SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

The National Theatre at the Olivier

11.11.2017

Rory Mullarkey’s new play is an enjoyably old-fashioned affair. And not only the opening scene [it’s really a three-act play] which is done in cod-Chaucerian verse. The last third, after the interval, is set in the present day, but agreeably free of expletives.

It’s an ambitious exploration of the legend of St George, and the cross which was his symbol but now has a multitude of meanings.

He comes home to an England he remembers as an Eden, a perfect isle. “A Knight there was ...” the tale begins, as he descends through the stalls, a messianic figure in a flowing robe and his “sunrise russet” locks. But he finds England much changed, darker, more dismal, ruled by a traditional dragon.

Our hero, a naive, likeable dragon-slayer, with moments of self-doubt, moments of epic bombast, is engagingly played by John Heffernan, bringing out the quiet humour of the writing. His Dragon, very much a pantomime villain, at least in his first incarnation, is done with evident relish by Julian Beach.

We are quickly introduced to the villagers, medieval types named for their trades. As with Blackadder, they crop up again in the second part, set in the Industrial Revolution, with the Dragon in a giant capitalist top hat. And again in the 21^st century, when tower blocks have obliterated the town which replaced the village.

Many fine performances, from Gawn Granger as the old man, Jason Barnett as the Crier [“Oyez...”], Joe Caffrey as Smith, Jeff Rawle as Brewer the inn-keeper. The Dragon’s henchman, or aide-de-camp, a complex character, key to the story’s development, is Richard Goulding. And the Saint’s love interest – the old man’s daughter – is given a memorable performance by Amaka Okafor. And the boy, another key character, was confidently played, when I saw it, by Reuel Guzman.

Lyndsey Turner pulls out all the stops to do justice to the epic scale of the story. The aerial battle with the triple-headed dragon is a powerful blend of narration, reaction and old-fashioned special effects as the heads crash and burn in a most spectacular fashion. Rae Smith’s design – a Ravilious landscape, with a model village/town/city built on it, and a kitchen for each era – is perfect for the piece, which seems very much at home in the spacious Olivier.

We are left to ponder what the play is about. The dragon, by the end, is no longer a foe to be challenged, but the enemy within each one of us. The England that has appropriated the noble flag is a selfish, soul-less place, hen parties and football in the pub. Elsa, now a teacher, finds herself crying on the bus.

The playwright deliberately does not set it in England, though it’s a very close match - “an island much like our own”. It’s not a state-of-the-nation play, though the programme reflects on our national identity, on heroes [and villains] and our need for stories. And this is a fairy tale, a myth – as George, completely adrift in the present day, says,“I am a legend.”

It would be unkind to reveal the ending, but it is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for optimism or despair as we wonder whether the dragon can ever be defeated.

Photograph: Johan Persson

FOLLIES

FOLLIES

The National Theatre at the Olivier

05.09.2017

The eagerly awaited NT Follies – latest star-studded revival of Sondheim's 1971 masterwork.

It must be almost 40 years ago that I saw what I think was the UK première – a production by students of the University of Southern California, in the cavernous, faded splendour of the auditorium of Portobello Town Hall.

Dominic Cooke's production, with designs by Vicki Mortimer, uses the depth and height of the Olivier stage to recreate the derelict Weismann Follies, inspired perhaps by the iconic photograph of Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy Theatre, reproduced in the lavish souvenir programme.

The ravages of time are central to his interpretation – the older characters are contrasted with their younger selves, forever walking through conversations or shadowing the movements of half-forgotten numbers. So, as in Merrily We Roll Along, we are reminded of the fate of the glowingly optimistic young things. The young lovers watch from atop the rubble as their older selves reminisce and fight. The showgirls – beautifully dressed – appear like ghosts or angels on the rusty fire-escapes – the closest we get to a walk-down staircase. The 21-strong band [MD Nigel Lilley, in white tie] are glimpsed in the upstage shadows.

