Julius Caesar

25 March 2018, Bridge Theatre

There seems to have been a recent rash of Shakespeare productions with fantastic constituent parts that don’t quite make as effective a whole as they might. At least with Nick Hynter’s Bridge Theatre production, we seem to have got the Julius Caesar obsession out of our systems - although I’m sure another one will be announced immediately I post this.

We had some of the immersive pit tickets for this, and I’ll immediately point anyone who reads this to Andy Kesson’s great blog about the treatment of the audience in this production, and on Julius Caesar’s ideas about the crowd and mob mentality more generally. I’d expected the experience to be slightly more upsetting than it was, and while I did get a bit grumpy towards the end of the show, I coped with it ok, although I’m not sure everyone around me did. My main problem with using the people standing in the pit as part of the production is that it felt most effective in the battle scenes towards the end of the play, by which point I’m fairly done with the piece. To my mind, the most interesting parts are the big persuasive scenes featuring Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony, which weren’t badly done in this, but did seem slightly sidelined.

That said, it’s always a total privilege seeing Ben Whishaw onstage, and particularly doing Shakespeare. I thought his Brutus was spot on, and very strong in the orchard soliloquy scene, although perhaps slightly over-directed - we didn’t really need him signing a book for a political fanboy (?) in the audience. Michelle Fairley’s Cassius was nice too, but I didn’t entirely get the read between her and David Calder as Caesar. I was a big fan of the tent (sans tent) scene between Brutus and Cassius though - one of the most urgent ways I’ve seen it played, which really makes sense of the eruption into argument. David Morrissey did a good job with the big Mark Antony speeches - the moment when he goes unamplified in the funeral oration was probably my favourite of the show, and I definitely wouldn’t mind one of those SPQR t shirts.

It wasn’t until I saw Macbeth at the National a couple of days later (my next post will be about that one) that I really figured out how I felt about this show. I didn’t mind Rufus Norris throwing ideas haphazardly at the Olivier to see what stuck, and I think preferred it to the more calculated approach Nick Hytner takes for Julius Caesar. His Othello really really worked for me back in 2013, and although Julius Caesar is a similar sort of modern setting, I just didn’t get on with it in the same way. I’m not too sure what the Bridge as a venue is trying to do at the moment, either; they don’t seem to know who their target audience is, and so it’s all a strange mishmash of madeleines and rock covers of Katy Perry. The programming is another kettle of fish entirely, and not one I feel quite informed enough to go into here. I had a good time watching some great actors give good performances, but I was left thoroughly whelmed by the experience overall, I think.

Caroline, Or Change

24 March 2018, Hampstead Theatre

Another year, another Kushner. I’ve been lucky enough to see three big stagings of arguably Kushner’s biggest shows over the last three years - iHo at Hampstead in 2016, Angels at the National last year and now Caroline, or Change at Hampstead again. Everything I see of his deepens my admiration for him, as a playwright and simply as a mind. I would give quite a lot to be as eloquent and fearless in my self-expression as Tony Kushner at some point in my life. This latest show, a musical collaboration with Jeanine Tesori, is something of a departure from the Kushner I’ve got to know so far, and all the better for that. Caroline, or Change tells the story of Caroline Thibodeaux, a black maid in a Jewish household in Louisiana in the early 1960s. This time is obviously a period of great social change and movement forward, and the piece examines Caroline’s place within this larger context as both an individual and, importantly, a mother to children who are seeking to find their own way in a threatening but also I think hopeful world.

