Good People

Noel Coward Theatre, London

****

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire

Directed by Jonathan Kent

Imelda Staunton

Good People is a searching drama for the modern age. Jonathan Kent directs the London premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2011 Tony-winner that explores the two faces of America’s Dream with a nod too to some of that country’s greatest 20th century literature.

With the first half of the action set squarely on the wrong side of South Boston’s tracks, the play follows a few days in the life of Margaret, a “Southie” all her life and a middle aged single parent who has cared for a severely disabled adult daughter since birth. Her daughter’s demands have denied Margaret the ability to hold down steady employment and the play opens with her being fired from her supermarket cashier's job. Desperate for work she tracks down Mike, a childhood friend and now a successful doctor and amidst banter with her bingo hall buddies and an intriguing past with the doctor, so Lindsay-Abaire’s tale pans out.

The star turn of the play is Imelda Staunton's Margaret. She and Kent have previous form together (he directed her Oliver award winning Mrs Lovett in Chichester's Sweeney Todd three years ago) and he coaxes from Staunton a performance of the most marvellously measured mania. Margaret’s lot is a tough one and Staunton never once lets us forget that hers’ is a character that has only known the hard knock life. There is a hint of Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in the story's opening moments as we see her fired, reluctantly, by a supermarket manager who we learn is the son of an old friend. Her tragic circumstances are continuous and whilst Staunton’s performance of a woman, literally on the edge, is sublime and sensitively realised, that so many of the audience laugh at her so often, is actually rather uncomfortable. There’s a distasteful prurience at work here, (Is it really so "blisteringly funny" as the posters proclaim, to laugh at a woman so tragically desperate?) that possibly says more about the chattering classes of the play’s predominantly well-heeled audience, than it does about the painstakingly fleshed-out heroine.

Mike is played by Lloyd Owen. Life has dealt him aces and he has clawed his way out of the South Boston poverty projects through a combination of luck and hard work. He has a complex history however and in his dialogues both with Margaret and with young wife Kate (Angel Coulby) the timing and nuance of all three actors is exquisite. We find that Mike and Kate's marriage is shaky and built on some reluctant compromises and there are moments in act 2, largely set in their beautiful suburban mansion, that echo Edward Albee’s Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.

At the bingo hall Susan Brown and Lorraine Ashbourne put in delicious caricatures of hardened harridans, ultimately loving towards Margaret yet as sceptical as good friends should be. Again, the dialogue between the three women is acutely observed by Lindsay-Abaire, with perfectly weighted performances.

Whilst some of the story’s links may stretch credibility and occasionally the tale’s chapters sit oddly together, what is unquestionable is that each chapter is brilliantly scripted. The text convinces and all the actors are nigh on flawless. Hildegard Bechtler’s ingenious use of the theatre’s revolve also impresses.

Lindsay-Abaire captures the grit of human endeavour, tragedy and deceit in his two hour work. Whether Good People leaves you amused or troubled it will surely make you ponder. The play should not be missed and its outstanding cast will leave you stunned.


Booking until 14th June 2014

De Profundis

Leicester Square Theatre

****

Music and lyrics by Paul Dale Vickers

Directed by Stuart Saint

Alastair Brookshaw

Three years after his acclaimed performance as Leo Frank, imprisoned on trumped up charges in Jason Robert Brown’s Parade, Alastair Brookshaw finds himself once again behind bars. The actor who is a master of profoundly fragile strength is once more playing a prisoner of conscience, this time the author and poet Oscar Wilde, who in the late 19th century was imprisoned for gross indecency a charge that arose from his (illegal at the time) homosexuality.

De Profundis is drawn from the 50,000 word letter that Wilde wrote (but never sent) to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, whilst incarcerated in Reading Prison. A solo performance, it is presented at the Leicester Square Theatre as the chosen show from The New Musical Project competition held earlier this year.

