LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT at the Wyndhams Theatre - The Long Day Closes

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY is easy to admire, but harder to love.  My two previous experiences of seeing it on stage have given certain memorable moments but the play itself has remained a rambling, shapeless beast, over 3 hours long and full of repetitions and longueurs.  But Richard Eyre might have changed that perception...

I think I have seen the ten most famous plays by Eugene O'Neill - maybe I need to see DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS too - but all have been seen with a vague sense of duty attached; I have been conscious of seeing Great Plays in the Canon: ANNA CHRISTIE, THE EMPEROR JONES, THE HAIRY APE, STRANGE INTERLUDE, MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, AH WILDERNESS!, THE ICEMAN COMETH, A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, A TOUCH OF THE POET... there would have to be some seriously great actors in revivals of these plays to get me to see them again.

Of all the O'Neill plays I have seen, as I said before, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is the one I have returned to most often: I saw Jonathan Miller's 1986 Haymarket Theatre revival with Jack Lemmon, Bethel Leslie, Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher, then in 2000 I saw the late Robin Phillips' version with Charles Dance, Jessica Lange, Paul Rudd, Paul Nicholls - and an unknown actress called Olivia Colman as the Irish maid!  Now here I was... back for another long night in the Tyrone family home on the lonely Connecticut coast.

The monumental play is remarkable when you consider that O'Neill was already suffering the onset of the Parkinson's-related illness which would over the next ten years slowly rob him of the capability to write anything at all.  It's intriguing that the more he was being robbed of the ability to write he turned inwards to write plays where his own alcoholic struggles were reflected, and with JOURNEY, the corrosive feelings he had for his family.

1912: The Tyrone family are staying in their summer house on the Connecticut coast, haunted by the sound of fog horns through the night.  Although all looks well in the morning, by night time all their resentments and secrets will be aired and possibly be unrepairable.  James Tyrone once was an actor of promise but has for many years made a lot of money touring a star vehicle that has kept him in work but never fulfilled his dream of being a great tragedian.  Although he speculates in buying property, he is miserly with money for his family.

His wife Mary harbours a deep resentment for her husband's forcing them all to go on the road with him living out of cheap hotels.  She has never got over the death from measles of a son while touring, and resents her eldest son Jamie who she feels passed it on deliberately.  A difficult birth with her youngest son resulted in her being medicated with morphine, by the cheap doctor Tyrone paid for, to which she has since become addicted.  Their two sons are also caught in misery: Jamie is also an actor but struggles to find work as he is becoming an alcoholic while younger Edmund aspires to be a poet but is succumbing to crippling tuberculosis, again exacerbated by Tyrone's unwillingness to spend money on an expensive sanatorium.

Despite Mary's strenuous attempts to look bright and engaged with the family after being away curing her addiction, her sons slowly come to realize that she has returned to her morphine addiction which over the day becomes more and more evident.  Eventually, the family are lost in the blackness of the night and their existence, forced to watch as Mary appears, once again a morphine addict but remembering her days as a convent girl and her wish to become a nun but she "fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time."

Eugene O'Neill's father was also a touring actor, forever touring a stage version of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO which earned him money but at a loss of any interest as an actor, his mother was raised in a convent and was addicted to morphine after the difficult birth of her third son, his eldest brother Jamie died from alcoholism and he himself spent time in a TB sanatorium.  Having exorcised his family demons when he finished the play in 1941, O'Neill sat on it until he gave it to his publishers in 1945, on the strict instruction that it not be performed until 25 years after his death.

He died in 1953 but his third wife Carlotta went against his wishes and allowed it to be performed only 3 years afterward in Sweden.  The play premiered on Broadway later that year with Fredric March in the lead role where it won the Tony Award for Best Play as well as for O'Neill a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, his fourth in all.  The first London production appeared in 1958 with Anthony Quayle as Tyrone.  And here we are 60 years later...

Richard Eyre has directed this production with a purity of vision that also was evident in GHOSTS, his last collaboration with Lesley Manville.  Although 3 hours 30 minutes it was only towards the end that one became aware of the time, the scene between the two sons having just a few repetitions too many.  Eyre has subtly brought out the fact that the Tyrones, despite everything, are still together and you do feel that the four members of the family do all love each other - the tragedy is that they all seem to give it the wrong way.

Eyre is reunited with his GHOSTS lighting designer Peter Mumford who draws us through the day to the darkening night and Rob Howell's wonderful set for the summer home puts us right in the centre of the Tyrone's world: the semi-transparent walls reflecting a house where there are no secrets held from others even if you are behind closed doors.

