Theatre Review: Wise Children (Old Vic)

"What a joy it is to dance and sing!" Those words form a refrain throughout Angela Carter's last novel Wise Children (1991) in which the teeming, complicated, theatrical family history of two 75-year-old Brixton-based twins, Dora and Nora Chance, the deserted illegitimate offspring of the Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard, unfolds with the dizzying inventiveness and in the exuberant prose for which Carter was justly celebrated.

Stage-struck and Shakespeare-soaked, Carter's novel is both an ideal candidate for theatrical adaptation, and a challenging one. Still, there seem few directors better suited to the task than Emma Rice, who not only writes and directs this new version at the Old Vic but who has also named her new theatre company for the novel. "No one opens a book by Angela Carter in search of restraint," wrote Carol Shields, and no one goes to a Rice production in search of restraint, either. (Rice's great self-description - "I'm not a minimalist girl" - works equally well for Carter.) And following the tumult of her too-brief time at the Globe, it's heartening to find Rice already back in the saddle, and with her signature style very much intact.

Image: Steve Tanner 

That being said, I wouldn't rank Wise Children as one of Rice's best productions. The unabashed glee of her Midsummer Night's Dream or the charm of last year's lovely chocolate box musical Romantics Anonymous are not quite achieved here. Like Kneehigh's take on Steptoe and Son, Wise Children is a patchier effort and its seams sometimes show. Rice originally intended this production for the Globe, and I think it would have worked better there: various conceits and bits of audience interaction that might have made the show soar come off somewhat awkwardly in this staging. Too often - an animated flight over London is a case in point - the production seems to be signposting "enchantment" rather than actually creating it.

A lot of the comedy is strenous and forced, too. The great Katy Owen - previously Rice's water-pistol-toting Puck and pillar-rubbing Malvolio - certainly makes her mark as the twins' assertive adopted Mum, but some of the comic business she's given - saggy boobs, urination and all - is just plain crass. And does a mention of going to buy some clobber at Brixton Market really have to come complete with a dance interlude to Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue"? At such heavy-handed moments, Rice's recent essay about reading and adapting Carter seems, um, wiser than what's actually ended up on stage.

Still, there are some lovely touches throughout: charming puppetry, lively contributions from the on-stage musicians. The moments when the three sets of actors playing the twins at different ages - Bettrys Jones and Mirabelle Gremaud, Omari Douglas and Melissa James, Gareth Snook and Etta Murfitt - share the stage together have a magical Three Tall Women quality. While some plot elements and a number of characters have inevitably been snipped, a great deal of Carter's language has been retained and its extravagance enlivens the evening.

And what does come through vibrantly here is the case that the piece makes for 'illegitimacy," both in terms of family relations and theatrical form. While posh, declaiming Shakespeareans are lightly satirised (and, given Rice's recent Globe experiences, make of that "what you will"), entertainments such as music hall, panto, revue, and end-of-the-pier comedy are warmly celebrated. Rice's affection for those British traditions is palable, and the show's undoing of cultural hierarchy is as subversive as its insistence that our true families are those we choose for ourselves. The production's perspective is boldly matriarchal in a way that makes the final tableau (set to a song I won't reveal) both a hokey and a truly touching conclusion to the evening.

What a joy it is...? Well, some of the time.

Wise Children is booking at the Old Vic until 10 November. 

Theatre Review: Romantics Anonymous (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

Forget Follies. (And, believe me, when it comes to that damn “Loveland” sequence, I’m still trying to....) A little further down the Southbank there’s now a lovely, intimate, humanly-scaled alternative. As the opening production of her final “Winter Season” as Globe Artistic Director, Emma Rice has turned the stage of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse into a chocolate factory, adapting Jean-Pierre Améris’s 2010 French-Belgian rom com Les émotifs anonymes into a sweetheart of a new musical that charms and amuses throughout.

Rice and the Globe board may not have proved to be an ideal match, but Rice and “le cinéma Français” certainly are, as previously demonstrated by Kneehigh’s glorious take on Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg back in 2011. Romantics Anonymous has a similar kind of spirit to that show: ludic and loving, soulful and silly, by turns. But, though difficult themes are glanced at, there’s much less melancholy in this material. Working with lyricist Christopher Dimond and composer Michael Kooman, Rice makes Romantics Anonymous into the equivalent of a big, warm hug: just what’s needed to brighten winter nights.  

