PRESENT LAUGHTER at the Old Vic - Coward's 1940s Fizz in New Bottles...

This production of Noel Coward's PRESENT LAUGHTER marks my 45th production seen at the Old Vic Theatre.  Constant Reader, this occurred to me when faced with the frustrating front-of-house building work that the Vic is currently doing during this sold-out run and made me realize that it is a theatre that I have never felt comfortable in.  There is always *something* to irk me about the experience of seeing plays there - oh I have enjoyed productions - it's just the constant tsouris while inter-acting with the theatre.  Was it this awful even during Olivier's National Theatre days? 

The main foyer has been configured again and again and it still feels unwelcoming.  The Dress Circle is always like the Black Hole of Waterloo - and now they have crammed tables and chairs into the central space, while the basement area is given over to a bar/restaurant space that's open to all - of course an earner for the Vic - but again, the audience for the actual show is left with no space due to the non-theatre-going table-hoggers... and of course there is the notorious lack of loos for patrons.

But now the Old Vic is addressing this latter issue by rebuilding the basement while the run of PRESENT LAUGHTER is happening.  Couldn't they wait until a gap in their season?  Temporary portaloos are in the road next to the theatre while the balcony loos are also closed - so the 1,000+ patrons all have to use these, mostly during a 20 minute interval.  At the end of the show, we were only allowed to leave down the back stairs... which of course took forever because the exit doors lead out - you guessed - straight into the queue for the toilets.

Believe me, it would have to be an exceptional production that managed to transcend this frustrating visit.  Luckily it was.

Noel Coward wrote the play in 1939 but it's premiere was cancelled at the outbreak of WWII so it waited until 1942 before being staged with Coward in the blazing star role of Garry Essendine, an unashamedly self-centered West End leading man.  Over the years it has been revived frequently with actors who have lent towards the showy - O'Toole, Sinden, Callow, McKellen, Kline - and I first saw it played by Alex Jennings in the National Theatre's 2008 production.  Although Jennings was fine as Garry it wasn't a production that particularly grabbed me.  So I leapt at the opportunity to see it again and also to see how it worked with a younger than usual actor in the lead.

Director Matthew Warchus says that he had shied away from taking on a Noel Coward play before but when he and star Andrew Scott hit upon the idea that, by changing the genders of a married couple in the play, it could open the play up in a vibrant new way while keeping the shape and, more importantly, the essence of Coward's vision intact.

Another morning in West End star Garry Essendine's Mayfair apartment and his staff - secretary Monica, valet Fred and cleaner Miss Erikson - go quietly about their duties while their temperamental employer sleeps off his hangover - and as usual, there is a 'guest' who has stayed the night having somehow 'forgotten their latch-key'.  This time it's gushing starlet Daphne who Garry - when he eventually wakes up - has to quote his most romantic Shelley verse to before he can get rid of her.  Garry's hope for a quiet day to prepare for an overseas tour is interrupted by appearances from his closest associates - his manager Morris, his producer Helen and his estranged wife Liz - who, along with Monica, is the only one that Garry feels he can fully trust.

Liz is worried however: she has heard that Helen's husband Joe is having an affair with Morris - who vehemently protests his innocence - but Liz knows that if Helen finds out, Garry's protective bubble will be broken.  Added to all this, there is a forgotten appointment with young Roland Maule, a new playwright who has asked for Garry's opinion of his play.  They clash when Maule reacts badly to Garry's criticisms and he belittles the shallow West End star vehicles the actor appears in - before confessing that he actually adores Garry and wrote the play just to meet his hero.

Later that night, finally alone in his apartment, Garry is visited by the suave Joe who appears to have "forgotten his latch-key".  Garry tells his unwanted visitor exactly what they all think of him and warns that gold-digger Joe will be cast out of the golden circle if he keeps seeing Morris - but Joe has his eye on a bigger prize than Morris... needless to say, the narcissist in Garry cannot refuse the offer of more adoration and they spend the night together.

