The Exorcist - Review

Birmingham Rep


****


Written by John Pielmeier
Based on the novel by William Peter Blatty
Directed by Sean Mathias

Adam Garcia, Clare Louise Connolly and Peter Bowles

Unquestionably for over 18s and with John Pielmeier's adaptation retaining both the physical and verbal profanity of Blatty's shocking novel, the tale of 10 year-old Regan’s possession by the devil condenses well into Sean Mathias’ neatly staged two hour yarn. With Hollywood forever having been about make believe and impossible illusions - now more than ever in the age of motion captured CGI – it was always going to be a tall order translating classic horror from screen to stage. So there’s a well-earned hurrah (or should that be scream?) for this evening of hokum that's currently playing in Birmingham over the Halloween fortnight. As the audience take their seats the house lights are gradually built up to a full on brightness before plunging the auditorium into a shriek-filled darkness and we’re off.

If you know the story then it’s all familiar territory. If you don’t, there’ll be no spoilers here. Kicking off with a brief glimpse of Father Merron, the excavating exorcist, digging up a decidedly dodgy amulet somewhere in the Middle East (think Indiana Jones crossed with Lawrence of Arabia) the action shifts to a house in Washington DC’s Georgetown where our pre-teen protagonist has been discovering the delights of the Ouija Board and her apparently imaginary friend, Captain Howdy. It’s hellishly downhill from thereon.

The production could arguably have been called The Possessed, rather than The Exorcist. It's not until the second act that the titular Peter Bowles really starts earning his wage, cassock donned and holy water spurting. Prior to then the story is all about the poor possessed Clare Louise Connolly's Regan becoming increasingly demonized.

Make no mistake - Bowles gives Merron a worthy gravitas. Not easy, given that his character on stage is reduced to a little more than a paper thin caricature with acute angina. Likewise his earnest sidekick Father Karras (fine work from Adam Garcia) eases the narrative along commandingly, whilst Jenny Seagrove's Chris, Regan's despairing film-star mother does a fine job, steering her character just safe of melodrama. Nods too, for Tristram Wymark's head-turning performance as Burke, the drink-soaked film directing family friend and also for Mitch Mullen who's as dependable as ever in the modest role of Dr. Klein.

The acting honours however are all Connolly’s in a performance that is quite simply a tour-de-force. Yes - there are some clever special effects and ingenious projections (which could to be honest be a little tighter, especially that rather clunky projectile vomiting gizmo) with Anna Fleischle's design work and Ben Hart's illusions creating the story's disconcertingly hellish domestic setting. But it is the diminutive Connolly who makes the show. Whether she's either speaking or lip-syncing to Ian McKellen's vocalizing her inner demon, Connolly’s performance suspends disbelief and from a terrifying precipice at that, utterly convincing that she is a girl possessed. 

Forty years ago on screen, director William Friedkin had Linda Blair’s Regan do all sorts of cleverly horrific tricks, assisted by an FX army and days of post-production. Live on stage however it’s all about the acting and Connolly simply becomes a blond haired fiend before our very eyes. One can only hope that the UK Theatre Awards judging team have her performance in their sights. 

Neither for the squeamish nor the pretentiously highbrow, The Exorcist represents Bill Kenwright at his very best, staging wonderfully entertaining theatre. And Clare Louise Connolly's Regan is unmissable!

Runs until 5th November

Photo credit: Robert Day

King Lear (at Birmingham Rep) - Review

Birmingham Repertory Theatre


****


Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Buffong

Don Warrington and Miltos Yerolemou

It’s a mark of a good Shakespeare production that, even when one knows the play well, the show reveals new depths and nuances to the text. So it is with Don Warrington whose Lear, now playing at the Birmingham Rep (for a ridiculously short 3 further days!) is up there with the best.

Director Michael Buffong chooses not to play fast and loose with the context. This is a pre-mediaeval setting, all animal skin drapes for royalty and heavy swordplay, mounted against Signe Beckmann’s simply effective staging and it works. No gimmickry here, the power of this production rests solely in the verse and its delivery.

At 65 Warrington is the perfect age to be a monarch who is planning his retirement and wanting to bestow his kingdom upon his three adult daughters. Warrington descends convincingly into the red mist of his rage at what he mistaken sees in Cordelia as a loveless insouciance – and then takes us on the most harrowing of journeys as we watch him realising his foolishness as age slowly saps his mental faculties.

Warrington’s handling of Lear’s big moments is masterful. His curse of sterility upon Rakie Ayola's Goneril is appropriately splenetic, yet where one can occasionally sympathise with his daughter at this point, here Warrington bestows his evil words with a justifiable credibility that is rarely, if ever witnessed.

The man gets better – His impotent rage, howling at Kent being placed in the stocks and subsequent, classic, plea to his daughters to “reason not the need” is heartbreaking. As Lear’s detachment from reason becomes more pronounced, Warrington’s cri de coeur at recognising his decline, “oh let me not be mad” touches us, in our modern ageing society increasingly challenged by dementia, with a touchingly relevant poignancy.

