ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Olivier, NT: Nothing Left Remarkable...

In 1998 I saw Sean Mathias' woeful ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Olivier Theatre starring an imperious Helen Mirren and an Eeyore-like performance from the late and not-always-great Alan Rickman.  Mirren, Samuel West as Octavius and Finbar Lynch as Enobarbus have lingered in the memory but everything else sucked donkeys.  The audience included actresses like Susannah York, Janet Suzman and Sian Phillips - possibly because it had meant to be the press night which got moved to later in the run - and an odd atmosphere hung over the stalls; probably those actresses thinking "Mirren you poor cow, being in this dog-show!"  And almost 20 years to the day later... here I am in the Olivier, seeing Tony and Cleo again...

The good news is that Simon Godwin's production is better than Matthias' but it is not without it's own sandtraps.  In the more Director-Theatre moments I counted off the already-hackneyed cliches of the modern dress Shakespeare productions du jour - the suited politico costumes for the powerful, the battles staged as machine-gun-rattling, hand-grenade-throwing close-hand combat as in Iraq, a video screen appearing to deliver rolling-news tv coverage of plot that usually happens offstage and the inevitable bulk-bought combat gear.  So far, so un-original.

Luckily Godwin has the powerful combination of Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo to power the three and a half hour production along.  Feinnes was very good as Antony, whose influence and power is dwindling due to his absence from Rome while lounging with Cleopatra in Egypt.  He captured perfectly the world-weary soldier who simply cannot be bothered with the power games of Octavius in Rome but who is dragged back into that world at the death of his neglected wife Fulvia.  First seen in a pair of baggy harem pants and a little pot belly, Fiennes captured the essence of a bored man without making him boring.  I hooted when Antony cracked opened a bottle of beer while talking to his retinue at the start of the play - was Godwin aware of Sid James doing that in CARRY ON CLEO as later referenced by The Smiths in SOME GIRLS ARE BIGGER THAN OTHERS?

There is a telling segment in the documentary THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A DAME where Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins talk about their experiences with ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA and Atkins points out that she has never met an actor who didn't complain about playing Antony: namely because only when they have committed to the role, they realize that it is in fact Cleopatra which is the better role and by then it's too late to back out.  She cites Alan Bates in particular as having told her that he disliked it - to which Mags slyly adds "That's because he wanted to play Cleopatra".

The quartet also reflect on the role with Atkins saying she turned the role down four times because she didn't have the courage to take it on and Plowright saying she did not do it when Jonathan Miller asked her to perform it at the National as most people would complain she only got it as she was married to Olivier.  Maggie Smith says she didn't have the courage to play it in the UK so went to Canada to play it away from critical eyes and Dench says she only agreed to do it after asking Peter Hall did he really want his Cleopatra to be a "menopausal dwarf".  Luckily Okonedo is not a dwarf and has the courage to take it on.

In truth she grew into the performance as the evening progressed: she first seemed too lightweight with her oddly-pitched voice to conquer the role - her 1970s Halston pantsuit also was an odd choice - but as we inched closer to the plateau of Act 5 where, with Antony dead, Cleopatra is the focal point of the play, Okonedo assumed the dominance needed and I felt I could not take my eyes off of her.  Our last Cleopatra was Eve Best at the Globe and she resolutely refused to grow in stature in the final scenes where Cleopatra creates and enters into her own legend: no such issues with Okonedo, who went out in an ice-cold blaze of passion.

There is fine work to be found in the supporting performances: particularly Fisayo Akinade as Eros who excelled in the scene where, rather than watch Antony die, he kills himself with Antony's sword.  Gloria Obianyo and Georgia Landers both impressed as Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra's maids who find their own niches in their Queen's legend.

Nicholas Le Prevost as Lepidus and Hannah Morrish as Octavia gave good performances in rather disposable roles while Tunji Kasim as Octavius and Tim McMullan as Enobarbus gave disposable performances in good roles - McMullan's dreary delivery pissing away the glorious "the barge in which she sat" speech.

