Last 10 Things Seen In the Theatre Meme #4

List the last 10 things you saw at the theatre in order:

1. Earthquakes in London (Richmond Theatre)

2. How To Be Happy (Orange Tree Theatre)
3. The Importance of Being Earnest (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
4. Farewell To The Theatre (Rose Theatre, Kingston)
5. Othello (Sheffield Crucible)
6. South Downs/The Browning Version (Minerva, Chichester)
7. Street Scene (Young Vic)
8. Grief (National Theatre, Cottesloe)
9. Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops (Richmond Theatre)
10. Boys Plays (Above the Stag)


Who was the best performer in number one (Earthquakes in London)?
Toss-up between Tracey-Ann Oberman and Paul Shelley.


Why did you go to see number two (How To Be Happy)?
Reviewing assignment.


Can you remember a line/lyric from number three (The Importance of Being Earnest) that you liked?

Even people who’ve never seen this play can remember lines from it! Stick a pin in the text and you’ll find a memorable epigram. I think my favourite is Gwendolen’s "I am pleased to say that I have never seen a spade."

What would you give number four (Farewell To The Theatre) out of 10?
A charitable 4.



Was there someone hot in number five (Othello)?
Ahem! West! Gilbreath! Shame on Shakespeare for not giving them a happy ending, though.



What was number six (South Downs/The Browning Version) about?
Oh, lots of things. Mainly, perhaps, what unexpected acts of kindness can do.



Who was your favourite actor in number seven (Street Scene)?
A strong ensemble but I suppose  Elena Ferrari just takes it.



What was your favourite bit in number eight (Grief)?

The scene in which Marion Bailey’s Gertrude finds Lesley Manville’s Dorothy in distress and the characters almost - but don’t quite - break through to honest communication touched me a lot. Classic Leigh, brilliantly done.

Would you see number nine (Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops) again?
Could do.


What was the worst thing about number ten (Boys Plays)?
The first play in the double-bill was fairly lacklustre.



Which was best?
Not a fashionable view, but I thought Grief was absolutely wonderful.



Which was worst?
Farewell To The Theatre. All too aptly titled, I’m afraid.



Did any make you cry?
In approximate order of amount of tears shed: Grief, The Browning Version, Street Scene, Othello.



Did any make you laugh?
Earthquakes in London, How To Be Happy, The Importance of Being Earnest, Othello, Grief, Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops.



Which roles would you like to play in any of them?
Judging by two of the locations in which it ended up in this production, Desdemona’s handkerchief looked to be having a rather jolly time. Alternatively, Sam in Street Scene so I get to sing “Lonely House.”



Which one did you have the best seats for?
How To Be Happy and Grief. Go small theatres!

Film Review: Elena (Zvyagintsev, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

The best film that I saw in an altogether strong first week at this year’s London Film Festival was Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena (2011), a movie that fully confirms the Russian director as one of the most vital talents in contemporary cinema. Zvyagintsev follows The Return (2003) and The Banishment (2007) with an intimate, subtle but bracingly intense drama that intelligently and feelingly explores issues of class and social status in contemporary Russia. It does so through the story of the title character (played with blinding brilliance by Nadezhda Markina). Elena is a woman caught, essentially, between two worlds: that of her poor son and his (ever-expanding) young family and that of her wealthy second husband Vladimir (Andrei Smirnov), who’s none too sure that he owes Elena’s brood any financial favours at all (“I married you, not them”). The manner in which the protagonist opts to resolve this dilemma leads her into some unforeseen territory indeed.

A Tarkovsky for those of us who (confession time) have been bored by the majority of Tarkovsky’s work, Zvyagintsev is as philosophically-inclined as his illustrious predecessor but without losing sight of character and narrative. Elena is a marvellously assured piece of filmmaking: beautifully rhythmed; rich in telling, unstressed details; and full of spaces for the viewer’s involvement and interpretation. It also proves - if proof were needed - that Iris Murdoch’s dictum that “language is soaked in the moral, literature is soaked in the moral” may be applied with equal relevance to film. The thorny ethical dilemmas that result from Elena's predicament are many. But for me perhaps the most resonant question that the movie asks might be: does the notion that “the last shall be first” refer, these days, simply to the opportunity to watch trash on a wider screen TV? But there's no overt proselytizing going on in this movie. All of the characters are viewed with a very clear eye indeed, and the expert way in which Zvyagintsev allows our allegiances to shift (and shift again) as the story develops is one of the deep satisfactions that his film offers.

