"Where to Begin with Isaac Julien" at BFI online

 

I wrote a "Where to Begin..." guide to Isaac Julien's work for BFI. You can read it here. 

Review: A Crack in the Mountain

My review of Alastair Evans' documentary A Crack in the Mountain is in this month's issue of Sight and Sound, and up on the website. You can read it here. 

Theatre Review: The Circle (Orange Tree)

 

Part of the pleasure of W. Somerset Maugham's work is the way in which a seemingly conventional surface gradually splits open to reveal subversive elements. Maugham's plays may look like polite drawing room dramas or comedies but the middle-class trappings conceal  unorthodox thinking - whether that's an endorsement of euthanasia in The Sacred Flame, a critique of war in For Services Rendered, a defence of a dissatisfied patriarch's decision to leave his family in The Breadwinner, or a general vision of ever-shifting relationships that can still feel surprising today.

Predating those plays (it was first performed in 1921) the challenge to the sanctity of marriage offered in The Circle looks highly unlikely to inspire the boos that it apparently elicited in its premiere - especially since the play's final act is, in truth, a bit of a mess. Tom Littler's production - his first as Artistic Director of the Orange Tree, taking over following Paul Miller's successful 9 years - doesn't manage to solve those weaknesses but it makes for a sharply funny and entertaining evening nonetheless. Littler delivered a strong, Chekhovian production of For Services Rendered at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2019 and clearly has a gift for presenting Maugham in small spaces, helped along here by a crack cast.

Like The Breadwinner, staged at the OT exactly 10 years ago, The Circle focuses on a parent's leaving of their family - but in this case it's the mother who the deserter, and the abandonment has happened some 30 years before the events of the play begin. Lady Kitty Champion-Cheney walked out on her husband Clive and young son Arnold to be with her lover Hughie. Decades on, Arnold's wife Elizabeth has organised a reunion: inviting Kitty and Hughie back to the Dorset family home, much to the chagrin of Arnold, who's now an MP. While she wants to reunite mother and son, Elizabeth's motives aren't entirely altruistic. Motherless herself, she's curious about Kitty whom she's come to admire for her bold stance in turning her back on convention to pursue her own desires. And with friend Teddie evidently interested in her, Elizabeth soon finds herself in a similar quandary that looks like it might result in a little case of history repeating.

The funniest parts of The Circle come in the second act, in which Elizabeth's romantic perception of Kitty is challenged by the reality of her appearance. Jane Asher delivers a glittering comic performance that digs into Kitty's vanity, superficiality and anxiety about her age  - not to mention her palpable disillusionment at the way her decision to leave has panned out. There's some hilarious sniping between her and Nicholas Le Prevost grumping, querulous, dentally challenged Hughie,  and Clive Francis proves their match in a hilariously wily  turn as the deserted spouse who can't help but relish their arguments, and whose own life hasn't lacked in sexual adventures.

The younger cast members -Pete Ashmore as Arnold, Olivia Vinal as Elizabeth, and Chirag Benedict Lobo as Teddie - don't manage to match the older generation: the necessary chemistry between Vinal and Lobo isn't quite there, but Ashmore does bring a memorable ferocity to the proceedings as Arnold realises he might be facing his father's fate. Some elements of the production feel like missed opportunities: Robert Maskell's Butler constantly seems on the cusp of doing something funny without ever quite delivering and Louie Whitemore's design is minimal, apart from some eye-catching costumes for Asher which nicely reflect the character's trajectory as the silly Kitty belatedly reveals some sensitivity.  The twists and turns of the climax don't manage to produce a satisfying conclusion but Maugham's tolerant writing distributes sympathy in unexpected places and there are enough comic highspots to make this pleasing revival worthwhile.

The Circle is booking until 17 June. 

10 Great British Films of 1973 (BFI online)

I wrote about 10 British film celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year. You can read the piece here. 

Sight and Sound (May 2023 issue)

 

May's issue of Sight and Sound is out now. I wrote about the Arrow Blu-ray of The Last Emperor for this issue. 

