Backstroke

by Anna Mackmin

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 6 March 2025

Anna Mackmin directs Tamsin Greig as Bo, Celia Imrie as her mother Beth with Lucy Briers as Carol and Anita Reynolds as Jill (two nurses) and Georgina Rich as Paulina (a consultant) in her own play about a complex mother-daughter relationship further complicated by the mother's advancing dementia and physical incapacity after a stroke.

After a brief depiction of the medical emergency that brought Beth to the hospital, she is immobilised and apparently unconscious as the panicky Bo tries to deal with the consultant's overworked briskness and Carol's old-style nursing approach (that one does what is best for the patient even if the intervention is said to be unwelcome). Unfortunately without the legal authority to impose end-of-life preferences Bo is immediately in a false position in attempting to assert her mother's views on the subject.

The situation is rendered more fraught by Bo's other responsibilities: her daughter is evidently causing disruption at school, and the drive to visit Beth takes several hours, so Bo has to keep appealing to Ted (her partner or husband) to interact with the school. Everything rapidly becomes a burden because too much is happening at once.

Fortunately Celia Imrie is not bed-bound for the entire performance. The often harrowing hospital situation is frequently interspersed with flashbacks in which she is a lively if wayward and self-obsessed single mother, having emerged at some point from communal living to bring up Bo according to her less than conventional principles. But there is an unhealthy co-dependency as it is impossible for Beth to be left alone: clearly many school days were missed (or perhaps Bo was entirely home-schooled), and as Bo prepares to leave for university the emotional blackmail is turned up several notches until she takes her mother with her.

Unsurprisingly Bo is exasperated nearly all the time, and almost unable to cope with her mother's sudden decline. The suffocating constrictions of her upbringing range from being forbidden to call Beth 'mummy' or 'mum' ("I have a name!" Beth insists), to being utterly unable to reach out to her physically in this current emergency. Bo's hand hovers above Beth's shoulder or face without daring a caress a painful number of times during her rushed hospital visits, a mute manifestation of her inner torment.

In an all-purpose setting (designed by Lez Brotherston) the hospital room is at the back of the stage and slightly raised, while in front is the memory room of Bo's adolescence and younger adulthood: a table and chairs to one side and an Aga to the other. Through the flashbacks we learn of the prickly relationship between the two women, usually involving snarky banter but occasionally exploding in rage or frustration. Bo's daughter, it transpires, is adopted, and the action is punctuated with short videos of her night terrors and tantrums. The indications of Beth's dementia creep in as they do, with increasing fumbling with words and repeated comments. The end cannot be anything but sad, despite Bo's extraordinary eulogy of her mother.

The title of the play seems to be connected to one flashback to a happier time in which the half-scared half-excited six-year-old Bo was taught by her mother to swim; this is linked to a gentle gesture (at last) of letting go which, while satisfying in its moment, is perhaps just a shade unlikely as a resolution to a lifetime of frustrated love.

The two central performances are extremely good, but the overall structure requires considerable concentration, and the minor characters are not deeply drawn. The decision to present Bo's own role as a mother largely through projected videos makes for clunky interruptions to the main matter of the play, which is so finely observed between the two women.

Churchill in Moscow

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 3 March 2025

Tom Littler directs Roger Allam as Churchill and Peter Forbes as Stalin, with Julius d'Silva as Molotov (Soviet Foreign Minister), Alan Cox as Archie Clark Kerr (British ambassador to the USSR), Tamara Greatrex as Svetlana Stalin, Jo Herbert as the British interpreter Sally Powell and Elisabeth Snegir as the Russian interpreter Olga Dovzhenko in Howard Brenton's play concerning the meeting Churchill had with Stalin in Moscow in August 1942. (The main characters are historical, but the two interpreters are fictional).

