A Doll’s House @ the Royal Exchange Theatre

A Doll’s House

By Henrik Ibsen

Royal Exchange Theatre, 7 May 2013

Cush Jumbo as Nora Helmer in A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen. Photo – Jonathan Keenan.

It has not been so long, a little more than two years, since the Library Theatre put on a production of Ibsen’s great play.

What strikes one now is its contrivance: the way it takes place over Christmas, the many elements of intrigue that would not be out of place in a Feydeau farce.  Such as, for example, a secret loan, a forged signature and a fatal letter that must be intercepted and retrieved.

Yet the crucial achievement of the play remains, and that’s the verve with which it reengineers marriage.  Transforming it from a Christian institution where the woman vows to honour and obey into a mature alliance of equals founded on honesty and mutual respect.  And this still seems extraordinary as well as effecting, the way these people – Nora and Torvald too, the latter with some reluctance, granted – grow up before ones eyes.

A beautifully crafted, perfectly paced play and there are some splendid performances in this production, not least from Cush Jumbo as Nora.

A Doll’s House is at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 1 June, further details can be found here.

Abigail’s Party

Abigail’s Party

By Mike Leigh

The Lowry, 29 April 2013

Hannah Waterman in Abigail’s Party.

Perhaps we now laugh at certain different moments, yet even so Mike Leigh’s play retains its pre-Thatcher, ‘70s splendour.

This nouveau riche couple Beverly (Hannah Waterman) and Laurence (Martin Marquez), an unhappy mismatch, invite a few neighbours around for drinks and nibbles.  There are plenty of laughs and superior sniggers to be had, but it never becomes quite as savage as Ivy Compton-Burnett.

The characters are well-sculptured monsters, skirting though never quite succumbing to caricature, and the play says much about Britain still: its snobbishness and pretension, the incessant bullying and sense of frustration, our essential immaturity.

I enjoyed this production very much.  The performances, particularly from Hannah Waterman as Beverly, are excellent, and as for the  set, a ‘70s-style living room, it is virtually a character in itself.

Abigail’s Party is at The Lowry until 4 May, further details are here.

Cannibals

Cannibals

By Rory Mullarkey

Royal Exchange Theatre, 8 April 2013

Ony Uhiara as Lizaveta in CANNIBALS by Rory Mullarkey. Photo – Jonathan Keenan.

It is a queer play, full of dark, disturbing characters and set in a world at once extraordinary and recognisable as some place like our own.

We follow Lizaveta (Ony Uhiara, a splendid performance) and it is quite an odyssey she takes, from being cosseted in a loving marriage to a forlorn captivity.  Her exposure to the world leaves a corkscrew stain.  She winds up with a bruised innocence, diagnostic of a deeper damage.

There’s a lot to take account of here and the best policy is probably just to let it wash over you.  For some, the play will have perhaps too much incident.  But if you like your drama with unruly tendrils and viral undergrowths and, in short, a gorgeous (one might even say a Shakespearean) exuberance, then you won’t be disappointed.  I was quite chuffed myself.

Cannibals is at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 27 April, further details can be found here.

Propeller’s Twelfth Night & The Taming of the Shrew

Twelfth Night & The Taming of the Shrew

By William Shakespeare

Propeller

The Lowry, 9 & 10 April 2012

Joseph Chance (Viola) and Ben Allen (Olivia) in Propeller’s Twelfth Night.

Geometric figures that are mirror images of each other but not contiguous; that is how I’d describe the two Shakespeare plays that Propeller have decided to produce this year.

In appearance, similar (both bawdy comedies, and so  about wooing & such like); in reality, unlike.

You would be well advised to batten down the hatches for Twelfth Night, for it is a rollicking ride.  There is a fellow (Joseph Chance, a very fine actor) playing a gal (Viola) who is pretending to be a guy (Cesario), and that’s nowhere near the half of it.  The production brings out all the delirious comedy and wanton vitality and queer poetry (both lyric and dramatic) laying curled in Shakespeare’s text.  Amidst the romping, there are some poignant moments, some occasions where the language takes wonderful flight (literally, or should that be literarily) yet also one scene (the torture of Malvolio, a terrific performance by Chris Myles) which seems wholly out of place.

