12/2/10, Southwark Playhouse
A rather disappointing production of the Brendand Behan classic in the Southwark Playhouse's new premises underneath the arches below London Bridge station (only occasional train rumble audible).
We saw it once before in an Irish production at the Barbican. I don't remember the songs (very Theatre Workshop, for whom this piece was originally written/designed), and it seemed more involving then.
The performances here weren't strong enough (particularly the hostage, who spoke in a rapid monotone), the playing space (audience on three sides; rudimentary set including staircase and landing across the back) seemed alienating.
Competent but no more.
Monday, 22 February 2010
SWEET CHARITY
10/2/10, Menier
Unexpectedly wonderful: another triumph for the Menier.
Tamzin Outhwaite (full of fantastic energy with a wonderful light-up-the-back-stalls smile) as Charity, the ever-hopeful dancehall hostess in search of Mr Right. She finds three, all played by the same actor (Mark Umbers). The first is a layabout and a crook who chucks her in the lake before running off with her handbag full of savings; the second is a film star with whom she has a fling before his regular partner returns; the third is a bag of nerves who seems truly nice, but eventually lets her down at the last minuite, claiming he's too screwed up to marry her.
Paul saw it and complained that it's a flawed piece because there's no dramatic progression. At the end Charity is back exactly where she started, older, poorer, presumably wiser (though don't count on it). And he says the songs aren't well enough integrated and don't advance the action.
But what songs! Big Spender, the girls going through the motions of welcoming men to the dancehall robotically, is integrated. I Love Weddings at the end may not advance the plot, and could be sung about any wedding, not just Charity's, but it's a rollicking number and gives the grumpy dancehall boss a number of his own. Only Rhythm of Life doesn't really fit, but since that too is a fantastic number who's complaining?
Once again they mounted a production that filled the tiny Menier stage. There were some fine moments. The girls in their dressing room, wearily preparing for yet another night fending off the advances of lubricious men ("Dancing? We're defending ourselves to music!" in the words of Charity's friend Nicky, a great performance by Josefina Gabrielle, dark-haired temptress who sings Big Spender and rivals Outhwaite for energy). Charity hiding in the (translucent) wardrobe when the second Mr Right's Latin squeeze bursts in on them in the bedroom. The hippy love-in of The Rhythm of Life.
I'm not sure how long the Menier can continue this run of triumphant musical revivals, but we've seen La Cage aux Folles, Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music there in the past two or three years and they've all been in the range top-notch to bloody brilliant.
Unexpectedly wonderful: another triumph for the Menier.
Tamzin Outhwaite (full of fantastic energy with a wonderful light-up-the-back-stalls smile) as Charity, the ever-hopeful dancehall hostess in search of Mr Right. She finds three, all played by the same actor (Mark Umbers). The first is a layabout and a crook who chucks her in the lake before running off with her handbag full of savings; the second is a film star with whom she has a fling before his regular partner returns; the third is a bag of nerves who seems truly nice, but eventually lets her down at the last minuite, claiming he's too screwed up to marry her.
Paul saw it and complained that it's a flawed piece because there's no dramatic progression. At the end Charity is back exactly where she started, older, poorer, presumably wiser (though don't count on it). And he says the songs aren't well enough integrated and don't advance the action.
But what songs! Big Spender, the girls going through the motions of welcoming men to the dancehall robotically, is integrated. I Love Weddings at the end may not advance the plot, and could be sung about any wedding, not just Charity's, but it's a rollicking number and gives the grumpy dancehall boss a number of his own. Only Rhythm of Life doesn't really fit, but since that too is a fantastic number who's complaining?
Once again they mounted a production that filled the tiny Menier stage. There were some fine moments. The girls in their dressing room, wearily preparing for yet another night fending off the advances of lubricious men ("Dancing? We're defending ourselves to music!" in the words of Charity's friend Nicky, a great performance by Josefina Gabrielle, dark-haired temptress who sings Big Spender and rivals Outhwaite for energy). Charity hiding in the (translucent) wardrobe when the second Mr Right's Latin squeeze bursts in on them in the bedroom. The hippy love-in of The Rhythm of Life.
