Allegra - Review

Richmond Theatre, London

****

Written by Peter Quilter

Directed and choregraphed by Stephen Mear

Maureen Lipman

In a play that will touch the hearts of many, Maureen Lipman plays Allegra, a woman of senior years who, through conditions that are unstated in the script but clearly recognisable, is losing her connection with the world around her. Frequently disappearing into her own private world of song, it matters not whether dementia or Alzheimer’s is her diagnosis, rather that Allegra is a woman of remarkable mental energy who is finding her world increasingly confusing.

Quilter offers three foils to Allegra’s vivacity: her brother Ronen (John Middleton), her Czech carer Anna (Elizabeth Bower), and PC Rogers (Bailey Patrick) the local cop who’s tasked with challenging Allegra over her singing that has been complained about as a public nuisance.

The strength of Quilter’s writing lies in its deliberately unsophisticated charm. The action as it plays out is simply defined, in a dialogue peppered with neatly timed gags that all land perfectly. Throw in a liberal measure of songs that stretch back over the years - and how Allegra, who may not remember that she had only seen her brother barely two hours ago, but can remember lyrics and tunes that date back decades - and one realises the perceptive depth of Peter Quilter’s script.

There are hints of Quilter’s Glorious! - about Florence Foster Jenkins - in the story, as well as a hint of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest as Allegra reluctantly subjects herself to the medication imposed upon her by the Court.

More than just the writing however, it is Lipman who takes this story of simple charm, lifting it into an evening of simply stated drama, that’s also rather wonderfully sung. In a performance of powerfully poignant presence and poise, she captures not only Allegra’s comic eccentricities but, almost heartbreakingly, her fragile vulnerabilities too.

The musical backing may be prerecorded, but Lipman’s singing, often a-capella, is thrillingly glorious, truly live, and possibly one of the finest performances to be found. That the lyrics of Take Me Out To The Ball Game are also projected on screen, encouraging an audience singalong, only adds to the evening’s magic.

Stephen Mear directs his first play (albeit one with music and some neat choreography of course) and he has helmed a hit, unlocking a beautifully nuanced story of simple humanity.

Prepare to laugh and cry - Allegra is exquisitely crafted theatre.

Runs until 13th June, then on tour before playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Rose - Review

Ambassadors Theatre, London

***

Written by Martin Sherman

Directed by Scott Le Crass

Maureen Lipman

Maureen Lipman delivers a flawless performance in Martin Sherman’s fictional Rose, a play drawn from the experiences of his grandparents. Over two acts and two and a half hours, Lipman performs a monologue that charts the path of diaspora Jewry through the 20th century.

Set in 2000, the narrative sees Rose looking back upon her life. Born in a shtetl in the Ukraine in 1920, she was to experience Cossack pogroms and then the inhuman horror of the Holocaust that was to see her witness the shooting of her nine-year-old daughter by the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto. Escaping Europe and making her way on to the Exodus, bound for Palestine, Sherman is rightly unforgiving in his description of the harshness of the British rule over mandated Palestine and the accompanying hostilities shown by UK forces towards Jewish refugees.

The second act sees Rose build a life with the second of her three husbands, with Sherman offering up a description of the post-war American Jewish experience that will likely resonate with much of the play’s transatlantic audience. So far, so good, with the playwright having crafted a magnum opus in addressing the history that his writing has encompassed.

The wheels fall off in the monologue’s closing phase, as Rose equates Israel’s modern day actions in the West Bank with the Nazis' extermination of the Jews. This is a poorly argued conflation that offers a shallow and dangerous interpretation of a complex situation. It no doubt suits Sherman’s political agenda to promote this analysis, but as a historical comment his conclusion debases the preceding 90 minutes of brilliance.

Maureen Lipman’s performance of Rose is magnificent. Sherman’s writing however is ultimately found to fail to match her excellence.

