THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE at the Dorfman, National Theatre - into the woods...

Hot on the lion's tail of THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, it was time to see another theatrical adaptation of a fantasy novel - one in which, ironically, CS Lewis' Narnia novel is heavily featured.  Welcome to the at-once familiar, but very strange world of writer Neil Gaiman's THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE.

I have only read one of Neil Gaiman's novels, the topsy-turvy London adventure NEVERWHERE, but have seen him onstage playing wingman to his missus Amanda Palmer, and even met him once ten years ago when we bumped into the two of them taking photographs in the Vaudeville Theatre foyer.  Luckily Owen had one of Amanda's badges on so we got a hug and told her we were seeing her soon at the Union Chapel.  While queueing that night for a signed cd, Neil Gaiman nudged Amanda and said "Oh look Amanda, it's the two gentlemen from the theatre".  Fame, eh?

Gaiman dedicated THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE to Amanda;  it started out as a short story in response to her questions about his childhood, but as he got more involved into the plot it changed to novel-length.  Wildly successful, it later won Book of The Year from the British National Book Awards.  Gaiman has had no involvement in Joel Horwood's adaptation but there is a connection to Amanda Palmer as a frequent musical collaborator Jhereck Bischoff has composed the score.  Not having read the book I had no idea what to expect but it did not take long for me to get involved in the story as well as the way it was told. 

A man attends a family funeral and, strolling back to his old house, he strays towards a nearby farmhouse where he encounters an older woman.  Prompted by her, he vaguely remembers a girl called Lettie Hempstock, who he was inseparable from when 12 years old, and just about remembers that she moved away.  We then flashback to far-flung 1988: he is living with his father and younger sister, and the whole family is silently trying to cope with the death of the children's mother a year ago, his escape being his love of books.

Their lives are further disrupted when the family's former lodger commits suicide after stealing the family car.  The boy meets Lettie on the border of her land soon after and when he tells her about the suicide she brings him home to her mother and grandmother to tell them about it too.  The women of the farmhouse are strange mystics who believe that the man's suicide - caused by guilt of stealing money - has allowed an evil entity - a 'flea' - to attempt to 'cross over' into the real world. Lettie and the boy set out to destroy the 'flea' by magic but the boy is warned not to let go of Lettie's hand - but during the tumult he accidentally does.

Later that night in his bathroom, the boy extracts a worm from a wound in his hand without realizing he has left a piece inside... which means the 'flea' has escaped into the real world!  Shortly after, the boy's dad informs his children that a new lodger is moving in, a woman called Ursula Monckton who bonds with his sister but who the boy takes an instant dislike to.  Slowly he realizes Ursula is the 'flea' in human form and soon his father is her pawn too..

With Ursula able to read his mind, he escapes from the house by reciting from memory THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE to block his thoughts.  Once safe at the Hempstock farm, the boy and Lettie must again fight evil in the shape of Ursula - but what if there is a greater danger than her?

Director Katy Rudd has a firm hold on the narrative for most of the play - oddly it only lapses at the end where the climactic battle between good and evil seems to plateau out - but she not only gives us a good eerie tale but also a sad portrait of a family struggling with the loss of a wife and mother. 

Concentration on the tricksy plot is well-served by Fly Davis' simple set - a thicket of trees serves as a backdrop with all other locations suggested by a few pieces of furniture, this comes into it's own as Ursula spreads her malign influence in the boy's house with her appearing behind every door he opens and, in a particularly scary moment, when the boy casually drops the worm from under his skin into the bath, a bloodied hand reaches out of it.  It was one of a few moments when I wondered how the few scattered pre-teens in the audience were handling it!

Paule Constable's lighting is exemplary in illuminating unsettling moments, Steven Hoggett's movement suggests a whirling world of dark undertows and a particular mention to Samuel Wyer's puppet and costume designs - Ursula's pink peg-leg trousers pinpoint the late 80s very well.

In a hard-working cast, three stood out: Pippa Nixon was very good as the smiling intruder Ursula who left the action too soon; her insidious poisoning of the household was an excellent, unexpected plot twist.  Justin Salinger was very good as the boy's father, trying hard to keep his two children occupied after their mother's death but not seeing the enemy within; he also played the grown-up boy at the beginning and end but he could do little with the over-emphatic lines of half-finished sentences which meant to show his hesitant forgetfulness but, as Owen said, just made you think no one speaks like that in real life.

But the performance of the night was Samuel Blenkin as boy at the centre of the action.  Gawky and uncomfortable, unhappy and sad, he was a very believable anti-hero and delivered a touching and true performance.  I think the play could possibly stand another look-at to iron out some pacing issues in the second act but THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was an unexpected delight and deserves going on to bigger stages: for a fantasy tale, it has a lot of truth in it about memory and loss.