The plot concerns the burgeoning romance between two characters with social anxiety issues. Angélique is a timid girl who, wishing to build her confidence, starts attending sessions at the “Les émotifs anonymes” support group. Through a contact there she ends up working as a sales rep at the chocolate factory run by Jean-René, a guy who, it turns out, is even more introverted than she is, as he skulks in his office listening to passive aggressive self-help tapes. A disastrous date follows, before love starts to blossom. But with the factory under threat, Angélique may be called upon to truly overcome her inhibitions and reveal her own secret chocolate-making skills.

Rice has said that she wanted to make Romantics Anonymous “very European” in tone, but in many ways the show feels British through and through: I found myself thinking of The Two Ronnies and Dinnerladies at various points. As in Cherbourg, the Frenchness of the source is intermittently played up with “haw-hee-haw-ing” cheek, particularly when the beret- and striped-shirt-sporting ensemble archly croon the hilarious “Don’t Think about Love” while wheeling out a bed and flinging rose petals for our hero and heroine’s first night together.

Dimond and Kooman have talked about French influences on the score, too – from Satie to Debussy – and, played here by a skilled quartet (Sophie Creaner on woodwind, Mike Porter on percussion, Llinos Richards on cello and MD Jim Henson on piano), the music has a lovely, light, gently undulating quality, with just enough bite and quirk to make revisiting the score an attractive proposition. The lyrics are variable, but sung with conviction by the cast, who seize on the wittiest lines and deliver them with gusto.

Indeed, Rice has recruited many of her favourite actors for this confection (including several from her Twelfth Night, which opened the “Summer of Love” season back in May). They all shine, with Carly Bawden (Twelfth Night’s minx of a Maria) and Dominic Marsh making a charmingly awkward pair; they’re especially delightful when singing together on “Some Things are Too Good for Words,” as funny and sweetly sexy a duet as recent musical theatre has offered.

Bawden and Marsh are well supported by a superb ensemble who multitask with gleeful aplomb, whether it’s Marc Antolin as a computer geek and a strident chef, or Joanna Riding moving from gruff Corrie-ish factory worker to incongruously sexy matriarch. (Riding also takes the wheel for one of the funniest driving sequences that the stage has seen recently.) I also loved Gareth Snook as both Angélique’s father-figure benefactor and a highly-strung prospective female buyer, and Natasha Jayetileke as the support group attendee who’s so bad at saying “No” that she buys PPI twice a week. (Since Rice, in her "Letter" regarding her departure from the Globe, seemed to define herself as a people-pleaser, can we detect a bit of wry self-portraiture here?) Lez Brotherston’s glowing design (with location shifts signalled by neon signs) also helps to keep the proceedings fleet and fluid, and Etta Murfitt’s witty choreography makes the most of the small space. 

Romantics Anonymous is slight, and those resistant to Rice’s brand of whimsy will doubtless find it too winsome a proposition – though in fact there’s a steely undercurrent to the show's presentation of the courage it takes to embrace change and face fears. The ending feels a bit rushed, and not quite magical enough, yet. Still, small of scale but huge of heart, this show is a charmer, and a perfect start to the final season of Rice’s all-too-brief time at the helm of the Globe.

Romantics Anonymous is booking until 6 January. Further information here. 

Theatre Review: Steptoe and Son (Lyric Hammersmith)

My review of Kneehigh's adaptation of Steptoe and Son  is up at One Stop Arts. Taster below; full thing here.  

Neil Murray's excellent design places a cart as cumbersome as Mother Courage's at the centre of the stage; a large moon hangs overhead and morphs, momentarily, into a clock and a screen. In the middle of a quarrel Steptoe (Mike Shepherd) and son (Dean Nolan) stop to bop, sometimes joined by a mercurial female figure, the Woman (Kirsty Woodward), who weaves her way through the action, in a series of guises that include trolley-dolly Bunny Girl and flower-power hippy. (The role is somewhat reminiscent of Meow Meow's turn as Lola in Kneehigh's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg adaptation.) Music, throughout, is central to the piece, but don't expect to hear the familiar clip-clop of the TV theme tune. Rather, Rice and sound designer Simon Baker opt for an eclectic set of songs (from Cliff Richard, The Rolling Stones, Louis Armstrong and many others) to conjure moods, suggest the passing years, and gesture towards the wider world that seems to remain forever outside of the protagonists' grasp.

