Love's Labour's Lost

by William Shakespeare

seen in the gardens of Braboeuf Manor, Guildford on 25 July 2026

The Guildford Shakespeare Company and the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond have created joint open-air productions of both Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing for their summer seasons (quite usual for the GSC, but particularly apt for the Orange Tree, the auditorium for which is undergoing major renovations this summer). Tom Littler from the Orange Tree directs a cast of ten in the two plays, and he has devised ways to link them so that they appear to deal with the same characters before and after the Second World War. This is achieved by a few textual adjustments, but principally by assigning character names from each play to four couples and some assorted others. Thus the plays are linked more explicitly than in a similar exercise presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company eleven years ago (the RSC placed the plays on either side of the First World War and disposed the members of the cast differently).

In Love's Labour's Lost the four young male courtiers of the original are perfectly plausible as 1930's Oxbridge undergraduates (or perhaps they have recently graduated), their aspirations for living hopelessly out of touch with the world of real relationships and awkwardly insistent feelings. The visiting ladies soon scupper their idealistic fantasy of a three year retreat from feminine company, but the social comedy remains untouched almost until the end by the weightier matters of the real world. Even the lesser characters, decidedly from lower social strata, are ostensibly free from want or anxiety.

As in Much Ado (seen last week) James Sheldon gives a tremendously assured performance as Berowne/Benedick, a vital asset as these two characters (here presented as essentially the same person) must be convincing and charismatic for the plays to succeed as entertainment. The supporting cast manages the elaborate wordplay of Love's Labour's Lost with great panache, and often at dazzling speed, allowing us to be impressed by their mastery of the text rather than bamboozled by the now unfamiliar rhetorical wizardry.

The brittle make-believe world of the play is famously shattered in its concluding moments by the arrival of an unavoidably serious message for the Princess: the death of her father. The desperate and perhaps forlorn attempts of the young couples to retrieve something from this interruption by promises to revive their interest in one another after a suitable period of mourning, reflection and seeing to their new responsibilities is handled with due sobriety, and we the audience have some inkling that these four pairs of young people will have a "second chance" in the later Much Ado About Nothing.

The play ends with contrasting Spring and Winter songs concerning respectively the cuckoo and the owl. The text does not assign the songs to characters previously named; in this production Costard (here, an innkeeper) takes the lyrics for spring and Holofernes those for winter. At first they recited them, which had the curious effect of reminding me of reciting poetry in primary school classes, before they were repeated in song. I have seen productions in which the tunes for the two parts were utterly different, reflecting their different seasons, but here the same tune was used throughout. The overall effect was surprisingly poignant: the world of easy love-play was certainly giving way to something more serious.

Much Ado about Nothing

by William Shakespeare

seen in the gardens of Braboeuf Manor, Guildford on 18 July 2026

The Guildford Shakespeare Company and the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond have created joint open-air productions of both Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing for their summer seasons (quite usual for the GSC, but particularly apt for the Orange Tree, the auditorium for which is undergoing major renovations this summer). Tom Littler from the Orange Tree directs a cast of ten in the two plays, and he has devised ways to link them so that they appear to deal with the same characters before and after the Second World War. This is achieved by a few textual adjustments, but principally by assigning character names from each play to four couples and some assorted others. Thus the plays are linked more explicitly than in a similar exercise presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company eleven years ago (the RSC placed the plays on either side of the First World War and disposed the members of the cast differently).

By chance I have seen the "second" play first, and have thus watched the soldiers returning from the war, variously affected by its violence: Benedick Berowne suffers nightmares, while the affable Longeuville has become the treacherous John. But the linkings are a minor matter; the principal pleasure is to be gained from the excellence of the production of a fine play. Beatrice (Phoebe Pryce) and Benedick (James Sheldon) remain the dazzling sparring couple perfectly believable in the heady days of victory in the mid-1940s, while the plot to denigrate Hero (Joëlle Brabant) and humiliate Claudio (Chirag Benedict Lobo) unfolds around them in a milieu where mistrust could very easily develop due to the years-long parting of sweethearts. The comic village constabulary with the pompous Dogberry (Matt Pinches, doubling also as the villainous John) in charge are suitably re-imagined as members of the local home guard in a nod to Dad's Army.

In a corner of the extensive gardens of the former Guildford College of Law the setting was imagined to be a rural village pub festooned with victory bunting but apparently not much used during the war years. Great trees provided a magnificent backdrop and a vital sounding board, and also much needed shade for the actors in a matinee performance (the audience was less fortunate in this respect). Once again the GSC has provided a really enjoyable al fresco production of a Shakespeare play.

Black Comedy

by Peter Shaffer

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 2 July 2026

Caroline Steinbeis directs Joe Bannister as Brindsley Miller, Leah Haile as his fiancée Carol Melkett, Jason Barnett as her father Colonel Melkett, Julia Hills as Brindsley's neighbour Miss Furnival, Simon Manyonda as his other neighbour Harold Gorringe, Patricia Allison as his former girlfriend Clea, Chris Chilton as Schuppanzigh (an employee of the London Electricity Board) and Javier Marzan as Georg Bamberger, a wealthy recluse, in Peter Shaffer's one-act farce Black Comedy.

The action takes place on an evening of chaos (naturally): Brindsley and Carol prepare to dazzle her father and Baumgartner who are about to visit Brindsley's down-at-heel flat. To do this they have surreptitiously "borrowed" impressive items - furniture and knickknacks - from Gorringe's flat in his absence. Suddenly the entire building suffers a blackout during which unexpected visitors turn up and complicate the situation in the ridiculous way in which farces usually operate.

The dazzling visual technique by which all this is managed for the audience's benefit is that the opening scene in which there is electric light is played in total darkness, while the scenes in blackout are played with full stage lighting so we can see all the characters blindly feeling their way about the room. Striking a match or clicking on a cigarette lighter reduces the lighting to a subdued glow. This witty convention allows for any number of tremendous sight gags as characters try to find one another, hand out drinks, or in Brindsley's case try to move furniture into and out of the room. The arrival of a new character can be "concealed" until he or she chooses to speak, providing yet another avenue for laughs.

