Leopoldstadt

by Tom Stoppard

seen at Wyndham's Theatre on 16 September 2021

Patrick Marber directs a large cast (twenty-five adults and several children) in Tom Stoppard's new play concerning the fate of two extended Jewish families in Vienna in the first half of the twentieth century. There ae major scenes in 1899, 1900, 1924, 1938 and 1955, and four generations of the Merz and Jakobovicz families are on stage at various times.

At the turn of the century the families are well off and slightly contemptuous of their humbler beginnings and any reminders of more traditional Jews from the easern provinces of the empire (they don't actualy live in Leopoldstadt which was by then a popular Jewish enclave in Vienna: one senses they find it beneath their dignity). Hermann in particular sees great possibilities in joining the bourgeois establishment, apparently prepared to overlook the snide anti-semitism surrounding him until it is too glaring even for him. Later, of course, in 1938, as the Nazis take over Austria, any such accommodation is impossible, and in the coda to the play the fate of almost all the family members is intoned in a bleak account of their deaths.

Stoppard's own experience of fleeing Czechoslovakia in 1938 as an infant and eventually being brought up as an English schoolboy with his stepfather's surname willingly adopted and for many years unaware of his wider family's story is represented in the play by a young man similarly naive in 1955, but this is determinedly not a play specifically about the Straussler family. Unfortunately all too many experienced similar aspirations of integration followed by brutal tragedy, and it is perhaps more salutary that Stoppard chose to portray a fictional exemplum of the fate of so many, rather than a documentary drama of an historical case. 

By shifting the location from his own family's provinical Bohemia to the imagined families' cosmopolitan Vienna, and evoking a wide ranging cast of businessmen, doctors and professors, matriarchs and young women eager for more than domesticity, all enmeshed in a comfortable and sociable setting, he easily blends sharp reminders of prejudice with dazzling explorations of intellectual pursuits (especially mathematics) and also with socal comedy and Jewish humour - the scenes in 1924 revolve around an almost farcical conflict between various family members over whether the new-born male should be circumcised, with a typical Stoppardian riff on mistaken identity when a visiting business associate is mistaken for the surgeon invited to perform the rite.

The families could be seen as turning a blind eye to danger for too long - but who did not? The collapse of security in 1938 is a chilling interruption to 'normal' life. After scenes of domestic tension amidst family solidarity, almost the stuff of any comfortable family-oriented drama, the arrival of thugs self-appointed as official bureaucrats to dispossess the family of their apartment, all the while spouting vile terms of abuse, is sickening. The fact that very little overt physical violence is needed renders the ultimate peril all the more frightening.

Marshalling a large cast and exploring a multi-generational story is a huge challenge for playwright, director and actors alike. Stoppard's decades of experience with paradox, coincidence and wit here enable him to create memorable vignettes which underpin a rich milieu: we may wish we had time to explore some of these in more detail, but we have to be satisfied with just the small hints we are given. Yet it is one of these apparently incidental scenes in 1938 which triggers the poignant connection in 1955 between the young Englishman and the embittered Austrian survivor when hitherto their utterly different experiences threatened to leave them cold to each other: a quiet and subtle masterstroke in a play of panoramic ambition.

Hedda Gabler

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 January 2017

Ivo van Hove directs Ruth Wilson as Hedda, Kyle Soller as Tesman, and Rafe Spall as Judge Brack in a new version of Iben's play modernised by Patrick Marber. Chukwudi Iwuji is Lovborg, Sinéad Matthews is Mrs Elvsted, Kate Duchene is Aunt Juliana and Éva Magyar is the maid Berte.

The setting is a bare apartment, looking all the more bare for having large expanses of unpainted walls (plastered and awaiting attention) and comparatively little furniture. This partly evokes the Tesmans' pretensions in moving into an apartment beyond their means (ironically underscored in the text by Hedda's admission that she praised the apartment on a whim), and partly reflects the aridity of Hedda's interior life. Indeed, stripped of its late 19th century social claustrophobia, the play has to focus more intently on Hedda's trapped and disintegrating psyche. As the audience files in, the maid is seated impassively to one side while Hedda sits at the piano, back to the audience, and fiddles tunelessly with the notes.

