Theatre Review: The Winslow Boy (Old Vic)

“Let right be done” is the “time-honoured phrase” at the heart of Terence Rattigan’s 1946 play The Winslow Boy, in which a 14-year-old Royal Naval College cadet, Ronnie Winslow, accused of the theft of a five-shilling postal order, finds himself at the centre of a legal battle spearheaded by his father, Arthur, who’s determined to clear his son’s name. Lindsay Posner’s new production, currently in previews at the Old Vic, certainly “does right” by Rattigan’s great play, elegantly revealing its sorrows, its humour and its hopes. Posner recently screwed up The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida, but he’s on form this time around, delivering a beautiful, deeply felt production that’s entirely absorbing and perfectly judged. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine seeing the play served better than it is here.

Rattigan’s writing formed an important part of British cultural life in 2011 – the playwright’s centenary year which saw London productions of Flare Path and Cause Célèbre, revivals of queerish minor gems such as While the Sun Shines and a great Chichester season dedicated to his work (reviews here, here and here), plus Terence Davies’s not-so-great film of The Deep Blue Sea, of course. Like the best of those productions, The Winslow Boy again reveals Rattigan’s strengths as a dramatist: watertight structure, elegant dialogue, perceptive characterisation, humanity of vision. Unlike The Deep Blue Sea and (to a lesser extent) The Browning Version, though, The Winslow Boy doesn’t have sex at its centre (or on its sidelines, either) and so can seem a tamer proposition than those later plays by comparison. A courtroom drama that (praise be) never shows us the inside of a courtroom, it feels like the sort of work that should have dated, with its characters’ earnest musings on justice, innocence and individual liberty.

And yet, without resorting to anything remotely tricksy (his production is "traditional" in the best sense of the word), Posner makes the piece feel fresh and reveals it to be both funny and quirky. Not only do individual lines surprise you with their relevance, but what’s also striking is the way in which the play keeps calling its own dramatic premise into question. Again and again, characters comment on the wisdom of Arthur’s obsession and ponder whether proving Ronnie’s innocence really matters so very much, especially since the boy (endearingly played by Charlie Rowe here) is soon happily ensconced in a new school and seems oddly indifferent to the outcome of the trial himself.

The point of the play is to show us that it does matter, of course. But the tensions that are raised make the drama much more complex, scene by scene, than the quest-for-justice plot suggests. Rattigan lets our sympathies shift throughout, as doubts, anxieties and convictions move from character to character. Ronnie’s pleasure-loving brother Dickie (Nick Hendrix) feels that “pinching’s nothing” and wonders if the fuss made by their father isn’t “much ado about damn all.” Mother, Grace (Deborah Findlay), also poignantly questions the motives of Arthur (Henry Goodman) for continuing the case as the family come under increasing financial and emotional strain. Their feminist daughter, Catherine (Naomi Frederick), shares her father’s conviction about the trial’s importance (though not for precisely the same reasons). But she, like the rest of the family, ends up making a considerable sacrifice for it. This being Rattiganland any such privations are borne “with fortitude,” natch.

The play’s showiest role is that of Sir Robert Morton, the lawyer hired by Arthur to make the family’s case against the Admiralty, and who’s misjudged as “a hard, cold-blooded, supercilious fish” by Catherine. Jeremy Northam’s take on the part in David Mamet’s fine film of the play casts a long shadow but Peter Sullivan invests the character with an engaging wry authority here. Still what counts the most in Posner’s production is the family context, and the actors succeed in fleshing out an entirely convincing dynamic. Proper yet mildly eccentric, loving but seldom friction-free, you believe in them completely as a family unit. Henry Goodman is gripping as the driven patriarch, whose own health suffers for his single-mindedness in pursuing the case. At first it seems that Deborah Findlay is resorting to the mannered mode she employed in the NT’s Timon of Athens last year - voice sliding down at the end of lines; hands stabbing out in gestures - but the performance takes hold gradually, as the actress shows maternal warmth and frustration at Arthur’s obsession finally settling into an amused, what-the-hell exuberance and resolve to enjoy the courtroom spectacle.

