Film Review: Benediction (dir. Davies, 2021) (Sight and Sound)

My review of Terence Davies's new film Benediction is up at the Sight and Sound website. You can read it here. 

Theatre Review: The Father and the Assassin (National Theatre, Olivier)

 

Playing Nathuram Godse, the man who murdered Gandhi in 1948, in Anupama Chandrasekhar's exciting new play The Father and the Assassin, Shubham Saraf rises out of the Olivier stage to tell his character's story in retrospect. He does so with witty, audience-implicating self-consciousness and a contemporary awareness that includes references to Richard Attenborough's "fawning film"... and Brexit. 

In this way, Chandrasekhar makes The Father and the Assassin not merely a memory play but also a postmodern, beyond-the-grave reminiscence. Avoiding the reverential tone and ponderousness of the aforementioned Attenborough film - which Pauline Kael famously claimed had her leaving the cinema feeling "the way the British must have when they left India - exhausted and relieved" - The Father and the Assassin has a surprising formal playfulness, but one that doesn't detract from the seriousness of its concerns. 

It's a play about radicalisation, about colonial oppression and Indian in-fighting, about violence versus non-violence, and, especially, about hero worship curdling into hatred. (The Hindu Godse started out as a Gandhi acolyte before becoming an opponent when he came to feel that Gandhi had made too many concessions to the Muslim minority.)

It's also, modishly but persuasively, a play about gender. The loss of several children led Godse's parents to raise him as a girl, a fact that, Chandrasekhar suggests, resulted in identity issues that reflect India's wider struggles. Godse is seen seeking out father figures: first in Gandhi (here presented as the first man to call Godse "son") and then in Vinayak Savarkar, whose anti-Muslim, Hindu-nationalist stance proves a fatally radicalising influence, and who in one scene schools Godse in "masculine" behaviour. 

The play's narration-dependent form results in dialogue that's sometimes something of an exposition blitz. But Indhu Rubasingham's production never feels fusty, zipping the action along at a clip, as Rajha Shakiry's flexible dusty design moves us from prison to seashore, backwards and forwards in time, with filmic fluidity. 

The charismatic Saraf commands the auditorium with such casual ease that he might be standing in a living room. Announcing his tale as "a potboiler," starting his narrative proudly and confidently ("Once you know my story you'll celebrate me!"), he becomes compellingly disquieted as  his version of events starts to be challenged by other conflicting voices and hauntings in his head. 

Equally vivid acting comes from Ayesha Dharker and Tony Jayawardena as the parents; from Sagar Arya as Savarkar; and from Paul Bazely, whose brilliantly fresh performance embodies Gandhi without resorting to cliché. I remember seeing Bazely on stage as Aziz in Shared Experience's adaptation of A Passage to India about 20 years ago, and there's a touch of that company's emphasis on expressionistic movement to the ensemble work here. An episode depicting Partition strife looks a bit awkward, and the lengthy dialogue exchange that precedes Godse's violent act doesn't convince, either. But this remains a highly entertaining and enlightening evening that succeeds in balancing epic sweep with emotional intimacy. 

The Father and the Assassin is booking at the National Theatre until 18 June. Further information here. 

Related Reading: 

Review of Hex 

Top 10 Theatre Productions 2021

10 Great Films About Old Age, BFI online

 

For BFI online I wrote about 10 films focusing  on ageing or elderly characters. You can read the piece here. 

10 British Films about Love Across Social Divides (BFI online)

 

Ali & Ava (2021)

For BFI online I wrote about 10 British films dealing with romance across social divides. You can read the piece here. 

Film Review: The Lost Daughter (Cineaste)

I reviewed Maggie Gyllenhaal 's The Lost Daughter for the Spring issue of Cineaste. The review is available online here. 

Theatre Review: Pretty Woman: The Musical (Teatr Muzyczny, Łódź)

 

With both Waitress and Once currently being presented at Warsaw's Teatr Muzyczny Roma, it's obvious that the appetite of Polish theatre audiences for West End or Broadway-originated musicals, especially those derived from films, remains strong. 

Having opened late last year after a long pandemic-necessitated delay, Łódź's latest addition to the list of imports is Pretty Woman, the musical version of Garry Marshall's seminal romantic comedy, with music and lyrics by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance. The Łódź production is directed at Teatr Muzyczny by the theatre's artistic director, Jakub Szydłowski. And it's not the only take on the show in the country, either: for those wanting to play "compare and contrast," Krakow's Variété Theatre also has a production running concurrently.

When the musical premiered on Broadway in 2018 and then in London in 2019 (where it's currently at the Savoy Theatre) critics were quick to point out the "problematic" elements of the material's Cinderella-meets-Pygmalion set up, in which Hollywood hooker Vivian Ward finds love with the businessman Edward Lewis after he's paid for her services - as if people hadn't been making such critiques since the film's release in 1990. (Among actresses who turned down Julia Roberts's star-making role over concerns about the "tone" of the script and its "degrading view of women" were Michelle Pfieffer and Daryl Hannah.) 

In most respects a facsimile of the film, with a book penned by Marshall and the film's screenwriter J.F. Lawton, Pretty Woman: The Musical certainly doesn't attempt a revisionist view of its source's sexual politics. What Szydłowski's production does do, though, is add a bit of a meta framework - mild but nonetheless welcome - which presents the production in the context of a sound stage film set, complete with crew, cameras,  clapperboards and the occasional "re-take" for a flubbed line. You'd hesitate to call it Brechtian, but, carried through to a witty curtain call, this self-conscious conceit puts a little bit of distance on the material, serving as a wry reminder of its origins. 

