (well, except vaccines!). I revisited productions of Come from Away and Singin’ in the Rain, though they don’t really count as revivals, likewise Hairspray which was a replica of the original, but I enjoyed all three immensely. Regents Park Open Air Theatre brought Carousel to Britain, in more ways than one, and the Mill at Sonning continued its musical roll with an excellent Top Hat. It was South Pacific at Chichester and Anything Goes at the Barbican that wowed most, though, the former bringing a more modern sensibility to an old story and the latter giving us Brits an opportunity to see what Broadway has been getting that we’ve been missing in Sutton Foster. If only we could detain her permanently.

In other theatrical and musical forms…..there were dance gems from New Adventures with Midnight Bell at Sadler’s Wells and the Royal Ballet’s Dante Project at Covent Garden, and a beautiful concert performance of Howard Goodall musical of Love Story at Cadogan Hall. There were lots of classical music highlights, but it was the world premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Up for Grabs at the Barbican, accompanying footage of his beloved Arsenal, that packed the hall with football fans and proved to be a refreshing and surreal experience I wouldn’t have missed for the world (and I’m not a football fan, let alone an Arsenal one!). Somewhat ironically, most of my opera-going revolved around Grimeborn and Glyndebourne and it was a scaled down but thrilling Die Walkure at Hackney Empire as part of the former that proved to be the highlight.

Let’s hope its a full year of culture in 2022.

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Life of Pi

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’ve never read Yann Martel’s novel and I didn’t take to the film. After watching this stage adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti, I’m beginning to wonder why. Whatever you make of the story, the telling of it, and the stagecraft with which it is presented are extraordinary. It’s great to see quality like this on a West End stage.

It starts in the Mexican hospital room where Pi was taken after his time lost at sea. From here, we flash back to his home in the zoo & botanical garden in Pondicherry, the market of that city where the family prepare for the voyage, the harbour and the ship as they load and set sail for Canada for a new life, with their animals, including a hyena, orangutang, zebra, and a Bengal tiger.

From here, Pi – the only survivor of the shipwreck – tells the Japanese accident investigator and Canadian consular official the story of his period of hundreds of days at sea in a lifeboat and on at attached makeshift raft. Reality and fantasy seem to blur, differentiating between truth and hallucination or dreams becomes difficult. All the time we move back and forth between telling his story in the hospital to his memories of this time at sea.

Much of it really is breathtaking, with eleven actors and six puppeteers swiftly moving us from place to place. Soon after it starts, we experience terrific transitions – from zoo to market to harbour to ship – and it continues at sea, on the lifeboat and raft. The entire cast excel, but the central performance by Hiran Abeysekera is simply astonishing, on stage throughout, continually moving from the present to the journey to the past. An award-winning performance if ever I saw one.

Director Max Webster has assembled a first class creative team, with Tim Hatley’s designs, Finn Caldwell & Nick Barnes puppetry, Andrezej Goulding’s video & Tim Lutkin’s lighting and the music & sound of Andrew T Mackay & Carolyn Downing fully integrated in the storytelling. Wyndhams is a fairly small theatre, and it seemed both intimate and epic.

Sheffield Theatres originated this show in 2019 and it’s taken a while to get here, with at least three scheduled openings, so it’s great to report a huge hit that might sit in the specially reconfigured theatre for some time. Don’t miss it.

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Leopoldstadt

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , on February 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a big cast in a West End theatre – thirty-one actors playing thirty-five characters over fifty-six years – which, added to the fact its a new Tom Stoppard play, a partly autobiographical one too, makes this a highly anticipated major theatrical event.

We start in 1899 Vienna, Christmas with three generations of the Jewish Merz and Jakobovicz families. This city at the turn of the century is an intellectual and artistic powerhouse and names we know are dropped with abandon – Freud, Mahler and Klimt to name but three. Though it is clearly important to what follows to introduce the characters and set the scene, by the interval it seemed to me to be a bit of an inconsequential family saga, albeit beautifully staged and performed.

When we return after the interval 24 years have passed, another generation have been born, and it becomes somewhat farcical, mostly revolving around the circumcision of one of the newcomers – Carry on Foreskin! We soon jump forward another 12 years, the doorbell rings and we realise we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security as it becomes positively chilling. It’s 1938 and the Nazi’s have come to call. The play ends in 1955 at a reunion of what’s left of the family, now in three countries on two continents, and we learn the fate of the rest in a deeply moving ending.

Though I see the necessity of the scene-setting and the point of the changes in tone, it is a bit imbalanced, with that whole hour in 1899 in particular. I think it would have been a better play if they shortened this and placed the interval between 1924 and 1938. That said, there’s much to enjoy in Patrick Marber’s staging, with a fine ensemble, too many to mention, and much to help understand the profound impact the events of this period had on just one family. I feel it will probably resonate even more, and differently, with people of shared heritage. A major theatrical event nonetheless.

