High Society - Review

Barbican Theatre, London

*****

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter

Book byArthur Kopit

Additional lyrics by Susan Birkenhead

Based on the play "The Phildadephia Story" by Philip Barry

Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Julian Ovenden and Helen George

In a glorious whirl through the Great American Songbook, Rachel Kavanaugh’s take on High Society is an immaculately cast revival of Cole Porter’s deliciously frothy yarn.

Drawn originally from the 1939 play The Philadelphia Story, the story opens with divorcee Tracy Lord on the eve of her marriage to George a rather nondescript accountant. Mother Lord and younger sister Dinah are flapping supportively as Dexter, Tracy's dashingly suave ex who still holds a torch for her, turns up as a surprise arrival at the family home for the weekend. Her hitherto estranged father Seth, a disgraceful womaniser also arrives unexpectedly. Lob in a couple of journalist lovebirds and a drunk Uncle Willie and the stage is set. What makes this 2026 revival of such a ridiculously improbable story take flight however is the genius of marrying Cole Porter’s cracking songs to one of the finest character-driven casts in town.

Helen George leads the line as Tracy, the delightfully ditzy and over-privileged heiress who opens the show with the title number, goes on to learn the power of forgiveness and redemption (OK, there is a heart to High Society’s bonkers storyline), making equally fine work of some classily duetted numbers as the story unfolds.

Julian Ovenden plays the dashingly divorced Dexter, a man who is gifted the lion’s share of the show’s songs which he duly smashes out of the park, hit after hit after hit. You Do Something To Me and Once Upon A Time are his softer solos, while his spectacular duets of Be A Clown with Uncle Willie (Nigel Lindsay) and Well, Did You Evah? with journalist Mike (Freddie Fox) take the Barbican's roof off.

Lindsay gets a further chance to show off his singing chops, closing the first half with a spectacular Now You Have Jazz. Matching Ovenden for sheer vocal power and beauty is the always brilliant Carly Mercedes Dyer as Liz (the other aforementioned journalist). In act one Dyer deftly duets with Fox in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? , but it is after the interval, with her mellifluous take on I’ve Got You Under My Skin, that she re-defines this song as her own.

The final singing accolade of the night has to go to David Seadon-Young as George. This accomplished performer has, at Leicester’s Curve over the past two years, perfected the style of the reserved, clipped gentleman whose complexities are unlocked, firstly as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady and more recently as Georg Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Seadon-Young channels his mastery of this particular style of character into, on this occasion, the far more shallow and two-dimensional George. It’s a modest (albeit critical) role to fill, with only one decent solo to perform, All Of You. Nonetheless he is yet another of this production’s gems.

So much for the songs - the show’s gags have been honed to perfection. All of the above-mentioned actors together with the stellar Felicity Kendal as Mother Lord and Malcolm Sinclair as Seth are terrific, hitting their marks with pinpoint precision and making sure that every gag lands just as intended.

Stephen Ridley's 16-piece band are a blast, Anthony Van Laast choreographs his company of 28 with flair, Tom Rogers’s sets, while designed for the road tour that the show will shortly set out on, is suitably glamorous, while Jon Morrell’s costumes are a fusion of both pastels and vivid brilliance. And as ever, Howard Hudson’s lighting plots enhance the whole affair.

High Society is an evening of pure theatrical pleasure.

Runs until July 11th, then on tour

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

The Lehman Trilogy - Review

Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

**

Written by Stefano Massini

Adapted by Ben Power

Directed by Sam Mendes

l-r Hadley Fraser, Nigel Lindsay, Michael Balogun

As a tour-de-force of theatrical skill, the National Theatre's The Lehman Trilogy, now revived at Covent Garden's Gillian Lynne Theatre has to remain one of London's highlights. The 3hr 20min opus, reflecting the transition of the american dream into a nightmare is a sublime presentation of acting skill and technical genius. Stepping into the roles of the three Lehman brothers are Nigel Lindsay as Henry, Hadley Fraser as Mayer and Michael Balogun as Emanuel.

And of course what makes this production quite such a Herculean effort for its actors is that not only are they playing the three immigrant brothers, setting up in Montgomery Alabama in the 1840s, but they are playing every other supporting role too.

Notwithstanding the actors’ excellence, matched by Es Devlin’s ingenious stage designs that have translated well to the Gillian Lynne Theatre together with Luke Halls' mesmerising video projections, the play is profoundly flawed both in its literary construct and even more so, in this particular iteration.

