The Arc - Review

Soho Theatre, London

**

Written by Amy Rosenthal, Alexis Zegerman and Ryan Craig

Directed by Kayla Feldman

Abigail Weinstock

It’s not often that a play writes its own review, but when Nigel Planer’s Michael, a retired  obstetrician, refers early on in The Arc to “a shimmering platter of bollocks on toast” he could have been describing The Arc itself.

A trilogy of new short plays by three different writers, The Arc strives to give an alternative Jewish perspective on Birth, Marriage and Death (also the titles of each drama). On for a short run at Soho Theatre’s Upstairs house, the venue was packed for this mid-run performance.

A well drilled and high-performing cast deliver the pieces, but aside from some neatly observed pathos in Alexis Zegerman’s Marriage that focusses on some of the finely nuanced complexities of dating, there’s more Jewish life-cycle substance to found in the Social and Personal columns of the JC.

All of the actors are great, notably Nigel Planer in Amy Rosenthal’s Birth and equally Abigail Weinstock in Marriage. But notwithstanding the performances that Kayla Feldman coaxes from her company in this mercifully short (hour-long) production, what The Arc lacks in credibility it makes up for in groaning cliche.

Bollocks indeed.

Runs until 26th August

Photo credit: Danny with a camera

Chasing Bono - Review

Soho Theatre, London


*****


Written by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais
Directed by Gordon Anderson

Denis Conway and Niall McNamee

Chasing Bono, on at the Soho Theatre over the festive season is a new play from Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais, drawn from Neil McCormick’s remarkable autobiographical tale, I Was Bono’s Doppelganger. McCormick and Paul Hewson (Bono) were at school together, both harbouring ambitions of making it big in the music world. Where Bono was to triumph, McCormick, to quote the playwrights "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” spending his life in the shadows of his megastar pal, not only dealing (and coming to terms) with his own sense of failure but also to be fair going on to build a successful career as a rock journalist.

Clement and La Frenais have visited this story before, with a co-scripting credit for the 2011 movie Killing Bono. But the pair have sole authorship for this iteration which, staged in one 90 minute act, is perhaps the sweetest piece of new drama to hit London this year.

In a bizarre twist of real-life, many years back McCormick had been kidnapped by Irish gangsters. It is the mark of Clement and La Frenais’ genius that from this event they have woven a narrative that sees the hoodlum (fictionalised as Danny Machin in the play) demand that McCormick ghost-write his life story, and from which process spins out the remarkable story of McCormick’s own and very personal journey. The writing is fresh, perceptive and sharp, with the authors - whose pedigree includes some of British television’s finest comedy work - having an innate understanding of the human condition’s sweet spot,  allowing them to distil pure humour from humanity.

They are blessed with a perfect cast, nearly all of whom hail from across the Irish Sea. Niall McNamee puts in a beautifully weighted turn as McCormick. Riddled with angst and envy and frustrated at his own (comparative) ineptitude, he carries the play convincingly, capturing McCormick from schoolboy through to adulthood. Gifted with some of the play’s pithiest wit, Denis Conway is the hoodlum Machin. With spot on timing, Conway brings an avuncular menace to this curious comic creation, a man who’s imbued with more than a hint of Clement and La Frenais’ Grouty (from their BBC comedy Porridge) in his fictional DNA. There is strong work too from Dónal Finn as McCormick’s brother Ivan – with a nod to both Finn and McNamee for their fine work on acoustic guitar that permeates the evening, while in perhaps the play's toughest gig, Shane O’Regan pulls off a carefully crafted caricature of Bono through the years.

In another example of London’s fringe theatre at its unmissable finest, Chasing Bono offers an evening of flawless entertainment.

