Antony & Cleopatra - Review

Shakespeare's Globe

**

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Blanche McIntyre

Nadia Nadarajah and John Hollingworth

There are occasions in the theatre when a play is less than the sum of its parts. So it is with Blanche McIntyre’s take on Anthony &  Cleopatra that boldly translates Shakespeare’s prose into a hybrid of spoken verse and British Sign Language (BSL).

John Hollingworth and Nadia Nadarajah play the famed titular lovers. Hollingworth delivers an adequate Anthony as Nadarajah serves up an equally impassioned Egyptian Queen. However, with Nadarajah communicating her entire role through BSL, those audience members not fluent in that language are forced to follow her dialogue via the surtitle screens placed at gallery level around the Globe’s open space.

While the projected words enable the narrative to be followed, the scrolling text screens completely distract one from the strengths (or weaknesses) of Nadarajah’s performance. One is looking at the screen, not the actor and as a consequence much of the power of the verse is lost. The same frustration applies to those other characters in the story delivered through BSL, where again one’s eyes are taken away from the stage by the projections.

Daniel Millar shines as Enobarbus, notably in his famous description of Cleopatra’s barge, but such moments are rare.

An ambitious production that ultimately fails to deliver.

Runs until 15th September

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz

The 39 Steps - Review

Trafalgar Theatre, London

****

Adapted by Patrick Barlow

From an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimond

Directed by Maria Aitken

Tour directed by Nicola Samer

Tom Byrne

Returning to the West End after nine years, Maria Aitken’s affectionate tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie remains a fabulous fusion of stagecraft, wit and British interwar history.

The 39 Steps famously sees Englishman Richard Hannay caught up in a web of intrigue and espionage as he unwittingly stumbles across a fiendish spy-ring and finds himself the prime suspect for a murder he did not commit. The ripping yarn has him fleeing London aboard the night train to Scotland, pursued by both the police and the villains, with scenes of high drama and derring-do on the train, the Forth Bridge and amidst the remote villages and misty moors of the Highlands.

What makes Aitken’s piece (her work recreated in this production by Nicola Samer) quite so delightful is how she achieves such spectacular thrills and spills with just a cast of four. Using the simplest of suggestive props and lighting and the ingenious conceit of laughing fondly at the stiff upper lip of a time gone by, a re-creation emerges of so many of the wonderful cameos and caricatures that Hitchcock so painstakingly wove into his film.

Tom Byrne is Hannay, on-stage throughout and the only member of the quartet to play just one character from start to finish. Playing the three women with whom Hannay interacts is Safeena Ladha, while picking up the multitude of other roles from Scotland Yard detectives, to shady criminals, to enchanting Highland crofters (to name but a few of their roles) are Eugene McCoy and Maddie Rice in a breathtaking whirl of interchanging characters. The thrills and spills are cleverly played out along with a generous measure of nods to other Hitchcock classics written into the script.

A familiarity with the 1935 film, while not essential, is useful if only to recognise just how ingenious and true to the original, Aitken’s staging proves to be.

The 39 Steps is gorgeous theatre, brilliantly performed. To quote the story’s Mr Memory: “Am I right?” Definitely!

Runs until 28th September

Photo credit: Mark Senior

I Ran With The Gang - Review

Stage Door Theatre, London

***

Written and directed by Liam Rudden

In its first ever London production, Liam Rudden’s tribute to Alan Longmuir, the original Bay City Roller, plays for one week at the Stage Door Theatre above Covent Garden’s Prince of Wales pub.

In a show that's more monologue than musical (this ain't no Jersey Boys) Michael Karl-Lewis plays Young Alan, effectively narrating Longmuir's story and that of the group he founded, the Bay City Rollers, a band that for a chunk of the 1970s saw "Rollermania" dominate the global pop scene.

What this show lacks in panache it more than compensates for in audience enthusiasm. Longmuir’s story is an impressive tale of beating the odds to reach global stardom before the band was to fall apart, but the two-dimensional nature of Rudden's narrative makes for heavy going at times. A heartfelt photo-tribute to Longmuir that wraps up the first phase of this hour long one-act show shares a sentimental intimacy that seems best preserved for a more private gathering, rather than a theatre-show.

No matter - the evening’s second shift sees Karl-Lewis and his fellow performers Ross Jamieson and Lee Fanning leading a glorious kitsch singalong to a backing-track powered medley of the band’s greatest hits. Guilty secret: I might just have sung along to Bye Bye Baby….

The theatre was packed with a mature tartan-waving throng. With most of the Bay City Rollers’ hard-core following now drawing their pensions, to see such a grey-haired mob up on their feet and rocking to the music was as much of a tribute to hip surgery and HRT, as it was to the chart-topping songs.

Strictly for the fans who won’t let the music die.

Runs until 17th August

On location with Martin Kemp

 

Jonathan Baz and Martin Kemp

I spent a day on location with Martin Kemp, currently shooting his latest starring role in serial killer movie Doctor Plague.