I'm not sure how long the Menier can continue this run of triumphant musical revivals, but we've seen La Cage aux Folles, Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music there in the past two or three years and they've all been in the range top-notch to bloody brilliant.
Monday, 8 February 2010
KNIVES IN HENS
8/2/10, Arcola
Revival of the David Harrower play which launched his career in 1995 at the Traverse. He went on to write Blackbird, an extremely powerful piece about teacher-pupil relationships and abuse which I saw with Roger Allam (and Lea Williams?).
This is a three-hander involving a ploughman, William, his wife, known throughout as Woman, and a miller, in some dirt-poor place in medieval Scotland. The villagers ostracise the miller. The wife is despatched with the grain. She's fearful of the miller, who sits and reads and writes. The ploughman spends his time with his horses in the stable at night (and with another woman?). The woman gradually discovers the power of language: the naming of things, to the greater glory of God (the miller doesn't believe in God).
It opens with a riff about language and meaning. The ploughman tells his wife she's a field. She protests that she's not a field, she's herself. He tells her she's like a field and even tells her precisely which one. In time she apparently outdoes him in her capacity for language. In the central scene of the play she sits in the miller's house and writes at length what she sees in the world and its significance.
The title refers to a moment when the wife likens words to the way a knife opens the belly of a hen as she kills it.
All rather allusive but at times quite haunting. A programme note by Mark Fisher claims Harrower can't remember writing it: his subconscious took over. It is, says Fisher, mysterious: "a play more dreamed than written." He says its international success may be explained by the openness of the script to interpretation: "It has an elemental quality that strikes a chord across cultures." The starting point was apparently T C Smout's A History of thr Scottish People 1560-1830, and Harrower's interest in a subsistence economy where survival is paramount and creativity is a luxury. "The characters use a language that is without decoration, treating metaphors with the same suspicion as any threat to their perilous way of life. They lack the vocabulary not just for abstract ideas but for anything surplus to their immediate requirements." Which presumably also helps to explain why it translates so well.
Done in the Arcola's Studio 2, a tiny space entered by going back out of the Arcola's front door and round the side. Very cold. The space had three wooden pillars which were cleverly used to suggest doorways, stables and changes of scene.
The husband, William, was OK; the miller not bad; the wife, played by Jodie McNee, was outstanding: small, north country accent (the men's accents were all over the place and none of them remotely Scottish), face that lit up when she smiled, not beautiful. She reminded us a bit of Jane Horrocks. There was a solo cello accompaniment from a (very beautiful) Portuguese musician called Maria Rijo Lopes da Cunha who also sang a lament-like song (presumably Persian or some such because she's currently developing her stuies in Persian Classical Music at SOAS) while the wife wrote her testament.
On the way from work I read a stinker of a review in the Evening Standard and feared the worst, but it turned out to b very creditable. S said she found it quite moving.
Revival of the David Harrower play which launched his career in 1995 at the Traverse. He went on to write Blackbird, an extremely powerful piece about teacher-pupil relationships and abuse which I saw with Roger Allam (and Lea Williams?).
This is a three-hander involving a ploughman, William, his wife, known throughout as Woman, and a miller, in some dirt-poor place in medieval Scotland. The villagers ostracise the miller. The wife is despatched with the grain. She's fearful of the miller, who sits and reads and writes. The ploughman spends his time with his horses in the stable at night (and with another woman?). The woman gradually discovers the power of language: the naming of things, to the greater glory of God (the miller doesn't believe in God).
It opens with a riff about language and meaning. The ploughman tells his wife she's a field. She protests that she's not a field, she's herself. He tells her she's like a field and even tells her precisely which one. In time she apparently outdoes him in her capacity for language. In the central scene of the play she sits in the miller's house and writes at length what she sees in the world and its significance.
The title refers to a moment when the wife likens words to the way a knife opens the belly of a hen as she kills it.
