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Hampstead
Theatre – Hampstead Theatre
Downstairs
Southwark Playhouse (and The
Vault)
Eton Avenue
Swiss Cottage
LONDON NW3 3TU
BOX OFFICE: 020 7722 9301
website: www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Race
by David Mamet
Now playing
at Hampstead Theatre until 29th June
Courtroom
drama: Jasper Britton as Jack and Clarke Peters as Henry – Photo by
Alastair Muir
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
Kilburn High Road (nearest underground - Kilburn)
BOX OFFICE: 020 7328 1000
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 20th
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
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
29th
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
Street, London N1 1TA
BOX OFFICE: (020) 7359 4404
CHIMERICA by Lucy Kirkwood
(a
co-production with Headlong)

(Photo Jeff
Widener/AP/Press Association Images)
Now playing at the Almeida Theatre
until 6th
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
11 Pembridge Road
Notting Hill Gate
London W11 3HQ
BOX OFFICE: 020 7 229 0706
The
Gate Theatre presents
DANCES
OF DEATH
by August Strindberg
in a new version by Howard Brenton
Now playing at Gate Theatre until 6th
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
Shepherd's Bush Green
London W12 8QD
The
Bush Theatre presents
DISGRACED
By Ayad Akhtar
Now
playing at Bush Theatre until 22nd 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
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 9th 10th 16th
17th and 23rd 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
King Street
Hammersmith
BOX OFFICE: 0871 22 117 22
Reviews by Lucy Popescu for Theatreworld Internet Magazine
Shipwright Yard
Tower Bridge
BOX OFFICE: 020 7407 0234
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Reviews
by Clive Burton for Theatreworld Internet Magazine
70
Landor Road
London
SW9
9PH
BOX
OFFICE: 020 7737 7276
Reviews
by Clive Burton for Theatreworld Internet Magazine
Clifton Terrace,
Finsbury Park,
London, N4 3JP
BOOKING INFORMATION
By phone: 020 7870 6876
Online: www.parktheatre.co.uk
Reviews by Lucy Popescu for Theatreworld Internet
Magazine
For more details or
individual advice/help - email: GPowner@aol.com