The physical comedy is rendered even more remarkable as the play is here performed in the round, so the gags have to be convincing from multiple angles; the small acting space means that drinks are occasionally passed in error to members the audience, and some are directly addressed by characters who mis-place where other people are in the room.

The cast and creative team (set and costume designer.Simon Daw, lighting designer Elliott Griggs and physical comedy consultant John Nicholson among others) have done the play proud, and have revealed the astonishing variety of Peter Shaffer's talent - he wrote this play within months of the epic The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Yet though this seems far removed from the high seriousness of his full-length dramas there remains beneath the surface a strong undercurrent of uncertainty and betrayal; Brindsley is tying himself in knots and unwittingly causing damage to himself as well as those around him as he persists in seeing himself only as a victim of circumstances. However, the strongest impression is of immense theatrical fun.

Vincent in Brixton

by Nicholas Wright

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 19 March 2026

Georgia Green directs Jeroen Frank Kales as Vincent van Gogh, Amber van der Brugge as his younger sister Anna, Niamh Cusack as Ursula Loyer, who becomes his landlady in Brixton (Stockwell actually), Ayesha Ostler as her daughter Eugenie and Rawaed Asde as Sam Plowman, the other lodger in the house.

The twenty-year-old Vincent came to London as an employee of his uncle's art dealership (headquarters in The Hague); naturally he was short of money and looking for affordable lodgings within relatively easy reach of his office. The play opens as he is just finishing an interview with Ursula Loyer, who agrees that he might move in, and even offers him Sunday lunch immediately.

The boy is callow and opinionated, and fairly brusque in the manner of a foreigner grappling with English. He is also emotionally needy and immediately fixates on Ursula's daughter Eugenie, only to be rebuffed by her - she and the other lodger, the easy-going Sam, are already an "item". Ursula initially wants to withdraw her offer of the lodging, but agrees that he may stay if he forgoes any thought of paying court to Eugenie.

It's a situation bristling with tension, made worse by the veneer of respectability required to preserve Ursula's position as the head of a small boys' school (the students meet in the front room of the house).  When Vincent transfers his affections from daughter to mother the situation inevitably becomes more fraught; and when his censorious sister Anna comes to live in the house matters only become even more difficult, and Vincent acquiesces in a family plan to move him to Paris. And yet, some time later, when he, full of unwelcome evangelical fervour, makes a brief call to the house, there is the first glimmer of his future career as he begins to sketch his work boots lying on a newspaper on the table - a knowing reference to one of his celebrated paintings.

In the small space of the Orange Tree the kitchen is suitably cramped, especially as there is a functioning cooker in use to one side, and a table for preparing vegetables in the middle, as Ursula prepares the Sunday lunch. But the space is ideally suited for the intimacy of the piece, and the cast perform it very well. Vincent's earnestness it utterly compelling and the pitfalls awaiting his naiveté all the more wrenching to appreciate. The weird subversion of "respectable" Victorian values espoused by the household are a trap for the unwary, yet they seem completely plausible. In the capable hands of Niamh Cusack Ursula Loyer, the still-grieving widow of fifteen years who flourishes in Vincent's attentions, but is crushed again when he leaves, provides a strong counterpoint to her more famous lodger. Knowing the mental instability that would bedevil Vincent's later career, it is fascinating to see the warning signs in this intriguing play.

 

Dance of Death

by August Strindberg

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 4 March 2026

Richard Eyre adapted Strindberg's bleak play Dance of Death and directs Will Keen as Edgar, Lisa Dillon as his wife Alice and Geoffrey Streatfeild as Kurt her cousin in an intense and yet at times darkly comic production.

Edgar and Alice have been married for almost twenty-five years; he is a captain on an island which is enduring quarantine due to an epidemic (in this version, the 1918/19 flu epidemic, though the play was written in 1900, and in the original the couple's social isolation is entirely of their own making). The marriage is miserable, though one senses a weary sort of camaraderie beneath the constant sniping and bickering. It's all very well playing games of that sort (and it has become a sturdy theatrical tradition with echoes in the work of Albee, Pinter and others), but there is always a risk of overplaying one's hand, or of losing control due to unforeseen circumstances.

Cue the arrival of Kurt, whom Edgar purports to hold responsible for "trapping" him into marrying Alice, and who is uneasily drawn into the toxic atmosphere through sympathising with his cousin, unaware that his own now dissolved marriage has also been contaminated by Edgar's meddling. And furthermore, Edgar is actually unwell, though it is hard to tell whether he is using his illness as ammunition, or is genuinely running the risk of incapacitation. In this production Will Keen gives a mesmeric performance of draining physicality as he spasms with heart failure and veers between fighting for control with all his military experience of fierce disciple, and succumbing to the terror of dying. His grunts and facial tics are astonishing manifestations of years of repression as much as of physical decline, and it turns out to be foolish of Alice to imagine that now is the time to gain the upper hand.

Lisa Dillon's Alice, fluttering with self-deprecation but usually able to hold her own, exhibits mounting desperation while at the same time revealing a morbid dependence. At one level this is the classic dilemma of the victim of an abusive relationship, but paradoxically here she remains unbowed and in a strange way unbeaten. Kurt's stolid diffidence finally fails to protect him from the fireworks, but after he has left Alice and Edgar are still contemplating their approaching silver wedding anniversary.

At such close quarters the play could have been stultifying and melodramatic, but in the hands of these actors, and with Richard Eyre's inspired realisation that there is a disquieting vein of comedy running through the misery, it was thrilling to watch and horribly fascinating. 

The Rivals

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 8 December 2025

Tom Littler directs a revival of Sheridan's first really successful play to celebrate its 250th anniversary, re-setting it in the Wodehousian world of the 1920s, "about as modern as you can go," he says in a programme note, "before the plot makes no sense". (In any period it stretches the bounds of credulity, but that is partly its point.)

