The Ruling Class - Review

Trafalgar Studios, London

*****

Written by Peter Barnes

Directed by Jamie Lloyd

James McAvoy

Director Jamie Lloyd continues to prove a deliciously petulant force in London theatre with productions of The Hothouse, Urinetown and most recently Assassins that have all sought to parody an accepted view of society, government or history. With his new production of Peter Barnes’ The Ruling Class, Lloyd again takes aim at what is shown to be a blatant madness that lies within institutionalised power structures, specifically in this work the control and influence of the English political and moneyed elites.

Barnes 1969 satire displayed a vision for the timelessness of sharp political farce, with The Ruling Class feeling as painfully poignant and relevant amongst today’s New Labour and Cameron’s Bullingdon buddies as it would have done in the Swinging Sixties, yet with moments in the play that resonate with our era’s phone hacking scandal and a ruling “Old Boys” club.

Lloyd again pairs up with James McAvoy, directing the Scottish actor in an unrelenting portrayal of the schizophrenic 14th Earl of Gurney. Mcavoy's performance will have one both crying with laughter and shifting uncomfortably, such is the recognisability of Gurney’s world. As the play progresses it darkens, becoming increasingly disquieting yet enthralling. Gurney’s arc highlights the contrasts of his world, and when he is ultimately brought into the fold of the ruling class, McAvoy offers a truly terrifying reality, performed brilliantly - and thats even without his topless unicycling!

The entire cast’s energy is sensational throughout, with Joshua McGuire in particular continuing to display his talented versatility. And in the event that Barne's carefully crafted irony may have been lost on the audience, a tenet of the play’s message is spelled out in an interjection from Anthony O’Donnell’s butler, Tucker, reminding us that it is 1% of the country owns 50% of the nation's property. A comment that is as relevant today as ever.

In what is fast becoming a recognised double act of theatrical creativity, Lloyd turns to Soutra Gilmour for her distinctive design work. Staged in the Trafalgar Studios, a venue that, in a previous existence as the Whitehall Theatre was famous for farce in the 50’s and 60’s there is a comforting appropriateness in the location. Lloyd however would be appalled should his shows ever be mistaken for comfortable viewing. The Ruling Class is satire at its best, powerfully written and sharply presented. Unmissable.

Runs until 11th April 2015

Amadeus

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer
Directed by Jonathan Church

Rupert Everett as Antonio Salieri

Chichester’s newly restored Festival Theatre is sumptuously graced with chandeliers and a baroque arch. It's a lavish touch from designer Simon Higlett that sets the scene for an exhilarating production of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's intriguing commentary upon Vienna’s Kappellmeister Antonio Salieri whose jealousy of the genius of his young contemporary Mozart tormented the Italian composer throughout his life.

This production is one of those rare trinities of excellence in writing, performance and stagecraft. Rupert Everett, barely offstage throughout, plays the tormented Salieri who we first encounter  infirm and at the end of his days, dementedly raving that his devious machinations some 35 years earlier had led to Mozart's untimely death, impoverished and racked with disease. Everett seamlessly slips between the years of his now senility and the conspiratorial times of his younger self. His is a maestro of mediocrity in a performance that carries the DNA of a latter day Francis Urquhart, cross bred with Shakespeare's Claudius and Iago. One feels no sympathy for Everett’s philanderous Latin, yet we are awed at the persona that he creates.

He has his match in Joshua McGuire's Mozart. Shaffer's research is meticulous, portraying the gifted Austrian as a scatologically obsessed immature with behavioural difficulties. McGuire captures the manic frustration of Mozart's genius, being so bafflingly snubbed at every turn, though as the narrative unfolds we see his resolve harden as he suspects Salieri as the phantom of his operas. McGuire skilfully references the complexities of Mozart’s relationship with his father and in some fabulous scenes defines his desperate, even if deceitful, love for his ever tolerant wife Constanze (another standout performance from Jessie Buckley). Alongside, Jonathan Church assembles a stellar supporting cast that includes Simon Jones who subtly suggests the well-meaning yet inept buffoonery of Austria’s Emperor Joseph II, with John Standing as his shrewd yet meddling censorious courtier Count Rosenberg.   

