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.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 7 October 2021

Yaël Farber directs James McArdle in the title role and Saoirse Ronan as Lady Macbeth in a compelling production of one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays to stage. The potent brew of notorious witches, prophecies that come true because they are known about, and others that come true with cruel twists, combined with violent action and unsympathetic protagonists all too often leads to overblown or unbalanced results on stage. Here at the Almeida the pitfalls are avoided, and the director has made some interesting adjustments to the text to create a stark vision of inexorable catastrophe.

What to do with the language? The Scottish court spoke with Scottish accents: only the witches, Lady Macduff and the children did not. This worked surprisingly well once the ear had adjusted to it; Shakespearean cadences resonate just as easily in these voices as in 'received pronunciation'.

What to do with the witches? The presumed mindset of the original audience is no longer available to us, and indeed these witches in particular with their incantatory rhymes have become so stereotypical that they can seem like a joke. Farber has renamed them 'Wyrd Sisters' (having noticed that they are named 'Weird Sisters' in the folio cast list), and the programme notes draw attention to the many manifestations of three women guarding, creating or spinning Fate (Anglo-Saxon 'wyrd') in European myths. Thus there are no old crones cackling over a disgusting cauldron. Instead three enigmatic women, almost serene in their dispassionate presence, may be seen not only when they appear to Macbeth and Banquo, and later to Macbeth alone; they are also visible as silent observers of the outworking of Fate at many other moments during the play - possibly at all moments, though there is a good deal of mist billowing about which makes the back wall of the stage invisible at times.

What to do with the violent action? Macbeth is a bloody play, with unpleasant murders both off and on stage. There were two perspex screens often moved about the stage demarcating inner and outer spaces (part of a brilliant set design by Soutra Gilmour). A director might easily have splashed them copiously with blood starting with the execution of the rebel Thane of Cawdor near the beginning of the play; the murder of Duncan might even have been mimed behind a screen with further opportunity for spraying blood. In this production matters were more restrained, and all the more disquieting for that. At the opening tableau the whole cast gathered on stage to a persistent thrum of a low musical note above which a single cello line wavered. An attendant woman brought on a wheelbarrow full of boots and upended it, then carefully placed them at the front of the stage. A soldier washed himself from a bucket, but what he daubed over himself was blood, since a blood-soaked messenger brings the news of victory to Duncan. Similarly, bloodstains were always restricted only to the bodies of actors - either Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan, or Banquo when he appears as a ghost - and not used at all elsewhere, even during the on-stage murders. This made the deaths of Lady Macduff  and her two sons all the more chilling, especially as one child was dragged screaming from a hiding place and the lady herself was ultimately dispatched in a tub of water.

What to do with the disintegration of Lady Macbeth towards the end of the play? Lady Macbeth is a driving force in the first half of the play, but increasingly cut off from her husband's plans and inner torment once he has become king. Then, at the end, there is the famous sleepwalking scene, with little to prepare us for it. Farber has created a daring visualisation of  the trauma precipitating this downfall. She has Lady Macbeth bring the advice to Lady Macduff that she should flee with her children, and then still be present to witness the murders. It is preposterous on a realistic level, but psychologically extremely acute, and Saoirse Ronan utterly convinces in showing the trembling panic of an unwilling witness to such babarity. Naked ambition in the abstract, so forcefully embraced by this woman at the beginning of this play, here confronts the horror of its consequences on real lives, and the strain is too much: a brilliant stroke.

What to do about Macbeth? Make him passionate, ambitious, uncertain about murder at the beginning but plausibly easy with the idea as his obsessions take control, completely unaware of the irony (and foolishness) in his determination to connive at the fulfilment of prophecy when it is to his advantage but to attempt to outwit it when it is detrimental. Make the famous lines of despair at the news of his wife's death deeply felt, not just cynical world-weariness. Give the part to James McArdle who conveys initial doubts over murdering Duncan, horror at the deed, abject terror at the appearance of Banquo's ghost and steely resolve to fight to the last, with equal skill and authority.

What do do about the Porter defusing the tension of the murder scene with long disquisitions about equivocation, a subject of no interest to a modern audience? Dispense with him completely, along with the more lurid witches' hocus pocus. In fact a number of other scenes were streamlined or omitted, making for sharper emphasis and an unremitting atmosphere of tension. I am not sure, but I think I even missed the explicit instruction for soldiers to disguise their numbers by cutting branches from the trees at Birnam Wood (a vital point in destabilising Macbeth's self-assurance, which was cunningly foreshadowed by the procession of Banquo's heirs presented to an anguished Macbeh during his final encounter with the Wyrd Sisters). There was no evocation of the holy stability of the English realm under Edward the Confessor to contrast with the dire state of Scotland or the peculiar defensiveness of prince Malcolm when Macduff confronts him. 

There was no final speech by the new king after the death of the tyrant Macbeth. Instead, the surviving cast gathered again in almost the same positions as at the beginning; the wheelbarrow of boots appeared, and one of the three Wyrd Sisters pronouned once more the opening question: 'When shall we three meet again?'. Malcolm was in the spotlight rather than Duncan, but Fate, evidently, is cyclical.