Light relief is provided by Jessica Regan as Cathleen, the local Irish girl employed as the Tyrone's maid; it's a bit of a hackneyed comedy Oirish role but Regan soon has you laughing with her than at her.  Matthew Beard and Rory Keenan were both very good as Edmund and Jamie, the damaged sons of the Tyrone's bad blood, both wishing to escape but unable to draw themselves away from the family quagmire.

Jeremy Irons was an interesting choice as Tyrone: not as obviously dominant as others who have played the role - David Suchet, Charles Dance, Jack Lemmon, Brian Dennehy, Jason Robards Jr, Gabriel Byrne, Laurence Olivier - but he played him with the distracted air of a man forced to engage with three family members who have all disappointed him.  Irons rose to the challenge of the scene where Tyrone explains to Edmund the joy he had as a young actor in being singled out for praise by the great Edwin Booth and his lilting, flowery speaking of Shakespeare conjured up a bygone day of performing.  He also was able to turn on the cutting, sniping anger of a man unused to having to give ground.  It's just a shame Irons' American accent was as drifting as the Connecticut fog outside.

The evening belonged to Lesley Manville as Mary Tyrone, she was quite magnificent.  Starting off girlishly happy and shy at her recent weight gain from her time in the sanitarium, she charted Mary's eventual decline during the day with a deadly accuracy: her skittish behaviour, her sudden flare-ups of resentful anger, her circling around the room edging ever-closer to the stairs that led to her secret supply of morphine, her coquettish dissembling "Is my hair coming down?" when meeting the stares of her all-too-aware family and finally her withdrawn stare as she looks out at her unhappy life while remembering the young girl who fell in love with a handsome actor.  She also conveyed effortlessly that Mary is not without guilt in the way her sons have been damaged emotionally by the Tyrone family life, so giving us a fully-rounded character.

The remarkable thing about O'Neill's writing is that by the end of the play you are so invested in them on a human level that you can only hope that life gives them all another chance, as slim as that seems in the dark night.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Old Vic - Rhys Ifan's Ghost Dance

Yes it's that time of the year when Owen seeks out a new adaptation of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL - more often than not to be able to say "They don't do *that* in the book".  This year it was to the Old Vic we ventured to see how Ebenezer Scrooge saw the light on Christmas Eve night and became a better man for it...

 

The Old Vic has been radically changed with a transom stage that dissects the auditorium in two - and audience seating on the stage too - for a production that brings the audience right into the centre of the Jack Thorne's version of the story though it wasn't used to it's fullest extent, most of the action still took place in the centre of the stage crossroads - the transom just made for some room for dancing and, at it's best, for Jacob Marley's lengthy train of chains and cashboxes.

For all the production's explosion of theatricality - more of that later - Thorne's adaptation felt thin and uninvolved, maybe I am over-familiar with the story but it felt like they were playing the synopsis and not the script.  Maybe it was Thorne's take on Dickens tale; Thorne has invented the character of Scrooge's father who is emotionally distant and uncaring - ah so that's it - Scrooge isn't nasty he just never had enough love in his childhood - and to quote Roxie Hart in CHICAGO - "and that's show biz, kids".  I think I prefer my Scrooge to just be a bastard.

None of the ghostly apparitions changed the tempo either - maybe because they were all played by similar-looking women - and the Ghost of Christmas Future was profoundly unscary, what is the point of that??  Scrooge really didn't have far to jump from being just narked to embracing life.

It felt like director Matthew Warchus couldn't wait to get to the scene where Scrooge wakes up a changed man on Christmas morning and the preparations for the biggest Xmas feat ever take over the whole of the auditorium while the audience experiences the wonder of a white Christmas.  But is Scrooge just dreaming?

I loved the theatricality of it all - the ensemble handing out free mince pies and oranges before the show started, the bell-ringing for lovely hushed versions of Christmas carols, the snow blizzards, the It's A Knockout feel to the Xmas dinner preparations but it all felt a bit added on; none of it seemed to rise from Thorne's text.

Rhys Ifans is good as Scrooge looking like a wizened husk of a man who blooms into an excitable beanstalk at the joy of life, he has great charisma on stage and it has just been announced that he will make a third Old Vic appearance in 2018 in a new play about the music business.

There was fine contributions from John Dagleish as Bob Cratchett, Alex Gaumond as Bob Marley and Golda Rosheuvel as the Ghost of Christmas Present.  I also liked Erin Doherty as Belle who has an invented scene at the close of the play where Scrooge visits her to apologize for his behaviour as a young man and she replies in a very non-Dickensian way that without him in her earlier life she would not be happily married and able to forgive him all these years later.

