Making Marilyn - Review

Horatio’s Bar, Brighton

***

Written by Julie Burchill & Dan Raven

Directed by Carole Todd

Making Marilyn that played for three nights at the Brighton Fringe this week, is the fusion of some remarkable writing combined with one of the more outstanding performances to have been seen this year.

Suzie Kennedy is Marilyn Monroe in Julie Burchill and Dan Raven’s play that gives a voice to one of the most enigmatic women of the 20th century.

The plot projects Marilyn into a dialogue set in the modern era and through Burchill’s incisive analysis, offers us the chance to hear Monroe give her take on her tragically short life, reflecting on her achievements and her experience of exploitation. Set against what the #MeToo movement has highlighted about Hollywood, Monroe’s words offer much to contemplate - and Kennedy’s performance in both sound and appearance, is astonishing. As the star remarks that she was “better at being a personality than a person” there is much to reflect upon, and her coruscating critique of Elton John’s Candle In The Wind is brilliant.

The play’s underlying vehicle however is creaky. Two time-travellers from 2024 (Josh and Candy, played by Luke O’Dell and Kirsty Brewster-Brown) are sent back to the 1960s to collect a sample of Monroe’s DNA to bring back to the future so that replicant Marilyns can be cloned for today’s rich and powerful. Candy is perhaps the more interesting of the pair with Josh’s character proving ham-fisted, weighed down with too many clumsy references to his onanistic adulation of Monroe.

Think H.G.Wells meets Back To The Future, combined with The Boys From Brazil but lacking that trio’s carefully crafted approach to science fiction. The evening offers an overly ambitious storyline that ultimately defies credibility, letting our suspended disbelief crash to the floor as the narrative cries out for the nuclear-powered intensity of Doc Brown’s flux capacitor.

The play needs a lot of work. But Burchill and Raven’s interpretation of Monroe is little short of genius and in Suzie Kennedy’s voicing of the star, all three have truly been making Marilyn.

Awful People - Review

Latest Music Bar, Brighton

****

Written by Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven

Directed by Carole Todd

Joseph White, Temisis Conway, Seth Morgan and Deborah Kearne in rehearsal

Awful People is the latest play from Julie Burchill - this time co-authored with husband Daniel Raven - that proves to be a morality tale for our time.

India (Deborah Kearne) and Aonghas, pronounced Seamus, (Seth Morgan) are a bitterly estranged couple in early middle age who are nonetheless still pooling their creative talents together in the vain hope of penning a rap version of The Wind in the Willows. Their infertility, recently addressed by IVF, has seen them become late-onset parents to offstage toddler twins. 

While Aonghas lives in a nearby flat, India shares her comfortably appointed home with Galyna (Temisis Conway) a Ukrainian refugee who she has billeted in the room next door to the kitchen and tasked not just with the household’s domestic chores, but also with providing care to the toddlers.

Both Aonghas and Guardian reading India are fleshed out as grotesques and while their callous Class A drug-addled existence may at times verge on the caricature, there are piercing moments of clarity that define Burchill’s ability to skewer these chattering (il)liberal metropolitans with their own hypocrisies. When late in the play Galyna reveals that she is a qualified doctor and India exclaims “You never told us”, the Ukrainian’s reply is brilliantly devastating: “You never asked”.

Completing the quartet of players is Joseph White as Gideon, a Deliveroo motorcyclist. Born in Britain but of Nigerian descent, Gideon has been brought up with a strong Christian ethic and an equally firm moral code. From a poor background, and having lost a brother to drug-running violence, (possibly having delivered drugs to Aonghas in the past), Gideon’s take on the world is wise and measured and his scorn for Aonghas, to whom he is delivering a smashed avocado sandwich, is palpable. 