There isn’t a huge amount of plot to the show but the action centres around the difficulties Caroline faces when Rose Stopnick Gellman, the stepmother of Noah, decides that the boy needs to be taught a lesson about leaving change in his pants’ pocket, and tells Caroline she can keep whatever she finds. With three children to support at home, the money that Noah absently-mindedly leaves in his pockets makes a real difference to Caroline, but she’s obviously uneasy at being toyed with like this by Rose. Kushner and Tesori don’t hesitate in skewering the conceited casual racism that exists in people who claim to be well-intentioned - ‘I’m not your enemy!” is a constant refrain from Rose in the show. There are strides forward made by characters in the piece, and understandings reached, but nothing really conclusive. We don’t know whether Caroline has changed substantially, we do see Rose and Noah’s relationship soften somewhat, but the show ends with Emmie, Caroline’s daughter, coming to some realisation about the strength her mother possesses and the ways in which she can use that foundation to build something for herself and her own children one day.

Tesori mixes genres to tell the story - blues, gospel, klezmer, all sung-through and demanding some serious singing agility from the cast. As you’d hope, the performances are excellent all round. Sharon D. Clarke’s ‘Lot’s Wife’ is spectacular, and so great to watch since Caroline is (understandably) so taciturn for much of the rest of the piece. Abiona Omonua is brilliant as Emmie, she gets some of the best songs in the whole thing, and the choric roles of the Radio, Washing Machine and Dryer (stick with me) are so well done by T’Shan Williams, Sharon Rose, Carole Stennentt, Me’sha Bryan and Ako Mitchell. I saw Aaron Gelkoff as Noah, and he and Lauren Ward as Rose do a really nuanced job with their parts, and there’s great support from Teddy Kempner as Rose’s outspoken father, and Alastair Brookshaw as Noah’s emotionally closed-off clarinettist father.

Caroline, or Change is a really complex and involving show, and refreshingly brief for Kushner. I think the constricts of libretto writing provide him with an interestingly different task to the baggier plays of his I’ve seen, and I believe he and Jeanine Tesori are working on something new together, which is incredibly exciting! This production of Caroline, or Change, meanwhile, is at Hampstead for a bit longer and is then transferring to the West End, so there are some good chances to see it in the next few months, which I’d definitely recommend. I’m going to be exploring the bootleg clips of the Broadway production on youtube (shh) and crossing my fingers for a cast recording of the current one. I need to hear Sharon D. Clarke singing this material again, it’s a pretty extraordinary thing!

N.B. it took me a horrifyingly long time to work out the double meaning of ‘change’ in the title. Got a little further to go before I can claim to have that Kushner-sized brain, unfortunately.

John

17 February 2018, Dorfman

Before this production I hadn’t seen any of Annie Baker’s work staged, but I would count her as one of my favourite playwrights - and certainly one of the most interesting working right now. Strangely, then, I went into John without having read the play, and having been told that it was maybe a little different from her previous pieces. As with most of her other plays, it features a cast of characters with quite major age gaps, which I’d always found interesting in terms of the dynamics of the relationships that are portrayed, but in John there’s a definite sense of the central couple being intruders in a space that is detailed and disquieting. Other writing about the play has talked about a certain sense of spookiness, maybe leaning in a magical realist direction, which gives it a slightly more actively theatrical bent. In fact, each act is prefaced by the owner of the Gettysburg B and B, Mertis, drawing and closing a huge red curtain like you’d find in an old-fashioned proscenium arch theatre.

So John is about a couple in their late twenties, Jenny and Elias, on their way home from Thanksgiving who are stopping for a couple of nights at this eccentric B and B in Gettysburg. Elias is a civil war buff and wants to do some local sightseeing during their stay, but Jenny gets really bad cramps and so stays inside, chatting with Mertis and her intriguing friend Genevieve. That’s the plot in a couple of sentences, because Annie Baker as a rule doesn’t do plot - or certainly not big action-y plots - there’s a lot that goes on in John, but it’s what I guess you’d call emotional plotting. Jenny and Elias’ relationship is not in a good place, so we spend time watching them bicker, seemingly salvage things a bit, then fall back into horrible patterns. I’m going to get a little spoiler-y for a second, just to say that I am a huge fan of the women in Annie Baker’s plays who get to be bitches, without having to owe anyone anything. From my read on the play, Elias is the real problem in the relationship, but it’s Jenny that has cheated on him. And in The Flick, Rose is not very nice to either of the guys, just as in Circle Mirror Transformation Teresa strings Schultz along. These women aren’t stereotypically messy, like the “messy” female protagonists you get in rom coms (where messy means, oh my god, they eat all the time but still seem to be tiny? I digress.), they just make poor or hurtful or selfish decisions and, refreshingly, they don’t really get punished for it.

