Review: Sondheim’s Company in the cinema

“When a person's personality is personable, he should not sit like a lump"

With the amount of theatre I see, I rarely go to the cinema these days – my Cineworld card collected dust for a quite a few months before I admitted defeat and cancelled it – so when I received an invitation to a press screening of a film, I was amused and intrigued by the novelty of the idea. Of course, it wasn’t that much of a stretch in the end because the film was a recording of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company from last year’s Lincoln Centre (Center?) production in New York featuring Neil Patrick Harris and a cast of luminaries including Patti LuPone (who inspired possibly the greatest YouTube video ever), Martha Plimpton (her from the Goonies all grown up) and Anika Noni Rose (the one from Dreamgirls who wasn’t Beyoncé or who won an Oscar).

I have to admit I was initially a little wary about going to see this: my relationship with Sondheim took a bit of a battering in the deluge of productions that celebrated his anniversary year and it was only really with the utterly fabulous Sheffield Crucible production of Company at the end of last year that the pieces all finally clicked together for me and I could hand on heart for the first time say that I absolutely loved a Sondheim show. But I have gotten much better at managing expectations for shows, especially in relation to other productions of the same, and this was an opportunity to see a whole bunch of performers, whom I like but may never get to see, live on a big screen. And you’ll get the chance when the show screens for one night only on Thursday 15th March at 7pm – the list of cinemas is available here.

Review The Resistance of Mrs Brown, Radio 4

“I never miss an opportuntiy to go unnoticed”

I love me some wartime drama especially when it involves the role of women, tv films like Housewife 49 and plays like The Firewatchers fill my heart with joy, and so the 15 minute drama for this week (formerly the Women’s Hour drama) fell very much into my field of interest, with an added twist of alternate history in the mix. Ed Harris’ The Resistance of Mrs Brown imagines a world where the British were defeated at Dunkirk and a Nazi Military Administration has been set up in London. Joan Brown works as a tea lady for the new powers-that-be and is determined to keep her head down, especially after the death of her husband, but when she advertises for a new lodger, she is contacted by the Resistance who want to use her unique position to help strike a blow against the Nazis.

Amanda Root’s delicate clipped tones make a beautifully unwilling heroine out of Mrs Brown, who is pushed along by the forthright Mrs Crace, a delightfully matter-of-fact Adjoa Andoh and Simon Bubb’s Wode who try their best to cajole her into going along with their plans, and using her as a narrator is an inspired choice by director Jonquil Panting as we’re constantly reminded of her reticient fragility which ends up responding beautifully to the challenges that are presented to her. Whether its her daughter, her boss or the men she serves tea to who come to know her a little, she is pulled one way or another until she finally gains the confidence to stand up for what she truly believes in and consequently makes decisions according to her own conscience.

Review: Hay Fever, Noël Coward

“People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days"

A Noël Coward play in the Noël Coward theatre, what could be more apt. Howard Davies’ production of Hay Fever is the first by Coward to play since the Albery Theatre was renamed in his honour, and featuring Jeremy Northam, Kevin R McNally, Olivia Colman and young talent like Freddie Fox and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, plus Lindsay Duncan with whom he did a very well received Private Lives in 2001. So the stars all seemed aligned for a rip-roaring good time but this ended up being the kind of hay fever I wish I could have taken anti-histamines for.

The play follows the outrageous antics of the four members of the Bliss family who each invite someone special to stay for the weekend with the intention of pursuing their private flirtations but end up driving everyone up the wall and coupling off in unexpected directions. But over the three acts, I found there to be precious little energy playing out in Bunny Christie’s rather drab design. Sluggish is the word that sprung to mind, from the (admittedly) set-up heavy first act through to the final act of reconciliation, as the air was of perfunctory run-through rather than finely-calibrated comedic excellence. Even the games of the second act which are rich in comic potential didn’t really catch fire like they ought despite Duncan’s best waspish efforts.

Weekend #5 – Digital Theatre

When the website Digital Theatre first launched, with its mission of capturing theatre productions for posterity, it was with a collection of plays that would probably be best described as low-key although an interesting selection with it: I duly investigated and took advantage of special offers to see The Comedy of Errors and Far From the Madding Crowd. There’s been much debate about the value of filmed theatre performances and I have to say that my initial choices were guided by the availability of shows that I had not seen, I wasn’t much minded to pay to see plays I had already seen onstage.

