DVD/150: CRANFORD (Simon Curtis/Steve Hudson, 2007, tv)

"You're not in London now, you're in Cranford"

In 1842, the residents of the Cheshire market town of Cranford know their place in Victorian society and in God's eyes.  But slowly the modern world is coming...

The formidable spinsters and widows of Cranford spend their days seizing on any gossip and the sight or two women walking quickly usually means new scandal.  The arbiter of moral rectitiude is Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who lives with her younger, more gentle sister Matty but both can be relied upon to do the right thing.

The spinsters welcome in Mary Smith, the daughter of an old Manchester friend, when she is forced out by her step-mother and, together they experience new neighbours, new joys, but also new sadnesses because for all of them, death can come unexpectedly. 

Heidi Thomas' adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill's novellas is a superb mix of comedy, tragedy and class.

Shelf or charity shop? Definite shelf.  Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin's production would have seemed a natural for the BBC but it was hit by the corporation's budget cuts, postponed for a year and having to thin down from 6 episodes to 5 and then changing directors halfway through filming but luckily they persevered.  It goes without saying that the cast give excellent performances but they also provide a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Barbara Flynn, Deborah Findlay, Lesley Manville, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Philip Glenister, Michael Gambon and Alex Etel are all memorable.

THE VISIT or THE OLD LADY COMES TO CALL at the Olivier, National Theatre

It is sad there are plays disappearing from the repertoire of the major theatres who are now putting on new tick-box State Of The Nation plays or Woke-To-Caffeine-Level revivals with gender bounced characters in drab modern dress using hand-mikes.  Where are revivials of particularly 20th Century European dramas to be found - the ones not that well-known enough to become a West End star vehicle for a GAME OF THRONES actor.

Step forward the National Theatre, all the more surprising as it has become The National Theatre of The Crashingly Obvious under Rufus Norris' PC Worldview.  But here we are back in 1956 in the strange, blackly comedic world of Friedrich Dürrenmatt for his most famous play THE VISIT. Dürrenmatt was a Swiss writer whose novels and plays did much to elevate German drama in post WWII.

THE VISIT is a deadly cocktail of the harsh judgemental world of Brecht peopled with the conniving, small-minded citizens from the plays of Oden von Horváth while shot through with Dürrenmatt's own satire. It has proved his most successful play in English language versions including the sanitized 1964 film with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, but was also the basis for an opera as well as the last Broadway musical of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb starring Chita Rivera and Roger Rees (his last show before his death).

Jeremy Herrin's production of Tony Kushner's US-based adaptation takes up the whole of the Olivier's stage and makes much use of the under-stage drum to make whole new sets appear before us, although it must be said that there is not much joy looking at Vicki Mortimer's drab and murky sets for the depressed town of Slurry in upstate New York.

Slurry is a town in sharp decline: businesses are failing, mainline trains don't stop there anymore and the city government is running out of money.  Only one thing can save them and it looks like it might be about to happen - Claire Zachanassian, the world's richest woman, was born in Slurry and she is coming back to visit.  Although she left as a young girl under scandalous circumstances, the mayor begs her former lover Alfred Ill to put the city's case to the eccentric widow.

The imperious and glamorous Claire arrives and soon has the whole town at her feet - although she reveals there's not just a monetary change in her life as she now has two false legs and a false hand!  Alfred discovers this while asking her for the (ahem) hand-out for the city.  Claire says she is willing to help the town on one condition which she will reveal at that night's gala reception. After a lavish, dull homecoming ceremony with child athletes and a huge choir, Claire announces she will give the town one billion dollars - half for the town's coffers, half to be divided between Slurry's families.

After the ecstatic applause dies down, Claire reveals her condition: Alfred was her lover when she was young and after she became pregnant, he disowned her.  She tried to bring a paternity suit but the trial judge and Alfred fixed the hearing by introducing two male witnesses who purjured her and the case was dismissed forcing her to leave the town in shame.  Now the trial judge is Claire's butler and her two clownish courtiers are revealed to be the two witnesses whom she tracked down to blind and castrate.  Now she wants her final revenge on Slurry: one billion dollars - if Alfred is killed.

And that's about it - the following two acts tread water for the inevitable to happen, the second act is purgatorial as it is the same scene replayed again and again as Albert begs his community not to kill him while also noticing that all his neighbours now own credit cards and are spending out on the expected windfall.  Albert tries to escape but the town turn out at the station to stop him getting the train.