As for The Taming of the Shrew, beyond its boisterous comedy, it is a brutal affair.  A man brings a woman to heel.  She resists mightily but in time comes to know her place, and love her husband as her rightful Lord.  This is presented as a dream, so there’s a get out and a distance, and it can be dismissed as simply a male wish-fulfilment fantasy.  But for Shakespeare and his contemporaries it was likely the order of the day.  There was plenty of laughter to be had here but there’s no denying that it becomes a little disconcerting at the end.

Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew , both terrific affairs, are currently touring throughout the UK.  Tour dates can be found here.

The Ladykillers

The Ladykillers

By Graham Linehan

The Lowry, 26 March 2013

Michele Dotrice as Mrs. Wilberforce. Photo by Shaun Webb.

This excellent stage adaptation of the great Ealing comedy makes for an entertaining evening all around.

There is enough of the flavour of the original film, e.g. the sight of Mrs Wilberforce’s mallet hitting the pipes above her sink, to satisfy fans and Graham Linehan adds his own brand of humour too.  The cast are on top form, not least Marcus Taylor as a cross-dressing Major Courtney (Linehan’s influence, I would suppose); and the ‘house that Jack built’ style set, designed by Michael Taylor, is a prodigious creation in its own right.

What you miss here, however, is the definite air of mystery, the sense of something decidedly unsaid, that the film will always possess.  It’s an idiosyncratic and weird and altogether English affair, as no doubt Mrs Wilberforce’s view of the world is.  But there are enough pleasures to make up for it.

The Ladykillers is at The Lowry until 30 March, further details are here.

Mother Courage and Her Children

Mother Courage and Her Children

By Bertolt Brecht

Library Theatre Company

The Lowry, 26 February 2013

Natalie Grady in the Library Theatre production of Mother Courage and Her Children. Photo by Jonathan Keenan.

What’s extra special about this production of Brecht’s great chronicle play is Greg Palmer’s music.

The songs are given a swing and a swagger, something that’s wholly in keeping with the unblinkered, sometimes savage tone of the play, and the cast really take to them.  Most of all Natalie Grady, who impressed as Yvette, a good-time girl who comes up in the world.  If you can imagine Ute Lemper as a Northern lass, you’ll have an inkling of the flavour and quality of her performance.  A career in cabaret is there for the taking.

It is curious how Mother Courage seems to be so stereotypically Jewish, surely intentional considering the historical context in which the play was written.  Not a heroic figure entirely, she suffers yet also profits from the war.  As a going concern she feeds off it, doesn’t want it to end.

Whilst his play hits its targets more often than not, it’s no big surprise to say that Brecht’s Marxist critique of war doesn’t allow us to understand Auschwitz or Katyn.  Precious profit wasn’t to blame there, nor were these accidents of war.

Mother Courage and Her Children is at The Lowry until 9 March, further details can be found here.

My Arms

My Arms

By James Leach

Box of Tricks

The Lowry, 24 January 2013

Photo courtesy of the Library Theatre Company

Some two terrific performances grace this play, which is all about a relationship that has reached the end of the road.

The extensive use of timeshift is unusual  but effective, with each successive scene revealing just a little bit more of what it was that drew Helen (Susan Twist) and Colin (Josh Moran) apart.  It’s what could be called a peel-back technique, and is quite apt: the play takes an excoriating look at a marriage that’s gone wrong, and so does the audience.

My Arms is showing again at The Lowry on 26 January, details here.  The play is also showing at selected venues in the UK, details here.

The Bubbler

The Bubbler

By Cathy Crabb

House of Orphans & Eat Theatre

The Lowry, 23 January 2013

Photo courtesy of the Library Theatre Company

There is that old question: what does the drinker (yes, that’s you) see in the glass in front of him?