Aonghas and India view immigrant communities as being there to serve them on low wages. Gideon and Galyna however, having experienced the harshness of life’s knocks, bring a more sanguine take on society and view with contempt the virtue signalling of their patrician patrons. Gideon describes divorce as a “disease of the affluent” and comments, with chilling perception, of the likelihood of the twins growing up into arrogant replicants of their parents.

As Aonghas behaves with a casual misogyny, so does India express an Emma Thompson-like contempt for the UK “Another day, another reason to hate this miserable island” with both of them spitting sneerful Remoaning contempt at the ruin and inconvenience brought to them by Brexit. It is the youthful Gideon and Galyna who rise to become the adults of this piece.

At around 75 minutes, the play is short and (bitter) sweet. All 4 performers turn in assured work, deftly directed by Carole Todd and wrapped up at the end with an unexpected but gorgeously sung solo from Conway. 

Only on for a tiny run in Brighton’s Fringe Festival and coming in with visibly low running costs, Awful People deserves a wider audience as there are millions across the country to whom Burchill and Raven’s words will resonate with truth. The work is crying out for a British theatre (either London or regional) to stage this provocative piece.

Runs until 25th May

Goodbye Easy Street - Review

Vout-O-Reenee's, London

****

Lyrics and book by Julie Burchill

Music by Robin Watt

Additional dialogue and lyrics by Jim Owen and Daniel Raven

Goodbye Easy Street, Julie Burchill’s new musical, made its debut in the capital at the intimate Vout O Renee’s club on the fringes of the City of London. Burchill’s first iteration of the show, Hard Times On Easy Street had played in Brighton earlier this year. Since then she has taken a sharp pencil to her prose and the result is a slicker, tighter, wittier show.

Featuring a cast of just two, Deborah Kearne and Temisis Conway return as Elle and Anna, two former nightclub singers now the resident turns on a cruise liner. Both in love with each other, the younger bisexual Anna is taking the cruise gig to escape her unrequited love for gay club manager Otto. The worldy-wise Elle has a far more sanguine view of the world. Together however, the pair’s relationship is passionate, credible and fuelled by sharply-tongued banter

In stripping her original show down to the two women only, Burchill’s scripting scalpel re-arranges her earlier love triangle into a far more plausible parallelogram. The interval has been ditched too with the whole piece coming in at just under the hour. Best of all, away from the original over-complicated structure, this simple little love story allows Burchill’s wit to take flight. She’s a gifted writer and her lyrics and dialogue sizzle with sexual frisson and just a hint of political edginess too.

Early on in the show Conway stuns with the numbers Lazy Kind Of Love and Incorrigible You, with Kearne soaring in Speculate To Accumulate. There is a hint of Gershwin in Conway’s There For You, while the pair’s endgame duet of Let’s Be Selfish /Self Care sparkles in its wit and rhythm.

Burchill’s amassed years of premier league writing are on display throughout the piece – her understanding of sex and relationships is blistering, making her points through the most economic use of English. Elle speaks of having had her past love life “fringed by crime tape” – a fabulous metaphor!

Burchill’s Woke-sceptic and staunchly feminist take on the world blaze through this show that demands a bigger audience.

Hard Times on Easy Street - Review

Latest Music Bar, Brighton

***

Music by Robin Watt

Lyrics and book by Julie Burchill

Directed by Seth Morgan

Hard Times on Easy Street marks a brave foray into the world of musical theatre from writer Julie Burchill. A paean to Brighton, the city that she has made her home for 25 years, Burchill’s show is set in a nightclub and for this week, is performed immersively at Brighton's  Latest Music Bar venue.

Middle-aged Otto (Matt Wright) has owned and run his Easy Street nightclub for years. Resident diva Elle (Deborah Kearne) is as wise she is weary for her 50 years, when bustling into their lives comes 20-something Anna (Temisis Conway) who’s auditioning to be the new chanteuse. Joseph White completes the Easy Street team as bouncer Precious.