On the night we went, the actress playing the boy's sister was unwell and could not perform and while the Dorfman as is has the same rule as the Cottesloe as was, eg. no understudies, still they managed to find an actress to go on reading the script.  Well done whoever she was - there was no slip in the programme and the stage manager mumbled her name.  Needless to say she got a nice round at the end...

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD at the Palace Theatre - Magic to do...

Back in that famous 'day' that everyone talks about, me and my mum went to the barn of a theatre that was, and is, the Palace on Shaftsbury Avenue to see Danny La Rue in his successful DANNY AT THE PALACE.  One of his guest artistes - they were 'artistes' then - was the Black Theatre of Prague, hugely popular at the time and very influential in their black-on-black illusions where objects flew and reformed themselves into different shapes.  They were much on my mind when, 45 years on, I was watching the old Black Theatre of Prague idea utilized on the same stage in HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD.  Yep, I gave in...

Ah HARRY POTTER... Neil Simon once said of the tv series "Friends" 'It's like they made one episode and they keep showing it all the time" - that's how I felt about the Harry Potter films.  When all the blind alleys and red herrings were stripped away, they all told a fairly basic story which never really seemed to reach a denouement (apart from the final one of course).  It also suffered from the dedicated book-to-film franchise problem of having an ever-growing collection of characters who all had to appear for only minutes at a time sometimes - the last film was a veritable parade of actors all turning up to stare down the camera, contributing nothing to the actual story.  The things Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson have made me do...

But here we are, in the Dress Circle of the Palace Theatre, as I said a veritable barn of a place that could have served as an inspiration for Hogwarts with it's dark gloomy spaces and Gothic pretensions, and the good news was that, despite my fears of having restricted view seats towards the end of the third row, they gave a very good view of the large open proscenium arch stage.  Quite right too for the prices I paid.

Despite my anathema for the Harry Potter films, I must admit that I got quite excited waiting for the play to start: HARRY POTTER, along with HAMILTON, have made the mere attendance of the show an event, so sitting and waiting for the start could only be a combination of relief to finally be in the seats booked ages ago and to get the vibe from the audience that you are in the auditorium of a copper-bottomed hit.

I must also admit by the end of the first play I was fully on-board - John Tiffany's production moves along at quite a breathless pace and the sheer theatricality of the piece was what I enjoyed most: illusion, slight-of-hand, the simple Black Theatre of Prague techniques all contributed to a show - that like the best of all theatre - allows you to use your imagination while watching, the direct reverse of what the films did which allowed for no imagination as everything was CGI-d for you.

The production has the feel of a musical - the on-stage action is deftly choreographed by Steven Hoggett, which sweeps you along with the characters inter-actions with each other and the sets - I particularly liked how just some snap-to-black lighting and the ensemble's swirling capes transitioned one scene to another so effectively.  Last year we saw John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett's PINOCCHIO at the National which, compared to POTTER, seems even more clunky than it did at the time.

The programme helpfully gives you a potted Potter synopsis of all the stories up until the start of the play: 19 years after Harry's defeat of his evil nemesis Voldemort, he is grown up and employed by the Ministry of Magic.  He and his wife Ginny send Albus their youngest son off to be educated at Hogwarts and, while travelling, Albus makes friends with another new pupil, the shy yet gushing Scorpius.  Much to Albus' surprise, he discovers Scorpius is the son of Potter's former bully Draco Malfoy.  Albus and Scorpius find life at Hogwarts hard as they are forever compared to their more illustrious fathers which makes the friends bond all the more special.

Harry is approached by the father of a contemporary of his at Hogwarts who was killed by Voldemort; the old man has heard of the existence of a time-travelling device which could be used to save his son from an early death.  Harry refuses but Albus is determined to help him and his anarchic niece Delphi.  Harry is confused at the growing estrangement from Albus and is worried from auguries that something evil is approaching.  The boys steal the time device from the office of Harry's school-friend Hermione, and twice attempt their mission; however both times end with them interfering with time altering the reality of their present day.  On the second attempt, Scorpius finds himself trapped in a reality where Harry was killed by Voldemort who reigns supreme.

The first play ends on such an unexpected note of the evil world manifested to the terrified Scorpius that it really send you out desperate for Part 2 - the final coup de theatre is breath-taking, generally eerie and - as the free badge we received as we left the theatre asked us to #keepthesecrets, I will.  The second play sadly runs out of steam and is not as dramatically involving as the first. The second play seems full of repetitions and the culprit who is allowing the coming evil to happen is very obvious.  Indeed, even the final confrontation between Potter, his old friends and the spirit of Voldemort, doesn't quite work.  Both fathers and sons - Harry & Albus, Draco & Scorpius - are finally reunited however but this also threw up a quandary for me.

