Over on My London Your London, I’ve just put up a review of Speechless, now at the Etctera Theatre in Camden. It is an intensely topical, and intense play, which definitely has its moments.
And do please read it; this has been a jinxed review – various computers and sites managed to swallow it twice, so this is my third, reconstructed, version…
I’ve just put a review up over at My London Your London of the press night for the first production of the new director at the Globe. In summary: If you like charisma, sex appeal and lots of swordplay the first half will satisfy you; if that’s a bit testosterone-drenched for you, the second half will be much better. Margot Leicester is superb as Volumnia – Shakespeare’s pushy mother from hell.
My retroblogger Frances Williams Wynn (whose site hasn’t moved) is today commenting on watching Charles Kemble – an elderly Charles Kemble – performing Hamlet.
This site says that by the time Miss Williams Wynn was watching, he had been saved from bankruptcy by his daughter Fanny going on the stage. He was the sister of Sarah Siddons, on whom Miss Williams Wynn has also delivered her verdict.
Some links: Images of Kemble at the National Portrait Gallery; a playbill of a Macbeth production in which he played Malcolm.
Today, of course, Hamlets are getting younger all the time.
There are some interesting characters in 15 Minutes, which has just opened at The Arcola,. Maggie (Moira Brooker) is a veteran television documentary-maker battling to come to terms with the “reality TV” age. Her married (to someone else) boyfriend Robin (Tim Block), is a cynical old Fleet Street hack – a type I recognise all too well. Maggie’s “subject” is Toni (Carly Hillman), a rebellious youngster who after a stretch in Holloway is trying, sort of, to get her life into line, not helped by her angry young man Mason (Ashley Rolfe).
These are familiar – perhaps too familiar – characters, but a combination of solid writing and excellent acting take them beyond the stereotypes. The problem with the play is clear, however, in its title. 15 Minutes refers – the programme explains – to the Andy Warhol quote about fame, something that has gone beyond cliche to the point of joke. The story here is of the exploitative and partial nature of “reality” TV. Yes? And it is about how subjects can sometimes turn the tables and become (for their “managers”) all too active agents. Yes?
These ideas are simply too familiar, too obvious, to make an entirely satisfying evening. The writer, Christine Harmar-Brown, has a real ear for dialogue and an eye for dramatic movement, but she needs to find some bigger themes, bigger ideas, to explore.
That doesn’t mean you won’t have an entertaining evening at the Arcola. The acting is top class, and director Paul Jepson does interesting things with giant television screens that shift uncertainly around the stage. But don’t expect to spend a delicious after-show dinner at the many excellent restaurants around the Arcola fervently arguing the issues it raises. You’ll have said and heard it all before.
The production continues until May 13.
Fear is on the prowl in Zimbabwe – in, sadly, the real Zimbabwe, and in the Zimbabwe of Fraser Grace’s Breakfast with Mugabe, the RSC New Work production now at the Soho Theatre. The beast first unleashed, perhaps, when a group of Australopithicenes turned first on a sabre-toothed tiger and made themselves not prey but predator, the beast of revenge, of the anger born of suffering, is here. It was reined-in, controlled, soothed, managed – so miraculously – in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, but not in Zimbabwe.
So it is appropriate that Grace should build his play around a psychiatrist – a white, liberal psychiatrist who’s spent his life studying the intersection of western thought on the brain and African spirituality – called in to treat the problems of President Robert Mugabe (Christopher Obi), who’s being tormented by a ngozi, the angry spirit of a former comrade-in-arms. The psychiatrist, Andrew Perric (David Rintoul) – in appearance and voice all bluff, red-faced classic settler type – is patently aware of the dangers of his position, but determined to turn the President into “Robert”, the patient. Although his motives might just extend beyond a doctor’s desire to heal.
The lighter relief – this is always dark comedy, but there is no shortage of laughs – come chiefly through Grace Mugabe (Noma Dumezwemi). She is brittle, smart and grasping, with no illusions about the way modern Zimbabwe functions. Grace doesn’t fear ghosts, but has a healthy horror or her husband’s mental instability. Her scene with the strong-arm bodyguard Gabriel (Christopher Obi) – no angel he – conducted entirely in Shona, except for two key words, “Mercedes” and “Coupe”, is a tiny comic masterpiece of writing and acting. READ MORE
The basic story of the Salem witchcraft trials is well known. At its centre was a group of young women who made increasingly wild accusations about spirits, demonic possession, and malevolent attacks. It is these young women, led by the spiteful, slighted Abigail (Elaine Cassidy) who open Arthur Miller’s powerful exploration of the story, The Crucible.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s version – its first Miller production – has just transferred to the Gielgud in London. This is a powerful, classy effort (as you’d expect), with a highly topical theme. Miller wrote the play in the Fifties, when McCarthyism was at its height, and today, with restrictive new laws forbidding “glorification of terrorism” coming into effect today, and a scent of panic in the air, it is again all too relevant.
The three hours never drag, as a small Puritan town gradually implodes into a frenzy of wild allegation. Miller presents, and the production magnifies, one potential slant of the conflict, as a class and generational war that sees the poorer, younger women finally getting their revenge against the older women and men who’ve used their labour and heavily disciplined their lives.
The production makes particular effective use of the pregnant pause, the long heavy silence, its actors arrayed in carefully composed tableaus that are almost picture-perfect, within stone-grey wallls that hold – just – the threat of nature, or sexuality, of change, without. READ MORE
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