We learn that Otto is gay with an unseen long-term partner.  Anna is virginal and fancies Otto, while lesbian Elle can barely keep her hands off the younger girl. When bisexual Rory (Seth Morgan), a man with a murky past and a ruthless corporate and sexual appetite who is eager to buy Easy Street, appears on the scene there are moments of menace and exploitation that pierce the otherwise halcyon idyll of the club trio’s curious triangle. Burchill certainly manages to tick off L,G,B and Straight from the checklist of today’s lexicon of love and if some of her dialogue is a tad cheesy, her acerbic look at some of today’s common hypocrisies, for example society’s more tolerant (blind-eyed even) attitude to same-sex predation, makes for a refreshing perspective in the world of new musical theatre writing.

The music is brilliant. Robin Watt, an accomplished saxophonist who alongside Michael Edmonds on guitar plays live each night, has penned a score that’s heavy on jazz and R&B. It’s a delight to listen to, with some numbers, particularly Otto's Incorrigible You sounding as though they could have been lifted straight from the American Songbook.

Currently standing at around two 45 minute acts with a 15 minute interval, if some of the writing were pruned and the interval dropped, it would make for a punchier one-act piece. The songs are deliciously tight though and with a sharper pencil and a venue that’s easier on the neck-strain than the Latest’s head-swivelling sightlines, this could be the genesis of quite a show.

Runs until May 23rd

Welcome To The Woke Trials - Review

*****

Julie Burchill’s Welcome To The Woke Trials is a brave and excoriating critique of today’s Woke-culture that seeks, via political correctness and the power of the social-media massed mob, to upend so many traditionally held conventions. The book’s journey to publication has proved a woke-war in itself, with two publishers in turn choosing to sign contracts with Burchill before cowardly reneging on their commitments, but two years on from its inception all credit to Academica Press for having the commercial cojones to bring Burchill’s work to an audience. Indeed, such is the toxic nature of today’s wokery that even as this review was being initially compiled, so were Facebook suspending their sharing of Quentin Letts’ review of the book that had already been published in The Times. Truly, sadly, deeply, life is imitating art.

Burchill comments in the book that the delay in publication has ultimately proved to her advantage in that she has been able to “end with an up-to-date roll-call  of  the  Woke  lunacy that  has  taken place  between 2019 and the autumn of  2021,  as  I  write  this” and in that respect the book is bang up to date. That being said of course, the Woke Wars are incessant and post the publication of Burchill’s work, Professor Kathleen Stock’s conflict with the University of Sussex and an even more recent free-speech battle between columnist Rod Liddle and the University of Durham, both events that could easily have fueled another of Burchill’s chapters, have grabbed the headlines.

Burchill’s work is thorough throughout, proving to be both entertaining and educational in equal measure. Her research has been meticulous and as she bravely exposes the hypocrisies of the latter-day puritans of Woke, the book becomes a very bloody abattoir of sacred cows. Hollywood and its spawning of the #MeToo movement, that had so complicity turned a blind-eye to Weinstein for decades, is tackled. Likewise does Burchill take to task the assault on the feminist movement from the transsexual lobby.

Antisemitism and its myopic accompanist of islamophilia is scrutinised, while elsewhere in the book some of Burchill’s most blistering critiques are levelled at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their de-camping to California, described intuitively by Burchill as “The Grabdication”. Perhaps her most powerfully painful comments of all are those that focus on the elitist dismissal of the working class in a chapter exquisitely titled The Wrong Kind Of Diversity.

At times hilarious, at other times bleak. Burchill acknowledges her sources and offers us a devastatingly honest portrait of our times. Typos abound - but given the book’s fraught journey to reach the shelves, they can be forgiven.

Rarely is a work of socio-political comment such a damn good read. An essential volume for anyone interested in considering both sides of a debate.

Available from good booksellers and online via Amazon and most usual channels.