Some of these touches are striking and beguiling. The end of the first half, for example – a moment of resignation scored to the strains of Roy Orbison's "It's Over" – is sublime, while a sequence in which father and son dress for an important encounter, with Elvis's "Always on my Mind" playing on the gramophone, is as lovely a moment as I anticipate seeing on stage this year. At such times, Rice and her collaborators really do succeed in getting us to see the protagonists and their relationship freshly. The problem is that other elements feel too much like self-conscious "touches": extraneous bits of business insufficiently integrated into the whole.

Theatre Review: Oedipussy (Lyric Hammersmith)

A whole heap of soul-satisfying silliness is offered at Oedipussy, the latest show by the celebrated comedy troupe Spymonkey. The group - comprising Brits Toby Park and Petra Massey, German Stephan Kreiss and Spaniard Aitor Basauri - have teamed up with members of another venerable theatre company for this particular venture, collaborating with Emma Rice and Carl Grose of Kneehigh to create a rather spectacular, scattershot spoof of Greek tragedy.

Read the full review at OneStopArts.

Theatre Review: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Gielgud Theatre)

Emma Rice and Mike Shepherd’s Kneehigh company have excelled at re-imagining fairy-tales and classic films for the stage, presenting versions of The Red Shoes, Brief Encounter and A Matter of Life and Death to great acclaim. For the first time, the company have turned their attention to a French film: Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand’s gorgeous bittersweet musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). The results are wonderfully enjoyable. The story of the romance between a young couple, Guy and Genevieve, that’s complicated by separation when Guy is sent on a two year tour of combat in Algeria, the film is a dream of a musical, with its candy-coloured sets and costumes and innovative score by Legrand, not to mention the performances of Catherine Denueve and Nino Castelnuovo, both irresistible as the young lovers. In Kneehigh’s hands the source material becomes an equally glorious fusion of movement, dance, puppetry and song that goes beyond homage to carve out its own distinctive niche. This is a truly delectable production that delights and enchants from its opening moments, when Meow Meow’s Maîtresse clambers through the audience to take her place on stage, from where she serves as our guide to Cherbourg and its denizens. Observer and commentator, her character is the living embodiment of the spirit of the city, viewing the lovers’ travails with a mixture of warm compassion and ironic distance that feels exactly right for a narrative that combines romance and realism in equal measure.

As usual, Kneehigh opt for a highly stylised and eclectic approach to the material. But  the disparate elements are united by the strength of Rice’s vision; she adapted, directed and choreographed the show. The production boasts a brilliant set design by Lez Brotherston, beautiful lighting by Malcolm Rippeth, and it is wonderfully sung and performed by all, with Carly Bawden’s Genevieve, Andrew Durand's Guy, Joanna Riding’s Madame Emery and Cynthia Erivo’s Madeleine outstanding. It might be most fun for those who know Demy’s film and are already acquainted with the conversational rhythms and quirks of Legrand’s score, which offers only one instantly hummable number (the immortal “I Will Wait for You”) but which slowly, gradually works its way into the listener’s consciousness. Also of considerable interest is the artful manner in which Rice has woven references to other Demy/Legrand-associated works into the piece. Meow Meow’s Maîtresse is, it transpires, Lola, the titular heroine of Demy’s 1961 film, while the character’s show-stopping number, “Sans Toi,” is drawn from Cleo de 5 à 7, the 1962 film directed by Demy’s wife Agnès Varda, which Legrand also scored and appeared in. Such references give the production a delightful richness of texture for French film buffs, and I was particularly taken with a final visual flourish that transports the show right back into the world of film - and the audience back out onto the city streets.

But the production’s inclusive spirit of play and its lovely poignancy should win over all but the most cynical of audience members. Kneehigh’s conceits are endlessly (and for some tiresomely) "inventive," yet they never swamp the heart of the story, with its mature and thoroughly clear-eyed appraisal of a youthful romance. As our marvellous Maîtresse reminds us: “We are learning the language. Of love.”

Official website here.