The Importance of Being Earnest - Review

Noel Coward Theatre, London

**

Written by Oscar Wilde

Directed by Max Webster

Stephen Fry

When it opened at the National Theatre late last year, Max Webster’s take on The Importance of Being Earnest was a work of theatrical quality and imagination, delivered by a company that dripped in expertise and experience. Now, transplanted across the river for a 3-month West End residency, the original’s acting genius is replaced by stunt casting and celebrity that takes an inspirational concept, reducing it to poorly performed moments of silliness.

Topping the bill for the evening is Stephen Fry, best known for his screen achievements rather than a career on the boards. In an unexplained gender-swap, Fry replaces (the previously excellent) Sharon D Clarke as Lady Bracknell. In what should be one of the most exquisite roles in the canon for women over 50, Fry gives a hammy performance that other than showcasing his distinctly recognisable voice delivering some of the most famous lines in English literature outside of Shakespeare, adds nothing to Lady B whatsoever. He is of course a big star and will no doubt draw in the punters - but they’ll be disappointed to find the actor delivers little more than a pound-shop Julian Clary.

The evenings other star name is Olly Alexander as Algernon Moncrieff. Alexander focusses on silliness over dramatic heft and while the role is undoubtedly complex, one feels that he barely skims its potential. Likewise Nathan Stewart-Jarrett who seems to concentrate more on the mania of Jack Worthing rather than his character’s depths.

Kitty Hawthorne and Jessica Whitehurst are respectively Gwendolen and Cecily, two parts that again, inexplicably, Webster has chosen to play through channels of over-acted histrionics. The physical comedy of Hayley Carmichael, doubling up as the faithful retainers Lane and Merriman has faint echoes of Tom Eden’s genius as Alfie in One Man Two Guvnors - but its little more than that, as Carmichael’s work descends into repetitive cliché. In a rare moment of class, Hugh Dennis as the Rev'd Canon Chasuble is brilliant.

The scenery is tired. Back at the Lyttleton, Rae Smith’s original designs were sensational. Here, the grassy banks of the Hertfordshire garden scenes are shockingly frayed, while actors waiting offstage for their cue are clearly visible in the wings.

This is a poorly executed transfer and other than the stunt casting, it is hard to see why the National and their co-producers have staged it. Perhaps they could resist everything except temptation?

Runs until 10th January 2026

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

The Importance of Being Earnest - Review

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Oscar Wilde

Directed by Max Webster

The company

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a sharply observed farce that sets improbably false identities against a gorgeously satirical examination of the hypocrisies of English society in the late 19th century. Given a makeover by Max Webster in his revival for the National Theatre’s Lyttleton stage, the production’s colourblind casting may give rise to moments of cultural inconsistency, but its performances are sublime and the cast’s delivery of Wilde’s script, exquisite

Sharon D Clarke is magnificently matriarchal as Lady Bracknell. Deliciously costumed in an African/Caribbean style, Clarke exudes commanding snobbery together with a sharp social awareness. Her interpretation of one of the canon’s most fearsome women is a delight.

As the two bachelors Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, Ncuti Gatwa and Hugh Skinner are on point throughout, their flamboyant japery delivered with pinpoint timing. Opposite them as Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, the subjects of their wooing, are Ronke Adekoluejo and Eliza Scanlen respectively who equally immaculately capture their roles.

But it’s not just in the five lead roles that this production excels. Richard Cant as Revd. Canon Chasuble and Amanda Lawrence as Cecily’s Governess Miss Prism absolutely nail their deliciously nuanced parts, their modest but critically important contributions to the narrative only adding to the evening’s comedy. Similarly, doubling up as the butlers in both the town and country houses of the action, there is lovely work from Julian Bleach.

Rae Smith’s scenery and costumes are a marvel although one has to question the expensively costumed, camped-up pantomimes that are performed at the opening and closing of this production. The play alone is a gorgeously crafted - it does not need such accoutrements.

Only on for a few more days and mostly sold out, if you can grab a ticket it's well worth catching!

