Elektra

by Sophokles, translated by Anne Carson

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 17 March 2025

Daniel Fish directs Brie Larson as Elektra, Stockard Channing as Clytemnestra, Patrick Vaill as Orestes, Greg Hicks as Aegisthus and Marième Diouf as Chrysothemis, with a chorus of six women, in a version of Sophokles's play adapted from Anne Carson's translation from 2001. (As a pedantic point, why the choice to use 'k' rather than 'c' for the more usual 'Sophocles' and 'Electra', but not for 'Clytemnestra'?)

The play presents a moral dilemma in the starkest terms: Elektra's father Agamemnon has been murdered by her mother Clytemnestra, and the aggrieved and grieving daughter feels that vengeance is the only possible response. She hopes for the return of her brother Orestes and that he will perform the requisite act of vengeance - yet how can it be right to murder one's mother?

Elektra herself has no doubts: she is consumed by rage against her mother and her situation as a virtual slave in her mother's household, overseen by the usurping paramour Aegisthus, her mother's lover and fellow murderer of Agamemnon, and himself a victim of the family feud (though this is not mentioned in Sophokles's version of the story). The chorus while alert to the moral sickness pervading the city, questions whether Elektra's unrelenting fury is wise. Her sister Chrysothemis appears more or less comfortable with accepting the current state of affairs. Both these attitudes earn Elektra's scorn, and only serve to wind her up to further paroxysms of anger. Clytemnestra's appearance only intensifies her rage.

All this is brilliantly conveyed in this production.  Elektra dominates, her anguish amplified by the use of a hand-held mike as she prowls around a slowly revolving stage sparsely littered with electronic paraphernalia. Every time the word "no" occurs she wails it in varying degrees of outrage. Every time she (or anyone else for that matter) mentions Aegisthus by name she spits derisively. By way of contrast, every time Orestes is named, there is a ritual thumping of the chest over the heart by the six members of the Chorus. In the meantime these women chant their supple lines of comment in close harmony; the perennial problem of how to manage a Greek chorus has here been triumphantly solved. The conversations (or confrontations) with Chrysothemis and Clytemnestra are impassioned but occasionally relieved by a bleak humour as Elektra makes knowing asides to the audience.

Daniel Fish has intensified the concentration on Elektra herself by dispensing with the opening scene of the play in which Orestes plans with his old tutor (the Paedagogus) the ruse by which news of his supposed death is brought to Argos; and indeed Orestes himself, rather than the old man, delivers the hectic account of the chariot race which is supposed to have killed him. Again, with the use of microphones, this account comes across like an excited radio commentary of a modern race meeting. Though it is a little confusing to have blended the two male characters, the force of this "revelation", hard on the heels of Clytemnestra's blasphemous prayer that her dream should only come true if it is advantageous to her, indicates that she is actually trapped, though she does not yet know it. When Orestes finally reappears as himself clouds of mist envelop the stage rendering the climactic murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as spectral occurrences.

The consequences of this act of vengeance are not examined; Agamemnon's own guilt in sacrificing his daughter at the outset of the Trojan war is adduced by Clytemnestra as a justification for her actions, but her daughter utterly rejects the argument, so the focus is totally on Elektra's own predicament. With its stark setting and intense concentration on Elektra herself, it is a powerful play embodied here in a powerful production.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

adapted by Joel Horwood from Neil Gaiman's novel

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 28 April 2022

Katy Hudd directs Tom Mackley as Boy (on the night I attended), Nia Towle as Lettie Hempstock, Nicholas Tennant as the boy's father, Grace Hogg-Robinson as his sister, Penny Layden as old Mrs Hempstock, Siubhan Harrison as Ginnie Hempstock (her daughter and Lettie's mother) and Laura Rogers as Ursula in this imaginative adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel concerning the fateful irruption of a malignant spirit into the lives of the boy and his family, and the efforts of the mysterious Hempstocks to control and banish it.

