How The Other Half Loves - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London


***

Written by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Alan Strachan

Matthew Cottle and Gillian Wright

Written before he had become one of the nation's most prolific playwrights, yet as ever focusing upon his hallmark theme of domestic dysfunctionality, How The Other Half Loves is Alan Ayckbourn's 1969 effort, viewed through the prism of well-performed comedy.

Fuelled by differences in class and alongside marital infidelity that spans the social strata, the young and argumentative Teresa and Bob Philips (Tamzin Outhwaite and Jason Merrells) live modestly whilst the older Frank and Fiona Foster (Nicholas Le Prevost and Jenny Seagrove) enjoy a more privileged lifestyle. This being Ayckbourn however, Bob is having an affair with Fiona and thrown into the mix are the dull and dim Featherstones (William and Mary played by Matthew Cottle and Gillian Wright respectively) who have no idea that they’re being used as scape goats to hide the sordid carryings on. 

For the most part the book is well thought out. Mistaken suspicions are cleverly managed to comical and catastrophic results, with occasional moments of perfectly timed slapstick only enhancing the humour. But while there's much energy on display, the ending disappoints, feeling a little weak and somewhat rushed and almost doing a disservice to the preceding hilarity. The lengthy curtain drops between scene changes don't help, with the frequent halts dissipating dramatic momentum. 

Le Prevost, Wright and Cottle are all on top form. Le Prevost’s embodiment of a Blithering older gentleman with a constant misunderstanding of what’s been said to him brings the audience to its knees with roaring hilarity. He shows a believable stereotype that continues to surprise and is extremely enjoyable to watch. Wright’s Mary is shy and understated, with a masterclass performance in how to use pauses to full effect and a wonderful collaboration on stage with Cottle, who embodies a warm awkwardness on stage that one could watch for hours.

Alan Strachan's direction is choreographed to perfection with pinpoint timing and movement, delivering an Ayckbourn revival that is fun to watch and which refreshingly restores some old school charm to the theatre.

Runs until 25th June
Reviewed by Charlotte Darcy
Photo credit: Alistair Muir

Hero's Welcome - Review

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford


***


Written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Richard Stacey and Evelyn Hoskins

Alan Ayckbourn's latest play sees this most prolific of playwrights fire off yet another salvo of domestic dysfunctionality. Hero’s Welcome, set in a northern English town, treats his audience to tableaux of human misery staged as an end of the pier farce. 

Murray is a decorated soldier returning home from a conflict somewhere east of the Adriatic, to the town he'd fled nearly 20 years ago when he jilted the pregnant Alice at the altar. Time has seen Alice go on to marry Derek, a charmingly inadequate builder (and sensitively played by Russell Dixon) devoted to his model railway layout. Meanwhile, in a palatial house out on the hills, Brad (a former childhood buddy of Murray) has built his home, married to the desperately unhappy Kara. There's the smouldering ashes of a love triangle in here too and if all this seems familiar Ayckbourn territory, the playwright resolutely catapults us into the modern era introducing Baba, Murray's young and devoted wife displaced by war and who Murray has recently married during a tour of duty. 

Ayckbourn (much like Arthur Miller) dwells upon the human condition in his work. But where Miller applies a surgeon's scalpel to fillet out grief and emotion, Ayckbourn uses a chainsaw (or should that be shotgun?) to make his point. Whilst many of Hero's Welcome's themes are recognisable, by the time its characters have endured murder, arson (and for good measure, one of them suffers a debilitating stroke half way through act 2) the play's credibility has all but evaporated.

That being said, Ayckbourn, who also directs, has assembled a marvellous ensemble. Richard Stacey's Murray is believable as the flawed warrior, whilst Elizabeth Boag's Alice cleverly hints at her once glamorous youth and an adulthood quietly spent in a marriage of disappointing compromise.

As Brad, an absolute cardboard cutout of a morally bankrupt bounder, Stephen Billington sports the chiseled good looks demanded of his millionaire lifestyle - and whilst Ayckbourn offers him little more than crass cliché by way of dialog, he makes the most of it. Likewise, Emma Manton's Kara offers a thoughtful study in housebound misery. Though Manton's re-appearance towards the play's end, appallingly wigged and playing her daughter Simone, is stagecraft at its clumsiest. 

The centrepiece of this company however is Evelyn Hoskins' Baba. Hoskins (around whom, one suspects, the part may well have been written) brings an fragile, elfin stature to a woman wise beyond her years and who has witnessed life's horrors. Hers is one of Ayckbourn's most well-conceived back-stories in a long while, with Hoskins defining the resolute determination and courage of a loving woman, desperate to re-build her life in the West. In a masterful turn from Hoskins we sense Baba's vulnerability yet admire her steely resolve.

Aside from the litany of his character's woes, Ayckbourn seeks to comment on other social malaises, raising his scatter gun to take aim at the rise of gastro-pubs, binge drinking whilst all the while inviting us to laugh at other people's misfortunes.

But Scarborough's literary hero is a canny chap and knows what entertains his devoted fan base. After a UK tour Ayckbourn’s company take the play to New York for a summer residency.

Now on tour

Season's Greetings

Union Theatre, London

***

Written by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Michael Strassen

Abigail Rosser

The Union Theatre's festive offering is Alan Ayckbourn's Seasons Greetings, a black comedy that bears occasional aspirations to farce. The world has moved on greatly since the play's 1980 premiere and what may once have passed for pointed hilarity is now awkwardly dated.

