Constellations 1 and 2

by Nick Payne

seen at the Vaudeville Theatre on 3 July 2021

Michael Longhurst revives Nick Payne's play, this time on behalf of the Donmar Warehouse where he is now artistic director, though in a West End theatre since the Donmar itself is currently undergoing a major renovation.

The play is well suited to the current situation in terms of its technical requirements, in that there are only two actors involved, with a small technical team to back them up; also, at only 70 minutes in length, it places a fairly minimal threat in terms of gathering strangers in an interior space for a prolonged period. Many of the seats in the theatre are in any case unoccupied due to current government restrictions.

The beguiling investigation of memory, its significance and fickleness, is further emphaised in this revival by the decision to use four separate casts to play the protagonists. On this occasion I saw Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker in the afternoon performance, and Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah in the evening performance.

Visually the production is the same as I recall seeing in 2015 (see my review of 24 June 2015 for my account of the play itself and the way it challenges the audience's expectation of following a straightforward narrative). The interest here, therefore, resides in watching two completely different pairs of people interpret the play on the same day: an older couple followed by a younger couple. Inevitably one assumes that the opening scenes in which Ronnie and Marianne tentatively get to know one another are played out with a different hinterland in each case: the nerves of older people making a connection which may or may not be comfortable being fraught, one supposes, with past possibly disappointing experience, whereas the nerves of the younger pair may only arise from inexperience. These contrasting possibilities cast very different lights on what follows.

I felt that there was a drawback with Zoe Wanamaker and Peter Capaldi. They are both distinguished actors, but their styles are also very distinctive, and in a play with so little material pointers - a stage full of balloons, for exanple, rather than any representation of a recognisable space - it is hard to distance onself from the knowledge of who the actors are. Their personal mannerisms are simply too prominent at times. Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah are not (yet) so well known, though Sheila Atim has an immensely striking physical presence. It seemed to me that the younger pair had an easier time with establishing the flirtatiousness of the two characters, whereas with the older actors the same scenes came across more as social comedy or world-weariness. Consequently I found the second performance more convincing.

The play revels in repeating scenes with slight variations of dialogue, creating multiple ways of understanding what might be happening or what is going unsaid. It is even more fascinating to watch two such different performances in quick succession, allowing even more resonances to reverberate in the mind.

Girl from the North Country

by Conor McPherson, songs by Bob Dylan

seen at the Old Vic on 6 September 2017

Conor McPherson directs his own musical play set in a debt-ridden guesthouse in Duluth Minnesota (Dylan's birthplace) in 1934; a sketchy story from the Depression years is used as the framework for a score od Dylan's songs drawn from a wide range of his recordings, here re-arranged and sung by an exemplary group of soloists and backing singers. Principal parts are taken by Ciarán Hinds (Nick, the landlord), Shirley Henderson (Elizabeth, his wife suffering from dementia), Sheila Atim (Marianne, their adopted coloured daughter) and Ron Cook (the narrator/doctor, in a style reminiscent of 'Our Town' by Thornton Wilder).

Though not at the bottom rung of society's ladder, most of the characters are struggling to avoid it, not least Nick, the proprietor of the guesthouse, faced with impoverished guests, an increasingly sick wife, and a daughter who has fallen pregnant but is unwilling to accept the (somewhat forced) offer of marriage from an elderly (white) widower. The possibility of Nick's lover providing a financial escape once the probate from her husband's will is settled in her favour evaporates in 'Bleak House' style when costs consume the estate; the outlook is extremely grim with the presence of a gun on stage intimating the worst. However, the denouement, desperately sad as it must be, is nonetheless tinged with unexpected and moving dignity; there is even hope for Marianne as she takes up with someone who may be an escaped prisoner but who is nevertheless kind and honourable (it is noticeable but not forced on one's attention that her name is nearly Mary and his is Joseph). 

The stories are not deeply engaging, being little more than anecdotal, and the idea of a motley group of people thrown together by circumstance lends only a superficial unity to the proceedings, but all this is hardly the point. The production owes its deserved success to the wonderful songs - the lyrics are revealed to be at times heart-wrenchingly appropriate despite their familiarity - and to the inventive way in which they have been adapted to suit the situation. Add to this the skill and commitment of the instrumentalists and the singers, and the result is a poignant insight into the lyricism of Dylan's songs arising from a really entertaining ensemble piece. Curiously, the title song was omitted from the performance we saw, even though it was listed in the program, but many other songs were a sheer joy to listen to.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar King's Cross Theatre on 15 December 2016

Harriet Walter plays Prospero in this production directed by Phyllida Lloyd and designed by Chloe Lamford. It forms the third of a trilogy (the first two being Julius Caesar and Henry IV, a conflation of Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays) with all-female casts, purported to be performed by the inmates of a women's prison. The first two plays were performed in the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 and 2015, and have been revived at the temporary King's Cross site in conjunction with The Tempest. I have not revisited the two earlier productions, although it would have been instructive to see them all as there are intriguing correspondences between the Shakespearean parts played and the characters of the prisoners that the actors have developed in consultation with the Prison Partnership Project.