And so we watch Jenny and Elias arguing (including upstairs, out of sight and quite muffled at one point, which is a bit different), watch them both interact with the older women, and we do get some way towards finding out who John is. John the play is long, with the famous Annie Baker pauses, but it’s nice to sit and watch these characters live in front of you. They’re so well written, and well performed by a 3/4 British cast (Marylouise Burke having come over from the US, apparently with considerable Equity negotiations), that I could have done another three hours easily. The forays into less realist moments are really quite wonderful too - particular highlights for me were Genevieve’s second (I think) interval speech, and a lot of the third act, where the lights go down slowly and you feel like you’re entering into something entirely more strange and otherworldly. 

It feels very odd to have got this far and not talked about the set at all - in some ways I wish I hadn’t looked at any production photos before I went, because the first reveal of the B and B, with Mertis drawing back the red curtain, must have been quite something for people in the audience who didn’t know how Chloe Lamford had run riot with the kitsch decor, including of course Samantha, the American Girl doll. Jenny and Elias’ reactions to arriving in their ‘home away from home’, as Mertis rather terrifyingly calls it, are pretty great. I found, though, that after a while I got sort of used to the madness of the ornaments and the dolls and the classical jukebox - I was so focused on the characters and the nuances of the dialogue and the acres of subtext under every interaction.

Having missed The Flick a couple of years ago, I was so pleased to be able to see this. I can’t quite tell how I feel about Annie Baker in performance as opposed to on the page - I bought the John playtext this weekend, but haven’t read it yet, I suppose to make sure that my memory of seeing it live wasn’t tainted by my experience of it read. I’m really hoping I get to see any of her other plays, or a new one very soon. I love her work and am very happy to start my live collection off with John, and to have it expand my printed collection.

Side note: she dedicates the final page of the play to her husband (I think) Nico Baumbach, which is Mertis’ incredibly understated but also sort of aggressively beautiful speech about meeting her husband in person for the first time. You hopeless romantic, Annie!

Top Ten of 2017

Hello! I am still alive, and still going to see plays. This blog died a bit of a death last year (somewhat ironically, just after going to see Anatomy of a Suicide) but I am determined to write more this year. So to get going, I thought I’d stick down a top ten from 2017:

These are in chronological order, because I’m too much of a coward to really make value judgements about which was better, and also because they all did very different things to me which are tricky to quantify as such.

Lazarus, 11th Jan

dir Ivo van Hove, King’s Cross Theatre

This was kind of a mess but damn if it didn’t make me feel a lot of things, as well as benefiting from an absolutely top notch cast, all of whom sang their faces off and did all of the strange stuff that Ivo usually demands. As I tweeted at the time, I’m not sure I’ve even seen a musical number staged better than Valentine’s Day.

Richard III, 19th Feb

dir Thomas Ostermeier, Barbican

Overall this probably wasn’t the strongest production of Richard III, but that central performance from Lars Eidinger was probably the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen live. I got out of this and just started crying, because I couldn’t really deal with the impact of what he’d done in that show. I haven’t thought about acting and live performance in the same way since, and I must make it to Berlin to see him do Hamlet too at some point.

The Glass Menagerie, 22nd Feb

dir John Tiffany, Duke of York’s

This would probably be my production of the year, thinking about the show as a whole; beautiful directorial vision and four pitch perfect performances, as well as gorgeous design and music. I spent most of the spring going to the Duke of York’s to see this, and I don’t regret a single trip.