As with his Leo Frank, Brookshaw again astonishes. Commanding the compact stage of the (packed) Lounge space, for one hour the shows' melodies range from ballad to distinctly upbeat as this beautifully talented tenor captures the tortured soul of one of England's most celebrated writers.

Paul Dale Vickers has chosen wisely in his extracts from the original opus. From an opening reference to "we are the grotesques" in which we glean the misery of Wilde’s condition, through to the glorious melody of I Must Have Love In My Heart, a song that that gives Brookshaw a chance to fill the room with his voice, the work is a finely balanced combination of styles. 

The musical highspot of the show coincides with Wilde’s nadir, as he learns whilst imprisoned that the court has removed his children from his care. The pain is acute and Brookshaw sings How Sick The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name with such controlled rage that there is an almost Gethsemane-like quality to his treatment. It's a spine tingling moment in such an intimate theatre. 

Stuart Saint has delivered a gem in his interpretation of this new writing. Enhanced by Jonny Dickie's subtle sound design and clever lighting, the dank isolation of a Victorian jail is convincingly suggested. This ballad of Reading gaol though merits a wider audience and an auditorium with grander acoustics than a sticky-floored Leicester Square basement. Brookshaw's mellifluous tones are frequently deployed as a chorister in the splendour of both St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and to hear him deliver Vickers' majestic melodies in a classic venue, built with echoing walls of stone, would be a treat.

Until then, Alastair Brookshaw serves his current term until 8th June. Visitors are most definitely encouraged.

Runs until 8th June

Emerging Artists - April 2014

Crazy Coqs, London

Produced by Simon Greiff

The series of Emerging Artist gigs that are taking place at London’s Crazy Coqs is a potentially exciting showcase for new talent in the arenas of both performance and also creativity. The guru behind the events is Simon Greiff, long recognised as a champion of the talent that is to be found breaking through in musical theatre.

Three writer/composers were showcased in the April session, Jonathan Eio, Ella Grace and Dan Looney. All talented musicians for sure, far more talented than this critic and all able to structure a song with a respectable number of verses, a key change and a middle eight that works too. But it was a disappointment that too many of the evening’s numbers bore the hallmarks of bland ballads. The human condition has long been the driving force of strong musical theatre and songs about relationships are all very well and good. But, there’s a difference between just writing a song and writing a good striking song that hooks the audience. All too often there wasn’t enough imaginative bait on offer to make me want to bite, either in terms of an exciting melody or truly witty lyrics.

That being said, whilst Eio’s When You Were Mine may have been lyrically trite, Adele Pope’s delivery of the song was rather gorgeous. Elsewhere in the programme Grace’s Promise Me tackled the challenge of violent abuse. A dark subject for any song (Suzanne Vega nailed it years ago with Luka) and whilst Kay Hindmarsh sung it beautifully, the lyrics veered from being painfully percepetive to at times being shallow and occasionally patronising. These are criticisms that I suspect could not have been further from Grace’s mind when she penned the number, her song simply needs more work.

Dan Looney’s work was generally excellent. His Swear Our Love, about a young man with Tourettes, was a brave song that trod very thin ice. To write a witty song about a disability requires profound sensitivity and tact and Looney got the balance just right, showing judgement and maturity in his lyrics. Looney was also blessed with two of the evening’s stellar performers. Seasoned young star Matthew Rowland served his Excalibur 93 number very well, whilst Mollie Melia-Redgrave was a stunning Ditsy Blonde.

Not really an emerging talent, more a leading-lady in waiting, Laura Pitt-Pulford graced the stage with Eio’s Sandbox. Pitt-Pulford only really knows to do “fabulous” when she sings and this song proved no exception. A cracking performance as ever, which also seemed to truly tickle the hen party that staggered in to the Crazy Coqs half way through her number!

Talent showcases will always present a variety of abilities and whilst it is proving hard to discern an emerging wit to match the the likes of a young Rice Sondheim or Schwartz there is definite potential amongst today’s young composers. The venue was packed, the show only lasted an hour and it costs a tenner. And all this all takes place in one of London’s most elegant art deco cabaret venues. Greiff’s next gig in the series is on Saturday June 7 and if you care about the future of the genre, it’s well worth attending.