Charismatic Nick Hendrix – channelling a similar kind of easy-going charm to that which he displayed a couple of years ago in ETT’s wonderful Eden End – makes Dickie Winslow puppyishly loveable; when, near the end, this genial fellow talks cheerfully about the prospect of going to war (the rumble of which is felt throughout Rattigan’s play, which covers 1912 to 1914) it’s a truly chilling moment. (On a personal note, I quibble with Dickie on just one point: you can indeed “keep late hours in Reading.”)

The expert Naomi Frederick brings exactly the right kind of candour and directness to Catherine, and Jay Villiers does a gem of a supporting turn as the lawyer who loves her, blushing with pride when recognised for his cricketing prowess, but never made a mere figure of fun. Posner’s production, classily designed by Peter McKintosh and lovingly lit by Tim Mitchell, ensures that every encounter between these characters carries its precise emotional weight and the near-3 hour running time zips by. In sum: an exquisite evening that’s not to be missed.

The production is booking until 25 May. Further information at the Old Vic website.

Theatre Review: The Turn of the Screw (Almeida)

Henry James’s suggestiveness and super-subtlety get fairly short shrift in Lindsay Posner’s rather laborious new production of The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida. Inspired originally by an Archbishop’s anecdote, and inspiration, in turn, for Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, James’s devious 1898 novella - about a Governess’s conviction that her two young charges, Flora and Miles, are possessed by the spirits of depraved dead servants - has been the subject of about as many adaptations as critical interpretations over the years. And its central ambiguity - are the ghosts “real” or hallucinated by the imagination-prone (and love-struck) Governess? – is still capable of provoking a very heated class discussion or two even today, I can attest. Alas, despite some scattered flashes of interest and a few chills, Posner’s ploddy production doesn’t contribute a great deal that’s new to this oft-adapted, much-debated enigma.

Overseen by Hammer – the rebooted studio responsible for James Watkins’s lame film of The Woman in Black and here making a first stage foray – the production attempts to steer a course between psychological study and Gothic spook-fest and thereby retain a certain amount of ambiguity. Posner adds thunder storms and lightning flashes; there are shadows, sudden flares, chalk scraping down a blackboard and all sorts of things going bump in the night. Peter McKintosh’s set revolves to become parlour, bedroom and riverbank and to suggest, as the novella does so brilliantly, the workings of the Governess’s mind: what Edna Kent called “the ebb and flow of troubled thought.” For all these effects, the production lacks atmosphere, though, and there’s a formulaic, workmanlike quality to the scares that means that the proceedings don’t generate enough tension or terror. (Hey, even webcowgirl didn’t scream!) An unnecessary interval doesn’t help, either.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s script has its effective and witty touches (“It’s hard to do interesting things and keep your hands clean at the same time,” chirps Flora early on) and nicely brings out the elements of class hostility underpinning the narrative. Yet other notions tend toward the crass and crude (a spot of groping; a masturbation moment for the Governess). The production also cribs rather liberally from earlier adaptations - especially Jack Clayton’s classic 1961 film The Innocents – without coming near to matching the beauty and horror that Clayton’s great images managed to achieve. Throughout, indeed, the material cries out for a more imaginative, theatrical approach than Posner and Lenkiewicz seem able to provide. Watching the production, I began to think more fondly of the 2009 BBC version which, for all its shortcomings, at least attempted to offer a fresh take on the material by vindicating the Governess’s visions and wagging an unfashionably feminist finger at those who’d prefer to view the character as a sexually repressed neurotic.

Here Anna Madeley’s performance certainly gives ample space for such a reading; the actress delivers a solid turn though perhaps not a truly disturbing one. Emilia Jones as Flora (alternating with Isabella Blake Thomas and Lucy Morton) and Laurence Belcher as (a rather too-teenage) Miles both work hard at their demanding roles, and Mrs. Grose’s shift from belief to scepticism is sharply caught by the always-reliable Gemma Jones – once a memorable Fleda Vetch in the BBC’s adaptation of James’s The Spoils of Poynton. (“From Spoilin’ to Screwin’” as a dear James-freak friend of mine wrote me when informed of Ms. Jones's casting.) But the ghosts themselves – Eoin Geoghegan as Quint and Caroline Bartleet as Miss Jessel – are fairly weak presences here, seldom made sufficiently vivid to us to “raise the dear old sacred terror” that their creator desired.