For a hugely successful female writer JK Rowling is oddly resistant to showing any connection between her female characters: Ginny Potter is a standard worried mother, Hermione - while in a position of power - has hardly any connection with her daughter Rose who starts out with Harry and Scorpius but who soon vanishes for large sections of the story, while Delphi remains firmly obsessed with her father.  So the only real female character who appears to have any tangible connection to Harry is his mother... who's dead.  When the relationships in the play buzz around the subject of the burdens placed on fathers and son relationships, the women in essence are not allowed any such soul-searching.  Strange.

As I said the second play cannot keep up the pace of the first and it left me with the feeling that writer Jack Thorne could have been more concise with his, Tiffany and Rowling's original story - but whoever heard of a production taking place over one full play and a second first act?  There just seemed to be a lot of padding to get to the climax of the second play.

In juggernaut productions like HARRY POTTER there really is no need to cast star names but the performances were by-and-large good: Jamie Ballard was good as the troubled Harry while Joe Idris-Roberts was very good as his equally-troubled son Albus, oddly enough we last saw him as another growing boy with father issues for John Tiffany in PINOCCHIO.

Thomas Aldridge was fine as the plain-speaking Ron Weasley but Franc Ashman as Hermione frequently sounded clanging notes, however Helen Aluko showed spirit as their daughter Rose - so much so that I wished she had more to do.  But by far the most eye-catching performance was Jonathan Case as Scorpius, in his first professional role.  Although he pushed the gurgling, bashful, tongue-tied Scorpius to almost Boris Johnsonian levels, he connected to the role perfectly and made him more of a central character than either Potter, with a more interesting character arc.

The true stars are however the production team: Tiffany's direction allied to Steven Hoggett's movement, Christine Jones' sets, Katrina Lindsay's costumes, Imogen Heap's score, Neil Austin's lighting and the illusion effects of Jamie Harrison; all combine to give a unique theatrical event and a genuine celebration of what theatre - and only theatre - can do.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE at the Duke of Yorks - truth through illusion...

By a lovely coincidence one of my favourite plays is currently on in London, just in time for my birthday!  I had been quietly - and not-so-quietly - looking forward to seeing this Broadway import and I am happy to say I wasn't disappointed!

With it's 1945 Broadway premiere, THE GLASS MENAGERIE catapulted Tennessee Williams into the forefront of American playwrights which was confirmed with his second play A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE - his remarkable style of autobiographical poetic realism hitting an unknown chord at the time which has resounded down the years.  They remain his most revived plays and for good reason, they have become plays that actors want to test themselves against.  Personally I find them both incredibly moving plays to experience.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a four-hander and each role is wonderfully mined by Williams to give any actor who plays them so many opportunities.  The play's premiere delivered a seismic shock across the theatre world and not only just for Tennessee's writing, as Laurette Taylor's performance as Amanda has echoed down the years - anyone who saw it said her naturalness in playing burned itself onto their memories and her death in 1946 aged only 63 surely robbed us of it being immortalized on screen, in the 1950 film version the British musical star Gertrude Lawrence played Amanda, a decision that Williams called "a dismal error".

What is interesting is that Taylor's performance was acclaimed because of the naturalness of her acting - Martin Landau said it was like an ordinary woman had wandered through the stage door and was moving around the stage - however it is usually the tendency for Amanda to be played in a barnstorming diva-style manner but in John Tiffany's excellent revival Cherry Jones is certainly barn-storming but totally within the world of the production; Tom, the narrator, tells us at the start that what we will see is what plays in his memory and his mother Amanda simply swamps his memory of life at home.

Tom Wingfield is a man haunted by memories of when he lived with his southern belle mother Amanda and his shy, withdrawn sister Laura in a cramped apartment in St Louis during the 1930s.  Mr Wingfield left 16 years before - "a telephone man who fell in love with long distances" as Amanda bitterly says - and since then she has managed to raise her children but her overbearing love drives them to distraction.  Tom longs to be a writer but has to work as a clerk in a shoe factory which he loathes and stays out at night to visit local cinemas and bars.  This piece of autobiographical writing is given resonance when we read that Williams' regular trips to his local cinema were, in part, to have sex with men in the dark.