All rather allusive but at times quite haunting. A programme note by Mark Fisher claims Harrower can't remember writing it: his subconscious took over. It is, says Fisher, mysterious: "a play more dreamed than written." He says its international success may be explained by the openness of the script to interpretation: "It has an elemental quality that strikes a chord across cultures." The starting point was apparently T C Smout's A History of thr Scottish People 1560-1830, and Harrower's interest in a subsistence economy where survival is paramount and creativity is a luxury. "The characters use a language that is without decoration, treating metaphors with the same suspicion as any threat to their perilous way of life. They lack the vocabulary not just for abstract ideas but for anything surplus to their immediate requirements." Which presumably also helps to explain why it translates so well.
Done in the Arcola's Studio 2, a tiny space entered by going back out of the Arcola's front door and round the side. Very cold. The space had three wooden pillars which were cleverly used to suggest doorways, stables and changes of scene.
The husband, William, was OK; the miller not bad; the wife, played by Jodie McNee, was outstanding: small, north country accent (the men's accents were all over the place and none of them remotely Scottish), face that lit up when she smiled, not beautiful. She reminded us a bit of Jane Horrocks. There was a solo cello accompaniment from a (very beautiful) Portuguese musician called Maria Rijo Lopes da Cunha who also sang a lament-like song (presumably Persian or some such because she's currently developing her stuies in Persian Classical Music at SOAS) while the wife wrote her testament.
On the way from work I read a stinker of a review in the Evening Standard and feared the worst, but it turned out to b very creditable. S said she found it quite moving.
SCHUBERT ENSEMBLE
5/2/10, Cadogan Hall
A Martinu piano quartet. A Smetana piano trio. A Dvorak piano quintet.
The Martinu was spiky, well on the way towards the unlistenable-to range of 20th century music, with random phrases apparently strung together in a disconnected fashion. At the end of the first movement, which went at a tremendous lick and was urgent and percussive, the man behind me let out a low whistle of admiration. In the slow movement one particular passage had the Chinese girl student who turned the pages for the pianist looking absolutely crestfallen: the only time I saw her impassivity flicker. The last movement had a lovely song-like theme which floated above choppy, jagged playing by the strings (violin, viola and cello).
The Smetana was bombastic. I fell asleep. But recall enough to conclude that it was agreeably characterful.
The Dvorak was infinitely preferable. It had tunes. And conventional harmonies. It was plangent. There were four movements. An hour later that's all I could remember.
The men wore grey suits and purple shirts without ties which made them look like Anglican bishops. Except for the second violinist who joined for the Dvorak, whose shirt was blue and who seemed younger and more enthusiastic than the rest. The (female) cellist had a fine red skirt. The viola-player's socks were too short. He had a rather coarse countryman's appearance, red-faced and block-shaped: I was told afterwards that in real life he's a farmer. I spent much time watching the players watching one another: first one would lead, then another, like passing the baton between runners.
A Martinu piano quartet. A Smetana piano trio. A Dvorak piano quintet.
The Martinu was spiky, well on the way towards the unlistenable-to range of 20th century music, with random phrases apparently strung together in a disconnected fashion. At the end of the first movement, which went at a tremendous lick and was urgent and percussive, the man behind me let out a low whistle of admiration. In the slow movement one particular passage had the Chinese girl student who turned the pages for the pianist looking absolutely crestfallen: the only time I saw her impassivity flicker. The last movement had a lovely song-like theme which floated above choppy, jagged playing by the strings (violin, viola and cello).
The Smetana was bombastic. I fell asleep. But recall enough to conclude that it was agreeably characterful.
The Dvorak was infinitely preferable. It had tunes. And conventional harmonies. It was plangent. There were four movements. An hour later that's all I could remember.
The men wore grey suits and purple shirts without ties which made them look like Anglican bishops. Except for the second violinist who joined for the Dvorak, whose shirt was blue and who seemed younger and more enthusiastic than the rest. The (female) cellist had a fine red skirt. The viola-player's socks were too short. He had a rather coarse countryman's appearance, red-faced and block-shaped: I was told afterwards that in real life he's a farmer. I spent much time watching the players watching one another: first one would lead, then another, like passing the baton between runners.
