Arcadia - Review

Duke of York's Theatre, London

*****

Written by Tom Stoppard

Directed by Carrie Cracknell

Isis Hainsworth

Arguably the zenith of Tom Stoppard’s all encompassing genius, Arcadia is a play that bends time to explore the intriguing complexities of maths, physics and art.

We meet the Coverly family on their country estate, firstly in the 19th century and latterly, some generations later, in the present day. Thomasina Cloverly is from the 1800s a gifted thinker who Stoppard aligns with the mathematical geniuses of her time. Aged just 16, her character is combination of precocious intellect fused with sexual curiosity. Played by Isis Hainsworth, hers is a masterful performance. Also striking from that era is Seamus Dillane’s take on Septimus Hodge, tutor to Thomasina. As the unseen Lord Byron drifts in and out of the narrative, Stoppard crafts a richly woven tapestry.

Fast forwarding to the modern era where the latter-day Coverlys are visited at their still-standing country pile by warring academics Bernard Nightingale (Oliver Chris) and Hannah Jarvis (Nikki Amuka-Bird). As the pair clash over the finer points of Lord Byron’s life and romances, Nightingale is ultimately and deliciously exposed as a pompously self-opinionated arse, all making for great theatre and as the 21st century family, aided by computer, uncover the genius of Thomasina’s mathematical theorems, the drama becomes electrifying. A further mark of Stoppard’s craft is that throughout both the story and the centuries that it spans, there is a beautifully penned undercurrent of lustful desires, both consummated and frustrated.

Carrie Cracknell has helmed her production that hails from the Old Vic magnificently. Stoppard created the piece to let the historical timelines segue seamlessly and Cracknell directs her cast with a perfectly placed accuracy. Alex Eales's set design of concentric revolves beneath suspended spheres emphasises the metaphysicality of Stoppard’s creation.

Three hours (including interval) makes for a long haul, but it’s worth it. Rarely is such brilliant writing so beautifully performed.

Runs until 12th September

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Grapes of Wrath - Review

National Theatre, London

***

Written by John Steinbeck

Adapted by Frank Galati

Directed by Carrie Cracknell

Cherry Jones

Frank Galaţi’s 1990 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic makes for an interesting glimpse of American history. The 1930s Dust Bowl, coming hard on the heels of the Great Depression and Wall Street Crash saw the fabled american dream evolve into a nightmare for millions, with countless Mid-Westerners migrating towards California, in desperate search of a living.

Simply staged, Carrie Cracknell’s production that comes in at just under three hours mixes quality with tedium. Greg Hicks and Cherry Jones as Pa and Ma Joad are a magnificent focal pair of Oklahomans leading their family west. Hicks only recently played an onstage farmer in the musical Oklahoma!, so there is a theatrical symmetry in seeing his decline from playing a prosperous landowner to an impoverished migrant.  Both he and Jones bring a perfectly weighted gravitas to their family’s struggles and amidst a luxuriously cast company of 27, there is standout work from Harry Treadaway as their son Tom and Mirren Mack as daughter Rose of Sharon.

Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel is brutal in its portrayal of the depths of the era’s hardships, not least in its harrowing finale that Cracknell and Galati effectively retain. The show however slips into cliché too often, with Maimuna Memon’s songs that have been written for this production. The #RefugeesWelcome theme to Memon’s lyrics offers a clumsily crass attempt to link a contemporary political relevance with Steinbeck’s magnum-opus and proves to be a disappointing distraction.

Good in parts.

Runs until 14th September

Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith

Julie - Review

National Theatre, London


***


Written by Polly Stenham after Strindberg
Directed by Carrie Cracknell

Eric Kofi Abrefa and Vanessa Kirby

Polly Stenham’s Strindberg straddles the centuries as she translates Miss Julie from 1800s Scandinavia to a modern-day mansion on the fringes of Hampstead Heath. Retaining the original's core themes, this iteration finds the eponymous Julie as the privileged, entitled daughter of an ever-absent millionaire father and a mother who committed suicide during her childhood. The show opened in London last week, not long after the tragic news had been reported of two millionaire celebrities apparently taking their own lives - Strindberg’s commentary on the depressive loneliness that can reach into the elite’s gilded cages is resonant and timely. 

