Ideal Home Truths

HOME, I’M DARLING

The Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tuesday 25^th April 2023

Married couple Johnny and Judy live their lives as though it’s the 1950s.  They’ve done the house up in period style, all the furniture is authentic, and of course, so are their clothes.  A bit like Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in reverse, Judy has given up her career in finance to become a housewife, while Johnny goes off to work with a hat on and a spring in his step.  It all seems to be going well until financial pressures come to bear on this idyll.

Laura Wade’s script is sharp, full of funny retorts, but there is also social commentary: how far we’ve come since those days, and more tellingly, how far we still have to go.  Friend and neighbour Marcus is on gardening leave, while allegations of sexual misconduct at work are being investigated.  Touching a secretary’s bum is ‘a joke’ he claims.  You know, banter.

Jessica Ransom rules the roost and the stage as domestic goddess Judy, putting on a bright smile when the going gets tough, and treating us to some superbly timed pained expressions.  Judy’s world has shrunk to the house but what, her mother cries, about her potential? 

Neil McDermott gives an energised performance as husband Johnny.  He and Ransom have a heightened style when they’re together, living their Fifties fantasy.   In contrast, his boss, Alex, who in true sitcom tradition comes around for cocktails, is very much a woman of today – Shanez Pattni wearing trousers and low-key glamour.

Filling out the cast are Cassie Bradley as Fran and, at this performance, Steve Blacker-Barrowman as Marcus, fellow Fifties fans but nowhere near as obsessive.  The pair also serve as scene-changers, jiving and bopping through transitions, in a way that’s fun at first, but wears a bit thin as the show goes on.

Diane Keen is marvellous as Sylvia, Judy’s plain-speaking mother.  In a blistering monologue, she punctures her daughter’s fantasy lifestyle with a scathing reminder of what the Fifties were really like, a far cry from the Ideal Home scenario Judy and Johnny have created.  “You’re living in a cartoon!” she says savagely, unable to understand why anyone would want to go back to a time of scarcity (post-war rationing was still on the go) and rampant discrimination.

The play is very much about exposing nostalgia for a past that never was as a seductive lie, as well as throwing up questions about gender roles and societal expectations.  Director Tamara Harvey balances the heightened nature of the comic moments with the more painful moments when reality creeps in.  Anna Fleischle’s sumptuous set and costumes (Judy’s dresses in particular) are bright and stylish, capturing both the nostalgic and the aspirational.

It’s a funny and provocative piece, played by a sharp and charming ensemble, and while the resolution is as pat as anything you’d find in a 50s sitcom, it reminds us that what keeps a relationship on track is communication and compromise.

Now, where are my slippers?  Hello?

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jessica Ransom and Diane Keen (Photo: Jack Merriman)

Re: Possessed

THE EXORCIST

The REP, Birmingham, Tuesday 25^th October, 2016

 

William Peter Blatty’s novel became one of the most famous and celebrated horror films of the 1970s.  Now, John Pielmeier adapts the book for the stage, giving rise to questions like ‘How are they going to do that?’.  Fans of the film need not worry: all the iconic moments are here.  Director Sean Mathias uses every trick in the book of theatrical tricks to present what we expect to see: rocking beds, projectile vomit – this production really makes heads turn!  And it’s a real showcase for the technical team.  The illusions are designed by Ben Hart and supported by atmospheric, cinematic lighting by Tim Mitchell, who makes use of darkness and chiaroscuro to both hide and reveal what’s going on.  Adam Cork’s sound design surrounds us with eerie noises and disembodied voices.  Anna Fleischle’s set is versatile and evocative – Nick Gingell’s stage management team pull off wonders, changing scenes in pitch blackness so the action can flow from seamlessly from place to place.

Out front a strong cast delivers an engaging script, laced with humour to relieve the tension.  Jenny Seagrove is excellent as Chris, movie star and mum, unravelling as her daughter’s plight worsens.  Clare Louise Connolly is Regan, the child in question, and gives an astonishing performance as the ten-year-old falling prey to evil.  Although she spends much of the show in bed, she must be exhausted by the end!  Adam Garcia’s troubled Father Karras, trying to work through his grief over his late mother, finds redemption – the keynote of the production is that the cast play with earnest.  The material is bunkum – gloriously so – but the actors help us suspend our disbelief and go along for the ride with them.  Peter Bowles is fantastic as the titular exorcist, the ailing Father Merrin, managing to be imperious and vulnerable at the same time.  There is sterling support from Joseph Wilkins’s Father Joe, Mitchell Mullen’s Doctor Klein, and Todd Boyce’s Doctor Strong, a succession of ‘experts’ trying to diagnose what’s wrong with the little girl. Tristram Wymark is good fun as the camp and avuncular film director, Burke, and is party to one of the great shocks of the evening.  There are plenty of moments of grand guignol, to be sure, but what keeps us hooked is the unsettling atmosphere.  Anything might happen and right before our very eyes.  But among all the thrills and frissons, I can’t help thinking the devil doesn’t half sound like Sir Ian McKellan.

