DVD/150: MAGGIE SMITH AT THE BBC - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE / THE MILLIONAIRESS / A BED AMONG THE LENTILS / SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (various. tv)

An uneven quartet of BBC productions starring Maggie Smith.

Cedric Messina produced the PLAY OF THE MONTH series but also directed their 1972 version of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE; Portia's mix of humour and drama was perfect for Maggie but she struggles with a leaden studio-based production and a subdued Frank Finlay as Shylock.

She starred in another 1972 POTM, Shaw's THE MILLIONAIRESS where she is pure Smith: her fur stole wealded like a weapon, imperiously all wrists, cheekbones and shoulders but it's another underwhelming production.

Also included is her unforgettable Susan, the depressive vicar's wife whose secret drinking leads to the arms of an Asian shopkeeper in TALKING HEADS, written and directed by Alan Bennett.

Last is Richard Eyre's adaptation of Tennesee Williams' Southern Gothic SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER.  Maggie was ill during the filming but her subdued Mrs Venable exudes a patrician power rather than all-out madness.

Shelf or charity shop?  Half of the productions might be underwhelming but Maggie's performances make it onto the shelf. Interestingly, the extras make it more of a keeper: there is her episode from the 1967 series ACTING IN THE 60S where she is interviewed by Clive Goodwin and they are later joined by her longtime friend Kenneth Williams to discuss playing comedy.  A 1973 apperance on PARKINSON is a great addition when, again joined by Kenneth Williams, they read John Betjemin's "Death In Leamington" to the obvious pleasure of Betjemin.

 

DVD/150: CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (Gabriel Pascal, 1945)

The most expensive British film flopped badly at the box office, and no more Shaw adaptations were filmed during his lifetime.

Yet there are pleasures: John Bryan's sets, Oliver Messel's costumes and the cinematography of Freddie Young, Robert Krasker, Jack Hildyard and Jack Cardiff.

Stewart Granger is a dashing Apollodorus, and the cast includes Basil Sydney, Cecil Parker, Frances L Sullivan, Ernest Thesiger and Flora Robson, going over the top as Cleopatra's murderous nurse Ftatateeta and looking like Scary Spice...

Milling around are Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Michael Rennie, John Laurie, and 16 year-old Jean Simmons - unseen are Roger Moore, Renée Asherson and Kay Kendall. 

Claude Rains has the right avuncular air as Caesar but his wry performance gets somewhat lost among the columns.

Vivien Leigh is gloriously kittenish as young Cleopatra and grows into an imperious Queen, but filming proved tragic as she miscarried after falling on-set.

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf for Vivien.  It is a bit of an acquired taste - and the Shavian dialogue is an uneasy fit with several action scenes - but it is such a curio it is worth the climb. Poor Vivie, the miscarriage heralded the first of her bi-polar depressions which dogged her career and life from this moment.  But showing the courage that also marked her life, she and Olivier appeared on stage in 1951 with their own repertory company playing both CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA on alternative days in London and New York - a Herculean feat for the fittest performer.

 

Dvd/150: SAINT JOAN (Otto Preminger, 1957)

As it's 40 years since Jean Seberg's tragic death, I watched SAINT JOAN, the film that started - and nearly ended - her career.

Otto Preminger launched a worldwide search for an unknown to play Joan in his film of George Bernard Shaw's play and 18 year-old Jean from Marshalltown,  Iowa was chosen.  Preminger bullied her relentlessly during filming earning her the sympathy of co-stars like John Gielgud.

She suffered physically too while filming the execution scene when she received minor burns when the under-set gas jets flared up out of control.

Her fragile confidence was again knocked when the film opened to bad reviews with critics highlighting her obvious inexperience.

Yes she is inconsistent but that is unsurprising with her lack of experience and Preminger's undermining bullying but she has an unsettling directness and is wonderful in key scenes like the recantation at the end of her trial.

Shelf or charity shop?  An obvious keeper for Jean but also for Gielgud's supercilious Warwick, Felix Aylmer and Anton Walbrook's thorough trial judges and Victor Maddern's cockney soldier who is allowed out of Hell for one day a year for giving Joan a makeshift cross at the stake.  

THE PHILANDERER at the Orange Tree - lovers' Shavian war of words

Last year marked my first visit to Richmond's intimate Orange Tree Theatre and that was to see a rare production of George Bernard Shaw's social comedy WIDOWERS' HOUSES, directed by the Orange Tree's artistic director Paul Miller.  I enjoyed it much more than I expected so was very curious to see if lightning would strike twice with Miller tackling another early Shaw comedy THE PHILANDERER.  Ouch!  It did.