The next concert in the series is at Crazy Coqs on 7th June

Anything Worth Holding On To - Scott Alan - CD Review

****

Music and lyrics by Scott Alan

Produced by Paul Vazquez and Scott Alan

Many artists seek to bare their souls in their work and it can often be a journey of self-discovery or confession that leads to the recording of an album or the creation of a work of art. But whilst many creative individuals sincerely try to open their hearts, few bring the level of measured brilliance to their work that Scott Alan displays in his album released this week, Anything Worth Holding On To. Alan’s liner notes talk of the songs coming from difficult periods of his life and in having been so open and on the record about his battles with depression, the glimpse into his emotions that the album gives is both profound and moving.

There is an intimacy to the start of most tracks that lay down either the sound of breaking waves or gentle rainfall. Opening with the plaintive Nothing Remains, Alan gives us the sound of seagulls and footsteps along a shore easing into a song that suggests a bleak sense of loneliness and despair, yet also expresses a hope for a future fulfilling love. As with (nearly) all the tracks, Alan sings his words alone, though on this number Oliver Tompsett and David Hunter providing an ethereal backing harmony.

Take Me Away is a beautiful track expressing the hope of a man weighed down in depression to again soar in the sky and climb a mountain peak. Jessie Vargas arrangement of Chris Delis’ exquisite guitar work encapsulates what this album is all about, the importance of looking up and holding on to a visionary dream.

The title track is a stunning song. Alan scored Anything Worth Holding On To, a song that he is particularly proud of, from the darkest pain of depression. I first heard it sung by a sobbing Cynthia Erivo live in London last year and was intrigued as to how Alan himself would deliver the number. Handing over the piano responsibilities (for this track only) to Logan Culwell, Alan re-immerses himself in his song’s intensity and his take on the song delivers up a shocking honesty about his experience that shines out from the recording. It is humbling to listen to this track.

Shoshana Bean joins Alan as the album’s only featured artist, on I’m In Pain, a song that speaks of the desperation of his suffering. Bean’s contribution to the recording gives it a strangely everyman feel, making the singer’s pain recognisable to so many. This number also has no rainfall intro, rather it ominously fades to the muffled sound of thunder.

Bonus tracks include an instrumental take on Anything Worth Holding On To and a live recording of Nothing More, taken during a London gig in 2009. 

Alan's words are sometimes painful to hear, though throughout the album is imbued with well crafted harmonies. Returning to the liner notes, Alan writes that he hopes his words and music will motivate the listener to “pick yourself up when life is keeping you down”. His is a motive that is noble and altruistic. Scott Alan has known the darkest of times and in Anything Worth Holding On To he bravely seeks to shine a beacon in that darkness, not just for himself but others too. This is an inspirational album and a beautiful collection of songs.

Available from May 6 on Amazon and iTunes

Titus Andronicus

Shakespeare's Globe, London

****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Matthew Needham, William Houston and Indira Varma

Much like General Titus himself, Lucy Bailey’s production of this most bloodthirsty of Shakespeare’s works, makes a glorious and triumphant return to Shakespeare’s Globe. Under Bill Dudley’s black and oppressive velarium spread atop the yard space, the groundlings are spared blistering sunshine, but remain exposed to the pouring rain, which on press night only added to the ghoulish horrors of the ghastly tale. Guttural percussion and pungent incense assault one's senses on entering the Globe’s performing space and even before the players take to the stage, this production hints at being a festival of Shakespearean fun.

The classic story is driven by the vengeance that Tamora, the Goth Queen and Titus her conqueror, wreak upon each other's families for the various acts of murder, rape and mutilation that their children have suffered. Around these tribes and fuelling their appetites for revenge, Aaron, Tamora's Moorish lover, spins a web of lies and deceit that adds to the body count. Whilst the horrendous rape and disfigurement of Titus’ daughter Lavinia occurs offstage, nearly all the other carnage occurs in full view of the audience. For those who like their literature served bloody, this play truly is a rare treat.