Runs until 19th January 2019

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks

Barbarians - Review

Central St Martins School of Art, London

*****

Written by Barrie Keefe

Directed by Bill Buckhurst

Jake Davies, Thomas Coombes and Josh Williams

It has long been recognised that when writing about his world, Barrie Keefe’s finger is firmly on society’s pulse. With Barbarians however Keefe goes one step further, not just finding that pulse, but slicing it open in front of us, confronting his audience with those bloody, ugly realities that, skin-deep, continually surround us.

A 1970s trilogy of short plays, Barbarians follows three disaffected young men from their confused and sometimes angry adolescence into adulthood. Keefe’s deployment of irony is always a treat and the evening's opening play, Killing Time is peppered with his trademark black humour as the teenagers, not long out of school, contemplate an evening of petty crime.

Abide With Me sees the audience shepherded into holding pens to watch the three lads, all fans of Manchester United, spend the 1976 Cup Final ticketless outside Wembley Stadium and brimming with futile hopes to get in to see the game. Anger and frustrations bubble, as amidst the trio’s evolving dynamics, Keefe also exposes football's vicariously exploitative place in modern England. For young men with little else to believe in, their team offers a cause and a flag to rally behind, in later years a devotion often further exploited by the right wing National Front.

Barbarians ends with In The City, set against a backdrop of the Notting Hill Carnival. The boys are grown up now, yet still Keefe's scalpel mercilessly exposes further layers of pain and frustration.

Youth unemployment was (and is) rife when Keefe wrote the scripts and his prose remains a masterful and perceptive analysis of angst and inadequacy. Those of us who knew the era will relish the nods to Dickie Davis and adverts for Denim after shave, as well as recalling the days when a "tranny" meant a portable radio and a Rover 3500 signified some modest status. Alternatively, Barbarian’s younger audiences may perhaps consider a comparison with Green Day’s American Idiot, a show that speaks to and of an American wasted generation, as they observe Keefe’s characters walking their own boulevards of broken dreams.

Throughout, the three actors compel, no mean feat for a show that's nigh on three hours. Thomas Coombes plays Paul the wannabe alpha-male. He’s all mouth (or boot, or knife as circumstances dictate) and menace. Coombes explores his character’s machismo with an impressively thuggish sensitivity. Railing against a world that is passing him by bestowing him no favours, his ignorant hatred darkens with each chapter.

Josh Williams is Louis, the black kid. In Killing Time he’s the one of the trio that’s gone and got himself a skill as a refrigeration engineer. As he displays a decent commitment later to the army cadets and ultimately in landing himself a decent job, we see Keefe’s caustic vision expose the decay of friendships that were once strong, into an envious and racially fuelled contempt.

Completing the trio is Jake Davies’ Jan. The least impacting of the three in the first two plays though his subtly played reactions to his friends is critical, Jan dominates In The City. As a newly passed-out squaddie who's fearfully contemplating a posting to Belfast, Jan's terror and frustrations surge into a revelation that is as agonising as it is horrific.

Staging Barbarians in the starkly furnished former Central St Martins School of Art lends the tales an aura of frustrated bleakness and the fact that 40 years ago the venue hosted the first Sex Pistols gig, thus becoming the birthplace of punk, only adds to the evening’s zeitgeist. The site itself is a challenge. Three floors up, no lift and with a requirement to walk (or be herded) between the space’s auditoria, it’s a deliberately uncomfortable experience. Credit to Rob Youngson’s lighting and Josh Richardson’s sound design, both of which classily complement the location's complexities

Reprising Tooting Arts Club’s 2012 revival (although of that cast only Coombes remains), Bill Buckhurst - who recently directed the TAC's acclaimed pop-up Sweeney Todd - returns to the helm. Amidst spellbinding soliloquy and monologue, Buckhurst demonstrates a profound understanding of Keefe’s language and nuance, delivering a scorching, brilliant drama.

