The Grönholm Effect

by Jordi Galceran

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 26 May 2018

B T McNicholl directs Jonathan Cke, Greg McHugh, Laura Pitt-Fulford and John Gordon Sinclair in this Spanish play (translated by Anne Garcia-Romero and Mark St. Germain) which recounts an interview process for an executive job in a high-flying but unspecified business. In this version the interview is taking place in New York, but the American setting is not crucial.

The four characters discover that this, their fourth round interview, is to be conducted jointly, which strikes them as odd. It soon becomes clear that the interview process itself is unconventional, as instead of meeting a panel, or even a single person, the four are presented with a series of tasks and challenges, the instructions arriving impersonally in envelopes addressed to one or more of them which appear in a mysteriously opening drawer at appropriate times.

Nell Gwynn

by Jennifer Swale

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 3 May 2017

Christopher Luscombe directs this revival of Jennifer Swale's 2015 play about the career of Nell Gwynn who began life in the seedy streets of Covent Garden and became the mistress of King Charles II. Laura Pitt-Pulford plays Nell and Ben Righton the king, with able support from the company playing courtiers and actors.

The play is not an historical documentary, but is broadly accurate in depicting Nell's career and her undoubted charm, skill as an actress, and personal attachment to the king, far less mercenary or politically ambitious than his more aristocratic mistresses (embodied in Lady Castlemaine). It cleverly makes use of dramatic conventions and the introduction of women on the stage to involve the audience in the spirit of the times; the Globe's groundlings in the pit make the opening scene a dazzling example of the excitement a good performance in this theatre can evoke, even though it was decidedly cold on this afternoon and the number of groundlings was perhaps the smallest I have seen.