Runs until 25th January

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Death Of A Salesman - Review

Piccadilly Theatre, London


****


Written by Arthur Miller
Directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell

Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke

Death Of A Salesman is Arthur Miller’s post-war homily to the bleak brutality of the American Dream. A timeless tragedy of the dashed hopes and aspirations of husbands and wives, parents and children, all ground out through the crushingly recognisable reality of salesman Willy Loman, his wife Linda and their two adult sons Happy and Biff.

Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell have framed their production that has transferred across the river from the Young Vic, within a distinctly racial context. Their Lomans are African Americans, subject to injustices from both their employers and their would-be employers, who here are all white. In this production's world, both power and employability (and, to be fair, the saintly kindness of neighbour Charlie) are with the white folk - while it is the blacks whose dreams are shattered. While this may be a noble conceit in its artistic intention, Miller’s text does not yield unquestioningly to such interpretation. Willy’s older brother Ben - whose spirit appears throughout the play- ventured into Alaska and Africa to make his fortune. But would a colonial exploiter of Africa’s diamonds really have been black? And would Miller's humble waiter Stanley really be a white man in such a world? The directors’ cultural misappropriation undermines Miller’s opus for in truth, Willy Loman is everyman.

Flown in from the USA, Wendell Pierce plays the eponymous salesman. While there is unquestionable power and consummate energy in Pierce’s Willy, his is not a tour-de-force. Miller writes that Loman is tired but for much of his time on stage Pierce’s delivery is frenetic. We know that Willy is manically depressed, but rather than allow Miller’s beautiful prose to portray his terminal decline, Pierce mangles manic with maniac, all too often garbling his words when a slower pace would inexorably bring the audience with him. Pierce’s work sits in sharp contrast with, by way of example, Sope Dirisu’s immaculately nuanced Biff, never finer than in the second act’s hotel room scene when he discovers his father’s devastating secret.

It is in Linda Loman, played here by Sharon D. Clarke, that we discover the production’s greatest strength. Clarke’s is perhaps the finest interpretation of this complex role, for decades, displaying a fierce protective love for Willy, while convincing us of her wise and weathered life. Magnificent in her matriarchy, Clarke’s Linda is desperate to be the glue within her family with a devotion to her husband that is as heartbreakingly supportive as it is deeply recognisable. Buy a ticket for this show if for no other reason than Clarke - hers is quite possibly a once in a generation turn.

Drama moves with the times and perhaps audiences have dumbed down or perhaps, more likely, Elliott and Cromwell know what pleases the modern-day crowd. But the strength of Miller’s tragedy has always lain in the razor sharp brilliance of his words. There is no need to reduce his work to a play with songs, no matter how relevant either the spiritual or american songbook numbers may appear. Equally, there are moments when Aideen Malone's staccato lighting bursts suggest a production that's more akin to The Curious Incident Of The Car Crash In The Nighttime. Credit though to Anna Fleischle’s set, an ingenious reflection of the timebends of Willy’s fractured mind.

Kenneth Tynan famously described Death Of A Salesman as “the greatest American play”. Elliott and Cromwell deliver an interpretation that demands to be seen.

Runs until 4th January 2020

Photo credit: Brinkhoff/Mogenburg

Caroline, Or Change - Review

Playhouse Theatre, London


***


Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book & lyrics by Tony Kushner
Directed by Michael Longhurst

Sharon D Clarke and Ako Mitchell

Caroline, Or Change is a curious show that sees a 5 Star cast deliver distinctly flawed material. Set in an early 1960s Louisiana, Sharon D. Clarke plays Caroline Thibodeaux, an African-American maid employed by the (Jewish) Gellman family. Caroline is low paid and hard working and Kushner and Tesori do a fair job in sketching out the prejudiced, poverty trap that blighted the South’s African-Americans, a situation that some may argue continues to the present day.

