Bird Grove - Review

Hampstead Theatre, London

****

Written by Alexi Kaye Campbell

Directed by Anna Ledwich

Owen Teale and Elizabeth Dulau

Bird Grove is a well crafted and beautifully performed study on fathers, daughters and the conventions of the 19th century.

The title of the play is drawn from the Warwickshire home shared by Mary Ann Evans and her widowed father Robert. Mary Ann (played by Elizabeth Dulau) was an educated woman, as her father (played here by Owen Teale) was a traditionalist who, as his daughter’s challenges to his faith and his lifestyle become more apparent, finds such evolutionary thinking increasingly hard to bear. What makes this story even more remarkable is that Mary Ann was to go on and change her name to George Eliot, becoming one of the greatest forces in English literature of her time.

Dulau and Teale are magnificent protagonists. As Mary Ann rails against the stifling and oppressive chauvinism of the era, Dulau imbues her with a measured yet powerful presence. She commands our respect and as the evening evolves, our sympathy too, director Anna Ledwich deftly helming the narrative of Mary Ann's complex arc.

Teale is a man whose stature and character is chiselled from the granite of humanity. There are hints of both Lear and Tevye in his temperament and he commands his scenes with passion and pride, his love for his daughter matched only by his inability to recognise her wishes and desires. A man trapped by the strictures of both church and convention, his struggles are recognisable and, in many ways, timeless.

A handful of supporting characters enhance the narrative, with Jonnie Broadbent’s take on Horace Garfield, a would-be suitor to Mary Ann, proving a first-half cameo that comes close to stealing scenes, such is his comic excellence.

Alexi Kaye Campbell’s writing is, for the most part, delightful. His dialogues are deft, even if some of the plot’s advancement (notably the epilogue) is at times a little expositional and clunky. Sarah Beaton's set and Matt Haskin's lighting design create an elegant suggestion of the titular country house.

Fine new writing, Bird Grove makes for a night of provocative, stimulating theatre.

Runs until 21st March

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Grindr Mom - Review

Waterloo East Theatre, London

**

Written by Ronnie Larsen

Directed by Gerald Armin

Jessica Martin

Billed as a “funny, fast-paced comedy” and “a riotous plunge”, Grindr Mom turns out to be neither. 

Jessica Martin turns in a fabulous performance as a married Mormon mother who discovers that her son is gay, however Ronnie Larsen’s 80-minute monologue does not deserve her acting and (sometime singing) genius.

Larsen’s script lurches from one tediously bigoted cliché to the next, and while the drama’s closing chapter comes close to genuine pathos, the story’s ultimate finale is predictable and trite.

Rarely does an evening of comedy fall so flat.

Runs until 1st March

Here There Are Blueberries - Review

Stratford East, London

****

By Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich

Conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman

The cast of Here There Are Blueberries

Only on for two more weeks in this the play’s UK premiere, Here There Are Blueberries is a compelling and chilling history lesson.

The play is a tough 90-minute one-act drama inspired by a collection of photographs, all snapshots rather than formally posed images, and all taken at Auschwitz concentration camp in the final months before its liberation, that were discovered towards the end of the 20th century.

Moisés Kaufman conceived the play on learning of the photographs’ existence, and it is a cleverly conceived presentation of the images that drives the evening, delivering a chilling comment on the society that allowed its antisemitism to fuel the industrialised slaughter that defines the Holocaust. Technically ingenious, the creative team’s digital wizardry has breathed a gruesome vivacity into the projections of these authentic images from the 1940s.

Not until the play’s final paragraphs do we witness any images of the victims of Auschwitz. Rather, throughout the drama, we observe the SS leadership of the concentration camp and their assistants, who went about their murderous work with the detached air of any corporate management team. The titular blueberries refer to an image of the camp’s communication corps, a bevy of teenage girls perched on a fence at Solahütte, an SS holiday lodge on the perimeter of the Auschwitz camp, grinning as they eat bowls of the fruit.

