Julie - Review

National Theatre, London


***


Written by Polly Stenham after Strindberg
Directed by Carrie Cracknell

Eric Kofi Abrefa and Vanessa Kirby

Polly Stenham’s Strindberg straddles the centuries as she translates Miss Julie from 1800s Scandinavia to a modern-day mansion on the fringes of Hampstead Heath. Retaining the original's core themes, this iteration finds the eponymous Julie as the privileged, entitled daughter of an ever-absent millionaire father and a mother who committed suicide during her childhood. The show opened in London last week, not long after the tragic news had been reported of two millionaire celebrities apparently taking their own lives - Strindberg’s commentary on the depressive loneliness that can reach into the elite’s gilded cages is resonant and timely. 

Vanessa Kirby is Julie. Deemed as irresponsible - her personal fortune locked away in trust funds – she is a woman in her 30s who has never been allowed to mature. She glitters on the surface but there is a gaping hole in her deserted soul and like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, her parties are attended by nameless people whose connections are devoid of care or compassion for their hostess.

Jean is Julie’s father’s chauffeur who’s also on duty as the hired muscle to keep the house free from being trashed during Julie's birthday celebrations. Eric Kofi Abrefa's Jean drives the play’s tragic arc as he smoulders with a credible, irresistible  attractiveness.

Completing the triangle of devastation is Thalissa Teixeira’s Kristina, Jean’s fiancee. Her finely nuanced grief, upon discovering her betrayal by her betrothed, is truly heartbreaking. 

The one act play runs just short of ninety minutes, brevity, as it transpires, that is much appreciated. As director Carrie Cracknell opts for style over substance, her production could well set the august Strindberg spinning in his grave. In an almost mirror image of the amorality of Julie’s casual affluence, the play drips with theatrical opulence that smaller theatre companies will only look at and marvel. The National Theatre have cast 20 (20!)  non-speaking partygoers in addition to the trio of protagonists, actors who spend nearly all of the show offstage. Likewise designer Tom Scutt’s trompe-l’oeil in the final scene is so lavish as to detract from Strindberg’s originally conceived harrowing denouement.

There is a very gory moment late on involving a food processor. Such is the extent of that violent incident (clearly and evidently a special effect) that many of the audience are moved to laugh out loud at its gratuitous excess - and in an instant the tragic drama of the moment is lost. If ever there was a production that proves “less is more” then this is it, such is the opportunity squandered amidst such budgetary extravagance.

But the tenets of the tale remain, as Stenham assuredly illustrates the complexities of power, wealth, race and gender. Julie may well be far from a definitive interpretation of Strindberg's classic, but nonetheless makes for an evening of thought-provoking theatre.

Runs until 8th September

Photo credit: Richard H Smith

A Taste Of Honey

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Shelagh Delaney

Directed by Bijan Sheibani

Kate O'Flynn

The 2014 season at the National Theatre could arguably be renamed “Unhappy Families, A Study On Parents And Daughters”. Whilst the Lear dynasty rages at each other in the Olivier, a far more recognisable family of modern Britons has lodged in the Lyttleton. Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey is her 1958 debut that paints a bleak tale of single parenthood in Salford, Lancashire.

It's a carefully crafted piece of theatre, all the more remarkable for having been penned by the 19 year-old Delaney who hailed from a working class Manchester background. In a literary era still dominated by a privileged patriarchy, that her work prevailed at all was due to the playwright’s nurturing by the remarkable Joan Littlewood. The play was first seen on the Theatre Royal stage at Stratford East and that Littlewood’s Oh What A Lovely War is currently in revival there, speaks volumes for the older woman’s theatrical energy and vision.

A Taste of Honey pivots around school-aged Josephine (Jo) and her mother Helen. Kate O'Flynn is Jo, giving a career defining performance that portrays the feisty girl who has never been shown maternal love, from petulant teenager through to the brink of motherhood. O'Flynn is at once naive, worldly and coquette. When her mother is besotted with latest suitor Peter, it is Jo‘s radar that detects the man is a serial cheating womaniser. When Jo does ultimately find an unconditional love from gay friend Geoffrey, O'Flynn's handling of her affection for the young man avoids all mawkish sentimentality. Hers is a complex role and in one of the finest performances currently to be found in London, she masters Jo's challenges superbly.