Where Thibodeaux, we learn, has three growing children for whom she heroically and proudly provides on little more than a hand-to-mouth basis, the Gellman household is a desert of dysfunctionality. Noah (played by the confident and cool Jack Meredith on the night of this review) is 9 years old. His mother having passed away some time back sees the boy now being raised by father Stuart and step-mother Rose (Lauren Ward) . Kushner goes on to suggest an intriguing, but ultimately fragile, bond between Noah and Caroline as the child seeks and apparently (so we are led to believe) receives, emotional succour from the matriarchal maid. Noah despises Rose, leaving Stuart reduced to little more than an (oddly) clarinet playing nonentity. The reed playing offers a possible musical twist but as an easy nod to perhaps a hint of klezmer in the score, its an unusually lazy touch from Tesori. Rose rarely strays from an angst and kvetch-ridden neurotic, while the Gellman grandparents offer little more than superfluous stereotypes.

In their portrayal of the African-American characters however, the writers soar. Caroline listens to the radio - itself embodied by three beautifully soulful singers, while the bus that she takes to and from her work, is also given a living soul. And one only needs a moment’s recollection of Rosa Parks to recognise the clunking symbolism of the bus in the narrative.

Technically it is not just Clarke who is award-winningly magnificent. Ako Mitchell as The Dryer and The Bus is, as ever, on fine form, while Abiona Omonua as Caroline’s daughter Emmie is another vocal star.

But taking a step back, one can see that Kushner and Tesori, possibly burdened by their white privilege, have deified Caroline and her community, while monstering America's Jews on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line. In Rose’s petty fussing over Noah’s inability to recognise the value of even the smallest amount of loose change, she embodies one of the oldest anti-semitic tropes in the book: that of the Jew as mean and penny-pinching. It is (thankfully) not often that such a potentially hate-filled stereotype is played out on stage. 

In his musical Parade, Jason Robert Brown offered a passionate yet dignified exploration of the South’s capacity to hate both Jews and people of colour. Kushner lacks that dignity offering us instead his own personal expiatory, prompted possibly by a personal conflict with his Jewish heritage? In today's world of increasing hatred Kushner might have done better to have worked his issues out in the therapist’s chair, rather than impose them upon the theatregoers of Broadway and the West End.

Booking until 6th April 2019

Aladdin - Review

Hackney Empire, London

****

Written and directed by Susie McKenna

Clive Rowe

There’s something truly magical about panto at the Hackney Empire. Writer/director Susie McKenna delivers her 20th (oh yes it is!) festive production with a show that captures the diversity of her London patch, yet cleverly avoids cultural appropriation and all the while managing to maintain the joyous irreverence that makes pantomime such a glorious British Christmas tradition.

Set on the fictional island of Ha-Ka-Ney, McKenna’s company of Mare Street stalwarts launders the age-old Middle-Eastern cum Chinese fairytale into a 21st century iteration that it is anything but washed out. Obeying the genre’s conventions meticulously, Gemma Sutton is the titular Principal Boy (as McKenna lobs in a bravely scripted swipe at gender-fluidity too!). Sutton of course, as this website has long proclaimed, is up there with the best of her generation in UK’s musical theatre and it shows! She brings poise and precision to the role, capping it off with her wondrous voice. Her leading the company in The Greatest Showman’s This Is Me is spine-tingling.

Making his return to Hackney’s panto after a short sabbatical, Clive Rowe shares the bill-topping honours with his wonderful Widow Twankey. Showmen aside, Rowe is arguably The Greatest Dame of our time. His presence is sublime with razor sharp wit and precision timing making each one of the corniest, smuttiest gags sparkle. Rowe’s gift for pantomime is a rarity and his beautifully frocked, twerking Twankey is worth the ticket price on its own.

In time-honoured tradition, McKenna lampoons the lunacy of our leaders, with Brexit and assorted Tories coming in for some well-deserved flack. But if there is one criticism of the piece, it is the bias. Given the current debacle that is manifest throughout our political class, there is no reason to have let Labour off the hook quite so lightly.

