The Smile Of Her - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

****

Written by Christine Lahti

Directed by Mêlisa Annis

Christine Lahti

Watching the effortless, magnetic solo performance of Christine Lahti — a Golden Globe-winning actor and an Academy Award-winning director — one cannot help but feel privileged. Yet knowing that this is Lahti’s autobiographical play, that invites the audience into the most intimate corners of her life, transforms that feeling into something deeper: a sense of gratitude at having been entrusted with her story.

The play The Smile of Her, which is based on Lahti’s 2018 book of autobiographical essays True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness, begins in her childhood home in 1950s Michigan. In the immaculate white living room, represented by a white sofa covered in plastic at the centre of the stage, Lahti remarks with a bitter laugh that her family did everything there but ‘living’. Every Christmas, her parents and their six children posed there for a professional family portrait. Yet behind the smiles of the picture-perfect family captured in those photographs lay dark secrets, pain and frustration, which Lahti confronts with sincerity and humour.

As a young girl, Lahti first noticed the cracks in her mother’s famous, almost unfading smile. Through them, she begins to uncover disturbing truths about misogyny and patriarchy, forcing her to find her own way in a world not yet ready to recognise her as equal or worthy, let alone accommodate her ambitions to become an actress. 

The child version of Lahti is played by the talented Isabella Ford. In her stage debut, Ford masters the role, first as Lahti’s adorable younger self and later as her inner child (this role is also played by Jesamine-Bleu Gibbs). The interaction between Lahti and Ford is harmonious and well supported by the staging. 

In this London revival of the play, director Mêlisa Annis and designer Sarah Beaton create a minimalist yet effective stage setting, managing to maintain an intimacy with the audience while uplifting the story in its epic moments.

The evening is a rollercoaster of emotions and revelations, Lahti’s play more than anything proving to be a love letter to her mother — and to all the other women who fought, each in her own way, on the same battlefield. 

As much as she presents her compelling life story, Lahti also strikes us with a disturbing and uncomfortable truth: women’s liberties are fragile, recent, and remain far from perfect or secure. Only one generation separates Lahti from her mother, but their experiences as women were at once profoundly different and shockingly similar. Lahti’s message is clear: feminism remains not only relevant, but necessary.

Reviewed by Florit Shoihet

Runs until 29 August

Photo credit: Mark Senior

Here Comes J. Edgar - Review

King's Head, London

*****

Music by Peter Matz

Lyrics & book by Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold

Directed by Josh Seymour

Marc Elliott and Bryan Batt

Here Comes J. Edgar makes its world premiere at London’s King’s Head Theatre this week, some 30 years after it was written. This sparkling satire has a remarkable pedigree with book and lyrics penned by LA’s masters of comedy Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold and a stunning score composed by the equally gifted Peter Matz who was to tragically pass away in 2002.

The titular J. Edgar is of course the USA’s J. Edgar Hoover who served as the director of that nation’s Bureau of Investigation for 11 years from 1924, before changing its name to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI) and remaining in post for a remarkable 37 further years. It has been recognised that the vast amount of surveillance information that Hoover had amassed over the years, including compromising information on all of the Presidents that he served under, went a long way to assist him in corruptly keeping his job for such an inordinately long period of time.

Hoover’s alleged corruption went much further than just holding onto his job for 48 years. The vast extent of the secrets held in his files enabled him to abuse his powers, largely at whim, enabling him to persecute and manipulate politicians, celebrities, activists and ordinary citizens. Tasked with tackling the spread of communism, his association with Senator Joe McCarthy was frightening.

It was however in his approach to matters sexual that Hoover’s hypocrisy was most apparent and Shearer, Leopold and Matz mercilessly mine this rich seam of his life to deliver the sharpest historical satire around.

Hoover never married and was widely believed to be gay – developing over the years a very close association with his assistant Clyde Tolson.  The show opens (and closes) with the dying Hoover on his hospital bed, before delivering a whistle-stop tour through Hoover’s life touching upon a handful of the eight presidents that he was to serve under, from Coolidge through to Nixon.

Mad Men’s Bryan Batt makes a terrific London stage debut in the title role. Capturing the vain, egomaniacal Hoover, Batt’s presence is convincing – and boy can he hold a note too. Wickedly exploring his character’s sexual proclivities, including an inspired dalliance with transvestism, Batt’s performance cuts through the evening like a hoover at a glitter convention.

The King’s Head maybe one of the capital’s fringe venues, but the production values that underscore this show are breathtaking. Alongside Batt, the key principal players include Hugo Bolton as Tolson and Marc Elliott as Walter Winchell, a fading Entertainments Journalist who forges a symbiotic relationship with Hoover, both feeding each other the titbits of scandal they need to survive.