Roman Tragedies, 19th March

dir Ivo van Hove, Barbican

This production is a masterpiece, simply put. Six hours of considered, unbelievably smart dramaturgy and an ensemble who know each other and the piece inside out by now. Technically it’s stunning, and I want to see it again and again for all the detail and different viewpoints you can watch from.

Hamlet, 5th April

dir Robert Icke, Almeida

I have a lot of Icke Issues but he really produced the goods with this one, despite a blatant steal from Roman Tragedies which infuriated me at the time. I haven’t seen a production of Hamlet which established relationships with such depth and clarity, and the emotional intensity of Andrew Scott’s performance was really something.

Angels in America, 28th April and 1st May

dir Marianne Elliot, National

This was by no means a perfect production and I’m intrigued to see how it goes on Broadway this spring, but my word this is a PLAY. I feel really privileged to have seen this text performed live, as well as Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn. We went in previews and he was astonishing even then, so I can’t imagine what he’ll be like well into the Broadway run. Kushner is just an extraordinary writer, who makes me feel both smarter and as if I know nothing at all. 

Anatomy of a Suicide, 8th July

dir Katie Mitchell, Royal Court

So this was the one that put paid to this blog- I just couldn’t work out how to write about this, mainly because it touches on subjects which are a bit close to the bone. Again, this was a production that really combined all elements to produce something really impressive; Alice Birch’s writing, Katie Mitchell’s directorial vision, the performances from the whole cast as well as how intensely complex and precise the staging was. Not an easy watch, but one that felt important.

Follies, 2nd Sept

dir Dominic Cooke, National

I really REALLY love musicals you guys, and this one was beautiful. We were sitting right at the back, which felt completely perfect because you got the scale of the thing. I was lucky enough to see both Kushner and Sondheim talk about their work at the National last year, and Follies just confirmed Sondheim’s genius. Gorgeous in all aspects again- design, performances, staging- and I was totally swept away.

This is How We Die, 10th Sept

Christopher Brett Bailey, Almeida

Now this was a bit different, but also totally brilliant. Ridiculous and mind (and eardrum) blowing, there’s a double bill of Christopher Brett Bailey’s stuff on at BAC in April, and I would highly recommend it. It was really nice to think a bit differently about what theatre can be, as well as have my face melted by very loud guitar noises.

Hamilton, 20th Dec

dir Thomas Kail, Victoria Palace

Closed out the year with this, which isn’t bad at all. After all the hype and waiting to see Hamilton onstage, it finally happened and it was pretty great. I can’t really work out how I feel about this as a piece right now; it’s been tied up in a lot of stuff for me I guess, but in general the London cast are great, it’s a modern masterpiece and the density of the thing (lyrics, music, staging) has to be seen/heard to be believed.

So looking back I had a pretty great year, including a period in the spring where I wasn’t sure what it meant to go to the theatre and not end up in tears- mainly John Tiffany’s fault. In the autumn I started a PhD up in Durham, so will have to watch this space to see what I manage to get to and blog about in 2018, but I do want to try to do more. Fingers crossed for the new year!

The Ferryman

5 July 2017, Gielgud Theatre

It’s always odd seeing a play that is already being hailed as the best of the year, and that has five star reviews coming out of its ears. You go in with a curiously combative attitude: “come on then Jez, impress me. What have you got?” And as with everything that is overhyped, you are usually somewhat disappointed when you get out of the theatre. The Ferryman is a really really good play. It’s a great production too; well designed, nicely paced, great performances. But it didn’t blow me away, and that is what I wanted (but didn’t necessarily expect, given the hype).