The poster's photograph looks like the kind of hipster bloke you would see in Hoxton Square and the production is played in modern dress which actually works, Shaw's battle between women and a slippery man is always current!

Written in 1893, Shaw's stance on women having an active say in their lives and loves was so free-thinking that it didn't get a proper theatrical production until 1907 at the always courageous (Royal) Court theatre.  It had however already been published in 1898 in the collection "Plays Unpleasant" with WIDOWERS' HOUSES and MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION and there was a private performance staged in 1905.  Shaw dropped the last act of his play when it was suggested to him that discussing divorce onstage was beyond the pale but Miller has reinstated it to give us Shaw's real intention.

Our philanderer of the title is Leonard Charteris, a man incapable of fidelity who confesses to his new lover, an elegant widow called Grace, that he never did break off his previous affair with the fiery Julia.  When Julia arrives unannounced all Hell breaks loose as she demands that Leonard stays with her but while she pleads with him, Charteris chides her that her actions are counterpoint to her much-trumpeted idea of being a 'new woman'.  Just to complicate matters further Grace and Julia's fathers both appear and are totally confused by the morals of the day.

The arguments spill over to the fashionable Ibsen Club where you are only allowed membership if you are a non-manly man or non-womanly woman in keeping with the great writer's thoughts but needless to say this is all just a pose for most of them.  Also there is Dr Paramore who confesses to Julia's father that he is not in fact dying because the good doctor misdiagnosed him.  If only he could experiment on a bigger range of animals, then he could have made a proper diagnosis!  One thing he is sure of is that he adores the tempestuous Julia and she actually accepts the doctor's marriage proposal to spite Leonard - not realizing that he arranged it all.

Shaw's last act takes place four years later and - surprise surprise - both Julia and Paramore are both thoroughly bored with each other and Paramore has started a relationship with - what a surprise - the widow Grace.  To divorce or not divorce?  How does Julia feel about Grace being a rival again?  And more importantly, can Leonard stay teflon-coated when women are concerned?

Paul Miller's production crackled with Shaw's wit and was a joy to experience, I think I enjoy early Shaw the best, before he became a bit of a pompous old windbag.  It was interesting that THE PHILANDERER comes relatively soon after seeing his MAN AND SUPERMAN where another man tries to escape from the marauding chasing woman but THE PHILANDERER makes it's point with a great deal more economy.

Miller's cast of eight were all impressive at keeping Shaw's emotional souffle whipped up.  Rupert Young could have been a bit more dangerous as the philanderer Leonard but was nicely laid-back and wisely stayed out of the way of the deliciously explosive Julia of Dorothea Myer-Bennett who was so effective as Nerissa in MERCHANT OF VENICE at the Globe Theatre last year.  Here she caught the quicksilver quality of Julia, desperately trying to be a cynical, modern woman but betrayed by her emotions.

I liked the wry coolness of Helen Bradbury's Grace, the wheedling neediness of Christopher Staines' Dr. Paramore and the double act of exasperated fathers from Mark Tandy's Cuthbertson and Michael Lumsden's Colonel Craven, both clinging on to a vanishing world.  There was also a saucy, eye-catching performance from Paksie Vernon as Julia's cynical younger sister Sylvia.

THE PHILANDERER is on until the 26th June and is well worth a visit to the wilds of Richmond.

MAN AND SUPERMAN / CLOSER: Love Is A Battlefield

It's odd how sometimes you can see two productions back-to-back and find particular themes that link them across the years - who would have thought that of George Bernard Shaw and Patrick Marber?

I booked to see MAN AND SUPERMAN because we recently saw Shaw's first success WIDOWERS HOUSES at the Orange Tree Theatre and also because I do like a theatrical challenge - the production runs for over 3 and a half hours!  It also gave us the chance to see Ralph Fiennes in the stonking lead role of Jack Tanner, a radical (and of course wealthy) writer who finds himself in the sights of the emancipated Ann Whitefield.

Tanner has no desire to be yoked to a woman in marriage - and believes fervently that a woman shouldn't want that either.  But he finds himself possibly ensnared when Ann's father dies and his will reveals that Ann's guardians are to be Tanner and her father's conventional older friend Roebuck Ramsden. 

Ann is being pursued by the lovesick Octavius whose sister Violet has caused outrage by announcing she is pregnant.  Violet, like Ann, is a young woman who is direct in her dealings with men and unbowed by her condition.  Tanner stands up for her right to give birth as it is woman's highest power but Violet dumbfounds them all by revealing that she is in fact married but refuses to tell them who it is!