The 37 cast members include excellent chorus – Bill Deamer's choreography is wonderfully well served – and some of the best musical theatre performers in the land. Janie Dee is Phyllis, unhappily married to Ben, stylishly sung [not for the first time] by Philip Quast. She flirts passionately with a callow waiter [Jordan Shaw] and gives a near-definitive Could I Leave You, very simply staged. Peter Forbes is Buddy, whose dowdy wife – from Phoenix AZ – is the legendary Imelda Staunton, already Olivier-laurelled for three other Sondheim leading ladies. Her Losing My Mind is unbearably tragic, and she brings the same sad despair to much of her dialogue.

Her younger self is Alex Young; Phyllis's Zizi Strallen.

Superb characters from Di Botcher as the chain-smoking Hattie – Broadway Baby; Tracie Bennett, flaky, heavily mascara'd, gives a manically, despairingly defiant I'm Still Here.

The role of Roscoe is key to setting the tone [with Beautiful Girls] – good to see the excellent Bruce Graham given space to make an impression.

Any Follies production needs a legend or two to underline the nostalgia and the theme of showbiz survival. I fondly recall Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson in the 1987 Shaftesbury Theatre show. Their dancing double act is nicely done by Norma Atallah and Billy Boyle, whose résumé includes a long list of West End musicals as well as the Basil Brush show. But the real legend here is Dame Josephine Barstow as the operetta star Heidi Schiller. She duets beautifully with her younger self, soprano Alison Langer.

Loveland – and the follies which follow – is suggested by gauze and chandeliers, and a diaphanous front cloth for Buddy's superbly guyed vaudeville routine.

No interval, but the two and a quarter hours didn't seem a moment too long. At the end, we're left with the quartet of youngsters, and a last look back from Gary Raymond's wonderful Weismann as he stands in the doorway.

Di Botcher as Hattie - images by Johan Persson

AMADEUS

AMADEUS

National Theatre at the Olivier
05.11.2016

Back in the Olivier to see the eagerly awaited revival of Peter Shaffer's classic Amadeus.

Only a couple of rows from the front of the circle, where I still remember sitting entranced in 1979 as I watched Schofield create the role of Salieri, ironically bringing notoriety to a composer who feared, rightly, that his memory would be eclipsed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Michael Longhurst's production is very different, of course. One of its great strengths is the 20-strong South Bank Sinfonia, embedded in the action. They set up at the beginning, and at the end, coats on, instruments in cases, they take a call with the actors. The venticelli are literally winds, carrying their instruments as they bring gossip and comment on the action.

Their modern dress is not the only anachronism – Salieri's sweetmeats look like donuts, and Mozart sports stylish DMs.

He's played by Adam Gillen as a strident, charmless child, accentuating the gulf his rival sees between the sublime and the disgusting prodigy. The “dreadful girl”, his Constanze, is given the full TOWIE treatment by Karia Crome.

Gillen's caricatured shoutiness is occasionally contagious, with screeching and yelling where cold crispness might be more effective.

Antonio Salieri, seeking advancement and fame, bargaining with his God, scheming to thwart the upstart Mozart, is powerfully played by Lucian Msamati. He has a strong rapport with the audience, his ghosts of the future.

The Olivier stage, bustling with life at the court, on the streets, in library and salon, is excellently used, with hangings, two levels, a cloth for the Prater and a pit for the players, who are imaginatively used – a walking glockenspiel especially effective. The music is often played straight, but there are twists, too: hooked-on bass-heavy serenade for the party, smooth jazz for a seduction.

Among the many impressive moments, amusing stagings of Seraglio and Zauberflote, and a stunning climax in which Salieri is crushed by the force of the Kyrie, and he clutches vainly at the Mozart manuscripts on the floor around him.

production photograph: Marc Brenner

YOUNG CHEKHOV

YOUNG CHEKHOV

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Olivier, National Theatre

30.07.2016

These three early plays, performed in repertory last year in Chichester, transfer triumphantly to the even vaster arena of the Olivier.
David Hare's brilliant adaptations – Platonov (1880), Ivanov (1887), The Seagull (1897) are directed by Jonathan Kent, whose excellent Gypsy also travelled up from Sussex last year.
This was the first of the all-day Chekhov-fests.

