Tartuffe

by Moliere

seen at the Rhodes Scholars Theatre (Barker College) on 19 July 2018

The Old Barker Association Theatre (OBAT) club produced a modern-dress version of Tartuffe at the drama theatre on the school campus. Unfortunately no program or cast list was available; but the production was enjoyable, acted with considerable energy and some clever inventions to offset the potentially stultifying effect of the long rhetorical speeches given in rhyming couplets. Top marks to the cast for even attempting the difficult task of declaiming in translated couplets, even if at times the delivery was taken too quickly for coherence. The occasional undercutting of the high-flown language with considerably more earthy asides or exclamations produced the desired comic effect, and also reminded us that the whole situation, though being exaggerated, really was holding up a sceptical mirror to the whole idea of parental control, religious hypocrisy, and the gullibility and even powerlessness of 'civilised' people in the face of out and out self-interest and shameless amorality. 

An enjoyable effort at performing a classic from a stage tradition very different from modern English-speaking taste.

2018 Directors' Festival 3

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 13 July 2018

The Orange Tree Theatre, in partnership with St Mary's University Twickenham, is presenting three short plays directed by graduates of the MA program developed by the two institutions, in the second year of their partnership.

3. In the Night Time (Before the Sun Rises), by Nina Segal, directed by Evangeline Cullingworth

A man (Ziggy Heath) and a Woman (Anna Leong Brophy) recount their stories - at times their own personal stories, and at times tale of a wider world, at night, ostensibly to try to pacify their ever-crying baby. What starts in a more or less realistic setting - a white carpeted room with a cot in the centre, and the aggravating sound of a baby crying in rage and distress - swerves from stories about how the couple met, how they set up home, and had a child, to more general  intimations that all is not well with the world, via some children's stories that the couple remember from their own childhoods, which turn out to carry uncomfortable resonances for the relationship between well-meaning parents run ragged by exhaustion.

It's a dizzying ride, and a fairly difficult one to negotiate dramatically with only a few props and sound effects. Luckily we were not subjected to 50 minutes of the baby's cries - one or two before the lights went up were excruciating enough, and the point was to hear the Man and the Woman rather than what (or who) they were trying to pacify. The two young actors managed the shifts of tone extremely well; one believed in their basic affection for and commitment to each other while appreciating the wry comments about one another's failings. The wider sphere proved threatening, though the threat was sensibly left in rather general terms - political upheaval and climate degradation were the obvious culprits but they remained largely impersonal.

Though the play was short, it covered a great deal of ground and made excellent use of the Orange Tree space - the front row more than usually likely to have exploding rubbish showered onto them (fortunately it was dry and clean) as more and more surprising things emerged or were pulled from from the central cot - even a pair of hands returning the deserved applause from the audience at the end.

Though only three plays were offered this year (in comparison to five last year), the Festival was well worth attending for a view of some exciting new talent.

2018 Directors' Festival 1 and 2

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 13 July 2018

The Orange Tree Theatre, in partnership with St Mary's University Twickenham, is presenting three short plays directed by graduates of the MA program developed by the two institutions, in the second year of their partnership.

1. Katie Johnstone, by Luke Barnes, directed by Samson Hawkins

Katie Johnstone (an impressive Georgia May Hughes) is a teenager with dreams - dreams of doing good in the city which she loves. She will become a millionaire and then a benefactor, just as soon as she finishes night school (to retake her school exams) and sets up her first business (she spends her grandmother's inheritance on purchasing Sky remotes on E-bay to sell on at a profit - a disastrous idea). In the meantime her friend Jackie pursues a less ambitious course, and her mother wants her to get a paying job to help make ends meet (both parts, and other female characters, played by Kristin Atherton) while Jackie's father (Reuben Johnson, also playing other men and a fox) agrees to let her help him in his council gardening job.

Katie has blistering self-confidence, and a desperate determination not to take on dead-end jobs or to be ground down like her mother. This is reflected in her complete control of the stage, from before the start of the play when she hands out torches to various members of the audience (pertly refusing to give one to someone who asked for one) and then issues firm instructions on how to use them, to almost the end, when her dreams have been reduced to supporting her boyfriend in what he wants to do. The idealism of youth, fuelled by sheer willpower and a sense of entitlement encouraged (if she could but recognise it) by the very society she would like to improve, carries almost everything before it, and incipient defeats merely provoke more energy and anger, until they prove too much.

The sheer energy of the performance is infectious, the audience willingly providing the torchlight for the poetry recitations, agog at Katie's self-belief and carried along by her confidence. The tentative rapprochement with her mother (once herself having perhaps comparable aspirations) is all the more touching, and even as her life takes on some of the conventional contours that she so despised, Katie's optimism shines through. The production catches these mood swings very well, and the ise of the small square stage is inventive and skilful.