The principal reason for Churchill's journey was to inform Stalin personally that the Allies had decided that it was impossible to launch an invasion of western Europe immediately: it would have to wait until at least 1943 (in the event, the D-Day landings and the invasion of Italy did not take place until 1944). He felt that a face to face meeting was essential to deliver this bad news in good faith, rather than relying on telegrams or telephone calls. But it was of course a delicate matter, as the German invasion of the USSR had begun and the battle of Stalingrad actually began while Churchill was in Moscow.

Brenton makes good use of the interpreters he has chosen to invent. At the opening of the play Stalin speaks in Russian, requiring the audience to wait until Olga translates into English before understanding. In an inspired move, Churchill then speaks in complete gobbledygook, so that once again we must wait for Sally to interpret before we understand his response. This technique is used sparingly; most of the time English is spoken throughout, though the business of interpreting continues unobtrusively except when either Station or Churchill mistrusts what is being said or requires (or impatiently dismisses) immediate clarification. The interactions of the wider delegations are suggested b y the occasional presence of Molotov and Kerr, while the teenage Svetlana wanders around practising her English by reading David Copperfield until she is briefly introduced to Churchill during a late-night confab between the two leaders.

This was of course an extremely consequential meeting; the seriousness of the issues is always before us even as the outsize personalities of both the leaders dominate the stage. Wisely neither actor simply imitates the historical character. Roger Allam has something of Churchill's awkward gait and rhetorical flair, and his curious dress sense (for much of the time he is in a boiler suit, except for being in a nightshirt one evening and formal wear for the reception the next). Stalin, in his usual military style dress, speaks with a West Country accent, cleverly indicating the Georgian provincialism sneered at by the urban Russian elites.

The presence of the interpreters not only provides some comic relief arising from their tasks. They also have a brief interaction outside their official capacities injecting a slight nod to the anxieties and prejudices of the ordinary people enduring the war and the volatile political tensions surrounding them. And Brenton uses the idea of interpretation and the responsibility of the translating staff to be accurate - whether literally or thematically - as an intriguing emollient to the fractious and potentially disastrous rift which otherwise seems impossible to bridge. Despite their qualms, it seems that the interpreters saved the day.

A thoroughly enjoyable insight into what to many (myself included) is a little-known meeting.

The Girl on the Train

by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 28 February 2025

Loveday Ingram directs this adaptation from Paula Hawkins's novel and the subsequent film, starring Giovanna Fletcher as the troubled Rachel Watson, a divorced alcoholic still obsessed with her husband Tom (Jason Merrells) who is now married to Anna (Zena Carswell).

When Megan Hipwell (Natalie Dunne), a near neighbour of Tom and Anna, disappears, Rachel's propensity to loiter near her old house, and to leave increasingly incoherent messages on Tom's phone, inevitably leads to her being questioned. It becomes clear that she has seen the neighbour when travelling by train, and in her befuddled state imagines that she has some sort of connection with her, leading her to introduce herself to Scott Hipwell (Samuel Collings) as a 'friend' of his missing wife.

The situation is increasingly claustrophobic, with Rachel's misery spiralling out of control and potentially compromising any attempt to solve the mystery of Megan's disappearance, particularly as Rachel has been seen near where Megan was last seen, but she has no clear recollection of what she was doing at the time. The gaps in her memory provide a convenient means of heightening the tension and frustration surrounding the police investigation, and alienating her ex-husband, his new wife, and also Scott.

Much depends on Giovanna Fletcher's skill at portraying Rachel as an unreliable and deeply distressed woman; at times the misery and confusion seem to exist only on one aggrieved note, but on the whole her gradual movement towards clarity and responsibility (though agonisingly slow) is believable. The supporting cast fulfil their roles despite some melodramatic moments, and it takes some time before the true course of action on the fateful night becomes clear. A couple of flashbacks to Megan's session with a psychologist help to fill in her troubled backstory.

As a variation of the theme of a bumbling amateur helping to solve a mystery, Rachel's incapacity to remember clearly what would immediately solve the problem is a clever device which allows for a satisfying pace in revealing to the audience all the relevant information. The result is a highly entertaining thriller. The technical production, envisaging several locations both indoors and out, provides an excellent physical background to the developing story.

