THEATREWORLD

The combination of David Mamet and director, Terry Johnson proves to be a real winner in this belated London transfer of a play that hit Broadway as long ago as 2009. In it, the playwright uses techniques honed in Oleanna to address contemporary issues of race and gender.

Johnson is helped by a script that is as sharp as a knife and a British cast which may not have quite have the glamour of its American counterpart comprising James Spader, Richard (John-Boy Walton) Thomas, Kerry Washington and David Alan Grier but manages to screw every grain of humour from a very witty script.

The play is set in a Tim Shortall-designed, wood-panelled, book-lined legal office where one of those ultra-rich, ultra-lazy Masters of the Universe, Charles Strickland played by Charles Daish, is seeking succour.

This is the consequence of a night of passionate stupidity, which has subsequently been mirrored by more real-life politicians and diplomats that one cares to remember.

What is beyond dispute is that in a society that seeks to condemn anyone who is not 100% politically correct, this rich White man had adulterous sex with a poorer, Black woman who then cried rape.

The main debate that exercises a hilarious, wise-cracking legal double act of Jack Lawson and Henry Brown, played respectively by Jasper Britton and Clarke Peters, is whether to take a case that will almost certainly result in reputational disaster whether they win or lose.

At the same time, the pair are more than a little interested to discover what lies behind their prospective client's misjudgement and misdemeanour. Was Strickland guilty of rape or merely picking the wrong woman to fall in love with?

It doesn't take long to realise that he has chosen badly, as we discover that the lady's main motive for the relationship is material and quite possibly nothing more than following her seamy profession..

What would be a fine legal drama and interesting dissection of the American law business today is given an extra dimension by the presence of Nina Toussaint-White's Susan. She is a junior attorney who is both attractive and Black, spicing up the mix as the story unfolds.

Susan gets treated equally badly by both of her bosses and reacts like Oleanna, which switches the evening's emphasis a little too sharply and makes Mamet's intentions all too clear.

While this is a legal drama, the writer is clearly more fascinated by taboo issues such as attitudes to race and gender and the desperate attempts that in which all others become embroiled when we try to avoid giving offence even where it might be richly deserved.

Terry Johnson has been blessed with a wonderful cast all of whom are on top form at the same time, though Jasper Britton manages to prove primus inter pares even in this company.

For much of its 80 minute running time, Race takes on serious ethical issues in a light-hearted but deeply satisfying manner. The speed of delivery takes the breath away and guarantees a fulfilling evening that will leave viewers pondering and quite possibly arguing about the subject matter long after they leave the theatre.

As such, this should be compulsory viewing, even if its dramatic closure is a little too simplistic and pat for what is otherwise such a sophisticated and elegant piece.

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

HAMPSTEAD THEATRE - DOWNSTAIRS

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

TRICYCLE THEATRE

Kilburn High Road (nearest underground - Kilburn)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7328 1000

www.tricycle.co.uk

Tricycle Theatre and Shared Experience

Present the world premier of

BRACKEN MOOR

by Alexei Kaye Campbell

Now playing at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn until July 20^th

Bracken Moor is a psychological drama with more than its fair share of plot twists. The first scene of its 2¼ hours feels like an escapee from Rutherford and Son, still playing at St James's Theatre, though Daniel Flynn's Harold Pritchard is better spoken than his direct equivalent.

The time is 1936 and the setting a comfortable home occupied by the Pritchards close to the colliery that the old man is about to close, as the aftermath of the depression continues to hit profitability.

With its intellectualised allusions, this really does feel like one of a plethora of left-wing plays written at the time or in the 25 years before.

With the arrival of house guests the Averys, the evening takes a very different turn. First, we meet young Terence. The beautiful boy hardly endears himself to his reactionary host, who distastefully labels the left-leaning would-be writer as a Freudian rationalist.

Terence quickly explains that he is not "the marrying kind" setting us up for an exploration of gay themes in a repressive context.

This is only developed to a degree, as Terence remembers the late Edgar Pritchard, a contemporary of his with whom he empathised to a remarkable degree prior to the youngster's death aged only 12, which took place on the lonely, titular moor ten years before.

The bulk of the plot is taken up with a genuinely chilling and at times unsettling ghost story that literally makes some punters jump out of their seats on occasion.