But over the last year, the folks behind Digital Theatre have very much raised their game in terms of the productions they have been involved in, taking on such high profile successes as the Open Air Theatre’s Into the Woods, the Tennant/Tate Much Ado About Nothing and the incendiary All My Sons. And with the present of a gift certificate for Christmas, I decided to take the opportunity to revisit Much Ado About Nothing and All My Sons, as well as seeing the RSC’s As You Like It for the first time.

Review: All My Sons, Digital Theatre

“I’m interested in what people want”

There’s not really much more to be said about All My Sons that I didn’t cover in my original review of the play. Howard Davies’ production of Arthur Miller’s classic was a deserved huge success in the West End in 2010 and Digital Theatre captured it on film over two nights in September and so one now has the opportunity to rent it online, or download it to watch via their video player.

The fact that the play takes place on the single set lends itself to being captured quite easily on film, there's little theatrical shenanigans employed here to distract from the fireworks of the acting, that is the real focus of this show. David Suchet's oily geniality and Zoë Wanamaker's blind forthrightedness are simply exceptional together as the Kellers play host to family and neighbours and are ultimately left helpless as long-buried truths from the past worm their way to the surface with devastating consequences.

Review: Much Ado About Nothing, Digital Theatre

"Can the world buy such a jewel?"

Well you can now buy a copy of Josie Rourke's Much Ado About Nothing which parlayed the star quality of its leads David Tennant and Catherine Tate into massive box office success but watching it again, I'm not so convinced of its jewel-like propensities. Revisiting this particular show did it no real favours in my mind, exposing its limitations and the lack of subtlety that characterises so much of the production.

Relocated to a Gibraltar naval base in the 1980s, the brashness of that decade was clearly taken onboard as a key note for the whole thing. But whereas from the back row of the Wyndhams, it seemed to work in filling the theatre, in the up close and personal of the cmera lens, the broadness doesn't work quite as well. Tennant comes off slightly better with a more natural reading of the lines as a cocky Benedick but Tate never really gets under the skin of Beatrice, the emphasis too much on artifically contrived comedy which never allows her to just be. She is always made to work harder by Rourke who perhaps should have trusted her actor a bit more as she really comes into her own from 'kill Claudio...' where she demonstrates her dramatic gift and indicates what might have been of lines like "there was a star danced..." had she been mugging less right before delivering it.

Review: As You Like It, Digital Theatre

“If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father...”

Against my better judgement, I bought the RSC’s As You Like It ages ago when a special offer came up for it but it has languished on my hard-drive ever since as I have serious AYLI fatigue and no real desire to watch it again. It is one of those Shakespeares that seems to pop up with unfailing regularity and I’ve grown tired of it to be honest – occasionally a production will surprise with a stunning central performance as did Cush Jumbo at the Royal Exchange but usually I’m left weary by the lack of inventiveness in productions which end up blurring into one another in my mind.

And that’s how I felt in the end about this 2010 Michael Boyd-directed production featuring the Long Ensemble. It is undoubtedly well-performed: Katy Stephens’ bright intelligence is perfectly suited to the determined Rosalind and well matched with Jonjo O’Neill’s passionate Orlando, Richard Katz’s wild-haired Touchstone is well observed and having become accustomed to this group of actors, I liked the smaller parts played by the likes of Christine Entwisle, Dyfan Dwyfor and Charles Aitken.

Review: In Basildon, Royal Court

“There's no new beginnings for families like ours. And there never has been."

One of David Eldridge’s most recent previous plays - The Knot of the Heart for the Almeida – proved to be one of the most divisive I’ve experienced in terms of the response from the critics who lauded it and so many of the bloggers and audience members of my acquaintance who really did not like it at all. So when the new season at the Royal Court was announced featuring a new play by him, I was ok with not booking it as it helped me with my ‘I will cut down on the amount of theatre I see’ mantra. But then they announced the cast and as soon as I saw the names Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen I knew that I would have to book for In Basildon. Bassett blew me away in the Arcola's undersung The Road To Mecca and Sheen is an actress whose work I have recently revisited and adored in recent MIke Leigh films, and the Leigh connection is furthered with the presence of other regular collaborators Peter Wight and Wendy Nottingham. So I was a mixture of reluctance and eager anticipation as I schlepped off to Sloane Square to catch the final preview.

Dying from prostate cancer, salt-of-the-earth Len has returned to the home he inherited from his parents as friends and family gather round his sickbed. Sister Doreen and best friend Ken lead the group but the atmosphere is shaken by the return of estranged sister Maureen who hasn't spoken to 'Dor' in nearly 20 years. As Len passes away, attention turns to his will as everyone seems to have a claim on something, including Pam from next door, Doreen's son Barry and his wife, and Shelley, Maureen's daughter and Eldridge explores the tensions that emerge from these family loyalties and how they change over time and across the generations. The complexities of sibling relationships are brutally exposed but also overlaid with a frank discussion about class and how it is intrinsically connected to location, their working-class politics shaped by hard-earned experience. Confrontational, conflicted and compelling, Eldridge's writing speaks with the darkest of humour but also the ring of a deep emotional truth. It's just a shame that the Royal Court have decided to play the 'tricksy' card with the staging.