Travesties

by Tom Stoppard

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 12 November 2016

This revival of Stoppard's coruscating 1974 play inspired by the coincidental presence of James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Zurich in 1917 is directed by Patrick Marber and features Tom Hollander as Henry Carr, Amy Morgan as his sister Gwendolen, Tim Wallers as his servant Bennett, Peter McDonald as Joyce, Clare Foster as his amanuensis Cecily, Forbes Masson as Lenin, Sarah Quist as his wife Nadya, and Freddie Fox as Tzara.

Joyce really was the business manager of an amateur theatrical group which presented The Importance of Being Earnest; Carr (a member of the British diplomatic staff in Zurich) really did take part in the play and there was a squabble between them about finances. From this situation, together with the fact that Lenin departed from Zurich in late 1917 with the connivance of Germany to make his way to the Russia to instigate the Bolshevik revolution, and the fact that Tristan Tzara, the notorious Dadaist, was also in the city, Stoppard constructed a play in which Carr reminisces about his interactions with all three men - though it is clear that his memories are highly questionable.

Three Days in the Country

by Patrick Marber based on A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 21 October 2015

Directed by Patrick Marber and designed by Mark Thompson, this version of Turgenev's play stars Amanda Drew as Natalya, John Light as Arkady, John Simm as Rakitin, Lily Sacofsky as Vera and Mark Gatiss as Shpigelsky.

The arrival of a young tutor at a Russian provincial country house triggers various crises amongst people who have been living together without formally acknowledging their feelings for a very long time. Arkady married Natalya on impulse - his friend Rakitin was with him when he first saw her, and wishes that he had acted first. Now he is a visitor to the estate, hardly able to bear being there but unable to keep away. Both Natalya and her ward Vera fall for the new tutor, and meanwhile there are subplots in which an unprepossessing neighbour wishes to marry Vera, while the doctor Shpigelsky makes an extraordinary proposal to a spinster in the household.

The Red Lion

by Patrick Marber

seen the the National Theatre (Dorfman) on 4 August 2015

The play is directed by Ian Rickson and features Daniel Mays as Kidd, Peter Wight as Yates and Calvin Kemba as Jordan. It is set in the dressing room of a football club. Kidd is the ambitious and slightly dodgy club manager, Yates a one-time player now reduced to managing the club's kit (washing and ironing), and Jordan a promising young player offered a contract with the club.

The three men are all passionate about football, but being totally different personalities, each brings different loyalties to the situation. Kidd regards Yates as a loser and an encumbrance, while Yates sees Kidd as the unacceptable modern face of football as a business instead of a vocation. Jordan wishes to behave in an ethical manner and bridles at Kidd's tactical instructions - yet he fails to disclose a crucial piece of information, naively expecting that playing well in an amateur club with no further ambition bypasses the issue. Since the other two (especially Kidd) see him as a candidate for a potentially lucrative transfer, a crisis rapidly engulfs all three.

In a bare and rather run-down set, with only three actors, a wealth of tension, aspiration, frustration and anger is revealed as the two older men battle for their vision of the game and hope to recruit the youngster to their own cause, without really telling him straightforwardly what is at stake. Marber is excellent at providing dialogue which uses the situation at hand to reveal many issues of personality, status and ambition, and the three actors rise to the challenge. The explosions of energy and anger are offset by scenes of mundane activity or quiet reminiscence, through which we come to realise how heavily invested the three men are in the club. Though sport as a metaphor for life is a well-worn idea, the play uses it with great skill to reveal their characters, their weaknesses and strengths alike.

Daniel Mays brings a cocky urgency to Kidd, his pent-up energy masking an emptiness that only the wiser Yates can perceive - but Yates has neither the strength nor the authority to help resolve the problem. Peter Wight's body language, a pitiable slumped stature from which he rarely asserts himself, conveys the shattered shell of an out-of-touch romantic. Calvin Kemba convincingly sows us a young man looking to his future from a bleak past.  But, for all their shared enthusiasm, the three men are ultimately alone with their demons, which have fairly wrecked the Red Lion club. 

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.