2. Precious Little Talent, by Ella Hickson, directed by Dominiqe Chapman 

The play opens with a reminiscence by young New Yorker Sam (Matt Jessup) of the occasion when he unexpectedly met Joey (Rebecca Collingwood), an English girl, on a rooftop, felt an attraction, whisked her on and off a subway ride, and kissed her in Grand Central Station. Then, the scene shifts suddenly to the flat where George (Simon Shepherd) lives, and where Sam is evidently some sort of carer. The rooftop encounter is replayed from Joey's perspective, which is amusingly and cleverly different from Sam's, but just as plausible; and then to their mutual surprise they meet in George's flat: Joey turns out to be George's daughter Joanna, and George is desperate that she she should not discover the reason Sam is so much part of his reclusive life.

The play is full of misunderstanding and well-intentioned concealments, but it also has an engaging commentary on the differences between English and American approaches to social conventions. Sam often expresses himself with an American openness which Joey regards as staggeringly naive; he finds her reserve frustrating and merely evasive: this leads to moments of delicious comedy, offsetting the more serious puzzle of George's decline and his vain attempt to conceal it from his daughter, in New York on an unannounced visit as she finds her mother's remarriage and new family hard to cope with.

With excellent performances from the three actors, the production avoids the pitfalls of potential stereotyping - either of national character, or of the awfulness of a decline into dementia. Each person is trying to control the chaos - George has a brilliantly coherent speech, as if there were at last an insight to the clarity of mind that is progressively deserting him, in which he elucidates his attitude towards Joey, while the two young people in turn take up the interpretation of what they are experiencing by providing narrative commentary Joey rueful, Sam enthusiastic. Curiously, Joey's bleak realism, in choosing to refuse Sam's offer of elopement, resonates with Katie Johnstone's final recognition that her horizons are limited. It's a cautionary conclusion to a beautifully acted piece. 

A Monster Calls

based on the novel by Patrick Ness

seen at the Old Vic on 11 July 2018

Sally Cookson directs Matthe Tennyson as Conor O'Malley, with Marianne Oldham as his mother, Selina Cadell as his grandmother, Stuart Goodwin as the Monster, and a supporting cast playing the other characters, in this company-devised adaptation of the celebrated novel by Patrick Ness about a 13-year-old boy whose mother is desperately ill, and who is confused, angry and terrified by the situation and his conflicting reactions to it. The novel itself is based on the ideas of the late Siobhan Dowd, who died before she could complete her version of the story.

The stage is a bare white box with functional wooden chairs placed along the sides, and a number of large ropes suspended from above and tied back to the wings. One panel on high on the back wall cn be opened to reveal the instrumentalists who provide most of the musical accompaniment and some of the sound effects (other music and effects are pre-recorded). The white space reflects Conor's numb mind, pays tribute to Peter brook's famous description of the acting arena, and allows for some colourful projections, particularly of Conor's persistent nightmare.

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

by Dan Gillespie Sells (music) and Tom MacRae (lyrics)

seen by live streaming from the Apollo Theatre on 5 July 2018

A snazzy musical directed by Jonathan Butterell sees 16-year-old Sheffield schoolboy Jamie New (a wonderfully versatile John McCrea) having dreams of attending his Year 11 school prom in a dress. (The play is inspired by a TV documentary on the same subject). His mother Margaret (Josie Walker) supports him, but is also in peril of living out her own dreams through her son and compensating for her own disappointments - including a disastrous  and short-lived marriage to Janie's father. His closest schoolfriend Pritti Pasha (Lucie Shorthouse) is also supportive, if at times baffled, and really all that clouds his prospects are his own insecurities, his father's disgust, one school bully (Luke Baker) and the ambivalent school teacher Miss Hedge (Tamsin Carroll).

Imperium

Adapted by Mike Poulton from the Cicero novels of Robert Harris

seen at the Gielgud Theatre on 4 July 2018

Gregory Doran directs Richard McCabe as Cicero and Joseph Kloska as his secretary Tiro, with a supporting cast of twenty-three, in a two part adaptation of Robert Hrris's three Cicero novels (Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator) though most of the material from the first novel has not been used. The two stage parts are called Conspirator and Dictator, and each contains three plays: Cicero, Catiline and Clodius in the first, and Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian in the second. From this it can be seen that the first play deals with Cicero's consulship (63 BCE) and the subsequent and controversial suppression of Catiline's conspiracy to overthrow the legitimate government of Rome (if that is what it was), while the second deals with Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE and its aftermath up to the death of Cicero in the following year.