Tanner challenges Ann to prove her independence by driving with him around Europe but is panicked when she accepts!  Octavius appears with his American friend Hector (who is Violet's secret husband) and Tanner is again floored when his plain-speaking cockney chauffeur 'Enry lets him in on something he hadn't realised - Ann is actually after Tanner.

Tanner flees to Europe to escape the pursuing Ann but driving through the Spanish Sierras he and 'Enry are captured by mountain-dwelling brigands.  Their leader Mendoza, however, is a poetic ex-Savoy hotel waiter and became an outcast when the woman he loved rejected him.  Well wouldn't you know?  It turns out that his beloved was none other than 'Enry's sister!  They settle down to sleep and Tanner, spun around by all these love affairs, dreams of being Don Juan in Hell.

The ensuing scene is the reason that MAN AND SUPERMAN has a wobbly history as it sometimes performed without this archetypal GBS scene as Don Juan debates with the Devil about man's inhumanity to man and the joys of Hell over the bland dreariness of Heaven.  I had been surprised how enjoyable the play had been up until then but this long scene of solid Shavian talk soon had me drifting off to watch the subtle, ever-changing video screen on Christopher Oram's set.

Eventually we return to the plot when Tanner and 'Enery are 'rescued' from the brigands by his pursuing friends but Tanner 'saves' Mendoza and his cohorts by telling the police that they were acting as his guides.  All the threads of the character's storylines are tied up in an Andalusian garden and Jack, finally worn down by the slyly predatory Ann, capitulates to married life although stating it will be on his terms.  Dream on Jack!

Ralph Fiennes gave a hugely enjoyable performance - made even more funny because he seemed to be channelling Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in RISING DAMP which makes perfect sense for the role!  It's the best I have seen him on stage and makes one realise how much he is missed there.

Fiennes' excellence is sadly not matched by Idira Varma as Ann.  She certainly had the character's intelligence but lacked that quintessential quicksilver spark to make her Ann interesting.  Faye Castelow's spirited Violet showed all the individuality and tartness that Varma lacked.

There were fine supporting performances from Nicholas Le Prevost as the disapproving Roebuck Ramsden, Ferdinand Kingsley as lovelorn Octavius and Elliot Barnes-Worrell as the cocky cockney 'Enry Straker.  Tim McMullan is not an actor I usually like but here his fruitiness suited the heartbroken brigand Mendoza and the lushly urbane Devil.

Simon Godwin also directed the 3 and a half hour STRANGE INTERLUDE at the Lyttelton and it shared MAN AND SUPERMAN's speed of pace but although enjoyable, it ultimately felt that was down to the performances and not what Godwin had actually contributed.  Christopher Oram's arresting design of traditional sets against a video wall was handy to look at when Shaw's dialogue overwhelmed one.

With Jack Tanner's futile attempts to keep love at arm's length still fresh in my mind, it was interesting to then see the revival of Patrick Marber's CLOSER at the Donmar.

Marber's savage drama/comedy features two men - Dan a writer, Larry a doctor - and two women - Anna a photographer, Alice a sometime exotic dancer - who are all desperate for love but who are also desperately bad at staying in love.

I saw the original National Theatre production in 1997 (and the 2004 film version) so was curious to see how well it stood up 18 years later.  It was with some relief that I found still a fascinating, tantalising, brilliantly cruel play about the way you can hurt the ones you feel are closest to you.

Perfectly suited to the intimacy of the Donmar, you hung on the four characters every words, almost flinching at the emotional brutality inflicted.  It is definitely a play written by a man as Larry and Dan tend to get the bravura lines and the showier business - in particular the scene where they encounter each other in an Internet chat room and Dan toys with Larry while pretending to be Anna.

The women are more problematical; the roles feel somewhat lightweight compared to the men and, in particular, the character of Alice maddeningly feels like the young Marber's wank fantasy stuck in a naturalistic setting.  Alice is unknowable, an enigma to be solved by her lovers, but also a tantalising creature of habit, but also an innocent nymphet - it's like Marber is working through his own version of Wedekind's LULU.  The only resolution he can find for her is to have her die - a very Victorian end for such a modern girl - and in the play's coup de grace it is revealed that even her name wasn't real.  She is less a character, more a collection of pin-up girls.

As such I felt Rachel Redford was the weakest member of the cast as she didn't have the personality to distract from the character's flimsiness but I liked Oliver Chris as Dan, the personable young writer whose charming demeanour covers a shallow user of people.

The two more interesting characters were wonderfully played by Rufus Sewell as Larry and Nancy Carroll as Anna.  Sewell was a revelation, burning up the stage with a kinetic energy, emotions flickering across his face within seconds of each other while his eruptions of spiteful, lethal anger were great to watch.  Nancy Carroll brought her remarkable quality of attentive stillness to Anna, a woman who seems to be forever anticipating the next inevitable disappointment.  She proved again how exceptional an actress she is.