The third act is a strange mix of tension and obviousness as Albert's fate is revealed when the town make their decision, watched dispassionately by Claire.  It is no surprise that it was adapted into an opera; it's basic plotline would be well suited to the medium.  Like Brecht, Dürrenmatt does nothing to make Alfred sympathetic so - because she has the best lines - I was totally behind Claire to triumph.  It makes for a very lop-sided battle of wills.

None of Dürrenmatt's characters have anything that equals depth so well done to Sara Kestelman and Nicholas Woodeson for bringing vigour to their roles of the disenchanted school head teacher and Slurry's garrulous Mayor.  Hugo Weaving brings increasing levels of unbelieving panic to his role of shopkeeper Albert Ill as one by one, his friends and family choose Claire's promised money rather his safety, it was good to see him on stage after having only ever seen him on screen before.

The ice-cold heart of the show is the wonderful Lesley Manville who delivers every killer put-down with a soured thud; in her hands the improbable Claire becomes a very human-sized avenger.  It was a measure of her performance that - rather than the usual replication of Scutari hospital on a wet Wednesday night - the audience was silently attentive and, during her denunciation of Slurry and Alfred, you could hear a pin drop.  Seemingly modelled on elements of Madonna, Lauren Bacall and Elaine Stritch, it's Lesley Manville's show.

An evening of revenge and retribution which I would recommend although Tony Kushner really does like crossing his t's and dotting his i's... I would suggest having a foyer bar break for the dull second act.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT at the Wyndhams Theatre - The Long Day Closes

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY is easy to admire, but harder to love.  My two previous experiences of seeing it on stage have given certain memorable moments but the play itself has remained a rambling, shapeless beast, over 3 hours long and full of repetitions and longueurs.  But Richard Eyre might have changed that perception...

I think I have seen the ten most famous plays by Eugene O'Neill - maybe I need to see DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS too - but all have been seen with a vague sense of duty attached; I have been conscious of seeing Great Plays in the Canon: ANNA CHRISTIE, THE EMPEROR JONES, THE HAIRY APE, STRANGE INTERLUDE, MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, AH WILDERNESS!, THE ICEMAN COMETH, A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, A TOUCH OF THE POET... there would have to be some seriously great actors in revivals of these plays to get me to see them again.

Of all the O'Neill plays I have seen, as I said before, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is the one I have returned to most often: I saw Jonathan Miller's 1986 Haymarket Theatre revival with Jack Lemmon, Bethel Leslie, Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher, then in 2000 I saw the late Robin Phillips' version with Charles Dance, Jessica Lange, Paul Rudd, Paul Nicholls - and an unknown actress called Olivia Colman as the Irish maid!  Now here I was... back for another long night in the Tyrone family home on the lonely Connecticut coast.

The monumental play is remarkable when you consider that O'Neill was already suffering the onset of the Parkinson's-related illness which would over the next ten years slowly rob him of the capability to write anything at all.  It's intriguing that the more he was being robbed of the ability to write he turned inwards to write plays where his own alcoholic struggles were reflected, and with JOURNEY, the corrosive feelings he had for his family.

1912: The Tyrone family are staying in their summer house on the Connecticut coast, haunted by the sound of fog horns through the night.  Although all looks well in the morning, by night time all their resentments and secrets will be aired and possibly be unrepairable.  James Tyrone once was an actor of promise but has for many years made a lot of money touring a star vehicle that has kept him in work but never fulfilled his dream of being a great tragedian.  Although he speculates in buying property, he is miserly with money for his family.

His wife Mary harbours a deep resentment for her husband's forcing them all to go on the road with him living out of cheap hotels.  She has never got over the death from measles of a son while touring, and resents her eldest son Jamie who she feels passed it on deliberately.  A difficult birth with her youngest son resulted in her being medicated with morphine, by the cheap doctor Tyrone paid for, to which she has since become addicted.  Their two sons are also caught in misery: Jamie is also an actor but struggles to find work as he is becoming an alcoholic while younger Edmund aspires to be a poet but is succumbing to crippling tuberculosis, again exacerbated by Tyrone's unwillingness to spend money on an expensive sanatorium.

