Woody Sez - Review

 Underbelly Boulevard, London

****

Devised by David M. Lutkin

Directed by Nick Corley

David M. Lutken

Returning to London for a two week residency at Soho’s Underbelly Boulevard, Woody Sez is a slick 80-minute tribute to Woody Guthrie, a man whose songs were to describe much of America’s 20th century history.

Devised and led by David M. Lutken, this Fringe favourite is a cleverly curated compilation of Guthrie’s compositions, beautifully performed. Via song and narration Lutken steers us through the singer’s life, highlighting his milestone successes alongside numerous tragedies. As we learn and listen to Guthrie’s navigation of the Great Depression, largely through the Dust Bowl of America’s Midwest, the history is compelling. Guthrie's lyrics match the writing of John Steinbeck in their harrowingly ingenious simplicity. 

Lutken, a Texan, is supported by a talented trio of North Americans, with Raquel Chavez, Nyssa Grant and David Finch accompanying him on guitar, fiddle, bass, zither… the list is as endless as the troupe’s playing skills are sublime.

The Guthrie classics are well represented in a setlist that includes This Land Is Your Land, Tom Joad and The Sinking of the Reuben James.

Woody Guthrie fans will love it - not least the evening’s singalong vibe. Classy, sassy entertainment.

Runs until 19th September

Photo credit: Jake Oseland

Jeeves Takes Charge - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

****

Book by P.G. Wodehouse

Adapted by James & Edward Duke & Hugh Wooldridge

Sam Harrison

In a spectacular evening of stagecraft, Jeeves Takes Charge is English drama at its finest. James & Edward Duke together with Hugh Wooldridge have carefully crafted their adaptation of P.G.Wodehouse’s original, fashioning a handful of absolutely spiffing yarns into two acts of glorious theatre.

Set on Caite Hevner’s ingeniously simple set and aided by equally ingenious projections, the story’s action ranges from London’s Mayfair to Gloucestershire to Brighton - with the show being made all the more remarkable by the fact that it is just one actor who delivers a tour-de-force delivery of all the parts. The two key roles are of course Bertie Wooster, a toff as wealthy as he is dim and his much put upon valet, Jeeves. Not just Jeeves and Wooster, there are approximately 20 other assorted roles (including Wooster’s would-be fiancée, a precocious young schoolgirl and her domineering headmistress) that are also performed by the same actor in an evening of vocal delight and sensational physical theatre. Wodehouse's creations are magnificent, the subtlety of his wit being delightfully retained in this cleverly adapted script.

Sam Harrison takes charge as Jeeves for the vast rump of the week’s performances, but on Thursdays (perchance, the day of this review) he is a replaced by the ridiculously talented Rupert Sadler as his alternate. Sadler barely pauses for breath as he seamlessly segues between roles, always hitting his mark, and breathing a life into Wodehouse’s words that has to be heard to be believed.

Jeeves Takes Charge is the simplest form of theatre possible. One actor performing on a simply structured stage - but at the Charing Cross Theatre it makes for exquisitely entertaining theatre. The sublimely talented Sadler spirits us away to the far gentler inter-war years, when toffish buffoonery was kept in check by the impeccably understated reserve of a first-class valet.

Magnificently entertaining drama, cleverly written and perfectly performed.

Runs until 6th September

Photo credit: Craig Fuller

Fame The Musical - Review

Theatre Royal, Plymouth

****

Music by Steve Margoshes

Lyrics by Jacques Levy

Book by Jose Fernandez

Title song 'Fame' written by Dean Pitchford & Michael Gore

Shoko Ito

Some 30 years after its European premiere in Plymouth, Fame The Musical returns to the Theatre Royal, giving “P.A.”, The New York Academy For The Performing Arts a 21st century interpretation, this time helmed and choreographed by Tom Jackson-Greaves.

Soutra Gilmour designs an ingenious set that perches on Plymouth’s revolve, taking us in and out of the dilapidated arts school located in midtown Manhattan, a blend of decades-old pipework, graffiti and suspended lightbulbs that all create an ingeniously effective, grimy backdrop to the narrative.