Other top-notch Hackney regulars comprise the classy company. Notables are Tameka Empson, released by the Beeb from her duties on Albert Square to play the Empress, Julie Yammanee’s Princess, Kat B's energetic Genie and Tony Timberlake’s dastardly Abanazar. Heck, they’ve even roped in stage legend (and Mckenna’s missus) Sharon D. Clarke to voice a Goddess!

Whilst the show’s budget may not be as palladian as some, not only are Hackney’s tickets affordable but the show's professionalism and panache are a treat, well earning it the moniker of “London’s No 1 panto”. McKenna continues to create the very essence of pantomime - a show that is firmly rooted in its local community, yet packing a hilarious punch with technical excellence. (And did this review even mention Steven Edis' music, the stunning flying dragon scene or Richard Roe’s super-slick tap-dance routine?)

Meanwhile Clive Rowe's Widow Twankey, masquerading as Cher and serenading Abanazar with ABBA’s Fernando, will stay with me for a long, long time.

Runs until 6th January 2019

Photo credit: Robert Workman

King The Musical - Review

Hackney Empire, London


****


Music and lyrics by Martin Smith
Directed by Susie McKenna

Cedric Neal and Debbie Kurup

30 years after its premiere, Martin Smith’s affecting musical biography of legendary civil rights movement leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr was revived for just two performances, in a co-production between the Hackney Empire and London Musical Theatre Orchestra directed by Susie McKenna and which marked 50 years since Dr King’s assassination.

Opening with a brief, shocking re-enactment of the assassination, the scene was accompanied by the hauntingly mournful vocals of the full cast, shrouded in shadows on stage. Slowly, Debbie Kurup’s Coretta, Dr King’s widow, stepped out of the darkness to sing a few painful lines in memory of her late husband, a moment that was totally engrossing, but extremely brief.  Quickly, the story flashes to the younger Kings as a courting couple, a change of pace that immediately humanised Dr King’s almost mythical figure, inviting the audience to step his life and his journey.

Cedric Neal was mightily impressive in the title role. Wearing a look of perpetual apprehension which slowly melted into defiance as his story progressed, he had the audience in the palm of his hand from his very first introduction all the way through to his sudden and tragic demise. Particularly powerful was his interpretation of the iconic I Have A dream speech, which closed Act 1. 

Accompanied by the orchestra’s slow build to a powerful crescendo alongside the full cast with additional vocal support from Hackney Empire Community Choir and the Gospel Essence Choir. Neal wisely chose not to impersonate King’s intonations, bringing his own heart and charisma to the scene. The staging of the speech was a testament to the intelligent direction of Susie McKenna, and the impassioned performances of the entire cast and orchestra. 

Under Freddie Tapner’s baton the 22-piece London Musical Theatre Orchestra were perfection throughout. The particularly impressive brass section emphasised the triumphant power of Simon Nathan’s new orchestrations, whilst the strings brought a sense of dreamlike nostalgia to the story that only foreshadowed the painful finale. 

But for all of King’s heart wrenching musical moments, the story occasionally lacked depth, opting to cover the most significant and well-known moments in broad strokes, rather than drill down into the psyche of its characters and their relationships. As such, Debbie Kurup as Doctor King’s dignified and supportive wife Coretta, and Sharon D Clarke as his loving mother Alberta, were sadly side-lined as the story progressed. 

As a reminder of Martin Luther King's immutable legacy Smith’s compelling musical, forgotten for 30 years, deserves a full staging soon, especially off the back of such a striking production.

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Growney

The Life - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

*****

Music by Cy Coleman

Lyrics by Ira Gasman

Book by David Newman, Ira Gasman, and Cy Coleman

with additional material by Michael Blakemore

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Charlotte Reavey and Cornell S. John

Cy Coleman has a fine track record of taking an acerbic view of iconic American cities. With City Of Angels his score parodied a film noir view of Los Angeles - and here, with The Life, he peels back the fairytale of New York to reveal the truer uglier side of 42nd Street and Broadway that persisted throughout much of the last century.

