Theatre Review: Play House, & Definitely the Bahamas (Orange Tree Theatre)



Lily James in Play House, photo by Robert Day



Directed by its author, the Orange Tree Theatre’s current double-bill pairs an early Martin Crimp play, Definitely the Bahamas, originally produced on BBC radio but staged at the Orange Tree in 1987, with a new work, Play House, that’s been specially commissioned to mark the theatre’s 40th anniversary. A Richmond resident, Crimp’s association with the Orange Tree goes back to his first forays as a dramatist. The theatre staged six of his plays in the 1980s and was therefore instrumental in getting his work seen and noticed. Among the many admirable aspects of the Orange Tree is its loyalty to the playwrights whose work it has put on. And Crimp’s return to the theatre that first produced him has turned the opening of this double-bill into something of an Event.

As dramas focusing upon two couples - one young and energetic, the other ageing and apparently settled - Play House and Definitely the Bahamas chime together quite nicely. Play House presents episodes in the life of Simon (Obi Abili) and Katrina (Lily James) as they set up home together. We witness the pair engaging in domestic duties (fixing a phone; cleaning the grimiest fridge the stage has ever seen) and some odder, more enigmatic escapades as well. Crimp has described the play as being about “the fragility and volatility of a relationship,” and he seems to be getting at the mundaneity and the strangeness of coupledom here - its pleasures and unease - as Katrina gradually reveals a scepticism about “playing house” that rivals that of the little girl in the Tammy Wynette song.

Unfolding in thirteen abrupt and riddling scenes, the drama conceals as much as it discloses. There are striking moments throughout and the scenes are sharply shaped and rhythmed at their best. But an air of wilful obscurity underpins the enterprise, and the piece isn’t especially satisfying dramatically. Rather, it comes out skimpy and sketchy: due to the structure, the characters’ declarations and tirades feel unmotivated and often fail to generate sufficient emotional weight.

This is despite the sterling work of the two performers. Abili and James (a young actress who’s capable of transforming herself utterly; she’s unrecognisable here from Vernon God Little and Othello) bring gusto and great physicality to their performances, especially in an exuberant dancing scene. But, apart from a few scattered insinuations about Katrina’s difficult relationship with her father, you may not feel that you know a great deal more about these characters at the end than you did at the beginning, making Play House a slightly frustrating experience despite its flashes of interest.

Definitely the Bahamas seems to me by far the stronger, more substantial piece of work. The play focuses on an ageing couple, Millicent (Kate Fahy) and Frank (Ian Gelder), as they discuss their beloved son Michael, with their dialogue occasionally interrupted by the appearances of their Dutch student lodger, Marijke (James again, in another excellent turn). What starts out as a comedy of manners and misunderstandings gradually gives way to something far more unsettling, however, for, in Aleks Sierz’s grandiose formulation, this is a play about the ways in which “fascistic attitudes are manifest in everyday life as well as in history.”

Crimp’s production is a tad too self-conscious: the play is staged as the radio drama it originated as, with no props, the actors seated at tables in front of marked-up scripts, and sound equipment visible. It’s hard to see what this conceit contributes beyond a superficial veneer of “baring-the-device” modernism, and it makes the piece feel static. But the conception is transcended, finally, by the strength of the writing and by superbly naturalistic performances. Ambiguities and uncertainties here feel more integrated and meaningful than in Play House, and the play broadens out quite successfully into a critique of an insular world-view that sees violence as perpetrated by those unlike us: the distant, the Other, the foreign.

As the garrulous Millicent, Fahy (last seen on screen as the matriarch in Joanna Hogg’s great Archipelago) delivers a gem of a performance: the character’s Freudian slips and inanities (“Who do we know in a call-box, Frank?”) are deliciously delivered. Gelder partners her wonderfully, their performances achieving a marvellous equilibrium. And James does brilliantly in a long late monologue which offers a new perspective on events, suggesting that, contrary to Millicent’s belief, threat and danger aren’t just something associated with foreign climes, but may in fact be manifest a good deal closer to home.

The double-bill runs until 21^st April. Further information at the Orange Tree website.

Theatre Review: Othello (Sheffield Crucible)

At the Sheffield Crucible, Daniel Evans directs a highly accomplished Othello that’s notable for its clarity, pace and excellent performances. Evans has pulled off something of a casting coup in reuniting two of the stars of HBO’s The Wire (a series whose intricacies have sometimes been described as Shakespearean) for this production, which pits Dominic West’s Iago against Clarke Peters’s Othello. That billing is all that Evans has needed to ensure a sell-out run, but the production’s success is fully deserved, for this is a stark, sharp and powerful staging that grips and involves from beginning to end.