Laura's lack of self-confidence due to a crippled leg and pathological shyness have led her to pretend to go to a business school which drives Amanda to despair when she finds out.  Amanda decides that Laura's only option is to find a man like the "gentleman callers" she remembers from her youth. Tom invites his only friend at work for dinner much to Amanda's delight but Jim O'Connor's appearance sets off a chain of events that will change the Wingfields forever.  Tom tells Jim he has used the electricity bill money to register for the navy and when the lights cut out, Amanda encourages Jim to sit with Laura by candlelight but we know this is exquisite torture for her as she used to silently adore Jim at high school.

This scene is beautifully written - Williams taking the time to set the characters up so the scene plays almost like a thriller as we hang on their every words: Jim trying to build up Laura's confidence, Laura's hesitant introducing Jim to her beloved glass menagerie and, above all, the realization that Jim would be the perfect boyfriend for Laura; her hopes smashed - like her favourite glass unicorn figurine that Jim knocks against - when he reveals that he is already engaged, the sadness becoming unbearable when she gives Jim the broken unicorn as a parting gift to remember her by.  Amanda's rage at Tom's ignorance of at his friend's engagement drives him from the flat for the last time and now his mother and sister haunt his peripatetic life.

As with most of Williams' plays it was arrived at through different permutations: it first appeared as a 1943 short story "Portrait of a Girl In Glass" and one of the interesting diversions from the play is when after The Gentleman Caller leaves, Laura enigmatically suggests that maybe she wasn't the only Wingfield child who was in love with Jim....  Williams also tried out the idea as a film script in the early 1940s when he had a six-month contract with MGM.  Luckily it all came together as a play.

John Tiffany's production was beautifully realized; Bob Crowley's stripped-down set seemingly hanging in darkness and - unseen by us from the back of the stalls - surrounded by inky-black water.  There was a surprising theatre moment when Michael Esper's Tom literally pulled Kate O'Flynn's timid Laura from the depths of the living room couch only to have her disappear within it at the end - this was a production which constantly reminded us through the use of Steven Hoggett's choreographed movement and Nico Muhly's tinking score that we were watching a non-realistic representation of Tom's memories.

In all the productions I have seen before, there was an imbalance in the level of performance but here John Tiffany elicited strong performances from all four: Cherry Jones and Brian J. Smith had played their characters in Boston and New York but they have still meshed well with the UK additions of Michael Esper (straight from the Bowie musical LAZARUS) and the English actress Kate O'Flynn so they feel like a real ensemble.

Esper was fine as Tom, wanting a life denied to him by his dead-end job and unhappy home life but you still felt his inner struggle with leaving the family home while Brian J. Smith was very good as Jim The Gentleman Caller who enters the home unaware of the weight of expectations awaiting him; he also added a larger-than-life quality to Jim giving him an air of the outside world that is missing from the crepuscular Wingfield home.

Kate O'Flynn gave an unsentimental performance as Laura, her shyness even with her mother and brother shown by her swallowing every word she spoke but she also rose to the challenge of slowly flowering into happiness when finally alone with her adored Jim; her slow withdrawal back into her interior world at the news of Jim's engagement was heartbreaking to watch.  In other productions on both stage and screen Laura's crippled leg has been played up but here it is hardly noticeable; John Tiffany's take seems to be that Laura has convinced herself that she is a helpless cripple despite Amanda, Tom and Jim's protestations to the contrary. 

I had seen Cherry Jones on Broadway in 2005 as Sister Aloysius in DOUBT and now she is making her much-anticipated London debut in a dazzling star performance. Her Amanda Wingfield is a woman whose life has not measured up to what she expected; brought up to expect a life of pampered marital leisure but who has had to raise her children alone, with no work experience to fall back on, in the challenging decades of the 1920s and 1930s.  Amanda's tragedy is that she sacrifices everything for her children's future without seemingly asking what they want their future to be.  Cherry Jones was funny, formidable, affecting, terrifying and, primarily, all-too-human.

John Tiffany has since had much acclaim with his direction of the Harry Potter plays but with THE GLASS MENAGERIE he lived up to Tom's opening speech - unlike the stage magician who "gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth, I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion".

This play continues to haunt you long after it ends, just as Tom is haunted by his memories of Laura and in reality Williams was haunted by the fate of his sister Rose who was given a frontal lobotomy on the agreement of their mother Edwina while Tennessee was away, working at MGM.  Their initial closeness had given way under the pressure of Rose's mental condition and he turned against her when she revealed his homosexuality to their mother.  But his lingering guilt at her treatment made him ensure that she was kept in the best rest homes and that she would be well cared for after his death.  But the guilt remained... as it does for Tom:

Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!  I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger - anything that can blow your candles out - for nowadays the world is lit by lightning!  Blow out your candles, Laura - and so good-bye.