With men that are predominantly shallow stereotypes, it is down to Ayckbourn's women and Michael Strassen's actresses to provide some dramatic meat for the audience to chew over. Abigail Rosser's vivaciously beautiful Belinda, sexually and emotionally ignored by her husband, fizzes with bitterness and lustful desire. That she will passionately devour her plainer sister Rachel's boyfriend Clive is clear and the sibling angst that unfolds between these two women is one of the play's better explored themes. Pandora McCormick's Rachel, who has lived a sexless life spent in her more glamorous sister's shadow is a performance of assured sensitivity from a talented actress. Clumsy in the kitchen and also lusting for Clive is Phyllis, maritally inadequate, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but nonetheless very well acted by Marianne Adams. In contrast Gavin Kerr's Clive is a lacklustre cliché, whilst the other male characters of assorted husbands and dotty ageing uncle make a moderate fist of their poorly fleshed out parts. Matthew Carter's manically and tragically inept Bernard is perhaps the best of the boys.

Seasons Greetings is a period piece harking back to an embarrassing era of cringe-worthy offence. The play hails from a time when references to suggested domestic violence or the grief of childlessness could be quickly glossed over by an audience eagerly awaiting their next laugh at either the farcical misunderstandings of a blundering old duffer or the puppet-show antics of a bumbling fool. Strassen directs well and the Union’s compact space has been cleverly moulded into a suburban downstairs. But whilst many of the family tensions shown are still relevant and recognisable, Ayckbourn’s crass construction is thankfully a ghost of Christmas past.

Runs until 4th January 2014

Hello, Janie! A profile of Janie Dee

Janie Dee

Janie Dee is one of this country’s treasures of the stage who this week makes a fleeting dash from Leicester’s Curve Theatre, where she has been playing Dolly Levi to rave reviews for the last few weeks, to a brief residence at one of the new London cabaret venues, the Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel. I caught up with Janie shortly before she headed up the M1 for her final week in Leicester.

Dashing from gig to gig seems to be the current hallmark of this busy actress. Hello, Dolly! followed hard on the heels of her appearance in NSFW at the Royal Court, and whether it be in Shakespeare, modern drama or musical theatre, for more than twenty years, Dee has been delivering excellence in all of her stagecraft. Gaining a Best Supporting Actress Olivier Award as a sparkling and truly memorable Carrie Pipperidge in Nicholas Hytner’s 1992 Carousel at the National Theatre, a performance that is even today described by Wikipedia as amongst the top three ever to have been played of that role globally, defined her starry potential and also introduced her to Cameron Mackintosh who with a canny eye for transfer potential, was at that time adopting a wonderfully philanthropic approach to the National’s musicals. Mackintosh wanted Dee to transfer across the river with the box office smash that the show had become, but a combination of commitment and also professional choice, led her to decline the producer’s advances. Nonetheless, she speaks glowingly of Mackintosh’s commitment to the musical theatre genre and has nothing but sincere and considered praise for his recently released film of Les Miserables.

Dee is also a member of that select group of UK performers who has achieved recognised success on Broadway  (make it there and you can make it anywhere, so it is sung) with her creation of Jacie Triplethree (android JC 333)  in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential, a multi-award winning performance in London that went on to achieve numerous New York nominations. She  has garnered critical acclaim for roles in regional theatre as well as London, with particularly strong working relationships being established with Paul Kerryson in Leicester (who also directed the most recent ‘ Dolly!)  and Jonathan Kent at Chichester.



Dee as Dolly Levi in Leicester Curve's recent Hello, Dolly!

When the role of Dolly Levi was offered to Dee she was hesitant, mindful not only of Streisand’s giant shadow but also of Samantha Spiro’s successful 2009 London turn in the role and initially was inclined to decline. Fate, however, had fortuitously intervened, with the complete coincidence of her father, for whom the show is a personal favourite, asking her  “So when are you going to play Dolly, Janie?”, just a week or so before Kerryson actually approached her with the part. Her father’s plea convinced the leading lady to accept and all who have seen the Leicester show are the richer for it.

Dee was already familiar with the work of ‘Dolly’s composer, Jerry Herman, having played the female lead in the most recent West End production of his Mack and Mabel. Herman made the trip to London to see the show for himself, establishing a distinct bond of mutual admiration between writer and performer and sharing with her his underlying philosophy of a strong musical theatre plot, that “people need to love and to be loved”, a writer’s note that Dee has evidently absorbed into her recent hilarious yet sensitive and intuitive performance as New York's professional matchmaker. Showbiz is of course not without its knocks and Dee, who made her Hello, Dolly! entry each night from a seat in row 8 of the stalls, talks anecdotally of an audience member in her 80’s, not recognising that the show's star was sat in front of her, commenting quietly to the actress that a friend (also elderly)  who had already seen the show thought it “really wasn’t very good at all“ ! With those words of criticism ringing in her ears, Dee then had to take the stage and launch into the show’s wonderful opening number Call on Dolly. Suffice to say, Dee was the consummate trouper and by the end of the performance, the 80 year old buttonholed her, to say how wonderful it all had been!

And thus to the West End, where today Miss Dee commences her residency. With pianist  Ben Atkinson who is fresh from musically directing her in Leicester, the two have had plenty of time to rehearse together and polish the set. She talks of a song list including a smattering of Fats Waller combined with other numbers from era and her take on some of the classics of the American Songbook is eagerly awaited. If you like your music like your bourbon, long slow and smooth with moments of dancing liveliness, then an evening in the intimate cabaret company of  this sublimely talented actress is likely to prove time wisely and wonderfully spent.

My review of Hello, Dolly! at Leicester's Curve can be found here.

Janie appears in cabaret at the Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel until Saturday January 26th 2013, reviewed here.