Warchus directs with a steady hand but the show does belong to designer Rob Howell and lighting designer Hugh Vanstone who create a very unique theatrical experience.  The music adds greatly to the feel of the show and Christopher Nightingale deserves plaudits for his composing and arranging of carols.

I would recommend A CHRISTMAS CAROL for it's exuberant festive finale and nice performances but do we really need a psychologically-profiled Scrooge?  I don't think so.

THE FERRYMAN at the Gielgud Theatre - secrets in Troubles times...

2017 was already shaping up to be a great year for theatre and now Jez Butterworth's THE FERRYMAN has confirmed it.  Butterworth has already shown with JERUSALEM that he could write for a large cast but here that includes 21 speaking roles as well as a baby, a goose and a bunny!!

Despite it's roughly-agreed thirty year span, how many plays have directly addressed The Troubles in Northern Ireland?  Bearing in mind how deep it ran in both Ireland and the UK's collective psyche it cannot be said to have populated the main stages of the West End, the fringe maybe, cinema occasionally, the West End no. 

But Jez Butterworth has taken the queasy atmosphere in 1981 Northern Ireland and filtered it through a classic tragedy-style plot where the sins of the past come back to haunt those still living, both innocent and guilty.  But within that framework there is also a stunted love story, comedy, tension, poetry, swearing, 80s pop, the insidious nature of teenage peer-pressure and the constant undertow of nationalist resentment.

Dawn breaks as a couple are playing drunken what-if games in a cottage kitchen, they obviously have a special, easy relationship with each other but we soon find out, as the rest of the extended family wake up and enter the kitchen, that they are brother-in-law and sister-in-law and the oncoming harvest will change their relationship forever.

The very first scene sets a lingering discordant note: Father Horrigan is having a secret meeting with Muldoon, a man who exudes a chilly power.  A body has been discovered in a peat bog, hands tied, shot in the head.  The priest identifies him as a member of the Carney family.  The man's brother Quinn was once an IRA 'soldier' but renounced them at the time of his brother's disappearance to run his father's farm in the countryside with his wife, seven children and extended family.  Muldoon blackmails the priest to go to the farm and persuade Quinn not to make waves.

 

Quinn and his wife Mary had invited sister-in-law Caitlin to move into their home with her son Oisin ten years ago and has made herself indispensable to the family, with Mary retreating for longer periods to her bedroom claiming illness, Caitlin has assumed the role of homemaker.  She has never given up the hope that her husband is alive in England, having been fed with rumours of sightings.  

The rambling farmhouse is also home to aunts Maggie and Pat, uncle Patrick, and also Tom, a simple-minded Englishman who have lived with the family since being discovered as a child lost and disheveled.  Aunt Maggie has dementia but her lucid moments are shot through with a strange mysticism, Aunt Pat is a hardline Republican with a venal streak toward Caitlin who is wrestling with her deepening affection for Quinn who, in turn, is trying to hide his feelings for her now Mary is growing colder towards him.

All this is disrupted when Father Horrigan arrives with his painful news which sends Quinn and Caitlin into shock.  She tells Quinn that she will wait till the harvest has been collected before telling her son but Oisin overhears them and is plunged into despair.  The harvest is gathered, helped by their three young Corcoran cousins, but the celebrations are interrupted by the appearance of Muldoon, greeted as a hero by Aunt Pat and at arm's length by Quinn.  

Muldoon reveals his real interest in the Carney family, the news of the IRA hunger strikers dying has given them massive public sympathy and it would be counter-productive for Quinn or Caitlin to announce that the IRA murder their own.  The political and the personal erupt into a night of growing tensions and betrayals before an explosion of violence that will scar the family forever... 

Sam Mendes's production is a masterpiece of delayed tension; it's always there running under the action, you are just never sure when it will erupt - will it be the internal family pressure that explodes into violence or will it be external world that blows the family apart?  However it is both that leads the stage at the end to resemble a Jacobean tragedy.  I must admit the ultimate sudden bloodbath made me think of David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE which pulled my focus; the violence is necessary but I hoped it might be reached through the insidious emotional pressure of Aunt Pat and Mary.

But THE FERRYMAN is it's own entity and it's sheer breadth of invention and dramatic sweep belies it's rural farmhouse look - it also feels more of a whole than JERUSALEM which was powered by it's larger-than-life central character of 'Rooster', here Quinn is almost the still centre of the vortex with his family providing a non-stop array of vividness.  As Quinn, Paddy Considine is never less than watchable, his remarkable capacity for submerged hurt and anger is never far away, in this his stage debut.