Hildegard Bechtler's set design was impressive for the Egyptian palace with it's expanse and sunken pools - just begging for someone to be pushed into - but went for dreary corporate design for Rome... yes, we get that Rome is about Power but for God's sake give us some bling.  I am not asking for recreations of the lavish Henry Irving Lyceum productions but spend some cash for God's sake!  Evie Gurney's costumes were also drably dull.

But Godwin - who is leaving the UK to become Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in the US - kept the pace going through-out and the three hours plus running time was unnoticeable.

Again, another ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA falls short of being a truly great production but there is enough there to encourage a visit to see Shakespeare's play about the end of an epoch and the beginning of a legend.  The production will be shown in cinemas as part of NT Live on 6th December, probably the only chance to see it as practically all performances are sold out.  However always bear in mind that day seats are always available to personal callers from 9.30am as well as the online Friday Rush scheme.

Exit Through The Giftshop - Postcards at an exhibition....

More bootiful booty from museum and exhibition gift shops...

1) FARM AT WATENDLATH (1921) - Dora Carrington

I bought this at Tate Britain which have Carrington's lovely painting in it's collection.  It is now 23 years since the last major exhibition by the most elusive of Bloomsbury-related painters so Tate Britain really needs to pull it's collective finger out.

I love how Carrington has the Cumbrian landscape, rearing up like a whale, echoed by the brick walls which surround the farm house which is dwarfed by the countryside.  The woman and child, who form a loose visual triangle with the house and the washing hanging on the line, seem frozen in awe of their surroundings.

2) ROSES SUR FOND NOIR (1932) - André Derain

This was bought at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris where Derain's striking still life is in the permanent collection.

I am not the biggest fan of still life paintings but I was struck by the lovely use of light in Derain's painting; he was one of the painters who embraced the 'Fauvist' style in the early years of the 20th Century and his use of colour here is still vibrant, particularly against the black background.

3) LE VERROU (1777) - Jean-Honoré Fragonard

We went to a Fragonard exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris but I found it all a bit underwhelming to be honest.  By far the best painting there was one of his most famous, "Le Verrou" or "The Lock" which usually is seen in The Louvre.

It was certainly the image of the exhibition as it featured on the poster and all the merchandise so I simply had to buy a postcard to get out!  It is certainly a striking painting, full of intrigue and passion: is the man locking the door to stop others getting in or the woman getting out?  Is it violent or romantic?  You decide... It would make a perfect poster design for LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES which was published only five years after Fragonard finished his painting.

4) RAMON CASAS I PERE ROMEU EN UN TÁNDEM (1897) - Ramon Casas

One of the jewels of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Casas' large painting was originally created for the Barcelona cafe Els Quatre Gats, which was a focal point for the artists of the Catalan 'modernisme', a copy now hangs there.  The original in the museum however has been cut down by a third in the intervening years

Casas is seen at the front of the tandem pedalling into the future while the restaurateur Romeu looks out at the viewer grinning widely with the Barcelona skyline behind them. Romeu was financially backed by Casas and two other leading Catalan artists Santiago Rusinol and Miguel Utrillo.  I love Casas' spare design, almost as if he knew it would one day adorn merchandise!

5) The PARAKEET AND THE MERMAID (1952) - Henri Matisse

I bought this at the wonderful Tate Modern exhibition of Matisse's glorious cut-outs in 2014.  The  large work, measuring over 11' x 25', drew you into it's waving, magical world; a world of waving fronds surrounding the parakeet and the floating mermaid.  Suffering from failing health, Matisse still wanted to express his artistic vision so he turned to cut-outs.

Matisse painted paper with coloured gouache then cut out his individual shapes which would then be arranged by assistants until he was happy with the harmony of colours then glued them onto the white backing paper, so simple yet so vividly effective.  It's wonderful that only two years before his death, Matisse was still creating art and continuing his love affair with colour.  Another work of art I want to dive into!

COMPANY at the Gielgud Theatre: Side By Side.. By Side

Constant Reader, as you will recall, I am wandering through my 50 favourite musicals elsewhere on this blog and Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking COMPANY from 1970 landed at #46.  It's not my favourite musical of his as you can see; don't get me wrong I love the score but I have found George Furth's book to be dated.  So how will Marianne Elliott's re-appraised and gender-flipped version work?