An odd amalgam of the OTT and the undercooked, the production feels inessential, then. Those unfamiliar with James’s tricky tale might glean some enjoyment from this particular turn of the screw. But given the richness and potential of the source material, Posner’s well-intentioned yet ultimately lacklustre take seems a missed opportunity overall.

Theatre Review: Butley (Duchess Theatre)

Simon Gray’s play Butley, which focuses on a few hours in the life of an academic in meltdown, premiered in the West End in 1971 in a production starring Alan Bates in what was to become something of a signature role. The play has not been frequently seen since then (a Broadway production with Nathan Lane had a limited run in 2006) but now, 40 years on, it gets an excellent and very well-cast revival directed by Lindsay Posner at the Duchess Theatre.

Our eponymous protagonist, Ben Butley, is an English Literature lecturer at a college of London University. Self-absorbed and drink-dependent, we encounter him on the first day of term as he dodges persistent students, and learns that his estranged wife, Anne, is to divorce him, and that his protégé/lover, the assistant lecturer Joseph, is to leave him. Butley’s response to these and other disasters is a stream of barbed insults and a dose or two of mischief-making, a default mode that masks the protagonist’s pain regarding where his professional and personal life have ended up.

Gray’s play doesn’t feel dated: the portrait of academia - its rivalries, frustrations and insecurities - still rings true, and the dialogue retains its freshness, pungency and wit. And in our monstrous hero Gray has fashioned a vivid creation indeed. Harold Pinter, who directed the 1971 production, described Butley as “a character who hurls himself towards destruction while living, in the fever of his intellectual hell, with a vitality and brilliance known to few of us. He courts death by remaining ruthlessly - even dementedly - alive.”

All of these interesting contradictions are embraced in Dominic West’s dynamic performance. His Butley is at once petty and shrewd, captivating and awful, charismatic and impossible. Physically lithe and vocally dexterous, the actor brings a marvellous gusto to the invective while also communicating the insecurity and sheer neediness that underpin it. Indeed, what’s especially impressive about West’s performance here is how it shows - without a hint of sentimentality - Butley’s bluster to be the recourse of a man who’s sick at heart, and who can deal with loss and failure only by lashing out, alienating those he desires to bring closer. It’s an indelible portrait of a man set upon sabotaging himself that gives the piece its measure of poignancy and power.

West is well supported by Martin Hutson, who is at once deeply sympathetic and ever-so-slightly irritating as Joseph, the young man who knows he must escape Butley’s grasp. As the stolid Reg, Joseph’s new lover and facilitator of that escape, Paul McGann also makes his mark in a memorably tense and funny encounter with Butley in which the latter’s penchant for insult goes into overdrive. (McGann’s brilliantly controlled performance lets us know that Reg will give Joseph neither the pain, nor the excitement, that he’s experienced with Butley, and that that’s why he’s necessary to him.) Amanda Drew, meanwhile, brings a marvellous straightforwardness to her brief appearance as Anne, but it’s a woefully underwritten role. Penny Downie is luckier: as Edna, a colleague of Butley’s who’s dealing with a problem student, this expert actress manages to pack the suggestion of a whole life history into a handful of scenes, imbuing them with fresh and surprising touches. And I also enjoyed Emma Hiddleston as Miss Heasman, the student whose eager persistence at gaining a tutorial with Butley is finally shaken when she finds him pretending to projectile vomit over her essay on The Winter’s Tale.

Set as it is in one room on one day - a conceit that leads to a good self-reflexive joke on the “three unities,” one example of much enjoyable “literary” banter in the play - there’s a static quality to Butley that Posner’s production can’t quite solve. Even though Peter McKintosh’s office set is both imposing and expressive, there’s little to engage the eye here except the actors. In addition, the play doesn’t, ultimately, go quite as deep as you might hope, and there’s a sense of anti-climax about the ending, which requires a stronger punch-line. Nonetheless, this is a highly entertaining evening, and a must-see for West’s tour-de-force alone.

 

Butley runs for 2 hours 20 minutes. It's at the Duchess until August 27th.

 

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.