Jackson-Greaves’s roots hail from an impressive dance history and his take on Fame’s big numbers is impressive. Opening with Pray and then Hard Work, the staging and structure of the routines is breathtaking, with close harmony work that is gorgeous. Shanay Holmes leads the teaching staff as the highly-principled Miss Sherman. Well cast, Holmes is beautifully restrained throughout, not least in act two’s These Are My Children. It’s a neat touch that sees her given the opportunity to lead a belting singalong reprise of the title song as the cast take their bows.

There are standout gems amongst the cast, not least Megan Ellis as Serena who is exquisite in her singing as Let’s Play A Love Scene and Talia Palamathanan as the tragic Carmen Diaz who has to explore the full range of emotions across both acts, ranging from an outstanding Fame in the first half, to the bleakness of In L.A. after the interval. Harrison Wilde’s comic highlight of Can’t Keep It Down is another of the show’s treats. As Iris Kelly, Shoko Ito's dance moves are phenomenal.

Inspired by Alan Parker’s 1980 movie, Fame is a gritty tale of hope and endeavour, spiked by moments of tragedy. It is a tough script that requires a broad depth of performance from its cast, particularly in the dialogue scenes. Away from the moments of song and dance, the show’s pace drops and one feels that Jackson-Greaves lacks that director’s killer instinct, needed to extract the show’s full dramatic potential from his company. 

But it’s the songs that power this show, not least the final full company numbers of an exhilarating I Sing The Body Electric leading into the bittersweet anthem of Bring On Tomorrow, both songs delivering powerful punches with the latter proving gorgeously poignant.

Only on for a short run, Fame The Musical has the potential to travel far beyond Plymouth. Bring on tomorrow for this beautiful show.

Runs until 15th August

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Now You See Me Live - Review

London Coliseum, London

****

Creative Director - Ash Jacks McCready

Illusion Director - Enzo Weyne

Enzo Weyne

Inspired by the Lionsgate blockbuster franchise and mounted by the producers of The Illusionists, the London premiere of Now You See Me Live trades in some of the smaller scale intimate style magic for high-tech illusion, solo stunts and set pieces built for altitude. The films rested on a beguiling premise: that the finest deception is performed at scale, in plain sight, daring you to catch it. Onstage there is no cutaway and nowhere to hide — and the show takes that dare gladly. It arrives having already conquered the Sydney Opera House, with Las Vegas waiting its turn in October.

The foursome united as The Horseman go by Enzo Weyne, Andrew Basso, Gabriella Lester and Matthew Pomeroy, with guest turns from Eden Choi, Fraser Penman and recent BGT finalist Rafferty Coope  — a billing that reaches across the generations. Basso has toured escapology for twenty years and Weyne has built over a thousand shows in 40 countries, while Lester, at 22, already headlines the Magic Castle. Rafferty Coope, a Golden Buzzer and a fifth place on Britain’s Got Talent behind him, is barely out of his teens.  Yet nobody here is a filler: the stage is set, and while at times the pace can falter, the bar is high and met without exception. Audience involvement is peppered throughout.

With an emphatic opening from Rafferty, the youngest of the company, to daring escapology from Lester and Basso and some of the most quick, detailed and breath taking close up magic and manipulation from Eden Choi the show has something for everyone.

From explosives, to teleporting and creepy crawlies in the most unexpected of moments this is a show that sets out to entertain the masses of all ages. Here for five weeks before it travels to Las Vegas, Now You See Me Live is a theatrical special that will entertain the whole family.

Runs until 6th September

Phot credit: Johan Persson

Cleansed - Review

Almeida Theatre, London

****

Written by Sarah Kane

Directed by Rebecca Frecknall

Pearl Chanda

Sarah Kane’s Cleansed is a bleak tale. A 100 minutes straight through detailing man’s inhumanity to man and woman, and how power can be so easily abused. Not for the faint hearted, Kane’s narrative is graphic and under the gifted helming of Rebecca Frecknall, the stagecraft on display at the Almeida is as brilliant as Kane’s writing is horrific.

