Review: The Match Box, Tricycle

“Take a match to their thatch”

Frank McGuinness is definitely a playwright who never likes his audience to sit too comfortably and his latest play The Match Box is as emotionally demanding a piece of theatre as you’ll see in a long time. Sequestered on a remote Irish island, it’s a 100 minute monologue delivered by Sal, a Liverpudlian woman in exile after the violent death of her 12 year old daughter, caught in gangland crossfire as she walked home from school. And through the depths of her unimaginable grief, a tale of revenge and redemption emerges as the boundaries of forgiveness are tested to the extreme.

McGuinness constantly challenges us as we return to questions of what kind of justice, if any, can be exacted in such a situation and whether we could ever be capable of rational thought after such an experience or if such grief can have a transformative effect on us that we allow primal impulses to govern our actions. The debates it raises are compelling and complex and as Sal unravels her own feelings on the matter, its intensity forces us to confront our own morality and decide if things can ever be so black and white.

Review: Public Enemy, Young Vic

“We want people who know what must change and why”

The phrase ‘timely revival’ is one much abused by reviewers and theatre marketers alike but it is genuinely amazing how strongly the resonances of a piece of writing from 1882 chime in today’s world. Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, retitled here as Public Enemy in a terse new version by David Harrower, rails against government corruption, the treatment of whistle-blowers, unscrupulous clothing factory owners and foretells a world of growing ecological and environmental calamity. It is a powerfully compelling tale, cheekily updated to the 1970s here, and one which wriggles uncomfortably beneath the skin.

Stockmann is a principled doctor in a provincial Norwegian town famed for its spa baths but when he discovers that the waters are poisonous and need to be shut down and announces this to the town at large, he is not met with the gratitude and acclaim he expects but rather is ostracised and demonised by the leaders of the town’s society. Chief among these in the mayor but as is often the way in small-town politics, he just happens to be Stockmann’s brother. The battle for public opinion that ensues is then bitterly fought as Stockmann, Ibsen thinly veiling his contempt for the frosty reception of his previous play Ghosts, reacts to becoming the enemy of the people.

Short Film Review #13

Films films everywhere.

Bed Trick

The Young Vic have previously come up with a couple of films inspired by the plays they’ve put on – Nora was a spin-off from A Doll’s House and Epithet came from by Bingo – and now, although a little bit behind the times, comes Bed Trick, inspired by Joe Hill-Gibbins’ raucous adaptation of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling which was a big success for the venue. Again taking a modern twist on a classic story, Hill-Gibbins has written and directed this short which plays on the idea of the ‘bed trick’, so integral to the plot of theatre of that time, and transplants into a modern home where Sinéad Matthews’ babysitter arrives at a plush home to be greeted by Monica Dolan’s grateful wife who is keen to offload her responsibilities for the evening.

Quite what those responsibilities are is the subject of a little misunderstanding and that is the rather amusing meat of the story, which I won’t reveal, and though the whole thing may come across a wee bit slight in the end, it is undoubtedly entertaining to watch. Dolan and Matthews are both actors I could watch for days on end and neither disappoint, Matthews unleashing her gorgeously throaty giggle on more than one occasion and Dolan bringing her intense gaze with its almost hypnotic quality. It’s decent stuff, hardly essential, but worth the time.

Review: Cuddles, Oval House

“You’re not the only monster in this house“

Many a play purports to send chills down the spine but precious few actually manage the act of setting the hairs on end with moments of genuine chilling revelation. But Cuddles, Joseph Wilde’s first full-length play which has just opened upstairs at the Oval House, managed just that with its pervasive air of dark fantasy gone wrong and one of the most shocking moments one will probably see all year in a theatre. Rebecca Atkinson-Lord’s direction keeps the intensity of this show almost oppressively high, challenging both her actors and her audience, but emerges with a flawed gem of a production that won’t be easily forgotten.

Shut away in her room in a castle, Eve is a 13 year old vampire whose only visitor is the (human) Princess Tabby who dispenses food, whether sandwiches or blood, and affection, cuddles of varying levels. But in the real world, Tabby is Eve’s big sister and a young woman aching for a taste of normal life and as she seeks to satisfy that hunger with a likely young chap named Steve, Eve’s own determination to pursue her desires theatens to disrupt all the carefully constructed systems they have put in place to manage day to day life.

