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.

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).

The Writer

by Ella Hickson

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 9th May 2018

Blanche McIntye directs Romola Garai, Michael Gould, Lara Rossi and Samuel West in an often dazzling play examining the fraught business of writing for the theatre complicated by the difficulty (or even the impossibility) of a woman exerting artistic freedom in a male-dominated world.

The play begins with a young woman, a member of the audience of a play evidently just finished, engaging in a conversation with an older man who has some position in the theatre. It seems an accidental encounter, and the woman is at first unwilling to stay back and talk, but she soon delivers an impassioned speech about the corruption of theatre by monied interests, and she also objects to the too-easily patronising attitude of the man. 

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 19 April 2018

James Macdonald directs Geoffrey Streatfeild as Mirabell, Tom Mison as Fainall, Caroline Martin as Mrs Fainall, Justine Mitchell as Millamant and Haydn Gwynne as Lady Wishfort in this celebrated comedy from 1700, presented in its historical time with flowing wigs and lacy cuffs.

The language is polished and often dazzling, the social comment astute, the plot a vehicle for observing both cynical and heartfelt attempts to navigate the difficulties of relations between men and women. While urban and sub-aristocratic could be and often was portrayed as essentially the unscrupulous use of masculine power and influence to gain wealth through marriage, in this play Congreve contrasts the moral characters of the two friends Mirabell and Fainall, each of whom stands to gain from the woman (Millamant and Mrs Fainall respectively) he is connected with. Where Mirabell and Millamant are shown to be genuine in their affections, all the warmth has drained from the Fainall marriage and the husband is plotting merely for financial advantage, and in this production is shown up as a distinctly unpleasant person.

The Lie

by Florian Zeller

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 29 September 2017

Lindsay Ponsner directs Christopher Hampton's version of Zeller's new play with Samantha Bond as Alice, Tony Gardner as Paul, Alexandra Gilbreath as Laurence and Alexander Hanson as Michel.

Anna Fleischle has designed a stylish French apartment's living room for a very stylish and very French play about the thorny issues of lying, being honest, being tactful and being deceitful, set around Alice's disquiet at hosting her husband's friend Michel and his wife in the evening after by chance seeing Michel kissing another woman in the street during the afternoon. Paul argues that neither Michel nor Laurence should be confronted - it is Michel's business and not theirs to interfere - but this raises large questions about honesty amongst friends and in a marriage, with spiralling and unforeseen consequences for all concerned.