The York Realist

by Peter Gill

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 22 February 2018

Robert Hastie directs Ben Batt as George, Jonathan Bailey as John, and Lesley Nicol as George's mother in this revival of Peter Gill's 2001 play set in the 1960s when a production of the York Mystery plays is being prepared in York using local amateurs for most of the parts.

'The York Realist' is the name given to the unknown author considered to be responsible for about eight of the four dozen pageant plays which make up the entire cycle. These are the pageants dealing with the passion and death of Christ, which render the episodes in 'realistic' Yorkshire vernacular. But the title could equally well be applied to the young farmer George, who has been encouraged to take part in the modern revival by Doreen, his would-be sweetheart, but who has ceased to attend rehearsals ostensibly because his onerous farmwork and his mother's illness require his complete intention.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

adapted by Tom Wright

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 21 February 2018

Matthew Lutton directs five actors - Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabben and Nikki Shiels - in a new stage adaptation of Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, with set and costume designs by Zoë Atkinson, lighting by Paul Jackson and sound composed by Ash Gibson Greig and designed by J. David Franzke. The production comes from Victoria's Malthouse Theatre and Western Australia's Black Swan Theatre Company.

The 1975 film directed by Peter Weir sets a standard of dreamy sensuality and atmospheric mystery which would be hard to emulate on stage. Tom Wright's adaptation approaches the subject in a completely different manner which brings its own fascinating rewards.

Long Day's Journey into Night

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at Wynndhams Theatre on 18 February 2018

Richard Eyre directs Jeremy Irons as James Tyrone, Lesley Manville as his wife Mary, Rory Keenan as Jamie and Matthew Beard as Edmund, the two Tyrone sons, and Jessica Regan as Cathleen the maid, in a production designed by Rob Howell.

The play, loosely autobiographical, takes place in the Tyrone's summer house on the day in which Edmund is told by the family doctor that he has consumption. But both his brother and his father have half suspected this (indeed, he may himself have been aware of the likelihood); the menfolk are furthermore confronting the fact that Mary is incurably addicted to morphine, having been prescribe it many years before after Edmund's difficult birth.

Such a bald summary hardly begins to account for the play's power, nor for the unremitting portrayal of self-deception and mutual recrimination that unfolds before us as the various members of the family try to maintain a veneer of normality in the face of long years of denial, repressed anger, and tortured love.

The Divide

by Alan Ayckbourn

seen at the Old Vic on 7 February 2018

The play, directed by Annabel Bolton, features Erin Doherty as Soween and Jake Davies as her brother Elihu, with a supporting cast of eleven, and a choir with a small orchestra (music by Christopher Nightingale). It is designed by Laura Hopkins and lit by David Plater.

When I bought the tickets, it was for a two-part production to be seen in the afternoon and evening (this was how it had been presented at last year's Edinburgh Festival). Later I had an email informing me that there would be only one part. Shortly before my attendance the now-customary email giving performance details mentioned a running time of four hours and 5 minutes. By the time I reached the theatre the running time was three hours and 45 minutes. Was I to see only unsatisfactory chunks of the original work? Or was it so much a work-in-progress that it would prove still to have too much padding? Ayckbourn has in the past been a master at complex narratives spanning more than the usual performance time - for example The Norman Conquests, three plays covering the same weekend in the dining room, the living room and the garden of a house; or, even more ambitiously, House and Garden, two plays to be performed by the same cast simultaneously on adjoining stages, requiring the audience to attend twice to perceive the technical brilliance of the stage-craft. Had something gone wrong with The Divide?