Runs until 7th November

Carmen - Review

Soho Theatre, London

****

By Georges Bizet

In a new orchestration by Harry Blake

And a new English version and directed by Robin Norton-Hale

Flora McIntosh and Anthony Flaum

There is a simplistic charm to Carmen from Opera Up Close that see's Bizet's classic stripped down to a talented cast of nine and an orchestra reduced to the most elegant of quartets. One of the most popular works in the classical canon, Carmen makes for a great introduction for those just dipping a toe into the opera genre. With a musical score that alone could fill a Now That’s What I Call Classics compilation, the melodies are familiar and the story offers a parable that is, sadly, as timely today as at its 1875 premiere.

Set in Seville the plot tells of Carmen, a free-spirited and beautiful gypsy girl who turns the head of Don Jose, a locally garrisoned soldier. Jose, who has never known a woman's love, becomes smitten with Carmen, who in turn has seen her desires move away from the soldier, falling instead for the dashing matador Escamillio, Unable to control his jealousy, Jose brings the story to a violent, tragic conclusion.

Opera Up Close have split their company into two teams for the length of the run and on the night of this review, Flora McIntosh played Carmen whilst Anthony Flaum was the troubled young dragoon. They were both sensational in their sung roles, with McIntosh capturing Carmen's defiant spirit as well as delivering a deliciously luring Habanera (and to my non opera-savvy readers, if you think you don’t know that famous melody, just google it).

However, whilst McIntosh, who has more operatic talent in her little finger than this reviewer can even aspire to, offers a performance of technical genius, her Carmen is more MILF than irresistible provocateur and her required charm, that should be able to attract alpha-males like flies, doesn’t entirely convince.

Flaum is a perfectly cast delight. At first appropriately stilted and gauche, he evolves into smouldering jealousy. One can believe in his emotional, impressionable innocence and whilst Jose's behaviour abhors, Flaum offers a portrayal that explains his character's desperate flaws, without apologising for them.

Richard Immergluck is Escamillo, who with the opera's famous Toreador Song is gifted one of the most recognisable singing gigs ever. Again, notwithstanding sheer vocal excellence, Immergluck also doesn’t convince. From the outset, Escamillo requires a flamboyance in his appearance, marking him out as a testosterone infused stallion. As it is, Immergluck looks as if he has just stepped off a bus rather than out of the bullring and whilst towards the opera’s finale, where Carmen sports his chic bolero, defining her as the matador's lover, it is too little too late. 

Amongst the supporting company, Louisa Tee as local girl Micaela turns in some exceptional aria work and it has to be said that the entire cast are performers of the highest calibre. It makes such a refreshing change to a reviewer more acclimatised to musical theatre, to attend a musical performance in which not only are the actors un-mic'd, but their vocal work is so powerful and precise that they are crystal clear, even at the back of the auditorium.

On a modest budget, with a set that is more suggestive than detailed and fabulously lit by Joshua Pharo, Robin Norton-Hale's imaginative direction works a treat, even if her new translation occasionally grates for there is often something awkward when the contemporary English idiom is juxtaposed onto classic melodies.

A final word to musical director Berrak Dyer and her three fellow musicians Alyson Frazier, Alison Holford and Rosemary Hinton. These women are simply the best and their tireless work, is unmissable!


Runs until 19th September

A Clockwork Orange - Review

Soho Theatre, London

*****

Written by Anthony Burgess

Directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones




Martin McCreadie (centre) leads the Ensemble

 

Action To The Word’s production of A Clockwork Orange, has finally exploded onto a London stage. Having seen the work performed at Edinburgh in 2011 and 2012, it remains one of the most remarkably electrifying displays of excellence across a company, both in individual performances and from the ensemble.

Opening with a meticulously choreographed fight ballet set to Beethoven’s 5^th, the production does not flinch from portraying the ultra-violence of Burgess’ novel. No stage blood nor clever trickery are deployed by the actors, rather 9 talented and supremely fit young men throwing themselves and/at each other with a perfection of bone-crunching timing that is as sickening as it is beautiful.  With minimal use of props and extensive use of mime, movement and the most simply suggestive of costumes, scene changes are deftly executed and locations convincingly created ranging from court room to milk bar to prison. When Alex climbs on a table and mimes the opening of a window that he prepares to jump from, the tension created is almost palpable.