MIDSUMMER
29/1/10, Soho
Very funny, tremendously energetic piece written by David Greig for the Traverse at the Edinburgh Festival last year. We couldn't get tickets.
It's a two-hander about a pair of 30-somethings who meet up in a bar, have wild sex, and then pursue a series of picaresque adventures the following day, including a disastrous wedding and a drunken spree as they try to spend a large sum of money.
I missed the first 30 mins, so don't feel qualified to judge. But what I saw I thought was wonderful, rollicking stuff. The ladies thought it great as well.
Here are some reviews:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/midsummer-traverse-theatre-edinburgh-1770237.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/oct/31/theatre1
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/midsummergreig-rev.htm
Very funny, tremendously energetic piece written by David Greig for the Traverse at the Edinburgh Festival last year. We couldn't get tickets.
It's a two-hander about a pair of 30-somethings who meet up in a bar, have wild sex, and then pursue a series of picaresque adventures the following day, including a disastrous wedding and a drunken spree as they try to spend a large sum of money.
I missed the first 30 mins, so don't feel qualified to judge. But what I saw I thought was wonderful, rollicking stuff. The ladies thought it great as well.
Here are some reviews:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/midsummer-traverse-theatre-edinburgh-1770237.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/oct/31/theatre1
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/midsummergreig-rev.htm
THREE SISTERS
26/1/10, Lyric Hammersmith
Missed it. Had to work.
Version of the Chekhov classic by a company called Filter. S very keen to go, but said in the event it wasn't as good as their Twelfth Night. D said first half a bit tricksy with microphones and modern dress and deliberate anachronisms; second half played much straighter and much more affecting. Cast included Romola Garai.
Missed it. Had to work.
Version of the Chekhov classic by a company called Filter. S very keen to go, but said in the event it wasn't as good as their Twelfth Night. D said first half a bit tricksy with microphones and modern dress and deliberate anachronisms; second half played much straighter and much more affecting. Cast included Romola Garai.
MY NAME IS YUSUF AND THIS IS MY BROTHER
25/1/10, Young Vic
A Palestinian production in English and Arabic (surtitles projected onto a bath hanging above the stage!) which rather confirms one's suspicion that, for the Palestinians, there is only one subject and therefore there can only be one Palestinian play.
I made notes shortly after seeing it, but I can't find them.
Yusuf is a simpleton. His brother looks after him. It is 1949. The British leave, the Jews come, there is fighting, they flee. The brother returns to the village in search of his girlfriend, and is shot. Yusuf and the girlfriend survive to live the rest of their lives in a refugee camp (we see them at the beginning, old and cranky, and the aged Yusuf acts as a kind of chorus, commenting on the action).
There was some good stuff with water. At one point towards the end the stage filled with water, so that the actors had to splash about in it. There was some satire at the expense of the Brits. But the accents were too strong, and quite a lot of the dialogue got lost in the unforgiving spaces of the Young Vic configured with the stage at one end.
A Palestinian production in English and Arabic (surtitles projected onto a bath hanging above the stage!) which rather confirms one's suspicion that, for the Palestinians, there is only one subject and therefore there can only be one Palestinian play.
I made notes shortly after seeing it, but I can't find them.
Yusuf is a simpleton. His brother looks after him. It is 1949. The British leave, the Jews come, there is fighting, they flee. The brother returns to the village in search of his girlfriend, and is shot. Yusuf and the girlfriend survive to live the rest of their lives in a refugee camp (we see them at the beginning, old and cranky, and the aged Yusuf acts as a kind of chorus, commenting on the action).
There was some good stuff with water. At one point towards the end the stage filled with water, so that the actors had to splash about in it. There was some satire at the expense of the Brits. But the accents were too strong, and quite a lot of the dialogue got lost in the unforgiving spaces of the Young Vic configured with the stage at one end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)