Kemp stars as jaded detective John Verney who is on the trail of an ancient cult of Plague Doctors which is cutting a bloody swathe through the London underworld. Dismissed by his superiors as gang on gang killings, the murders draw Verney into an obsessive maze of a secret society conspiracy with links to the Jack The Ripper murders of 1888, putting him and his family in grave danger. Above is a first look.

Joining Kemp in the cast are Peter Woodward (Babylon 5), David Yip (A View To A Kill), Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott (Renegades), Wendy Glenn (You’re Next) and Daisy Beaumont (The World Is Not Enough).

Jonathan Sothcott produces for his indie genre studio Shogun Films (Helloween) with Ben Fortune directing. The screenplay is by Robert Dunn (Knightfall) based on an idea by Robert Geoffrey Hughes. Director of photography is James Westlake (Helloween). Executive producers include Jamie McLeod-Ross and Charley McDougall of Empire Studios, Nigel Smith and Keith Reilly.

Sothcott noted: “One of the best-loved and most recognisable faces in the UK, Martin Kemp has achieved a constant evolution of reinvention for new audiences in the last decade, but I’m delighted he’s back in front of the camera in this gritty horror serial killer movie, facing off against an instantly-iconic enemy and navigating a seemingly endless labyrinth of twists and turns. I know his legion of fans are going to love it and he’s backed by an exceptionally strong cast of terrific British actors. Doctor Plague has instant cult movie written all over it.”

Slated for release in the first half of 2025, look out for Doctor Plague. 

The Birthday Party - Review

Ustinov Studio, Bath

*****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Richard Jones

Jane Horrocks, Carla Harrison-Hodge and John Marquez

One of Pinter’s earliest plays, The Birthday Party’s plot defies explanation. Written in the 1950s and set in a boarding house in an unnamed English seaside town, Meg and Petey own the establishment, Stanley is a long-term resident, Lulu is a glamorous local girl and friend of the household and then, upsetting the already fragile equilibrium, come Goldberg and McCann who throw this gentle world into complete and unsettling disarray. Imagine, if you will, a fusion of the BBC’s Fawlty Towers, ITV’s George and Mildred, with a dash of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho thrown in for good measure and even then, in all honesty, you will not be any closer to unfathoming where this story has come from, nor how it ends. But you know what? That really doesn’t matter. Pinter’s finest writing is pure Absurdism and for such writing to take flight requires a high-calibre, finely-tuned company – and it is such a troupe that Richard Jones has assembled in Bath.

Jane Horrocks is Meg and such is this actor's versatility that it is almost impossible to believe that it is Horrocks playing this apparently small-minded and delightfully dotty little landlady. Pinter’s language fuses the everyday and the mundane – and Horrocks’ interpretation of the mundanity is simply a joy to behold. Nicholas Tennant is Petey, a municipal deckchair attendant – again a character from the most ordinary slice of life, and yet when given Pinter’s dialogue, elevates the everyday into excellence.

Sam Swainsbury is Stanley, the birthday celebrant and a man with a clearly damaged background, although the cause and circumstances of whatever trauma has befallen him is never revealed. Swainsbury captures Stanley’s mental fragility in a beautifully weighted performance that has the audience crying out for him with their empathy. Carla Harrison-Hodge plays Lulu in what is one of the play’s smaller roles, but to which she delivers an enormous amount of (ultimately) damaged complexity.

Sam Swainsbury and Jane Horrocks

And then there are Goldberg and McCann, the villains of the piece, played by John Marquez and Caolan Byrne respectively. Marquez is brilliant in capturing so much of what makes Goldberg evil. Is it the predatory sleaze or the wafer-thin veneer of polished charm? Either way Marquez’s (and Byrne’s) mastery of Pinter’s quickfire interrogatory style is outstanding. And again, for both characters to slip into the Jewish or Irish-Catholic heritage of their respective youths is yet another masterclass in outstanding writing, brilliantly performed.

John Marquez, Carla Harrison-Hodge and Caolan Byrne

And for all of the characters, from Meg to McCann, Pinter makes it clear that there is so much more to them than meets the eye.

This production of The Birthday Party needs to follow Jones’ recent Machinal into a London run. A gripping, complex, troubling play that is by no means an evening of easy entertainment. It is however, flawless theatre.

Runs to 31st August

Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou

Fiddler On The Roof - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

***

Adam Dannheiser

Book by Joseph Stein

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Music by Jerry Bock

Directed by Jordan Fein

Much like the village of Anatevka itself, Jordan Fein’s production of Fiddler On The Roof is a microcosmic melting pot, not only of the marvellous but also of the mediocre. It gives a curious message that the show's producers have decided that its main publicity image promoting and celebrating the show, should be of Chava (played by Hannah Bristow), the one daughter of Tevye and Golde who deserts her Jewish heritage to marry outside the faith, rather than upholding 'tradition'. Notwithstanding this unusual bias, Fein’s interpretation has managed to retain the show’s cultural essence.