Re-review: Merrily We Roll Along, Harold Pinter

“Me with music and you the words“

Menier Chocolate Factory Christmas musicals have a habit of making the leap into the West End and given the rapturous reception that Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along received last year, it was no surprise to hear that it would make the well-deserved transfer into the Harold Pinter Theatre for a 12 week engagement. My original review of the show can be read here and perhaps not unexpectedly, very little has changed of my feelings about this rather magnificent production. But more surprising was how little I felt it had changed in the considerably larger space of this new theatre. 

It’s a good six months since I saw it so perhaps my memory isn’t too reliable but it really does feel very similar indeed, Soutra Gilmour’s design slots into the theatre in a similar fashion and the staging – although expanded to fill the space – moves around it in the same way. Not that this is a bad thing, but rather that I’m not exactly sure about how it might play from further back or up in the theatre than you’d ever be in the Menier. Where the lack of discernible difference is a definite boon though is in the performance level.

Review: A Human Being Died That Night, Hampstead Downstairs

“White South Africans needed a scapegoat, black South Africans needed a culprit”

There’s a neat little twist to the staging of the latest play to be put on in the downstairs space at the Hampstead Theatre which cocks a snook at audiences rushing to secure the best seat in the house. A Human Being Died That Night starts in the foyer area, which has been dressed up as a conference room, as South African psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela prepares to give a talk on “The human capacity for evil and the possibility of forgiveness”. She served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a restorative justice body that sought to aid South Africa’s transition into a post-apartheid world by acknowledging the gross human rights violations carried out under that regime’s name, receiving testimony from the victims but also hearing from those who perpetrated the crimes in an attempt to come to terms with it all.

As part of the commission, Gobodo-Madikizela interviewed one of the most notorious figures of the era, Eugene de Kock, and as she describes the first of her visits to Pretoria Central Prison to see him, the play moves into the theatre as we’re transported into the chilling darkness of a prison cell (so it is actually better to sit on the back row of the ‘lecture theatre’ to get the best spot for the majority of the play…). From here, we bear witness to the young Harvard-educated black woman probing into the mind of the seemingly implacable police colonel nicknamed ‘Prime Evil’ as her fascination with him drives her to search for something of an understanding about why he did what he did, in the hope of forging a new, better South Africa.

Review: Travels with my Aunt, Menier Chocolate Factory

"People who like quotations love meaningless generalisations"

There’s a strange disconnect at the heart of Travels with my Aunt which means it never really ignites the comic potential it possesses. Giles Havergal’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1969 novel sees four actors cover a multitude of characters and a globe-trotting range of locations in a free-wheeling narrative which commences with retired bank manager Henry Pulling being reunited with his long-lost Aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral. But the adventures that follow have a dated feel to them with a distinctly not-quite-post-colonial flavour and the presentational style also has a measured quality which only intermittently embraces the carefree spirit of the story.

There’s fun to be had though, as Henry falls deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole opened by his aunt and they ricochet from the depths of suburbia to Turkey, Paraguay and more and he gradually becomes more accustomed to the new excitements of his life, which had previously been limited to growing dahlias in his back garden. The actors share the roles as well as sharing them out so Greene’s richly evocative writing is constantly changing mouthpiece as all of them take turns in playing Henry, as well as the colourful cast of characters that pop up along the journey.

Review: The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Globe

“The isle is full of noises”

It’s always nice to be surprised by a night at the theatre, especially with a play with which one is rather familiar. And more importantly in the case of The Tempest is the feeling that I have already seen a production of the play that will rank as one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen in Cheek By Jowl’s extraordinary Russian interpretation back in 2011 – Caliban and Miranda’s parting is forever seared on my mind. But The Globe is nothing if not reliable and in casting Roger Allam as Prospero, director Jeremy Herrin knew exactly how to get me along in hope of a genuinely brave new world.

And in some ways it does it. Allam brings a studious humanity to the exiled sorcerer – less anguished magician and more concerned father, making his reading of some of Shakespeare’s most evocative writing almost unbearably moving. His control of the language is just superb, imbuing even the most innocuous of lines with worlds of meaning, so often restrained but flaring magnificently like a bearded Brunnhilde when provoked. He’s wryly amusing too, his insistence on protecting his daughter’s virtue particularly well-observed as a running gag.

Review: The Hothouse, Trafalgar Studios

“I don’t need to have things repeated and repeated and repeated”

One of the best things about having a blog like this is that my thoughts about a show can be retrieved at the click of a button which means my patchy memory isn’t too much of a problem. And it also serves as a record of how I’ve changed (or not, as the case may be) as a writer, as rather amusingly shown by my response to the National Theatre’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse back in 2007 – a minor obscurity indeed! So safe to say I was less than thrilled at the announcement of the second play in Jamie Lloyd’s Trafalgar Studios residency but his assembly of the kind of cast I couldn’t ignore if I tried, plus someone having a spare ticket, meant I found myself taking a seat on the cramped front row.

