Hamlet (again)

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 28 August 2017

This is director Robert Icke's Almeida production (reviewed in March this year) with Andrew Scott as a superlative Hamlet, transferred to the West End. I decided to see it again in the company of two friends from Australia and we all enjoyed it immensely.

There have been some changes of cast from the original. In particular Derbhle Crotty took over from Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude in early July, and Joshua Higgott plays Horatio. The portrayal of Gertrude was less imperious; the dangerous flirtatiousness at court was absent. This led to her being slightly more enigmatic, and the crisis brought on by Hamlet's searing accusations in the bedroom scene was the more devastating because she seemed a more vulnerable woman. Horatio, in turn, was presented as a friend far more unmanned by Hamlet's death at the end.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

by Tennessee Williams

seen at the Apollo Theatre on 26 August 2017

Benedict Andrews directs Sienna Miller as Maggie, Jack O'Connell as Brick and Colm Meaney as Big Daddy, with Kerry Fox as Big Mamma (replacing an indisposed Lisa Palfrey), Brian Gleeson as Gooper and Hayley Squires as Mae in this Young Vic revival of the play now transferred to the West End.

The play has been reset in a strangely empty space with vast metallic walls and a raked floor containing a bed, a dressing table and a shower; though it was written in 1955 some of the characters use mobile phones and there is a modern substitute for a record player - it is not clear that all this is an advantage, although the visual effect is striking and underlines the fact that all the characters are in different ways trapped.

Knives in Hens

by David Harrower

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 24 August 2017

Yaël Farber directs Judith Roddy as the Young Woman, Christian Cooke as Pony William (her husband) and Matt Ryan as Gilbert Horn (the miller) in this revival of David Harrower's 1995 play, designed by Soutra Gilmour and lit by Tim Lutkin. 

Yaël Farber likes to create an atmosphere even before a performance starts; the auditorium is dim, with 'smoke' drifting through the directional spots on stage, and a gradually increasing low hum pervading the space. There is packed earth on the stage floor, black walls behind, and a gigantic circular disk just visible in the gloom, which turns out to be an enormous mill wheel set upright rather than lying flat to the ground.

Committee

music by Tom Deering, book and lyrics by Hadley Fraser and Josie Rourke

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 12 August 2017

Committee, or, to give it its full title, 'The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee takes Oral Evidence on Whitehall's Relationship with Kids Company', is an eighty-minute sung account of one day's evidence given to the PACA Committee, edited from the published transcript of the enquiry, directed by Adam Penford. Five MPs assisted by two clerks question Alan Yentob, played by Omar Ebrahim, the chairman of the trustees of Kids Company, and  Camila Batmanghelidjh, played by Sandra Marvin, the chief executive and founder of the charity.

The charity was set up in the 1990s to help disadvantaged and neglected children in poverty, and its CEO was a dominant and charismatic personality who was able for many years to garner sufficient funding for its somewhat controversial methodologies. However by 2015 serious concerns were surfacing about its financial viability and probity, especially as it was in receipt of several million pounds' worth of government funding, which was still being given despite official warnings that it was inappropriate to do so. Eventually the Chief Executive was dismissed, but this gesture was too late to save the charity, and at very short notice it was closed, its staff suddenly unemployed, and many young people and their families who had become dependent on it left unsupported.

Queen Anne

by Helen Edmundson

seen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 8 August 2017

Natalie Abrahami directs Emma Cunniffe as Queen Anne and Romola Garai as Sarah Churchill in this new RSC production transferred from Stratford. It follows the difficult relationship between the two women from the last years of William III's reign (when Anne was heir to the throne) until about 1708 soon after the death of her husband Prince George of Denmark. When Anne becomes Queen, England is soon involved in a European War, while domestically the Queen sees the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland as a personal triumph.

Anne, insecure and ill-educated, is seen by many as biddable and stupid, but she has a clear sense of her own entitlement and her duty, even as those around her try to manipulate her for their own political advantage. Her ambitious friend from their youth, Sarah Jennings, has married the brilliant soldier John Churchill - Earl, eventually to be Duke, of Marlborough - and her own driving ambitions conjoined with his make her dangerously impatient with the dynamics of being the special friend of a woman she has come to despise, but who is nonetheless the monarch.

Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika

by Tony Kushner

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 7 August 2017

Marianne Elliott directs this revival of Tony Kushner's sprawling two part epic subtitled 'A Gay Fantasia on National Themes'. The second part takes up where the first part finished, with the marriage of Joe (Russell Tovey) and Harper Pitt (Denise Gough) in tatters, Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) trying to fathom whether the Angel's visitation is real or a hallucination, Lewis (James McArdle) his ex-lover) and Joe Pitt tentatively exploring the possibilities of a relationship, and Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane) approaching death. The nurse Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) provides a strange link between all these characters.

The quality of the production that I praised in the review of Part One (in May) is easily matched in Part Two, as the themes of love, loss, betrayal and fear of death are further elaborated and examined. The disparate elements of angelic powerlessness, encroaching illness, the breakdown of personal relationships, and despair at political negligence and injustice, and the glimmers of hope in the face of it all, are woven into a compelling tapestry, and once again the skill and commitment of the cast prevent the whole fantasy from unravelling into bombastic talk.