Equus - Review

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Toby Stephens and Noah Valentine

Lindsay Posner is back in the saddle at the Menier Chocolate Factory, jockeying his cast of thoroughbreds into a stunning interpretation of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 classic.

Teenager Alan Strang (Noah Valentine) has just been committed to a psychiatric hospital after having blinded six horses at the stables where he worked. Dr Martin Dysart (Toby Stephens) is the psychiatrist tasked with unlocking the young man’s deeply damaged mind, with Shaffer’s drama offering a brilliantly structured analysis of the challenges the doctor faces.

Onstage throughout, Stephens is sensational, gradually peeling away Strange’s defences to reveal his vulnerable core that led to such a horrific attack. Not only does Dysart unravel the teenagers traumatic life, such is Shaffer’s genius that he is also forced to face his own flaws too.

Stephens may be a sensation but he is well matched by the youthful Valentine a comparative newcomer to the London stage. In a story that revolves around flawed parenting, sexual frustrations and mixed attitudes to Christianity, it is no wonder that young Strang finds solace in the company of horses. Valentine is straining at the bit as he charts his most complex character’s arc with a graphic and brave brilliance. As a double act, Stephens and Valentine offer one of the best pairings in town.

The supporting cast are all given full rein to deploy their skill, notably Colin Mace and Emma Cunniffe as Alan’s bewildered parents who nurse troubled histories of their own. Bella Aubin - another relative newcomer - puts in fine work as Jill, the stable girl attracted to Alan.

It is however the ensemble of six performers, all trained in dance and who depict the horses, that offer some of the evening’s most powerful visuals. Moses Ward and Ed Mitchell do most of the heavy lifting in carrying their riders around the stage, but their stablemates of Luke Hodkinson, Aristide Lyons, Zack Parkin and Tommi Sutton have all been brilliantly cast for their sublime strength and movement. Credit too to Movement Director (or should that be Trainer?), choreographer James Cousins, who has groomed this talented sextet into mimes of equine beauty. Paul Farnsworth’s designs and Paul Pyant’s lighting only enhance Posner’s stylish direction.

After this Menier run, the production canters down the M4 for a brief stabling at its co-producers, the Theatre Royal Bath. Expect to see it galloping into the West End soon!

Runs until 4th July, then at Theatre Royal Bath from 14th - 25th July

Photo credit Manuel Harlan

The Deep Blue Sea - Review

Theatre Royal, Haymarket

*****

Written by Terence Rattigan

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Tamsin Greig

Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea is a minutely observed take on one day in the life of Hester Collyer. Middle aged and having suffered a failed marriage and a failing affair, we encounter Hester, prone on the floor of her tawdry Ladbroke Grove flat following yet another failure, this time in her attempt to kill herself. Lindsay Posner’s take on 1950s England delivers a sepia-tinged snapshot of social mores that have long since been discarded. But while life’s customs may have evolved and changed, the play’s underlying themes of passion and despair are timeless.

As the day unfolds we meet Hester’s landlady, neighbours, her husband and her lover, as the jigsaw pieces of her life are slowly revealed. Rattigan has a powerful and perceptive understanding of the human condition, with each of his characters carefully crafted as they impact onto the fraught and fragile Hester.

But more than just the sublime writing, the acting at the Theatre Royal Haymarket defines this production (a transfer in from the Theatre Royal Bath) as one of the finest dramas currently to be found on a London stage. Tamsin Greig is Hester, on stage throughout, in a performance that captures the complexities of her depression, self-loathing and desperate desire in the finest of detail. Never melodramatic, Greig delivers a masterclass in perfectly nuanced acting.

As her High Court judge husband Sir William and some years her senior, Nicholas Farrell turns in an equally assured performance of a complex love that still burns for his estranged wife, while Hadley Fraser’s Freddie, Hester’s younger lover, offers up a snapshot of a man battling his own demons.

The key supporting roles of Miller, a lapsed German doctor and Mrs Elton, the landlady of the house are perfectly and sensitively fleshed out by Finbar Lynch and Selina Cadell respectively, each contributing valuable colour to Rattigan’s harrowing palette. Peter McKintosh’s set is an understated masterpiece of 50’s austerity, perfectly lit by Paul Pyant.

Rattigan’s eye for English misery is unmatched, and under Posner’s direction and with Greig’s breathtaking performance, The Deep Blue Sea is unmissable theatre.

Runs until 21 June

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Primo - Review

*****

Antony Sher

Adapted by Antony Sher from If This Is A Man by Primo Levi

Directed by Richard Wilson

The film of Primo,  Antony Sher's translation of Primo Levi's  If This Is A Man from page to stage, has recently been released to stream by Digital Theatre. Made in 2005, the movie is directed by Richard Wilson who also helmed the original 2004 Royal National Theatre production.

Levi's work is an opus on the horrendous scale of the horrors of the Holocaust, but viewed from his very singular perspective as a man who was not only subject to the nightmares of the concentration camps, but who ultimately survived Auschwitz. Sher's interpretation of Levi's testimony is a tour de force.

The brutality of the Holocaust so often spelled out in the scale of its slaughter, is reduced by Levi to the minutiae of individual humans, the unimaginable detail of their lives and deaths in the hell of Auschwitz, but described with a harrowing eye for detail. From the glimpses of passing stations and landscapes, momentarily seen through the gaps in his cattle truck's walls, through to recognising the provenance of different camp inmates through the number tattooed on their arm, it is the detailed horrific picture painted by Levi’s, and ultimately Sher’s, words that define this unique narrative.

Hildegard Bechtler has designed a stage that is bare save for a solitary chair, amidst Paul Pyant’s stark but carefully plotted lighting designs. A haunting cello accompaniment from Jonathan Goldstein underlies Sher's eloquent reverence as his spoken narrative transports the audience/viewer from Italy through Austria, Czechoslovakia and ultimately Poland, all under the malevolent control of the Third Reich. 

Levi died in April 1987 and Sher much more recently in December 2021. The recording of this drama is a tribute to them both – it is unmissable.

To access the film click here https://www.digitaltheatre.com/watch/41413292