Kit Young plays Captain Jack Absolute, who has disguised himself as Sergeant Beverley to win the affections of Lydia Languish (Zoe Brough), a girl lost in dreams of romantic poverty inspired by reading sentimental novels. Their liaison has been discovered and forbidden by Lydia's aunt Mrs Malaprop (a wonderful Patricia Hodge, managing the lady's hilarious mangling of language with unerring dexterity). 

All very predictable, but the comedy intensifies when Mrs Malaprop and Jack's father Sir Anthony (Robert Bathurst) agree that Jack should marry Lydia (essentially for her fortune, so far as Sir Anthony is concerned). Jack at first refuses his father's overbearing pressure to marry under instruction, until he discovers who the intended bride is, and then he must juggle being Beverley and Jack to try to keep everyone happy, knowing that Lydia will not be impressed at being forced to marry a captain. Subplots abound, involving Lydia's cousin and Jack's friends, and Mrs Malaprop's clandestine flirtation via letters to the ludicrous Lucius O'Trigger (re-imagined as an American tycoon/"typhoon" rather than an Irish chancer).

The transition to the glamorous (and highly unrealistic) world of giddy young flappers bewildering their old-school elders works remarkably well, and the cast manage multiple scene changes in semi-darkness with consummate aplomb, blending the removal and replacement of furniture items with sophisticated dance-steps to bright 1920s-style music. The high level of energy and speed of delivery make for an invigorating and amusing evening, and the text, which could sound rather stilted if kept in its original 18th-century milieu, fizzed with the glitter of the play's updated setting.

Hedda

by Tanika Gupta inspired by Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 21 October 2025

Hettie Macdonald directs Pearl Chanda as Hedda, Joe Bannister as George (Jörgen) Tesman, Milo Twomey as John Brack, Bebe Cave as Alice Smith (Mrs Elvsted), Jake Mann as Leonard (Ejlert Lövborg), Rina Fatania as Shona (Berte) and Caroline Harker as Aunt Julia (Juliane) in Tanika Gupta's adaptation of Ibsen's 1890 play Hedda Gabler, cleverly re-imagined as taking place in London in 1948.

In this setting Hedda is a film star of the 1930s and 40s determined to retire rather than keep up the pretence of her public persona. The social constraints which suffocate the original Hedda are here replaced by the trauma created by long suppressing her identity as an Anglo-Indian in order to succeed in a film world bedevilled by ingrained racism (the parallel with the careers of such stars as Merle Oberon is obvious). Aristocratic hauteur is replaced by Hedda's consuming insecurity masked by reserve, but the consequent ruthlessness remains as formidable as ever.

Around her the constellation of hapless academics - her second-rate husband and the fragile alcoholic genius - are replaced by rival screenwriters, and the calculating judge Brack by a powerful film producer. In perhaps the boldest realignment, the household servant becomes Hedda's ayah; the menfolk and Aunt Julia cannot understand the hold this figure has on her mistress, but there is a clever twist which explains all to us but remains opaque to the characters. on stage

The great scenes of the original - the disparaging of Julia's hat, the condescension towards George, the manipulation of Alice and the corruption of Leonard, Brack's machinations - all survive and thrive in this new atmosphere, and the cast deliver exemplary performances in a fascinating variation on Ibsen's themes. The evocation of the prejudiced world of glamorous film-making is transmitted with shocking directness when the men talk contemptuously about half-castes, and the threat to Hedda's position is made abundantly clear when the details of Leonard's screenplay are discussed - he has used Hedda's own story in fictional form to create what the others see, without irony, as a masterpiece of cinema, where she sees only an unforgivable personal betrayal. (In the original the details of Lövborg's manuscript are not revealed.)

There is thus slightly more melodrama in the situation, but nonetheless this was a fascinating evening.

Creditors

by August Strindberg adapted by Howard Brenton

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 16 September 2025

Tom Littler directs Charles Dance as Gustaf, Geraldine James as Tekla and Nicholas Farrell as Adolf in Strindberg's 1889 acute psychological drama about a strained marriage (Tekla's and Adolf's) and the disruptive influence of a third party.

In a set of aseptic creams and blues designed by Louie Whitemore representing a hotel at a Swedish sea-side resort Gustaf has befriended Adolf and persuaded him to shift from painting to sculpture to revive his flagging inspiration. Despite a short friendship - barely more than a week - they start to discuss Adolf's marriage. Gustaf's probing and apparently authoritative manner soon expose Adolf's insecurities while none-too-subtly denigrating the absent Tekla. Since Tekla had left her first husband to take up with Adolf there is fertile ground for undermining Adolf's confidence in her current fidelity. Clearly a man so easily persuaded to change the medium of his artistic expression is also suggestible in other areas of his life.

On Tekla's return Gustaf retreats to a room from where he can eavesdrop while husband and wife confront one another, moving rapidly from kittenish playfulness to lacerating criticism, and finally, in a surprising twist, Gustaf and Tekla cross swords. The play therefore is a series of dialogues; apart from a final brief tableau there are only ever two characters on stage at a time, and the intense encounters are thus tightly wound, sometimes resembling (to modern eyes and ears) informal therapy sessions made unhealthy by the ulterior motives of the participants.

One can see here the precursor to the styles and preoccupations of many subsequent dramatists: the veiled threat of insinuation so expertly wielded by Pinter; the backstory of long-simmering tensions precipitating a crisis often used by Eugene O'Neill; the unexpected twist forcing a late re-evaluation beloved by Edward Albee; even the barbs underlying social niceties which give some of Noel Coward's plays their unexpected bite amidst uneasy humour. In the hands of these three masterful actors the dynamics fizz and the acuity of Strindberg's dissection of an unsatisfactory marriage is brilliantly explored.

The drawcard of this particular cast - apart from their obvious expertise and long theatrical experience - is that the three actors have not been seen together since they appeared in the famed TV series The Jewel in the Crown more than forty years ago. However, such an extraneous frisson pales into insignificance once the performance starts: we are simply witnesses to an incisive theatrical experience.

Poor Clare

by Chiara Atik

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 7 August 2025

Blanche McIntyre directs Arsema Thomas as Clare, Freddy Carter as Francis, Anushka Chakravarti as Beatrice (Clare's sister). Hermione Gulliford as Ortolana (Clare's mother), Liz Kettle as Peppa and Jacoba Williams as Alma (servants in the household), and George Ormerod as a beggar in Chiara Atik's exploration of the career of St Clare of Assisi.

