In The Print - Review

King's Head Theatre, London

*****

Written by Robert Kahn and Tom Salinsky

Directed by Josh Roche

Alan Cox and Claudia Jolly

Rarely are history, politics and drama fused so perfectly as in In The Print, currently playing at the King’s Head Theatre. The title draws on the phrase, used for years, by workers in the print rooms of the newspaper industry to describe their employment. 

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s play is set at the time of the 1986 decision by Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation to shift the printing of its four titles from the labour-intensive presses of the central London, to a modern computerised print factory in Wapping in the city’s east end. Brenda Dean was the leader of SOGAT, the major print workers’ trade union of the time, with the genius of this story being its creation of fictional tableaux based around historical facts, and all performed to perfection.

The play demands some context, with In The Print’s programme helpfully including a description of the times:

“The Fleet Street print unions - SOGAT and the National Graphical Association, the NGA – held the upper hand. Newspaper operations were hugely inefficient, with old-fashioned hot metal presses which kept breaking down, and ancient agreements with the unions about which type of worker did which job. Print workers were remarkably well-paid, and enjoyed short hours which enabled them to hold second jobs such as driving cabs. Fleet Street print-rooms were rife with legendary Spanish Practices' - overmanning, cash payments, and non-existent ghost workers with names such as Donald Duck.”

Alan Cox plays Murdoch, with Claudia Jolly as Dean. (A nod here to Simon Money, the production’s dialect coach, who has honed Cox’s required Australian accent to perfection.) Both lead performers are electrifying in their interpretations - Cox depicting Murdoch’s ruthless singleness of purpose brilliantly, as Jolly captures the agonies of Dean desperately trying to defend the livelihoods of her members while having ultimately to surrender her fight to the march of technology and progress.

Jolly and Cox are ably supported by Alasdair Harvey, Georgia Landers, Jonathan Jaynes and Russell Bentley who between them convey a raft of recognisable supporting characters of the era ranging from union officials through to Murdoch’s editors. Harvey’s Andrew Neil (The Sunday Times) and Bentley’s Kelvin MacKenzie (The Sun) are particularly enjoyable cameos. Josh Roche’s direction is deftly nuanced, in particular tracing Jolly’s journey that sees Brenda Dean transition from defiance to defeat. 

It is sharp writing that packs so much well constructed content into this one-act, 90-minute gem. Older theatregoers will savour the well constructed return to the nation’s febrile industrial relations scene under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Younger audiences will simply enjoy this rather exquisite history lesson.

Runs until 3rd May

Photo credit: Charlie Flint

The North - Review

****

Written & directed by Bart Schrijver

In a love letter to the Scottish Highlands, Bart Schrijver’s The North follows two friends trekking the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail, reliving a journey they had made some 10 years previously.

Not just a beautifully photographed narrative, The North is a perceptive comment on the evolution of a friendship and its underlying complexities. Navigating not only the 350 miles of stunning landscapes, Lluis (Carles Pulido) and Chris (Bart Harder) face the challenges of trust and honesty between themselves, as well as an ongoing battle to keep the outside world, including incoming phone calls from the office, at bay. 

It’s a gritty yet touching tale. Brief interjections from other hikers that the pair encounter on their trek move the story along. Filmed amongst the raw beauty of the Scottish elements: sunshine, rain and wind, the challenges facing Lluis and Chris become almost tangible.

A thoughtful, beautiful movie.

In cinemas from 24 April

Avenue Q - Review

Shaftesbury Theatre, London

*****

Book by Jeff Whitty

Music & lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx

Directed by Jason Moore

Emily Benjamin, Charlie McCullagh and Meg Hateley

LP Hartley famously wrote that “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” Never has this been more true than in musical theatre, where today marks 20 years since Avenue Q first opened in London. With its brilliantly scripted and piercing satire puncturing many of today’s pretentious pomposities, one has to reflect that this show would never be written today, our modern lyricists lacking both the wit and the temple-tumbling cojones of Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. Quite simply, Avenue Q returns to reclaim its title as one of the funniest shows in town.

Who knew that this inspired parody of Sesame Street would prove so timeless? Lopez and Marx’s songs may drip with an inspired cynicism - but what makes this show really soar is that the brilliantly animated puppets convey stories of powerfully poignant humanity - their furry appearances belying beating and sometimes broken, hearts of gold.

Minorities are mercilessly mocked, the cruelty of this libretto proving a slap in the face to today’s relentlessly entitled generations. But as with the very best of clowns, when they ridicule our society, they hold a mirror to us all and as some of the evening’s monstrous animations ultimately find paths towards love, redemption and a joyously happy ending, they make us shed tears of both hilarity and also profound joy. It is a rare show can hit both of those emotional sweet-spots simultaneously.

Jason Moore, who directed the show to glory both on Broadway and in London all those years ago, returns to helm this revival with a neat touch seeing him assisted by Julie Atherton who back in the day created Kate Monster /Lucy The Slut  in the show’s London premiere.