Warchus has done his gender-flip on the characters of Joe and Helen - as written by Coward the characters are predatory actress Joanne married to manager Henry.  But the change works wonderfully well, staying true to Coward the writer and more importantly, Coward the man.  It also works well within the plot: having seen Garry ruling all around him as a spoiled star, here he is confronted with someone who refuses to be cowed by his imperious manner; Joe knows Garry's Achilles heel and he strikes...

Once again Garry's staff quietly go through their morning chores only now they have the boastful presence of Joe to contend with rather than some airhead starlet.  Garry has to finally face up to his actions but not before all the characters descend on the apartment and end up being thrown in kitchens, spare rooms and bathrooms as Garry finds himself in the middle of a French farce situation.

Warchus has saved another change for the end of the play - echoing the end of the first half - where Garry is alone in the apartment with someone close to him calling his bluff.  The original has a more obvious curtain-line and business, but Warchus has the play end on a more uncertain note, playing up the feeling of sadness and ambiguity that runs beneath the surface of what has gone before.

Matthew Warchus handles the material wonderfully, letting both the verbal wit and physical comedy shine but always keeping that undercurrent of Garry's loneliness flowing just below the surface.  If there is a problem with the show it's that some of the supporting performances fail to rise - the characters of Morris and Helen are particularly ill-served.

But there are several which contribute wonderfully to the show's success: Enzo Cilenti has just the right air of calculating brazenness for the character of Joe and his big scene at the end of the first act was very well-handled, seductive and menacing at the same time.  Luke Thallon was great fun as Roland Maule the writer in love with Garry's glamour and I particularly loved Joshua Hil's laconic, deadpan valet Fred, indifferent to the artistic temperaments exploding around him.

Sophie Thompson was in delicious form as Monica, the seen-it-all Scottish secretary who is always one step ahead of Garry's demands and who keeps a big sister-like eye on him for his own good; her knowing one-liners were delivered to perfection.  I also liked Indira Varma as Liz, the poised and cool ex-wife might not be a particular stretch for her but she made an excellent counterpoint to the shenanigans around her and she hit the right sensible tone throughout.

PRESENT LAUGHTER cannot work without an actor who can be the outrageous temperamental star and also suggest the emptiness behind the glittering mask and Andrew Scott was sheer perfection.  Watching him soar in this role, it dawned on me that here finally is an actor who comes close to the quicksilver quality that the late Ian Charleson brought to his theatre performances: the same graceful physicality, effortless charisma and the ability to hold a moment between comedy and despair, revealing all you need to know about his character that is hidden underneath the lines he is saying.  He was that good.

The run is now sold out but NT Live are filming it for a November screening - click on the picture below to book your seats - just think, you probably won't have to queue for a portaloo at the cinema...

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.

"Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour"

Sometimes it takes a while to get used to an auditorium.  You go, you see productions but nothing particularly happens around you, the walls don't bounce anything back at you.  It usually takes a great production to get you to react to the space as well as to what you are seeing.

I have been to the Globe Theatre at Southwark a few times but have never liked any of the productions enough to warm to the theatre itself, however I think that might now have changed thanks to Lucy Bailey's thrilling, notorious TITUS ANDRONICUS.

It's not that often that theatre productions - classical theatre productions at that - jump from the review pages into the news sections of papers but Bailey's production has been getting column inches over the number of audience members who have been passing out during the more gory moments of Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy.  Yeah, sure I thought.  Good going Globe on the hype.

I had never experienced TITUS on stage before but had enjoyed Julie Taymor's stylish 1999 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins as the put-upon Roman general, Jessica Lange as his nemesis Tamora Queen of the Goths and Alan Cumming (channelling his performance of the MC in CABARET) as dissolute Emperor Saturninus.