Vanessa Kirby is Julie. Deemed as irresponsible - her personal fortune locked away in trust funds – she is a woman in her 30s who has never been allowed to mature. She glitters on the surface but there is a gaping hole in her deserted soul and like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, her parties are attended by nameless people whose connections are devoid of care or compassion for their hostess.

Jean is Julie’s father’s chauffeur who’s also on duty as the hired muscle to keep the house free from being trashed during Julie's birthday celebrations. Eric Kofi Abrefa's Jean drives the play’s tragic arc as he smoulders with a credible, irresistible  attractiveness.

Completing the triangle of devastation is Thalissa Teixeira’s Kristina, Jean’s fiancee. Her finely nuanced grief, upon discovering her betrayal by her betrothed, is truly heartbreaking. 

The one act play runs just short of ninety minutes, brevity, as it transpires, that is much appreciated. As director Carrie Cracknell opts for style over substance, her production could well set the august Strindberg spinning in his grave. In an almost mirror image of the amorality of Julie’s casual affluence, the play drips with theatrical opulence that smaller theatre companies will only look at and marvel. The National Theatre have cast 20 (20!)  non-speaking partygoers in addition to the trio of protagonists, actors who spend nearly all of the show offstage. Likewise designer Tom Scutt’s trompe-l’oeil in the final scene is so lavish as to detract from Strindberg’s originally conceived harrowing denouement.

There is a very gory moment late on involving a food processor. Such is the extent of that violent incident (clearly and evidently a special effect) that many of the audience are moved to laugh out loud at its gratuitous excess - and in an instant the tragic drama of the moment is lost. If ever there was a production that proves “less is more” then this is it, such is the opportunity squandered amidst such budgetary extravagance.

But the tenets of the tale remain, as Stenham assuredly illustrates the complexities of power, wealth, race and gender. Julie may well be far from a definitive interpretation of Strindberg's classic, but nonetheless makes for an evening of thought-provoking theatre.

Runs until 8th September

Photo credit: Richard H Smith

Wozzeck

Coliseum , London

****

Composer: Alban Berg

Director: Carrie Cracknell

This review was first published in The Public Reviews

Leigh Melrose and Sara Jakubiak

Wozzeck marks Cracknell’s directorial debut for the ENO at the Coliseum, and this talented young woman arrives with some panache. First performed in Berlin in 1925, it was in 1988 that Berg’s demanding work was last tackled by the ENO and with a talented cast and creative team, Cracknell weaves a gripping but agonising hold over us during the heavily stylised 90 minutes that the interval-free production runs.

The story is drawn from Buchner’s Woyzeck, the troubling story of a young soldier of fragile mind and susceptible to paranoia who is bullied by his Captain, the army doctor and his Drum Major who then cuckolds him with Marie, his common law wife and the mother of a young boy. His struggles with his mental health and the abuse he suffers inevitably has tragic consequences.

Leigh Melrose is Wozzeck. Beautifully baritoned he displays a well-performed flawed grasp on reality from the outset. It is hard to watch him knowing that each challenge he encounters or humiliation he suffers is adding to the provocation that will unleash his final acts of slaughter. American Sara Jakubiak another ENO debutante is Marie, a perfect soprano , who notwithstanding her character’s lifestyle, still evokes our sympathy in her difficult relationship with Wozzeck.

Tom Scutt’s set design is as imaginative as it is convincing. Marie’s cramped flat set above the noisy pub suggests the poverty that she and Wozzeck endure and in the climactic finale, is home to some hauntingly visceral imagery. None more so than Harry Polden as her young son, donning his schoolboy rucksack and heading out into the world. Cracknell bleakly indicating that this cycle of violent abusive behaviour is only destined to continue.

Photo: Alastair Muir