This time around Emily Benjamin is simply magnificent as Kate/Lucy, at times delivering both sides of her characters’ deliciously barbed exchanges. Benjamin is matched by the equally talented Noah Harrison who is fabulous as the preppy Princeton and investment banker Rod, perpetually struggling with his sexuality. These two performers have both a physical presence and a vocal genius that delivers passion in their puppetry. As with all good puppetry, our focus is on their respective animated characters - but sneak a glimpse at their (human) faces as they perform, and the integrity and commitment of their performances is just joyous.

Benjamin and Harrison may be doing most of the narrative’s heavy lifting, but this show is truly an ensemble piece. Equally stunning are Charlie McCullagh’s hilarious Trekkie Monster and (Frank Oz soundalike) Nicky, Amelia Kinu Muus is an horrifically blunt Japanese therapist Christmas Eve, Oliver Jacobson is her Jewish husband Brian, as  Dionne Ward-Anderson steps up as Gary, the show’s only black character. Amidst the mayhem, Meg Hateley silently animates other characters that drive the story. The energy across this entire company is relentless and with pinpoint timing, all of the show’s gags make perfect touchdowns. 

There’s a classy creative crew too. Ben Holder directs his five-piece band to make fine work of the deeply varied score. Ebony Molina’s choreography is tight, Anna Louizos’s (also ex-Broadway) scenic design is a treat, enhanced by Tim Lufkin's nifty lighting plots.

Blink and you’ll miss them but there are some barely perceptible script-tweaks that bring the show into the modern era. The song Mix Tape is enhanced with a ‘playlist’, as ChatGPT gets a brief mention too. But overall, Avenue Q remains 99.9% true to its brilliant, original self.

They don’t write ‘em like this any more – and more’s the pity for that. Only here for the summer, take a stroll down Avenue Q for a night of outrageous comedy and brutal social comment. Musical theatre does not get better than this!

Booking until 29th August

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

hOWL - Review

*

Written by Howard Jacobson

In perhaps one of the most shamelessly exploitative works of fiction, and arguably an extremely unfunny comedy, Howard Jacobson’s hOWL charts the journey of Ferdinand Draxler MBE, a Jewish headteacher from south London as he navigates his world following the massacres of October 7th 2023.

Draxler is a character whose credibility quite simply defies belief. Married to a non-Jew, their daughter Zoe is a staunch antizionist, his brother Isak who had emigrated to Israel also harbors a skeptical view of the Jewish state. Draxler’s Deputy Head, Axelberg, is a Christian man who converts to Judaism so that he too can assume an Israel-critical stance. Draxler’s mother is a survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she may, or may not, have had a sexual relationship with the camp’s Nazi commandant.

Notwithstanding this eclectic array of characters, Jacobson subjects his protagonist to the raft of de-humanizing experiences that have befallen the diaspora since October 7th. Many readers will have found themselves facing ghastly antisemitic challenges in recent times. Draxler experiences almost all of them. De-platforming, raw hatred, Banksy’s murals, heck, even Glastonbury gets a mention. It is as though Jacobson has worked his way through a checklist of antisemitic/antizionist tropes and abuses, ensuring that as many as possible can be woven into the threadbare tapestry of his prose.

The book drifts in and out of reality, Jacobson perhaps having intended his blurred use of timelines to reflect Draxler’s loss of reason as the narrative unfolds. In reality, this blurring by the writer masks an overall incoherence that is found to be liberally sprinkled with gratuitous sexual references. Other than for prurient sensationalism, or a (very) cheap laugh, why else does Jacobson feel the need to let us know that as a teenager, Isak masturbated into his shirt drawer?

Almost halfway through the novel, Jacobson reveals a worrying (possibly autobiographical?) sentiment. In a letter that Draxler is penning to his daughter in an attempt towards an ideological reconciliation, he writes: “I won’t say the baby-murdering, land-grabbing Jew you march against does not somewhere exist, but he is not me.” In that one sentence Jacobson single-handedly pours petrol onto the fires of one of the oldest antisemitic tropes, the Blood Libel, and for that, Howard Jacobson, one of the most celebrated Jewish writers of our time, is to be condemned.

The book’s jacket bears a quote from Patrick Marber, lauding hOWL that reads: “A howling comic masterpiece”. In those four words Marber brings the classic children’s fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes, bang up to date. To be clear, Jacobson has not written a comic masterpiece.

To have released – what the book’s publishers Jonathan Cape describe as – a ‘tragicomedy’, in the wake of October 7th, a day so horrific that many of its survivors have yet to fully address the impact of its trauma and more than 1,200 families mourn their murdered relatives, and as world Jewry faces murderous antisemitism on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, stands as possibly the most crass, insensitive and shamefully opportunistic decision in the hitherto noble history of Anglo-Jewish literature.

The writers Eli Wiesel and Eli Sharabi, who both survived the horrors of the infernal depths of antisemitic Jew-hatred, are amongst the most qualified to write of those desperate times. In their shadow, Jacobson is but a literary pygmy. He should donate any income earned from this execrable work to a charity that supports the rebuilding of those devastated Israeli communities within the Gaza Envelope.

hOWL is available from all the usual bookselling outlets.