Despite Mary's strenuous attempts to look bright and engaged with the family after being away curing her addiction, her sons slowly come to realize that she has returned to her morphine addiction which over the day becomes more and more evident.  Eventually, the family are lost in the blackness of the night and their existence, forced to watch as Mary appears, once again a morphine addict but remembering her days as a convent girl and her wish to become a nun but she "fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time."

Eugene O'Neill's father was also a touring actor, forever touring a stage version of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO which earned him money but at a loss of any interest as an actor, his mother was raised in a convent and was addicted to morphine after the difficult birth of her third son, his eldest brother Jamie died from alcoholism and he himself spent time in a TB sanatorium.  Having exorcised his family demons when he finished the play in 1941, O'Neill sat on it until he gave it to his publishers in 1945, on the strict instruction that it not be performed until 25 years after his death.

He died in 1953 but his third wife Carlotta went against his wishes and allowed it to be performed only 3 years afterward in Sweden.  The play premiered on Broadway later that year with Fredric March in the lead role where it won the Tony Award for Best Play as well as for O'Neill a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, his fourth in all.  The first London production appeared in 1958 with Anthony Quayle as Tyrone.  And here we are 60 years later...

Richard Eyre has directed this production with a purity of vision that also was evident in GHOSTS, his last collaboration with Lesley Manville.  Although 3 hours 30 minutes it was only towards the end that one became aware of the time, the scene between the two sons having just a few repetitions too many.  Eyre has subtly brought out the fact that the Tyrones, despite everything, are still together and you do feel that the four members of the family do all love each other - the tragedy is that they all seem to give it the wrong way.

Eyre is reunited with his GHOSTS lighting designer Peter Mumford who draws us through the day to the darkening night and Rob Howell's wonderful set for the summer home puts us right in the centre of the Tyrone's world: the semi-transparent walls reflecting a house where there are no secrets held from others even if you are behind closed doors.

Light relief is provided by Jessica Regan as Cathleen, the local Irish girl employed as the Tyrone's maid; it's a bit of a hackneyed comedy Oirish role but Regan soon has you laughing with her than at her.  Matthew Beard and Rory Keenan were both very good as Edmund and Jamie, the damaged sons of the Tyrone's bad blood, both wishing to escape but unable to draw themselves away from the family quagmire.

Jeremy Irons was an interesting choice as Tyrone: not as obviously dominant as others who have played the role - David Suchet, Charles Dance, Jack Lemmon, Brian Dennehy, Jason Robards Jr, Gabriel Byrne, Laurence Olivier - but he played him with the distracted air of a man forced to engage with three family members who have all disappointed him.  Irons rose to the challenge of the scene where Tyrone explains to Edmund the joy he had as a young actor in being singled out for praise by the great Edwin Booth and his lilting, flowery speaking of Shakespeare conjured up a bygone day of performing.  He also was able to turn on the cutting, sniping anger of a man unused to having to give ground.  It's just a shame Irons' American accent was as drifting as the Connecticut fog outside.

The evening belonged to Lesley Manville as Mary Tyrone, she was quite magnificent.  Starting off girlishly happy and shy at her recent weight gain from her time in the sanitarium, she charted Mary's eventual decline during the day with a deadly accuracy: her skittish behaviour, her sudden flare-ups of resentful anger, her circling around the room edging ever-closer to the stairs that led to her secret supply of morphine, her coquettish dissembling "Is my hair coming down?" when meeting the stares of her all-too-aware family and finally her withdrawn stare as she looks out at her unhappy life while remembering the young girl who fell in love with a handsome actor.  She also conveyed effortlessly that Mary is not without guilt in the way her sons have been damaged emotionally by the Tyrone family life, so giving us a fully-rounded character.

The remarkable thing about O'Neill's writing is that by the end of the play you are so invested in them on a human level that you can only hope that life gives them all another chance, as slim as that seems in the dark night.

100 x 2

That's an odd title isn't it?  But it ties in with the revival of OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR at Stratford East, the theatre where this groundbreaking show was born.

In case you haven't noticed, this year is the Centenary of the start of World War I but at Stratford East they are also celebrating the Centenary of the birth of the theatre's unique former artistic director Joan Littlewood.  Ironically, Littlewood came close to not even doing the show in 1963.