In a series of short scenes (managed with confidence and aplomb by ASMs in costumes as further servants in Clare's family household) we see Clare develop from being the typical product of a prosperous family with expectations of social standing and a marriage of convenience, to becoming a follower of the extraordinary path laid out by St Francis. 

Clare is sassy and opinionated, but completely sheltered from the the vicissitudes of life: when she and her sister are accosted by a beggar they scream in fright and run off as quickly as possible. It is only after encountering the newly scandalous Francis that she begins to rethink her priorities, though the lessons in absolute charity and renunciation of privilege are not easy to learn or to live out. Beatrice finds sharing a bed with a sister who has decided to wear a hair shirt profoundly uncomfortable; impulsive gifts to servants cause confusion in the household; attempts to run a 'clothing drive' for the poor are a bit ham-fisted. Clare is appalled that Francis will not act as a go-between to distribute the clothes she, her family and their friends have collected, and then she has to face the fact that well-meaning charity is not always well received by its recipients, because it may not be what they really need.

The play is written in an extremely modern idiom, though dressed in medieval costume. It's deliberately disorienting to hear modern expressions from the mouths of ladies in rich brocades or servant women in homespun, and even more so to have everyone speak in American accents - a deliberate nod to the playwright's origin, and a reminder that the issues facing Clare as a well-to-do person are still with us today: the play closes with an impassioned speech about moral responsibility in the modern world.

Clare's own progress towards her ultimate desire to break with her family and fully embrace Francis's doctrines seems like an exciting adventure in many ways; the growing friendship between the two has an easy familiarity once her initial bafflement subsides. Only at the very end of the play, when Clare asks to be tonsured and realises that Francis does not intend that they shall live in the same place - indeed that he intends to 'enclose' her, effectively sealing her off from the world in which he roams freely - does the full enormity of the step she is taking begin to sink in. We barely have time to register the shock of the disparity between what Francis imagines his male and his female followers are fit for, and there is no time to explore the further career of poor Clare as she becomes the founder of the Poor Clares.

In its own terms though, the play is fascinating, and the next stage of Clare's life is sensibly beyond its scope. Francis himself still seems to be finding his way as his boyish enthusiasms come up against stubborn reality, though he is adept at finding creative solutions (for example, appealing directly to the pope to forestall an unsympathetic local bishop) or in accepting from Clare some modifications to his grandiose plans for decorating a ruined chapel. His authoritative attitude to her future career seems like a harbinger from a different world, after his initial suggestions for what she might think about or do have been couched in rather more modern terms of giving hints rather than commands. 

The next chapter of their lives raises different issues for which the at times irreverent style of this play would hardly be suitable; the appeal to us to rethink our attitude to the poor among us would have been dulled by any attempt to grapple with the austere institution of an enclosed order of nuns.

In Praise of Love

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 30 May 2025

Amelia Sears directs Dominic Rowan as Sebastian Cruttwell, Claire Price as Lydia Crutwell, Daniel Abelson as Mark Walters and Joe Edgar as Joey Crutwell in a revival of Rattigan's 1973 play in which British reserve is taken to extraordinary lengths as the married couple Lydia and Sebastian try to protect one another from knowledge which each thinks will devastate the other.

Sebastian Cruttwell, exaggerating his pose as a curmudgeonly leftie theatre critic, appears abominably cavalier with his wife, expecting her to see to his every need and to solve the most trivial domestic problems (such as switching on the heater, or plugging in a desk lamp, when he complains the they do not work). Lydia, therefore, is convinced that he would be unable to function without her, despite the fact that he seems to treat her with casual contempt. Rattigan excels at scenes of domestic disharmony in which more is plainly going on than the surface dialogue admits; here are two people, married for twenty-eight years, who seem on the verge of being at loggerheads in the style of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - but we don 't have to wait till the end of the play to understand what is at stake: Lydia soon confides in her friend Mark what she is doing. The surprise comes later, when Sebastian also risks a confidential conversation with the same friend, who thus has too much information to know what to do for the best.

Unwittingly caught in this tense situation is the young Joey, infuriating his father by working for the Liberal Party, and aspiring to be a dramatist, very aware of his father's disdain but still all-too-easily hurt by it, and even aware of his mother's tendency to manipulate him, but helpless to avoid it. There is much impassioned talk about the importance of honesty even as both parents are concealing feelings and knowledge in the most brazen way.

I am trying to account for the subtleties in this play without giving away the plot details; suffice it to say that Rattigan's skill in dramatising these sorts of situations, pregnant with undercurrents that cannot be resolved in the way current fashion dictates - or even with the tentative glimmer of hope that flickers at the end of Albee's celebrated play - is undiminished, and the cast in this revival rise to the challenge of portraying these flawed well-meaning people with great success. There is a rapprochement between Joey and his father, even though Sebastian still cannot explain to his son why he has missed a crucial chance to see the boy's first television play - love may be praised as much as honesty, but the practice of it remains hard work and is often compromised.

 

Ben and Imo

by Mark Ravenhill

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 8 May 2025

Erica Whyman directs Samuel Barnett as Benjamin Britten and Victoria Yeates as Imogen Holst in a production transferred from the RSC's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon of Mark Ravenhill's new play exploring the beginning of the long working relationship between the composer and his 'musical assistant'.

Imogen Holst, the daughter of the composer Gustav Holst, famously denigrated her own skills as a composer, and spent her life dedicated to the idea that music should be available to all, and that all who wanted to should participate in it. She encouraged music-making among evacuees in the West Country during the Second World War, taught at Dartington Hall for nine years, and was encouraged to go to Aldeburgh in 1952 to assist Benjamin Britten while he composed Gloriana, an opera commissioned by the new Arts Council to be performed at the Coronation Gala on 8 June 1953. Britten had agreed to the commission (out of a sense of duty, it is claimed in this play), but never found composing as easy as it had been when he was a teenager, and he resented the interference of others outside his immediate circle. 

