A Number

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 26 February 2019

Polly Findlay directs Roger Allam as Salter (the father) and Colin Morgan as Michael, B1 and B2 (the sons) in a new production designed by Lizzie Clachan of Caryl Churchill's 2002 play concerning a man who, it transpires, has arranged for his son to be cloned, but is unaware of how many 'copies' were made.

In an ordinary slightly rumpled living room, an insecure son confronts his father, having just discovered that he not unique (though he hasn't actually met any of his 'twins'). Salter's immediate reaction is to stall and to muse about suing whoever is responsible, though he eventually has to admit that he condoned 'a single' cloning, and that the boy is not the first son. Unsurprisingly, the boy, already fragile, is very discomposed, rocked by the realisation that much of his family story is a fiction.

Cyrano de Bergerac

by Edmond Rostand adapted by Martin Crimp

seen by live streaming from the Playhouse Theatre on 20 February 2020

Jamie Lloyd directs Jamrs McAvoy in the title role, with Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Roxane, Eben Figueiredo as Christian and Tom Edden as De Guiche, in a production designed by Soutra Gilmour and lit by Jon Clark.

Edmond Rostand's 1897 play sought to re-intorduce poetry and the idea of romantic heroism to a theatre world which he saw as bedevilled by too much naturalism. Traditionally this has inspired productions revelling in lush seventeenth-century costunes and swaggering panache, with Cyrano, the main character, a self-defined misfit in an age where physical attractiveness is held o be essential in the world of love.

Endgame

by Samuel Beckett

seen at the Old Vic on 18 February 2020

Richard Jones directs Alan Cummings as Hamm, a wheelchair-bound blind man, Daniel Radcliffe as Clov, his servant who cannot sit down, Karl Johnson as Nagg, his father, and Jane Horrocks as Nell, his mother, the two parents being confined in dustbins, in Beckett's dystopian vision of the human condition near its wits' end.

The first time I saw this play I was 12 or 13, and it was a play reading at a nearby girls' school. The second time, I was 18 and it was produced at my own school. I think it's fair to say that neither production really managed to get beyond the sheer bleakness of the situation to the manic humour running through it. I saw a production at Trinity College, Dublin many years later, and it was a revelation. The most surprising thing was the lyricism of much of the language, which for me was unlocked by the Irish lilt of the actors in Dublin. This was possibly the most important factor missing from the attempts of Australian schoolchildren to grapple with the text.

The Boy Friend

by Sandy Wilson

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 16 February 2020

Matthew White directs this fizzing revival of Sandy Wilson's 1953 musical The Boy Friend, with Amara Okereke as PollyBrown, Dylan Mason as Tony Brocklehurst, Jack Butterworth as Bobby Van Husen, Tiffany Graves as Hortense, Janie Dee as Madame DuBonnet, Gabrielle Lewis-Dodson as Maisie  and Adrian Edmonson as Lord Brockenhurst, with an excellent supporting cast of singer/dancers. The production is designed by Paul Farnsworth with lighting by Paul Anderson, and the orchestra is led by Sion Beck.

The Sugar Syndrome

by Lucy Prebble

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 6 February 2020

Oscar Toeman directs Jessica Rhodes as Dani Carter, Ali Barouti as Lewis Sampson, John Hollingworth as Tim Saunders and Alexandra Gilbreath as Jan Carter (Dani's mother) in this first London revival of Lucy Prebble's first play, in which a teenager navigates her way from the often illusory world of chatrooms to encounters with the real people behind the names - encounters which may be more exciting but also more perilous.

The play opens with sounds familiar to older users of computers but probably completely foreign to those who have no idea of the tedium of dial-up phone connections. Actors prowl around the edge of the stage in dim blue light when they are in a chatroom, but use a lower central acting space when in the real world. Though the conversations between mother and daughter indicate a level of technology now long superseded, the issues and tensions in the play are still strikingly relevant and disturbing.