I’m aware that my last post about Ink was pretty unimpressed too, so I’ll grump for a bit and then get into the much nicer task of being excited about the things I enjoyed. First grump: I didn’t feel very much. Some of the comments I’d heard going in had said how well constructed the play is, and, in my relatively limited knowledge of contemporary playwriting, that’s definitely true. But the problem with setting things up and resolving them so neatly is that you find yourself watching the action and storing objects and elements away in your head; “ok, how is that going to come back in later? How will that plotline be developed and concluded? Where will that image recur, and how will its meaning change and deepen?” You become too analytical. There are definitely a couple of moments that I think are really beautiful, and they achieve that through both language and action (or a struggle with language, and inadequacy of action). But I only got emotional one and a half times, I’d say, and usually storylines to do with family on any level have me on the floor, so I don’t know what was going on there really.

Another grump: this show is very much a Big Production. It has a big ensemble cast, it has animals, it has a baby. Some parts of it are understated and naturalistic, but there’s a sort of melodrama lurking there. “I’m a Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes show! I’m a big deal!” Ultimately, for me at least, that’s a bit distancing. I don’t want to notice that stuff. I want to be swept away, and as much as I enjoy a nice placid goose, I want to be absorbed so that I don’t make a mental note about how nice and placid the goose was. In the long run, I think this might work against the play; I’m not sure it has the potential to be a classic play just on the strength of the writing (notify me in 30 years when I’m very wrong), but the scale of the thing also means that you’re probably not going to be able to do this very widely. It needs a budget, and a big staging.

Ok, switching over to positives now- or at least hiding reservations amongst more positive things. It’s really cool to see a massive three and a quarter hour play doing well in the West End, without any really notable names in the cast. And it is a good, absorbing show; chatting with people before I went to see it, they said that they wanted about half a dozen spin-offs to make the most of the characters and storylines that are set up, and I have to agree. I’d want some prequels, I think, about Aunt Maggie Far Away, about Quinn and Seamus, and a sort of co-quel (that runs alongside? If there’s a term for that, let me know) about the Corcorans in Belfast. I want a domestic drama with about four characters about Caitlin and Quinn and Mary, and how on earth that works. 

That brings me to the actors; gosh, they’re good, and Butterworth gives them some really gorgeous speeches and pieces of storytelling. Brid Brennan is a real highlight, and I wish she’d had more lucid moments to make the most of. I also wish her ending hadn’t been quite as lame- that really fell flat for me. I think this might emerge as a common thread for everyone, actually, but damn I wish Paddy Considine had some greater emotional extremes to go to. He and Laura Donnelly are wonderful together at the end, and I understand that that awful, barely possible restraint has to be there, but man. Throw that chair across the room Paddy! Get really, really angry! I just wanted a bit more. 

Very into the sense of threat Muldoon and his boys bring with him; power onstage tends to come not from the powerful person, but the way everyone else reacts to them, and they nailed that. The second third of the production was by far the most compelling, because everything that’s been set up is under threat, and the scale of that is revealed quite slowly and carefully. My favourite, though, has to be John Hodgkinson as Tom Kettle; I’ve seen some beautifully written plays this year, but “I collect rainbows actually” absolutely floored me. The simplicity of the phrase, the sincerity of the delivery, god, it really got me. Again, I think the ending Tom gets isn’t the greatest, but his moment with Caitlin later on made me quite teary, and really anyone who reacts to an IRA member appearing in a farmhouse kitchen in the way that he does (no spoilers here) has to be worth celebrating.

I’m running out of steam a little now, but I think looking back over this I probably got much more out of The Ferryman than I realised immediately afterwards. I’d like to give it a read (I’m going to the Royal Court tomorrow and am slightly worried about spending all my money on plays), and would highly recommend going if anyone is on the fence- I think they extended to early January 2018 recently. Can’t shake the “this is not a classic” verdict that ran through my mind even as I was applauding at the end, but it’s damn good. And, having seen it, I am entitled to have a proper opinion now! As ever, if anyone out there wants to discuss, my askbox is open. V interested to hear other thoughts!

Ink

26 June 2017, Almeida Theatre

Preface to this post: Charlie Cox was there the night we went, saw him having a chat with Richard Coyle beforehand, turns out they did some Pinter shorts together back in the day, Charlie was bi, Richard was married to Gina McKee, it was a beautiful time.