Lavinia's rape is evil and Flora Spencer-Longhurst puts in a moving performance as the victim, pleading to Indira Varma’s Tamora woman to woman that she should call off sons Chiron and Demetrius from ravishing her. Elsewhere in the play however, and as can be so often the case with horror, there is much comedy. When Tamora gives birth to a mixed-race baby, conceived illegitimately with Aaron, the proud father boasts to her shocked legitimate sons. When they accuse him of having “undone” their mother, he retorts “I have done thy mother”. Obi Abili convinces as the malevolent Moor and deftly extracts a deserved guffaw from the crowd. Some of the play's comedy is occasionally overplayed and Matthew Needham’s Emperor Saturninus is at times just a little heavy on the Kenneth Williams style antics.

William Houston plays the wearied Titus well. Rome’s loyal servant, he comes close to losing his mind as he witnesses the terrors that befall his family, though in the play’s final scenes, adorned in chef’s hat as the Bard instructs, his serving up of the pie in which Chiron and Demetrius have been slaughtered and baked, is delivered with relish. One should also give a nod to Brian Martin and Samuel Edward-Cook's performances as the errant young Goths, destined to fill Titus' infernal pasty. Their final scene before Andronicus slits their throats is excruciating to watch. Suspended by their ankles for what is probably five minutes but seems an eternity, their ultimate despatch comes as a blessed relief to the audience.

Ian Gelder is a wise counsel as Titus’ brother Marcus, though it is also largely through this play's creative team that Bailey has also achieved her success. Django Bates’ music, haunting trumpets and relentless drums, suggest a world of violence and discord. Terry King, arguably one of the greatest fight directors, choreographs the mayhem with aplomb whilst Pam Humpage’s make-up effects go a long way to convincing us that the onstage horrors are for real.

If you can stomach violence (and 13 people were spotted being helped from the auditorium during act one alone) then Bailey's production truly is Shakespeare for the people. The yard space is used to the full as the groundlings become Rome’s plebeians and the bacchanalic splashing of wine over the squealing crowd only adds to the merriment. Shocking, upsetting and at times hilarious, this Titus Andronicus is bloody good Shakespeare.

Runs until 13th July 2014

Stevie

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Hugh Whitemore

Directed by Christopher Morahan

Zoe Wanamaker

Christopher Morahan’s Stevie that opens this year’s season at Chichester, is a masterclass in modern drama. From the life and work of 20th century English poet Stevie Smith Hugh Whitemore’s carefully crafted text, weaves extracts of Smith’s verse into a narrative tell of poetry allowing her to escape a dull middle-class suburban world.

Spanning decades, the play takes place entirely in Smith’s sitting room in Palmers Green. It’s a compact work. Chris Larkin takes on the role of various male friends of the poet (including a post-war chap who bears a striking vocal similarity to Maggie Smith) whilst Lynda Baron plays the Aunt who tended to Stevie since childhood and who in turn was cared for by Smith as she became old and infirm. Baron (aided by excellent wig work from Campbell Young) convinces as the wise and humdrum relative, more moved by letters from the Inland Revenue than her niece’s writing, yet all the while still showing her charge love and care. It’s a performance of subtle charm and Baron is marvellous.