Laura Medforth plays Helen, Hoover’s devoted secretary at the Bureau, while Lucy O’Byrne plays the ghost of Hoover’s long departed mother. Medforth’s and O’Byrne’s vocal work is simply sensational. Equally sharp, albeit in a very brief cameo, is Judith Owen as the Madam of a brothel, tasked with the entrapment of Public Enemy Number One, gangster John Dillinger.

Josh Seymour directs his glorious company at a pace while leading choreographer Bill Deamer, a man more accustomed to the West End’s more glamorous stages, arranges routines that are stunningly executed within the venue’s compact space. And in the show’s closing act, the routine that has a quartet of Presidents ( chronologically FDR, Ike, JFK and LBJ) regretting that they had never acted more decisively to remove Hoover from his post is theatrical magic. 

The genius underlying the construction of this show is breathtaking. Matz’s music deliberately pastiches some Broadway greats – listen out for the nods to Guys & Dolls and West Side Story – with his tunes, often in musical snatches lasting barely a few seconds, covering a wide spectrum of genres. Perched high above the stage, Luke Holman deftly directs the show's small band. 

This is musical theatre at its best. Sharply, hilariously written and faultlessly performed. For those not easily offended, it’s unmissable.

Runs until 16th August

Photo credit: Mark Douet

My Fair Lady - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Music by Frederick Loewe

Lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner

Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Tony Jayawardena, Kezia Ibe and Hadley Fraser

Rachel Kavanaugh’s take on My Fair Lady is a musical treat. This fiendishly complicated tale of love conquering the shocking prejudices of both sexism and class, although set around the turn of the 20th century remains strikingly relevant today, Kavanaugh showing us the timelessness of those bigotries first outlined in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.

Of course it is the combined gifts of Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics and Frederick Loewe’s enchanting melodies that translate this cautionary parable into a fairytale of song and as performed by this Chichester company, every number is exquisite.

In a brave casting choice, debutante Kezia Ibe is cast as Eliza Doolittle, the flower-girl from Lisson Grove who is lifted up to refined eloquence by Hadley Fraser’s Henry Higgins. Ibe is handed the lion’s share of the numbers and if her confidence takes a little while to steady, by the time she delivers I Could Have Danced All Night, the exquisite sweetness of her soprano voice is spine-tingling in its beauty. 

Fraser’s Higgins is flawless in his take on the blinkered, sexist academic whose vulnerabilities slowly emerge through the evening The age difference between Fraser and Ibe is perfect, with Fraser giving us a cleverly crafted insight into the Professor. This, when complemented by his acting through song that manages to find every hint of cynicism and humour (as well as Higgins's appalling chauvinism) is a masterclass in musical theatre performance.

Tony Jayawardena puts in a solid Colonel Pickering, while Finty Williams offers up hints of her gifted mother in possibly the finest Mrs Pearce (Higgins’s housekeeper) to have been seen in quite a while.

Gary Milner masters the show’s comic responsibilities as Alfred P. Doolittle – his Get Me To The Church On Time is a delight that feels like it could go on forever and in the story’s curious and unresolved love triangle, Ben Culleton is a charmingly voiced Freddy Eynsford-Hill who makes glorious work of On The Street Where You Live.

Kavanaugh is supported by creative genius. Stephen Mear’s choreography is spectacular and, as always, conceived and drilled to perfection – highlights being the refined elegance of the Embassy Ball along with the equally ballsy cockney swagger of Get Me To The Church On Time. The other creative ace in the pack is Howard Harrison’s stunning lighting. With so much of the action playing out late at night and into dawn, Harrison has arranged opposite banks of spotlights to suggest the whiteness of moonlight and the golden hues of the sun. It makes for a classy visual touch. Perched atop the stage, Cat Beveridge's 14-piece orchestra are terrific.

Yet again, Chichester have created a summer hit. This magical cast could have danced all night.

Runs until 5th September

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Springwood - Review

Hampstead Theatre, London

***

Written and directed by Richard Nelson

Andrew Havill and Robert Lindsay

There’s a great premise underlying Richard Nelson’s Springwood. The title comes from the country estate in upstate New York that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would retire to when he wanted to escape Washington DC, with the play’s fictionalised action revolving around the actual visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the estate during the summer of 1939.

As war in Europe looms, Nelson picks out the birth of the Special Relationship between the USA and the UK in some delightfully nuanced conversations between FDR and Bertie (the King) as well as some deft interchanges between the two men’s wives.

