After Life

by Jack Thorne

seen at the National Theatre (Dorfman) on 8 July 2021

Jack Thorne has adapted this play from a 1998 Japanese film of the same name (at least in English: 'Wonderful Life' or 'Wandafuru Raifu' in Japanese) which was devised by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. The play is directed by Jeremy Herrin with the set and costumes designed by Bunny Christie, and it features a cast of twelve: five 'guides' and seven 'guided' with some of these seven doubling up in ancillary roles. It is presented by the National Theatre in conjunction with Headlong Theatre.

The action takes place over one week in a facility where guides are assigned to the recently dead to encourage them to identify a memory from their lives which they are happy to take with them (to the exclusion of all other memories) into eternity. The guided have three days to decide on their memory, after which the team of guides will reconstruct and film the memory for the onward journey, which must take place before the end of the week. On Sundays the staff tidy up and prepare for the next week's arrivals on Monday.

For some the memory to be chosen is fairly obvious, but a teenage girl is somewhat put out to discover that her choice (a visit to Disneyland) is all too common for her age group; eventually she chooses something more personal. But should she have discovered this? The knowledge came from one of the guides, despite the fact that guides should only be facilitators; the apprentice guide (Millicent Wong) has yet to learn the constraints of the job.

For others, making a choice is extremely difficult; a young man (Olatunji Ayofe) is shocked to discover he is not in a place of judgement, and he prevaricates. An older man(Togo Igawa), perhaps playfully given the same forename as the director of the film, feels his life has been too much on an even keel for him to make a valid choice. The guide assigned to each case tries to encourage reflection without forcing the issue.

There is something rather haphazard about the whole arrangement, brought to the fore when a couple of the memories are reenacted. The stage manager - or would it be production designer? - is frustrated  in re-creating a memory for a young pilot who was happiest flying a Cessna through clouds - the props department can only provide the wrong sort of plane. Equally, there are difficulties in arranging for the right quantity of cherry blossom to fall for the childish memory of an idyllic spring afternoon.

Jack Thorne's adaptation skilfully blends a number of characters from the film and makes clear through dialogue what was achieved in the film by indirection and voiceovers. While there is a lightheartedness about the presentation of some of the memories, an older lady Beatrice Killick (June Watson) reveals a deeply affecting life story when she is finally able to acknowledge the emotional cost of her experience. Likewise the interaction between the older man Hirokazu Mochizuki and his guide (Luke Thallon, giving an excellent performance) leads unexpectiedly to an extraordinary and moving resolution for them both while at the same time revealing to us more of the workings of the facility. The guides, while trying to be professional and discreet, have their own stories after all, which can all too easily impinge on their assignments.

The film, which I have watched again before writing this review, must have nuances connected with Japanese attitudes towards death which may well escape an anglophone viewer (there are, for example, some references to unfamilar devotional ceremonies). The play wisely concentrates on 'domesticating' the workings of the facility and imbuing some of the characters concerned with a more familiar Englishness: for example Beatrice Killick is very recognisably a type of stalwart no-nonsense Northern woman and her reminiscences of a dance hall where she danced with her brother easily evoke the bygone focus of social life in provincial towns. 

It is a great pleasure to see an intriguing but probably little known film transformed into an equally beguiling play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (again)

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the Bridge Theatre on 17 October 2019

Having so much enjoyed the production in August (see my review of 17 August 2019) I felt sure a second viewing in the cinema would not go amiss - this was actually a repeat of the original live streaming, also broadcast in August, as the production run has now finished.

It was a great pleasure to see this inventive and engaging production again. In this case, there were benefits to be gained from camera close-ups and varying points of view, though occasionally the editor's choices of shots were frustrating. But the pleasure of seeing some of the details in the performances of the actors more than outweighed the disadvantages of filming a live show. In particular, the roguishness of Puck, the gleeful pleasure Titania took in her machinations, and the besottedness of Oberon gained from a closer look at their facial expressions, while Theseus's initial intransigence was chillingly conveyed just by the intensity of his narrowed gaze at Hermia.

The hilarious comedy of Bottom especially among the Rude Mechanicals, and the weirdness of Puck, whose curling toes seemed to have a life of their own, were wonderfully in evidence in one of the great productions of this play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 17 August 2019

Nicholas Hytner directs Oliver Chris as Oberon and Theseus and Gwendoline Christie as Titania and Hippolyta in an inventive restaging of this perennially favourite play, with David Moorst as Puck and Hammed Animashaun as Bottom. The production is designed by Bunny Christie.

As with last year's production of Julius Caesar (reviewed on both 27 January and 27 March 2018) the Bridge has been transformed into a theatre in the round with a central pit area where audience members can stand and be moved around by stewards as various parts of the floor rise to become acting spaces. There is no need for a crowd as such in this play, so there is less immediate involvement than in the other play, but the mere presence of so many people 'in the way' underscores the confusions the mere mortals undergo as they enter the forest outside Athens.

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 January 2018

Nicholas Hytner directs Ben Whishaw as Brutus, Michelle Fairley as Cassius, David Morissey as Mark Antony and David Calder as Julius Caesar in a modern dress production designed by Bunny Christie.

It was a risk to attend two productions of the same play within three weeks, especially a play which runs the risk of being comparatively flat in its second half - all too often the machinations of the civil war unleashed by Caesar's death fail to match the power of the assassination plot and Mark Antony's great funeral oration. However, the risk was more than justified - this production is so different from the RSC's, and so exciting in its own terms, that there was no fatigue in watching it.

Ink

by James Graham

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 July 2017

Rupert Goold directs Bertie Carvel as Rupert Murdoch and Richard Coyle as Larry Lamb with support from eleven others in this new play concerning Murdoch's acquisition of the Sun newspaper and his editor's efforts to surpass the sales figures of the rival Daily Mirror within a year.

Once again James Graham has looked to a significant episode in British life from four or five decades ago and converted it into a fascinating play which turns out to have unexpected contemporary relevance. This House dealt with the minority Labour government of the mid-1970s and exposed in dramatic form the extraordinary stresses under which such a government operates from day to day. Now, after the recent election, the Tories find themselves in a similar and unenviable situation, and barely a month since the election it is already clear that strength and stability may well be in short supply.

Ink deals with the emergence of Rupert Murdoch as an unignorable figure in the field of British print media, at just the time in which his Fox company is proposing to become the major shareholder (i.e. owner) of Sky. But the play presents a surprisingly nuanced picture of the younger Murdoch, physically awkward and often ill at ease, determined to smash what he sees as outdated and outmoded Fleet Street traditions, but occasionally nervous about the methods adopted by his editor. 

The Red Barn

by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 20 December 2016

This play is based on a novel called La Main by Georges Simenon. Set in the eastern US, it concerns Donald Dodd (Mark Strong) and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis), and their encounter with his friend Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey) and his wife Mona (Elizabeth Debicki). It is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Paule Constable.

The play opens with a snowstorm in which the four characters are attempting to reach the Dodds' home after a party, their car having broken down. By the time three of them are safely inside, Ray has been lost in the storm; later his body is found even though Donald went out again to look for him. It transpires that he may not have spent long looking, though he was gone for hours, as Ingrid discovers many cigarette butts in the barn, which Donald burns - he had sat there for some hours.