On variations of the original watery set, some breathtaking performances, notably James McArdle, who takes two major roles. He's Platonov, the charismatic “misogyny on wheels“, who can't help attracting women – not unlike Ayckbourn's librarian Norman. A virtuousic performance, with impeccable comic timing. Hamlet is referenced in all three plays, and McArdle handles the soliloquies skilfully, as do many of his fellow performers. He's also Doctor Lvov in Ivanov, forever sanctimoniously pointing out the flaws in the title character – played here by Geoffrey Streatfield, Sam West being committed to the Coward tour.

Most of the other Chichester actors are in place, including Olivia Vinall, outstanding as Sasha and as Nina to Joshua James's Konstantin, fervent evangelist for the “new theatre” in The Seagull. His old-school diva of a mother is inimitably brought to life by Anna Chancellor. Nina Sosanya is Anna Petrovna for Platonov and, touchingly, Ivanov's Jewish wife.

“Just the lake and the horizon” - the setting for Konstantin's drama and for ours - wonderfully atmospheric, with interiors rising from the decking.

It rains through the last act of the Seagull. Otherwise, the oppressive heat is a leitmotiv, as is the unfortunate availability of vodka and firearms.

A deserved transfer for this illuminating collection, showing just how Chekhov honed his dramatic art.

SUNSET AT THE VILLA THALIA

SUNSET AT THE VILLA THALIA

National Theatre at the Dorfman
17.06.2016


Thalia, the muse of comedy, is the name playwright Theo [Sam Crane] chooses for the Greek home he acquires on the island of Skiathos, almost by accident, at the start of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s new play.
Theo's work is described as “quietly political”, Campbell's is rather more overtly so – the Aegean idyll is disturbed by an American couple, encountered by chance at the airport; the military coup of 1967 is imminent. CIA agent Harvey – a great performance from Ben Miles – is uncomfortably assertive, meddling with the lives of the two naïve Brits, his manipulative machinations masquerading as kindness and generosity. The subtext, surely, is the tendency of the US to wade in to impose its will on weaker nations, defining democracy to suits its own ends.
The four meet up again nine years later. Theo and the restless Charlotte [Pippa Nixon] have two children; Harvey has been scarred by the part he played in the overthrow of Allende. He cruelly reveals to his hosts the fate of the family whose house they bought for a song on the eve of the Generals' coup.
The action sometimes seems a little contrived. The sun sets slowly at the end of each act. But all the performances are polished and perceptive; Elizabeth McGovern, tall and slender in blue, is wonderful as June, Harvey's hard-drinking wife.
Simon Godwin's production brings out the best in Campbell's play, against Hildegard Bechtler’s hyper-realistic Skiathos setting.

HERE WE GO

HERE WE GO

National Theatre at the Lyttleton

25.11.2015

A new play by Caryl Churchill. Brief, even for a one-act offering. Tripartite. First, the “funeral party for a man with an adventurous past” - drinking champagne in hospital is mentioned.

Mourners stand around awkwardly, wine-glass in hand, making small talk interspersed with intimations of their own mortality – or pithy autopsies – and recollections of the departed. Rarely is a sentence finished, but instead of a naturalistic blending or overlapping, each speaker seems to apply the brakes – a disconcerting effect.

Then a masterly monologue by the dead man – a disembodied torso in the darkness – a confusion of ideas about the [possibly overpopulated] afterlife: Chiron, Valhalla, Purgatory. A powerful performance from Patrick Godfrey. 

Then an extended image – Godfrey again, with a patient Hazel Holder – perhaps of end-of-life futility, or perhaps eternal damnation, echoing Marlowe's Faustus -  “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.”

Too much of an eternity for some, exiting early through the Lyttleton doors before the final fade to black.

Dominic Cooke's uncomplicated direction lets Churchill speak, though I'm not sure what she's getting at in this black triptych.

HUSBANDS AND SONS

HUSBANDS AND SONS

National Theatre at the Dorfman

10.11.2015

It's easy to parody the kind of gloomy Black Country working-class angst that makes up Lawrence's three plays from a century ago.