Holst arrived in Aldeburgh with virtually no luggage and rented a room above a shop, intending to stay for less than a year. She spent the rest of her life based there, dying in 1984. She not only assisted Britten in the preparation of the opera, but continued to work with him for more than a decade afterwards (despite strains in their relationship) and was a significant contributor to the success of the annual Aldeburgh Festival until she retired in 1977.

The two personalities, so very different from each other, make for an intense two-handed play. Samuel Barnett captures Britten's curious mixture of arrogance, self-assurance and neediness, while Victoria Yeates portrays Holst's free-spiritedness and verve while hinting at the insecurities and loneliness which they mask. Inevitably, under the pressure of the commission, sparks fly despite her admiration for his genius and his resentful realisation that he needs someone like her to help with his work. In an explosion of anger Britten delivers some staggeringly cruel blows; the devastated Holst nevertheless stays, but with a steely announcement that she will neither forget nor forgive. 

The working relationship which brought Ben and Imo together is given its due without descending into too much technical explanation (it is never made entirely clear what Imo spends all her time doing, though there are hints of how careful she has to be not to tread on Ben's professional toes). In the meantime the personal relationship is revealed to be complex: sometimes workmanlike, sometimes extremely playful, sometimes warm, and yet at times quite abusive. What I found fascinating was that for all Britten's defensive cruelties and childish tantrums, Holst, though battered, kept rising to the occasion due to the force of her own character and her profound belief in the value of what she was doing. The personal cost to her may have been high, but she was determined not to let it crush her.

On a purely contingent level, the performance was remarkable for two unwanted interruptions. Soon after it began someone's phone rang (despite clear requests to ensure that such a thing would not happen), and Victoria Yeates, in her imperious Imo voice, asked for it to be dealt with: quite bizarre to hear a person supposedly in 1952 address such a modern irritation. Then a few minutes later the whole performance was suspended for the best part of ten minutes while a technical problem with the sound (I think) was addressed - although it may have been that the revolve was not working since it only turned when the performance resumed. The professionalism of the two actors in these trying circumstances was exemplary.

The play was originally performed on a thrust stage; here, with the audience on all four sides of the acting space, an adjustment had been made by the designer Sutra Gilmour, whereby Ben's piano was on a revolve in the centre, which periodically turned 90 degrees so that the actors could plausibly face in different directions during the performance. This in turn meant that all the static furniture - a music-score carrel, a standing lamp, a small trolley, a small bookcase and an armchair - had to be moved appropriately by the two actors. It was very well done.

Playhouse Creatures

by April De Angelis

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 10 April 2025

When the official London theatres re-opened in the 1660s after an 18-year hiatus acting skills and traditions had been lost and there were no trained boys to take on the female roles as they had done in Shakespeare's and Jonson's days. For the first time women were on stage professionally, but it was not without controversy and what we would now call trolling.

Playhouse Creatures concerns five such actresses, the unimpeachable Mrs Betterton (Anna Chancellor), married to the important theatrical manager Thomas Betterton, Mrs Marshall (Katherine Kingsley), Mrs Farley (Nicole Sawyerr), Doll Common (Doña Croll) and of course the up-and-coming Nell Gwyn (Zoe Brough). The title "Mrs" was a sop to respectability, and did not necessarily imply the presence or even existence of a corresponding "Mr", while Doll Common was actually Katherine Corey, forever associated with a part she played in Jonson's The Alchemist.

April De Angelis has created a play examining the highs and lows of these women's experiences, including some amusing pastiches of the kinds of roles for which they became famous - there was always an element of ogling involved on the part of the audience, not to say outright harassment, and though actresses could be taken up by aristocrats and even the King, they could also be dropped and vilified. The play covers all these eventualities in episodes mostly based on historical fact (though there were actually two Marshall sisters).

The play seems to be the dream reminiscence of Doll Common, portrayed here more as a wardrobe mistress and long-term confidante of Mrs Betterton than as an actress in her own right. The irrepressible Nell bursts into the lives of the others with blithe insouciance and an astonishingly resilient self-belief. Mrs Fawley is not so lucky, her career effectively destroyed by an unwanted pregnancy. No amount of sisterly sympathy can overcome the social disgrace once Mrs Fawley quails at the awful realities of an abortion (in the intimacy of the Orange Tree I suspect most of the audience was relieved that she called a halt to proceedings after the first probe proved too much to endure).

Here directed by Michael Oakley, the Orange Tree stage is used to excellent effect as principally a backstage space where the actresses can confer, advise and support one another. The rowdy audiences are just noises off, and a dialogue between Mrs Betterton and her husband, in which she puts the case for actresses owning shares in their company, is all the more poignant for us hearing only one side of the conversation: this as much as anything reminds us that the women's world was totally circumscribed by male power just out of sight.

Churchill in Moscow

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 3 March 2025

Tom Littler directs Roger Allam as Churchill and Peter Forbes as Stalin, with Julius d'Silva as Molotov (Soviet Foreign Minister), Alan Cox as Archie Clark Kerr (British ambassador to the USSR), Tamara Greatrex as Svetlana Stalin, Jo Herbert as the British interpreter Sally Powell and Elisabeth Snegir as the Russian interpreter Olga Dovzhenko in Howard Brenton's play concerning the meeting Churchill had with Stalin in Moscow in August 1942. (The main characters are historical, but the two interpreters are fictional).

The principal reason for Churchill's journey was to inform Stalin personally that the Allies had decided that it was impossible to launch an invasion of western Europe immediately: it would have to wait until at least 1943 (in the event, the D-Day landings and the invasion of Italy did not take place until 1944). He felt that a face to face meeting was essential to deliver this bad news in good faith, rather than relying on telegrams or telephone calls. But it was of course a delicate matter, as the German invasion of the USSR had begun and the battle of Stalingrad actually began while Churchill was in Moscow.

