Amadeus

By Peter Shaffer

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 31 January 2017

Just over 36 years ago, on a cold December morning of 1980, I queued outside the National Theatre in the hope of buying two day release tickets for Peter Hall's original production of Amadeus starring Paul Scofield (Salieri), Simon Callow (Mozart) and Felicity Kendal (Constanze). In those pre-electronic days the limited number of day tickets were only on sale at 9 am from a small booth near the entrance to the building, which was not open to the general public until a later more civilised time of day. Inexplicably, the couple in front of me declined the tickets on offer, and so a friend and I were able to see the play from the centre of the fifth row of the stalls. In this prime position, it seemed as if Salieri was speaking to us alone out of the whole unwieldy amphitheatre of the auditorium as he mused on the appalling mixture of joy, pain, jealousy and betrayal he experienced on first hearing the music of Mozart.

The National has now revived the play in a new production directed by Michael Longhurst with Lucian Msamati as Salieri, Adam Gillen as Mozart and Karla Crome as Constanze, with the participation of the Southbank Sinfonia to provide the musical interludes. Once again, I bought a ticket at the last moment; just by chance there was a return for the evening performance when I asked to the Box Office in the afternoon, this time in the centre of the eleventh row.

The Dresser

by Ronald Harwood

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 26 January 2017

This revival of the play, first performed in Manchester in 1980, is directed by Sean Foley with Ken Stott as 'Sir' and Reece Shearsmith as Norman, the eponymous Dresser. It portrays the close but fractious relationship between the autocratic actor manager of a wartime repertory company and his dresser, who possessively manages to cajole the over-stressed performer to rise to playing King Lear during an air raid.

The first act takes place in the dressing room; there is an initial panic because 'Sir' has had some sort of collapse in the market place and has been hospitalised. But he later appears, having discharged himself, and insists that the evening's performance should not be cancelled. The second act takes place partly on stage during the performance, and partly in the dressing room. The set is artfully designed to revolve to allow smooth transitions in the second half.

The play is full of sharp perceptions about repertory life, particularly during the war when there was much physical discomfort and evidently a short supply of new male talent (the supporting males are either past their best, or else physically wounded and hence discharged from the Services). Also, the actor manager's style, though comic at times to watch (though never to experience), is monstrously selfish. But then, so too is Norman, who fiercely defends his patch, more than half aware that his sense of self is totally dependent on his position, quite apart from his livelihood.

Ken Stott is wonderfully over the top, irascible, pettish, dominating, outrageous, yet able to summon reserves of actorly power even as he is struggling to remember which play he is in and when he should go on stage. Reece Shearsmith gives us an utterly convincing Norman, fussy, diligent, not quite sufficiently able to disguise his campness, full of little routines to keep things running his way, pathetically in need of approval when he is forced to make a public announcement. 

The play stands or falls by the relationship these two present to us, and in this case it was completely convincing. One could easily understand the curious reliance the two have on each other, and the completely different way in which each both acknowledges and denies the fact. Norman's ultimate realisation that Sir has completely failed to mention him in his projected memoirs is quite heartrending.

The production is also well served by the supporting players, who circle round their capricious boss with varying degrees of respect, affection and misplaced aspiration. This is a fine revival.

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.

This House

by James Graham

seen at the Garrick Theatre on 11 January 2017

Directed by Jeremy Herrin, this production has transferred from Chichester, though the play was first presented at the National Theatre in 2012. It features Nathaniel Hawthorne as Jack Weatherill (the Tory Deputy Chief Whip), Steffan  Rhodri as Walter Harrison (the Labour Deputy Chief Whip), with Malcolm Sinclair as the Tory Chief Whip, Phil Daniels as the Labour Chief Whip (until his demise), and Lauren O'Neill as Ann Taylor, the only female (Labour) whip. Other cast members take various parts as MPs both lesser known and famous - there are cameo appearances for John Stonehouse, Norman St Jon Stevas and Michael Heseltine.

The set represents the House of Commons, and some members of the audience are seated as if on the Commons benches or in the visitors' galleries. Adroit lighting turns parts of the stage into other Parliamentary venues, in particular the Government and Opposition Whips' offices (there's a delicious joke that the Government office has chairs with adjustable seats whereas the Opposition has to make so with ordinary - though still not uncomfortable - chairs). The play examines the fraught years from 1974 to 1978 when Labour formed the government firstly in a hung parliament and then with the slenderest of majorities, leading to desperate measures to ensure that crucial votes were passed, thus avoiding a vote of no confidence.

Buried Child

by Sam Shepard

seen at the Trafalgar Studios on 5 January 2017

Scott Elliott directs Ed Harris as Dodge and Amy Madigan as his wife Halie in this Gothic horror version of American family life. The two senior actors (also actually husband and wife) are ably supported by Barnaby Kay and Gary Shelford as their sons Tilden and Bradley (the first psychologically damaged and the second one-legged after a possibly self-inflicted chainsaw "accident") and by Jeremy Irvine as Tilden's son Vince and Charlotte Hope as his Californian girlfriend Shelly.

The play is set in the living room inhabited by the decrepit patriarch Dodge - he is on stage coughing and watching TV from his sofa as the audience files in. It is raining and there are leaks being caught in buckets and pans. When the play starts, it is with a peculiar dialogue between Dodge and the unseen Halie who is upstairs preparing herself to go out to meet the local minister. When she finally appears the lack of engagement between the two is acutely underlined as her somewhat faded smartness contrasts with his utter dishevelment. 

Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Trafalgar Studios on 29 December 2016

This stripped down version of Hamlet, adapted and directed by Kelly Hunter, emphasises the Ibsen-like domestic turmoil of the play in an intense 90-minute focus on the disasters falling on the Danish Royal house and the family of Polonius. It features Mark Arends as Hamlet, Finlay Cormack as Laertes, Francesca Zoutewelle as Ophelia, Tom Mannion as Claudius, Katy Stephens as Gertrude and David Fielder as Polonius and the Gravedigger.

All sorts of drastic decisions have to be made to create such a short version of what can be an extremely long play while ensuring that it will still make sense and not appear as an evisceration. In this, Kelly Hunter is almost entirely successful, dispensing with all the minor characters but retaining, with sometimes breathtaking aplomb, the major strands of the story so far as they relate to the two families under observation. 

The Red Barn

by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 20 December 2016

This play is based on a novel called La Main by Georges Simenon. Set in the eastern US, it concerns Donald Dodd (Mark Strong) and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis), and their encounter with his friend Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey) and his wife Mona (Elizabeth Debicki). It is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Paule Constable.

The play opens with a snowstorm in which the four characters are attempting to reach the Dodds' home after a party, their car having broken down. By the time three of them are safely inside, Ray has been lost in the storm; later his body is found even though Donald went out again to look for him. It transpires that he may not have spent long looking, though he was gone for hours, as Ingrid discovers many cigarette butts in the barn, which Donald burns - he had sat there for some hours.