Here, they are interwoven ingeniously by Ben Power, played out in three houses packed in to the Dorfman stage, and delineated by architect plans. This geometrical design, and the floor projections, recall other work in this space, also directed by Marianne Elliott.

The coal mine is a constant presence, with rumblings and light from beneath. Women are routinely abused by black-dusted brutes, bread is burned, crockery broken, pricey prints consigned to the fire. The design [by Bunny Christie] is wonderfully evocative, and there are countless memorable stage pictures, notably the three wives standing on the tables of the three houses as the menfolk march through to the pit.

Superb acting all round, though the dialect does prove a challenge at times. Despite the title, this is really about the womenfolk – Lawrence himself appears in the guise of bookish Ernest [Johnny Gibbon]. The action is centred around the kitchens and sculleries [with an effective mix of mime and props as fires are stoked, kettles filled, pots washed]. Anne-Marie Duff is Lizzie Holroyd, trapped in a violent marriage to alcoholic Charlie [Martin Marquez]. Louise Brealy is newly-wed Minnie, Susan Brown excellent as her meddling matriarch of a mother-in-law.

“It’s risky work, handlin’ men, my lass. For when a woman builds ’er life on men, either ’usbands or sons, she builds on summat as sooner or later brings the ’ouse down crash on ’er head – yi, she does.”

WASTE

WASTE
Nation Theatre at the Lyttleton

10.11.2015


“I'm angry . . .just angry at the waste of a good man. Look at the work undone . .. think of it! Who is to do it! Oh . . the waste . . . !”


Thus Walter Kent [Hubert Burton], secretary to Henry Trebell, as the curtain falls on Harvey Granville Barker's Waste, famously banned by the Edwardians.
Roger Michell's revival at the National is respectful and admirably acted. But the scandal and the political intrigue feel, if not irrelevant, then a little remote, the pre-occupations of another age.
Charles Edwards gives a cool, composed Trebell. He is a career politician “in love” with his parliamentary bill, seeking, a little like Wolsey, to use church property for educational ends. Olivia Williams is excellent as Amy O'Connell, with whom he flirts under a massive moon, the only glimpse of the natural world the production affords. Their ill-fated liaison drives the personal and political tragedy. Much of the “action” however, consists of gentlemen talking, notably at the start of Act Two, gathered at a round table, the only relief a kind of musical chairs. Closest to the style Barker would recognise are Michael Elwyn as the pragmatic Prime Minister Horsham and Gerrard McArthur, sporting magnificent spats, as the Catholic grandee Cantilupe. Sylvestra Le Touzel, as Henry's sister Frances, and Lucy Robinson [pictured] as Julia Farrant, give some much needed depth of feeling to the piece.
Hildegard Bechtler's sparsely furnished set, off white walls, high gloss flooring and wooden chairs and tables, uses massive screens both horizontal and vertical as scene tabs, making the epic piece as satisfying visually as it is intellectually or emotionally.

production photograph: Johan Persson

THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM

THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM

National Theatre at the Olivier

27.05.2015

Farquhar's carnal comedy comes to the vast Olivier stage, nicely filled by a versatile three-storey house [Lizzie Clachan designed] which morphs before our eyes from Boniface's inn to the Bountiful household, as oil lamps flying out pass chandeliers flying in.

Michael Bruce's music is splendid, too. Folk inspired and lively, especially in the “Trifle” song and dance number, and the French chanson, complete with accordeon. Musicians step out of doorways to accompany; the show begins with a lone fiddler at the top of the house, and ends that way too, when she is joined on stage by the whole band and the acting company for a joyful jig.

Simon Godwin's production eschews overly stylish Restoration mannerism for a more naturalistic feel: Susannah Fielding's resourceful Mrs Sullen has a feminist streak; she's well supported by Pippa Bennett-Warner as her sister-in-law sidekick. The two “brothers in iniquity” are Geoffrey Streatfield and Sam Barnett. Great comedy performances too from Jane Booker as Lady Bountiful, Richard Henders as her sullen, silent sot of a son, and Pearce Quigley as a deliciously deadpan Scrub.