As our heroine progresses through identities in her daily encounters - from wife-cum-nursemaid to bourgeois matron, cuddly babushka to criminal - so the movie shifts discreetly but dynamically through genre codes, moving from quiet observational character study to suspense drama, propelled at times by hypnotic snatches of Phillip Glass, and arriving at an ending that dispenses the kind of subtle chill you may find it difficult to shake off. Thrillingly good.  Trailer here.

Post-script: In terms of other films screened so far at the LFF, kudos, too, to Miranda July’s The Future, a gloriously quirky, heartfelt and surprising meditation on time that made me exclaim an enthralled “Wow!” on two occasions, and Andrea Segre’s tender Li and the Poet, about the relationship between a Chinese immigrant (Zhao Tao) and a fisherman (Rade Serbedzija) on the Venetian lagoon island of Chioggia. Time permitting, I’ll hope to write detailed appraisals of these and other films in the LFF next month.

Concert Review: Kate Rusby (Richmond Theatre) (23/10/2011)

“We’ve never played here before; we wondered if anybody would come,” confessed a characteristically self-deprecating Kate Rusby towards the end of her enchanting concert at Richmond Theatre yesterday evening. Well, Rusby need not have worried, for the folk fans of Surrey and its surrounds were out in full force last night and gave the singer and her band - Damien O’Kane (guitar/banjo), Ed Boyd (guitar), Julian Sutton (accordion), Duncan Lyle (double bass) and John Joe Kelly (bodhrán) - a very warm welcome indeed.

Though nursing a slight cough passed on to her by her and O’Kane’s two-year-old daughter, Rusby performed like a trouper and was in excellent voice throughout the night, sounding confident and clear. With no brand new album to promote - her last, the entirely self-penned Make The Light, was released a year ago - Rusby constructed a thoughtful set-list that ranged widely over her catalogue, offering a pleasing mixture of traditional and original material. And although much of her older work was of course arranged for fiddle and whistles, the competence and energy of the players ensured that the absence of these instruments in the current set-up wasn’t felt as too much of a lack.

Following an enjoyable, assured warm-up set by Kelly, Boyd and the wry O’Kane, the gig proper began with a lovely version of “Playing of Ball,” the opening track from 2001’s Little Lights, and was followed by a rollicking take on “The Cobbler’s Daughter.” (“We’ll get our songs involving deaths out of the way early on,” Rusby quipped. “And then you can relax into your Sunday evening.”) The newer self-written songs also sounded especially supple and strong, with the plaintive “Only Hope” outstanding, while “Walk the Road” - the closest that Rusby’s yet come to an anthem - concluded the first half on an especially stirring note.

It’s fair to say that, stylistically, Rusby’s work hasn’t developed much over the years, and, across an album, her music can sometimes seem to lack variety. But in a live context - and interspersed with her disarming, often hilarious banter - her music feels vibrant and fresh, and the songs sometimes gain new depths and resonances as well. The concert’s emotional highlight came towards the end of the second half with an exquisite, moving performance of “Let the Cold Wind Blow,” while other standouts included a spry, cheeky “Game of All Fours” (“If you’re under 16, then this is a song about a card game. If you’re over 16, make of it what you will”), a gorgeously rootsy “Over You Now,” and a great fun set of tunes from the band. The one-song encore of “Underneath the Stars,” which Rusby took solo, was, appropriately, celestial.

Rusby’s apparently artless, girl-next-door persona belies the talent and tenacity of a musician who’s been on the scene for 20 years now and who’s able to captivate an audience by creating an atmosphere of palpable warmth, intimacy and ease. “This theatre’s gorgeous… I think we’d like to live here,” Rusby mused. And judging by the affectionate response that she received, it seems that Richmond’s residents would be happy if she chose to do that very thing. A delightful evening.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Tour dates and venue information here.