Set in and around some dystopian institution, Leo Bill is Tinker, the play's authority figure and the rotten apple at the core of the evening’s malevolence. Sexually inadequate, his misogyny and sadism knows no limits as he wreaks unspeakable forms of torture upon the institution’s inmates.

 

All of Kane’s characters are deeply damaged, desperately needing care but at Tinker’s hands all they receive is cruelty, meted out in gruesome manifestations of rape, sodomy and violence that descend into inevitable nadirs of murder and suicide.

Alongside Bill, Frecknall’s cast are all magnificent. Pearl Chanda, Luke Cinque-White, Lizzy Connolly, Jack Riddiford, Parth Thakerar and Stuart Thompson capturing their respective characters' emotional pain and despair and, when required, brilliantly depicting the physical pain of the inhumane atrocities that are forced upon them.

Ingeniously, Frecknall leaves little to our imagination - and it is a credit to the show’s intimacy director (Ingrid Mackinnon), illusionist (Chris Fisher) and special make-up designer (Susanna Peretz) that, together with the cast’s sublime acting skills, this nightmare is played out with such conviction.

Harrowing drama, stunningly performed.

Runs until 29th August

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Trainspotting The Musical - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

****

Music & lyrics by Stephen McGuiness & Irvine Welsh

Directed and developed by Caroline Jay Ranger

The cast of Trainspotting The Musical

Mainlining straight back to the 90s, Trainspotting The Musical achieves that elusive high of transforming abject human misery into an evening of sharply crafted entertainment. Irvine Welsh whose 1993 book inspired the story’s iconic film, has penned the show and together with Stephen McGuinness has written a dozen or so new songs that fabulously fit this modern fable.

Focussing on the lives of five young men from Edinburgh, Welsh’s tale, much of it drawn from and inspired by his own experiences of 18 months as a heroin addict, delivers an evening of devastation as we witness the drug ripping through their lives.

Lewis Kidd plays the focal, narrative, Renton who tells of his world, his family and his friends. Onstage for almost the entire show, Kidd’s Renton breaks our hearts as he navigates the depths of his addiction. 

Alongside Kidd, Sheridan Townsley is the damaged Sick Boy and Kieran Andrew is Spud. Finlay Paul plays Tommy whose own decline leads to perhaps the show’s most harrowing moments. Completing this leading quintet is the brilliant Frankie O’Connor as the psychopathically menacing Begbie, vividly vicious yet also capable of moments of surprising compassion.

In support, Rebecca McKinnis and Gordon Cooper as Renton’s parents Cathy and Davie make fine work of their modest roles, their anguished pain witnessing their son slide into the opioid’s grip proving almost unbearable to watch.

Rosie Dignan’s Alison together with Ashley J. Russell’s Colleen deliver equally strong grief and anxiety-fuelled performances. 

Death’s tentacles sprawl through the evening and it is a remarkable credit to both the cast and the creatives that a story of such physical and emotional horror can at times prove to be as witty as it is tragic.

The music lifts the show - the classic songs from the movie’s soundtrack are retained with Lou Reed’s Perfect Day closing both halves. As the first act finishes on a moment of unbearable pain, the irony of the full company powerfully delivering Reed's classic makes for a bittersweet symphony of feelings.

The show’s original compositions are as brilliantly written as Welsh's original novel, highlights including the sardonically Country-themed The Eckies And The Brown and One Skin Too Few, both of which are deservedly reprised.

Caroline Jay Ranger has directed and developed the show, helming a production that is as much a poignant social commentary, as it is a historical take on how grim life can be for those who are either denied opportunity or who lack the ability and vision to strive for it. Ranger’s work is neatly  nuanced, complemented by Colin Richmond’s simply effective sets and Douglas O’Connell’s video projections, transforming the visuals from a row of impoverished city tenements through to the sensations of heroin coursing through Renton’s veins – with some impressive underwater photography that cleverly suggests the character’s escape into the Siren-like embrace of the narcotics. Stuart Morley's band are a blast throughout.