Um.. about the same really!  For all it's promised looking from a new angle at the show, it still left me loving the score and slightly enervated by the linking scenes.  Playwright George Furth had written a collection of one-act plays for mercurial actress Kim Stanley which were to be directed by Anthony Perkins... who showed them to his friend Stephen Sondheim... who showed them to Hal Prince who agreed that the short plays could be the basis of a new kind of musical where they could be solo scenes linked by a single character observing the action.  There is no word on how pissed Stanley or Perkins must have been to see their project side-lined.

So COMPANY was born: Robert is surprised on his 35th birthday by his close-knit group of friends, five sets of partnered couples.  As he attempts - and fails - to blow out his candles, he remembers occasions when he has been alone with the five couples when their happy facade showed cracks.  Ultimately Robert has to face that, for all his fear of commitment, "alone is not alive".  COMPANY was one of the first non-linear musicals and after mixed reviews out-of-town - Variety infamously said "As it stands now it's for ladies' matinees, homos and misogynists", it struck a zeitgeist-y moment on Broadway and won six Tony Awards, and has seen popular revivals since.

Director Marianne Elliott approached Sondheim with the idea of reworking the show so Robert is now Bobbi, a 35 year-old woman who, after concentrating on the goals of education and a career, finds herself in an emotional limbo.  Sondheim wasn't particularly excited by it but with his old adage "a revival can tinker but the original will always be there" he agreed for her to give it a go; it helped that he was a big fan of her work - indeed, when we first saw WAR HORSE at the National Theatre my attention was drawn to an elderly man a few row down from us on the aisle BLUBBING at the play's climax... it was Sondheim.

Elliott's vision certainly fits the musical's frame - with the implied idea that the biological clock is running too - and of course, in updating the material to include mobile phones and texting, there is also the opportunity to replace one of the couples for a gay couple and, to a less noticeable extent, swap another couple's roles: she is the provider, he is the house-husband.  Elliott's redrawn COMPANY succeeds more because of the production and ensemble rather than the actual material.  I have said how I think the linking scenes are the show's weakness and, again, I just found most of them - for all their modernizing - neither insightful or particularly humorous.  Furth's friends are a collectively unsympathetic lot to be honest and the book's flaws are all the more evident when they co-exist next to Sondheim's effortless wit and insight.

However, as I said, Marianne Elliott has attacked the show with such passion and focus that it is a pleasure to watch.  Helped by Neil Austin's bright neon framing for Bunny Christie's adjoining boxed sets, the show is an unexpected visual treat while at the same time, Sondheim's score sounds fantastic under musical director Joel Fram although having him and the orchestra perched above the set on a bridge is distracting and makes it look like they are sitting on Evita's balcony.  Liam Steel's choreography doesn't really move beyond quirky.

That I liked the production is established and it is the most cohesive vision of the musical I have seen but, for the life of me, I do not understand Marianne Elliott's obsession with Rosalie Craig, who as Bobbi, is the production's dead centre.

Rosalie Craig is a go-to actress for directors such as Elliott, Josie Rourke and Rufus Norris - I presume she takes direction well and doesn't get in the way of their concept-heavy approaches but from THE LIGHT PRINCESS to CITY OF ANGELS, from AS YOU LIKE IT to here in COMPANY she has turned in anonymous after anonymous leading performances.  She is certainly capable, with a pleasant singing voice - although it strains itself in the upper register - but she has zero charisma with no variance in tone - at no time did she surprise me onstage - which here is alarming as Robert / Bobbi is the glue that holds her the show together: at best Craig provides the Pritstick.

In scene after scene, my attention strayed to whoever else was on stage, no matter how good they were.  People might be saying "Let's see COMPANY, Marianne Elliott is directing it" not "Let's see COMPANY, Rosalie Craig is in it".  At one point I thought if only they had asked Cynthia Errivo... imagine what she could do with "Being Alive"?