I was really really excited for this production. I think it was my first time seeing a James Graham play? His work has always sounded really interesting from what I’ve read about it, and gosh that cast- Bertie Carvel has to be one of the most exciting actors working in British theatre right now, and Richard Coyle was the prince in Don Carlos way back in 2005, which was one of Those Formative Theatre Experiences for me. Obviously, having said “I was really really excited”, the show did not live up to the hype I (maybe unfairly?) placed on it. Small disclaimer: we went on the final preview, so maybe Rupert Goold notesed the shit out of it and what the critics saw and seemed to really appreciate the day after was very different. 

Basically, it felt like a mess. There’s a sort of framing device with Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb at the beginning discussing what makes a good story; this segues into a dinner scene, which is repeated at various points throughout (different dinners, at different points in the story of the Sun). It works to some extent, but it isn’t really hugely elegant, and I could not get on with Carvel’s Rupert Murdoch off the back of it. I’ll just do this bit now, and get it out of the way- I don’t understand how this performance works in the production as a whole, and I do think my friend’s comment that the play would be stronger without Murdoch appearing at all is pretty on the money. It’s not a bad performance at all; he’s a great actor, and to me it seems as though it’s working to do what it’s trying to do. It’s this weird kind of caricature thing, all composed of strange body language and peculiar vocal qualities, but then it looks like they’ve gone to the lengths of coloured contact lenses? That really confuses me, because there’s such broadness to it coupled with a very small detail like that? “Faustian” is the adjective that seems to be making the rounds in the reviews, and it’s definitely an angle, but then Graham introduces some humanising elements (Murdoch doesn’t want to look at Page 3, for example). Compared with the performances everyone else is giving (at least in the scenes, there are musical-type interludes which are obviously non-naturalistic), Carvel is doing something that’s way out there. 

Richard Coyle holds the whole thing together, and is very much the lead. It’s definitely not the sexy role, and it would have been nice to see him get to go to greater emotional extremes, but it’s a solid (that’s a really unhelpful adjective, he’s better than that) and very interesting performance. Would definitely recommend the Stage review purely for the selection of pictures of him smearing ink on himself (cos that’s the title of the play, innit). Of the rest of the ensemble, Tim Steed absolutely nails every comic moment he gets, even if a lot of them involve punctuation jokes, and Sophie Stanton is a welcome female voice amongst the editorial team. Pearl Chanda plays the first Page 3 girl, Stephanie Rahn, and has probably the longest scene with Coyle and Carvel towards the end of the play where Lamb asks her whether she’d be willing to do the Page 3 thing, and then they deal with the fallout from that along with Murdoch. I’d say that’s the best scene in the whole show; the actors get to stretch themselves a bit, and play something that has some emotional weight. This is another strange element of the play, which comes from (ironically) the difficulty Graham seems to have deciding which parts of the Sun story to stage. 

The first half of the production deals with Lamb and Murdoch getting together, Lamb abandoning the Mirror and setting up his editorial team, and that group of people constructing the Sun’s style and emphasis. The second half then chooses two episodes in the history of the paper, which (pretty uncomfortably) deal with female trauma, and its impact on the largely male-run Sun. This is obviously quite tricky, and I may mis-step when writing about it but I’ll give it a go. The first incident Graham chooses to focus on is the kidnapping of the deputy editor’s wife, Muriel McKay, and the ethical debates around reporting on a scoop of this nature when it’s happening to the Sun itself. The climax of the play is then the introduction of Page 3. As you’re watching, you realise that you’re going, seemingly as an escalation, from kidnapping and death to Page 3, which is a whole kettle of fish in itself. It’s kind of hard, certainly with the kidnapping plotline, to work out who on stage you’re meant to be feeling sorry for; Mrs McKay is obviously absent, so you’re watching Murdoch and McKay deal with the emotion of the situation and Lamb struggle (sort of? Not really) with how to present the story for the paper. Pearl Chanda is at least onstage, and does a really great job with the material she’s given, so we at least get a female perspective on the trauma that is enacted there, but it feels too slight. It feels silly to be getting angry about how feminist a show about the Sun and about Page 3 can be, but I think surely if you’re going to present that story, which is fucked up, you have to make more of an effort to be nuanced and critical in your presentation of it. If anyone has seen Ink and has things to say about this, I’d love it if you dropped me a message- I’m still trying to work out what I think exactly!

