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 James 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 costumes and swaggering panache, with Cyrano, the main character, a self-defined misfit in an age where physical attractiveness is held to be essential in the world of love.

Betrayal

by Harold Pinter

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 17 May 2019

Jamie Lloyd directs Tom Hiddleston as Robert, Zawe Ashton as Emma (his wife) and Charlie Cox as Jerry (his best friend) in a superb revival of Pinter's play about a the inricacies ad emotional costs of betrayal.

The design by Soutra Gilmour is mesmerisingly austere - a pastel shaded backdrop which occasionally slides forward; a grey floor containing a two-part revolve; a couple of chairs; at one stage a flimsy fold-out table; a few bottles of drinks (water or wine). This forces all the attention on the actors and on the psychological processes of the characters, and allows for maximum fluidity in a play that famously presents its story in reverse, starting with a meeting between Emma and Jerry two years after their seven-year affair has ended, and working gradually backwards until the first occasion on which Jerry confessed his love for Emma.