Owen had booked the tickets in a rush of Shakespearean vigour after we saw Eileen Atkins' magical Ellen Terry show in the new Wanamaker Theatre next door to the Globe and as the days drew closer to last Thursday I found myself getting more excited about seeing it.  Our seats were at the end of the first circle so we had the stage side-on to us but also a good view of the groundlings.  This was actually a stroke of luck as Bailey has the action spill off the stage and in and around the standing punters who were - not too politely - pushed around by the actors to make way for moving metal platforms, marching soldiers etc.  Those at the front were also frequently exposed to thick plumes of smoke that issued out from under the stage!  That'll learn 'em.

William Dudley's design has the usual brightly coloured stage swathed in black material and black netting stretches across the open roof to echo the design of Roman Pantheon.  Two large smoking braziers billowed the heavy scent of incense into the air which added to the sombre, claustrophobic atmosphere.

Titus returns to Rome victorious from a war against the Goths with his captives: Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, her three sons and her servant (and secret lover) Aaron the Moor.  To avenge two of his sons who were killed in battle he orders for Tamora's eldest son to be executed.  Despite Tamora's desperate pleas for mercy from one parent to another, he carries out her son's death.  As in KING LEAR one misjudgement brings down tragedy.  Tamora vows she will avenge this cruel act, with the chance coming sooner than she expected.

Rome is in tumult with the dead Emperor's sons, Saturninus and Bassianus, challenging for the throne.  The people of Rome however declare they want Titus to be Emperor.  He, always the good servant to the elite, refuses them and declares his support for Saturninus.  Saturninus repays him by announcing he will marry Titus' daughter Lavinia despite the fact that she and Bassianus are betrothed.  When the couple and his other sons react angrily to the Emperor, an angry Titus lashes out and kills his younger son.  Bored at their in-fighting - and to punish Titus - Saturninus chooses to marry Tamora instead.  Immediately grasping her chance, Tamora implores her new husband to forgive the Andronicus family and to let Lavinia and Bassianus marry.

 

Tamora, Aaron and her two remaining sons Chiron and Demetrius enact their revenge during the Emperor's hunting party in a forest.  Trapping the young lovers alone, Tamora's sons murder Bassianus and throw his body in a camouflaged pit and, with Aaron goading them on, rape Lavinia and, to stop her from identifying them, cut out her tongue and cut her hands off.  Aaron frames Titus' sons Martius and Quintus to make it look like they murdered Bassianus and Saturninus orders their execution.

Titus' brother Marcus discovers the mutilated Lavinia and brings her to Titus closely followed by Aaron who tells Titus that Saturninus will spare his sons if Titus cuts off a hand and sends it back with Aaron.  Although Marcus and his last living son Lucius argue over the action Titus does what is demanded and a gloating Aaron leaves.  Yes you guessed... his dismembered hand is returned to him, along with the severed heads of his sons.

Well these are the scenes that sort out the men from the boys.  As Lavinia tottered onto the stage, mouth pouring blood and jerking her stumps about I noticed in my peripheral vision the first person being helped out of the pit in a wheelchair... then I saw a tall man in a suit towards the back of the standing punters go *wobble* *crash* - cue another wheelchair appearing to help him out!  As Titus hacked off his hand upstage we heard a dull thud from further along from us and as Lavinia coughed up another stream of blood onto the stage I saw a girl being led out from the audience standing at the front of the stage shaking and white as a sheet.

Me?  I was grinning from ear to ear!  Partly because the ushers who were doing the fetching and carrying were all old grey-haired ladies who are obviously used to all this carry-on and also because I could see, in my mind's eye, Shakespeare then a successful playwright in his late 20s around 1591 cackling with delight as, quill in hand, he wrote quickly across his parchment saying "Oooh I can do this - and then I can do this - oh and I can do THIS too!"  The play exhibits his excitement at attempting his first revenge drama, a genre that had been hugely popular since Thomas Kyd's THE SPANISH TRAGEDY about ten years before.