The re-constructed auditorium is a tribute to all that is excellent in modern theatre. The sightlines and acoustics are perfect, whilst the semi-circular thrust, stepped for this production, allows for an exciting 360° use of the space. Church draws upon a world-class team of creatives for the show. Fotini Dimou's costumes are a confection in themselves that would truly win Salieri's discerning approval, whilst Danuta Barszczewska's wig work is faultless. Amadeus is nothing without its musical backdrop and Matthew Scott’s musical direction (and wonderful fortepiano playing) together with Stephen Mear’s subtly staged choreography complete the journey back to the Age of Enlightenment.

Amadeus is, yet again, a Chichester show worthy of a London transfer or a wider tour. Church and his company provide an unmissable interpretation of one of the 20th century’s greatest English plays.

Runs until 2nd August 2014

Privacy

Donmar Warehouse, London

****

Written by James Gray

Directed by Josie Rourke

Joshua McGuire

The mise en scene to Privacy is a backdrop that slowly fills with fingerprints as more and more audience members connect to the show’s WiFi. The message is clear. We are all leaving digital fingerprints and James Graham’s play seeks to consider how this geometrically expanding volume of recorded data is used and abused. When George Orwell wrote 1984, shortly after World War 2, the society he envisioned was an horrifically portentous nation, in which all information (and even thoughts) was accessible to a totalitarian state. Orwell’s opus was a magnificent work of literary art. But where Orwell composed fiction, Graham’s work is largely based on fact.

Privacy is an exciting play. A pre-show animation, in the style of an airliner’s safety briefing, asks the audience to break with convention and keep their (silenced) smartphones switched on and connected to the theatre’s network. There is a neat joke that asks children to connect their own phones first before helping a struggling adult get theirs on the network.  The play that follows is a presentation of the author’s research into how information is obtained about us and how that information is (ab)/used by the state and exploited by commerce. Graham has been thorough and a large part of the play is taken up with verbatim reproductions of interview text. The play is fascinating and chilling and his combination of excellent acting with revelatory facts about the data that one’s iPhone is continually recording, makes for occasionally electrifying drama. But whilst the verbatim genre may be new to theatre, its style has been around for a long time on TV and there are moments when Privacy seems little more than a live-action episode of Panorama. A slick projection screen enhances the action and graphically indicates how with the UK sitting at a critical junction of most of the world’s fibre-optic data networks, as one character suggests, the UK’s security services are “basically Sky+ing the internet”, a phrase that is mind-boggling in its simplicity.

Factually the play is terrific and it is only when Graham augments his research with creative writing, that the chinks appear. A police shooting of suspected terrorists is given a kitsch Romeo and Juliet parallel that is almost insulting in its naiveté, whilst the plays denouement lacks credibility. Graham also muddles his arguments. Michelle Terry’s perfectly nuanced take on an (anonymised) 16 year-old speaking of the online bullying stemming from the ask.fm social networking site that has led to numerous teenage suicides, was poignant and painful and touched the audience with its implicit tragedy. In shifting his focus towards the Snowden leak of state secrets however, Graham’s points become blurred. Snowden’s actions are not in question, but whether he was a champion of freedom, or alternatively a traitor, is very much a matter of personal and political opinion and Graham’s prose seems too heavily weighted towards defending the actions of The Guardian newspaper in releasing the Snowden files.

The cast of six are all outstanding, seamlessly interweaving between characters (only Joshua McGuire who plays The Writer is granted one role throughout the play) with Gunnar Cauthery’s take on William Hague and Jonathan Coy’s Paddy Ashdown being particularly fine caricatures.

Josie Rourke directs with pace though at times the second half flags. Whilst there may well be more heat than light to Graham’s analysis and at nearly three hours it’s a long haul, for the most part it proves to be entertaining theatre. Innovative and challenging, Graham does not provide many answers in his work, but he will shock you into realising just how many digital fingerprints we are all leaving, everywhere.

Runs to 31st May 2014