Pretty Woman: The Musical
© Teatr Muzyczny w Łodzi, Michał Matuszak

Otherwise the show offers a faithful, straight-down-the-line retread that delivers the expected mix of comedy, light social satire and romance. (Its machine-tooled slickness is the opposite of the last musical I saw, the National Theatre's wonky but characterful Hex.) Adams and Vallance's songs, with their upfront "80s pop/rock sensibilities, are generic and lyrically banal but serviceable and easy on the ear (well, except for the shrill "Rodeo Drive"): they sound good here in Polish translation by Daniel Wyszogrodzki, and are enhanced by fun, diverse choreography by Jarosław Staniek and Katarzyna Zielonka. 

Budgetary constraints are evident in elements of Grzegorz Policiński's  design - such as a meant-to-be-palatial Beverly Hills penthouse suite that looks more like the set of a 1970s sitcom. But there's an affectionate early '90s nostalgia to aspects like the displayed Cher, Thelma & Louise, and Terminator 2 posters. And the production reaches its romantic apex in a simply beautiful staging of the opera scene, with the La Traviata performance interwoven with the musical's centrepiece romantic ballad "You and I," that moves the couple from opera box to the stage and back to the apartment. It's the show's standout sequence in terms of fully integrating song, dance, design and lighting to develop character and move the narrative forward. 

Pretty Woman: The Musical
© Teatr Muzyczny w Łodzi, Justyna Tomczak

From costume choices to hairstyle to physique, Malwina Kusior as Vivian hews closely to Julia Roberts in the film. But Kusior succeeds in creating a strong audience rapport from the start, and from her impassioned delivery of Vivian's early "I want" song "Anywhere But Here" ("Jak najdalej stąd" - hej, Domalewski!), she makes all the musical moments count. As Edward, Marcin Jajkiewicz brings less to the party, but he does well by the soul-baring ballad "Wolność" which sounds much stronger and more meaningful here than in its blander English language incarnation, "Freedom".

 

A solid ensemble offers lively support, including Paweł Erdman as the hotel manager who schools Vivien in etiquette in an amusingly done number, and the ebullient Maciek Pawlak in two roles, including Erdman's bellboy sidekick. The biggest departure in terms of characterisation is Małgorzata Chrusciel's brassy, peroxided Kit, who's closer to a full-on John Waters heroine here than to Laura San Giacomo in the film. The definition of a fun, undemanding night out (though definitely over-extended at a whopping 3 hours), judging by the enthusiastic response of the packed audience it's easy to see Pretty Woman taking its place alongside Les Mis, Miss Saigon and Madagascar as a popular new addition to Teatr Muzyczny's repertoire. 

Pretty Woman: The Musical is booking at Teatr Muzyczny. Further information here. 

Theatre Review: Hex (National Theatre)

 

Its press night postponed twice and three weeks of performances cancelled due to Covid cases in the company, the National Theatre's new musical Hex seems to have fallen victim to the condition evoked by its title. Rufus Norris implied as much when he took to the stage before Wednesday night's performance, warmly welcoming the slightly sparse but nonetheless eager audience to a show he described as "particularly hard hit" over the previous weeks. The good news is that, all being well, Hex is now up and running again until 22 Jan. 

As it turns out, the show that Norris (direction and lyrics), Tanya  Ronder (book), Jim Fortune (music) and team have fashioned is a confounding mix of the enchanting and the inept. With a premise pitched somewhere between Into the Woods, Wicked and Tangled, Hex continues in the revisionist fairy tale mode, filtering the story of Sleeping Beauty through the perspective of the fairy who cursed her. 

A stunningly beautiful opening sequence introducing us to that lonely "Fairy in the wood" (played by Rosalie Craig as a part-melancholy, part-mischievous vision in tattered white tulle) promises much but the show only intermittently recaptures the spirit of that blissful opening, notwithstanding the sustained exuberance of Katrina Lindsay's design and the dynamism of Paul Anderson's lighting which create some memorable stage pictures throughout. 

A problem lies in Ronder's book which is patchy, to say the least. Lacking a strong dramatic centre, the show struggles to hold the characters in balance and the timeline is so confused in some stretches that it can be tricky to tell whether days or decades are meant to have passed. The ending is satisfying in terms of bringing the characters together but the themes don't quite emerge - at least not on a first encounter. In addition, Norris too often falls back on some of his bad habits of staging (familiar from his wonder.land and The Threepenny Opera productions, among others), with the cast facing out too much or scampering up and down wheeled-on ladders.

While the carryings-on of an ensemble of poncy princes and Prince-pricking thorns feel like forced fun, the show is at its strongest when at its darkest and most emotional. These are also the moments in which Fortune's score is at its most exciting and expressive, pushing beyond pop/rock parameters into more unpredictable, quasi-classical terrain. The independence anthem "Sixteen" delivered by Kat Ronney's Sleeping Beauty incarnation Rose feels too calculated and generic a belter, but the material written for the show's other women is much more arresting. 

While there's little Light Princess finesse to these proceedings, Rosalie Craig gives another thrilling performance full of swift wit, surprise and soulfulness. She's matched by an astonishing Tamsin Carroll  as  the devouring ogre-momma Queenie, who is disturbed by, then hellbent on satisfying, her cannibalistic appetites. At first it feels retrograde that the show, like wonder.land before it, falls back on making a female character the antagonist. But Carroll brings so much power to the part that she gives the character mythic stature and a tragic dimension that blows the crummier elements of the conception away.  Hex doesn't quite work as it stands, but I'm glad to have seen it: it has scattered moments of magic and daring, and two performances that are for sure the production's blessings.

Hex is in the Olivier at the National Theatre until 22 January.