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The Man in the White Suit

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , on October 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

I often feel more positive about a show which has received indifferent reviews, though I never know if it’s the pressure of press night (never the best night to see a show in my experience), improvement as the run progresses or the difference between the view of people paid to be there against those who’ve paid to have a good time, and so it is again.

Sean Foley’s adaptation of the 1951 Ealing comedy, the screenplay of which got an Oscar nomination, moves it later in the fifties, but is otherwise faithful to the film; indeed, it feels very much a homage to the genre, still much loved, well certainly by me. One of the keys to their success was the celebration of the underdog, the outsider, the pioneer. In this case it’s the eccentric inventor whose invention threatens the livelihoods and wealth of others.

Cambridge chemistry graduate Sidney Stratton invents a stain resistant indestructible fabric which the mill owners at first embrace, until the potential impact on their wealth dawns on them. At the same time, the workers can see the threat to their jobs. The adaptation illustrates its timelessness and plausibility with clever references to oil. They try to pay off Sidney, and even use mill owner Birnley’s daughter Daphne’s allure to turn him. In the end, it’s the soundness of the science that seals the fate of the invention. There are other up-to-date references which bring a delightful cheekiness.

It’s played as broad comedy, and I thought it was great fun. Michael Taylor’s brilliant design moves us speedily from pub to factory lab. to mill-owner’s home to car ride to digs. Lizzi Gee’s choreography adds a sprightly feel. There’s skiffle music incorporated, with four members of the cast creating a live onstage band bringing a touch of knees-up to proceedings, playing original music by Charlie Fink. This is one of a number of features that reminds you of One Man, Two Guvnors. The cast’s enthusiasm is infectious, but its Stephen Mangan’s amiable charm and comic prowess that lifts it.

It’s a show to go to if you just want some fun, like those Mischief Theatre shows or One Man, Two Guvnors. It may not be up to the latter, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good night out. Find out for yourself.

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Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »

This is the play that started my obsession with the work of American playwright Eugene O’Neill, more than thirty years ago in a Jonathan Miller production with Jack Lemon as James Tyrone and Kevin Spacey as James Tyrone Jnr. I was the same age as James Jnr. Now I’m the same age as James Snr. Subsequent productions had Timothy West and David Suchet as James Snr. The 2000 West End production had Jessica Lange as Mary Tyrone, with Olivia Coleman as the Irish maid. Now its the turn of Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville.

It’s O’Neill’s most biographical play, which he insisted wasn’t published until 25 years after his death, and never staged, but his widow didn’t honour this wish. It’s a long play, 3.5 hours in this Richard Eyre production, part of the Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary programme. It takes place over one day and night in one room in the Tyrone home. James is a Shakespearean actor, drinks a lot and is a bit of a bully. His wife became addicted to morphine during her recent illness. Youngest son Edmund is seriously ill. His elder brother has followed his father into acting, more by default than anything else. The only other character is Cathleen, the Irish maid, whose scenes bring some light relief to what is otherwise a rather depressing piece.

Rob Howell’s impressionistic design is beautiful, also lightening the gloom of the play. The performances were a touch tentative at first, but became more natural as the play unfolded. Jeremy Irons’ James is an appropriately charismatic presence as James. The wonderful Lesley Manville navigates Mary’s decline delicately, with carefully controlled emotionality. Rory Keenan plays a spiky James Jnr, under the influence of alcohol most of the time, and Matthew Beard a fragile Edmund, both excellent. I very much liked Jessica Regan’s cameo as Cathleen.

This is a high quality revival and its good to see another Bristol Old Vic production in the West End, but it didn’t engage me emotionally or maintain my attention as it should, probably more to do with me and the night I went. Don’t let me put you off.

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Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , on October 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Yes, it’s a play not a scientific theory. You can always rely on Simon Stephens for something different – he must have the most diverse body of work of any playwright. Here, he uses the concepts of uncertainty and unpredictability to tell the story of the most unlikely relationship between a 42-year-old woman and a 75-year-old man. It’s a very intuitive piece that I wasn’t sure about at first, but it drew me in and I left the theatre with a warm glow!

It’s beautifully set and lit by Bunny Christie and Paule Constable within a box of light, like a James Turrell installation, that changes size, shape and colour from scene to scene. There’s a lovely soundscape too, with music by Nils Fram. In the first scene, London Butcher Alex Priest meets American school receptionist Georgie Burns at a train station. From here, their extraordinary relationship unfolds from a chance encounter, unravelling of the truth, a mutual fascination with some brittleness to a romantic liaison and a full-blown relationship. At first it seems implausible, but somehow becomes believable. I put this down to superb chemistry between two fine actors.