The staging is authentically Scots, with dialects to match and for all that the Scottish brogue is convincingly delivered, there will be moments for many unsophisticated southern ears that may prove unintelligible.

Make no mistake, this is brave and bold new writing. Brilliantly bleak.

Runs until 5th September, then on tour

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

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

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

To Kill A Mockingbird - Review

Wyndham's Theatre, London

****

Written by Aaron Sorkin

From the novel by Harper Lee

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Richard Coyle

Bartlett Sher’s stunning revival of Harper Lee’s classic fable returns to the West End for a 12-week residency at the Wyndham’s.

Set in Alabama in the 1930s, in America’s segregated and highly prejudiced Deep South, Lee’s tale is one of oppression, racism and resentment, contrasted with a heroic stance on enlightened and principled legal thinking fused with compassion and the finest family values.

This site rarely seeks to draw comparisons but Richard Coyle’s performance as Atticus Finch demands one. Gregory Peck’s Oscar-winning take on the role (in Robert Mulligan’s 1952 movie) has been defined as one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. In a performance of breathtaking resonance and character, Richard Coyle redefines Finch, more than matching Peck’s genius. Returning to the role that he created in the production’s original London iteration, Coyle captures Finch’s complex morality and kindness in a performance that is perfectly weighted and nuanced, delivering arguably the greatest transition of an iconic character from screen to stage. For Coyle’s performance alone, one should buy a ticket. 

Sher's work on a London stage has never been so assured or perfectly pitched, where he has assembled a formidably flawless company. As the narrator / Greek chorus of the piece, Anna Munden is Finch’s adolescent daughter Scout. Together with her brother Jim (Gabriel Scott) and their friend Dill  (Dylan Malyn in an extraordinarily brilliant stage debut), the three teenagers serve to advance the evening's litany of cruel injustices, be they social as well as racial.

The cast boasts other supporting gems. Aaron Shosanya is magnificent as Tom Robinson, a black cotton-worker falsely accused of raping the white Mayella Ewell (Evie Hargeaves). Hargreaves similarly masters her challenging role, capturing the impact of the abuse and neglect that she has been subject to by her father Bob (Oscar Pearce playing a despicably ignorant redneck, in a performance that is as brilliant as his character is evil). Richard Dempsey is terrific as prosecuting counsel Horace Gilmer, while Stephen Boxer’s Judge Taylor is another modest role, perfectly performed. Andrea Davy is terrific as Calpurnia, Finch's black housekeeper who frequently holds up a mirror to his frailties.

Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation is masterfully penned – but is too long, especially in the first act. Where the visual impact of a movie scene can describe a story’s canvas in a second, dramatic narrative is a more laboured process. Lee’s original is a rich narrative, the details of which are not easily condensed into the confines of a theatre and there are moments when the story’s otherwise beautiful momentum, flags. At just over three hours, the play is a long-haul. Kander & Ebb’s The Scottsboro Boys, a musical also centred on racial injustice in the 1930s American South together with the flawed legal systems of the time, made its point as powerfully in just 90 minutes

Long maybe, but this is powerful theatre and a display of the finest acting in town.

Runs until 12th September

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Sinatra The Musical - Review

Aldwych Theatre, London

****

Written by Joe Di Pietro

Directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall

Joel Harper-Jackson

The song, dance and music in Sinatra The Musical is world-class entertainment. A ‘juke-box’ show that threads together most of Ol’ Blue Eyes’s most recognisable numbers, for those who love Sinatra’s style, flair and voice, the evening is one of sublime talent.

Joe DiPietro’s book charts Sinatra’s life from around the 1940s over a handful of decades, peppering the timeline with hit after hit, each loosely woven into the narrative.