People Like Us - Review

Union Theatre, London


****


Written by Julie Burchill and Jane Robins
Directed by Ben De Wynter

Sarah Toogood and Gemma-Germaine

Like a long overdue gust of fresh air blown into the stale politicised bubble that has become London’s arts scene, People Like Us, a debut play from the writing partnership of Julie Burchill and Jane Robins, upends the politically correct canards that have stifled decent debate in the capital for years.

Set around an Islington book group of five friends, most of whose relationships date back to their Oxford years, the fault lines are very quickly exposed between the trio who with varying degrees of passion support Remain and their two Leave believing buddies.

Ralph, with a house in Provence and a younger (second) French wife Clemence are, unsurprisingly, Remainers and upping the ante even further, Clemence is employed by an EU agency. And then there’s Will, a nice enough novelist who, while he canvases for Remain, espousing the intellectual virtues of a London liberal, is still socially, if not politically, impaled on his very personal fence post. 

Leading the charge of democracy are Stacey and Frances whose belief in the Brexit cause appalls Clemence and Ralph. Where Robins has constructed the play’s skeleton, it is Burchill who has fleshed out most of the dialogue and lashing out at London's litterati and chatterati, she takes no prisoners. Ralph’s liberal tolerance is mocked by Frances, while Clemence argues tellingly and, on reflection chillingly, that it is “morally better to silence dissent”. There’s an interesting nod from Frances to Islamic complexities too, an angle that may have the more sensitive critics throwing their hands up in horror, but her sentiments, when viewed through the prism of Rochdale and Rotherham carry more of a resonance than many would be comfortable admitting.

Kamaal Hussain captures Ralph’s privileged entitlement as Marine Andre makes her impassioned UK debut as Clemence. The intensity behind Andre’s performance is sincere and credible - but there are moments when her strong and natural accent renders some of the text inaudible. Gemma-Germaine and Sarah Toogood capture the indignity of their position, ostracised by Ralph and Clemence - and while, for the sake of artistic licence all the character’s arguments are slightly lampooned and exaggerated by the writers, the two Leavers make a powerfully cogent case. Paul Giddings’ Will is a cracking turn that could easily have been inspired by Chicago’s Mr Cellophane.

The silencing and politically dehumanising of Leavers in London has been a recognisable trait of the last three years - and whilst the play is unquestionably a rough diamond that still needs work on both script and aspects of the staging too - for the most part the writers and producers are to be commended for taking their argument to the capital, the ideological heartland of the nation’s Remain constituency.

This is unquestionably a courageous, partisan show for the Union to stage - and there is as much thought put into the production as there is heart, with the programme alone containing more than six pages of essay and comment on Brexit. And if ever there was an example of fortune favouring the brave then this is it: the show has sold out for its entire run and deservedly so.

While People Like Us may be unusual fodder for a West End transfer, there is already talk of a run being staged in the nation’s North East. It would sit well in a TV treatment too.

Runs until 20th October - SOLD OUT
Photo credit: Paul Nicholas Dyke

Jane Robins talks about People Like Us

Jane Robins

As Brexit remains headline news across the country People Like Us, a new comedy from writers Julie Burchill and Jane Robins, examines how this polarisation of political opinion has cut a swathe through friendships and families. Opening next week at London's Union Theatre, the play is about the impact of Brexit upon the members of a suburban book group. 

I caught up with Jane Robins in the closing days of rehearsals for a brief conversation.

JB:    Jane, how much of the script is drawn from personal experience?

JR:    Some of it has happened to me – I was very publicly shamed on Facebook for instance when I posted some links to articles that were saying actually it wasn't really so bad, referencing job gains that were being reported in the City of London since the referendum.

I quickly found myself unfriended very publicly, there was a moralistic tone in the air and I learned (from other friends) that some people had formed the view: "we thought she was a nice person and now she turns out to be really bad".

In the view of some of my friends it was almost immoral to vote Leave and I've certainly experienced people wanting to keep me at arm’s length because of it.