It's a complex piece, but the pace is excellent and the narrative is driven along at a cracking pace, especially in the last act, when bandits, marriage, divorce, and a helpful inheritance come hard on each other's heels.

THE HARD PROBLEM

THE HARD PROBLEM

National Theatre at the Dorfman

27.05.2015

Hedge funds, a gym-slip baby, neuroscience, the power of coincidence, the politics of academia.

That's a lot to pack into 100 minutes, and we haven't really looked at the Hard Problem: Cartesian dualism, consciousness, the mind/body conundrum.

I'm not sure I could have attributed it to Stoppard if I hadn't known. And what if it had landed anonymously on Nick Hytner's desk …

Of course Stoppard has previous as far as philosophy is concerned. Jumpers, for one, and, my favourite, Professional Foul, the television film where philosophers mingle with footballers. Pure philosophy gets a bit of a bashing in this latest play, and those of us expecting intellectual showmanship of the calibre of those classics will be disappointed.

One difficulty is that not many of the characters are sympathetic, nor do they seem to be drawn from life. Is that the writing, the casting or the direction ? A professor whose idiom includes “one feels” is not likely to say “haitch” for H. The wittiest thing in Hytner's production is the Venetian bed.

The dialogue often seems like a long tick-list. Teleology, Basel rules, altruism, game theory, the brain worm [Dicrocoelium dendriticum ], Godel's proof, the Prisoner's Dilemma … Characters often end up explaining stuff their listeners must already know. There's a Pilates instructor to ask the really basic questions.

Use of Pilates signals a certain laziness, perhaps. Loughborough University, too.

But there is much to enjoy, and a feast of food for thought. Together with all the ideas, there are human stories too, for Vera Chuk's sensitively drawn Bo, and for the central character, Hilary, played by Olivia Vinall.

She is picked from the slush pile to join the prestigious and amply funded Kroll Institute, though hardly seems qualified. In Vinall's performance she is touchingly vulnerable [miracle, coincidence and fireworks in her personal journey], but fails to convince as the academic – she simply sounds like an actor.

The frequent scene changes are covered by solo piano Bach – that most intellectual of musical forms – while above the stage a huge hard-wired neuron installation glows and flashes, the mind/body problem made kinetic.

A witty, clever piece, with enough twists and treats to keep us entertained. But not vintage Stoppard. If you want that, go back to Arcadia. Or for a brilliant account of Philosophy of Mind in a fictional, well-funded department, try David Lodge's “Thinks ...”, now a play as well as a novel.

LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

National Theatre at the Lyttleton

23.04.2015

Here we are, on St George's day, between the Magna Carta celebrations and the General Election. What better time to revisit Caryl Churchill's 1976 piece about the political aftermath of the Civil War. Poor relief, an economy on the rocks, corruption and hypocrisy in government.

This is the England of Levellers and Ranters, where, 600 years on, the ruling classes are still thought of as a foreign foe. Where all women are considered damned. Where religion, despite everything, still holds almost everyone in its thrall.

The stunning first image [Es Devlin's sumptuous design, glowingly lit by Bruno Poet] is a vast banqueting hall. The table – the size of a tennis court, it seems – groans under the weight of rich food. The nobles are sitting around it, enjoying the feast. The cloth is also the stage; the soldiers, the revolutionaries, the dispossessed, move around amongst the huge platters. It's a wonderful conceit, cleverly followed through, as the cloth is removed, then the boards torn up by the Diggers to reveal the earth of England beneath.

Churchill's play is a series of scenes, some brief, some, like the verbatim Putney debates, a little long - “we have been a great while upon this matter ...”. But these confrontations, between Cromwell with his right hand man Ireton and the soldiers and radicals, saw the forging of our parliamentary system. Orwell would have appreciated the back-tracking and the fudging. Not to mention Daniel Flynn's parson, who, like the incumbent at Bray, is keen to keep his living under the new order, as a parliament man becomes the new squire.

