The Bay at Nice

by David Hare

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 13 April 2019

Richard Eyre directs Penelope Wilton as Valentina Nrovka, Ophelia Lovibond as her daughter Sophia, David Rintoul as Sophia's lover Peter and Martin Hutson as an assistant curator at the Hermitage in this play about authenticating a possible Matisse painting left to the museum by an emigre aristocrat, entwined with the difficult relationship between mother and daughter.

The situation is rather artificial, Sophia having thought that the occasion of her mother's invitation to the museum to see the painting might be the occasion for announcing her intention to leave her husband and children and live with the much older and widowed Peter, for which she needs funds for the divorce proceedings. This allows us to see Valentina from a number of different angles - impatient with museums, dismissive of much modern art, contemptuous of modern ideas of freedom and self-fulfilment, and therefore extremely abrasive with her daughter. Behind this steely exterior, expressed in well-turned speeches of frightening social and moral put-downs (rather like Lady Bracknell in deadly earnest) is a history of repressed anguish and unacknowledged disappointment - Valentina was a gay young thing in Paris, a model and possibly lover of Matisse, shut out by the Master's admission that he had no time for love, and determined, with a baby to look after, to return to Russia to give order and structure to her life no matter the cost.

A German Life

by Christopher Hampton

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 8 April 2019

Maggie Smith plays Brunhilde Pomsel in this dramatic monologue directed by Jonathan Kent and designed by Anna Fleischle. It is 'drawn from the life and testimony' of Brunhilde Pomsel and based on a film of the same name, constructed from 30 hours of interviews with her and released in 2016.

An elderly lady in a bland flat reminisces about her life - Pomsel had just turned 106 when she died in 2017. At first there are some ripples of knowing laughter in the audience, expecting perhaps another Maggie Smith performance of an eccentric woman with a wandering mind. But this is no elderly lady in a van causing havoc in the life of Alan Bennett. On the contrary, this is someone determined to remember what she can, and to speak frankly with courteous apologies when she gets sidetracked or absently loses her thread. Her story soon commands rapt attention, and the laughter when it comes is in response to barbed wit, or to uncomfortable observations which may sometimes be too near the bone.

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 5 April 2019

Adjoa Andoh and Lynette Linton co-direct an exciting production of Richard II performed by a cast of women of colour supported by an entirely female stage crew. Adjoa Andoh herself plays King Richard, with Sarah Niles as Bolingbroke, Dona Croll as John of Gaunt, Shobna Gulati as the Duke of York, Ayesha Dharker as Aumerle, Leila Farzad as the Queen, Indra Ové as both Mowbray and Northumberland, and Nicholle Cherrie, Lourdes Faberes and Sarah Lam playing the other parts.

There is of course an element of statement-making about all this: why should actors of any gender or race be denied the chance to play Shakespeare, especially considering that originally (in Shakespeare's day) all the female parts were taken by men or boys? But, dramatically as an experience on stage, the issue is virtually irrelevant: the production is magnificent at exploring new facets of a familiar - even over-familiar - story, simply by capitalising on the extraordinary energy and freshness of the performances and the exotic setting.