LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA

LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA

at Hampstead Theatre
01.06.16


Here's Howard Brenton back again, doing what he does best, making an iconic historical figure a flesh-and-blood reality.
T E Lawrence a bit of a challenge in this regard, being something of a reclusive enigma as well as a self-aggrandizing fantasist.
Many of the factoids I recall about the man come from forty years ago, in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On – a memoir memorably delivered by John Gielgud. Nice to see these old friends again in this skilfully crafted play …


“Which is man and which is myth ?”
“I knew of Lawrence of course from his exploits in Syria, where he had been attached, though none too deeply, to the British Expeditionary Force.”
“Aurens the Arabs called him, for they are unable to pronounce their L's ...”
“He was taken for a Circassian eunuch ...”
“Shaw, or Ross, as Lawrence then called himself ...”

The action is set largely in G B Shaw's Hertfordshire home, beautifully realised, with photographic backcloth, in Michael Taylor's design, sliding off into the wings for the “garden of Allah”.
A fine cast, directed by John Dove, brings the characters alive. Not only Jack Laskey's gaunt, tortured Ross, but Jeff Rawle's “knobbly” Shaw, struggling to write St Joan, and Geraldine James's wonderfully touching, celibate Mrs GBS. William Chubb makes a ram-rod upright Allenby; Sam Alexander is the repulsive promoter hoping to cash in on Lawrence's celebrity.
The class divide, the home life of a great playwright - quince jelly and carrot cake - and above all Lawrence's guilt make for a thought-provoking, if not revelatory, drama. We see him promising freedom to Faisal and the Arabs, knowing that the region, far from being an Arab state with Damascus its capital, was to be carved up between France and Britain. As Brenton says more than once in the play, we are still reaping that whirlwind …

MR FOOTE'S OTHER LEG

MR FOOTE'S OTHER LEG

at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

23.01.2016


Last bow for Samuel Foote, and his biographer Ian Kelly, at the Haymarket. The final performance of this Hampstead transfer, almost 240 years since the real Foote walked out of the stage door of his Theatre Royal and into obscurity.
The play tells the crazy but [largely] true story of a born entertainer, stand-up, impressionist, true crime author, impresario, debtor, cross-dresser and friend of the great and the good.
The foul-mouthed backstage banter is amusingly re-created, with much to learn about the evolution of stage performance. Macklin and Garrick play leading roles, Peg Woffington – the first Polly Peachum – is wonderfully done by Dervla Kirwan. And of course we see Foote himself, in a splendid recreation by Simon Russell Beale. Outrageous en travesti, of course, but also vulnerable, both at the moment of his final defeat, and in the excruciating amputation that ends Act One. Wit aplenty, but clever references to the Bard – then, thanks largely to Garrick, undergoing a resurgence. George III gets his Prince Hal moment at the end. Madness recalls Lear, especially in the storm near the end. Jenny Galloway's grumpy, bawdy stage manager, has some Dresser-style reflections on being “the wife in the wings”, scrubbing gussets and making a career out of the worst bits of marriage ...
But this is not just a back-stage drama. We begin in “the charnel house of horrors” - anatomical specimens. And there's politics and philosophy, psychology and medecine. Benjamin Franklin speaks of the mind/brain problem; Foote suffers Locke's phantom limb, and loses his inhibitions after the accident – caused by a foolish royal wager – which also cost him his left leg, and opened up a whole new theatrical genre.
This is a very funny slice of history – directed with a sure hand but a light touch by Richard Eyre, no less. With wonderful designs by Tim Hatley, and beautifully judged performances by a brilliant ensemble. Joseph Millson is a superb David Garrick, and Kelly himself plays an impressive Prince George, later George III – what! What!. And there's a lot to think about, too – sending us to the book, also by Kelly, which preceded the play. But I wish I'd seen it in Hampstead first. Because, marvellous though it was to see Foote back in the Haymarket, though not on his own stage, the production did sometimes struggle to fill Nash's vast auditorium.

55 DAYS

55 DAYS

at Hampstead Theatre

07.11.12

Only the King wears his own clothes.

All the others, Presbyterians, Levellers, Counsellors and the two women, are all dressed somewhere in the middle of the Twentieth Century. Ashley Martin-Davis's grim traverse set suggests a corridor of power, with overflowing filing cabinets, in Whitehall, maybe, or Westminster, scenes of the military coup of 1649.

Like Brenton's earlier success, Anne Boleyn, 55 Days dissects a turning point in history, and takes us back to a world where religion was central to the lives of rulers and commoners alike.

But the mufti and the intimate setting make these people seem very real, their predicaments very immediate. Mr Speaker [John Mackay], the "saints" [Cromwell's army, encamped round braziers in Hyde Park], Freeborn John Lilburne [Gerald Kyd] and the rest.

The action is swift, brutal in Howard Davies's gripping production. Allegiances, ambitions are far from fixed – "everybody twists about" – stability is a dear, distant dream. A bell tolls for Evensong in the chapel at Carisbrooke, Cromwell is at his ablutions above a Knottingley tavern. And most chillingly effective of all, the noisy meetings and the attempt at a trial. A very real sense that decisions are made, policies forged, on the hoof. "We are not just trying a tyrant, we are inventing a country, " Cromwell says. The lawyers that the Parliamentarians enlist are unsure, torn between statute and revolutionary zeal. [Excellent performances from Tom Vaughan-Lawler and James Wallace, who also plays Richmond in the earlier scenes.]

Cromwell is a strong, determined but ultimately reasonable Douglas Henshall. Mark Gatiss his proud, remote, arrogant monarch. A glass of wine symbolises a meeting between them [which happens, like Tyndale's tryst with Boleyn, only in the dramatist's imagination]. Charles's rejection of his advances suddenly triggers an angry decision, the trial and the execution.

There are echoes of the earlier play in the humour, the names [Thomas, Lady Anne, Cromwell] and in Brenton's unique gift for heightened yet realistic historical dialogue. He captures the turbulence of the times, and makes complex political, social and religious ideas not only accessible but real and relevant.