I have other stuff to say about this production, but I’ve annoyed myself quite a lot trying to delve into the ethics/gender politics of the thing, so I’m going to stick this up and perhaps come back to it. 

Side note, again: Rupert Goold has most definitely not regained my trust after Richard III with Ink. Many kettles, many fishes, but wow that R3 was not a thing. Might try to write something further on this at some point.

Sweet Bird of Youth

Chichester Festival Theatre, 22 June 2017

Continuing the year of Tennessee (overstating the case somewhat, mainly consists of four trips to The Glass Menagerie and a lot of resulting pain), we took a nice day trip to Chichester for some intensely bleak mid-career Williams.

Sweet Bird of Youth is a pretty weird play. As said, my greatest familiarity with Williams is The Glass Menagerie, which I’m coming to realise is really quite an anomaly, but Sweet Bird is still quite far down the line in terms of melodrama and just not entirely top-notch playwriting. It plays almost as a two-hander to start with, then widens out, then returns to the opening pair. There’s a great (very dangerous) drinking game to be had out of it too- take a shot every time someone says “youth” and you’ll be getting your stomach pumped by the interval. All jokes and quibbles with the tone/scale of the thing aside, it’s kind of devastating if you get good performances out of your actors, and don’t mess up the staging too much.

I don’t think Jonathan Kent’s production is anywhere near revelatory, but it would definitely benefit from a longer run, and perhaps a slightly less awkward performance space? I’ve only been to Chichester once before, for Guys and Dolls, but that’s a good-sized musical and when you fill the stage with Andrew Wright and Carlos Acosta choreography, you’re doing ok. We were sat round the side for Sweet Bird and that was absolutely fine, but as I think other reviews pointed out, the long Chance/Alexandra scene that opens the play does get a bit lost- there’s only so big you can make a bed, and only so much movement you can get the actors to do before it feels somewhat strange.

The main reason that I’d like to see this show get another month or two is the performances Brian J. Smith and Marcia Gay Harden are giving, and the way those performances work together and apart. Chance and Alexandra are really brilliant Tennessee Williams characters, and their relationship is completely fascinating- the push and pull, power and pathos of it. I’m hugely grateful to John Tiffany for getting Brian J. Smith over for Glass Menagerie, and then to Jonathan Kent for keeping him here for Sweet Bird. I think he’s an extraordinary actor; charming, specific, present and beautifully playful. Both times I’ve seen him I’ve gone in having read the text a couple of times, and he’s produced something that’s been hugely emotionally engaging but also very surprising, at least compared to my original read on the character. Sweet Bird isn’t as impressive in those terms as Glass Menagerie is; his Jim is transformative, Chance less so but still so unexpected in lots of places. 

The dynamic between him and Marcia Gay Harden is really great, and felt like it was just getting to an interesting, mature point- this two days before the production closed. Her Alexandra is a lot more grounded than I’d expected, and has an excellent cackle, particularly in that first scene. Crucially, she is always way, way ahead of Chance; Kent is especially good at getting those cringeworthy moments out of the text, in ways that feel heavy with dramatic irony. We aren’t told exactly what’s going to happen, but it’s clear that the return to St Cloud is not going to end well, for one or both of the main characters. And although Alexandra receives good news about her premiere towards the end of the play, the longevity of her comeback is not assured. She’s granted a temporary reprieve from disaster, but Williams leaves us to wonder how the future will play out for her. 