Runs until 18th June

The Knowledge - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

****

Written by Jack Rosenthal

Adapted for the stage by Simon Block

Directed by Maureen Lipman

Steven Pacey and Fabian Frankel

Jack Rosenthal’s BAFTA-nominated  screenplay of The Knowledge was a gem of a 1970’s television movie. The most routine facets of life, in Rosenthal’s hands, could become perfectly portrayed vignettes, as he transformed the recognisable into the bitter-sweet hilarious.

The titular knowledge is famously what is required to become a licensed London black-cab driver, a process so demanding that 70% of hopeful candidates fail to make the grade. This is hardly surprising as those who pass will, over a period of a year or two (that is, for the fast learners) have committed to memory the nigh on 15,000 streets that sit within a 6 mile radius of Charing Cross. Of equal importance, they will also have convinced their examiner that they have the patience and strength of character to deal with the full range of humanity that could, at any point in time, end up in the back of their cab. Rosenthal’s genius lay in not only recognising that “doing” the knowledge was a massive feat of memory, but that it also impacted upon the would-be cabbies’ domestic lives.

Above all, within his cast, Rosenthal created the most brilliantly tyrannical of examiners in Mr Burgess. A finely scripted, complex character, capable of the most sadistic of pedantries yet also, ultimately, caring for the overall good of the taxi trade. Mr Burgess ranks alongside some of that decade's finest dramatic creations.  

Remember too that the original screenplay was written at a time when the internet (let alone Uber) was barely heard of. There is much talk today of the cheaper and far less regulated online service threatening the licensed cab trade. Those fears are probably valid and with this adaptation, The Knowledge does a fine job in reminding us of the asset London has in it’s black-cab drivers.

The play is directed by Maureen Lipman who not only featured in the 1979 film, but was married to Rosenthal until his untimely death in 2004 and rarely has a task been undertaken that is such a labour of love. Lipman makes a decent job of her late-husband’s material, supported by a strong cast of well fleshed out caricatures. James Alexandreou puts in a strong turn as a feckless womanizer, caring as little for wife Brenda (Celine Abrahams, in the role played on TV by Lipman) as he does for his taxi studies. Fabian Frankel is a well acted Chris – an intellectually challenged young lad who struggles with the gargantuan task of mastering London’s geography.

Famously, Rosenthal had an innate understanding of the Jewish community, many of whom work in the taxi trade. Ben Caplan’s Ted , a third generation cabby captures both the man’s passion as well as his nebbish qualities in equal measure – though it is Jenna Augen as his wife Val, who so brilliantly nails the angst-ridden Jewish mother and wife. Lipman played a memorably interfering Jewish matriarch “Beattie”, in a 1980s ad campaign for BT. With Rosenthal’s creation of Val, one can see from where she may have drawn her inspiration.

The finest contribution of the night comes from Steven Pacey’s Burgess. It was Nigel Hawthorne who played the role in 1979 (with ITV’s The Knowledge just preceding the BBC’s Yes, Minister onto the nation’s TV screens). Pacey thus has massive shoes to fill and he makes the role his own. Onstage throughout – on a raised platform representing his office, a device that proves surprisingly effective - he delivers a vocal wit and physical presence that convinces us at all times of his compassionate power over the fledgling drivers.

For the most part the evening is a warm and entertaining night out. The politics may be mild and dated, but the fondness that Rosenthal (a Mancunian by birth) felt towards his capital city is there in every line. The Knowledge is a gorgeous period piece with a lavish programme (highly recommended) that is chock full of recollections and current day comparisons.

If you love Seventies culture, you’ll love this show.

Runs until November 11th

Photo credit: Scott Rylander

My Mother Said I Never Should - Review

St James Theatre, London

****

Written by Charlotte Keatley

Directed by Paul Robinson

Katie Brayben

There's a pain and beauty to this first London revival of My Mother Said I Never Should in nearly 30 years that is, at times, quite devastating.

Like a ride on a fairground waltzer, Charlotte Keatley's narrative spins us around and through four generations of Doris Partington's family. Her scenes jump between the years, playing out the evolution of female emancipation in post-war England. 

