The Bridges of Madison County

by Marsha Norman (book) and Jason Robert Brown (music and lyrics)

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 6 August 2019

Trevor Nunn directs this musical based on Robert James Waller's popular novel about an intense brief affair between Francesca (Jenna Russell) an Iowa farm housewife, originally from Naples, and Robert Kincaid (Edward Baker-Duly), a roving free-spirited photographer hired by National Geographic to photograph the celebrated covered wooden bridges of Madison County.

Robert calls at Francesca's home to ask the way to the elusive seventh bridge, on just the day when her husband and two fractious teenage children have departed for the Illinois State Fair. There is an immediate attraction; one thing leads quickly to another; but, at the last, Francesca's family loyalty prevents her from leaving with Robert. By the time, years later, that she might consider herself free - widowed and her children fully grown and establishes - it is too late; the older Robert has died.

2019 Directors' Festival 1 and 2

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre on 5 August 2019

The Orange Tree Theatre, in partnership with St Mary's University Twickenham, is presenting four short plays directed by graduates of the MA program developed by the two institutions, in the third year of their partnership.

1. Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes by Tiago Rodrigues, translated by Mark O'Thomas and directed by Wiebke Green

This play, set in Lisbon, is one of many resenting an articulate child coming to terms with deep distress, in this case the death of her mother. The girl, played with enormous verve and charm by Eve Ponsonby, is explaining to us the meaning of words while preparing a school project about giraffes - Giraffe also appears to be her nickname, though her father (Gyuri Sarossy) is just as likely to call her Princess. Life is becoming difficult with father and daughter alone after the mother's death - she was evidently the provider in the family, ad now the bills are mounting up and the Discovery Channel has been disconnected. Giraffe embarks on a quest to find sufficient funds for a lifelong subscription to the Discovery Channel, aided by her trusty teddy bear Judy Garland, played with foul-mouthed insouciance by Nathan Walsh (he doesn't really like the name Judy Garland).

This sort of thing could too easily descend into sentimental whimsy; here under the capable hands of Wiebke Green and her versatile cast (Gyuri Sarossy also plays all the men Giraffe meets on her quest) the pitfalls are avoided and the story maintains the necessary balance between high-spirited comedy and uneasy poignancy. The conceit of a child articulating her occasionally wayward understanding of the world by imitating dictionary definitions is beautifully handled as a means of providing the narrative background, while still giving the audience some work to do to understand the situation.

All in all, an intriguing piece of work skilfully fitted to the Orange Tree Theatre stage.

2. Pilgrims by Elinor Cook directed by Ellie Goodall

Will (Nicholas Armfield) and Dan (Luke MacGregor) are friends who go mountaineering; Rachel (Adeyinka Akinrinade) has spent time with each of them, Dan latterly, before they set off on a challenge in Peru which is beyond their strength and skill. In a series of scenes announced by Rachel, who seems to be pushing against the stereotype of male adventuring and female patience (exemplified by the Odysseus and Penelope myth which she explicitly invokes at one stage) we gain an insight into the tangled relationships of the three characters; the exhilaration of the boys at their first experience of climbing as teenagers is all too easily transformed over the years into a defence against confronting deeper insecurities and challenges to mature.

The play is not always successful in keeping track of its many strands, so that the final image of Rachel donning a backpack as her 'man' waves goodbye, a reversal of the more typical gender roles, is both rather too neat and yet not well integrated into the young men's story. However, the cast perform well, negotiating the scrambled chronology of the narrative structure with ease and skill. Ellie Goodall and the Festival's stage management team evoked exposed mountaintops, natural beauty spots, nightclubs and domestic scenes with just a few boxes and pieces of wood, which were extremely effective in the intimate space of the theatre.

The play, perhaps, had bitten off more than it can chew, but the cast and director had not: their work was excellent.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 1 August 2019

Sean Holmes directs Peter Bourke as Thesues and Oberon, Victoria Elliott as Hippolita and Titania, and Jocelyn Jee Esien as Bottom, with Ciarán O'Brien as Demetrius, Amanda Wilkin as Helena, Faith Omole as Hermia, Ekow Quartey as Lysander, Billy Seymour as Flute and Mustardseed, Jacoba Williams as Snout and Moth, Rachel Hannah Clark as Snug and Peaseblossom, and Nadine Higgins as Quince, Egeus and Cobweb, in an exuberant production designed by Jean Chan including explosions of riotous colour in the fairy sequences.

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.

The Lehman Trilogy

by Stefano Massini adapted by Ben Power

seen at the Piccadilly Theatre on 27 July 2019

Sam Mendes directs Simon Russel Beale as Henry Lehman (originally Hayum Lehmann), Ben Miles as Emanuel (originally Mendel) Lehman and Adam Godley as Mayer Lehman, with piano accompaniment by Candida Caldicot, in this production designed by Es Devlin, which was originally presented at the National Theatre and is now enjoying a West End run.

