Next to Normal - Review

Wyndham's Theatre, London

*****

Music by Tom Kitt

Book & lyrics by Brian Yorkey

Directed by Michael Longhurst

Caissie Levy

There are moments when new writing touches the very essence of humanity. So it is with Next to Normal that has now opened in the West End following an acclaimed run at the Donmar Warehouse last year.

Caissie Levy is Diana, a woman who we learn early on in the show is grappling with significantly impaired mental health. Jamie Parker is her husband Dan, battling to support her, while there are perfectly nuanced performances from Eleanor Worthington-Cox as daughter Natalie and Jack Wolfe as son Gabe. To say much more about the plot would be to spoil the story’s reveals, as Levy and her three co-stars take Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s inspired songs and narrative, delivering harrowing entertainment punctuated with moments of perfectly weighted ironic humor.

In support are Trevor Dion Nicholas as the story’s two doctors, and Jack Ofrecio as Natalie’s would-be suitor Henry.

The words and music are fast-flowing with credit to Nick Barstow’s six-piece ensemble perched atop Chloe Lamford’s ingeniously designed set.

Ultimately uplifting, the two-act show plumbs the depths of grief and suffering and it makes for an inspirational evening that is probably not suited to those who are emotionally fragile. That being said, Next to Normal is exquisitely crafted musical theatre.

Runs until 21st September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Teh Internet is Serious Business - Review

Royal Court Theatre, London

***

Written by Tim Price

Directed by Hamish Pirie

In 2011, a small group of hackers affiliated with Anonymous and calling themselves ‘LulzSec’ (a contraction of ‘laughing at security’) embarked on a short reign of mischief  targetting the websites of Fox, Sony, PBS and eventually the FBI and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency. At the heart of Teh Internet is Serious Business is the tale of LulzSec's youngest members – teenagers Jake Davis and Mustafa Al-Bassam – as they are slowly drawn into an online world that seems to free them from the mundanity and struggle of reality.

But this is no conventional narrative drama. Without a computer or untidy bedroom in sight, Hamish Pirie and designer Chloe Lamford have re-imagined the dark underbelly of the internet as the protagonists themselves see it: a kaleidoscopic big-kids’ playground, complete with multi-coloured ball pit and bristling with anarchic energy. The world of the internet chatroom is literally brought to life, ‘Condescending Willy Wonka’ dances around with ‘Grumpy Cat’ and Rick Astley appears through a trapdoor any time someone is ‘Rickrolled’.

How well this central conceit works probably depends to a great extent on the audience’s familiarity and sympathy with internet culture (beginning with the in-joke of the misspelt title). Despite a handy glossary in the programme of hacker terminology and online memes, I’d have thought much of the piece would still be utterly baffling to a large number of people and indeed both directly in front of and behind me in the audience were people aged 50 and over, neither group returning after the interval.

For those more versed in the culture, the necessary spoon feeding of various concepts and conceits felt a touch episodic at times. The first half, in particular, feels more like a series of sketches – Memes! Pirate Bay! Anonymous! Trolling! – and after the audience has got over the initial bursts of energy there is a danger that ‘acting out’ every last chatroom post and hack can start to have a slightly simplistic feel to it. 

The fifteen strong cast are uniformly excellent, but the nature of the piece leaves most dealing in stereotypes and clichés. Whilst the onstage madness does a wonderful job of representing the anarchy of the internet, it offers little chance to invest in any of the characters. Kevin Guthrie and Hamza Jeetooa bring warmth and humanity to the two teenage hackers and Sargon Yelda is excellent in a variety of roles – the best as a man whose life is turned upside down by hackers and who, in the play’s funniest song, is mocked for using the same password for every online account.

Teh Internet is Serious Business is at times very funny, wonderfully energetic and even genuinely poignant. There is, however, the slight suspicion that the overall concept, brilliant and ingenious as it is, leaves some fascinating and moving human stories only half told.

Runs until 25th October 2014

1984

Almeida Theatre, London

*****

By George Orwell
Adapted and created by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

Mark Arends, (centre seated) and Company

This adaptation by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan of George Orwell's chillingly prescient classic, respects the story and its 65 year old heritage, yet gives it a disturbing relevance that speaks to our 21st century lives.

One wonders what Orwell would make of today’s multi-lane information superhighway. A world in which millions of digital fingerprints are left every day, creating a priceless seam of data to be mined or exploited by governments, corporations and bandits able to reach beyond the always outmoded and feeble data protection legislation. And that’s just here in the free West. Elsewhere dictatorships and fundamentalists across a spectrum of political and religious extremes tragically perpetuate the evils that Orwell’s oft quoted dystopian hell sought to mimic.

The Almeida’s co-production with Headlong and the Nottingham Playhouse is vivid and perceptive. Chloe Lamford’s set design shows meticulous detail in depicting Winston Smith’s world, details that literally fall away after his arrest, with the stark screened whiteness of Room 101 being so bleak that Smith’s blood, shed during harrowing torture scenes, provides a shocking splash of colour. Ingeniously Lamford deploys large video screens across every scene, graphically promoting the reality that Big Brother is watching everything.

Mark Arends’ Smith embodies the flawed everyman that Orwell intended and his grappling with desire, love and betrayal, against a backdrop of the pernicious Thought Police is as plausible as is his pain during torture that is almost unbearable to witness. Onstage throughout the single act 100 minute play, his performance is a flawless demonstration of his craft. Provoking and breaking Smith, Tim Dutton’s O’Brien is almost a cliché, were it not that the spook he represents is just so believably manipulative. Hara Yannas’ Julia, who loves Smith and yet who betrays him, as he betrays her under duress, gets the balance spot on in her character’s ambiguity.

Deservedly sold out, the play holds a mirror to our fractured world. That our democratic society provides a forum in which theatre such as 1984, together with the political debate it sparks, can thrive, is a liberty that in itself should be cherished. In far too many nations, the worst aspects of Orwell’s grim fantasy remain a terrible reality. 

Runs to 29th March 2014