Film Review: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

Seldom regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most profound or popular tragedies, Coriolanus is a work that has, nonetheless, frequently been raided for contemporary parallels by directors and adaptors across the centuries. The play’s slippery dissection of democracy - its concern with “people power,” the challenges of leadership and what constitutes “good” rule - has left it open to multiple, often contradictory interpretations. Nahum Tate’s 1682 adaptation was set against Whig-Tory rivalry, while later adaptations referred to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Rebellions. In the 20th Century, the Nazis extolled the heroism of the protagonist and drew favourable comparisons with Hitler, while Brecht’s 1953 version surprised no-one by portraying the masses as heroes.

Ralph Fiennes’s big, brawny new film adaptation strives - sometimes astutely and sometimes ham-fistedly - to chime with the times. The tale of the warrior-hero who, when conspired against, turns his back on Rome to join forces with his arch-enemy, the Volscian general Aufidius, is the tragedy of a man who, though a notable success on the battle-field, is entirely unable to flatter or charm the populace. Tipping its hat to the title of John Osborne’s 1973 adaptation, Fiennes’s film locates the action in “a place calling itself Rome” - a Balkan war-zone - and the early scenes in which the citizens besiege the Senate and are beaten back by riot-police certainly gain an extra frisson in the light of the London riots and current worldwide anti-capitalist demos.

Making his directorial debut here, Fiennes has done a mostly commendable job of work. And returning to a role that he first played on stage in 2000, he also delivers a compelling central performance that has genuine gravitas. But his approach sometimes betrays a certain amount of insecurity in relation to the material. The film strives so hard to be cinematic - jittery camera-work? check; ear-splitting sound? check - that it’s occasionally a little embarrassing. The opening scenes suggest a particularly hyperbolic advert for a Panorama Special, and the decision to present the conflict between the Romans and the Volscians through the language of TV news media (yawn) feels all too predictable. (How fresh this device seemed when it book-ended Baz Lurhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet; how totally shopworn now. The nadir here is a Jon Snow cameo.) As director, Fiennes also seems to have taken instruction from some of his previous collaborators: the over-wrought action scenes find him doing his best Kathryn Bigelow impersonation (Barry Ackroyd, who shot The Hurt Locker [2008], is the movie’s cinematographer), while the presentation of the Citizens as a very motley crew recalls the 2005 Deborah Warner production of Julius Caesar in which Fiennes played Mark Antony.

This tendency towards over-emphasis does result in admirably lucid story-telling, though. The film is thoughtfully paced and structured, with Coriolanus’s rejection of Rome taking place almost exactly at the movie’s mid-point. Hollywood’s favourite screenwriter-for-hire John Logan has done a skilful job of paring back (and simplifying) the text, although some elements and supporting roles do suffer the consequences of his tinkering. While Brian Cox is able to come through with a finely modulated performance as Menenius, the work of Paul Jesson and James Nesbitt as the conspiring tribunes ends up seeming obvious at times. And, more problematically, the association between Coriolanus and Aufidius (Gerard Butler, adequate) never quite strikes the sparks that it initially promises to. The homoerotic implications of the relationship which have been highlighted by some directors aren’t stressed here, although the movie does boast a slightly bizarre night-time sequence in which the Volscian camp seems momentarily to have morphed into a gay club.

The most genuinely exciting moments are those in which Fiennes stops proclaiming “Look! I’m making a MOVIE!” and opts for more sparsely staged scenes that allow Shakespeare’s language to do the work. Coriolanus then offers some memorably taut encounters, and some eloquent and expressive images, too. Fiennes’s scenes with Vanessa Redgrave’s strong, seductive Volumnia are especially fine; Redgrave (who gave even her hokey dialogue in Letters to Juliet [2010] the weight she might give to a bit of prime Shakespearean verse) delivers her best screen performance in years as the ambitious, manipulative matriarch. And she and Fiennes look wonderful together - a pair of Roman statues in the making, indeed - their intense close-ups offering the thrill that the theatre can’t provide. Volumnia’s final supplication scene is brilliantly sustained - the movie’s highlight - and its impact mitigates some of the more questionable, obvious ideas that mar the film’s opening sections. This Coriolanus isn’t, overall, everything that it could have been. But at its best it’s a vivid and gripping account of this now seldom-staged play.