This brings out the best in a number of the actors including Joseph Timms as Terence but more particularly the star of the evening, Helen Schlesinger playing Elizabeth Pritchard. Edgar's mother is still almost literally distracted by grief, despite the passing of a decade, to the extent that she has a seemingly intractable death wish.

At one point, Elizabeth begins to introduce a new theme which threatens to turn the play into a post-Ibsenite feminist tract, before the remainder of the evening finally settles down to what could almost be viewed as a particularly dark and sinister comedy.

Bracken Moor brings together a somewhat unexpected combination of Royal Court favourite Alexei Kaye Campbell, teaming up with Polly Teale's Shared Experience under the roof of the Tricycle Theatre.

Miss Teale directs a good cast that can't always cover up somewhat weak characterisation with several of the individuals more useful in advancing the plot than revealing their inner selves.

Having said that, tough patriarch Harold begins to gain greater depth towards the end of the drama, while Sarah Woodward plays Vanessa, a comically terse wife who is only too happy to chide tediously dim husband Geoffrey, Simon Shepherd whenever the opportunity arises.

Bracken Moor is unusual and although it swaps themes around rather too often to allow members of the audience to relax, there is enough of interest to make the prospect of a visit to Kilburn both intriguing and thought-provoking.

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

MENIER CHOCOLATE FACTORY

53 Southwark Street SE1 1TE

Box Office: 020 7378 1713

www.menierchocolatefactory.com

TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT

by Graham Greene

Now playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 29^th June

Iain Mitchell, Jonathan Hyde, Gregory Gudgeon and David Bamber in Travels with My Aunt. Photo: Alastair Muir

Any fan of Graham Greene will enjoy this amusing play which combines all the usual ingredients found in Greene’s novels such as uptight Englishmen in foreign lands, murky characters, questionable politics and a good dollop of Catholic angst.

Henry Pulling, the central character, is a retired bank manager who leads a blamelessly quiet life tending to his dahlias. This all changes at his mother’s funeral when he meets, for the first time in 50 years, his colourful aunt Augusta who promptly tells him that his mother was not his real mother.

Before Henry knows it he has left his safe existence behind and embarked on a travel odyssey to dangerous, exotic foreign countries with the bubbly, mysterious Augusta. Within no time he is letting his hair down on the Orient Express, smoking dope and “comforting” a willing young American hippy.

It soon transpires that Augusta has had more lovers than Henry has had hot dinners. The two of them travel to Istanbul in search of one of these lovers, an Italian Nazi collaborator called Visconti, who proves elusive. After a brief visit home Henry is once more persuaded to travel, this time to Paraguay, when his aunt asks him to bring her framed photograph to her. It seems like a long way to bring a framed photograph of Freetown. There must be more to this painting than meets the eye.

Throughout his travels Henry cannot help but wonder - will he ever discover the identity of his real mother?

The infinitely talented Jonathan Hyde, David Bamber and Iain Mitchell each take turns to play Henry Pulling, ably supported by Gregory Gudgeon. Jonathan Hyde also does a stunning turn as flighty Augusta.

A highly enjoyable evening.

Reviews by Sarah Monaghan for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

ALMEIDA THEATRE

Almeida Street, London N1 1TA

BOX OFFICE: (020) 7359 4404

www.almeida.co.uk

CHIMERICA by Lucy Kirkwood

(a co-production with Headlong)

Chimerica - Hampstead

(Photo Jeff Widener/AP/Press Association Images)

Now playing at the Almeida Theatre until 6^th July

The Almeida has enjoyed a taste of the goodies to come in this powerful work co-produced with Headlong, the company run by its Artistic Director Designate, Rupert Goold.

When Headlong as firing on all cylinders, nobody does it much better, Enron and Earthquakes in London being exhilarating examples of the company at its best.

While Chimerica may not quite scale those heights, it is a hell of a play, showing us why Lucy Kirkwood is such a highly rated playwright.

Following this company's sometimes overly ambitious ethos, the writer has spent some six years writing and developing a multi-layered piece that combines ripping yarn with a tangential comparison of life in China with that in America at two crucial developmental moments.

The connection between the Presidential election year of 2012 and the Tiananmen Square massacre 23 years before is Joe Schofield, a happy-go-lucky photo-journalist from New York.

His iconic photo of "Tank Man" an everyman superhero defined a moment of individual resistance that spelt a loss of control from which communism would never quite recover.

The excellent Stephen Campbell Moore's Joe became obsessed with the image that he had created and, together with a quartet of friends, attempted to track down Tank Man quarter of a decade on.