It is hard to believe that this same city location fuelled the narrative to Frank Loesser's Guys And Dolls. Coleman and Ira Gasman pitch their show uncompromisingly on the streets around Times Square in the 1980s, when crime and sleaze were endemic to the area. But where Loesser's Joey Biltmore or Big Jule may well have been looked on as lovable rogues, The Life's villains are terrifyingly monstrous.

And yet - amongst the filth and destitution of its city setting, The Life's story, fuelled by Coleman's richly flavoured score, moves us all in depicting the fragile shoots of hope and humanity struggling to survive.

T'Shan Williams leads the show as young hooker Queen - desperate to make enough money to break away from vice and build a new life with her boyfriend Fleetwood (David Albury). We know their love is doomed from the outset - he's a drug-dependant Vietnam vet, battling PTSD and for whom Queen will always take second place to his addiction. It is Williams’portrayal of Queen's self-belief that drives the show. Her relative youth belying an ability to play a desperately damaged, vulnerable woman who's struggling to make her life work. Vocally Williams is a dream too, holding sensational notes with a range that is at times spine-tingling.

Williams is more than matched by the powerhouse that is Sharon D. Clarke. Playing Sonja, a compassionate ageing woman who's only known life as a whore, Clarke is majestic and compelling. Her duetting with Williams offers some of the finest musical theatre performance to be found, the spirituality of You Can't Get To Heaven being an electrifying glimpse into the bond of humanity that spanning the decades between them, unites the two women. Living in a world of profound ugliness, they display a dazzling inner beauty.

There's impressive womanly work on stage not just from Clarke and Williams but from a striking ensemble of street-hookers, who frequently suggested (to this reviewer at least) that if one were to take back the mink and the pearls from Loesser's Hot Box Girls, then what Coleman and Gasman have created is so much closer to a far harsher reality.

There's a cracking turn too from Joanna Woodward as the (apparently) naive Mary, straight off the bus from Duluth and quickly hustled. Woodward's Easy Money routine offering a polished glimpse into the truth of the tawdry sleaze of the strip scrub - in a routine that again defines so much more dismal honesty than the glossed over burlesque of Louise's strip routines in the closing act of Styne and Sondheim's Gypsy.

The Life shines in its diversity. Not just in a cast that is unequivocally multi-racial, but rather one which is refreshingly spread across a range of ages and body sizes that don’t conform to the conventionally clichéd tropes of beauty.

Where the show is unashamedly partisan however is in its treatment of men. By the final curtain, we've learned that every man on stage is ultimately a deceitful, exploitative scumbag.

Notwithstanding their characters' moral vacuity, the guys on stage are, to a man, outstanding actors. John Addison sets the stage as Jojo a middle ranking hustler, whose Use What You've Got defines his oleaginous duplicity. There's classy work too from Jo Servi's bartender Lacy, who in a small but critical moment defines the malicious misogyny permeating the streets. It is however Cornell S. John as Memphis, the city's prime pimp who both stuns and horrifies. John has a presence rarely encountered in Off West End theatre. With magnificent understatement he oozes an abusive, fearful force, which when played alongside his striking vocal resonance in both Don't Take Much and My Way Or The Highway, proves as chilling as it is compelling.

It's taken twenty odd years for Michael Blakemore, who directed the show's Tony-winning Broadway premier to bring it to London and his maturity and wisdom is evident in this carefully nuanced production's impact. Slick movement matched with a simple design motif of sliding parking-garage doors that slide to reveal the scenic trucks, and all staged underneath visionary projections of New York (the projection of the Hudson River's ripples is inspired), combine to create an ingenious treat.

Above the stage, Tamara Saringer conducts the first 11 piece band to play Southwark coaxing an exquisite treatment of Coleman's soaring score. Yet again, Joe Atkin-Reeve's work on the reeds is sensational - as Coleman's compositions range from ballsy brassy belting numbers to ethereal Gospel and heartbreaking ballad. 