A gripping funfair ride of a show – perhaps it’s more frightening if you’re a believer – the production plays the horror movie tropes to great effect.  Wonderful entertainment for a chilly autumn night.

Bringing them to their knees: Adam Garcia, Clare Louise Connolly and Peter Bowles (Photo: Robert Day)

New Bromantics

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

The Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, Wednesday 31^st August, 2016

 

Shakespeare’s final play, written in collaboration with John Fletcher, lifts its plot from Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale.  It’s a story of friendship – the friendship between cousins Palamon and Arcite and the wedge driven between them by their infatuation/obsession over Emilia, a woman they only view from afar.  The cousins are prisoners of war and, as Mel Brooks might have put it, prisoners of love.  Fate holds different things in store: Arcite is banished, Palamon, with the help of the jailer’s love-struck daughter, escapes…

It’s a satisfyingly sensational plot, performed with vigour here.  At times, the speeches can be rather dense and impenetrable but the energy of the cast, especially from Palamon (James Corrigan) and Arcite (Jamie Wilkes) helps us to keep focussed.  Corrigan is a charming, petulant presence, while Wilkes’s Arcite is arch – the affection between the two convinces both in the lauding of each other’s virtues and the bickering when they fall out.  Chivalric values are held up for ridicule as much as admiration.  Within this world, where the gods answer prayers directly, we may understand characters’ motivations absolutely.

As Jailer’s Daughter, a thankless role that doesn’t even get a name, Danusia Samal stands out.  She has three lengthy monologues that track her decline from lovesick young girl to Ophelia-style mad wench.  Samal both appeals and convinces, emotions undimmed by the sometimes heavy-handed writing.

There is much to enjoy in Blanche McIntyre’s production of this seldom-staged story.  A Bacchanalian morris dance, complete with phallic hobbyhorses, fight scenes (directed by Kate Waters), and live medieval-modern music composed by Tim Sutton.   Palamon and Arcite climb the bars of their prison like apes in cages – the central relationship of the titular two underpins the entire production. The jarring note for me is the costume design.  Anna Fleischle gives us era-less clothing rather than evoking classical Greece.  Some of the choices are bizarre to say the least.  Amazonian Hippolyta looks like she’s off to New Romantic night at the student union.  In one scene she brings on a chainsaw but doesn’t use it.  The Jailer’s suit makes him look like a weary supply teacher, and Emilia’s twin buns and white shift bring to mind Princess Leia.  There is something performing-artsy about the designs that doesn’t match the quality and commitment of the actors.

But the dramatic storyline engages and the play’s teasing of same-sex relationships vs love and marriage make it seem very ‘now’.  The strongest, starkest message comes from the ebullient Gyuri Sarossy’s Theseus at the end, driven at last to compassion by the unfolding of events: For what we lack we laugh, for what we have, are sorry.

Ain’t that the truth?!

Cousins in bondage: Jamie Wilkes (Arcite) and James Corrigan (Palamon) Photograph: Donald Cooper

 

Save

A Date with the Don

DON GIOVANNI

Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tuesday 10^th May, 2016

 

English Touring Opera brings a new production of what, in my view, is the finest opera ever written – I always look forward to new productions with a mix of excitement and trepidation: will I be outraged by liberties taken with staging and interpretation?

Prepared to vent my dismay, I take my seat…

The setting is 1900s Vienna, or rather beneath the city.  Apparently it was quite the thing back in the day: the workers who had built the network of tunnels ended up living down there, with nowhere else to go.  My first impression is that Anna Fleischle’s set may be too dark and gloomy for the more humorous sections… but it turns out my worries are unfounded.  If anything the humour shines through.  The set and the atmospheric lighting (by Guy Hoare) cannot swamp the irrepressible Don Giovanni or indeed Mozart’s rich and vibrant score.

Nicholas Lester is a tall, dark and handsome Don Giovanni – you want your lotharios to be swoonsome and he most certainly is.  His baritone is seductive, like being tempted with melted dark chocolate, and his hearty laughter is delicious.  He forms an hilarious double-act with his servant Leporello (a marvellous Matthew Stiff), here looking rather well-fed, so we can take his protestations about the privations he suffers with a whole peck of salt.  Leporello’s catalogue aria is one of the comedy highlights of the night.

