Love in Idleness

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 22 April 2017

Trevor Nunn directs Eve Best as Olivia Brown, Anthony Head as Sir John Fletcher, Edward Bluemel as Olivia's son Michael and Helen George as Sir John's estranged wife Diana in a wonderful revival of Terrance Rattigan's wartime comedy, with sets designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis.

The play opens in a swank apartment with Olivia on the telephone gushingly trying to arrange a dinner party, persuading a series of guests to attend on each other's accounts. Eve Best excels at this fast-paced society manner, the words pouring out persuasively with hardly a breath taken. Yet we are soon aware that the situation is not exactly straightforward. She answers telephone calls a little warily, pretending anonymity until she knows who is calling; and she seems inept at taking in an important message for Sir John Fletcher, a minister in Churchill's War Cabinet. It transpires that Sir John has installed Olivia in the flat; their romantic involvement is clearly passionate but social respectability is denied them as Sir John cannot afford the scandal of divorce while in the Cabinet.

Obsession

based on the film by Luchino Visconti

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 20 April 2017

Ivo van Hove directs Jude Law as Gino, Halina Reijn as Hanna, and Gijs Scholten van Aschat as Joseph, with Chukwudi Iwuji as the Priest and the INspector, Robert de Hoog as Jhnny and Aysha Kala as Anita in this adaptation of Visconti's 1942 film Ossessione, in which a drifter takes temporary work in a car repair shop and begins an obsessive affair with the proprietor's wife.

The production bears a number of Ivo van Hove's hallmarks - an all-purpose set (designed and lit by Jan Versweyveld); slow pulsing musical notes to create an expectation of doom or threat; intense emotional situations revealed in silences or sudden bursts of activity or speech; a tendency to work against the grain of the piece in order to uncover its fundamental meanings.

The Glass Menagerie

by Tennessee Williams

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 15 April 2017

John Tiffany directs Cherry Jones as Amanda, Kate O'Flynn as Laura, Michael Esper as Tom and Brian J Smith as Jim in this excellent revival of Tennessee Williams's 'memory play'.

As the play is narrated by Tom, an aspiring poet (who may be seen as a stand-in for the author) we may expect it to be about his own struggle to escape the suffocating atmosphere of his family, and in particular of his over-bearing mother Amanda. She indeed manages the faded hopes of her life by keeping up appearances and talking, talking, talking in a way that would infuriate any young man with any strength of character. Cherry Jones portrays this difficult and at times infuriating woman with immense authority and dignity, which makes her power all the more pervasive, while Michael Esper as Tom shows us something of the strain of living up to such a mother's standards.

46 Beacon

by Bill Rosenfield

seen at the Trafalgar Studios Two on 13 April 2017

Alexander Lass directs Jay Taylor as Robert, a 30-something British actor taking a break from his London troubles in Boston, and Oliver Coopersmith as Alan, a teenage high-school student working at the theatre where Robert has a part in an Anouilh play. The play is set in Robert's room in the residential hotel on the prestigious Beacon Street, and concerns Robert's seduction of Alan one night in 1970.

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.

The Lottery of Love

by Pierre Marivaux translated by John Fowles

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 8 April 2017

This is the first staged prodiction of John Fowles's version of Marivaux's play Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard though there was a workshop at the National in 1984. It is directed by Paul Miller and designed by Simon Daw, and features Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Sylvia, Claire Lams as Louisa (her maid), Pip Donaghy as Mr Morgan (her father), Tam Williams as Martin (her brother), Ashley Zhangazha as Richard (her suitor) and Keir Charles as John Brass (his manservant).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

by Tom Stoppard

seen at the Old Vic on 29 March 2017

David Leveaux directs the 50th anniversary revival of Tom Stoppard's first great hit, playing in the theatre where it was first performed in London after transferring from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 1966, with Daniel Radcliffe playing Rosencrantz, Joshua McGuire playing Guildenstern, and David Haig the Player King.

The two main characters are mere extras in Hamlet, their fate sealed somewhat callously by the prince when he rewrites  letter leading to their undeserved execution at the English court. In Stoppard's play, everything depends on their chemistry, as they struggle with uncertainties about their past, with their entanglement in Danish court politics, with the significance of their own lives, and even with remembering their own names (not helped by the tendency of almost everyone else to confuse them).

In this production Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire make a great double act, the first a bit nervy but happy to try to ride the present moment, the second more speculative, more determined to try to impose meaning on what is happening. The players erupt into their lives with a stunning performance by David Haig of overwhelming theatricality, supported by a carnivalesque troupe who hardly say a word.

In Trevor Nunn's 2011 production with Samuel Barnett as Ros and Jamie Parker as Guil, I found the relationship between the two, and their final predicament, more moving. I think this is because Samuel Barnett played a more needy and dependent Rosencrantz. Where he was deeply frightened, Daniel Radcliffe is both more controlled and more panicky. Interestingly, he also comes across as intensely likeable. It's a wonderful performance, allowing for a really satisfying contrast with Joshua McGuire's more cerebral Guildenstern. Their physical confidence in one another, exemplified not least in the fact that almost all the coin tossing involves Radcliffe actually catching the coins, and their comic timing in the set piece routines such as the question-and-answer match, and in so much else, is a real joy to watch. 

Perhaps here the existential ruminations outweigh the more personal sense of waste and loss, accounting for the difference in my emotional reactions; but this is a very fine and at times hugely funny production of a modern classic.