For Peter (Neil Bell), one of those ‘never drunk, seldom sober’ sort of blokes, well, where do you start?  It’s the colourful characters he deals with in the pawnbroker shop everyday, who’re always looking to offload dodgy stuff; the good, respectable job he somehow lost; the relationship that broke down…  His usual is bitter, and it brings out all the hate, resentment and bile in him.

Neil Bell’s performance was extraordinary and mesmeric.  Try and picture a malign Tommy Cooper and you’ll get an inkling of what it was like.  The humour had a hate and an edge.  You laughed but always uneasily.

The play itself is beautifully written, paced and constructed.  A small canvas for Cathy Crabb, but a masterpiece all the same.

Stars are Fire

Stars are Fire

By Francesca Waite

Monkeywood Theatre

The Lowry, 17 January 2013

Photo by Neale Myers

A family without a mother, a widower and his daughter, try to begin anew in a new town.

For Carly (Emma Clarke), there is also the wrench of leaving friends behind and starting at a strange school.  She’s still hurting from the loss of her mother, not getting along with her father Neil (Steven Hillman), friendless… then along comes an angelic intermediary in the unlikely form of her cousin Lou (Richie Gibson).

Never crass or showy or overly melodramatic, though with a few explosive moments to be sure, this comes across as a nuanced, deftly written drama about the cost of bereavement and the price of renewal.  There are terrific performances from the whole cast, not least from Emma Clarke, here making her professional debut.

Stars are Fire is showing again at The Lowry on 19 January, details here.

Feydeau, First to Last

Feydeau, First to Last

By Georges Feydeau

Translated and Introduced by Norman R. Shapiro

Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2001

ISBN: 9781557834638

He wrote over 40 farces, this Feydeau fellow, a large number of them having just the one act.

This book has eight such one-act efforts, including the first and last plays produced in Feydeau’s lifetime – hence the title.  I say ‘produced’ advisedly because, as Norman R. Shapiro explains in his erudite, informative introduction, it is difficult to say exactly when some of these plays were written.  The translations read very well indeed.  And although in American English, they could easily be modified for the British stage.

To many, the plays will evoke the world of Fawlty Towers; and it should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that John Cleese has often expressed his admiration for Feydeau.  It is interesting in this regard to look at Les Paves de l’ours from 1896, a play wherein an upper-class bachelor employs a country bumpkin as a man-servant, believing him to be ‘a diamond in the rough’.  He hopes in time to polish this diamond and thereby to bring order into his life.  Of course, the man proves to be a blundering idiot and complete chaos ensues.  Whenever the bachelor turns to the man-servant for aid, he always makes matters worse.  There’s not a thing he can do as his world disintegrates around him.  Clearly, their relationship is essentially that of Basil and Manuel in Fawlty Towers.  Note also that a hotel will have many of the stock characters (waiter, maid, cook…) you’d expect to find in an upper-class residence in Feydeau’s day.

From the viewpoint of stagecraft, there is a lot that can be learnt from Feydeau’s use of monologue – most of these plays begin with a lone character onstage, talking aloud – and aside.  Aside as a device is especially used to involve the audience, to let them in on the joke, to gently reel them in.  Feydeau is always fishing for laughter and he usually gets a tug on the line.  Another instructive factor lies in seeing how a character will flit from being a narrator (addressing the audience) to an actor in the unfolding drama (oblivious to the audience, obviously) at different moments.  Say, like Hector in Par la fenetre.  It’s all very cleverly and sweetly and subtly done.

Golden comedy, riotous and surreal situations, and at root scathing vision of humankind, that’s what you find on Feydeau’s stage.  The men are venal and egotistical, the women vain and fickle.  The world of the Divine Marquis, but with lashings of jokes as each layer of moral corruption is flayed back.  You laugh most times to keep from crying out in despair.

The publisher’s description of the book can be read here.