As the debates move wearily to a close, the leadership decides to set up a committee, and, suddenly, there they are in black and white, the Puritans at the back of the stage. After the interval, it is their turn to take their places around that broad table, scribbling away as the Diggers rip up the floor.

It's a huge cast, augmented by a community company, and it's wonderful to see them throng the stage, singing their psalms and their songs of freedom. And many excellent performances – Leo Bill's dogged Ireton, Steffan Rhodri as Sexby [and a truculent butcher refusing to sell meat to the bloated rich], Ashley McGuire as a down-trodden, hopeless vagrant, Trystan Gravelle as Briggs, and Joshua James stunningly convincing as the ranting preacher Cobbe.

In Lyndsey Turner's production, design and costume details remind us that the struggle we are witnessing is not confined to one time or one place. Nowhere more so than in a second debate, where vagrants and outcasts noisily discuss the notion of property and of God. A reminder, too, that this was originally, and in the recent Arcola revival, a chamber piece, far removed from Turner's sprawling epic theatre.

But the Lyttleton stage does allow some superb visuals; after our protagonists sketch their lives post-Restoration, turn and leave, the final scene sees one lone idealist on the empty, sodden field, as the light shines out towards us, and a flock of birds, alarmed, flies unseen over our heads.

production photograph: Marc Brenner

RULES FOR LIVING

RULES FOR LIVING

National Theatre at the Dorfman

24.03.2015

A family gathers in the parental home for Christmas, bearing gifts and grudges, mince pies variously filo-based and gluten-free. Plus a new card game: Bedlam! For age 6 and upwards – “starts out simple but rapidly descends into chaos”.

Yes, this is right up Ayckbourn Avenue – intended neither as criticism nor as congratulation. Yet Sam Holcroft's piece is edgier, with some bolder strokes.

The McGuffin here – so beloved of the Scarborough Master – is that the entire action is ludic. The floor of the Dorfman is marked out as for a board game, or basketball, and at either end, scoreboards await.

Matt [Miles Jupp] arrives, with his up-for-it actress girlfriend [Maggie Service]. His brother [Stephen Mangan] is already here, with his wife Sheena [Claudie Blakley] and their teenage daughter. It is apparent that Matt is more at ease with Sheena, Adam more suited to Carrie. And at this point the domestic comedy is enlivened by the first of the rules: MATT:MUST:SIT TO TELL A LIE. The rules proliferate, with added riders, then game-show-style scores, until the boards are flashing as the Christmas meal, like the game of cards, achieves a sublime, and ridiculous, anarchy.

It would be unkind to include too many spoilers here, but the mood turns much darker after the sit-com introduction, largely due to the characters, at first unseen, of the paterfamilias, on parole from hospital for the day, and Emma the chronically fatigued daughter.

Much of this is very funny indeed, with some reliable targets – therapy, family rivalries, infidelity and social awkwardness. Marianne Elliott gets the most out of her cast of consummate comic actors. Jupp, successful but unhappy lawyer, star, in his younger days, of fourteen amateur musicals. Mangan, failed cricketer, now banished to a Travelodge by his insufferable wife. Service's Carrie is a hilarious if ultimately tragic study of a compulsive performer – MUST:STAND UP:AND JIG AROUND: TO TELL A JOKE:UNTIL SHE GETS A LAUGH. Deborah Findlay is wonderful as Edith, the awful mother – her rules involve Cillit-Bang and Solpadeine – with telling contributions in smaller roles from John Rogan and Daisy Waterstone. Who have no rules

It is perhaps inevitable that the Rules conceit – also a metaphor for our coping strategies, and vicious point-scoring – has diminishing returns. And, once the winner – more irony - is declared there are several places where the play could have ended, but didn't. Not that the low-key final pages, with their muted farewells, were less than effective. “One day we'll probably look back on all this and laugh!” “No, actually. I don't think we will.”

The last production of the Hytner years – very enjoyable on many levels – and well suited to the refurbished Dorfman. Not for the first time we were pleased we were looking down onto the playing area from the gods.