As I said, it was easy to look through Craig to see some good performances: Mel Giedroyc was a delight as Sarah, forever in contest with husband Harry; it is a bit of stunt casting as her pulling power out-weighs her small role but she was great fun and well matched with Gavin Stokes as Harry who also sang the lovely "Sorry / Grateful" wonderfully.  The classic Sondheim tongue-twisting number "Getting Married Today" is sung by Jonathan Bailey - as Jamie, not Amy - and although he pitched it a little too hysterical to catch all the lyrics it played well to the peanut gallery. Far better was the scene that follows when Jamie's paranoia leads him to break-up with his partner Paul, only to change his mind when Bobbi suggests they marry each other instead; Bailey and Alex Gaumond made a very good partnership.

There was also good work from Bobbi's three lingering boyfriends: Richard Fleeshman was a revelation as the air-head air pilot Andy who wrestles to leave Bobbi to fly to "Barcelona" while Matthew Seadon-Young was very good as Theo, the lover that somehow got away; sadly George Blagden couldn't do much with his big number "Another Hundred People" but that was probably due to the distracting choreography behind him, but the three combined well to deliver a great "You Could Drive A Person Crazy".

 

And the bitter cherry on the cake is Patti LuPone as Joanne, Bobbi's older and cynical friend, now on her third - possibly fourth - husband, who finally manages to break through Bobbi's defences after delivering her coruscating study of upper-class Manhattan wives, "The Ladies Who Lunch".  This classic was wonderfully paced and sung, and of course, LuPone was a sensation.  Luckily we were sitting halfway back in the stalls so there was no repeat of when we last saw her sing that song at the Leicester Square Theatre when she hurled her martini / water into the audience and I ended up soaked!

Elliott was lucky to get Patti: after suffering such pain from a needed hip operation that her last Broadway show had to close early, LuPone announced that she was finished with musicals - shortly before Marianne Elliott asked her to play Joanne!  LuPone was also a fan of Elliott's previous work so agreed - "if I had turned her down she may never have asked me again" LuPone has said.  Thank goodness she changed her mind.  As great as she was at socking over "The Ladies Who Lunch", her playing of the whole scene was a masterclass in nailing a character and holding her moment.

So, despite Craig, everybody rise... COMPANY is back in town.

THE INHERITANCE at the Noel Coward - "Only connect the prose and the passion..."

We first heard about Matthew Lopez' play THE INHERITANCE in July 2017 after a rehearsed reading of BENT at the Lyttelton; in an after-show Q+A director Stephen Daldry said that his next project was an epic two-part play for the Young Vic called THE INHERITANCE.  When it was announced that Vanessa Redgrave would be appearing in it I managed to snap up tickets for both parts last May.

In May we got about 20 minutes into Part One before the lights blew!  After an agonizing 45 minutes, Daldry appeared onstage to announce that the problem could not be fixed and the show was cancelled - AUGH!  An agonizing wait for replacement tickets led to finally hearing that the Young Vic had re-booked us for it's West End transfer to the Noel Coward Theatre.  So, we begin...

Matthew Lopez was raised in the conservative Florida Panhandle, with feelings of otherness as his family were the only Puerto Ricans in town and also bullied at school for being gay.  His aunt is the actress Priscilla Lopez - the original 'Diana' in A CHORUS LINE - and he saw Broadway shows on family trips to New York, sparking interest in theatre. A concomitant love of films led him at the age of 15 to see James Ivory's HOWARDS END with his teacher mother, primarily because Emma Thompson was being considered a front runner for the Best Actress Oscar.  In his own words "that day changed my life".

Lopez was haunted by EM Forster's story and when his mother bought him the original book, he read it repeatedly.  Ten years later, Lopez was living in New York and finally realized why HOWARDS END meant so much to him when he learnt that Forster was homosexual.  Galvanized by Forster's influence and using HOWARDS END as a template, Lopez started writing a play about a group of professional gay men living in the New York of today and the often unspoken dichotomy of what has been gained since the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s and more importantly, what has been lost.

The NY gay community, the AIDS crisis and the two-part play of course echoes Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA and THE INHERITANCE can be seen as a complement - and reaction to - that epic's polemic and storytelling.  I think it's remarkable that both plays have had huge success in early productions in London: in fact THE INHERITANCE has still to be performed in America.

