Richard II - Review

Bridge Theatre, London

*****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Jonathan Bailey

There is brilliance at the Bridge with Nicholas Hytner’s modern-day staging of Richard II, in an interpretation that sees the politics of the play resonate strongly with England in 2025. The corrupt ineptitude of Richard’s government echoes the bumblings of Keir Starmer and his cabinet, and when the Bishop of Carlisle prophesies domestic strife and discord across the land she could well have been speaking of this sceptre’d isle today.

Jonathan Bailey is Richard in a masterful interpretation of the flawed monarch. His cocaine-powered court may only enhance the failings of his reign, but in both his rage and his sensitivities Bailey’s interpretation of the verse is exquisite. 

Hytner has cast his production well. Notable amongst a virtually flawless company is Royce Pierreson’s Henry Bullingbrook, a classy portrayal of ruthless cunning and political steel. Similarly, and following his outstanding turn in the recent Guys and Dolls, Michael Simkins again brings magnificence to the venue with his Duke of York, fusing avuncular wisdom with an unswerving loyalty to Crown and country. The ‘domestic’ between the Duke and his Duchess (Amanda Root) over the alleged treachery of their son Amerle is a scene that could have been lifted straight out of Albert Square such is the pair's dramatic excellence. Martin Carroll stepped up on press night to deliver a perfect cover of John of Gaunt, while Olivia Popica is a treat in her take on Queen Isabel’s emotional complexities. 

Amanda Root and Michael Simkins

The show’s production values are stunning. Bob Crowley’s stylish modern day scenery silently rises and falls from the Bridge’s bowels, while Bruno Poet’s interrogative lighting designs emphasise the story’s brutality. Grant Olding’s music adds a cinematic dimension to the evening that feels entirely appropriate.

This is a stunning play that cements the Bridge’s reputation as possibly the finest Shakespearean stage on London’s South Bank. Coming out of Richard II and seeing the Tower of London just across the river only adds to the theatre's magic.

Runs until 10th May

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Inheritance - Review

Noel Coward Theatre, London



****


Written by Matthew Lopez
Directed by Stephen Daldry

The Company

When Mathew Lopez's play The Inheritance opened at the Young Vic earlier this year it immediately caused a stir. This wasn't just another epic piece of theatre, running in two parts over seven hours, it was another epic gay themed play and comparisons to the National's recent production of Tony Kushner's Angels In America were inevitable. In truth, the two plays may have similar themes but otherwise there is little in common save the running time.

Lopez's play reworks the story of E.M.Forster's Howards End, setting the action in New York more than 30 years after the major events of Kushner's groundbreaking opus. In a shrewd theatrical device, Forster appears to a group of aspiring writers to assist them out of their writers' block. In the process, we are introduced to liberal lawyer Eric Glass and his partner of seven years Toby Darling, who has just gained celebrity as an author and is currently bashing out a stage script.

By chance they meet and befriend the bookish Leo, who aspires to an acting career but needs a leg up, which Toby is more than happy to offer as his script is optioned by a producer. In the meantime the self-deprecating Eric entertains the ailing Walter, who has moved in upstairs while his townhouse is being renovated. The pair share common philosophies and Walter enlightens Eric to the realities of the AIDS epidemic that ravaged New York in the Eighties and Nineties.

The joy of this play is found in the rise and fall in the temperature of Lopez's writing. His characters are painstakingly crafted, without appearing heavy handed and they move the story on in sizable but absorbing chunks. There is no slavish attempt to ape Forster's written style, which simply wouldn't work, but he does credit the author with an overwhelming sense of humanity. It's this trait of Forster's writing that Lopez draws on and despite the numerous socio-political themes that ricochet throughout the play, it is this that gives the play its emotional strength.

Despite a quality creative team including Stephen Daldry as director and Bob Crowley as designer, this is very much the author's night. Scenes of great humour and occasionally even eroticism sit easily beside political debate and it's deeply satisfying to note that the author doesn't pander to the vanity of the current POTUS by mentioning his name. There is balance however, as Walter's Republican partner  Henry - a swaggering John Benjamin Hickey - supremely tears a strip off an over-zealous armchair liberal pointedly trying to undermine him. Walter's epic monologue, delivered so earnestly by a sublime Paul Hilton, hammers home the devastating effect of AIDS and more pointedly, the country that deserted its citizens as they suffered and died.