Keatley's writing is finely honed. She has crafted a (subtly updated) play that is as much a commentary upon Britain's social history as it is a study of four women. There may be a timelessness to the challenges of a loveless marriage, but whilst Maureen Lipman's Doris weathered 61 years of wedlock, confessing on her husband's death that "I don't think we liked each other very much", daughter Margaret sees her own marriage fail in middle-age in the 1980s, whilst granddaughter Jackie faces her own teenage, agonising compromise following the unplanned birth of her daughter Rosie.

Lipman heads a quartet that must surely represent one of the finest ensembles in town. In a play that explores the power and the bind of motherhood, Keatley's characters are stoic. Lipman's brings a measured wisdom and a quiet wounded pain to Doris. All seeing and all knowing, she seasons the morsels of wit that Keatley has sprinkled with a perfect nuance, capturing our affection and respect.

Katie Brayben as Jackie has a first half that could be likened to “Fantine's back story”. Her pain as mother Margaret takes Rosie to raise as her own is a masterclass in understated agony. And it's not just the acting too that is so brilliant - it is Keatley's brutally honest text. Unlike Fantine these women aren’t heroines of grand literature. Fictitious yes, but played out against the suburbs of Manchester and Croydon, they are a part of all our lives.

Caroline Faber's Margaret faces her own agonies. Supporting her daughter, loving and raising her granddaughter and ultimately deserted by her husband, she brings a resonant cadence to her speeches. And then there's Serena Manteghi's gorgeous Rosie. In the early scenes, when the stage-baby is simply a mass of swaddling, Manteghi sits stage right, gurgling and cooing and (brilliantly) giving vocal life to the linen. As she grows into adolescence we forget that the actor's an adult. Manteghi captures Rosie’s childhood without cliché and as the inevitable denouement looms, her pain is refreshingly free of melodrama.

Paul Robinson directs with sensitivity as Simon Slater's sound and music enhance proceedings, with the production marking an impressive debut by producers Tiny Fires. 

Go see this play – the acting is sensational.

Runs until 21st May

Photo credit: Alex Harvey-Brown

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

Daytona - Theatre Review

Park Theatre, London

****

Written by Oliver Cotton
Directed by David Grindley

John Bowe and Harry Shearer

Daytona is a cleverly crafted tale of love amidst denial and despair. A play that never leaves the 1986 Brooklyn apartment of Joe and Elli, married septuagenarians with a passion for ballroom dancing, lives lived almost to the full, with happinesses and tragedies amassed over the years. Theirs is a childless marriage and for all the polite warmth and fondness they show each other in the opening act, there is a pervading sense of sadness and "getting-by" that seems to be being papered over. When Elli leaves to visit a friend who is working on her ball gown, no sooner has she departed then the doorbell sounds and Billy, Joe's brother who has been self-estranged for thirty years arrives bedraggled. The tale that then unfolds is remarkable, gripping and above all, sensational yet still remaining credible.We learn that the all three characters are Holocaust survivors and that Billy whilst holidaying in Florida the previous week, had recognised an elderly concentration camp guard and war criminal whom he thought had long since been executed. 

The plot unfolds but never unravels and to reveal too much would be to spoil. Suffice to say that Oliver Cotton has written a piece of remarkable sensitivity, throwing complex family dynamics into the harshest of spotlights, whilst also laying bare the damage that the Holocaust caused to the minds of so many who survived its horrors.

Harry Shearer is Joe, who for the most part plays a weary Brooklynese accountant, getting by in managing his demons. Initially little more than a dramatic foil to his wife and brother, it is in the final act, when his demons run amok, that his performance as a man who admits to a lifetime of domestic denial is delicately fleshed out. 