Ten students wrestle with how to tell a story.  An older man appears and selects one to show how to structure a narrative, he asks the student to use a favourite book as a template - of course the book is HOWARDS END and the older man is revealed as the spirit of EM Forster.  Out of the group emerge the young man's central couple: Eric Glass and Toby Darling.

Eric and Toby live together in an upper-East Side rent-controlled apartment that previously belonged to Eric's grandmother.  They lead a busy cultural and politically-engaged life surrounded by similar gay professional friends.  Toby has published a successful novel about a handsome, wealthy gay man in New York which he is adapting into a Broadway play.  They take Adam, a young actor and adopted son of a wealthy couple, under their wing.  He is cast as the lead in Toby's play and Toby joins him in a Boston preview tryout. Toby becomes obsessed with the enigmatic Adam, while Eric, alone in the apartment, befriends Walter, an older neighbour who lives with his longtime partner, Henry Willcox, a rich property investor.

Walter tells Eric of his life and how he is haunted by the devastation that AIDS brought to his friends and the fear and stigma they all felt. Walter also discloses how his and Henry's relationship  suffered when, on finding an old friend called Peter destitute and dying, Walter brought him to their upstate NY country house to spend his last days in comfort.  When Henry found out, he angrily denounced Walter for bringing the disease to their home and handed over the house to Walter, washing his hands of it. Walter made it a place to bring other gay men to die in peace as Peter had.

Walter dies suddenly before he can show Eric his house.  The bereft Eric - also rocked by Hillary Clinton's defeat - finally admits to Toby that their apartment is being reclaimed as it was in his grandmother's name only and they have to leave; Toby provokes a fight with Eric and walks out on their life, however when he tells Adam this, Toby is shocked to discover that the actor is dating the play's director.  Toby can't shake his obsession for Adam and sleeps with Leo, a rent-boy who resembles the actor.

Eric shares his grief over Walter with the enigmatic Henry Willcox who slowly becomes charmed with Eric's goodness; but even he is appalled when a note is found written by Walter saying he would like Eric to have the summer house.  Henry and his two grown sons destroy the note, swearing to keep it secret.  After Henry finds Eric a new apartment, he takes Eric to Walter's country home.  As Eric explores the deserted house, he is welcomed by the ghosts of the men who died there, including Walter's friend Peter.  Eric has found his spiritual home....

In the second play we see the ramifications of the characters' actions: Toby starts a relationship with Leo but as his chems addiction grows, Leo is left hurt emotionally and physically but still sees an anonymous, rich 'john'.  Despite Eric's friends being horrified that Henry is a Republican who happily financed the Trump campaign, Eric still agrees to marry Henry when he proposes.  Their wedding is disrupted by a drugged-up Toby, but Henry's violent anger at the presence of Toby's guest Leo makes Eric realize that he has been the anonymous man using Leo for sex.

The hurt and anger that all the characters feel make for new alliances: Toby finally confronts the fact that his assumed 'golden boy' status was in fact as unreal as his book - he came from a deprived home and faked his way into the NY scene, while Eric becomes friends with a contrite Adam again and discovers Leo destitute and badly sick with HIV.  Disgusted at Henry's refusal to help Leo - and haunted by Walter's actions - he takes Leo to Walter's old house.  On arrival, they meet Margaret, an elderly neighbour who has become almost a caretaker to the house, both physically and spiritually.  Eric discovers that, rather than just storing his grandmother's old furniture from the apartment there, Margaret has furnished the empty house with it.

Margaret reveals her son was one of the men who Walter brought to the house; she had never accepted her son's gayness and was reconciled with him only moments before he died.  She stayed on to nurse the following dying men to atone in some way for her actions and her revelations bring the story full-circle and all the characters to a conclusion which echoes Forster's famous phrase "only connect".

Stephen Daldrey's wonderful production - despite it's combined length of 6 and a half hours - never once lost my attention, his incisive direction knowing exactly when and how long to linger on a scene or a line, knowing that particular moment would gain greater resonance further into the story.  It was a pleasure to be able to pinpoint the moments that reference Forster's book - and rather than seem to be ripping off HOWARDS END, it illuminates the characters and the play.  Daldrey's patience in telling the story reaps massive rewards.