The show marks Broadway and West End producer Catherine Schreiber's welcome arrival into leading a team of producers (co leads Amy Anzel and Matthew Chisling) on London's fringe. Together they display a commitment to production values throughout the show that rank alongside the sector’s best.

Scorchingly unmissable, The Life is one of the finest shows in town.

Runs until 29th April

Picture credit: Conrad Blakemore

T'Shan Williams talks about The Life at Southwark Playhouse

T'Shan Williams

Set in and around the sleaze of Times Square in the 1980s, Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman’s The Life garnered Tony and Drama Desk awards when Michael Blakemore directed its opening on Broadway in 1997. Twenty years later and with Blakemore again at the helm, the gritty musical crosses the Atlantic to open at the Southwark Playhouse next week.

The story focusses on Queen, a young woman of proud, principled intention who let down by the man she loves finds herself drawn into the complex criminality of prostitution. Sonja, an older and wiser hooker takes her under her wing… 

T’Shan Williams plays Queen and we spoke during a break in rehearsals. 

Update: To read my 5* review of The Life, published after its Opening Night, click here

JB:     Tell me first of all - What excites you about playing this role?

TW: Oh, the fact that Queen is not born into life that you see in the show. She's come from out of town, from a different area in the States and she’s moved to New York with dreams and aspirations. She's quite optimistic about what her life could be.

It just so happens that in the part that you see in the show, she has had to put her dreams on hold as she is sucked in to a mess that she didn't agree to.

JB:      What are the complexities of your character that you're having to explore and discover?

TW:     She has a certain sense of naivete because she didn't expect this to happen. She kind of got herself into a relationship where it just didn't work out right, so, it's basically I guess, her trying to be independent.

She's got a drive to be a better person, yet she's in a relationship where her partner is just quite happy with the situation they've ended up in.

So she is forced to choose between wrong and right, between love and a better life, that kind of thing, which is really quite hard for her.

What makes her such an appealing character though is the continuous optimism that she has, which is actually so inspiring and uplifting.

JB:     I was lucky enough to be invited to your rehearsal last week and see a glimpse of the show up close, in particular duetting with Sharon D. Clarke who plays Sonja. What is it like working alongside Sharon?

TW: Oh, absolute pleasure. She's so amazingly talented, and Cornell S.John too. I'm learning new things from them everyday.

Sharon’s like a big sister. She's got such a powerful energy in the rehearsal space. It's such a lovely time working with her. The whole cast too, they're all just so talented.

Sharon D. Clarke and T'shan Williams

JB:     Tell me about working with and being directed by Michael Blakemore.

TW: He's just such a gent, a charming man. And, I've never worked with such a director before that's just so detailed. He doesn't miss a beat. Of course, this is kind of his baby, because obviously he directed it originally on Broadway. The show really has a place in his heart and it's just such a pleasure to be in the room with him.

JB:     You are coming to The Life after a year in Book of Mormon. Have you worked in any off-West End productions before this?

TW: Yeah....ish! I did a season at the Arts Theatre in Leicester Square over Christmas and Ive toured But, that's kind of where my journey has been so far.

I only graduated in 2015 from drama school, so it has all been quite recent. But I've been lucky and had a good run in contracts so far. I love fringe theatre and I've always wanted to perform at the Southwark Playhouse because it's so intimate.

JB:     That's great to hear. The rehearsal that I saw was electric - I'm looking forward to your press night next week.

The Life will run at the Southwark Playhouse from 25th March until 29th April.

Photo credit: Simon Turtle

Sleeping Beauty - Review

Hackney Empire, London

****

Written and directed by Susie McKenna

The cast of Sleeping Beauty

Hackney Empire's award-winning Susie McKenna has created a brand new take on the fairy-tale story of Sleeping Beauty, bringing the classic yarn up to date for this year's pantomime.