The collapse of the Lehman Brothers Bank precipitated the financial crisis of 2008; this play examines the history of the firm by returning to the arrival of Henry Lehman in the United States from Bavaria in 1844, followed by his brothers in Emanuel in 1847 and Mayer in 1850. The first part shows them developing a business based in Montgomery, Alabama, originally selling cotton goods, then expanding to sell farm supplies, and eventually raw cotton to northern cotton mills. In the late 1850s, after Henry's death in 1855,  Emanuel set up a New York office and gradually, partly in response to the Civil War, the firm moved into banking and eventually finance. Descendants of the brothers maintained a relationship with the firm until the 1960s.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Lyrics by Tim Rice, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 15 July 2019

The double album of Jesus Christ Superstar was issued in 1971; the first Australian production (by Jim Sharman) premiered in Sydney in 1972, so it's the best part of fifty years since I first heard and saw it. Now the Barbican has revived the recent Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production designed by Tim Scutt and directed by Timothy Sheader with Robert Tripolino as Jesus, Ricardo Afonso as Judas, Sallay Garnett as Mary (Magdalene), Matt Cardle as Pilate, Samuel Buttery as Herod and Cavin Cornwall as Caiaphas.

The music holds its own, bending many styles of rock with pastiche nods to operatic convention - emotioanl numbers, a mix of solo introspection and energetic choruses. The story, basically the passion story preceded by Palm Sunday and the cleansing of the Temple, focuses on Judas's predicament as much as Jesus's, preferring to 'humanise' the Gospel traitor by giving him ostensibly higher motives for betrayal than mere greed - a disillusionment with a friend whose message is being eclipsed by his growing personality cult; and a tortured sense that he has been manipulated into a false position by exterior forces - Jesus himself? God?. Though we are probably meant to sympathise, there's an awful amount of special pleading and self-pity as Judas unravels towards his suicide.

Jesus himself remains something of an enigma, plainly not the figure Judas sees (though it is easy enough to understand Judas's point of view), but also not really seduced by crowd popularity nor prepared to indulge his followers in their easy optimism. His exasperation is by turns angry and disappointed, and the agony in the Garden is poignant, his aceptance of the inevitable alwayson a knife-edge.

Visually the production has powerful moments. Dressed in casual, not to say scruffy, clothes, the apostles form an engaging chorus moving with infectious choreography to the driving rhythms of the score. Jesus wears a loose white caftan-like shirt until his arrest. The Romans are dressed in black with white masks, thus effectively a faceless authority, while Caiaphas and the priests look as if they have blown in from a Star Wars desert tribe - probably a wise move to distract from the incipient anti-semitism of the text. The flogging scene was chillingly re-imagined with an already bloodied Jesus (obviously the victim of off-stage brutality as he is moved from Caiaphas to Pilate to Herod to Pilate) being attacked and manhandled by many different floggers who were gradually covering him with gold glitter.

The musicians were good; the singers were of course miked in the modern way (discreet appliances near the cheek), but it was a nice touch that all the major characters used hand-held mikes, often deftly passed from one to another, in a reminder that this was how things were done in the 1970s. But there were no string instruments other than guitars, which meant that the final meditative orchestral cod accompanying the deposition scene relied on plaintive wind instruments and lacked something of the melacholy sweetness of the original recording.

Worth seeing for more than old time's sake, even though there is much to criticise on philosophical and theological grounds about the interpretation of the story

Europe

by David Greig

seen at the Donmar warehouse on 4 July 2019

Michael Longhurst, taking over as Artistic Director of the Donmar, has chosen to revive David Greig's 1994 play set in an abandoned railway station in an unspecified (but probably Eastern) European country near 'the border'. Ron Cook plays Fret, the station master, with Faye Marsay as Adele, his assistant, Billy Howle as Adele's husband Berlin, Theo Barklem-Biggs as Horse and Stephen Wight as Billy, Berlin's friends, Shane Zaza as Morocco, a local boy made good, Kevork Malikyan as Sava, a refugee, and Natalia Tena as his daughter Katya.

Written during the period in which the former Yugoslavia was being torn apart by war and 'ethnic cleansing', Europe nonetheless still packs a powerful punch. The small town is dying now that its importance as a border crossing has vanished, and automation is making its industrial workforce redundant - Berlin, Horse and Billy are now at a loose end. Stationmaster Fret appears at first to be an old-fashioned martinet swamped by the illogicality of train timetables which no longer include stops at his station, and he has no sympathy for a man and woman he finds waiting on the station, apparently impervious to his announcements that there will be no trains. Adele, stifled in her marriage to the unimaginative and truculent Berlin, dreams of glamorous foreign capitals.