Set in an unspecified mental institution or ‘rest home’ on an unseasonably hot Christmas Day, the Hothouse starts off as something of a satire of institutional bureaucracy. The patients, unseen throughout, are all known by numbers rather than names and leading the diverse staff body is forgetful former colonel Roote and his model-of-efficiency assistant Gibbs who are dealing with a couple of situations that have arisen. 6457 has died and 6459 has just given birth and as Gibbs starts his inimitable investigation, it emerges that the culprit(s) is actually on the wrong side of the padded cell door and that the guards are just as imbalanced, if not more so, than the inmates.

Review: Ghost the musical, New Wimbledon

“Sometimes you need to hear it Sam”

Given the fortunes of its replacement at the Piccadilly Theatre, the 15 month West End run of Ghost the musical doesn't seem too bad at all in the end. Based on the famous 1990 film with book by Bruce Joel Rubin and music from Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard, the story of psychics, possession and pottery certainly looked impressive in Matthew Warchus’ cinematically flash production but this wasn't always enough to overcome the shortcomings of its adaptation. But it was a show that intrigued and one that I came to like quite a lot (I saw it twice - reviews can be read here and here but the first review of the show on here, from its original Manchester run, comes courtesy of my father!) and so I was certainly intrigued to catch it at the New Wimbledon Theatre as it sets out on a major UK tour.

The main difference comes with the blessed removal of the heinous song and dance routine Ball of Wax. I’m not sure that tap dancing ghosts have any place in the world but they really stood out like a sore thumb in the original show with their misguided appearance coming at an appallingly bad time, right after Sam’s death and shattering any poignancy that might have been built up. Now, we get a much mellower song called You Gotta Let Go (first introduced on Broadway) which serves the same purpose of getting him acquainted with his new status in the afterlife. Other changes are subtler and by and large, the show feels rather akin to its West End predecessor.

Review: The Ghost Hunter, Old Red Lion

“Do you know what they are, ghost stories? They’re a place to put things you’re too scared to look at any more”

Theatre of the Damned’s self-avowed undertaking is to explore horror and suspense on stage, a challenging mission as demonstrated by last year’s The Horror! The Horror! which only fitfully worked for me but one worth pursuing as this expanded version of The Ghost Hunter, written by Stewart Pringle, proves to be a highly proficient foray into the realm of suspense. And taking over the Old Red Lion theatre pub in Angel, it transforms the space most effectively. 

Alice Saville’s design is simplicity itself, but it shouldn’t be under-estimated how effective stripping the walls of the intimate theatre right back to black, with just a strip of frayed pub carpet up centre on which a table and chair sit, pint of Abbot Ale pride of place. And from these well-worn surroundings, Tom Richards’ Victorian-garbed raconteur Richard Barraclough quickly pulls us into the world of York’s twisting narrow streets like the Shambles and regales us with tales of pale abandoned orphans and other spooky goings-on.

Short Film Review #12

Instalment 12 of the Short Film Review - keep those recommendations coming and I promise I will get round to them all eventually, I've a fair few to work through ;-)

Bride of Vernon

A rather playful take on the Frankenstein story, The Bride of Vernon is a stop-motion animation in the mould of Wallace and Gromit which was written, animated and directed by Calvin Dyson and ended up winning the Best UK Short Film Award at the 2012 Manchester International Film Festival. Vernon Van Dyke, the appealingly voiced Dan Clark, is the lonely young scientist who is battling against the repeated failures of his experiment to create himself a bride and even the faithful Fritz (David Schofield as the Igor-style assistant) is rebelling and demanding better pay and conditions due to his recent unionisation.

Things brighten up though with the arrival of Mary Mae, a real life woman who offers a whole new world of possibility to Vernon as they start dating and here, Katherine Parkinson is excellent casting, her richly expressive voice is beautifully suited to the hesitant goodness of this character and they are so sweet together. Of course, things go wrong over dinner with an accidental poisoning and it is up to Vernon to see if he can save Mary Mae by hook or by crook. The film is really well put together, it looks a high quality product and Michael Slevin Uttley’s score fits over it like a glove to make this what seems to be a well-deserving prize winner.