Film Review: Dark Horse (Solondz, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

In Dark Horse (2011), Todd Solondz has made a film without rape, paedophilia and masturbation because, in the director’s words, “it’s always good to challenge yourself.” Toning down the shock value a notch, Solondz has produced in Dark Horse perhaps his most easily digestible feature to date, albeit one that leaves some space for the perverse and disturbing elements that are the director’s stock-in-trade.

Dark Horse charts the experiences of one Abe Wertheimer (a star-making turn by Jordan Gelber). Zipping around town in a yellow people-carrier, with obnoxiously upbeat pop as his soundtrack, this portly 35-year-old considers himself a cool, capable and desirable chap, despite the fact that he’s hardly a success story in conventional American terms, living as he does with his parents (superb Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken) - in a bedroom filled, amusingly, with Thundercats and Gremlins memorabilia - and working ineffectually in his father’s industial real-estate firm. Abe’s underlying frustrations manifest themselves in juvenile tantrums and petty squabbles with all and sundry. But he knows - or at least thinks he knows - how to turn on the charm. And when this self-satisfied fellow sets his sights on a distracted-seeming woman, Miranda (Selma Blair), whom he meets at a wedding, he’s soon approaching her with marriage in mind.

As Fernando F. Croce has noted, Dark Horse suggests Solondz’s caustic rejoinder to the endless parade of "adorable arrested development" comedies featuring the likes of Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. There’s also a touch of Coens comedy to the movie’s tone, but the brothers can’t match Solondz for emotional insight and don’t come close to rivalling his unerring ability to capture the sheer awkwardness of human interaction on screen. Its narration unravelling as the protagonist unravels, Dark Horse takes some wonderfully confounding twists and turns as it progresses. It becomes, ultimately, a movie about an individual’s dream/fantasy life, and, in particular, an exploration of the role that other people play as protagonists in such fantasies. If the movie’s did-that-just-happen-or-not? game-playing becomes somewhat wearisome towards the climax, its shakier stretches are redeemed by a final shot of staggering eloquence and poignancy, one which beautifully transforms the fantasised into the fantasiser. 

Film Review: Midnight in Paris (Allen, 2011)

Nostalgia is what it used to be - for a while, at least - in Woody Allen’s elegant time-travel comedy Midnight in Paris (2011), in which a Hollywood screen-writer, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), vacationing in Gay Paree with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and trying to work on a novel, hears the chimes at midnight and finds himself transported back to his favourite epoch: the City of Light in the 1920s.

The witty, old-fashioned confection that Allen conjures from this premise (which owes something to that of the 1990s BBC series Goodnight Sweetheart) has become - somewhat surprisingly - his highest-grossing movie ever, and one that’s finally re-awakened American audience’s love affair with the director. Told in Allen’s briskest, most playful style, and shot in gorgeous warm tones by Darius Khondji and Johanne Debas, Midnight in Paris is a fine light entertainment, combining the fantastic mode of Allen’s classic The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) with the Henry James-lite Yanks-do-Europe concerns of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

The movie’s warm, wry, romantic tone is established from the off, with an opening montage of Paris scenes so unashamedly touristy that it makes you laugh. And from there on the pleasures are numerous. Up front there’s Owen Wilson’s often-uncanny Allen impersonation in the lead role (watch out in particular for a scene where he emerges from a bathroom baring a pair of earrings and seems, for a moment, to have become Woody), as well as nicely observed turns from McAdams and from Michael Sheen as an unctuous friend.

Mostly, Allen wrests laughs via the roll-call of luminaries that Gil interacts with in the 1920s scenes, all portrayed with just the right degree of affectionate caricature by the other members of the lovely cast. Kathy Bates’s Gertrude Stein is a wonderfully straight-forward fount-of-wisdom; Corey Stoll's Hemingway is hilariously earnest, and Adrien Brody does Dali to a T. As F. Scott Fitzgerald Tom Hiddleston smiles his most beguiling smile, and Marion Cottilard twinkles bewitchingly as a muse to many.  Allen provides a light dusting of philosophy, and a little social comment too, as the movie contrasts the supportive, open, bi-lingual artistic community of the 20s (as perceived/constructed by Gil, at least) with the superficial tendenicies of the contemporary Americans, who, with the exception of Gil, disdain the idea of living in Europe.