Set in the enchanted land of Hackneytonia, the kingdom is celebrating the birth of their King and Queen's new child, Princess Tahlia. However, the evil fairy Carabosse is to cast an evil spell over the Princess that will change her life forever. The show's set design (great work from Lottie Collett) is vibrantly colourful, almost resembling a children’s picture book and compliments this high energy performance every step of the way. 

Sharon D Clarke's Carabosse is devilishly brilliant as she plays the part with a wonderful Caribbean feel, her voice dripping with soul. Clarke brings a sassy fire to the performance and despite playing the classic panto villain, she cannot help but be entirely loved. The smooth velvety tones of Prince Gabriel (Wayne Perrey) are a joy to listen to as he plays the role with an appropriate and princely intensity.

Unsurprisingly, Alexia Khadime’s performance as Princess Tahlia is, much like her voice, powerful and soaring. Khadime brings a lovely balance between the generic ‘Princessiness’ of the genre, and the tomboyish nature of her reinvented character. Flipping some of the traditional panto expectations, Thalia desperately wants to be a warrior. She challenges her gender stereotype, showing that there is more than enough room in a traditional panto for an all ‘Girl Power’ Damsel waiting to unleash her inner hero.

The show is stolen however by Gavin Spokes' Dame Nanny Nora. From the moment he first enters, on a mobility scooter and singing A Spoonful Of Sugar, Spokes has the audience eating from the palm of his hand. Just rude enough, clever, funny and a hell of a voice. There were a fair few topical jokes in the show, a highlight being the duet between Spokes and Tony Whittle's King entitled Never Ask The People What They Think .... nuff said!

Carl Paris' choreography is tight, with a well drilled ensemble as is Mark Dickman's musical handling of Steve Edis' score, as yet again McKenna and her team at Hackney give London a festive feast of a panto with all the trimmings. Oh yes they do!

Runs until 8th January 2017

Reviewed by Charlotte Darcy

Photo credit: Bob Workman

The Gershwins' Porgy And Bess - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

****

By George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Book Adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks 
Musical Score Adapted by Diedre L. Murray
Directed by Timothy Sheader

Nicola Hughes and Rufus Bonds Jr on opening night

The amphitheatre at Regents Park is dominated by a massive backdrop of beautifully buckled burnished copper. As the sun goes down and passions rise in Timothy Sheader’s inspired take on this North Carolina fable, the design reflects the light. lending its metallic nuances to the palette. Gold becomes red, becoming moonlit pale or a terrifying stormy blue. Katrina Lindsay’s stage design is breathtaking before the band have even struck up.

Sheader sets out a bold stall in the Overture. In a solo routine Bess emerges, clad only in a slip and in a lithe sensuous dance, slides into a sizzling red dress slit to the hips. Truly one of London’s Leading Ladies, Nicola Hughes owns the stage in a performance that defines her character’s complex combination of iressistible sexual magnetism with profound vulnerability.

If Hughes represents the best of British, then she is well matched against the trio of trans-atlantic talent, flown in under the UK-USA Equity deal, whose characters vie for Bess’ attentions. Cedric Neal reprises the coke peddling Sporting Life from his Broadway performance two years ago. His elegant peacocked flamboyance defining the fatally attractive evil of the drugs he supplies. In a show crammed with The American Songbook greats, Neal’s act two opener, It Ain’t Necesssarily So takes this most familiar of numbers and makes it sizzle with a thrilling interpretation. Phillip Boykin, also over from the States, nails the muscular menace of Crown. A man as large as his booming baritone, Boykin imbues Crown with the purest of dark violence. Rufus Bonds Jr completes the set of imports, starring as Porgy. Bond gives a pathos and a power to the role that makes our hearts bleed for his crippled character. His voice and presence is inspirational, defining goodness as he craves a shaft of Bess’ love to light his crippled world. Against three such stunning performers, Hughes more than rises to the challenge. “Frailty, thy name is Bess” could define her character, desperate to be a good woman, but unable to sustain a loving commitment or resist her addictions.