What makes this show soar however is not so much DiPietro’s book, as the legacy of Sinatra’s work, breathed into life at the Aldwych by Joel Harper-Jackson in the title role. Harper-Jackson is sensational in both tone and presence, and if you’re lucky enough to catch a split-second glimpse of his profile from the side, the resemblance to Sinatra is uncanny. The show’s creatives have played a smart move (for the most part) in how the songs are deployed through the evening. Opening with All Of Me (that proves to be a mini-motif of the evening), a novel twist sees Come Fly With Me used as the musical backdrop to Sinatra bedding his way through Lana Turner (Becky Anderson), Judy Garland (Jenna Innes) and Marlene Dietrich (Allana Taylor).

These women were of course bit-parts in Sinatra’s life, with the most influential females turning out to be his mother Dolly (Jenna Russell), first wife Nancy (Phoebe Panaretos) and his subsequent wife Ava Gardner (Ana Villafane). This talented trifecta are handed juicy solos across the show, with Villafane shining in Nice And Easy Does It, Panateros making heartbreaking work of In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning, while Russell along with Marty Aguire as her hubby Marty, sparkles in You Make Me Feel So Young. On the night of this review Sylvie Regan was Little Nancy, who sang with an enchantingly commanding presence.

If there is a criticism of the show it is Joe DiPietro’s wafer-thin book, the years playing out with a bland predictability. Aside from Russell’s fiercely matriarchal mamma, there is barely any humour at all, the mark of the perfect juke-box musical being that it can carry one’s interest in between the songs. There are moments during the dialogue when the evening drags. We already know that Sinatra was a serial womaniser with links to the Mob – Di Pietro sheds little new light on the singer’s journey. And deciding that Sinatra should sing The Way You Look Tonight to Little Nancy as she prepares to accompany him to the Academy Awards is the absolute depth of sugary, cutesy, kitsch albeit beautifully sung.

Those looking for Sinatra's classics will not be disappointed. That's Life and My Way bookend the interval, while New York, New York is gifted to the audience as a singalong number during the finale.

Kathleen Marshall directs and choreographs with flair, while Dave Rose’s 17-piece band are sensational (and don’t forget to stay for the exit music when each band member riffs a stunning solo!)

Lavish production values and oh, those magical songs!

Booking unti 10th April 2027

Photo credit: Brinkhoff-Moegenberg

Desperate Scousewives - Review

Theatre Royal, St Helens

****

Written and directed by Lynne Fitzgerald

The cast of Depserate Scousewives

Desperate Scousewives is a warm, gritty and filthy comedy that is proudly Liverpudlian. Written and directed by Lynne Fitzgerald (who also performs as one of its cast of four) it is set around the streets of Liverpool, mainly situated on the street where the characters' four terraced houses nestle side by side. 

Vanessa (played by Samantha Alton) is getting married the next day. Her fiancé is currently banged up in Walton Prison and we learn that Vanessa in fact has never met her intended – rather he has proposed to her based upon the topless photos that she had posted to her Only Fans account. Fitzgerald’s writing proudly embraces the familiar scouse stereotypes of being thieving, workshy benefit scroungers. Indeed, were the play to have been written from outside the city it would have been damned for being bigoted. But her humour is wickedly sharp too. When one of her characters refers to being “on the Jumanji – it’s knock-off Mounjaro”, the moment is comedy gold. 

Lynne Francis is Tricia, the outsider – who initially earns the contempt of the other three due to being ginger, from Manchester and most shamefully of all, working for her living in gainful employment rather than living off DWP handouts. 

Completing the quartet is the star-billed Crissy Rock who plays Lily. Bringing some scouse gravitas and wisdom, Lily is the foursome’s matriarch – but she also sits at the play’s darkest core. We learn that both Tricia and Lily have been the victims of domestic abuse, with Fitzgerald choosing to end the first act with a harrowing monologue from Lily detailing the violence suffered at the hands of her misogynist partner.

Act two descends into classic farce, much of which involves the well-tested gag of a corpse being moved from location to location. It all becomes extremely far-fetched, however Fitzgerald never lets the energy levels flag. 