Brenton makes good use of the interpreters he has chosen to invent. At the opening of the play Stalin speaks in Russian, requiring the audience to wait until Olga translates into English before understanding. In an inspired move, Churchill then speaks in complete gobbledygook, so that once again we must wait for Sally to interpret before we understand his response. This technique is used sparingly; most of the time English is spoken throughout, though the business of interpreting continues unobtrusively except when either Station or Churchill mistrusts what is being said or requires (or impatiently dismisses) immediate clarification. The interactions of the wider delegations are suggested b y the occasional presence of Molotov and Kerr, while the teenage Svetlana wanders around practising her English by reading David Copperfield until she is briefly introduced to Churchill during a late-night confab between the two leaders.

This was of course an extremely consequential meeting; the seriousness of the issues is always before us even as the outsize personalities of both the leaders dominate the stage. Wisely neither actor simply imitates the historical character. Roger Allam has something of Churchill's awkward gait and rhetorical flair, and his curious dress sense (for much of the time he is in a boiler suit, except for being in a nightshirt one evening and formal wear for the reception the next). Stalin, in his usual military style dress, speaks with a West Country accent, cleverly indicating the Georgian provincialism sneered at by the urban Russian elites.

The presence of the interpreters not only provides some comic relief arising from their tasks. They also have a brief interaction outside their official capacities injecting a slight nod to the anxieties and prejudices of the ordinary people enduring the war and the volatile political tensions surrounding them. And Brenton uses the idea of interpretation and the responsibility of the translating staff to be accurate - whether literally or thematically - as an intriguing emollient to the fractious and potentially disastrous rift which otherwise seems impossible to bridge. Despite their qualms, it seems that the interpreters saved the day.

A thoroughly enjoyable insight into what to many (myself included) is a little-known meeting.

The Misfortune of the English

by Pamela Carter

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 26 May 2022

Oscar Toeman directs Hubert Burton as Harrison, Vinnie Heaven as Eaton, Matthew Tennyson as Lyons, and Éva Magyar as a tour guide in Pamela Carter's new play The Misfortune of the English, concerning the fateful excursion of some twenty-seven London schoolboys in the Black Forest in 1936, during which five of them died as the result of an ill-adivsed hike into a snowstorm.

Politics swirled around the tragedy, with the Nazi government extolling the role of boys from the local Hitler Youth in rescuing many of the English boys (ignoring the contribution of the adults involved), and the teacher who led the expedition later being exonerated of any culpability though he ignored the advice of locals warning him of the oncoming storm.

The play however is focussed on three of the boys and their immediate experience setting out on the day of the hike. Secure in their Englishness, buoyed up by the inspirational ethos of their school (the Strand School of London, imitating the great public schools in its mission to produce men of good character) and the charismatic flair of their teacher, they reveal a turn of mind all too easy to parody in these more cynical days, but our sympathy is caught by the boys' guileless enthusiasm and amusingly patronising willingness to explain themselves (and their Latin). The encroaching horror of the situation is masked by their breezy assumption that all will be well, and their creeping doubts are tempered by esprit de corps and a fateful uwillingness to display weakness to their fellows.

Dressed in schoolboy grey trousers and maroon jackets (Lyons is still in short trousers, to his mortification), amused by the foreignness of German customs, flattered to be consulted as to hiking plans rather than being told what to do, but completely unaware of the bias in the way proposals are phrased, the boys are a mixture of high hope, woeful naivety and misplaced self confidence. Pamela Carter is concerned to extrapolate from this particular story to a more general exposure of the inherent flaws in the character building so beloved by adults. The damage runs unchecked through the enthusiasms of the boys as they explain how all is right with the world in which they feel that acknowledgement of their privileged position is sufficent guarantee that they will always be safe.

With such a careful evocation of attitudes which most people nowadays would find antiquated, and a general attention to the kinds of ideas the boys would have espoused and the ways in whih they would express them, it was jarring to hear the occasional modern idiom, most notably describing a popular boy as 'cool' and referring to 'out of the box thinking'. Apart from these lapses the period was well observed, while the young actors playing the boys caught the infectious enthusiasms of early adolescence as well as its determination not to admit to weakness or ignorance. With no adults actually embodied on stage (the guide hailed from modern times) the approaching disaster felt cruelly impersonal, as indeed it plausibly might have seemed to the boys who were not really participating in any of the discussions between their beloved teacher and the incredulous locals. The question of adult culpability was not the focus of the play, so it was wisely avoided.

At times there wass too much circumstantial information being smuggled through the boys' repartee, and it perhaps reduced the tension too much to know in advance the fates of the boys on stage, but the play nonetheless hit home in both its general critique of unthinking masculine pride and in the personal tragedy befalling the hikers.

Tom Fool

by Franz Xaver Kroetz

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 31 March 2022

Diyan Zora directs Michael Shaeffer as Otto, Anna Francolini as his wife Martha and Jonah Rzeskiewicz as their son Ludwig in Estella Schmid and Anthony Vivis's translation of Kroetz's play entitled Mensch Meier in German, here rendered as Tom Fool to catch the undertone that Otto Meier is both hapless and pitiable, but also something of an everyman.

In a domestic setting of cheap furniture and minimal comfort (excellent design by Zoe Hurwitz), Ludwig is sleeping on the living room sofa, trapped by his parents' aspirations for him: they castigate him for not earning his keep, but disapprove of his plan to take up a bricklaying apprenticeship because he could do better. Otto works in a car assembly plant, dependant on job security and only half aware that he is sapped by the relentless tedium of the work. He agonises over the awkwardness of having lent his boss an expensive pen which has not been returned - his lengthy analysis of the situation, and the difficulty of raising the matter days after the event, shows in microcosm the stifling social forces engulfing him, forcing him to brood on petty slights until they become an obsession. A later intense discussion about a restaurant bill shows us a mind restless to analyse but constantly presented only with mundane objects of attention (though of course money is tight, so it is vital not to be cheated).

Martha is patient and supportive with a sort of weary tolerance, while Ludwig is disaffected but powerless; his act of rebellion coinciding with the shock of mass redundancies at the assembly plant tip Otto into an unexpected and spectacular bout of rage. It is rare to see so much destruction wreaked on furniture in such a confined acting space, but a stroke of dramatic brilliance to have it followed not by an interval so that the stage crew can clear up the mess, but rather by a protracted scene in which Otto and Martha wordlessly mend furniture and sweep away the broken shards of their domestic life.