Considine's slow-burn performance is all the more remarkable in that he is surrounded by actors playing to the back of the balcony - but in a good way!  Sam Mendes has assembled an excellent cast who all contribute much to the play's success.

It is a production that for once boasts four key female roles, all played wonderfully: Laura Donnelly gives a quietly luminous performance as Caitlin, trapped by circumstance in Quinn's family but unwilling to move on for her love of him; her final scenes of desperation ring shockingly true, willing to accept the most degrading of circumstances to save her beloved and his family.  Her scenes with Genevieve O'Reilly as Quinn's wife Mary were shot through with tension, a sisterly relationship which is undercut with feelings of bitter antagonism and jealousy.

This uneasy relationship is further undermined by the marvellously devious aunt Pat played with icy fury by Dearbhla Molloy, here looking like a dessicated husk of a woman.  Pat is the rural queen of the killer put-down and the laughs she easily wins from the audience tend to die on the lips when you realize how venal she is, yet she is given a believable history of devotion to the Cause through witnessing the death of her brother, killed defending the Post Office in Dublin during the Easter Rising.

Her counterpoint is Brid Brennan's aunt Maggie who for long stretches of the play simply stares from her chair in the kitchen but who wakes from her reveries occasionally to deliver truths learnt on her internal journeys in her mind.  It was marvellous to see these two exceptional Irish actresses given such fine roles to play.

Des McAleer is very good as the comical and understanding uncle Patrick with a fondness for Greek myths, while Stuart Graham is frightening as Muldoon, the softly-spoken IRA chief who understands the weaknesses within the Carney family all too well.  There is fine work too from John Hodgkinson as Tom Kettle, the simple-minded displaced Englishman who provokes a catalogue of disasters when he clumsily proposes to Caitlin hours after she learns she is a widow, and from the always dependable Gerard Horan as the blackmailed Father Horrigan.

At the start of the third act, Quinn's two sons have an early hours drink with their Corcoran cousins which turns more menacing as they show that they are ready to stumble into tragedy themselves.  The feeling of lives about to take a turn down the wrong road was expertly conveyed and in particular I liked the very believable filial performances of the Corcoran cousins: Séan Basil Crawford - as the oldest Shane, already in too deep with the IRA - Conor MacNeill and Oliver Finnegan.

The farmhouse was wonderfully evoked in Rob Howell's cluttered, lived-in set and Peter Mumford's excellent lighting illuminated the 24 hours that devastate the Carney family.

THE FERRYMAN has nagged away at me since I saw it and will for some time to come - I urge you to see this tender and terrifying tale of hidden love and hidden lies.  It's playing at the Gielgud Theatre until the 6th of January.

Sing The Book...

Constant Reader, I have quite a few musicals to get blogging about. I have been thrashing about wondering how to tackle this task but I have come up with an ingenious way to do it.  I am going to stick my hand into the pile of programmes!

I saw THE BOOK OF MORMON on the first Saturday matinee after it's opening night and there was that certain buzz in the air of an audience almost delirious at having tickets for A Big Hit.  A similar feeling was in the air when I saw Patti LuPone in GYPSY on Broadway a few days after it's opening night.  I actually don't think it's the best circumstance to see a show, the balance is slightly off as everything and anything gets huge laughs and practically all the songs get standing ovations.  We audiences are excitable buggers sometimes.

I had no idea if I was going to like it. I vaguely knew the premise - two bright-eyed Mormon missionaries are sent to Uganda and find their optimistic outlook at odds with the poverty and violence they find - and had remained immune to the whole Trey Parker / Matt Stone phenomenon.  I had however loved AVENUE Q so knew I would probably enjoy Robert Lopez' score.

What surprised me the most was not the much-vaunted outrageousness but how savvy it is to the tenets of how a Broadway show works - take away the odd AIDS joke or 'cunt' word and you have a show that any coach party will enjoy!  It was rather obvious that it's outrage would be viewed slightly differently on this side of the pond.  It's often the case that what's viewed as cutting edge on Broadway raises but an eyebrow here.

However it was all rather endearing and I was soon won over by it's sheer joy in being able to make knob jokes amid the kick-steps.  Not knowing the first thing about the birth of Mormonism I found it all too ludicrous to be true - people actually believe this?  But while Parker and Stone enjoy their lampooning the whole set-up, it of course all ends happily for everyone, Mormon and warlord alike.  Oh and yes, Robert Lopez' score is wonderfully catchy and packed with memorable songs.