Her partner Gerry Raffles heard Charles Chilton's radio programme "The Long, Long Road" in 1962 which interspersed soldier's reminiscences with the songs they sang among themselves.  Raffles told Littlewood about it and suggested it might make a good show for her company Theatre Workshop but she turned the idea down as she was an avowed pacifist.  Undeterred, Raffles invited Chilton to the theatre and while going through the songs, Littlewood began to see the potential in making a show that was a critique of the war and the warmongers but to also celebrate the lives of the ordinary people swept up in their power-games.  Her idea to present the company as a Pierrot troupe gave the show a suitably Brechtian twist and featured such characterful actors as Victor Spinetti, Brian Murphy, Murray Melvin, Larry Dann and Fanny Carby.  The show was a huge popular success and moved on to both the West End and Broadway.  Richard Attenborough then went on to make a leaden, joyless screen version in 1969.

I have seen two revivals of the show and was looking forward to seeing this one on the stage where it was created.

There are several scenes in the show that always start the silent waterworks and again this production hit those moments with a quiet power - the Christmas Eve, 1914 scene on the western front when the English and German soldiers stop fighting and meet each other in no man's land to share makeshift Christmas presents always sets me off and the powerful scene of the French soldiers baa-ing their way towards the guns, literally 'lambs to the slaughter' is still unsettling.  The production uses the original trops of slides of contemporary photographs and a moving display that rolls out the awful casualty totals for the battles but the micro-sign that is in the current production uses too large text which makes it difficult to follow what is being scrolled.

What remains the success of the show is the use of the contemporary tunes as well as the snatches of song that the soldiers would sing while marching or in the trenches which constantly reach down the years and jolt you with their jaundiced and savagely ironical lyrics.  The chilling detachment of their words curdle the pretty melodies that they appropriated and are put across by the present company with both gusto and despair.

Sadly for me the show is now hampered by the too-frequent scenes where those who hold the strings - the Generals, the politicians, the businessmen - disrupt the more interesting ones with the soldiers.  What makes it all the more frustrating is that these are the real legacy of the Littlewood agit-prop style but now they are too blatant, too obvious and ultimately too damn long.  At the start of the second act, there is an interminable scene between American, English, German, French and Dutch businessman comparing the fortunes they have made off their munition-trading while on a Grouse shoot (geddit?).  It's so heavy-handed and obvious that it outstays it's welcome very quickly.  You want to shout at the stage "Yes we get it!!"  A re-write of these scenes could easily be done to make these scenes more effective for a modern audience but I'm guessing the show is frozen in deference to Littlewood's wishes.

The show seemed to take an awful long time to get going - namely down to the interminable "War Game" scenes setting out how the war started but start it did with the first real appearance of Caroline Quentin as the Music Hall star singing the recruitment song "I'll Make A Man Of You".  She shook the production awake by the scruff of the neck with her galvanising rendition and her two other major scenes were very effective - speed-singing "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts" and also as Mrs. Pankhurst being hectored and pelted as she tries to deliver a pacifist speech to an angry street crowd.  It's actually refreshing that Littlewood included this scene as it showed how most of the general public refused to believe there could be any other way forward apart from through killing.

Among a generally good cast, Ian Bartholomew was particularly fine as General Haig, Shaun Prendergast had a good Max Miller-like quality as the MC of the evening and I liked the contributions of Oliver J. Hembrough, who I remembered as the put-upon husband Edgar in last year's TITANIC.  Terry Johnson has directed the show with a sure but possibly a too-reverential hand and I liked the Lez Brotherston's stage design which copied the theatre's proscenium arch and stage boxes in metal scaffolding and filigree.

 

Constant Reader, as we are on the subject of revisiting shows, I went to see Richard Eyre's pressure-cooker production of GHOSTS again which has now transferred from the Almeida to the Trafalgar Studios (my blog from the original Almeida production is here) and I am happy (?) to report that it is still holds you in a vice-like grip of increasing despair and again I found myself breathless at the power and intensity of Lesley Manville as Mrs. Alving.

It was a pleasure to see her performance again and to see how she subtly shades the reactions and actions of her character and how ultimately she descends into her own living Hell.  She is magnificent and it's amazing she has kept up this remarkable performance with all that is asked of her during the course of it's 90 minutes when she is rarely offstage.