Warrington is surrounded by a fine company – In a revelatory performance Miltos Yerolemou’s Fool bestows a perceptive wisdom on this most intriguing of Shakespeare’s characters. The love between the monarch and his all-licensed fool is tangible (only heightened by the pathos of Lear’s penultimate words “and my poor fool is hanged” on Cordelia’s death) and the white slap that Buffong paints his Fool in, which miserably washes off in the storm scene, offers yet a further glimpse into the stripping back of human facades that had so easily convinced the King.

Of Lear’s daughters Pepter Lunkuse’s Cordelia offers the most rounded performance, however all three women are at times occasionally inaudible. This may be down to the staging/venue, however if there is an opportunity to fine tune this, it would make a very good play even better. Philip Whitchurch’s Gloucester however makes for a touching turn. The sub-plot of his deception by Fraser Ayre’s bastard of an Edmund is effective – with Whitchurch’s “I stumbled when I saw” offering powerful pathos.

Deceptively wicked, Norman Bowman brings a chilling menace to his all-too caledonian Cornwall. A truly malignant thug, his terrifying manner towards Gloucester is frightening even before he lays hands on his host. And credit too to Buffong for laying on a truly gruesome blinding, complete with tendril-strewn eyeballs bouncing off into the stalls. Shakespeare intended the scene as a horror show and, to mash up the reference points, Bowman duly delivers some Tarantino for the groundlings.

Above all, there is a heartbreaking majesty to this production and in this anniversary year of Shakespeare’s death, and with more Lears on the way, Warrington sets the bar very high. His Lear is every inch a King.

Runs until 28th May

Photo credit: Jonathan Keenan

Harvey - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

****

Written by Mary Chase

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Maureen Lipman and James Dreyfus

There are few shows in town more charming than Lindsay Posner's re-working of this 1940's all-American fable. Widowed Veta Simmons lodges with her daughter in the home of her wealthy brother Elwood P Dowd. Yet much is amiss, for as Simmons strives to keep up a genteel facade of normality, Dowd's closest confidante is Harvey, an invisible giant rabbit and much of the play hinges upon the anguish that his behaviour causes to his loved ones. 

This parable of the savant, who in today's jargon would be classified as somewhere on the autistic spectrum and yet who sees his world with a clarity denied his fellows, has already been explored in Rain Man and Forrest Gump. Yet Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winner preceded those modern classics by some decades and as her Harvey lifts the curtain on a petty-minded small town, so we see Dowd's noble and chivalrous pursuit of all that is good in life, shine out as a beacon amongst his morally flawed peers, all signed up to the rat-race.

James Dreyfus is Dowd bringing a comic pathos to a beautifully created character. We laugh at the witty excellence of his performance though with a compassionate chuckle rather than the poking of cruel fun at a Bedlam lunatic. Dreyfus convinces us of his belief in Harvey and at the same time plays the straightest of bats as his (and the company's) pinpoint timing sees the plot's farcical elements unfold delightfully.

Opposite Dreyfus is Maureen Lipman's Veta. Amongst the best actors of her generation, Lipman commands our sympathy as she strives to find a suitor for Myrtle Mae her grown daughter, whilst supporting her brother's mental frailty. We feel her frustration at the difficulties she has to manage, yet at the finale we almost weep at the loving compassion she shows her sibling. Powerful stuff indeed, although glossing over the physical abuse Veta inadvertently suffers in the local sanitarium, as comedy rather than the ghastly brutality that it truly represents, is perhaps the script's only flaw. It was to be another thirty years before Jack Nicholson's Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was to define how the cruelty of mental institutions should truly be portrayed.

Dreyfus and Lipman lead a marvellous troupe. Ingrid Oliver's Myrtle Mae nails the awkward self-centredness of a girl on the cusp of womanhood, whilst Sally Scott's psychiatric Nurse Kelly is a clever portrayal of cutely cognisant compassion. David Bamber is psychiatrist Dr Chumley, a medic who undergoes a Damascene conversion of his own with Bamber giving the complex role the comic mania it deserves. The play's endgame sees Linal Haft, in a tiny role, play a cab driver whose revelatory monologue moves both hearts and minds. (And those eagle-eyed and over 40 may recall Haft’s Melvyn, the much put-upon son to Lipman's Beattie in the BT 1980s ad campaign.) 

Peter McKintosh's set displays an ingenious elegance as interlocking revolves shift the action between home and clinic, whilst meticulous design in both costume and wigs set the time and tone perfectly.

Old fashioned for sure and with American accents that occasionally grate, the show is a curiosity of a production, but nonetheless bravo to the Birmingham Rep and its co-producers for having taken it on the road. When late into the second act, as Dowd reveals that during his lifetime he has known what it is to be “smart” as well as what it is to be profoundly pleasant, it is with a moving wisdom that he reports (and we feel chastened), that "being pleasant" is nicer. An allegory with the feel-good warmth of an adult fairy tale, Harvey makes for excellent theatre performed by a fabulous cast.

Runs until 2nd May 2015