The journalistic chase becomes thrilling at times, as this Woodward to Sean Gilder's grizzled Bernstein tries to expose embarrassments that the Chinese authorities would prefer to suppress.

On the inside, a highly convincing Benedict Wong playing Zhang Lin, does his best to help under repressive conditions. At the same time as helping his American friend, the Beijing-based teacher is exorcising his own symbolic demons, a young, pregnant bride slaughtered in the Square all those years before and a neighbour killed by the modern equivalent - industrial smog.

Joe has to overcome many problems, including several imposed by Trevor Cooper as his hard-boiled editor Frank, a witty man who is driven by about resents the commercial imperatives that are killing investigative journalism.

On the plus side, Claudie Blakley has great fun taking on the role of English PR consultant Tess, Joe's on-off squeeze but also a lady with a sense of humour to cherish.

The dramas are played out in front of a revolving cube that designer Es Devlin adorns with pertinent video images generated by Finn Ross, helped on occasion by a lively soundscape.

War photographers have proved to be a real and often symbolic inspiration to playwrights in recent years. In this country, The Witness by Vivien Franzmann immediately comes to mind, while across the Atlantic, Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies trod similar ground.

Lucy Kirkwood uses a slightly different angle and once again, proves that not only are war photographers great characters but they also provide voyeuristic opportunities on which the best playwrights can capitalise with powerful and often very moving results.

At around three hours, having been cut slightly ham-fisted late from even longer, one could argue that Lyndsey Turner's gripping production would not be harmed by pruning. Despite that minor criticism, with its combination of reportage, rich humour and deep investigation of feeling delivered with great compassion, Chimerica is likely to be remembered as one of the highlights of the year to date.

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

THE GATE THEATRE

11 Pembridge Road
Notting Hill Gate

London W11 3HQ

BOX OFFICE: 020 7 229 0706

www.gatetheatre.co.uk

The Gate Theatre presents

DANCES OF DEATH

by August Strindberg

in a new version by Howard Brenton

Now playing at Gate Theatre until 6^th July

(Photo by Catherine Ashmore - Linda Marlowe and Christopher Ravenscroft)

It’s hard enough to be stuck in a loveless marriage but imagine being marooned on an island together with your hated spouse for thirty years. This is the premise of Strindberg’s two-part drama that pits Edgar (Michael Pennington) against Alice (Linda Marlowe) in a battle of wits and one-upmanship. The couple clearly loathe one another and, over three decades, their hatred has poisoned everything inside and out of their home. They’re in debt, their servants never last long, the other islanders avoid them and even their daughter Judith (Eleanor Wyld) apparently keeps her distance, preferring to stay on the mainland.

Edgar, an army captain and commander of the fortress, treats his wife with virulent disdain. Alice, a former actress, longs for his death – he suffers repeated strokes but, once revitalised, celebrates with the savage, wild dances of the title. When Kurt (Christopher Ravenscroft), Alice’s cousin’s and Edgar’s childhood friend, arrives on the island to take up a post as quarantine master, he pays witnesses to the hell the pair have created. Edgar holds Kurt responsible for his loveless marriage while Alice seeks an ally. All looks set for a show down but the couple’s mutual obsession and Kurt’s natural passivity in the face of aggression moves events in a different direction.

Part II focuses on Judith’s relationship with Kurt’s son, Allen (Edward Franklin). Like her father she is adept at taunting her prey but Allen’s love offers the possibility of redemption. Again Edgar revels in playing the puppet master, attempting to meddle in his daughter’s future and usurping Kurt’s political ambitions. Like a political tyrant, he rules his family with “an iron fist” and is diabolical until the very end.

Howard Brenton's adaptation teases out the black humour from Strindberg’s original script and gives it a contemporary twist. At times, though, the tension palls and one yearns for a little more light to offset the play’s darker side. Tom Littler’s slick production is complemented by two world-class actors. What a coup for the Gate. Pennington and Marlowe give striking performances as the embittered couple raging at themselves and the world and James Perkins’ stunning design is worth the trip alone.

Reviews by Lucy Popescu for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

BUSH THEATRE

Shepherd's Bush Green

London W12 8QD

Box Office: 020 8743 3584

www.bushtheatre.co.uk

The Bush Theatre presents

DISGRACED

By Ayad Akhtar

Now playing at Bush Theatre until 22^nd June

Ayad Akhtar’s compelling play about multiculturalism and religious identity proves particularly timely, given the recent fallout from the terrorist atrocity in Woolwich. DISGRACED won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and looks set to wow London audiences.