The Theatre Royal St Helens was packed, with Desperate Scousewives being received with massive applause, gasps of pain at the tough moments and roars of laughter as every gag landed perfectly. It is rare that a play can blend eye-wateringly funny smut, with a message about domestic abuse that is truly painful to listen to. That Fitzgerald accomplishes this says much for her skill as a writer.

On tour, click here for dates

Photo credit: David Munn Photography

Allegra - Review

Richmond Theatre, London

****

Written by Peter Quilter

Directed and choregraphed by Stephen Mear

Maureen Lipman

In a play that will touch the hearts of many, Maureen Lipman plays Allegra, a woman of senior years who, through conditions that are unstated in the script but clearly recognisable, is losing her connection with the world around her. Frequently disappearing into her own private world of song, it matters not whether dementia or Alzheimer’s is her diagnosis, rather that Allegra is a woman of remarkable mental energy who is finding her world increasingly confusing.

Quilter offers three foils to Allegra’s vivacity: her brother Ronen (John Middleton), her Czech carer Anna (Elizabeth Bower), and PC Rogers (Bailey Patrick) the local cop who’s tasked with challenging Allegra over her singing that has been complained about as a public nuisance.

The strength of Quilter’s writing lies in its deliberately unsophisticated charm. The action as it plays out is simply defined, in a dialogue peppered with neatly timed gags that all land perfectly. Throw in a liberal measure of songs that stretch back over the years - and how Allegra, who may not remember that she had only seen her brother barely two hours ago, but can remember lyrics and tunes that date back decades - and one realises the perceptive depth of Peter Quilter’s script.

There are hints of Quilter’s Glorious! - about Florence Foster Jenkins - in the story, as well as a hint of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest as Allegra reluctantly subjects herself to the medication imposed upon her by the Court.

More than just the writing however, it is Lipman who takes this story of simple charm, lifting it into an evening of simply stated drama, that’s also rather wonderfully sung. In a performance of powerfully poignant presence and poise, she captures not only Allegra’s comic eccentricities but, almost heartbreakingly, her fragile vulnerabilities too.

The musical backing may be prerecorded, but Lipman’s singing, often a-capella, is thrillingly glorious, truly live, and possibly one of the finest performances to be found. That the lyrics of Take Me Out To The Ball Game are also projected on screen, encouraging an audience singalong, only adds to the evening’s magic.

Stephen Mear directs his first play (albeit one with music and some neat choreography of course) and he has helmed a hit, unlocking a beautifully nuanced story of simple humanity.

Prepare to laugh and cry - Allegra is exquisitely crafted theatre.

Runs until 13th June, then on tour before playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Atonement - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Written by Ian McEwan

Adapted for the stage by Christopher Hampton

Directed by Adam Penford

Miriam Petche

Ian McEwan’s Atonement takes an act of intimate deceit, exploding it across years and battlegrounds into a landscape of epic romance and consequence. It only took six years for McEwan’s 2001 novel to be translated into an award-winning movie and it is screenwriter Christopher Hampton who has returned to this modern classic, this time adapting the tale for the stage.

McEwan’s story as first published was a lavish depiction of wealth, class, deceit and its consequences, as well as a study on the power of the written word. To condense such an opus into two hours on stage (including interval) is a challenge that by its very nature sees corners cut from McEwan’s brilliant original. That being said, Hampton nonetheless fashions a stimulating drama that preserves much of the essence of this richly complex yarn.

We meet the young Briony Tallis in the 1930s. A precociously gifted young teenager with a vivid imagination, as the course of a misconstrued day in her family’s Surrey mansion unfolds, Briony tells a damning lie that sees her sister Cecilia’s lover Robbie ultimately jailed for a crime that he did not commit.