Ania Jeruc’s Donna Elvira is suitably wild-eyed, driven to derangement by her undying devotion to Giovanni.  Strident but never shrill, Jeruc brings a touch of the exotic to the piece.

Gillian Ramm’s Donna Anna may be small in stature but she’s a powerhouse of emotion, and she is paired with a Don Ottavio (Robyn Lyn Evans) that for once actually seems to have a pair himself.  This Ottavio is upright, decent and above all strong – you don’t always get that.

Lucy Hall is sweet and funny as peasant bride Zerlina – her ‘Beat me’ aria is cute and flirtatious.  Bradley Travis brings out handsome husband-to-be Masetto’s hotheadedness and indignation.

We’re all waiting to see how the murdered Commendatore (Piotr Lempa) will be staged, when he returns to take Don Giovanni to Hell.  Here the tunnels and shadows of the underground setting come into their own.  A chorus of demons, here reminiscent of the workers who built the place, stand sinisterly around Giovanni, before carrying him away like pallbearers.

John Andrews conducts with verve – all the colours of Mozart’s impeccable score are brought out, sometimes at quite a lick.

A thrilling, witty production (the translation by Jeremy Sams is clever and laugh-out-loud funny) it is also stylish and powerful.  The design supports the action – there are glimpses of colour reminiscent of Gustav Klimt – director Lloyd Wood’s ideas enhance the libretto, and the actor-singers are the focus of the production.

Every time I hear it, I marvel that something so wonderful can exist, can be created by a human being.  This production by English Touring Opera reaffirms the notion that Don Giovanni is one of humanity’s finest achievements.

Climbing the walls – Don Giovanni and Leporello (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Passion Play

LOVE’S SACRIFICE

The Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, Monday 27^th April, 2015

 

There’s often a reason why a play isn’t performed for centuries: it’s not very good or its day has come and gone and there is nothing of relevance to it. With this in mind, I settle into my seat at the RSC’s Swan and try to keep an open mind.

John Ford (you know, him – he wrote Tis Pity She’s A Whore) gives us a tragedy, the likes of which opera has been thriving on for yonks. Two best friends, one woman, loved by both but married by one… It can only end badly.

Matthew Needham is excellent as The Duke, whose emotions are never far from the surface. He is an exuberant hedonist, when things are going his way, but there is the suggestion he could become unhinged at any moment – we see flashes of his violent temper. His bride Bianca (Catrin Stewart) is perky and lively, and obeys her husband’s instructions to treat his bff Fernando (Jamie Thomas King) like a second husband, in all ways except one, of course! Bianca and Fernando get the hots for each other but never consummate their passion, despite a few stolen moments – enough to get the villain of the piece plotting and scheming. Stewart and King go through the anguishes of love without the pleasure, matching Needham’s emotional outpourings in intensity. As the villain D’Avolos, Jonathan McGuinness is a snide and unctuous presence, Iago with an admin job – and it almost looks like he will get away with it.

There is a couple of subplots, one of which ends horribly. Arrogant womaniser Ferentes (Andy Apollo making an impression) gets his comeuppance in a masque, when three of his conquests decide to have a stab at vengeance. Superannuated fop Mauriccio (an exquisite Matthew Kelly) has a happier ending – if banishment and marriage are anything to go by – and his relationship with Brummie servant Giacopo (Colin Ryan) is both funny and touching. Kelly and Ryan are a little and large double act with perfect comic timing – I find I am more moved by the resolution to their story than I am to the main plot.

Beth Cordingly is strong as strident widow Fiormonda, and Marcus Griffiths’s Roseilli, banished but comes back disguised as a simpleton, cuts a dash, but is too removed from the main action – This is a fault of the writer.

On the whole, it’s a watchable, rewarding piece with passions running as high as the production values and well worth sacrificing an evening to see. Anna Fleischle’s design conveys the period beautifully, but the projections on the back wall add little beyond mood lighting – I am too busy watching the actors to take much notice of these effects. There is, for my taste, a little too much of the discordant music. Director Matthew Dunster interrupts the action with interludes of dumb show – I could do without these. He also adds many humorous touches, heightening the comedy to match the intensity of the drama.

Many of the plot points can be traced to Shakespeare but I come away thinking about the great Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega, a playwright The Swan would do well to feature – in translation, of course!

Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be…
(Colin Ryan and Matthew Kelly. Photo: Helen Maybanks)