Amir (Hari Dhillon), a successful corporate lawyer and his wife Emily (Kirsty Bushell), an up-and-coming artist, live in a smart New York apartment on the Upper East Side. Amir claims to have renounced the Muslim faith because he finds it “backward”. His white, American wife, meanwhile, likes to draw on the influences of Islamic art. They’re in love and seem to have everything they could wish for. Amir is just waiting to be made a partner in his law firm.

However, it transpires that Amir has made some bad judgments. To get ahead at work, he denied his Pakistani roots, altered his personal security number and changed his Muslim surname to Kapoor. At the request of his nephew Abe (Danny Ashok) and Emily, Amir agrees to support an imam, imprisoned without due process, but is dismayed when he is quoted in the press, fearing it will harm his career prospects. Appearance is everything to Amir – he even wears 600-dollar shirts.

The cracks begin to show during a dinner party they host for Amir’s African American colleague Jory (Sara Powell) and her husband Isaac (Nigel Whitmey) a Jewish art curator interested in Emily’s work. It’s a potent mix and the characters’ different cultural perspectives, disagreements and personal rivalries provide the meat of the play. Gradually, various bitter resentments and the suppressed prejudices of the four are revealed. When Amir admits that he felt a blush of pride at 9/11, it’s a genuinely shocking moment, swiftly followed by an act of domestic violence that is to leave his life in shreds.

Nadia Fall’s production is beautifully paced and acted. Dhillon eloquently conveys the fall from grace of a debonair, arrogant achiever and Bushell invests Emily with just the right measure of charm and ambition. Incredibly this is Akhtar’s first work for stage. He tackles a lot of thorny questions around race, class and religion but offers no easy answers. In his choice of subject and its execution Akhtar displays a real flair for what makes good drama and DISGRACED had me gripped from beginning to end.

Reviewed by Lucy Popescu for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

KING'S HEAD THEATRE

Islington

BOX OFFICE: 020 7226 1916

Underground : Angel (Northern Line)

Highbury and Islington (Victoria Line)

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF

Now playing at the King’s Head Theatre until June 22nd

At the King’s Head, Liz Lochhead’s ‘Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off ’ explores the sexual and political rivalry that simmered between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Acclaimed on its premiere presentation at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Studio Theatre a quarter-century ago, the play enjoyed a week at London’s Donmar Warehouse in the same year (1987) until it re-surfaced in this sparse new production directed by Robin Norton-Hale.

Audiences must make up their own minds whether or not to share the enthusiasm for the piece by King’s Head’s Artistic Director, Adam Spreadbury-Mayer whose programme note expresses surprise that “this fascinating and powerful piece had been neglected for so long”. But, however “dramatic, poetic and hugely rich in its use of the Scots language” it may be, whether or not this new production will prove such a crowd-pleaser South of the Border is open to doubt.

Set in a stark approximation of what might well represent a ‘blasted heath’ – or perhaps a lowly bothy – it examines Mary’s troubled story through the eyes of Shelley Lang’s scraggy Corbie (Scotland’s national bird, the Crow) a prophet/prankster whose mischievous commentary sets the scene with a discourse on the very nature of Scotland, the country, and its doughty inhabitants, the Scots themselves.

To govern such a country required a strong hand, political nous and a monarch sympathetic to the country’s Protestant ethic as promulgated by John Knox: instead Scotland was forced to accept the staunchly Catholic Mary Stuart, who was shipped to Scotland to accede to the throne following the death of her husband, the Dauphin of France.

In naïve contrast to her English counterpart, Mary is portrayed as a woman prone to bouts of depression who rules a country she barely knows - and has little interest in - with her heart, rather than her head.

Locked in self-imposed isolation within her private apartments, and oblivious to much of what was happening in her own country, she delegated the day-to-day running of affairs of State to a Council (with whom she maintained little contact) preferring the company of a few sycophantic favourites.

Her ill-fated progress is followed by her ruthless cousin, Elizabeth, a ruler who enjoys the absolute power that keeps her firmly on the Throne but leaves her isolated and lonely at the heart of a brittle Court of toadying nobles. But, unlike Mary, she is both accessible, interested and in total control.

