Theatre Review: King Charles III (Almeida)

  

“Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be … WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!” That seems to be pretty much the spirit in which Mike Bartlett has approached his latest play. King Charles III is a speculative drama, a “future history play,” that imagines the fate of the British monarchy following Charles’s sucession to the throne and that - intriguingly - utilises some of the conventions and tropes of Shakespeare’s History Plays (plus mashed up bits of Hamlet, Macbeth and others) to do so. Tapping with steely calculation into the obsessions of our weirdly monarchy-friendly moment, the play has - predictably enough - already won much press acclaim as a searing piece of provocation. But, despite moments of engaging cheek, and a typically slick staging by Rupert Goold, I’d argue that it’s a pretty toothless piece of work underneath.

  

Opening in fine, striking fashion with the funeral of Queen Bess II, the play quickly cooks up a contrived crisis when Charles’s refusal to sign a bill restricting press freedom puts him at odds with the Labour government. With the new monarch refusing to play ball as his Ma might have done, a full-scale political ruckus looks likely. Camilla (Margot Leicester) cajoles; Wills (Oliver Chris) and Kate (Lydia Wilson) scheme and intervene. And Harry (Richard Goulding) occupies himself by hooking up with a sparky republican student Jess (Tafline Steen), a character who appears to have wandered straight in from Bartlett’s much-admired 2010 play Earthquakes in London. Meanwhile, the ghost of the erstwhile “Queen of Hearts” walks (yes, really), dispensing cryptic messages to her sons and her ex in the wee small hours.

  

That all of this comes off as a good deal less ludicrous than it sounds in synopsis is due to the confidence of Goold’s production which - evidently aware of the arch-gimmickry of Bartlett’s conceit - refrains from dashing at the play with habitual Headlong gimmicks. Rather, the approach is quite stately and restrained with a spare design by Tom Scutt and magnificent choral music from Jocelyn Pook (a score for a classier play, really) punctuating the scenes.

  

Then, of course, there’s also the sheer oddity of hearing versions of our current Royals popping out mock-Shakespearen dialogue, with inverted phrases, blank verse, similes, soliloquies and asides supplementing the usual crowd-pleasing Bartlett-ese (“Fucking hell, weirdest day evah” mutters Jess after being introduced to Wills and Kate.) Though some of the state-of-the-nation musings sound contrived in the extreme, the play’s linguistic mix at least gives King Charles III more stylistic interest, theatricality and novelty than the colourless writing which we’ve come to expect in work by Peter Morgan and other “docudrama” purveyors.

  

It’s a novelty that palls, though, since the political dimension of the piece feels puny and undercooked, and may leave some of us wishing for a more challenging, critical perspective on the House of Windsor. In place of this, Bartlett takes a rather affectionate attitude to the royals throughout, one that avoids any barbed satire. A queasily sycophantic programme essay by Tim Stanley that deems the monarchy to be “Britain’s spine of steel” sets the tone for right Royal rump-kissing, and I, for one, would like the piece a whole lot better if it didn’t pander so obviously to our culture’s current Royalist biases. For, like Morgan’s work, King Charles III perpetuates a view of the Windsors as a bunch of bumbling yet likeable closet liberals who stack up very well when compared to our nasty, scheming politicians. This sentimental stance is turning into a modern myth, and those of us who find it offensive won’t be mollified by Bartlett’s approach here and the presentation of Charles as a staunch defender of press freedom.

  

With characterisation swerving uneasily between Shakespearean archetype and media-created caricature - Richard Goulding’s Harry comes off as Prince Hal via Fresh Meat’s posh boy JP - there’s only so far the actors can go in their roles. But Tim Pigott-Smith (last seen at the Almeida in James MacDonald’s wonderful production of Albee’s A Delicate Balance) manages to give a very fine performance as Charles, eschewing impersonation for a lucid exploration of the character’s position. Still, for all the production’s witty touches, it’s essentially pastiche that Bartlett’s up to here. And if you don’t feel that’s quite enough for a compelling drama, then King Charles III may strike you, ultimately, as a rather superficial exercise: a hollow crown, indeed.

  

The production is booking until 31st May. Further information at the Almeida website.