I found it fascinating to see that here that, despite all the travails that he suffers, Shakespeare cannot make Titus a sympathetic character.  I likened it earlier to KING LEAR and although Lear also starts out as a vainglorious tyrant, by the end of that play Shakespeare has made him a universal figure for pity and sympathy - by the time we reach the famous climax of TITUS with the stage looking like a charnal house, Titus is exactly the same as he was at the top of the play.  I think this is due to the 15 year gap between the plays during which Shakespeare honed his craft and discovered how to give his characters more internalisation.

Something else that struck me is - as in LEAR - no mention is ever made of Mrs Andronicus.  Is she still living?  If she is why doesn't she ever come out of the house?  I can only presume that she wore out from giving birth to Titus' seven children.  Indeed Lucius, the only son left alive at the end of the play, has his own son - Shakespeare could only stretch to Young Lucius as a name - with no mention again of a wife/mother.

I must admit that a couple of times John Gielgud came to mind too.  He never played the role - it's remarkable how few of our acknowledged great actors have - but a critic once said of him that in tights he had "the most meaningless legs imaginable"!  That quote came to mind when I saw Steffan Donnelly as Bassianus standing on two strings of spaghetti with knots tied in the middle - they were quite distracting.

Gielgud also saw Peter Brook's 1955 production at Stratford which starred Laurence Olivier as Titus and Vivien Leigh as Lavinia.  In the play, Titus has Lavinia hold a stick between her stumps and write the names of the rapists in the sand and on the night Gielgud was in, Vivien dropped the stick while she was attempting to write the names.  He went to see her backstage and greeted her with "Butterstumps!"  In a letter afterwards he wrote that Olivier was excellent, but that "poor Vivien seems in a very bad way.  She is utterly ineffective on the stage, like paper, only not so thick".

Lucy Bailey (this is a revival of a 2006 production when Douglas Hodge was Titus) has directed the play with a remarkable clear-eyed approach, the three hours runing time slip by unnoticed, and her determination to stare the atrocities of the play in the face gives it the intensity that so lays waste some members of the audience.

What was fascinating is how she has found the underlying black humour so integral to the play's strength, there were as many intentional laughs as horrific moments - but then the best horror is offset by humour.  If you thought Iago was unapologetically gleeful in his actions, wait till you meet Aaron whose last lines sum up his nihilism while being led to his death:

"Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will;
If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul."

 

In the best performances of the evening, Obi Abili was excellent as Aaron, seizing every opportunity to delight in his actions and to include the audience in on his intentions while Indira Varma was deliciously nasty as Tamora, turning on a Denarius from Saturninus' conciliatory bride to Aaron's ravenous lover to Titus' Furie.

But is she evil?  Tamora has every right to want Titus's downfall due to his unwarrented killing of her son and is he the good character in his own story?  Titus is a domineering military bully who kills his youngest son for daring to stand up to him and who has little concern for his daughter's happiness and even Lavinia displays nothing but withering contempt for Tamora and her plight.   What makes Aaron and Tamora evil is the way they set about their revenge.

I also liked Matthew Needham's whining demanding Saturninus, a nasty spoilt brat playing at being a grown-up and Samuel Edward-Cook and Brian Martin were also good as Tamora's muredrous sons.  Flora Spencer-Longhurst was an affecting Lavinia but the role is a difficult one with few lines at the start of the play to engage the audience and then being but a mute witness to the events that follow her rape and mutilation.  I also liked Ian Gelder as a sympathetic Marcus Andronicus.  I also want to credit the nerve-shredding score of Django Bates.

William Houston was certainly effective as Titus but I grew to dislike his schtick of going from a resonant chest voice up into a wheedling head voice when exasperated or feining madness.  Despite these occasional flaws I loved this production for introducing me properly to Shakespeare's gory early play and for it's heightened theatricality - and yes, I think I have come to appreciate the Globe's special atmosphere.

Now if they could just sort out the Hell that is the forecourt during the interval.