Picking over scraps of action (not all historically sound) that include the sermons and sermonising of a lemon-faced John Knox (for such a pivotal player, Prentis Hancock is somewhat tentative in a role that requires considerably more presence) La Corbie acerbically delineates the other main personages surrounding Mary in a series of scenes that include her marriage to Darnley (strategically engineered by Elizabeth), the birth of her son James, the distancing descent of her boy-king husband into alcoholism and a destructive affaire with a Court favourite, Riccio.

The complicated plot strands may not always be clear - and the doubling of roles for Elizabeth as her own maid (Bessie) and Mary and her maid, (Marian), only add to the confusion. Perhaps a programme note might help?

As Mary, Nora Wardell adopts one of the most extraordinary accents to be heard on the West End stage in recent years: a mid-Manche amalgam of Franglais and soi-disant Scots dialogue, its vagaries take some getting used to, whilst Sarah Thom’s Elizabeth lacks the requisite autocratic froideur as the Virgin Queen.

But, it will be interesting to discover just how much this feisty “classic” appeals to a Sassenach London audience in the current economic climate.

Reviews by Clive Burton for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

BOYS’ LIFE

by Howard Korder

Now playing at the King’s Head Theatre 9^th 10^th 16^th 17^th and 23^rd June only

Just a generation ago, the characters in Howard Korder’s Boys’ Life were newly-minted: young men and women carving individual paths through a New York jungle of fast-changing sexual and business mores.

Today, judged from a contemporary perspective moulded by incisive sitcoms, reality shows and mocumentaries, Boys’ Life seems rather quaint. Yet, when it was first produced in 1988 by the Lincoln Center Theater, it was praised in Variety as a “satisfying and thoughtful work by a fresh playwriting voice” and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The singular ‘Life’ in the title alludes to the background communality shared by three ex-college buddies (Jack, Phil and Don), who subscribe to a ‘boys at heart’ mentality that justifies their egocentric attitude to life in general and women in particular.

Living in a state of permanent post-pubescent priapism, Matthew Crowley’s Don appears to be the most grounded of the three man/boys mooching about his messy apartment, swapping philosophies and inhabiting a universe of arrested personal development. Each has his own way of relating to the opposite sex - usually driven by a hoped-for ‘lay’ as its goal.

Luke Trebilcock’s rudderless, needy Phil is one of life’s losers (“does masturbation count as a fuck?”) whose quirky misadventures with women are legion. Even having sex with a comatose girl who had passed out at a party, has its funny side - especially as she presses him for a second date - although, as elsewhere, the intrinsically dark humour in the situation too often fails to illuminate a scene that ends with a blackout over an understated exit line.

Ringleader Max Warrick’s swarthy Jack toasts ‘America and the ladies’ with gusto in the opening scene, and remains a philandering two-timing presence throughout, despite a long-term relationship with Amanda Cooper’s Carla that has brought him a son by an accommodating partner who works tirelessly to support his indigent lifestyle and ‘weed’ dependency.

Ever the lad, he is ceaseless in his search for new conquests, whether predatorily prowling at parties or hitting on Abi Unwin-Smith’s ballsy jogger, Maggie, over a spliff in the park. Yet the root reason for his Quixotic pursuit of women is left largely unexplored and unexplained: it is simply accepted as a ‘guy’ thing.

So, it is hard to understand why the mother of his child would be willing to wed him in the end, except that perhaps she had seen where the lives of his buddies were leading.

Perhaps Matthew Crowley’s impending marriage (as Don) provided the spur. And, despite a threat from Anna Brooks-Beckman’s Lisa to leave him following a one-night stand with a creepily-cookie clairvoyant, a blistering row eventually clears the air and sets them both on the rocky road to matrimony.

The wider script affords little in the way of clues as to why each man is so determined to do 'the terrible things’ he does - other than the fact that they are men - but we do see how the seeds sown in the early scenes impact on their lives later on. And witness the emergence of women as a power in their own right.

In the years since its Pulitzer nomination (it was beaten by a considerable margin by Driving Miss Daisy in an otherwise lean year), Boys’ Life has lost much of its topicality and now largely begs the question as to where its original appeal lay.

Reviews for Theatreworld Internet Magazine written by Clive Burton

LYRIC HAMMERSMITH

King Street

Hammersmith

BOX OFFICE: 0871 22 117 22

www.lyric.co.uk