Feeling a little sore, I was drawn to the first meeting of Leavers of London. I had seen on Twitter that a young woman, Lucy Harris, had posted something along the lines of: "Did you vote Leave and now feel a bit isolated? Come and meet up for a drink."

So I went along (it turned out I was the first to arrive that evening and I've since become great friends with Lucy) and lots of people turned up. Really bright, interesting people from all backgrounds, and on both the Left and the Right politically. A lot of them were (are) working in creative industries or in fields like teaching or in public services and commented how they just were unable to say at work that they voted Leave.

There were lots of stories, individual stories, that people told about how difficult it was for them -  and that's how the idea for the play began. I'd lived in London most of my life and had never thought that something like this could happen. I thought we took it for granted that we trusted our friends and that we didn't cut them off because of the way they had voted on something.

JB:    How did you and Julie Burchill find each other?

JR:    We first met on Facebook through a mutual friend and a posted article that both Julie and I had “liked”. From there, we became Facebook friends. When the idea came to me to write this play. I thought I could do it but that it would take me at least a couple of years and I just don't have the time for that with my day job as a novelist. I've always admired Julie's writing and her exuberance, the way that she provokes and challenges amaze me.

So I said to her “I'm thinking of writing a play, can I come down to Brighton and talk to you about it?” She then invited me along to a lunch she was having with friends and as I walked into the bar of the Hotel Du Vin I think within 30 seconds I had asked her to be my co-author! She called for the champagne menu and it was the start, as they say, of a beautiful friendship.

I live in London, she lives in Brighton and over about 18 months we have worked very professionally – we didn't see each other at all during the whole writing of the play. I'd already got everything mapped out in terms of the characters and the structure of the play and how I saw it. That's the sort of stuff, especially structure, that Julie doesn't enjoy. What she loves to do is dialogue.

And so I would write each scene in a rough way, doing some of the dialogue and basic mapping and then send it off to Julie and she would just wave her magic wand all over it, bring it to life and send it back to me for editing.

JB:    What do you expect the reaction to the play to be when it opens in London next month?

JR:    I genuinely have no idea at all. I think that Remainers could come to the play and really like it and think it's very funny. Or there might be completely the opposite reaction because a lot of the jokes are about “people who go to the theatre”. We could've dug our own grave with that, I just don't know.

Many scripts make fun of the chattering classes. We've done it because everything's so deeply personal at the minute and I don't know whether people are going to take it benignly and enjoy it, or get bristly.

Part of me thinks that the hard core “Remain community” are very touchy but it’s not that way and, to be fair, it's not most people either. My sister voted Remain, as did my brother-in-law and half my family and they’ve enjoyed the play. I think it's only a sliver of society who have become sort of hysterical, but it's very hard now to know.

Above all, the play is about friendship. We’ve not gone into all those sort of, pros and cons of Brexit at great lengths. We could have done, but I think the pacing is all about democracy. And I believe that's what a lot of Leavers think and a lot of Remainers just can't see. There's a blindness there and they don't see why leaving the EU is important to so many people.

JB:    Do you feel there's a timeliness to the play with all that's going on right now, as the Chequers furore leads into the parties' conference season?

JR:    Definitely! All the time in the process of writing the play and getting it put on, it felt enormously timely and you might think that you could have written something about Brexit and a year and two year after the boat it would no longer be that relevant but I think it's more relevant than ever. Things haven't died down at all, they're still raging.

JB:    Has it been a challenge to stage the play in London?

JB:    Sasha Regan at the Union Theatre has been great, as has Ben de Wynter who is also directing. And the cast and creatives too, irrespective of their own personal views, are really putting their hearts into the production. It's extraordinarily exciting!

JB:    What do you hope the play will achieve?

JR:    A good night out. I think the number one duty is for people to come and have a great time and to laugh.

People Like Us runs at the Union Theatre from October 2nd to the 20th. For tickets, book here.