The company work is flawless. Sharon D Clarke’s Mariah is a performance of wisdom and presence. Golda Rosheuvel’s Serena is a role of subtle humility, yet when this actress mourns her husband with My Man’s Gone Now, her voice as if from nowhere, fills the open-air space, tingling spines. A nod too to Jade Ewen’s Clara, the diminutive Sugababe who masters the show’s signature Summertime, with a perfectly weighted poise.

Amidst such a classy company, the use of ramshackle tables and chairs as improvised scene-setters is a distraction. Excellent performers demand an excellence in staging and the frequent shifting of tacky furniture suggests low-budget fringe rather than a production that frames world-class talent. It also remains a disappointment that a show, so steeped in the troubled, racist, tenement history of America’s South plays to a London audience that is overwhelmingly white. It deserves packed houses that reflect a broader cross-section of the capital’s melting pot.

David Shrubsole coaxes a jazz-infused delight from his lavishly furnished 15-piece band and with few finer companies in town, The Open Air Theatre’s Porgy And Bess is unmissably incisive and thrillingly provocative.

Runs until 23rd August 2014 

The Amen Corner

National Theatre, London

*****

Written by James Baldwin

Directed by Rufus Norris

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

The Amen Corner at the National Theatre is a remarkable comment upon the lives of an African American community in 1953 Harlem. Rufus Norris’ interpretation of James Baldwin's play with music weaves a beautiful gospel lilt upon this scrutiny of a small church, its pastor, her family and the community elders. Whilst never leaving the claustrophobic confines of the church and Pastor Margaret Alexander's modest apartment, Baldwin dares to question the duplicity of religious fervour and amidst a background of a nascent Civil Rights push and with an all black cast, shows that hatred exists everywhere, not just amongst racist white folk.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste is Margaret. A single mother who following the infant death of her first child fled the the errant ways of Luke her alcoholic musician husband, gathering up her young son and donning the cloth as pastor to a committed if somewhat cynical city flock. Margaret's commitment to her faith is unquestioning. She makes decisions that are at times unpalatable, and Jean-Baptiste embodies her with such subtlety and also such passion, that we come to discover that in her world, faith has a dark side. It has provided her with a mechanism to deny much of life's ugliness and pain and further, Baldwin suggests that it has also served as a possible opiate to too many of the black community, dulling any sense of justified rebellion against the appalling racism that they were subject to through much of the 20th century,

Sharon D Clarke is Margaret's wise all seeing sister Odessa. Clarke is surely the grand-dame (and one day a deserved Dame?) of Britain's black acting community. Her fierceness combined with a compassionate protection of her sibling, offers a supporting role of strength and beauty whilst less well known Cecilia Noble turns in another masterful performance as a church elder who slowly sheds her early comic turn of virginity and bible bashing faux-purity, to reveal a malevolence of hatred and bitterness.

A surprise return of the estranged and dying Luke (Lucian Msamati) to the apartment questions all that Margaret has sought to hold dear for many years, and whilst Luke's lifestyle of wine, women and sin is anathema to the pastor, he provides the inspiration to their 18 year old musician son David, (yet another cracking performance, this time from newcomer Eric Kofi Abrefa) to quit the ghetto, free his spirit and make strides that are clearly signalled will influence the burgeoning demands of the Civil Rights movement.

Baldwin's writing is poetically profound and searching. If Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman highlighted the creaking gaps and flaws in the American Dream, then take the image of that play’s broken Willy Loman, re-write him as an African American woman and there emerges a strong argument to suggest that Margaret Alexander's story is as harsh a take on the realities of the black community’s strengths and battles as well as its flaws and failings.

The musical background to the work is impressive. The London Community Gospel Choir adding melodic brilliance to the The Reverend Bazil Meades arrangements, whilst Ian MacNeil's detailed set, split to show both church and apartment is another example of the timeless versatility of the Olivier stage. The final scene of passionate but cruelly heartless communal gospel singing, contrasted with Margaret's grief as she confronts her devastating personal loss, will break your heart.