And that is the essence of this piece - the sheer normality, the banality of those who individually were 'ordinary people' but who, when in collaboration, could wreak such horror on the Jews of Europe. Before they had joined the SS, we learn that the camp’s officers had been accountants, confectioners, bank clerks or such like, many coming from Germany’s professional classes. 

Much of the play’s narrative is verbatim theatre, drawn from meticulously researched interviews with not only survivors of Auschwitz, but also a number of grandchildren of the SS criminals who commanded the camp and who appear in the photos.

The evening’s most chilling revelation  comes from Tilman Taube (played by Clifford Samuel). Taube’s grandfather was Dr. Heinz Baumkötter, an SS doctor responsible for atrocities in a number of the Nazis’ concentration camps.

Late in the play, we learn from Taube that before Baumkötter died, he had said to his grandson, “with a twinkle in his [Baumkötter’s] eye”, that his time briefly in Auschwitz, but primarily in Saschenhausen concentration camps, implementing Hitler’s Final Solution to the Jewish Question, had been “the best years of his life”.

That vile comment alone makes Here There Are Blueberries essential theatre.

Runs until 7th March

Photo credit: Mark Senior

Dracula - Review

Noel Coward Theatre, London

*****

Written by Bram Stoker

Adaped and directed by Kip Williams

Cynthia Erivo

To understand why Cynthia Erivo is the Vice President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, just go and see Dracula. For close to two-hours straight through, Erivo doesn’t just dominate this intriguing production, she creates it, assuming all 23 roles of Bram Stoker’s classic yarn.

Kip Willliams’s take on Dracula sees a fusion of gothic horror with 21st-century technology, as physical, practical theatre is (almost seamlessly) joined to painstakingly crafted pre-filmed videos. As a squad of steadicam operators buzz around Erivo’s live work, a big screen merges the real-time with the recorded, taking the concept of live performance to a newly defined dimension.

The play’s design respects the original’s Victorian origins, with Marg Horwell creating images that ingeniously and subtly shift the action from London to Romania. The repressed sexuality of Stoker’s novel is similarly played out, with Erivo bringing a sensuousness to the characters’ carnal desires, both the mortal and the undead.

The teeth, blood and bite marks are elegantly done in this subtle portrayal of horror, but for all the show’s visual wizardry and Craig Wilkinson's stunning videos, it is Erivo’s acting that is spellbinding. While her Professor Van Helsing, Stoker’s vampire-slayer, may be slightly more Gandalf than is necessary, her interpretations of the traditional characters, alongside her effortless transformations is breathtaking.

Not only is Erivo’s physicality meticulously rehearsed, her vocal reach is sensational. As Jonathan Harker, the London lawyer sent to Transylvania with property deeds for Dracula to sign, Erivo is required to narrate the story’s opening. Listen to Erivo's exquisite Received Pronunciation and there are hints of Richard Burton in her perfectly measured tone and cadence.

A bold move by the show’s creative minds sees Erivo draw on her Nigerian heritage to voice the bloodthirsty Count with a deeply African pronunciation - a refreshing change from the cod-Slavic accent so often deployed. And look out too for some of the projected images of Erivo’s vampires that pay homage to, amongst others, Klaus Kinski and Christopher Lee’s legendary portrayals of the classic monster.

Be in no doubt, this is a story re-worked for our times. Cynthia Erivo drives a stake through the heart of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, defining it as her own.

Runs until 30th May

Photo Credit: Daniel Boud

Man and Boy - Review

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Terence Rattigan

Directed by Anthony Lau

Ben Daniels and Malcolm Sinclair

Anthony Lau’s take on Terence Rattigan’s intriguing Man and Boy is a deliciously stylised slice of Manhattan in the 1930s.

Played out on a green baize and beneath an oppressively interrogatory lighting rig, the moments of the play’s high drama are delivered from table-tops. Rattigan’s world is one of high-stakes deals, with Georgia Lowe’s set and costume design creating an atmosphere that's driven by malevolent corruption and greed.

The plot hinges around the complex relationship between Romanian tycoon Gregor Antonescu and his sometime estranged son Basil Anthony - played by Ben Daniels and Laurie Kynaston respectively. 