What makes the show so likeable is the the cast and in particular, the fabulous Gavin Creel who stars as the ever-smiling but ruthlessly self-centred Elder Price.  Three years ago he was here leading the wondrous HAIR tribe at the Gielgud and Owen and I also got to see him perform his own material at the Jazz Café so it's great to see him brightening up the West End again.

His charismatic, wonderfully-sung and funny performance as Elder Price lights up the Prince of Wales stage and he is one of those rare performers who you can just relax while watching as you know he will deliver the goods and he does.

Jared Gertner plays the hapless Elder Cunningham and certainly has the harder role as he really is playing an escapee from SOUTH PARK.  With no recognisable human qualities at all he occasionally grates but he certainly grabs his big moments such as the first act closer MAN UP and BAPTIZE ME.  Gertner and Creel previously played the roles in the American road tour and have an easy and natural partnership on stage.

Another stand-out is Stephen Ashfield as the ever-smiling, ever-closeted Elder Cunningham who runs the Ethiopian missionary.  His first act number TURN IT OFF is a real showstopper and he knocks it out of the (south) park with a twinkle in the eye and great energy.  I must admit it was the number that made me think "Oh I know I am enjoying myself now!"  I find that usually 20 minutes into a new musical, a song will pop up and I know I can relax... it's going to be a good show.  He also delivers with the second act paean of European Afro-centric condescension I AM AFRICA.

Giles Terera plays the village spokesman Mafala and has good fun with the 'welcome to Africa' number HASA DIGA EEBOWAI while Alexia Khadime shines with an unaffected innocence as his daughter Nabulungi, eager to escape to the heaven-on-earth SAL TLAY KA SITI.

I really enjoyed Casey Nicholow's energetic and inventive choreography although Scott Pask's set design is rather alarmingly low-rent at times.  I had a hugely enjoyable time so get yourself to the Prince of Wales and get Mormonised.  Hello!

I haven't blogged about MATILDA THE MUSICAL??? But I saw that *yonks* ago!  I mean to say, Bertie Carvel is playing Miss Trunchbull on Broadway now!  Well the programme is in my Poly Styrene 'Generation Indigo' tote bag and that's where unblogged progs go so... um *tries to dredge up what I thought of it*

I remember I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to, the combination of Roald Dahl and the RSC had left a sinking feeling within despite all the good reviews.  But I had reckoned without Dennis Kelly's involving book with it's darker moments and it's inventive retelling of Dahl's tale of a young girl who loves to read and has kinetic powers - I'm amazed the RSC took in on as it sound like a more family-friendly version of CARRIE which the RSC famously staged as a musical with disastrous consequences.

In fact the book takes over at times - God there's a lot of plot!  Matilda's parents hate her but are unknowingly involved with the Russian mafia, Matilda is telling a librarian an immensely convoluted tragic story of an escapologist and his wife, her teacher Miss Honey is living in a shed due to the evil plotting of her aunt Miss Trunchbull who also happens to be the headmistress of Matilda's school.  Luckily there is Tim Minchin's quirky and sophisticated score to break up the relentless plot. 

Although I was not enthused enough to buy the cast recording as Owen was, the score works within the confines of the show and does include one genuinely lovely song WHEN I GROW UP which got my eyes a bit moist, sung as the children soar out over the orchestra pit on swings!  The show is a triumph for choreographer Peter Darling, energetic and inventive for both young and adult performers. 

Rob Howell delivers colourful and eccentric costumes and an all-encompassing set design which even extends beyond the confines of the proscenium arch with building blocks tumbling and inching along the Cambridge Theatre walls.  Hugh Vanstone's lighting is also hugely effective and adds to the theatrical excitement.

Matthew Warchus' direction keeps the pace going but even he can't keep up the momentum of the second act plot log-jam.

I was lucky enough to see the first company - despite an a.w.o.l. Paul Kaye as Matilda's father - but it was great to see Josie Walker as Matilda's ballroom-dancing mother and Lauren Ward as the sympathetic schoolteacher Miss Honey while our Matilda for the evening Cleo Demetriou gave a performance which was a pure delight.

 

But towering over MATILDA - both the character and the show - was Bertie Carvel's astonishing Miss Trunchbull the domineering head mistress.  Part Richard III, part Anne Widdicombe, Carvel gave a performance that was frighteningly hilarious and hilariously frightening.  Although primarily a supporting part, he made his character larger-than-life and made you feel sorry for whoever has to follow him in the role.

 

 

MATILDA is still running at the Cambridge Theatre, I wonder if a second visit would enhance or wreck one's memory of it?