Elsewhere, there are nice performances in the other parts, although the political background of the play is quite underwritten. Richard Cordery adds another menacing Williams patriarch to his CV (he and Jamie Parker were quite brilliant together in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof at West Yorkshire Playhouse), and Victoria Bewick is good and feisty in the little stage time she gets. There’s also space for some Watch Discourse akin to that of David Jays on the Icke Hamlet; Alexandra’s watch has stopped so she has to ring down to the lobby of the hotel to ask for the time, Chance gave his away in exchange for the use of a train compartment for him and Heavenly, etc etc. It’s probably slightly more fitting here, as well; Williams is obsessed with time throughout his work, so the details feel less shoehorned in than with Icke. 

Good to see some slightly later Tennessee, anyway, despite the play’s flaws, and with such a good cast! The Young Vic have Cat upcoming with Jack Holden and Sienna Miller, so it will be interesting to see how that’s received. I suppose it’s less likely over here in the UK, but getting to know more about him I’d love to see some very late, very weird Williams as well. Definitely something to keep an eye out for.

Salome

21 June 2017, Olivier Theatre

I saw Yael Farber’s version of the Bible story on the third day of the heatwave- the friend I was going with had got a bit muddled with tickets, and I thought in the morning that I wouldn’t have to go into town and honestly wasn’t too upset about it. Luckily, the air conditioning at the National and the vision of the production saved me.

I knew the reviews had been pretty dodgy for Salome, and along with Common had prompted some “CRISIS IN THE OLIVIER SUMMER 2K17″ articles from brilliant minds like Matt Trueman (shade fully intended). Everything else I’ve heard about Yael Farber has been almost exclusively brilliant though, and I think Salome had good reviews in the US? I sort of settled in going “well, it’s 1h45 straight through and at least I get to have an informed opinion about it now- if it is terrible, I can say that with the authority of having seen it.”

In the end, it sort of blew my mind a little bit. I’ve always been massively susceptible to music in any context, and Salome is underscored pretty much throughout, so that was an easy way to create atmosphere that worked on me. The design of the thing is epic and intimate too; Farber uses sand and scarves to create a sort of backdrop at points, and the revolve is almost constantly on the move, so that there are stationary scenes taking place with tableaux of the other characters moving round at the same time. I’d be quite interested in reading the text again, which I think is Yael Farber’s own adaptation. Some critics dismissed it as “portentous”, although suggesting you’re confused by the line “I am peace and war has come because of me” because you don’t know whether you’re meant to be holding on to the peace or war aspect of the statement is pretty dumb (looking at you, Billington). 

There are some interesting tensions in the piece, too; a post-show chat had us discussing whether it’s empowering to reclaim the story in a way that centralises Salome, but denies her speech for probably 75% of the show? Farber uses a framing device of an older Salome who narrates from beyond the grave, or from the point of her death as she looks back on the events, so she’s speaking, but in this pretty cryptic, constantly juxtaposed language. For me, this language fit so well with the pace and reverence of the production that I didn’t really question it. There is a debate about where power lies in this story; Salome is physically abused by her stepfather, and gains the ability to ask for Iokanaan’s head because of the dance she performs, where Herod asks her to “take us beyond words”. Yet it’s that simple request that casts her as the “mother of the revolution”, and it’s clear that Iokanaan is so dangerous because of the power of his preaching. There are things to be said about embodied female power too, and where misogyny lies in previous tellings of the story, and in this one.

I might come back to this- I haven’t talked about the cast at all (Isabella Nefar (Salome so-called) and Ramzi Choukair (Iokanaan) are fiercely committed and really quite brilliant physically, emotionally, all of it), and I reckon thinking further about it would probably reveal more problems than I’m seeing right now. I came in really unsure of what to expect though, and was quite emotional at the end, because I found the whole thing so powerful. It’s on until the 15th July I think, and there were plenty of empty seats when I went so tickets to be had! I would definitely recommend giving it a go- I got a lot out of it, as the length of this post indicates.