Run to see GHOSTS before it closes on March 23nd, OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR ended it's run on the 15th.

The Theatre Chrissies are here!

Now for the best part of my Chrissies: the Theatre Awards!

BEST DRAMA/COMEDY

 

GHOSTS by Henrik Ibsen at the Almeida Theatre

 

Nominees: The AMEN CORNER (Olivier, NT); The AUDIENCE (Gielgud);

THE JUDAS KISS (Duke of Yorks); OTHELLO (Olivier, NT)

 

BEST MUSICAL

 

The SCOTTSBORO BOYS at Young Vic

 

Nominees: The BOOK OF MORMON (Prince of Wales); A CHORUS LINE (London Palladium); The COLOR PURPLE (Menier Chocolate Factory); SWAN LAKE (Sadler's Wells)

 

BEST ACTOR

 

RUPERT EVERETT (The Judas Kiss,  Duke of Yorks)

 

 

Nominees: John Heffernan (Edward II); Rory Kinnear (Othello);

Adrian Lester (Othello); Simon Russell Beale (Privates on Parade)

BEST ACTOR (Musical)

 

 

GAVIN CREEL (The Book of Mormon, Prince of Wales)

 

 

Nominees:  Bertie Carvel (Matilda: The Musical); Jared Gertner (The Book of Mormon);

Jonathan Ollivier (Swan Lake); Kyle Scatliffe (The Scottsboro Boys)

BEST ACTRESS

 

 

LESLEY MANVILLE (Ghosts, Almeida)

 

 

Nominees: Frances de la Tour (People); Anne-Marie Duff (Strange Interlude);

Marianne Jean-Baptiste (The Amen Corner); Helen Mirren (The Audience)

BEST ACTRESS (Musical)

 

 

CYNTHIA ERRIVO (The Color Purple, Menier Chocolate Factory)

 

 Nominees: Betty Buckley (Dear World); Rosalie Craig (The Light Princess);

Beverley Knight (The Bodyguard); Scarlett Strallen (Candide)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

 

 

CHARLES EDWARDS (Strange Interlude, Lyttelton, NT)

 

 

Nominees: Will Keen (Ghosts); Richard McCabe (The Audience);

Paul Ritter (The Audience);  Peter Sullivan (The Winslow Boy)

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Musical)

 

 

 

STEPHEN ASHFIELD (The Book of Mormon, Prince of Wales)

 

 

Nominees: Christian Dante White (The Scottsboro Boys); Colman Domingo (The Scottsboro Boys); James T. Lane (The Scottsboro Boys); Gary Wood (A Chorus Line)

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

 

CECILIA NOBLE (The Amen Corner, Olivier, NT)

 

 

Nominees:  Charlene McKenna (Ghosts); Sharon D. Clarke (The Amen Corner);

Haydn Gwynn (The Audience); Cecilia Noble (Once A Catholic)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Musical)

 

LEIGH ZIMMERMAN (A Chorus Line, London Palladium)

 

 

Nominees: Jackie Clune (Candide); Nicola Hughes (A Color Purple);

Michela Meazza (Swan Lake); Scarlett Strallen (A Chorus Line)

BEST DIRECTOR

 

 

RICHARD EYRE (Ghosts, Almeida)

 

 

Nominees: Stephen Daldrey (The Audience); Marianne Elliott (The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Time); Rufus Norris (The Amen Corner); Susan Stroman (The Scottsboro Boys)

BEST DESIGN

 

LEZ BROTHERSTON (Sleeping Beauty, Richmond)

 

 

Nominees: Bunny Christie (The Curious Incident of The Dog In the Night Time);

John Doyle (The Color Purple); Tim Hatley (Ghosts); Rae Smith (The Light Princess)

BEST LIGHTING

 

 

PETER MUMFORD (Ghosts, Almeida)

 

 

Nominees: Ken Billington (The Scottsboro Boys);

Paule Constable (The Light Princess); Paule Constable (Sleeping Beauty);

Paule Constable (The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night Time)

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

 

 

 

SUSAN STROMAN (The Scottsboro Boys, Young Vic)

 

 

Nominees: Baayork Lee/Bob Avian/Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line); 

Matthew Bourne (Sleeping Beauty); Matthew Bourne (Swan Lake);

Peter Darling (Matilda: The Musical)