Theatre Review: BLACK SUPERHERO (Royal Court)

 

In BLACK SUPERHERO, his debut play as a writer, Danny Lee Wynter (last seen on stage in Dominic Cooke's beautiful revival of The Normal Heart) casts himself as the protagonist, David, a mixed race actor who's working none-too-contentedly alongside his sister Syd (Rochenda Sandall) as a children's entertainer. David has been struggling to get acting jobs and attributes that struggle to the whiteness of the industry. Among David's social circle, though, are others having more success. These include the African American  King (charismatic Dyllón Burnside, of Pose), who heads up the "Crawtopia" superhero franchise and who is dealing with the particular pressures and liberations that such a high-profile mainstream gig entails. 

David's been nursing a crush on King for years, but when a hedonistic night results in a  tryst in Shoreditch the pair's relationship gets more complicated - not only by the fact of King's marital status  but also by what is gradually revealed as David's troubled childhood which, the play indicates, has resulted in projections and fantasies about a saviour/father figure - a bill which the combo of King and his superhero alter ego seems to fit. 

For better and for worse, BLACK SUPERHERO is very evidently an actor's first play, and Wynter's own trajectory from being an usher at the Court in the early 2000s to having his debut script staged in its main auditorium has been irresistibly rehashed in the publicity. Clearly, the piece draws on his own personal and professional experiences as both actor and activist (including his founding of the admirable Act for Change initiative). Both soul- and body-baring, BLACK SUPERHERO is open in its critique of casting processes and gay and Black representation across various levels of the industry, while contrasting takes on such contemporary cultural touchstones as Moonlight and Fairview are also offered up in the characters' on-the-nose debates. 

Throughout, in fact, the play revels in refs and quotations ranging from Big Brother to Hamlet - some of these are funny and revealing while others are a bit forced and gratuitous. And influences from Edmond to Angels in America to Daddy are evident in its own design, albeit filtered through a very British sensibility, language and rude humour.

If the end result feels less self-indulgent than it might, that's down to Wynter's populating the play with some sharply-drawn characters surrounding David, especially the conflicted King who resents his status as a Black spokesperson (and is evading specifics about his sexuality in interviews) and fellow actor Raheem (Eloka Ivo) whose easygoing, anti-activist attitude contrasts with David's combative militancy. The character of Syd also serves to give a different account of their childhood and to call David out on his narcissism (though Sandall often overacts here as she did in Steve McQueen's Mangrove). 

Not all of the characters are as sympathetically created, though. The white roles, in particular,  feel strategically caricatured, though both Ben Allen and Dominic Holmes get their laughs, with Allen playing King's prissy spouse (a  relationship that the play doesn't manage to make convincing) and a passive aggressive Australian interviewee quizzing the star on his personal life.

What's more, for all the concern over representation, the writing sometimes defaults dishearteningly to stereotype - from the appearance of a predatory bisexual (played with redeeming gusto by Ako Mitchell) to the presentation of David as a protagonist messed up by paternal absence who just wants some reassurance that Daddy cared after all. (Though dedicated to the playwright's mother, it's one of the oddities of the piece that David's relationship with his mum is barely referred to at all.)

The first half of BLACK SUPERHERO is the more confident and entertaining. The play is at its best when exploring the blurred lines of gay intimacy: King and David's hook up is super-sexy and believable, with post-coital playfulness perfectly played by the two actors. The second half, with David accompanying King on an Australian promo tour, feels more scattered and attenuated, and doesn't quite make good on the opening's promise.  Part of the problem may be in the writing but it's also  due to the fact that Daniel Evans' production, though proficient, fails to give the hallucinatory elements - David's fantasies of Craw's appearances - enough crazy conviction and heft. A final encounter is confusingly staged, though redeemed somewhat by a quiet, cleansing coda. The combination of wider cultural concerns with a whole heap of unresolved Daddy issues ultimately doesn't quite come off, but BLACK SUPERHERO remains engaging and provocative at its best. 

BLACK SUPERHERO is booking at the Royal Court until 29 April. 

Kinoteka 2023 Preview (BFI online)

 

The 21st edition of Kinoteka Polish Film Festival in London takes place  9 March - 27 April. I wrote a preview of the festival which you can read here.