Fresh from his brilliant star-turn in Lindsay Posner’s revival of Butley, West delivers another scintillating performance here. Employing a broad Yorkshire accent to underscore the confidence-inspiring “hail-fellow-well-met” persona that’s central to his Iago, the actor gives a vivid, characterful interpretation. There have been more perverse and chilling Iagos than this but few that have been more convincing and persuasive as successful manipulators, and West unearths a surprising amount of humour in the role too, while not stinting on the underlying bitterness. He’s well-matched by Peters whose Othello has gravitas and tragic grandeur, and who movingly conveys the character’s deep love for Desdemona (a touching, fervent Lily James) in a way that makes the tragedy feel both inevitable and deeply shocking. And, while Colin George's Brabantio is a mite feeble and Leigh McDonald's Bianca somewhat shrill,  there’s good work from Gwilym Lee as Cassio and from Brodie Ross as an amusingly lachrymose Roderigo.

And then there’s Alexandra Gilbreath as Emilia. At times, Gilbreath seems to be doing a tad too much in this relatively minor role: her incredible voice, with its exhilarating depths and husky layers, turns the simplest, most straightforward of lines into sweeping, grandiose pronouncements. But her big moments here - from the tenderness with which she invests the “willow” scene and the quiet passion of her plea for female equality to her grief at Desdemona’s murder and fierce denunciation of the men at the end - leave you in no doubt that she’s one of the most magnetic actresses that we currently have the privilege to see on stage. This Emilia starts out as a (slightly frustrated) bawd, and Gilbreath is especially adorable when popping Desdemona’s handkerchief into her cleavage for Iago to find and declaring “I have a thing for you.” But the clarity with which the actress charts Emilia's increase in awareness and refusal to “obey” turns the character into the heroine of the evening, in a production that restores vibrancy and power to even the play’s most familiar, shop-worn moments. Who needs HBO?

Sheffield Theatres website here.

Review: Vernon God Little (Young Vic)

Following its highly successful staging in 2007, Rufus Norris and Tanya Ronder’s adaptation of DBC Pierre’s novel Vernon God Little is back at the Young Vic in a recast and updated version, until March 5th. The production looks more than likely to repeat its previous success, if the wildly enthusiastic response of last Tuesday night’s audience was anything to go by. The story of the aftermath of a Texas High School shooting, focusing on the 15-year-old friend of the culprit of the massacre, who finds himself under suspicion, the adaptation embraces the dark humour of Pierre’s text, and gives the novel a bold, stylised and imaginative theatrical treatment.

It must be said that as a satire on various easy-target American madnesses - materialism, media circuses, criminals as celebs, trials as showbiz spectacles - Vernon God Little is pretty obvious, familiar and crude. There’s little depth - and next to no affection - to the portrait of small-town Texas life that the play constructs; the characterisation frequently crosses the fine line between archetype and stereotype, and a good deal of the (many) protagonists aren’t drawn in more than one dimension: they’re absurdist cartoons. But Norris’s supple and inventive staging generates interest and excitement throughout, and, at its best, the piece achieves something of the mixture of brashness, lyricism and oddity of a Sam Shepard play. There are well-staged musical interludes (with airings for everything from “Crazy” to "Galveston" to “Your Cheatin’ Heart” to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”); a set, by Ian MacNeil, that morphs and transforms itself to evoke interior and exterior spaces with fluidity and ease; and several jaw-dropping set-pieces, not least a startling trial scene that’s equal parts disturbing and hilarious. And amidst the coarseness and scatology there are sudden swerves into tenderness here that take the viewer by surprise.

Some of the performers transcend caricature, too - or else embrace it so wholeheartedly that their interpretation achieves its own kind of truth. Clare Burt is both exasperating and terribly touching as Vernon’s mother; Peter De Jersey brings a marvellous full-throttle vindictiveness to his role as her seducer and Vernon’s betrayer; and Lily James gives bite and substance to her dual roles as two contrasting American-girl archetypes. On the sidelines there’s vivid work from Johnnie Fiori in several roles: her stupendous vocalising as the Judge in the trial scene brings the house down every time. And as Vernon, Joseph Drake makes a great professional debut here, delivering an empathetic and engaging performance that’s the production’s beating heart.

I’m not sure that Vernon God Little is really saying anything especially insightful or profound; indeed, a little late death-row philosophising becomes tedious in the extreme. And I think that the very cosy ending is a mistake: it makes the piece seem trivial. But, despite these complaints, Norris and his team produce a stirring theatrical experience here that does at least prove one thing conclusively: there are few plays that don’t benefit from the inclusion of a line-dancing sequence.

Further information here.