Driving the work however is Zoe Wanamaker’s astonishing Stevie. On stage almost throughout, the role is massive both in terms of her character’s emotional complexities (Smith suffered from depression) as well as the sheer volume of text. Wanamaker is sublime, capturing the fragility of Smith’s youth, blighted by TB and from there charts her life with perception. Smith displayed a sanguine self-deprecation, referring to her parents unhappiness she describes herself as the “product of an unsuitable marriage”. Chain smoking and mainly plainly dressed, Wanamaker bestows on Stevie the gimlet eye that gave her poems such clarity of vision. Later in her career, she observes to a friend that “one doesn’t want happiness in a poem, it spoils the fun”, yet when she reflects upon her Aunt, now passed away, Wanamaker comments that on having lived with an old lady from an early age, one “never ceases to be a child”. That she can breathe sensitive and empathetic life into these two sentences, each at opposite ends of an emotional spectrum, is a mark of Wanamaker's understated excellence. Her Smith is at all times a down to earth north London suburbanite, feted for her talents for sure, yet in Wanamaker’s performance, remaining aloof from the Bohemian pretensions that one might perhaps associate with the Hampstead or Bloomsbury sets. 

Morahan is masterful in his direction. Finely crafted movement work conveys time and age and adds to the excellence of the production, whilst Jason Carr's music adds a fine accompaniment. There are few finer performances to be found than Wanamaker’s Stevie and this unmissable performance demands a London transfer.


Runs to 24th May 2014

Photograph by Manuel Harlan

King Henry IV Part II

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

*****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Greg Doran

Antony Sher

Greg Doran’s Henry IV Part 2 is a world class interpretation of a play that is at once a historical comment upon England, a bittersweet study on the frailities of age and a beautiful exposition of the human condition. Picking up from Part 1 with Hotspur’s death at Shrewsbury, the play dwells upon the waning of Henry IV’s reign, the revolutions that are continually afoot and the (now separate) paths of young Hal and Falstaff.

In the only obvious nod to the modern era, Doran opens the play with Antony Byrne's Rumour, in jeans, imploring us to open our ears. It is the only overtly stylistic nod to modern times, though such is the wit of Shakespeare's verse that many dramatic creations of our times clearly draw their inspiration from the Bard.

King Henry’s appearances in Part 2 are less frequent, he is an old man now, but Jasper Britton’s interpretation of the King is all the sweeter for being so much more condensed. His “uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown” speech being a beautifully focussed insight into the burdens of statesmanship. Britton is amongst excellent company on stage. Alex Hassell’s Hal is every inch the King to be, well weighted in addressing his father’s demise and steeled with the cold aloofness of absolute power as heartbreakingly he ultimately scorns Falstaff, his former friend. 

It is in his depiction of England and its natives though that Shakespeare gives us an endearing social comment. The elderly Justices Shallow and Silent, exquisitely defined by Oliver Ford Davies and Jim Hooper, seeing out their days in idyllic Gloucestershire, could so easily be the inspiration for television's Last Of The Summer Wine with just a hint of old Mr Grace thrown in for good measure. Ever considered what classical sources may have led to the creation of Albert Square's Angie Watts and Dot Cotton? Well get yourself to Stratford where Paola Dionisotti's marvellous Mistress Quickly presides over her brothel/tavern in a style that as much suggests EastEnders as Eastcheap.

And presiding over this carnival of characters is Antony Sher's Falstaff. The glory of his Part 1 excellence is only polished in this sequel. Sher extracts painful pathos as he acknowledges he is too old to sate the flame of his desire that burns for Nia Gwynne’s young whore Doll Tearsheet. He frequently owns the stage with his oratory, the soliloquy in praise of sherry being one of the evening's many delights. At the play's close Falstaff, full of bombast, is snubbed by the King in front of his old friends the Justices to whom he had promised access to the Court. The pain of this humiliation, so brilliantly penned by Shakespeare, in Sher’s hands is tragi-comedy defined. As he attempts to shrug off his own shrugging off by the King, one can sense more than a hint of Del Boy telling Rodney not to worry, "next year, we'll be millionaires". The relevance of the prose is timeless

Again the RSC surpass themselves. Dominic Dromgoole recently commented that some countries "do Shakespeare" better than us and occasionally he may be right. But this production cannot be bettered. The stagecraft on display, from both cast and creatives is perfection. Rarely is a classic work performed with such wit, freshness and vitality.

Runs until 6th September 2014, then tours.