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.

Straight Line Crazy

by David Hare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 19 May 2022

Nicholas Hytner directs Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses in David Hare's new play about the controversial and powerful New York urban planner whose projects were virtually unstoppable for nearly thirty years (1924 to 1963) despite increasing doubts about their efficacy or necessity. While proclaiming that his work was for the benefit of ordinary people he had no hesitation in destroying communities to implement his plans. Many of these areas were slums, but the relocations to outlying suburbs were nonetheless brutal. 

For many years Moses had the support of the New York State Governor Al Smith (Danny Webb) though the play suggests that Smith often (or always) felt outwitted by Moses. He also demanded absolute loyalty to his wishes and plans from his staff, here represented by Ariel Porter (Samuel Barnett) and Finnuala Connell (Siobhán Cullen). By the end of his effective career these two had devoted their lives to him and were practically burnt out; finally Finnuala resigns but Moses is incapable of understanding her reasons for doing so, or of realising that the new middle class activism already awakening in the 1950s is too strong even for him.

As a portrait of a masterful man in the early stages of his career (the first half of the play) and later as he fails to recognise the changed times and the increasing power of the forces opposing him (the second half) Straight Line Crazy offers an intriguing and often thrilling character study, brilliantly embodied in Ralph Fiennes's performance. The man is always restless, opinionated, certain of the correctness of his views both in the matter of town planning and in how to manipulate weaker people; Fiennes prowls around the stage barely able to contain his energy while his underlings learn to live and work with this force of nature, whether thrilled or appalled by his vision. 

This has to rank as one of Hare's better plays, and the production does it magnificent justice.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

by Manuel Puig in a version by José Rivera and Allan Baker

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 24 April 2018

Laurie Sansom directs Samuel Barnett as Molina and Declan Bennett as Valentin, with Grace Cooke-Gam as the warder and nurse, in this, a second dramatic adaptation of Manuel Puig's celebrated novel of 1976 set in an Argentinian prison (also the subject of a film in 1985). An earlier version of the play was staged in London in 1985 and revived at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007.

This new version is more streamlined, lasting a hundred minutes without a break. It thus increases the claustrophobic nature of the setting, enhanced by the configuration of the Menier stage and auditorium, with designer Jon Bausor making full use of its concrete walls and pillars, and surrounding the acting space with earth.

The Beaux' Stratagem

by George Farquhar

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 3 June 2015

The play, directed by Simon Godwin, features Samuel Barnett as Aimwell, Geoffrey Streatfeild as Archer, Pippa Bennett-Warner as Dorinda, Susannah Fielding as Mrs Sullen, and Pearce Quigley as Scrub, with music by Michael Bruce and the set designed by Lizzie Clachan.

Two out-of-pocket London swells propose to gull wealthy Lichfield heiresses through marriage (or else, if that fails, they will try Chester, Nottingham and even Norwich; otherwise they will enlist and die). But what could have been a cynical or heartless confrontation between town and country values becomes something more complex and even radical in Farquhar's hands. Aimwell falls genuinely in love with Dorinda, thus turning callow opportunism into romantic comedy, while Archer finds himself matched (if not over-matched) by Mrs Sullen - young and attractive indeed, but already disastrously married. Their comic resolution is only made possible by a fantastical agreement to a divorce between Mr and Mrs Sullen, a project that would have been all but impossible in 1707 when the play was written. Mrs Sullen, who could have been merely a disillusioned and scheming flirt, proves to be a woman of spirit not totally daunted by her domestic misery.