Present Laughter

by Noel Coward

seen at the Old Vic on 31 July 2019

Matthew Warchus directs Andrew Scott as Garry Essendine with Indira Varma as his estranged wife Liz and Sophie Thompson as his personal assistant Monica, with others supporting, in this revival (designed by Rob Howell) of Noel Coward's skewering comedy about theatrical celebrity first seen in the 1940s.

The set, in bright pastels, looks like a demented cross between a swank flat (where it is supposed to be) and an art deco cinema or theatre foyer, emphasising the fact that Garry Essendine lives on his celebrity status. Five entrances allow for a truly farcical set-up as people emerge from or are hidden in various rooms of the flat, or arrive at its front door, as the plot requires; but, typical of Coward, it is all very knowing, and one character complains (over the telephone) of being in a French farce. This calling the audience's attention to the mechanics of what they are witnessing is  high-risk strategy, but Noel Coward, at the peak of his powers, can pull it off, providing the cast rises to the occasion. This cast does, in splendid form.

Long Day's Journey into Night

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at Wynndhams Theatre on 18 February 2018

Richard Eyre directs Jeremy Irons as James Tyrone, Lesley Manville as his wife Mary, Rory Keenan as Jamie and Matthew Beard as Edmund, the two Tyrone sons, and Jessica Regan as Cathleen the maid, in a production designed by Rob Howell.

The play, loosely autobiographical, takes place in the Tyrone's summer house on the day in which Edmund is told by the family doctor that he has consumption. But both his brother and his father have half suspected this (indeed, he may himself have been aware of the likelihood); the menfolk are furthermore confronting the fact that Mary is incurably addicted to morphine, having been prescribe it many years before after Edmund's difficult birth.

Such a bald summary hardly begins to account for the play's power, nor for the unremitting portrayal of self-deception and mutual recrimination that unfolds before us as the various members of the family try to maintain a veneer of normality in the face of long years of denial, repressed anger, and tortured love.

The Ferryman

by Jez Butterworth

seen at the Gielgud Theatre on 30 September 2017

Sam Mendes directs Butterworth's new play set in rural Northern Ireland in September 1981, as news of the death of an IRA hunger striker reaches a farming family busy with the harvest and hoping that their involvement in the Troubles is more or less behind them. Paddy Considine as Quinn Carney and Laura Donnelly as his sister-in-law Caitlin lead a superb cast of over twenty actors in this stunning evocation of a family beset with memories, tragedies and evasions, with both chaotic and affectionate interactions between generations, with deep engagement in the business of farming, and with a fateful vulnerability after all to the political situation around them.