All About Eve

based on the film by Joseph L Mankiewicz

seen at the Noel Coward Theatre on 18 March 2019

Ivo van Hove continues his project of adapting classic films for the stage, with Gillian Anderson as Margo Channing and Lily James as Eve Harrington taking the roles originally played by Bette Davis and Anne Baxter. His partner and collaborator Jan Versverveld is the set and lighting designer, providing the by-now familiar versatile and at the same time slightly alienating space on stage to replace the fluidity of film sets.

Eve Harrington, an apparently naive young woman, is besotted with the stage star Margo Channing, and graduates from hanging about the stage door to being Margo's indispensable personal assistant, masking a steely ambition to replace her idol. The frisson of the piece is to watch a mature star exert her social dominance in the theatre world while belatedly becoming aware of the threat; and to realise for ourselves what lies behind Eve's surface modesty and endless willingness to please. In this production Gillian Anderson portrays both Margo's brazenness and her vulnerability with consummate skill, though Bette Davis is of course a difficult act to follow even in a different medium. Meanwhile Lily James maintains an almost perfect mask of innocence until a crucial late scene in which her daggers are drawn in a nasty piece of blackmail.

The Son

by Florian Zeller

seen at the Kiln Theatre on 13 March 2019

Michael Longhurst directs Laurie Kynaston as the teenage Nicolas, Amanda Abbingdon as his mother Anne, John Light as his father Pierre, Amaka Okafor as his stepmother Sofia, Martin Turner as a doctor and Oseloka Obi as a nurse in Christpoher Hampton's transaltion of Florian Zeller's nw play, seen as part of a triptych with The Father (reviewed in October 2015) and The Mother (not seen).

The Kiln has a totally exposed stage the width of its auditorium, so upon entering the audience sees immediately a plain space with panelled white walls (somehow looking French; designed by Lizzie Clachan), a black upholstered sofa in the middle, a small writing desk and chair to one side, and a large suspended grey bag on the other side. Eventually Nicolas appears and begins to write obsessively one the wall panel immediately above the writing desk; or else he paces round the room.

Edward II

by Christopher Marlowe

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 March 2019

Nick Bagnall directs Tom Stuart as King Edward II, Katie West as Queen Isabella, Jonathan Livingstone as Young Mortimer, and Beru Tessema as Piers Gaveston, with a supporting company of seven taking the other parts, in Christopher Marlowe's play about the disastrous career of the king who fatefully places a selfish desire for personal pleasure above the recognised responsibilities of a medieval ruler.

Marlowe, often seen as a histrionic, not to say bombastic, playwright in contrast to the more nuanced Shakespeare, is well served in the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where the lyrical aspects of his language can be appreciated as much as the dramatic turns of the plot. In particular, the intense, and intensely physical, relationship between Edward and Gaveston is expressed by high-flown but not insincere poetry, which has a more personal resonance in the smaller acting space of this theatre.

The Price

by Arthur Miller

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 6 March 2019

Jonathan Church directs Brendan Coyle and Adrian Lukis as two brothers, Vincent and Walter, with Sarah Stewart as Vincent's wife Esther and David Suchet as Gregory Solomon, an elderly second-hand furniture dealer, in a fiftieth anniversary production of Arthur Miller's play about the costs and misunderstandings of filial loyalty played out as the brothers meet after sixteen years to dispose of their father's property.

In an astonishing set designed by Simon Higlett to represent a lifetime's clutter, with chairs, desks and other bric-a-brac climbing surrealistically angled walls almost to hang from the ceiling, Vincent, a policeman nearing his retirement,  has returned to his father's apartment many years after the latter's death to dispose of all the moveables since the building is about to be demolished. This being an Arthur Miller play, the event is fraught with complex memories and resentments, revealed partly through the tense discussion with his wife when she arrives, when it becomes clear that Walter, the successful doctor brother, has been estranged from Vincent for many years and has not answered calls to help deal with this current crisis.

Cougar

by Rosie Lewenstein

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 2 March 2019

Chelsea Walker directs Charlotte Randle as Leila and Mike Noble as John in a new play in which Leila, an ambitious and successful woman lobbying big business to recognise and take action to mitigate climate change takes up with John, a young bartender whom she meets at a conference and takes around the world with her on the proviso that he does not demand too much of her or fall in love with her.

The escalating global crisis is a constant background to the difficult relationship between Leila and John: she is used to controlling all aspects of her life in the service of her job (which she sees as extremely valuable, and hence worthy of personal sacrifice) and perhaps is therefore fearful of too intimate a relationship at an emotional level (she is more than happy with physical intimacy); he is grateful for her attention and happy to experience the whirlwind of travel on offer, but also feels shut out and to some extent used. The imbalances of the personal encounter are perhaps not so very different from the more commonly examined situation of a powerful businessman whose wife or partner is meant only to function in the 'private' or 'domestic' sphere of his life; it's unusual and refreshing to watch a play where these stereotypical gender roles are, in effect, reversed. The problems arise, as they always do, from a perhaps chronic mismatch of priorities, and are dismayingly familiar.