Lesley Sharp is Helen. Bitter and hard, more concerned with having a man in her arms than her daughter's welfare. Sharp is an expert foil to O'Flynn's teenage angst and her desperate love for her dishonest boyfriend could almost be pitiful. Delaney however is too smart to allow us any sympathy for the self-centred harridan and her final act of selfish cruelty towards her daughter is heart-breaking. 

The support given by Harry Hepple's gold-hearted Geoffrey to the pregnant Jo has moments of true pathos, whilst Dean Lennox Kelly makes Peter every inch the drunken manipulative spiv. Jimmie, the father of Jo's child is a black sailor, fecklessly home on shore leave. The play is famed for addressing the issue of British racism at the time with the challenges that Jo will soon face as the white mother of a black child, yet these are only hinted at during the second act and the play’s unsatisfactory conclusion tests the limits of plausibility. That’s the only flaw mind, for otherwise Delaney’s writing is spot on. Eric Kofi Abrefa could make more of Jimmie. He recently shone in the National's The Amen Corner and Kofi Abrefa has more in the tank that can lift the seaman free of the cliché he currently suggests.

The back to back housing of a rain drenched industrial Manchester is cleverly evoked in Hildegard Bechtler’s design with a striking curtain image setting the scene pre-show. Our nation has moved on in 56 years. Illegitimacy is acceptable and though racism and homophobia still flourish in some quarters, much has been done to broaden the country’s attitudes towards diversity. A Taste Of Honey represents quality writing of a bygone era, with a memorable performance from O’Flynn. The NT would do well to send this one on tour, the regions deserve to see it.

Now booking until May 11th 2014

The Amen Corner

National Theatre, London

*****

Written by James Baldwin

Directed by Rufus Norris

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

The Amen Corner at the National Theatre is a remarkable comment upon the lives of an African American community in 1953 Harlem. Rufus Norris’ interpretation of James Baldwin's play with music weaves a beautiful gospel lilt upon this scrutiny of a small church, its pastor, her family and the community elders. Whilst never leaving the claustrophobic confines of the church and Pastor Margaret Alexander's modest apartment, Baldwin dares to question the duplicity of religious fervour and amidst a background of a nascent Civil Rights push and with an all black cast, shows that hatred exists everywhere, not just amongst racist white folk.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste is Margaret. A single mother who following the infant death of her first child fled the the errant ways of Luke her alcoholic musician husband, gathering up her young son and donning the cloth as pastor to a committed if somewhat cynical city flock. Margaret's commitment to her faith is unquestioning. She makes decisions that are at times unpalatable, and Jean-Baptiste embodies her with such subtlety and also such passion, that we come to discover that in her world, faith has a dark side. It has provided her with a mechanism to deny much of life's ugliness and pain and further, Baldwin suggests that it has also served as a possible opiate to too many of the black community, dulling any sense of justified rebellion against the appalling racism that they were subject to through much of the 20th century,

Sharon D Clarke is Margaret's wise all seeing sister Odessa. Clarke is surely the grand-dame (and one day a deserved Dame?) of Britain's black acting community. Her fierceness combined with a compassionate protection of her sibling, offers a supporting role of strength and beauty whilst less well known Cecilia Noble turns in another masterful performance as a church elder who slowly sheds her early comic turn of virginity and bible bashing faux-purity, to reveal a malevolence of hatred and bitterness.

A surprise return of the estranged and dying Luke (Lucian Msamati) to the apartment questions all that Margaret has sought to hold dear for many years, and whilst Luke's lifestyle of wine, women and sin is anathema to the pastor, he provides the inspiration to their 18 year old musician son David, (yet another cracking performance, this time from newcomer Eric Kofi Abrefa) to quit the ghetto, free his spirit and make strides that are clearly signalled will influence the burgeoning demands of the Civil Rights movement.

Baldwin's writing is poetically profound and searching. If Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman highlighted the creaking gaps and flaws in the American Dream, then take the image of that play’s broken Willy Loman, re-write him as an African American woman and there emerges a strong argument to suggest that Margaret Alexander's story is as harsh a take on the realities of the black community’s strengths and battles as well as its flaws and failings.

The musical background to the work is impressive. The London Community Gospel Choir adding melodic brilliance to the The Reverend Bazil Meades arrangements, whilst Ian MacNeil's detailed set, split to show both church and apartment is another example of the timeless versatility of the Olivier stage. The final scene of passionate but cruelly heartless communal gospel singing, contrasted with Margaret's grief as she confronts her devastating personal loss, will break your heart.