Isabella Dempster plays young Briony, who the story follows from adolescence into her early adult years. Dempster ages cleverly, with her youthful impetuousness evolving into a more considered maturity as the guilt of her deception weighs increasingly heavy upon her. Miriam Petche and Jasper Talbot are respectively Cecilia and Robbie, both delivering performances of heartbreaking poignancy. Theirs was a love barely requited, the two actors capturing the human complexities of their pain in moments of theatrical excellence. The story’s epilogue features a brief appearance from Jessica Turner as the elderly Briony, in terminal decline from vascular dementia and expounding upon her lifetime of atonement. Having been only very recently cast into the role following the unexpected indisposition of the originally cast Sian Phillips, Turner’s work is outstanding.

Atonement as a narrative depends upon a classy design brief, with Chichester veteran Anthony Ward delivering exquisite settings and costumes. A combination of practical ingenuity and slick projections transfer the action across southern England and war-torn northern France, while the costuming, notably Cecilia’s stunning green dress, critical to a focal point of the story, is outstanding.

Only on at Chichester for two more weeks, one can only hope for the show to transfer. Atonement is an evening of tragically beautiful theatre.

Runs until 20th June

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Review

Watermill Theatre, Newbury

****

Written by Ian Fleming
Music & lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
Directed by Paul Hart

Me Ol' Bamboo danced in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

It is bold and visionary to stage Chitty Chitty Bang Bang within the intimate confines of the Watermill’s 200-seater auditorium, but much like the magic that transforms the car in Ian Fleming’s classic story, so too has Paul Hart’s production of the show spread its wings in one of the most gloriously imaginative productions to be seen this year.

Christian Edwards plays Caractacus Potts, the widowered inventor who has clearly been an inspirational and principled, if somewhat maverick, father to children Jeremy and Jemimah. On the night of this review the Potts kids were played by Francis Adams and Auora Breslin who were both flawless in their portrayal of these cute kids who are wise beyond their years.

The show’s classic love story is the understated romance that blossoms between Caractacus and the confectionery heiress Truly Scrumptious (Lydia Louise) and it is a credit to this production that the tender humanity that sits at the core of the story is so delightfully picked out. Without veering into cheesy sentimentality, the strong familial love that binds the Potts clan together is beautifully portrayed.

Even more remarkably, not only was the versatile Edwards the face behind West End Producer, a man with whom I shared many an interval conversation over the years, but Louise is making her professional debut in this show. Based on the quality of this performance, a stunning career awaits her.

The show’s carefully crafted comedy is top-notch. Sam Pay as Boris and Alexander Zane as Goran, the two bungling Vulgarian spies, have honed their timing to perfection. And from a musical perspective Zane, the onstage MD in this actor-musician show, delivers some exquisite percussion on the glockenspiel during act two’s Doll On a Music Box. The other half of the evening’s hilarity is delivered by Samuel Morgan-Grahame as Baron Bomburst and Mairi Ikegami as his wife, the Baroness. These two nail their lampoonery to perfection, taking the scripts gags that, like a pantomime, are aimed at both the young and the not-so-young in the audience and delivering them immaculately.

The star of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will always be, to use the vernacular, a car that’s more than spectacular, and the Katie Lias's designs for the Watermill do not disappoint. In a neat turn of staging that sees the audience de-camped half way through act one into a fairground marquee for a choreographed treat of Me Ol' Bamboo, on returning to the theatre, the magically powered car has been brought on stage and hidden under dustsheets (think of that chandelier in Phantom…). And of course, as the story unfolds, the car first drives, then takes to the sea, before finally, before our eyes, soaring into the skies with the Potts family and Truly all aboard.

Fabulous family theatre!

Runs until 13th September

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Magic - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Written by David Haig

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Hadley Fraser hangs out in Magic

Magic is an ingenious new drama from David Haig, an actor and playwright with a talent for spotting an episode of history and then building a fictitious drama that is grounded in a fact-filled foundation. The play explores an imagined series of meeting between Harry Houdini, the acclaimed illusionist and escapologist, and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. The author is of course renowned for his creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes, but what is not so well known about Conan-Doyle was his belief in the world of spiritualism and seances.