The Lehman Trilogy opens with scenery being constructed out of dozens of cardboard 'Bankers Boxes', items that are synonymous with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers merchant bank in the 2008 financial crisis, when news broadcasts streamed images of hundreds of the bank's employees pouring out of its offices in Canary Wharf and Wall Street carrying their personal belongings in those boxes, images that came to define the impact of the 2008 meltdown on the world's financial centres. Equally, the play’s opening presents us with the three leads, clearly dressed as observant patrician Jews, one by one getting off the boat and heading for Alabama. The three never leave the stage throughout, nor change their costumes as the years roll by. Likewise, the cardboard boxes are also on stage from start to finish.

The message is clear, an insidious antisemitic conflation permeating the entire play, that visually links Jews with sharp financial practice and corporate collapse. That this trope of an association is even then factually inaccurate, given that the Lehman brothers’ descendants lost their last familial connection with the bank in 1969 and therefore had no connection whatsoever with the Lehman corporation at the time of its collapse, is treated by Stefano Massini as little more than an inconvenient truth.

Where this production compounds racial insensitivity even further is in the casting of Michael Balogun as Emanuel Lehman. Alabama in 1844 was a slave state in the heart of America’s south. A place where, especially in the play's first act, Balogun plays a person of self-made privilege. This of course was an opportunity not afforded to Alabama’s black population at the time and in his casting, the production’s creatives and producers have shown scant acknowledgment of Alabama’s desperately troubling history of racial oppression.

The Lehman Trilogy’s 21st century stagecraft may well be state of the art and its performances, arguably, the best in town. Its ethics however, are mired in the Dark Ages.

Runs until 20th May 

Photo credit: Mark Douet

Richard II

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon

To be broadcast live to cinemas on 13th November

*****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Greg Doran

David Tennant

Greg Doran’s Richard II takes a complex Shakespearean political conundrum, strips it down to the Bard’s beautiful verse, assembles a platinum cast and presents the tale in a form that is accessible, exciting and at times deeply moving. David Tennant is Richard, thoroughly earning the star-billing of the title role and his name alone will ensure that the production sells out at the Barbican. (It is already sold out at Stratford.) The marketing impact of “brand Tennant” powerful though it is, almost unfairly masks the underlying genius of this production, as Tennant and his supporting company are simply outstanding.

The play opens to a beautiful projection of Westminster Hall where we find Jane Lapotaire, Gloucester’s widow, mourning at her husband’s casket. It’s a tiny role, sweetly executed by this national treasure of an actress (why has she not yet been honoured?) and sets the tone for the themes of vengeance, retribution and restitution that are to run through the piece. Michael Pennington plays her brother in law John O Gaunt wise and politically astute enough to have suspected the King’s complicity in Gloucester’s death. Every word that Pennington speaks is measured and weighted to perfection and when later in the play we meet Oliver Ford Davies’ York, there can surely be no finer collection of senior UK Shakespearean talent currently assembled on one stage.

Making his RSC debut Nigel Lindsay, some months since he washed off the green make-up of Dreamwork’s ogre Shrek, steps up to the role of Gaunt’s son Bolingbroke. Banished by Richard he returns from exile, raises an army and challenges the monarch. Lindsay gives a fine turn combining a complex mix of ruthless vengeance with compassion. His character has more decency than most in this bloody tale and he gets the balance between good and bad spot on.

Tennant’s Richard is sublime. Successor to Edward III, Tennant subtly yet brilliantly shows how he has become absolutely corrupted by absolute power. His and his fellow actors' interpretation of the text makes the complex poetry of the play immediately understandable, even to a newcomer to the story. When Bolingbroke forces the king to abdicate, Tennant’s aura of profound devastation and humbling bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the late Margaret Thatcher as she left 10 Downing Street for good and in tears. And whilst Thatcher (arguably) was not akin to the heartless monarch of 1399, that sense of "shock and awe" experienced when one sees before ones very eyes, the moment of a great person toppling, is easy to recognise but very hard to define. Tennant conveys such a moment in Richard II with ease and maturity, eliciting our sympathy in a truly moving portrayal.

Richard II represents the RSC at its very best. Live musical accompaniment enhanced by three heavenly soprano voices (who provide a beautiful mise en scene before the lights go down, as a backdrop to the grieving Lapotaire) only adds to the quality on offer. Unmissable.

Plays at Stratford Upon Avon until 16th November 2013 ( sold out)

Then plays at London's Barbican Theatre from 9th  December 2013 until 25th January 2014

The production will be broadcast live from Stratford, to cinemas across the UK on 13th November 2013. To find out details of these screenings, click here.