This is of course the first Fiddler On The Roof to play in London since the horrors of October 7 2023. The pogrom that befalls a community of dancing, celebrating Jews and which closes the first act, leaving Anatevka in flames, chills in its identical ideology of hatred that led to the massacre at Israel’s Nova Music Festival last year.

Hannah Bristow as Chava in the show's main publicity image

Fein makes gorgeous use of Raphael Papo as The Fiddler. His violinist serves as a musical interpretation of Tevye’s (Adam Dannheiser) Jewish conscience, and intriguingly is rarely offstage. This is a beautiful touch, for Jerry Bock’s melodies written for the Fiddler deserve the centre-stage attention given to them by Fein.

Dannheiser himself (last seen by this reviewer as an outstanding Lazar Wolf on Broadway) is an adequate Tevye. Vocally strong, but occasionally disconnected, particularly in his brief exchanges his God, that feel as though they are played more for laughs than for sincerity. Lara Pulver is Golde, in possibly the worst miscasting to have been seen in years. Pulver is one of the more gifted musical theatre performers of her generation but her Golde lacks a shtetl-based warmth. Clipped and reserved, she appears more Lucille Frank (her outstanding 2007 role of an Atlantan Jewish spouse subject to horrific antisemitism) rather than Tevye’s loyal wife of 25 years.  Vocally strong, but with barely any detectable acting through song, her Golde disappoints. Similarly Dan Wolff’s Motel fails to convince us of the sincerity of his love for Liv Andrusier’s Tzeitel. The show however is in its early days and both of these flaws can yet be remedied by Fein.

Tom Scutt’s set is enchanting, a roofed canopy across much of the theatre’s stage, itself topped with fields of corn. It is a visual that works stunningly. Tevye’s Dream too is a comic delight that has been cleverly conceived. Upstage, Dan Turek’s 11-piece band are a delight. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s songs are timeless works of genius and for the most part, especially in the company numbers, are worth the price of the ticket.

Runs until 21st September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

A Chorus Line - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

Music by Marvin Hamlisch

Lyrics by Edward Kleban

Book by James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante

Directed by Nikolai Foster

The cast of A Chorus Line

Nikolai Foster created a magnificent revival of A Chorus Line at Leicester’s Curve Theatre in 2021. Even then, the brilliance of this production cried out for a wider audience, and so it is that London now has a month to enjoy this show with its residency at Sadler’s Wells before it tours across the country.

It has been 11 years since the A Chorus Line last played in the capital, a long wait to witness such a class act of a show and Foster’s interpretation has only improved with time. At just under two hours, this one-act record-breaker upends the traditions of musical theatre. There are no leading characters whose arcs we follow, rather an ingenious confection of the lives and histories of a fictional Broadway chorus line (with narratives drawn from real-life), all desperate to be chosen from the final-round audition that forms the backbone of the show. 

Adam Cooper and Carly Mercedes Dyer reprise their roles of the fictional show’s director Zach and Cassie an auditionee with more of a back-story than meets the eye. Both are sublimely skilled performers making captivating work not only of James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante’s fiendishly challenging book, but also of Ellen Kane’s choreography, with Dyer’s take on The Music And The Mirror proving breath-taking in her interpretation. Both Curve and Sadler’s Wells offer massive stages and Kane’s work, matched to a band that is intriguingly housed in an on-stage cube of gig boxes, uses that space to the full.

Most of the cast in this Curve revival may be new to the show but Foster has selected his actors wisely and they are all, to a person, performers at the very top of their game. The humanity that underlies each of their characters is sometimes funny but often heartbreaking and to name but a few of these gems, Amy Thornton, Lydia Bannister and Kate Parr as Sheila, Bebe and Maggie respectively make gorgeously poignant work of At The Ballet and Manuel Pacific has us in the palm of his hand as he delivers Paul’s devastating monologue of family dysfunctionality. Jocasta Almgill is entrusted with the role of Diana that includes the show’s hit-song, What I Did For Love. Almgill may have sung the lyric “look my eyes are dry”, but across the stalls on press night, quite a few eyes were moist at her delivery.

Throughout, under Matthew Spalding’s musical direction, Hamlisch’s score is handled beautifully. Grace Smart’s set design is neatly simple as the show demands. Howard Hudson’s lighting however is sensational, comprising ingenious use of rows of spotlights that rise and fall in carefully co-ordinated sequences, evoking scenes that range from intimacy to full on Broadway pizzazz. The tour’s lighting crew will have their work cut out on the road, re-calibrating this spectacular rig for each different venue.

It says much for the strength of the nation’s regional theatre that three of the finest musicals to be playing this summer, Oliver!, Barnum and A Chorus Line have all originated outside of London. With this interpretation however, Nikolai Foster has possibly created the definitive British production of this enigmatic show. Just go!

Runs until August 25th. Then on tour.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner