Les Liaisons Dangereuses ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Christopher
Hampton’s 1985 play and the 1988 film with Glenn Close were based on a French epistolary novel by Pierre
Choderlos de Laclos, first published in March 1782. It depicted the corruption
and depravity of the French nobility shortly
before the French Revolution through a series of letters written
between the various characters. The focus is on the cruel games of seduction
that the two revival formers lovers challenge each other with. The Marquise
de Merteuil is a widow who taunts and teases the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the virtuous married
Madame de Tourvel and Cécile de Volanges, a young girl who has fallen in love
with young Chevalier Danceny. They seek to ruin the reputations and the lives
of these women for their own amusement. It should feel a combination of sensual
seduction and cruel manipulative scheming in equal measure prompting sympathy
for the innocent exploited women and dislike for scheming protagonists.
It’s left to the principal
characters to set the locations and drive the narrative through wordy exchanges
as if reading the letters from the original novel. It felt like we were
watching a verbal chess game as Merteuil and Valmont sought to manoeuvre the
other characters towards checkmate without regard to the pieces lost in the
process. The seduction was depicted by the choreographed movement which
muted its sensualness and the cruelty of their intentions was lost in the
exchange of words sometimes when seated from opposite sides of the stage. The
production’s highly stylised sanitised portrayal of the action overwhelms the
characters and the story, so we don’t care about any of the characters or their
fate.
Lesley Manville is left to grab the
limelight as De Merteuil, beautifully dressed (and undressed)
but without the intensity and variation of her recent performance in
Oedipus in the West End. Aidan
Turner as Valmont was a far cry from his performances as the charismatic
sensual
Poldark on TV or the cruel Irishman in
Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Both were curiously
one note, so we never saw their delight and anticipation in sexual activity nor
their pleasure and satisfaction in the consequences of the actions. We know both are capable of this so assume
they were directed by Marianne Elliot to play it more mechanically and stylised.
Darragh Hand plays the foolish Danceny, a simple pawn in the game but fails to convey
why either woman would want him. The main victim of the game Cecile is
charmingly played by Hannah Van der Westhuysen and we see her transition from
giggling young girl to heartbroken woman while Monica Barbaro plays the other
victim, Tourvel, as Valmont gradually breaks down her barriers to his cruel intentions.
The overall effect is that the form of the staging and direction
overwhelms the subtlety and engagement of the substance of the narrative and performances.
It leaves the same feel that Ballet and Opera leave of grand images and impressions
without depth or authenticity. For some that will appeal but for us we don’t want
to leave impressed by the grandeur and scale of the production budgets but instead
want to be engaged, moved and reflective of the narrative and authors intentions.
Too often these days we find the National Theatre leaves the same aftertaste
and falls short of our expectations fed by the great days of Sir Peter Hall and
Richard Eyre, an era of twenty-five years when we booked as soon as the programme
was announced.
Nick Wayne
Three stars
Summerfolk ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The job of the National Theatre should be to lead the way in
new works, classic revivals and set the highest standards of production values
and outstanding ensemble casts at an affordable price while inspiring new theatre
goers to give Live Theatre a try. It’s quite a tricky balance to achieve and we
should always celebrate bold attempts that don’t quite work as well as enjoy those
successes that transfer into the West End and generate surpluses for the organisation.
They are in a fortunate position to take bigger risks than the commercial sector
across the river and attract some of the best theatrical talent to the concrete
monolith.
Summerfolk was for us a very solid attempt to achieve
all of that and its rousing, if slightly sudden change of tone in the finale after
a long, drawn-out game of character chess moves around the Russian countryside,
did at least jog the audience into a strong round of applause.
The production values are extraordinary utilising the full
vast open stage of the Olivier to portray the privileged life of self-satisfied
Russian Intelligentsia enjoying their summer break in the dacha and the wood
around it. Around forty huge wooden shafts create the idyllic forest setting of
Peter McKintoish’s set design and a stream meanders the picnic site allowing
cast to swim and paddle! It is bountiful picturesque setting in blues and green
of Paul Pyant’s lighting. The wooden frame of their dacha gets stripped away
as the tale progresses symbolically hinting out the collapse of the society
that underpins their lifestyle. The Bolshevik revolutionaries and peasants hoover
ominously around the woods, armed with rifles pointing to the coming turmoil
while the simmering undercurrent bubble
away.
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Sergei Bassov and his wife Varvara played by Paul Ready and Sophie Rundle respectively
play host to the gatherings of their Russian neighbours, but their relationship
is breaking down as she seeks to escape his boorish and oppressive personality.
Her oddball brother, Vlass (an excellent Alex Lowther) is drifting through life
under their patronage and when he finally seeks to break through by declaring his
love for Maria Lvovna (an utterly charming Justine Mitchell) the age gap proves
to be insurmountable but creates some of the best scenes in the play. There is
a delightful, nuanced performance from Gwyneth Keyworth as Olga Dudakova, bored
by her marriage to Kiril (a subdued Sid Sugar) and encumbered by four kids.
While the relationship between Yulia (Adelle Leonce) and Pyotr Suslov (Arthur
Hughes) seems equally fractious. With twenty-three in the cast, and subplots
lurking in the background, it was at times hard to recall who was who and who
they were related too.
Maxim Gorky’s 1905 play was created in the shadow of Chekov’s
The Cherry Orchard (which even gets a reference in the play as a play that
went on a bit too long) and has remained their ever since. It has been adapted
for this stage by Nina and Moses Raine, using modern often fruity language and
UK regional accents and feels like a more explicit exploration of the collapsing
ruling class at the time. It does more than hint out modern attitudes and a parallel
world in turmoil. Their perspective is that all the men are boorish misogynistic
often drunken fools who will deserve their downfall while the women are more rounded characters, full of life, seeking to escape
their current situation for a more fulfilling life. Characters are dismissed as
“Just another unhappy woman struggling for life and desperate for tenderness”
while a sister-in-law urges that the woman should leave her husband (the brother).
The men dismiss the women in their presence, and someone observes there are “no
people here, just corpses”. There are some funny lines, but the character's have
a bleak outlook.
For all its production quality and excellent cast, I did not
feel that this was a play ( running to nearly three hours long) that would tempt
a younger audience into the NT, and it seemed squarely aimed at the current Intelligentsia
who seek to change the world from their elitist’s perches. The result was that
it left me bored at times, observing the audience, detached from the narrative and
wishing they had taken an editors pen to cut some characters and lines as I am sure
a commercial producer would have done.
Nick Wayne
Three stars
Shadowlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
William Nicholson’s play Shadowlands play has seen several
famous faces play CS Lewis, Jack to his friends and colleagues, since it was first
staged in 1989 but the 2019 Chichester Production starred Hugh Bonneville who
now plays the role at The Aldwych unto 9
th May. It sits slightly
more comfortably on the proscenium arch stage than on Chichester’s thrust stage
with its fluid settings changing on a revolve between a lecture from Lewis
about Love and Pain and God's role in inflicting both on the human race, his
life in Oxford with the Don’s and his brother Warnie and his relationship with
the American authoress Joy Gresham (nee Davidman) and her young son Douglas who
connects us into Lewis imagined world of Narnia. Its charming, poignant, and
moving if a little wordy but works because of the three central performances which
are beautifully played and delivered under the direction of Rachel Kavanaugh. The
central theological theme is “If God loves us why does he make us suffer so
much”.
Hugh Bonneville has established himself in the public's
conscience playing a crusty old lord opposite an American wife in Downton Abbey
but in Shadowlands he demonstrates he is a powerful stage actor too. Here he is
CS Lewis, the author of the Narnia Chronicles in the 1950's, an Oxford lecturer
living in a male dominated clique sharing his home and his life with his
brother until he starts correspondence with an American poetess, Joy Gresham. Some of the attitudes the men show seem
shocking as they discuss how "some women are clever you know " or
talk of "deferring to the weaker sex" or discuss the fact that the
church will not marry divorcees. But gradually Lewis emerges from these dated
attitudes as he falls for Gresham. Bonneville takes us thorough this slow
enlightenment with great skill from aloof public speaker to emotionally broken
human and is utterly wonderful in the second half. Opposite him is American
Maggie Siff as Gresham is equally engaging as she moves from slightly obsessed
American stalker into a seriously ill woman with a young son. It is believable
and heart breaking, and the combination creates an emotionally high-powered
conclusion to the play. Jeff Rawle as Major WH Lewis (Warnie) provides stout
upright support to his brother throughout.
Designer Peter McKintosh's piece de resistance is the
magnificent bookcase upstage with books creating a heart shaped window into a
world beyond which was revealed by sliding aside to allow Douglas, Gresham's
young son to imagine wondering into Narnia itself. The large cast seem to spend
most of their time moving furniture and looking on as the relationship develops
but together with Howard Harrison’s highlighting lighting design successfully
creates the sense of the different settings of the Don’s meeting room. Lewis’s
home and the Hospital.
The play illustrates the lecture he is giving at start
and end of the play as he explains that "he started living when he started
loving " and "if you want love you have to have the pain" and as
an audience we can see and feel that. Theatre that can engage and move
audiences like this one does is special and lives long in the memory and while
the subject matter is difficult especially for anyone who has recently suffered
a family bereavement, the shared experience and strong messaging reminds us to
make the most of the time we have .
Nick Wayne
Four stars
Wendy and Peter ⭐️⭐️⭐️
JM Barrie wrote
Peter Pan, or the boy who would not grow
up in 1904 inventing the character to entertain the Llewelyn Davies boys
and famously gave the rights to the character and books to the Great Ormand
Street hospital for children in 1929 before his death in1937. Though the copyrights
have now expired Parliament granted the hospital the right to continue to receive
royalties from public performances in the UK in 1988. As a result, the Hospital still benefits from
Ella Hickson’s reimagining of the play for the RSC as Wendy and Peter , first performed
in 2012 at Stratford and now revived at the Barbican in London for a short season.
Her version she says puts Wendy more at the centre of the story
and adds a feminist dimension, although in our eyes, Wendy has always been the character
to admire and look up to for all the characters in the story as she grapples with
those adolescent feelings of growing responsibility and maturity in the family.
Her addition of a fourth Darling child Tom (Alexander Molony) is the most successful
element of the reinvention. When Tom suddenly dies the grief and sense of loss
to the family provides a stronger emotional rationale and motivation for the
adventure than simply following Peter because he likes to hear their stories. Some
of the language too certainly did not say 1904, Rizz , meaning charm or attractiveness
was the 2023 word of the year for Oxford University Press and Bog Off became
popular in this century too so just sounded out of place in the period.
The design of the set by Colin Richmond as you enter the theatre
is impressive with a very detailed nursery for the four children ( but no Nana)
and lots of half played toys spread across the floor , a projected sign tells us
it is London in 1904 and the large upstage window overlooking a skyline foretells
the arrival of Peter. In this version is
arrival is accompanied by not one shadow but eight all dressed identically although
in practice the lighting means we can see he is attached to his shadow from the
start. Indeed, throughout Oliver Fenwick’s lighting is such that there is no
illusion in any of the flying sequences with the wires being theatrically delivered
and attached by the shadows on every occasion. That lose of magic and wonder,
even spectacle which is such a part of the past stage versions, is a major disappointment
throughout. Neverland never really appears except in the context of the London Nursery
although at least when the Jolly Roger sails
centre stage it is an impressive stricture complete with two crows’ nests. The crocodile
too is reinvented as Doc Giles (Harrison Claxton) the doctor who attends the
dying Tom and crawls around the stage without ever really threatening Hook.
Toby Stephens successfully portrays the grieving Mr Darling
with a moustache for Movmeber and the evil Hook, although plays it a little
like Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races with Scott Karim as Smee, almost a sarcastic
Mutley alongside! The contrast is good,
but he never quite feels evil enough. The other pirates are well distinguished with
amusing characterisations as are the Lost boys.
Hannah Saxby makes a slightly hysterical all action Wendy alongside
a slightly insipid and uninspiring Peter (Daniel Krikler) and apart from some
overlong speeches she makes it is the Pirates and Lost Boys that live in the memory
after the curtain comes down, especially Joe Hewetson’s Martin the Cabin Boy and
Tom Xander and kyle Ndukuba’s Curley and Tootles.
Peter Pan is a familiar story, often seen it its pantomime
version, and all the main elements if the story are retained (The Kiss, The
shooting down of Wendy, the poisoning of Peter and the defeat of Hook) but the
huge cast despite their energetic efforts did not create the magic and emotion
of the story of the boy who did not grow up and it was left for little Tom to
give the story a heartfelt emotional pull while everybody else looked like they
were simply playing out a childhood fantasy game.
Nick Wayne
Three stars.
Deep Blue Sea⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When you go into the West End to see a play you expect to experience
three things, a wonderful historic venue that has been staging drama for
decades, a finely crafted script that stands the test of time in engaging audiences
and a cast of actors at the very top of their art. You will be hard pressed to
find a better example of these three elements fusing together than the brilliant
production of Terrance Rattigan’s 1952 play
The Deep Blue Sea with a
stella cast at the glorious Haymarket Theatre. Transferring from the small
intimate Ustinov Theatre in Bath with largely the same cast this production sits
beautifully on the larger West End stage and enthrals its audience.
Rattigan’s plays were of an era from French without Tears
in 1936 to In praise of love in 1973 with golden period in post-world War
II Britain that established him as one of the great 20th Century British playwrights.
They often centred on failed relationships and sexual frustration, and it is
suggested that his own gay lifestyle was coded into his writing. Indeed, it has
been speculated that Deep Blue sea was originally about male lovers before
reaching the stage as Hester, a lost soul between her husband Sir William
Collyer and her current partner, Freddie. Its dramatic opening with a lifeless
body lying in front of a gas fire in a darkened room while neighbours bang on
the door because they can smell gas is a brilliant opening that draws you straight
into her troubled life. The tattered
peeling paper of the walls reinforce the sense of a woman in decline.