There’s a little fuzzy plotting in the final third - some business about a significant diary seems fumbled - but for the most part Allen keeps proceedings on track in a way that he can’t always be relied upon to do. And such minor lapses don’t detract from the movie’s appeal or the cogency of its gentle argument for living in the now. A charmer.

Theatre Review: How To Be Happy (Orange Tree Theatre)

Two households, both with the same settee. A settee that gets lolled on, cried on, argued on, walked on and shagged on over the course of David Lewis’s lively and thoughtful new play at Richmond’s Orange Tree. Directed by its author, How To Be Happy unfolds in a series of overlapping, parallel scenes that take place in the separate - yet deeply interconnected - homes of Emma (Kate Miles) and Paul (Paul Kemp), a divorced couple now living with their new partners Graham (Steven Elder) and Katy (Carolyn Backhouse).

Each couple has its problems. Paul, a struggling writer, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, while Graham and Emma’s relationship is undergoing strain, not helped by the presence of a very vocal new baby. Meanwhile, Graham, an advertising executive who’s currently (and hilariously) “brainstorming notions of happiness” in order to best promote a new chocolate bar, wants Paul to collaborate on the campaign. Flitting between the two houses, and delivering sometimes indiscreet dispatches from each, is Paul and Emma’s teenage daughter Daisy (Kate Lamb), who’s harbouring hopes of bringing her parents back together.

At first, Lewis’s conceit of having the two families simultaneously occupy the same space in overlapping scenes feels clunky and obtrusive. But the structure moves into elegance as the evening progresses, creating some effective juxtapositions between the events in the two households: rhyming incidents of domestic discord and complicity. The relationships are, for the most part, sharply drawn, and just when you think Lewis is about to take a swerve into sentimentality you’re surprised by some unanticipated twist or acerbic observation.

The thematic focus of How To Be Happy is - you guessed! - the concept of happiness, and, in particular, its relationship to consumerism. Paul (in one of the play’s improbabilities, or, at least, its heavy-handed ironies) once wrote a self-help book on the subject of happiness and has worked in the advertising industry himself. But he has now come to disdain Graham’s profession, which he views as responsible for the sorry state of a society in which people feel pressured “to spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.”

What’s most admirable about Lewis’s writing, though, is that it refuses to employ the characters simply as one-dimensional representations of a particular idea. Rather, the people here are believably inconsistent muddles of contradictions, each with his or her measure of awareness and neurosis.

Graham may represent the horrors of consumer capitalism to Paul, but Steven Elder’s expert performance presents Graham as a rather ineffectual man, affable and eager to please, and nursing his own sense of futility and disillusionment. (It’s not until the end that we see a trace of steeliness.) Similarly, Paul’s rants against consumerism are, as his ex-wife points out, somewhat undermined by his own attachment to his iPhone.

The raspy-voiced Paul Kemp doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to make the disappointed, rather whiny Paul too sympathetic or easily appealing, and the other roles are played with equal bite. As Emma, Kate Miles brilliantly conveys the insecurity and frustration of a woman who’s walked away from one unsatisfactory marriage only to find herself in another. And although the characterisation of Daisy takes an unfortunate late slide into psychobabble, Kate Lamb (a young actress to watch) is spot-on as the daddy’s girl.

Some moments fail to completely convince - the growing intimacy between Graham and Katy, in particular - and the play’s contemporary allusions - Lady Gaga, The X Factor - occasionally feel pat. But Lewis’s spry production nicely conveys the shifts in tone of his writing, as the mood moves from broad comedy to contemplation, with the action underscored by classical pieces that range from jaunty, brisk baroque to the intense drama of Schubert’s Winterreise (“a good break-up CD,” in Paul’s definition). And the production’s truly delicious closing moments, which leave one character alone on stage and make the best use of The Ronettes’s “Be My Baby” since the opening of Scorsese’s Mean Streets, are perfectly judged. Lewis’s play has its glib and undeveloped elements, but at its best it reflects wittily and poignantly on the way we live now.

The production runs for 2 hours 20 minutes and is booking until November 5. Further information at the Orange Tree website.

 
 
Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.