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.

Young Marx

by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 20 December 2017

Nicholas Hytner directs Rory Kinnear as Karl Marx, Nancy Carroll as Jenny von Westphalen, Oliver Chris as Friedrich Engels and Laura Elphinstone as Helene Dumuth in this inaugural production of the Bridge Theatre situated in one of the new developments on the south-west side of Tower Bridge.

The play concentrates on the early years of Marx's life in London when he and his wife Jenny and four children (in the play, only two) and Helene Dumuth were living in a two-room flat in Dean Street Soho. Though some events have been 're-arranged' so that they can appear within this setting and time frame, the scenes presented in the play are essentially 'true', though at the same time the playwrights have noticed the farcical elements of the situation and have consequently emphasised Marx's larrikin nature as a young man.

Closer

by Patrick Marber

seen at the Donmar Warehouse 19 March 2015

This is the first London professional revival of Patrick Marber's 1997 play, sanctioned by the playwright. Directed by David Leveaux it features Rufus Sewell as Larry, Nancy Carroll as Anna, Olver Chris as Dan and Rachel Redford as Alice, with the set designed by Bunny Christie and the lighting by Hugh Vanstone.

The characters meet by chance or in the course of their working lives; at first Alice and Dan are together after an accidental meeting resulting from a traffic injury. Anna and Larry become interested in one another, having met as a consequence of an extraordinary (and theatrically famous) internet chat session in which Anna was impersonated by Dan. But Dan also falls for Anna; Larry eventually takes up with Alice; finally all have gone their separate ways and no-one is happy. The headlong sense of entitlement and an uneasy sense that one should be 'honest' no matter the cost means that most of the professions of love are basically self-centred and the idea of day-to-day commitment comes a sorry last in anyone's priorities.