Lopez's play also touches on so many different levels and each play leaves space for two hugely enjoyable - almost Shavian - arguments: in the first, Eric and his friends debate the uneasy balance of gay life in the 21st Century, by gaining access to the straight world, does that mean that gay identity is defanged, it's history forgotten and it's very words co-opted and devalued into the straight world.  In the second play Lopez dissects the gay response to Trump when Eric's Hillary-voting circle of friends are appalled that Henry Willcox is not just a Republican but also contributed financially to Trump's campaign.  His polished intellectual debate to their emotive one is fascinating to watch.

But it's not all politics; Matthew Lopez slowly constructs fascinating characters whose inner lives are slowly revealed while also leading to highly emotional climaxes that really strike at the heart.  It is also as wildly funny as it is tender and hard-hitting.  What is THE INHERITANCE of the title?  The apartment that was Eric's family home? The inherited sadness of the AIDS crisis on the gay community?  The inheritance of the art and culture of previous generations?  The denied inheritance of Walter's house to Eric?  It's all of these and more.  Bob Crowley's wonderful design of a stark marble stage rising and lowering to suit the play's mood against the black backdrop which parts to reveal certain locations, make you really concentrate the mind to the characters and what they are saying.  Jon Clark's lighting and Paul Englishby's score also help to make the plays' shine.

Six and a half hours is a long time to concentrate on just 14 performers but Daldry's ensemble act with an intensity and fearlessness that is truly thrilling.  Kyle Soller takes on the central role of Eric and is magnificent: it is difficult to play someone who is a force of goodness and compassion but he manages it by making Eric warm and sympathetic that you root for him from the start, while Andrew Burnap, again in a difficult role, makes Toby also charismatic and interesting, even at his most heartless.

John Benjamin Hickey is excellent in the difficult role of Henry Willcox, a man used to living his life to his own intellectual rules who can only react with anger when faced with emotional decisions that cannot register in his ordered mind, and Paul Hilton is equally fine as ethereal Walter, a man out of time, and he deliciously turns on a sixpence to become the intellectual and conservative Forster, also in a sense out of his time, quietly marvelling at the quality of life he was never allowed living in the Edwardian era.

Samuel H. Levine again showed marvellous versatility in his dual roles as Toby's obsessions: Adam, the gay Eve Harrington who worms his way into the lead in Toby's play, and Leo, the lonely hustler with the bruised heart and secret love of literature.  He captured the narcissism and desperation of the two characters wonderfully.  And then there was Vanessa Redgrave as Margaret: you have to wait a long time for her as she appears in the penultimate scene of Part 2, but once she is onstage she illuminates all that has gone before.

In her thrilling monologue, Vanessa hits the grieving but loving heart of the play; Margaret is forever haunted by her disgust at her son's teenage revelation of being gay and her subsequent blotting him out of her life.  Without sentiment but conveying the truth of the character, Vanessa played the remembered moments of seeing her dying son and their fleeting reunion before his death, a tremor in her voice and a catch in her throat was all that was needed to show the grief.  As important as her performance is to the play, her sheer presence alone is special - while watching her I could not forget her first husband Tony Richardson died from an AIDS-related illness in 1991, a year after the death of her friend Ian Charleson.  There was also another reason to celebrate her appearance in Matthew Lopez' play: she, of course, played Margaret Willcox in the film of HOWARDS END that so inspired him as a teenager - the film is even mentioned in the play which provokes a character to yell "Emma Thompson!  Vanessa Redgrave!!"

The other actors all deserve to be mentioned: Hugo Bolton, Robert Boulter, Hubert Burton, Syrus Lowe, Michael Marcus, Jack Riddiford, Michael Walters and Joshua De La Warr.

THE INHERITANCE is at the Noel Coward Theatre until the 19th January, click on the cast shot below to book tickets...

An already memorable year in theatre-going has just been made more wonderful by THE INHERITANCE.  If you love theatre and the alchemy of a wonderful script, committed performances and exquisite direction, you must see THE INHERITANCE.