The essence of Haig’s drama draws on Houdini’s mastery of trickery and ultimate cynicism – he was a man who made his fortune by skilfully deceiving his audiences via fairgrounds and flim flam – and how he deploys that skill to challenge what he believes to be the fraudulent trickery of the spiritualist mediums, who he is convinced are deceiving their clients, not via circus-style chicanery but rather, and arguably far more sinister, by preying on their emotional vulnerabilities. 

Magic is set in the 1920s when Conan-Doyle was already a widower and on his second marriage and had recently lost numerous close relatives including Kingsley, a much beloved son, to the fighting in the First World War. Haig sets out Conan-Doyle’s belief in the spiritual world as almost obsessive, with the clashes between the writer and the illusionist making for compelling theatre. There are moments in the evening when one feels that the ground is familiar, as some 30 years ago Haig wrote the play My Boy Jack that focussed on Rudyard Kipling’s grief over his only son Jack, who had been killed in the Great War. 

The evening’s physical theatre is magnificent. Hadley Fraser is Houdini, while Haig himself takes on Sir Arthur. Lucy Bailey directs with her usual flair of shocking brilliance that sees the play open to Fraser being suspended upside down while escaping from handcuffs. Fraser masters the scene spectacularly, but the visuals are striking enough to remind one of Bailey’s stunning Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2006 that left audiences fainting, such was the impact of her take on that play’s violence.

 

Aside from Fraser wowing the Chichester audience with his immaculate 6-pack, ( This reviewer jealous? Never! ) his take on the escapologist is passionate and convincing. Equally, Haig’s interpretation of the complicated author desperately seeking a connection with his dead son is deeply moving. There is strong work too from Jenna Augen and Claire Price as the spouses Bess Houdini and Jean Conan-Doyle respectively and a fabulous cameo from Jade Williams as Mina Crandon, a famed medium of her time, who Houdini tries to expose. 

The tone of the evening is classy as Bailey and her designer Joanna Parker create ‘just the right level’ of tawdry in the dancing troupe that supports Houdini’s vaudeville turns. The special effects and illusions are fun too – this could almost be a family show if the subject material wasn’t so troublingly dark.

Spellbinding theatre.

Runs until 16th May

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Price - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

****

Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by Jonathan Munby

Henry Goodman

Arthur Miller’s The Price, now playing at the Marylebone Theatre is a timely reminder of the writer’s ability to dissect both the human condition and the American Dream. As Victor Franz, a cop, meets up with Gregory Solomon, a furniture appraiser in his dead father’s house, he is unexpectedly joined by his brother Walter, a successful doctor. Solomon is there to give Victor (and Walter) a price for the building’s contents, but as Miller’s narrative unfolds and we learn of the resentments and envious complications that simmer between the brothers (where Victor had previously devoted much time caring for his dying father, as Walter had been more estranged towards his family), it becomes clear that the prices Miller seeks to explore are more than just monetary.

Elliot Cowan and John Hopkins are respectively Victor and Walter, but it is in Henry Goodman’s take on Solomon that this production truly takes flight. Miller’s language is acutely New York Jewish in its style, with Goodman savouring every word, delivering his words with an immaculate understanding of the pauses and emphases that each sentence demands. Miller’s observations are wry and Solomon is gifted some sublime wisecracks and perceptive analyses to inject into the conversation from time to time. Under Goodman’s masterful delivery, each gag lands perfectly – the audience chuckling at the accuracy of the actor’s interpretation.

Faye Castelow plays Victor’s wife Esther, in a role that adds little heft to the narrative. Castelow’s performance is fine, but the dialog and reactions given to her frequently sound superficial and cliched.   

Jonathan Munby directs with sensitivity, but ultimately The Price is not Miller’s finest work. The play’s second act in particular as the brothers’ verbally spar, each line revealing yet another twist in their father’s decline, feels more like an emotional whodunnit rather than the critique of wealth, poverty and jealousy that Miller has sought to explore.

The Price may not sit alongside Miller’s Death of A Salesman or All My Sons, as a seminal work of 20th century American literature – but it is nonetheless compelling theatre.

Runs until 7th June

Photo credit: Mark Senior

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