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

Hamlet - Review

Riverside Studios, London

**

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Selina Cadell

Eddie Izzard

With earrings, acrylics, heels and skin-tight leather trousers it is clear that Eddie Izzard’s take on the Prince of Denmark is at least as much about asserting the actor’s femininity as it is about an interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic characters.

As a solo turn that lasts for two and a half hours incl interval this Hamlet is undoubtedly a display of remarkable stamina and fortitude but Izzard’s performance comes across as more about ticking the boxes of ‘doing a Hamlet’ rather than offering any new comment on the play. The clumsily truncated dialogue is frequently rushed and disappointingly for a press night, often stumbled over, and for those not familiar with Shakespeare’s carefully crafted verse the evening will have offered little insight into the nuanced classic yarn. 

Izzard's background in stand-up serves the performance well in the gravedigger scene which is genuinely funny - elsewhere however there needed to have been more matter with less Commedia dell'arte. Playing the final act’s swordfight for laughs, be they intended or not, detracts from the story’s tragedy.

Strip away Izzard’s celebrity status and it is hard to imagine this Hamlet commanding much box office success. As Shakespeare himself wrote (in a speech that Izzard's adapter, brother Mark Izzard, has chosen to excise from this production) “it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags.” Izzard and director Selina Cadell should have heeded those words.

Runs until 30th June

Photo credit: Amanda Searle

The Dresser - Review

Duke of York's Theatre, London


***


Written by Ronald Harwood
Directed by Sean Foley

Reece Shearsmith and Ken Stott

There's a timeless nostalgia to Ronald Harwood's The Dresser that captures a particular snapshot of England during the Second World War. With the country's fit young men called up to fight, it's left to the "cripples, old men and Nancy boys" to tread the boards. Having served as actor/manager Sir Donald Wolfit's dresser during the 1950s, Harwood's experience provides a bedrock of credibility to the period piece.

Revolving around Sir (played by Ken Stott) and his dresser Norman (Reece Shearsmith), the text plays out during a performance of King Lear. Whilst not a pre-requisite, a working knowledge of Lear helps - for what emerges on stage is not just the parable of Lear and his all-licensed Fool being projected onto Sir and Norman, but we also watch the ageing actor crawl toward death. 

Stott and Shearsmith perform well, with Stott capturing the tragic decline of Sir's body and mind, as Shearsmith, knowingly and in a flurry of campiness after sixteen years of service, devotedly tends to the old man needs. Foley however fails to take his leading actors truly into their characters' skins. There's a lack of chemistry between the pair that's manifest in a lack of empathy from the audience. The second half (which bore witness to a number of post-interval empty seats) drags in a way that Harwood would never have wished, and though Shearsmith is racked with grief at the play’s denouement it's hard, in this production, to share his pain.

There's fine work from the supporting cast whose collection of modest roles set the era of time, place and also emotions, perfectly. Harriet Thorpe's Her Ladyship is a well turned battleaxe of a wife to Sir, while Selina Cadell exquisitely captures an ageing spinster’s pain whose love for the actor had never been returned.

Runs until 14th January 2017, then transfers to Chichester

Photo credit: Hugo Glendinning