The first half plods, weighed down with caricature and clumsily crafted exposition. The second act however sees the drama come alive from the perspectives of not only international statesmanship, but also the unconventionalities of the Roosevelt’s living arrangements

The overarching strengths of the evening lie in a handful of the performances on stage. Robert Lindsay as the polio-stricken President captures not only FDR’s sardonic strengths, but also his vulnerabilities too. As the two heads of state compare their respective afflictions (the King suffered from a distinct stammer)  the evening hits a rare note of profound pathos. There is equally fine work from Rebecca Night as Queen Elizabeth. 

Andrew Havill plays the King in a role that, albeit carefully crafted and faultlessly performed, has been epically mis-cast. The King was 44 in 1939, Havill is in his sixties and looks it. The effect on seeing him therefore is to associate him with more of a grey-haired elderly man (think perhaps of King Charles III) rather than the more youthful monarch that he was (for visual comparison, reference today’s Prince of Wales, also aged 44). Jemma Redgrave’s Eleanor Roosevelt is an incredibly complex woman given the strains and falsehoods of her marriage, and Redgrave does not dig deep enough to address her character’s emotional challenges.

Springwood is unquestionably entertaining theatre. But a play about the Special Relationship demands a special company. This isn’t it.

Runs until 25th July

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Suzie Kennedy - Review

Crazy Coqs, London

*****

Suzie Kennedy

So much more than just a tribute act, Suzie Kennedy, when she assumes the persona of Marilyn Monroe, breathes a brilliantly vivacious life into one of the 20th century’s most inconic and enigmatic women. And in this year that marks the centenary of Monroe’s birth, Kennedy’s act takes on even greater significance.

From the moment she stepped into the spotlight in London’s intimate Crazy Coqs venue, Kennedy not only sang those numbers most associated with Monroe, she inhabited the star’s style – her script and audience interactions never letting the character drop, not for one second.

Kennedy’s hour-long setlist was a celebration of songs that defined not just Marilyn’s life but possibly and even more importantly, the impact that she made not only in her short lifetime but in the decades since then. Of course the classics were there and as Kennedy wrapped her mellifluous vocals around I Wanna Be Loved By You, My Heart Belongs to Daddy and (later in the act) Happy Birthday, she became that immortalised Hollywood idol.

I Was Born This Way (in a neat touch, duetted with Lady GaGa tribute artiste, the excellent Lallie Burns) along with a soulful solo (by Kennedy) of I Am What I Am defined the day’s Pride credentials, as Kennedy spoke (as Marilyn) sincerely and above all knowledgably, about Monroe’s troubled life.

Kennedy brings a sincerity to her act that transcends her sublime performance skills, showing a profound respect to Monroe that only imbues her otherwise stellar performance. An eclectic choice of songs supports this deep understanding. The Leslie Gore classic You Don’t Own Me (delivered complete with its sublime key change) brings a charged profundity to the evening, while Charlene’s I’ve Never Been To Me comes across as though it could almost have been inspired by Marilyn Monroe. 

In 1962 and aged just 36, Marilyn Monroe’s life was tragically cut short. The tragedy of her death is  reflected in Kennedy's final act, where following Over The Rainbow a song steeped in heartbreak for so many reasons, she silently slipped away from the stage. Paul Rahme her talented musical director then took over the mic with a powerfully poignant delivery of Elton John’s song from 53(!) years ago, Goodbye Norma Jean.

Notwithstanding the sadness, Kennedy makes sure the show ends with a bang, returning from the wings, costumed-changed and shimmering in sparkles to deliver another of Monroe’s signature tunes, from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.

Sparkling entertainment – Suzie Kennedy defines the legacy of Marilyn Monroe.

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 Ladyboys of Bangkok - Review

 The Sabai Pavilion, London

**

Beneath a pink, pulsating, (and when the bass is turned up, throbbing) big top erected on Shepherds Bush Green, The Ladyboys of Bangkok are strutting their stuff nightly during the show's London residency. 

In an evening that always promised more than was to meet the eye, perhaps if the tent had even been half-full (it was at far, far less than 25% capacity on the night of this review) then maybe all those mimed disco classics, pyro effects and laser beams that sliced through the haze might have complemented a party vibe. As it turned out, the evening felt more like an end-of-the-pier show on a rainy bank-holiday afternoon, rather than the tittilatingThai-themed treat of a cabaret and floor show that the marketing material had suggested.

The cast were troupers - playing to a virtually empty marquee while sporting immaculate make up and (occasionally) sparkling costumes they kept their smiles throughout. It was only a wonder that Queen’s Show Must Go On was not included in their pre-recorded backing set.

The two stars are for the Ladyboys’ sheer bravado and balls.

Runs until 12th July - then on tour and in Edinburgh