Martin McCreadie plays Alex, a droog or young man, evolving from street thug to murderer, and ultimately the subject of the government’s mind-washing Ludovico technique, politically motivated, to “cure” him of his criminality . His is a role requiring total commitment of voice, face and body, onstage throughout the 80 minutes of the play. No green room rests for him, though it is fair to state that the rest of the cast undergo such frequent character changes, that all of them, in one guise or another, are on stage for most of the show’s duration. It is invidious to single out names as without exception all the cast excel, though Philip Honeywell’s harrowing portrayal of a man violated by broken milk bottle, Neil Chinneck’s Dr Brodsky and Stephen Spencer's oleaginous and duplicitous government minister remain as particularly chilling moments from amongst the supporting role call of characters.

More than three years in development and with many of her original cast still in role, Alexandra Spencer-Jones has fashioned her own masterpiece from this modern literary classic and it is a credit to both her and to her company that Methuen have released the lastest re-print of the text ( first published in 1987 ) branded and foreworded with the cast and creative team details of this Soho Theatre production.

Spencer-Jones’ selection of music, that includes snatches of Beethoven’s most recognisable pieces, is modern, eclectic and punchy. Having seen the show twice on the Fringe, where both time and space impose rigid boundaries upon a troupe’s potential, to  witness it on a London stage, in front of a deeply raked audience, and with a stage that offers height and depth and lighting that were simply not available in Edinburgh, as well as a more generous time slot, is to see an already beautiful piece of work simply polished to perfection.

A Clockwork Orange is not for children, nor for the faint-hearted. But if one enjoys chic, stunning, provocative theatre, then this production is not to be missed.

Runs to Saturday 5 January 2013

To read the review of this production at EdFringe 2012 click here

I Heart Peterborough - Review

Soho Theatre, London

**

Written & directed by Joel Horwood


This review was first published in The Public Reviews


Jay Taylor and Milo Twomey



I Heart Peterborough is a piece of drama that may be brilliantly performed but unfortunately lacks a direction in its construction. Whilst programme notes suggest it is drawn from “modern suburbia”, the publicity flyer makes reference to the play’s location being “a city stuck in the fens” and as a further contradiction, co-producer Eastern Angles’ website refers to the play being “a desperate tale of life in an overspill town”. That these three diverse descriptions emanate from the production’s own creative team suggest the fact that this is a play still struggling to define its own identity. As it happens, the setting of Joel Horwood’s work is probably best described as “grim provincial”.

The story tells of Lulu, a gay transvestite and his son Hew (sired in a moment of unprotected adolescent exploratory sex) tracking both men’s trajectories from birth, with a scope that commences in the 1960’s but is largely played out in the 70’s and 80’s. Life for this unconventional pair is hard, particularly with local folks’ intolerance of Lulu’s sexuality, the older man frequently referring to beatings he has suffered. Hew too has a difficult upbringing leading to a chilling description of having been raped amongst the riverbank reeds whilst an adolescent. Peterborough, the place, is not flattered by this play and whilst the City Council is credited with having provided public funds to support the work, it is a disappointment that the picture created of this historic city is so two-dimensional.

Milo Twomey and Jay Taylor as father and son provide outstanding performances of commitment and energy. Twomey’s poise, timing and movement is as perceptive an impersonation of a female as could be wished for and Taylor effortlessly voices a multitude of characters that the pair encounter, as well as portraying the damaged young man. The two perform snatches of classic 80’s songs throughout the single act that serve to define the period well.

Whilst the play has rare moments of genuine humour, (a mimed karaoke session is technically brilliant) and may indeed be imitating life as its arc frequently switches between moments of frivolity and misery, it struggles to be more than an extremely well-acted but nonetheless confused and ultimately unsatisfying, portrayal of East Anglian life.

Runs until 20th October