David Leveaux's direction caught every nuance of Marber's deftly-woven script, balancing the humour and the drama to great effect.  Bunny Christie's ingenious set had a cool East London, minimalist vibe hugely helped by Hugh Vanstone's lighting.

Two excellent revivals showing the possibility and impossibility of love.

A Shaw thing: WIDOWERS' HOUSES, Orange Tree Theatre

Well last week was a novel experience - I went to a theatre I had never visited before!  Yes, Constant Reader, believe.

I have wanted to visit the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond for a while as they have a policy of staging little-seen and neglected plays but had hitherto put it off.  The news that they were staging George Bernard Shaw's 1892 play WIDOWERS' HOUSES was the spur to finally go.

 

My default setting for Shaw is "Oh my lord all those WORDS" but on reflection I find that more often than not I have enjoyed what I have seen.  Of his many plays I have seen MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION, HEARTBREAK HOUSE, PYGMALION and SAINT JOAN in the theatre, as well as having seen CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, MAJOR BARBARA, PYGMALION, SAINT JOAN and THE MILLIONAIRESS on film and television.  Yes that hectoring tone is always lurking in the background somewhere but I have enjoyed the plays seen.

WIDOWERS' HOUSES actually plays like a fast-paced drawing-room comedy but with lurking shadows among the teacups.  Shaw was 36 when it was staged at the Royalty Theatre in 1892 and it proved to be his first major success.  However it is not seen as regularly as some of his other works, I had only heard of one production before in 1970 at the Royal Court with Nicola Pagett, Frank Middlemass, Anthony Newlands, Robin Ellis and a young Penelope Wilton.  Mind you, it has only been staged on Broadway once - and that was in 1907!

Shaw sets up the play as a romantic comedy but then pulls the rug under our expectations.  Idealistic Dr. Trench is holidaying in Germany with his affected friend Cokane and has fallen for one of their fellow travellers Blanche Sartorius but although she is more than happy to reciprocate his feelings, Trench has to win over her stern widowed father, a secretive self-made man.

Back in London, Trench discovers that Sartorius has made his fortune from being a slum landlord, squeezing extortionate rates from tenants in poorly-maintained flats in deprived areas.  Sartorius even dismisses his unctuous rent-collector Mr Lickcheese for sympathising with his tenants' well-being.  Trench's shock is compounded when Sartorius reveals that the doctor's income is drawn from interest accrued from a mortgage on one of Sartorius' buildings!  Trench is further disenchanted when Blanche refuses to live without her father's 'tainted' money that has kept her in the style she has come accustomed to and they call their engagement off.

Four months later Sartorius is visited by a newly wealthy Lickcheese, grown rich by investing in a dodgy property company that renovates tenements to hopefully sell on or knock down for municipal building projects.  Sartorius' buildings - the Widowers' Houses of the title - are of interest to the company and Lickcheese hopes to persuade his former employer to join in the scheme so they can all get rich quick - including a certain doctor who has a mortgage on one of the houses.

Will Trench remain unsullied by the nefarious property deal or will he ditch his principals for a piece of the action and the chance to reconcile with Blanche?  It all leads to a surprisingly modern ending.

As I said, I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed the sharply defined characters and the swift pace.  The small in-the-round Orange Tree auditorium suited the piece well, giving the action an intimate immediacy.  

Simon Daw's design idea of having the playing area surrounded by a frieze of Charles Booth's 'poverty' map of central London helped to visualise the play's themes as these iconic maps were published around the time that Shaw wrote the play.

The Orange Tree's new Artistic Director Paul Miller's direction brought out Shaw's moments of comedy and drama in equal measure and he elicited strong performances from Patrick Drury as the commanding Sartorius, Alex Waldmann as the baffled Trench, Stefan Adegbola as the preeningly pretentious Cokane and it was a delight to see Rebecca Collingwood as the opinionated and 'modern' Blanche.  

We saw her last year in GRAND HOTEL, her final year production at the Guildhall Drama School, where she was an eye-catching and vivacious Flaemmchen so it was a thrill to see her again at the Orange Tree making her professional stage debut. Simon Gregor certainly made a splash as the oily Lickcheese - another of Shaw's working-class characters who refuse to know their place - but the Dickensian caricature he gave us was sometimes at odds with the more restrained performances around him.

As I have said, I was surprised how much I enjoyed WIDOWERS' HOUSES and hope to visit the Orange Tree again - even if the 'age specific' sold-out audience made it's small bar/foyer and narrow staircases a bit of a logistical log-jam.