Maureen Lipman is Elli. Her journey since the War is perhaps the most painful to hear of. Emotionally vulnerable in her youth and clearly scarred from enduring so much pain, hers has been the journey back from mental illness. Lipman's dialogs with both brothers, that start mundanely but which crescendo to agonising accusations and revelations, are heart breaking.

Maureen Lipman

The tour de force performance of the night though rests with John Bowe’s Billy. A man who has built the last 30 years of his life around a framework of lies and of a total denial of his past, yet who ultimately finds within himself a resolve of massive strength, that leads him to commit a crime of honourable recklessness. The role is draining, with monologues recounting Billy's life that are relentless, yet Bowe marches through both acts of the play with an admirable defiance. His is surely one of the finest performances to be found on a London stage this year.

David Grindley's pinpoint direction picks apart the subtleties of the human condition, whilst Cotton's writing at times echoes the scalpel like incisiveness of Arthur Miller. Daytona is a fine study on love, self-discovery, and above all, a glorious albeit damaged sense of survival that emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. A play that should not be missed.

Runs until August 18th and then on tour

Old Money - Review

Hampstead Theatre, London

****

Written by Sarah Wooley

Directed by Terry Johnson

Maureen Lipman in rehearsal for Old Money

Old Money is a new play by Sarah Wooley. Encompassing three (with an unseen fourth) generations of a south London family, it considers growing old (dis)/gracefully and throws several family relationships under the microscope, in a play that is very good (in parts) and is skilfully directed by Terry Johnson

Central to the piece is Maureen Lipman’s Joyce who we meet, together with her mother, daughter and son in law, at the funeral of her just deceased husband of 40 odd years. Joyce is proud to be the same age as Paul McCartney, Jean Shrimpton et al and as the story unfolds, it is clear that she has been the subject of repression and enforced emotional denial throughout her adult life. She talks wistfully of an affair she had whilst a teenager with a married neighbour, as being the happiest years of her life and when we learn in act 2 of her resentment of the fact that her late husband actually selected her wedding dress, we get a glimpse of the extent to which he had been a controlling individual and how those around her had continually sought to smother her spark of character. Condemned to suburbia but yearning for the city, upon achieving widowhood Joyce forays occasionally into London, where stopping at a pub for some refreshment, she stumbles across Candy, a young stripper and single mother, with whom she strikes up the most inspiring of friendships. Played by Nadia Clifford, Candy positively fizzes with a Facebook fuelled energy of modern youth in a performance that is a charming foil to the older woman’s quirky discovery of independence. Miss Lipman’s performance however is nothing short of remarkable and in Joyce, Wooley has created a heroine that inspires and commands our sympathy. Such is Lipman’s expert craft that this gently ageing woman becomes a character whom we find ourselves passionately caring for and cheering on her journey.

Timothy Watson is Graham, the workshy musician married to Joyce’s careerist daughter Fiona, played by Tracy-Ann Oberman. In a familiar scenario, Fiona likes to spend whilst Graham cannot earn and their dependence upon Joyce’s cash, whilst being ever so recognisable, is a plot line too thinly fleshed out by Wooley. Similarly, their eagerness to move into Joyce’s home as theirs is repossessed is again a clichéd mechanism. Whilst Oberman’s performance and the challenges she encounters are real, the dialog afforded her frequently lacks credibility and depth.

In his poem This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin wrote the now much quoted line, “They f**k you up, your mum and dad, They may not mean to, but they do”.  Few people however are familiar with the second verse, that opens, “But they were f**ked up in their turn, By old style fools in hats and coats” nor with the third and final verse that commences “Man hands on misery to man….” Larkin's famous words are a bitter reflection on the failures of parenting, and suggest that the cycle repeats itself through the generations. With Old Money, Wooley seeks to argue that the premise of Larkin’s first two stanzas is correct, but by providing Lipman's character with an ultimate escape to a life of freedom and expression, Joyce's own treadmill of misery is ended (who cares about the callous, albeit pregnant, Fiona?) in a climax that maybe unbelievably cheesy but is still rather uplifting.

Runs to January 12th