This month I have had two theatrical events. Well... sort of theatrical... Owen and I made the journey out to Greenwich to the main O2 auditorium to see DELIRIUM yet another production by the always-busy Cirque de Soleil boys and girls. The big surprise was that the stage went across the length of the auditorium giving us a 'widescreen' production. As usual for their productions the arena looked fairly well sold out.
This show is built around music which has featured in previous Cirque productions but remixed and given a more tribal, drum-based performance. The main character in the show is a man dangling from a huge balloon - as you do - slowly drifting back and forwards across the stage while the standard acrobatics took place below and around him. On each side of the stage were enormous video screens which were utilised every so often to give it a real avant-garde multimedia vibe. Needless to say it was all set in the floaty man's dreams.

It was all very entertaining in that there was always something to gawp at but I can't say I was fully connected to the show primarily because despite the fact it was only 90-odd minutes long there was the usual constant stream of people up and down the arena aisles. What is it about arena auditoriums that make it impossible for people to stay in their bloody seats for any length of time without nursing a plastic glass of drink? I mean I know these places are impersonal hanger-like spaces but it does my head in every time!

I did enjoy some of the turns though but they are the Cirque acts that I always enjoy. We had two Chinese lads who went twanging up to the flies and back down again on elastic straps who gave us a bit of a chance to go Oooo and Ahhh and best of all were the four East European lads who balanced on each other - practically holding themselves upright by one hand on the one of the others' head. They would be handy to have about the house if there was nothing on the telly. It all came together for an all-hands-on-stage uplifting finale which culminated in huge inflated orbs being bounced over the front stalls. The shadow of Slava hangs over Le Cirque obviously. On Wednesday I went to the National Theatre - courtesy of Angela who could not use her ticket - see a new play called HARPER REGAN by Simon Stephens. It was all rather glam as it was the opening night with critics and actor-y types dotted about which, from my 2nd level eyrie at the side of the Cottesloe, made for occasional viewing when the play started to lose my interest. I looked at the audience quite a bit.

Harper's father is dying and she is desperate to see him one last time. When she is told by her boss that she cannot have the time off she simply leaves her job and her home in London but arrives in Stockport too late. She has a bit of a wander, encountering a boorish journalist in a pub who gets a glass in the neck for his attempts to pick her up, a married man she meets in a hotel room after scanning an online singles site, has a confrontation with her estranged mother then goes home having faced her demons and ready to challenge the particular elephant-in-the-home that is affecting her marriage.

Dear God was it wordy. From it's Pinteresque opening scene where Harper nervously asks for time off from her creepy boss to it's countless two-hander scenes in various locations it just kept striking me that this could easily have been done on radio and not lost anything in translation. It would appear all the strands of the playwright's oeuvre are here, I just wish it wasn't all so damn predictable. If you haven't guessed the problem that is eroding Harper's relationship with her husband after their first scene then you just ain't trying hard enough. I was second-guessing this play all down the line.
Lesley Sharp is a fine actress but here, although handling with skill the taxing demands of a role which requires her to be onstage for the entire running time, I can't say with all honestly that I enjoyed it. Her delivery in a flat hesitant monotone conjured up the excesses of Mr. Michael Leigh and I frankly couldn't give a toss whether her profoundly slappable character found out anything about herself on her walkabout.
I did enjoy Marianne Elliot's direction however and as usual she elicited nice turns from various supporting actors - Troy Glasgow (a porn name if ever I heard one) is good as a young black lad she connects with, Nick Sidi was also fine as her husband as were Jack Deam and Brian Capron as the bad and good men she meets on her Stockport visit. As forceful as Susan Brown was as Harper's mother the scene smacked too much of soap opera confrontation. Within that scene though there was a delightful cameo from Nitin Kundra as her builder step-father's assistant. But ultimately there was less to this play than meets the eye.