Tasmin Greig is stupendous as Hester beautifully showing her
passion , anger and despair as she tries to sort through her colliding feelings
about the men in her life. She carries the air of loneliness and of unrequited
or lost love that draws us to become sympathetic to her plight and hopeful that
those around her can give her hope to carry on and not attempt suicide again. Selina
Cadell is a delight as the landlady Mrs Elton, caring for her tenants but
revelling in the gossip and intrigue. It is lovely subtle comic performance with
her pauses and glances being as powerful as her words.
The male cast is equally strong. Nicholas Ferrell is her impressive caring husband
a respected judge who she has left a year before but who still cares enough to
have her back while Hadley Fraser is the RAF pilot who had lost his nerve and
uses alcohol as an escape and whose passionate affair with Hester has quickly
cooled. Finbar Lynch creates the curious laid-back struck off Doctor, who lives
in the same block and tends to her in her initial recovery. Each character is very
well drawn , believable and we can understand their relationship with her. There
remains a sexual tension that bubbles away under the surface adding to the
taught drama played out over one day in three acts.
Once again, the Director Lindsay Posner, makes no attempt to
update the setting to a later period and leaves the audience to draw their own conclusion
to take back into the real world. There are feelings of loneliness and despair
over failed relationships, of uncertainty and shame over the future and the
shows of raw emotions later in the play are powerful and intense. But despite the
challenges and disappointments, life must go on and I suppose there is great value
in finding like souls to connect with who will help guide you through the issues.
And perhaps we should all look out for our neighbours who might need our help.
Nick Wayne
Five stars
Oedipus at The Wyndhams ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The legend of Oedipus captured in Sophocles ancient tragedy written around 429BC is a well-known basic tale made more famous by Sigmund Freud’s coining of the Oedipus Complex in 1910 to refer to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father. This tale is the basis of Robert Icke’s latest exciting new production at the Wyndhams Theatre. It does mean that many of the audience already know the basic underlying truth of the situation that is laid out before us as the countdown clock ticks down until the final revelation, so the shock and surprise of the revelation is very muted. It does require that the script, direction and acting has to be first class to sustain our interest for the two-hour non-stop running time. Thankfully Icke and his fine cast know how to do this and deliver a thoroughly engrossing and satisfying dramatic story.
Icke reimagines the story in a modern setting where Oedipus is awaiting the result of an election campaign supported by his wife, Jocasta, her brother Creon, the loyal family servant Corin and their three children Antigone, Eteocles and Polyneices. To complicate matters further his mother Merope arrives unannounced leaving her dying husband’s bedside to tell Oedipus a pivotal secret. The Icke vision draws an easy parallel with many modern electioneering campaign pledges as Oedipus promises to both reopen the investigation into the death, 34 years earlier, of the previous leader Laius (Jocasta’s first husband) and to disclose his own birth certificate although this promise does telegraph to the audience the complex revelations of the story.
It works as a play because of the outstanding performances of the three central characters and their powerful and emotional interactions which are elevated by our knowledge of the real back story which is unknown to the other on-stage characters. Mark Strong is magnificent as Oedipus, the confident politician enjoying the success of his campaigning until his wife and mother gradually reveal the hidden truths to him, causing a despairing desperate collapse as the reality dawns on him. Lesley Manville is wonderful as the powerful loving wife supporting him in his ambition and unaware of the truth of his birth. The third protagonist is June Watson as his mother Merope, anxiously trying to find time with her son to finally reveal to him that truth of his birth.
The story telling has many tremendously effective set piece scenes which first establish and then deconstruct the family relationships as these truths are slowly revealed. The initial video shows Oedipus setting out his pledges with Creon (Michael Gould) nervously circulating in the background. The blind Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) sets out his three premonitions adding the first signs of dramatic tension. The family dinner to celebrate the end of the campaign cleverly reveals the parental love of his children and then spills into an erotic celebration with his wife. The tension rises more when we meet the driver of the car in which Laius was killed and then again when Jocasta reveals how she was pregnant by Laius at the shocking age of 13. Then finally when Merope reveals that Oedipus was adopted by her and the dreadful truth dawns of Oedipus and Jocasta. Even though we know these truths from the start, the writing and playing of these scenes makes them gripping and dramatic and you are left admiring the performances and swept along by the drama.
Icke is a master storyteller taking familiar tales and bringing them to the stage with a powerful creativity that is a joy to experience. The recent tour of Animal Farm, the wonderful Mary Stuart, the extraordinary Oresteia, and the utterly scary 1984 are now joined by this version of Oedipus as wonderful demonstrations of his mastery of adaptation and direction. As around the globe political change is happening the allusions to recent leaders of the free world resonate with hints to the modern controversies over Obama’s birth certificate, Trump’s cover up of Stormy Daniel affair or Johnson’s multiple children making this ancient tale relevant and topical in his fresh setting. A triumph of adaptation.
Nick Wayne
Four stars
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