Daniels’s Antonescu is a monster of corporate greed and manipulation - almost a Jeffrey Epstein of his time - with a compelling performance that commands both attention and contempt. Kynaston by contrast presents a complex creation of a profound fragility.

But in this melodramatic wonderland of neo-noir, it emerges that almost everyone is loathsome. Nick Fletcher turns in a great performance as Sven, Antonescu’s long-serving lieutenant. Malcolm Sinclair is equally magnificent as Mark Herries, a millionaire American industrialist who is as motivated as much by his homosexual cravings as he is driven for success on Wall Street. And then there’s Isabella Laughland as Countess Antonescu - a trophy blonde of a wife whose two-dimensionality is divine.

A fun script, cleverly performed, in a production that is fuelled by America’s era of Art Deco. As a glorious glimpse of human vileness, it’s quite possibly the finest show in town.

Runs until 14th March

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

***

Music & lyrics by Passenger

Book by Rachel Joyce

Adaption co-created by Rachel Joyce, Peter Darling & Katy Rudd

Directed by Rachel Joyce

Mark Addy, Jenna Russell & company

There’s a flicker of a good yarn at the heart of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel Joyce’s story sees the titular Fry walk 500 miles across England, fleeing the baggage of a grief-laden marriage, to visit the bedside of a dying friend.

Not only are there the makings of a good story, the show also boasts standout excellence from Mark Addy as Fry and Jenna Russell as his wife Maureen. Both leading characters are deeply damaged and it is a credit to both performers that they deliver performances of a tender complex fragility.

It’s just a shame that such excellence is smothered in an evening of mediocre musicality, wrapped up in a plot that lurches from one shallow cliche to the next. Passenger’s lyrics are found to be frequently expositional and witless, while the band of crusties who follow Fry on his pilgrimage appear to be little more than a bunch of lazily drawn two-dimensionals, straight out of central casting. 

The musical’s (rare) highlights both fall in act one with a classy tap-routine in From The Rooftops, and a moderately amusing set of lyrics in Out of Luck. 

Those who love Rachel Joyce’s book will probably enjoy the show. Otherwise The Proclaimers’ 1988 single I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) offers a similarly themed story, and in under four minutes.

Runs until 18th April

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley - Review

Wilton's Music Hall, London

****

Adapted & directed by Christopher McElroen

Arnell Powell and Eric T. Miller

Only on for this week, Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley gives a historical trajectory to a remarkable event of some 61 years ago at the Cambridge Union.

In February 1965, Civil Rights activist and author James Baldwin, together with conservative publisher William F. Buckley Jnr. were both flown across the Atlantic to debate the motion “Is The American Dream At The Expense Of The American Negro?”. In what is perhaps one of the most effective pieces of verbatim theatre staged, Christopher McElroen directs his fellow  Americans, Arnell Powell (as Baldwin) and Eric T. Miller (Buckley) in a recreation of the debate.

An ingenious deployment of grainy archived newsreel footage - Norman St John Stevas the presenter - frames the speeches as Powell and Miller proceed to offer stunning interpretations of their characters’ arguments, each offering monologues of breathtaking length and complexity that prove compelling in their delivery. The text is of course a matter of record, with the evening’s artistic strengths therefore lying not so much in the words that were spoken, but rather in the flair with which they have been animated with such conviction and credibility.

The historic arguments are fascinating. In 1965 much of America’s black population was disenfranchised with much of the country’s South still segregated. Contexting the oratory of the era with the USA of today makes for interesting comparisons. While the Civil Rights movement achieved great milestones, the political dialogues of the 21st century of course offer a different and troubled take on America’s still fractured society. As the Far Right continues to preach hatred, many will argue that in much of the country the liberal Left equally weaponises racial disharmony and discord in pursuit of their objectives. 

Simply staged at a packed Wilton’s Music Hall, the show is enhanced by the supporting performances of Christopher Wareham and Tom Kiteley as David Heycock and Jeremy Burford respectively, who were the student pro/opponents of the motion back in the day.

For those with an interest in modern American history and politics, the play is unmissable.

Runs until 7th February

Photo credit: the american vicarious