Review: Artist Descending A Staircase, Criterion

“Imagination without skill gives us modern art”

Home to the long-running The 39 Steps (which I still haven’t quite gotten round to seeing yet), the Criterion Theatre has been expanding its programming both with late-evening and afternoon events. This Tuesday afternoon saw a performance of Tom Stoppard’s radio play Artist Descending A Staircase by such an attractive cast that it was impossible to resist. The play was performed in front of us to a microphone, although I couldn’t quite figure out whether this was being recorded for real or not, and sound effects created onstage so it was just like watching a radio play being recorded rather than something being acted out and was most amusing with it – not least because we got to see the actors in their civvies and see what their fashion sense is like!

But to the play itself: we open with a scratchy recording of undetermined sounds and soon find ourselves in an attic studio shared by three elderly avant-garde artists with two of them standing over the body of the third at the bottom of the staircase. Beauchamp is the one who made the recording as his art centres on the sounds of everyday life and as he and his colleague Martello hear their dead friend Donner acknowledge the presence of something just before his fall, they each point the finger of suspicion at the other.

Review: Second Blast – Present Dangers, Tricycle

“There are over 200 countries in the world and only 8, maybe 9 have nuclear weapons”

The second part of the Tricycle’s The Bomb – a partial history is named Second Blast: Present Dangers and focuses its attention on where the nuclear threat lies now, i.e. in the Middle East and North Korea. Alongside the five plays, there’s more of the verbatim reportage, edited by Richard Norton-Taylor, in this section, effectively deployed to demonstrate the almost ridiculousness of the way in which the debate about Iran and nuclear capability has been framed the US and Israel, and later on to remind us of the official political positions of many of our own leaders in the UK.

Altogether I was a tiny bit disappointed with this half of the day (I’d’ve given it 3.5 stars as opposed to 4 for Part 1) as First Blast: Proliferation had cast its net far and wide to cover five different aspects of the history of the bomb but Second Blast returned time and time again to Iran (3 times in fact) in terms of the present day. Obviously it’s a massive part of where we are in terms of potential instability, but I felt that a more useful eye could have been cast elsewhere as well – in a savage indictment of those countries like Israel and Pakistan who still refuse to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or indeed a more damning look at those countries that have signed yet show no signs of reducing their stockpile.

Review: There Was A Man. There Was No Man

“Ethics are all very well from the safety of Switzerland”

In some ways Colin Teevan’s There Was A Man. There Was No Man ought to have been the most powerfully resonant piece in the second part of the Tricycle’s The Bomb – a partial history given the heightened tension around the Iranian nuclear programme and the ever-present antagonism with Israel.

The official blurb is as follows. ‘While Israel officially has no nuclear arms programme, few doubt it has; Iran claims this gives it the right to develop its own nuclear programme. Who will be the first to blink? When an Israeli and Iranian scientist meet at a conference in Jordan, their meeting has deep repercussions for their nations, their families and themselves.’

Review: Axis

“Hungry as they are, they are proud to be North Korean and not American puppets”

Even within the constraints of a short piece of drama, playwrights often think and write big, but not always to the greatest effect, and so it felt a little bit with Diana Son’s Axis, one of the plays making up the second part of the Tricycle’s The Bomb – a partial history. Starting off in a White House strategy room, two advisers try to come up with a sexy soundbite that will help sell Dubya’s aggressive post 9/11 strategy, we then flip ten years into the future in North Korea where two members of the government discuss what things might be like under their new inexperienced leader Kim Jong-Un.

Both sections have their merits: the idea that something as powerful and definitive as the ‘Axis of Evil’ rhetoric is something that could have been whipped by speech-writers and spin doctors has a horribly persuasive currency but it felt a lost opportunity for the revelation that this policy threw away the considerable diplomatic efforts of the previous administration who had come close to buying out the North Koreans’ nuclear programme in exchange for aid to just be used as a post-script caption. And where the 2012 discussion of the huge uncertainty around their untried new leader does look at the repercussions of this hardening of the position on both sides, especially on worsening the poverty in North Korea, there’s an almost slapstick tone which undermined the seriousness of the subject.