In ways such as these the playwright has pinpointed the suffocating pressure of 'ordinary' life, the man of the house bound on a treadmill but with the uneasy thought that he could be let go of at any time, the housewife eking out a domestic haven until it becomes unbearable, the next generation paralysed by uncertainty and resentment. Only a tentative recognition that each of them must learn to look after themselves before taking on responsibility for each other provides a modicum of hope that the bleak cycle of uncomprehended frustration may one day be broken.

This all sounds unbearably depressing, but it was electrifying to watch, with excellent performances from all three actors and a steady direction allowing the all important silences to signify as much as, if not more than, the awkward attempts of the characters to communicae their feelings and frustrations to one another, and hence to us.

While the Sun Shines

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 29 November 2021

Paul Miller directs a revival of one of the Orange Tree's most successful productions, Terence Rattigan's farce While the Sun Shines, first seen in 2019. Four of the original cast reprise their roles - Paul Labey as the Earl of Harpenden, John Hudson as his manservant Horton, Michael Lumsden as his prospective father-in-law the Duke of Ayr & Stirling, and Jordan Mifsúd as the French Lieutenant Colbert - while three new cast members take the other roles - Rebecca Collingwood as the Earl's fiancée Lady Elizabeth Randall, Sophie Khan Levy as Mabel Crum (an independent woman of considerable acuity), and Conor Glean as the American Lieutenant Mulvaney.

It's a great pleasure to see again this entertaining production of an intricately plotted play in which the surface confusions and rivalries, which could have been merely superficial nonsense, unexpectedly reveal deeper truths about the workings of society and the pitfalls of over-hasty presumptions about how people will behave. There is something Shavian about the twists and turns by which the characters navigate the perils of social expectation and personal happiness.

See also my review of the original production at 

https://nicholasatthetheatre.blogspot.com/2019/06/while-sun-shines.html#more

Rice

by Michele Lee

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 21 October 2021

Matthew Xia (artistic director of the Actors Touring Company) directs Zainab Hasan as Nisha and Sarah Lam as Yvette in a production designed by Hyemi Shin of Michele Lee's intriguing play Rice, a co-production by the Orange Tree Theatre and the Actors Touring Copany.

Nisha is an ambitious executive in an Australian company hoping to take over the management of India's distribution of rice (the 'public distribution system' or PDS). Yvette is an older Hmong woman who is a cleaner in the Melbourne office where Nisha works. Their initial encounters are extremely abrasive, but gradually a friendship develops, buffeted though it is by each woman's personal and business problems. During the course of the play we see the pressures confronting these two women through family expectation - Yvette has always been denigrated by her family, and has a particularly unsympathetic daughter, while Nisha struggles to make her mark in the masculine world of big business, taking risks which rebound against her and dealing with condescending assumptions about her connections to India (she is presumably Australian-born). Intriguingly, it is not only the men in her business who are ruthless: her liaison with a feamle official in an Indian government department is fraught with power plays and proves quite poisonous.

In an aseptic white set - white floor, white office desk and attachments, a white sunken space which acts as a sluice for water used in cleaning - the story of the business project is played out, but vertiginously the two actors take on other roles to show what happens, and the scene moves seamlessly from Nisha's office to other spaces in Melbourne and various sites in India. We also see Yvette's awkward struggle to protect her daughter from prosecution for a principled assault on the CEO of a polluting company. 

At times the transformations of character take place at great speed, but with carefully managed inflections of accent and characteristic stances and movements we are almost always clear about whom we are seeing and where we are. The accents are perhaps a little overdone at times (the Eastern European manager of the cleaning contractors is rather too much of a caricature, and the Australian accents are valiant but clearly not native), but the overall effect successfully opens out the different cut-throat worlds in which these two women have to navigate their lives.

As a corrective to the predominantly male-dominated interpretations of the business world Rice is an important piece of work; with no men actually on stage we see more clearly Nisha's frustrations and sense the almost impersonal oppression a woman can so often feel with powerful men calling the shots, often acting behind her back while being patronising to her face. Likewise, Yvette, though used to a lifetime of men in her family defining her place and her character, here has a chance to exhibit her resilience and her anger. Zainab Hasan and Sarah Lam show a dazzling technical skill in bringing this remarkable text to life.

Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act

by Athol Fugard

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 9 September 2021

Diane Page, this year's winner of the JMK Award for new directors, directs Athol Fugard's play from 1972 concerning an affair between a librarian Frieda Joubert (Scarlett Brookes) and a schoolteacher Errol Philander (Shaq Taylor) which falls foul of race relations legislation in apartheid South Africa because she is white and he is not.

The affair is of necessity clandestine, both because of the colour bar and because Errol has a wife and children. Consequently there are any number of tensions between the two, whose needs and passions conflict with fear, uncertainty and suspicion. As Errol and Frieda circle round a huge sunken pit in the centre of the stage, and only occasionally meet in it, they voice their anxieties; each tries to hold on to the joy of their relationship as it threatens to crumble under pressure. The whole stage floor is a matt black, and the circular pit has no sharp edges: the ground just slopes into the wall of the pit, making their circling round it look perilously like water swirlng round a drain. The pit is, of course, of no use as a hiding place when a police raid led by Detective Sergeant J du Prez (Richard Sutton) leads to their arrest and interrogation. Niall McKeever's set achieves both a sense of limbo and an underlying threat.

This is not a play in which love triumphs over adversity. The two lovers are brim full of insecurities deriving from their personalities as much as their political and social situations. Lyrical outbursts vie with the pain arising from the need for concealment, and though this need is obvious it also leads to feelings of guilt and inadequacy. The wider issues of desperate poverty in the townships and intense bigotry in the privileged white areas create plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding. In a mere seventy minutes a whole crushing environment is evoked through conversation, monologue, and the chilling impersonality of the official police report which is delivered with startling venom.