It is the beauty of Lopez's writing that allows him, at least partially, to get away with such a long play. Part One could quite easily pass for a complete full-length piece, albeit one with loose ends to tie up. It is in tying up those strands of the story for Part Two that Lopez begins to repeat himself, drawinging moments out unnecessarily.  The character of Forster long abandoned, reappears to explain why he wrote Maurice and in a nod to the Merchant Ivory adaptation of Howards End, Vanessa Redgrave steals focus as a mother who stayed on at Walter's home, long after her son had died. In fact, Redgrave never made the second press night and the role was admirably undertaken by Amanda Reed.

The Inheritance has been rightly lauded as a major piece of 21st century theatre and Lopez has a gift for crafting argument and dialogue with sensitivity and innate understanding. Does it need to be seven hours long? Hell no, but it's a gripping story, eloquently reminding us that unless we have a conversation with our past, we will never be able to understand the future.

Runs until 19th January 2019

Reviewed by Paul Vale

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Travelling Light - Review

National Theatre, London

February 19 2012

***

Written by: Nicholas Wright
Directed by Nick Hytner
Music by Grant Olding

In some ways, Travelling Light represents what the National Theatre really can do very well. A stunning set design by Bob Crowley that cleverly evokes an Eastern European shtetl at the beginning of the 20^th century, and a use of technology and staging to tell what could be a very imaginative story.

The play charts the development of the exploitation of the motion picture camera developed by the Lumiere brothers into a vehicle for telling fictional stories that can ultimately be projected to paying audiences. In essence, the birth of what Hollywood was to become.

Nicholas Wright opens his tale in 1936 with Maurice Montgomery ( Paul Jesson ) , a Hollywood producer, looking back to his starting out in motion pictures as a young man in the shtetl, inheriting his father's camera.  The young filmmaker is played by Damian Molony,  whose name before emigrating to the USA had been Motel Mendl

Mendl recognises the potential to use the camera to tell stories through film, and a local wealthy timber merchant Jacob Bindel, (Antony Sher) sees the commercial potential in Mendl making films that will tell exciting and fantastic stories that people will want to pay money to see.

The story’s strength lies in its premise that some of the key aspects of film-making were born even in the infancy of the art. The small world of the shtetl sees the movie-makers encounter budgetary constraints, temperamental artists, a meddling (or even visionary) producer, sexual duplicity and even the casting couch. To that extent the story is potentially clever, and at times probably close to being historically accurate in some of the detail it portrays. The National’s use of projection technology to chart the development of Mend’ls black and white silent movies is pleasing – the musical accompaniment written by the talented Grant Olding provides an authentic shtetl sound. It is clear that with his skiffle contribution to One Man , Two Guvnors, and with his work in this production, that there is a very positive creative relationship between Hytner and Olding.

The delivery of the story is however flawed inasmuch as there is an inconsistent use of accent and dialect. In the shtetl, most of the (generally well acted) characters do not have an Eastern European inflection to their voice  with the exception of Bindel, whose distinctive and somewhat contrived accent has already rather mischievously been described as being based around Borat. In a similar observation, the young  Mendl speaks with with no accent whatsoever in the shtetl, yet adopts a broad American-Yiddish brogue as the old man Montgomery by the time he makes it to Hollywood. This dialectic evolution is left unexplained.

The character of Bindel is also just a little too "one-dimensional". The timber merchant describes his journey from poverty to wealth, but we only encounter him as an established person of substance, and see little of his development.  To have Sher play a character who is often little more than a stereotypical cross between Tevye and Zorba ,but without the emotional arc of either of those two cultural legends, seems to me a rare squandering of one of the great acting talents of his generation. The action of the play hops between Hollywood and the flashback shtetl, and the story moves towards a denouement that whilst aiming to be moving and profound is perhaps a little too contrived.

Overall, one is reminded of Tateh , the penniless Jewish immigrant to the USA in Ahrens and Flaherty's musical Ragtime who goes on to make his fortune in the movie industry. Tateh's story is a modest chapter in a much larger canvas, but nonetheless a journey told perhaps a little more succintly than has been portrayed here.

The recent success of the movie The Artist has seen silent film thrust back into contemporary popularity. With that in mind and given the rather distracting vocal inconsistencies in this production, a possible thought to consider is that if this play had perhaps have been devised as a  mimed performance, without dialogue, but with simply more of Olding's music and appropriately projected dialog cards it could possibly have been a more impressive tribute to the era that it sets out to portray.

In repertory and also on tour until June 2