The play begins as a reminiscence, the boy returning to his childhood home as a grown man while attending his father's funeral, but very soon we are in the thick of the real story as the boy meets and befriends the young girl Lettie just after having seen the body of the family lodger who had committed suicide. Though Gaiman's novels are aimed at a fairly young readership he does not pull his punches with some dark subjects; the boy has a panicked response which his father tries to assuage, but with typical English reticence much of the father's strategy is a matter of deflection. The Hempstocks seem preternaturally aware of the boy's predicament, but in their own way they are also not forthcoming, leaving him both intrigued and confused.

Lettie views the local village duckpond as an ocean, and this capacity, both fey and childlike, to see strange possibilities in the ordinary world is crucial in developing the atmosphere of the play and convincing us of the strange emanations which she and her family feel bound to monitor and control. The boy's means of coming to terms with the strangeness are bound up with his immersion in the Narnia books of C.S.Lewis (as Gaiman himself was), while his sister is of a more practical disposition: the tension between the siblings is palpable and convincing. When the strange spirit accidentally unleased on the world takes human form as the intrusive Ursula, the 'wicked stepmother' aspect of so many fairy tales takes on an all-too-believable abusive form in the modern world.

With an atmospheric use of the simplest stage effects - lighting, noise, dark shapes and diaphonous swirling sheets of fabric, the work of Fly Davis (set) and Jamie Harrison ('magic and illusions') among others - the numinous world threatening the boy and his family is thrillingly evoked, and the story resolves itself with a muted sense of the need for willing sacrifice and the consequent loss to those left behind. After the somewhat hectoring tone of Marys Seacole seen in the afternoon of the same day, it was a pleasure to witness masterly storytelling on stage.

Rosmersholm

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 29 May 2019

Ian Rickson directs Hayley Atwell as Rebecca West and Tom Burke as John Rosmer in Duncan Macmillan's new adaptation of Ibsen's play, with Lucy Briers as Mrs Helseth (the housekeeper), Giles Terera as Andreas Kroll (Rosmer's brother-in-law), Peter Wight as Ulrik Brendel (Rosmer's former tutor) and Jake Fairbrother as Peter Mortensgaard (a newspaper editor).

In classic Ibsen style the oppressive traditions of a family dynasty, the Rosmers of Rosmersholm, weigh heavily on Pastor John Rosmer, now living in the vast family mansion in mourning for his sick wife who leapt into the nearby millrace in despair (apparently) at not being able to bear children to carry on the family name. Rebecca West, sent by Kroll to be a companion to his sister in her illness, is still living in Rosmersholm, a soulmate and intellectual sparring partner of John Rosmer, a woman with an uncertain past who threatens Kroll's comfortable sense of masculine superiority. 

But there is more than simmering family dynamics here - there is a political situation as well. Kroll has not visited the house since his sister's death, but now he needs Rosmer's endorsement in the imminent elections for the governorship, in order to counter the scurrilous populists encouraged by Mortensgaard's gutterpress Lighthouse newspaper. Kroll proposes that Rosmer should become the nominal editor of the Tribune which he and his supporters have just purchased. He is astounded to discover that Rosmer wishes to remain neutral, and appalled even more when the Pastor confesses that he has lost his faith. Naturally he concludes that this is Rebecca's fault.

The free-spirited Rebecca, passionate about her right to think for herself and to control her destiny, is an obvious foil to Kroll, a man so convinced of the rightness of his views that he discounts the fact that his wife and children profoundly disagree with him. But as usual, Ibsen shows the damage idealism can cause as well as its allure - Brendel, an old tutor who doubtless first sowed the seeds of intellectual enquiry in the young Rosmer, is now a disreputable sponger, while Rebecca herself has to face unsuspected facts about her past which are truly awful: her intellectual mentor was more than he had seemed.

Rosmer, encouraged at first to break free from the legacy of his family, finds little solace in adventurous idealism as he loses Kroll's esteem and finds even Mortensgaard precipitately keen to drop him when he realises that an apostate pastor is of no use to his cause. And of course, to add to the ironies, it was Rosmer in his earlier days who had ruined Mortensgaard's life by publicly denouncing his adultery. He also finds Rebecca an enigma to the last, and the conventional solution of marrying her is not one that she can countenance.