Cyrano de Bergerac

by Edmond Rostand adapted by Martin Crimp

seen by live streaming from the Playhouse Theatre on 20 February 2020

Jamie Lloyd directs Jamrs McAvoy in the title role, with Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Roxane, Eben Figueiredo as Christian and Tom Edden as De Guiche, in a production designed by Soutra Gilmour and lit by Jon Clark.

Edmond Rostand's 1897 play sought to re-intorduce poetry and the idea of romantic heroism to a theatre world which he saw as bedevilled by too much naturalism. Traditionally this has inspired productions revelling in lush seventeenth-century costunes and swaggering panache, with Cyrano, the main character, a self-defined misfit in an age where physical attractiveness is held o be essential in the world of love.

Betrayal

by Harold Pinter

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 17 May 2019

Jamie Lloyd directs Tom Hiddleston as Robert, Zawe Ashton as Emma (his wife) and Charlie Cox as Jerry (his best friend) in a superb revival of Pinter's play about a the inricacies ad emotional costs of betrayal.

The design by Soutra Gilmour is mesmerisingly austere - a pastel shaded backdrop which occasionally slides forward; a grey floor containing a two-part revolve; a couple of chairs; at one stage a flimsy fold-out table; a few bottles of drinks (water or wine). This forces all the attention on the actors and on the psychological processes of the characters, and allows for maximum fluidity in a play that famously presents its story in reverse, starting with a meeting between Emma and Jerry two years after their seven-year affair has ended, and working gradually backwards until the first occasion on which Jerry confessed his love for Emma.

Knives in Hens

by David Harrower

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 24 August 2017

Yaël Farber directs Judith Roddy as the Young Woman, Christian Cooke as Pony William (her husband) and Matt Ryan as Gilbert Horn (the miller) in this revival of David Harrower's 1995 play, designed by Soutra Gilmour and lit by Tim Lutkin. 

Yaël Farber likes to create an atmosphere even before a performance starts; the auditorium is dim, with 'smoke' drifting through the directional spots on stage, and a gradually increasing low hum pervading the space. There is packed earth on the stage floor, black walls behind, and a gigantic circular disk just visible in the gloom, which turns out to be an enormous mill wheel set upright rather than lying flat to the ground.

Romeo and Juliet

by William Shakespeare

seen at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on 7 July  2017

Daniel Kramer directs Edward Hogg as Romeo and Kirsty Bushell as Juliet in this controversial production designed by Soutra Gilmour, set in an indeterminately modern environment - guns and loud music, but not much sign of other technology - with everyone in extreme white clown make-up except for Paris and Friar Lawrence who have gold faces.

The critics panned the production as incoherent and unnecessarily loud and vulgar. It is certainly surprising to discover Lord Capulet dressed as a (black) alligator and leading a raucous rendition of the Village People's YMCA as he hosts his party. It is more than a bit weird that the major deaths occur by means of pistol shots, but that the wielder of the pistol continues to talk about swords, rapiers, vials of poison, or whatever, and then merely utters the word 'Bang' to indicate that the weapon has been fired. Towards the end of the play, Paris is not dispatched, but Romeo shoots Juliet's parents and his own parents.

On occasion, some scenes are played simultaneously. Most notably the scene in which the Nurse (Blythe Duff, very Scottish) informs the distraught Juliet of Romeo's banishment is superimposed on the scene in which Friar Lawrence (Harish Patel, behaving more like a Hindu mystic than a Catholic friar) advises the distraught Romeo to depart for Mantua. Romeo and Juliet are thus kneeling on the same bed although they are oblivious of one another, being in entirely different spaces.

Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 10 April 2017

Simon Godwin directs Tamara Lawrance as Viola, Oliver Chris as Orsino, Phoebe Fox as Olivia and Tamsin Greig as Malvolia in a fascinating and at times hilarious modern dress production designed by Soutra Gilmour.

The gender confusions of this play, in which Viola (in Shakespeare's time played by a boy) spends much of the time disguised as a boy while falling in love with Orsino and being pursued by Olivia, are given added twists here by re-shaping the part of Malvolio as a woman, Malvolia, and also having the clown Feste played by a woman (Doon Mackichan). A couple of minor characters also become women, while the boundaries of friendship and the desire for a more intimate affection are also blurred for Antonio and Sebastian, for Orsino as he befriends the disguised Viola, and, at a comic level, even Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attitude towards Sir Toby Belch.

My Brilliant Friend

adapted by April De Angelis from Elena Ferrante's novels

seen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames on 23 March 2017

Melly Still directs Niamh Cusack as Elena and Catherine McCormack as Lila in this two-part adaptation of the four Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante, with a supporting cast of ten actors taking all the other parts. The set - an all-purpose and inventive use of the whole Rose Theatre stage and the galleries behind it - and costumes are designed by Soutra Gilmour.

This is a compelling piece of theatre with blisteringly good performances from the two women whose careers and experiences diverge drastically from their childhood in post-war Naples. The adaptation of four dense and complex novels into about five and a half hours of playing time is extremely ambitious, but it is triumphantly realised. It is clearly an adaptation from another medium, rather than a newly devised play, but nonetheless it is dramatically sound and intensely involving. I have not (yet) read the books, so I cannot comment on what has been sacrificed or simplified, but as a sheer piece of theatre I found it totally engrossing. I'm not entirely clear on the relations of some of the families - not helped here by the inevitable doubling of roles - but in the heat of the moment it was not much of a disadvantage.