 

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 February 2025

Nicholas Hytner directs Jonathan Bailey as the eponymous king with Royce Pierreson as Henry Bullingbroook (sic.) in a production designed by Bob Crowley and lit by Bruno Poet.

This is the fifth production of Richard II I have seen since beginning this blog and, true to form, it is quite different from all the others: proof, if any were needed, of the capacity for intelligent reinterpretation afforded by many of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

Performed on a long thrust stage initially bare, but with parts of the floor able to be sunk in order to set and remove furniture as required, the production is in modern dress, entirely subdued in greys and blacks. Stripped of the gorgeous medieval finery often used in honour of the Wilton diptych (which features a portrait of Richard II as a sacral king), all attention is on the language and on how the characters relate to one another in political and personal terms. The result is fascinating, the power plays surprisingly modern, and Richard's self-absorption entirely credible, rarely descending into self-pity.

Jonathan Bailey is a superb Richard, speaking the verse with unerring musicality, and he is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast even if none of the others quite rise to his level of delivery. Bullingbrook is something of a cipher, not obviously irritated with his cousin's theatrics in the deposition scene, but instead impassively prepared to indulge him. But he upholds his rights earlier in the play with conviction and hence gains the support he needs to press his claims and ultimately to become the new king.

Two of the major scenes involving women have been cut: the dialogue between John of Gaunt and his widowed sister-in-law the Duchess of Gloucester; and the famous "gardener" scene in which Queen Isabel overhears commoners discussing the disaster befalling her husband. This streamlines the play, and puts heightened emphasis on the poignant but brief scene in which Richard and Isabel are parted. The only other woman featured is the Duchess of York (Amanda Root); her frantic support for her errant young son Aumerle (Vinnie Heaven) is beautifully staged, providing some light relief from the increasing tension without tipping over into parody. (The Bishop of Carlisle here was female, the only concession to gender-blind casting, which in the modern context was effective.)

The staging was excellent; from the gallery to one side I never felt that I was being deprived of good views of the actors or being presented with a badly skewed vista of the production - indeed it would be interesting to see the play from the front as it were, to gauge whether there was a significantly different effect: in the deposition scene, conducted like a commission of enquiry or a court hearing, Bullingbrook sat for some time with his back to those sitting at the 'front', rendering him even more inscrutable at this point.

In the modern setting there were some clever adjustments. The joust between Bullingbrook and Thomas Mowbray is prepared for in all its formality, but rather than being a cumbersome affair in full armour (possibly on horseback) it is re-imagined as a bare-knuckled fight - bare-chested too - in a pit conveniently created in the versatile stage floor. The visceral rivalry between the two noblemen is thus given a macho physicality barely contained when Richard intervenes to stop the fight.

Richard himself speaks with authority but comes dangerously close to losing face as he interrupts the 'joust'. His fitness to rule is more seriously put into question for us in the scene with his favourites, who are lounging together and snorting cocaine, a very modern but all too plausible indication of their unfitness to govern the realm. They and Richard are obviously still high when visiting the dying John of Gaunt, so that the king's assumption of Gaunt's revenues is enacted in a drug-fuelled haze as the king lolls on the old man's vacated sickbed. Yet despite the hedonism, the king is for the moment still the king and none can gainsay him.

Richard in his last scene is contemplative and vulnerable. As part of the editing of the play for this production, his murderer was evidently Bagot (a former crony) rather than the named new character Exton, but nothing was made of this being a final example of betrayal. At least this was a more credible directorial choice than having Aumerle (a cousin of the two kings) perform the deed, as has been done elsewhere, something that would have been beneath him. Shockingly the corpse was presented to Henry IV in a body bag, undisclosed but a fateful reminder of the guilt which would overshadow the new king in the subsequent plays.