In Marianne Elliott’s delicate, sensitive staging, Kenneth Cranham and Anne-Marie Duff give the sort of uninhibited performances that deliver the believability of the relationship. Every time it turns a corner, implausibility returns but is then dispelled. Even though it runs less than ninety minutes, it does leave you satisfied.

I would have preferred to see it in a space more suitable, like the Dorfman, Royal Court, Donmar or Almeida, and more accessibly priced for a one-act two-hander, but in other ways it’s good that the West End can support work like this.

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Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill

Posted in Contemporary Music, Theatre, tagged , , on August 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »

It’s good to welcome the First Lady of Broadway to these shores, in a proper show too, albeit a one-woman one. We’ve only seen her before in concert, and only once in recent years. This show seeks to recreate a Billy Holiday concert before a tiny audience in a Philadelphia nightclub shortly before her death and its a virtuoso performance by Audra McDonald. 

Wyndham’s Theatre has had a makeover, with cabaret seating onstage and in the front stalls. Interspersed with the fifteen songs, accompanied by an onstage piano bass & drums jazz trio, an intoxicated Billy tells us things about her life, including her mother’s dalliance with the oldest profession, her dad’s desertion, sexual abuse, the men in her life, prison and her Carnegie Hall triumph. It becomes increasingly uncomfortable as you watch her breaking down before your very eyes, though when she sings it’s heavenly.

Even though its only 100 unbroken minutes, I felt it outstayed its welcome a bit and left me feeling somewhat depressed at the tragic life, but that takes nothing away from an extraordinary performance which had you on the edge of her seat willing Billy, forgetting you were watching a characterisation rather than a real person.

It has to be seen, but I’d like to welcome her back again with something more uplifting.

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No Man’s Land

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , on October 22, 2016| Leave a Comment »

When I saw Patrick Stewart in Anthony & Cleopatra some time ago he had a throat infection but went on like a real pro. He was clearly suffering at Thursday’s performance of this play too, but he continued gallantly. It was inspirational to see two theatrical knights with a combined age of 153 still at the top of their game, and in Stewart’s case, determined not to disappoint his fans with an understudy.

I’m slowly reappraising Pinter, one of my problem playwrights, aided by recent revelatory productions by Jamie Lloyd and Matthew Warchus, and Sean Mathias now does for No Man’s Land what Lloyd did for The Hothouse and The Homecoming and Warchus did for The Caretaker. I don’t profess to understand it, but I do find it captivating, fascinating and funny.

Successful writer Hirst brings the less successful and somewhat scruffy Spooner home from the pub and they drink and chat (well, Spooner rather hogs the conversation). Hirst’s staff, Foster and Briggs, archetypal menacing Pinter characters, are introduced. In the second half, the following morning, Hirst does more of the talking as Spooner tries to get himself hired as his secretary. Foster and Briggs continue their intimidation and ambiguity.

It’s back in Wyndhams, the same theatre it transferred to (from the NT at the Old Vic) 41 years ago. Lancastrian McKellen plays Spooner, named after a Lancastrian cricketer, the role originally played by John Gielgud. Yorkshireman Stewart plays Hirst, named after a Yorkshire cricketer, first played by Ralph Richardson. They are both superb. Owen Teale and Damien Molony provide fine support as Briggs and Foster, also named after cricketers.

I thought the personal, first person programme bio’s were a nice touch and gave two of the actors the opportunity to make a point about access to training today by comparing their experience with the more difficult climate today.

It was a privilege to watch such a masterclass in acting, as I continue to warm to Pinter.

 

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The Mentalists

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , on July 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »

In his fifteen year playwriting career Richard Bean has written no less than twenty shows (including two adaptations and the book for a musical) and we’re already getting revivals – his first play Toast at the Park Theatre last year and now his 2002 third play, originally seen at the NT’s first temporary space, The Loft. This one gets a West End run, presumably on the strength of his One Man, Two Guvnors success and the casting of Stephen Merchant in his stage debut.

It’s a two-hander set in a grubby hotel room in north London. Ted has decided to set up a utopian community based on an obscure novel he’s read and he has asked best friend Morrie (Steffan Rhodri) to film a video to help him promote it. By the interval, I was wondering if this really was a Richard Bean play. It was a bit dull. The second half though is packed with revelations, twists and turns. We learn about the nature of their friendship and back stories, we begin to differentiate between realities and fantasies and we learn what the play is really about. For me, though, the imbalance between the acts, holding back so much until the second act, is a fatal flaw.

Stephen Merchant acquits himself well as a stage actor and Steffan Rhodri does very well to play ‘straight man’ (with the attention and focus all on Merchant), but the play isn’t good enough to be a vehicle in itself and I left disappointed. If they’d mounted a lower profile Off West End production as a 90-minute show without the interval I think it would have fared a lot better. In the glare of the West End, with the expectations that (and the ticket prices) generates it sets itself up and fails to deliver.

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