All this and more is superbly supported in Rae Smith's design for this production. The horror of the house is emphasised by its grey walls studded with family portraits (at first gloomily covered by grey cloths). The light pouring in from the windows reveals a chilly atmosphere. Rosmer's abandoned faith is cleverly signified when his study is revealed: the wallpaper (silvery grey of course) is faded except for where a cross must once have stood against it: now just the outline remains, and above it another painting (of his wife? of a religious subject?) has also been removed, leaving a darker patch.

Hayley Atwell imbues Rebecca with fierce passion and a self-confidence which scandalises the more conventional Kroll - and perhaps the loyal housekeeper Mrs Helseth too - but the character's nervous tension is finely drawn, making her sudden collapse at Kroll's revelations all the more convincing. Tom Burke's Rosmer is also excellently done, a man of ideals finally trapped by the vast gulf between idealism and the day-to-day grind of life. These two carry the passionate weight of the play with complete ease.

Cogent political points are easy to score in today's climate where questions of personal responsibility for political views are all too relevant: the jibes at the ignorance of the voting population and the manipulations of a cynical press were all too resonant. But at the same time the dangers of self-indulgence on the part of the idealistic John Rosmer and Rebecca West were wonderfully intimated by the constant presence of silent servants performing their duties - moving furniture, bringing in flowers or candles, providing Rosmer with his house clothes or his outdoor gear - but also listening stupefied or nervously intrigued as their 'betters' sound off about personal freedom and economic improvement.

The power of Ibsen' vision, unflinchingly revealing that nothing can be just black or just white in this complex world of women and men, was fully evident in this fine production.

Summer and Smoke

by Tennessee Williams

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 21 November 2018

Rebecca Frecknall directs Patsy Ferran as Alma and Mathew Needham as John in this West End transfer of the Almeida production seen at their Islington theatre earlier in the year.

This 1948 play is given an impressionistic outing (designer Tom Scutt), which helps enormously with the fluid sequencing of the action, but also underlines the strange extremes of the situation. Rather than attempting to convey a hot Southern summer with a series of realistic sets, the stage is almost completely bare except for seven upright pianos ranged around the semi-circular back wall of the stage (here, a re-creation of the actual back brick wall of the Almeida theatre). Various characters play on the pianos - sometimes all seven are in use, and only Alma never plays one; and occasionally an actor will walk across the tops of the instruments.

The Moderate Soprano

by David Hare

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 26 April 2018

Jeremy Herrin directs Roger Allam as Captain John Christie and Nancy Carroll as his wife Audrey Mildmay in this play about the foundation of the Glyndebourne opera festival, with Paul Jesson as Dr Fritz Busch, Anthony Calf as professor Carl Ebert, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Rudolf Bing and Jade Williams as Jane Smith. The production is designed by Bob Crowley; it is a West End transfer of a play originally seen in Hampstead in 2015.

Although most of the characters speak straight to the audience at times (during scene changes) recollecting events of significance, the bulk of the play concentrates on Captain John Christie's determination in 1934 to build an opera house on his Sussex estate and to create an annual festival there in which his wife, a 'moderate' soprano, can shine. He employs three notable German refugees who are both baffled by Christie's ambition and eventually determined to make the festival work - even at the cost of weaning him from his desire to stage Parsifal in order to perform the more suitable repertoire of Mozart. This fascinating story is punctuated with several short scenes showing Audrey's fatal illness after the Second World War, with postscript of Christie's declining years as a widower.

The Glass Menagerie

by Tennessee Williams

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 15 April 2017

John Tiffany directs Cherry Jones as Amanda, Kate O'Flynn as Laura, Michael Esper as Tom and Brian J Smith as Jim in this excellent revival of Tennessee Williams's 'memory play'.

As the play is narrated by Tom, an aspiring poet (who may be seen as a stand-in for the author) we may expect it to be about his own struggle to escape the suffocating atmosphere of his family, and in particular of his over-bearing mother Amanda. She indeed manages the faded hopes of her life by keeping up appearances and talking, talking, talking in a way that would infuriate any young man with any strength of character. Cherry Jones portrays this difficult and at times infuriating woman with immense authority and dignity, which makes her power all the more pervasive, while Michael Esper as Tom shows us something of the strain of living up to such a mother's standards.