Scarlett Brookes and Shaq Taylor portray two people involved with one another yet always beset by wariness of their predicament and even mutual suspicion. Though neither disavows their relationship under pressure, there is little sense that it could ever survive the rigour of public exposure. It is a salutary reminder that more is at play in the world than struggles for personal fulfilment, and that social oppression can be frighteningly strong. 

This particular piece must be grounded in its historical context to make sense, and therefore the cast adopted fairly strong South African accents. Occasionally this made it hard to catch everything that was said, even in the intimate context of the Orange Tree, and it perhaps ran the risk of giving the audience the consolation of thinking 'that was then, that was there'. Unfortunately for many it is no consolation at all. The cruelties of South African apartheid may have disappeared, but racial prejudice and oppression are still rife; the play has not lost its force or relevance.

Last Easter

by Bryony Lavery

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre (Richmond) on 15 July 2021

Tinuke Craig directs this revival of Bryony Lavery's 2007 play Last Easter, in which June (Naana Agyei-Ampadu), a lighting designer, is diagnosed with terminal secondary breast cancer and is supported by her three friends drag artist Gash (Peter Caulfield), property manager Leah (Jodie Jacobs) and actor Joy (Ellie Piercy).

June is the often still centre of a maelstrom of displacement activity by her panicked friends, particularly in the first half of the play when Gash and Leah propose a trip to a villa in France which just happens to be close to Lourdes, and then the three decide to reduce shared costs by inviting Joy along as a fourth - Joy who is alarmingly self-obsessed and still reeling from the suicide of a boyfriend. To add to the larkiness generated by Gash and Leah within the narratvie of the play, there are frequent comments made directly to various members of the audience, including apologies that June's occasionally deep introspection is dramatically exceedingly uninteresting to watch.

The trip to France is a bit of a wacky road trip; the visit to Lourdes a mixture of horror at its insitutionalised commercialism of the unwell and humour at the prospect of a lapsed Catholic, a Jewess, a Buddhist and the quietly sceptical June actually gaining any benefit from being there. At times it seems that the play is trying to cover too many bases at once - farce, pathos, meta-theatricality, the loyalty of friends under extreme emotional pressure. In the second half, as the issue of assisted suicide is addressed, a deeper seriousness invades the stage in which the hilarity of inappropriate speech and gesture is more successfully integrated into a poignant and difficult circumstance.

The cast acquit themselves with infectious energy, skilfully managing the swerves of the play's style. Moments of solidarity and affection jostle with impatience, pain and disillusionment in a way which acknowledges that life is often raw, messy and painful, while there are also episodes of merry excitement and even quiet enjoyment. Not only is June enthralled by the light in a painting by Caravaggio; she also enjoys just being. It's fascinating that a play celebrating a fair degree of brashness nevertheless gives due weight to these quieter moments as well.

Shaw Shorts

 by Bernard Shaw

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 24 June 2020

Two short plays by Bernard Shaw, How He Lied to Her Husband (written in 1904 as a curtain raiser to Man of Destiny) and Overruled (written in 1912 for an evening of short pieces by various playwrights) herald the welcome return of live theatre with a small audience to this wonderful theatre in Richmond. 

Paul Miller, the artistic director of the Orange Tree, has form in reviving the classics of British drama, not least several scintillating productions of plays by Shaw. Here, two pieces rarely performed because they are so short - and because the idea of a 'curtain raiser' would probably be incomprehensible to a modern audience and unthinkable financially - are given the chance to remind us of Shaw's brilliant use of an absurd situation to expose the hypocrisies of social convention.

In How He Lied to Her Husband Henry Apjohn (Joe Bolland) has written sonnets in praise of Aurora Bompas (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). She has mislaid them, sure that her sister-in-law has purloined them and will show her husband Teddy (Jordan Mifsúd). In just a few turns of dialogue the dreamy romanticism that allows Henry to idolise Aurora is skewered by the curious mixture of carelessness and worldly wisdom exhibited by Aurora. The moment when social reality really begins to collide with high-flown sentiment is wonderfully managed by the shift of the lovers from using their christian names to using their formal titles ('Mr Apjohn', 'Mrs Bompas'), a social nicety with almost no practical force nowadays, but one which Shaw's unerring instinct for dramatic shorthand can still bring into play for an attentive audience. 

Masculine pretensions are further skewered by the arrival of Teddy Bompas. Has he seen the poems? Will he be outraged? Who will prevail in a fistfight? He is more angry when Apjohn attempts to deny that the sonnets were written to his wife than when he finally confesses that they have been - though the anger may be entirely confected. The suggestion that his wife is not worth writing love poems to is far more wounding than the threat of a love affair disrupting his marriage. It is brillint anarchic stuff, perfectly suited to a thirty minute exposition.

In Overruled Gregory Lunn (Alex Bhat) and Mrs Juno (Hara Yannas) have been conducting a shipboard romance - but Lunn is appalled to discover that he has mistaken Mrs Juno for a widow. With a ridiculous yelp he squawks that he has broken a sacred promise to his mother never to flirt with a married woman. Voices which each recognises as their respective spouses cause a flurry of alarm, but it transpires that Sibthorpe Juno (Jordan Mifsúd) and Mrs Lunn (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) have also been romancing on a cruise liner travelling in the opposite direction around the world. When the two couples meet, the ladies almost immediately form an urbane alliance (one thinks of Gwendolen and Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest) while the men desperately try to catch up with the unconventional possibilities of the situation. Shaw subtly indicates his own sympathies by allowing the wives to use the christian names of their husbands (one of them quite ridiculous) but withholding those of the women, thus buttressing them with a subtle authority. Once again, further development is superfluous.

It is so refreshing to see the conventions of 'mere' social comedy used so adroitly to raise issues as serious as the double standards between male and female propriety, the tiresomeness of male presumptions of superiority, and the innate common sense in women's negotiation of the social niceties. Even in a stripped down acting space, with half the seats removed from around the stage and an audience necessarily distanced from one another and facemasked, Shaw's provocative and whimsical humour, wonderfully embodied in this fine cast, still produces a welcome tonic and a challenge to the way we think and behave.

On the cultural front, Shaw and the Orange Tree 2 : pandemic 0