Theatre Review: A Delicate Balance (Almeida Theatre)

Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1966 play A Delicate Balance takes place entirely in the well-appointed drawing-room of Agnes and Tobias, an ageing, affluent couple who are seemingly content with their life in suburbia, except for their problems with Agnes’s alcohol-dependent sister Claire and their daughter Julia, a multiple divorcee who’s on the run from yet another marriage. But the couple’s relatively comfortable existence is rocked by the arrival of two friends, Harry and Edna, who turn up at the house unannounced and desperately frightened by an undefined feeling of imminent disaster. Over the course of a weekend, Agnes and Tobias are forced to come to terms with this crisis, and to re-consider the demarcation lines of friendship as Harry and Edna decide to move in with them. The situation is further complicated by the presences of Claire and Julia, the latter increasingly hysterical at the realisation that she’s been usurped from her room by the unexpected visitors.

Last seen in London in 1997, in a well-regarded production directed by Anthony Page and starring Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith as the sisters, Albee’s enigmatic drama now gets an absolutely exquisite revival by James Macdonald at the Almeida. Combining elements of drawing-room comedy-of-manners with chilly overtones of existential dread, Albee’s play is a challenge for actors and audience alike, and to many, it seems, it looks like nothing more than an overlong, excessively verbose piece about that most familiar of theatrical subjects: WASP angst. At some level that’s exactly what it is, but there’s also a searching, visionary, philosophical quality to the play that transcends the apparent limitations of its scope. And Macdonald’s sensitive production, which plays out on Laura Hopkins’s attractive set (beautifully lighted by Guy Hoare), achieves a wonderful clarity and richness of tone. It’s a glittering, stylish production that still cuts close to the play’s dark heart, brilliantly capturing its contradictory moods. The thorny questions that the play proposes - what exactly are our “rights and responsibilities” to our family and friends?; how is the daily "delicate balance" between survival and awareness of the abyss to be negotiated? - emerge subtly as so many sad (and funny) refrains.

And it’s hard to see how the performances could be bettered. Always subtle and economical, Penelope Wilton brings a marvellous mixture of elegant imperiousness, intelligence and awareness to Agnes. She handles the withering put-downs with aplomb - listen out in particular for her delivery of the line “My pudenda” - but when Agnes recalls the son she and Tobias lost the mood is suddenly charged with deep sorrow. It’s a wonderfully rich interpretation. The hard-drinking, yodelling, accordion-wielding Claire is the showier role, and one that constantly threatens to become merely a comic turn. But Imelda Staunton modulates her performance beautifully, finding fresh details in her scenes, whether its lying on the floor with her leg seductively outstretched as Claire reminds Tobias of a significant moment in their past, or slipping her arm tenderly around her beloved accordion. Tim Pigott-Smith gives a brilliant slow-burn of a performance as the apparently passive, rather befuddled Tobias. His aria about Tobias’s relationship with a cat generated uneasy laughs and a few gasps of shock, while a late break-down scene is also brilliantly sustained.

As Julia, Lucy Cohu brings her distinctive presence and lovely Streep-ish inflections to a rather difficult role, finding real pain in a character who spends a great deal of the play (too much, perhaps) whining. And in support Ian McElhinney and Diana Hardcastle are superb as Harry and Edna, Hardcastle in particular moving unsettlingly from heart-rending vulnerability to the chillingly serene arrogance of the interloper. She has a classic mid-play scene with Cohu and her delivery of the line “I do sometimes [speak my mind] … when an environment is not all that it might be” is especially cherishable. Indeed, the entire cast handle Albee’s highly mannered, Henry-James-goes-Pop dialogue with a wonderful lightness of touch throughout, while evidently relishing its odd rhythms and strange digressions. The brilliance of Albee’s writing here is to keep the audience on their toes - you’re never quite sure where he’ll head next, and for viewers who get on the play’s strange wavelength, this generates an incredible tension and excitement. The playwright describes A Delicate Balance as being about “people [who] are teetering between being able to survive and being thrown into chaos.” And Macdonald’s stunning production is perfectly attuned to the play’s own very delicate balance between comedy and tragedy, philosophy and bitchery, craziness and calm. What a great evening.

The productions runs for 2 hours 55 minutes. It’s booking until 2 July. Further information at the Almeida website.