JULIIUS CAESAR at the Bridge Theatre - all terribly new, all terribly old

All in all, it was an evening of remembering things..
.

 

...I remembered that Nicholas Hytner's 'modern-dress' Shakespeare productions might make critics salivate but to me they are crushingly obvious attempts at saying "Hey kids... Shakespeare could almost be writing about today!"; surely any decent production should rely on the text to get that over to an audience.

...I remembered how The Bridge Theatre's YOUNG MARX so underwhelmed me and here I was seeing it's second production to similar feelings

 ... and I remembered how uncomfortable the seating is at The Bridge, a willful act of neglect on the part of Hytner and oppo Nick Starr as the theatre was only built last year.

...and finally I remembered how much I loathe being interrupted during the first important minutes of a production by disruptive latecomers and a clueless usher.  Could they have come in during the caterwauling pro-Caesar band playing in the round playing area?  No.  Due to this-in-the-round configuration, the latecomers had to come through our row led by a clueless bumbling usher to get to far-flung seats as the actors were already speaking.

Now The Bridge Theatre's 'dress circle' third row has NO legroom when you are sitting in the large tip-down seats so we all had to stand and attempt to squash against the back wall when this tribe of arseholes made their way loudly and clumsily along the row.  Cue shouting from people whose feet were stood on and those who did the standing... meanwhile I have lost my train of thought and the actors might as well be speaking Urdu for all I fucking cared.  I repeat... this theatre was built last year, so we are not talking about seating as in the more ancient west end theatres which are cramped.  So one can only assume that the architect responsible deliberately made them like this.  The arsehole.

So.. by the time the mayhem died down we had missed the first scene altogether.  Sad to report I was so angry at all of the above that the production had lost me... and nothing I saw particularly made me fight to catch up.

Which is a shame considering I was looking forward to seeing this especially after seeing Dominic Dromgoole's gripping Globe production in 2014 which showed how timely Shakespeare's play is and probably always will be... and no, that wasn't in modern dress.

It's also a shame as there were good performances struggling to get out from Hytner's absurdly LOUD production, nothing terribly revelatory, but good.  Ben Wishaw was well-cast as a liberal elite Brutus, first seen at his desk surrounded by books, who is suckered into joining the conspiracy against Caesar when they appeal to his Republican idealism.  Wishaw is not a terribly likeable performer; there is a prissy petulant quality to his acting which suited the role of Brutus - a man whose idealist nature led to his downfall - but there were also no surprises in his performance: he gave me just what I expected.

Michelle Fairley played Cassius with a needling earnestness but nowhere in her performance did she suggest anything that was revelatory or what was gained by having her cast over a male actor, I also got no real heat off of David Calder's Caesar, for all the hints of Donald Trump - which was too drearily obvious to have been pursued in rehearsal.  Again, it's not that he gave a bad performance... it just didn't reveal or illuminate.

I had sadly the same feeling for David Morrissey whose hang-dog Mark Antony reminded me of the Tex Avery cartoon dog Droopy more than the quick-witted character who subtly beats the conspirators at their own game.  He upped his game for the famous funeral oration but then he almost seemed to disappear into the clanging loud whirlwind of the final third of the production.

One had to look further down the ranks for the performances that did stand out: Wendy Kweh's Portia was suitably impassioned in her attempt to keep Caesar from going to the Senate while Hannah Stokely and Leila Farzad stood out as Metellus Cimber and Decius, senators who all play their parts in lulling Caesar into thinking it's just another day at the office.  The most sparky performance of all was from Adjoa Andoh as the spiteful Casca, whose shade-throwing starts the whole conspiracy off; her pointed and arch performance made one feel sorry for the character's absence in the second half.

As i said all the stalls seats have been removed for JULIUS CAESAR making the punters so-many unpaid extras in the crowd scenes - and just like the Globe's groundlings - we had a fainter!  The production had to be halted in the scene between Cassius and Casca when a young bloke fainted and he had to be removed from the acting area, the wuss - it was only about 30 minutes in.

Although I can see the point in the promenade set-up, ultimately I tired of seeing the audience being moved about like so much cattle and looking about themselves while the actors were performing in front of them.  I did however like Bunny Christie's inspired production design of having platforms rise up in and around the audience to give the actors their stages - the Senate was particularly well-realized.

I'm only sorry I did not enjoy the production more.  To be honest I got more from the excellent programme notes than from the production!

YOUNG MARX at the Bridge Theatre - Carry On Comrade...

Two weeks ago we visited London's latest performing space, the rather clunky-named Bridge Theatre, which is situated between London and Tower Bridges.  I find it a frankly ghastly part of town, soulless and ugly, but the theatre space should give it a bit more promise.  The theatre is the brainchild of Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr who made such a success at the National Theatre when they were artistic director and executive director.

It will take a while to "warm up": the main foyer is fairly drab and oddly-lit from fashionable single bulbs hanging from the ceiling. the security staff out front were hardly welcoming and the trendy menu/bar doesn't inspire confidence.  However the loos are plentiful and there is a very handy stalls foyer space by the auditorium, which in itself reminded me of an enlarged Cottesloe/Dorfman apace.  The side stalls, where we were seated, were angled towards the stage but at the cost of leg-room.

The auditorium was about three-quarters full for the Bridge Theatre's launch production, Richard Bean and Clive Coleman's anachronistic YOUNG MARX which gives a whacking star part to Rory Kinnear as the struggling Karl Marx and is directed by - yes you guessed - Nicholas Hytner.

The thought "Blackadder does Marx" settled into my head very early on and I could not shake that through it's running time.  It gives a comic spin to Marx in his refugee years in Soho and uses many instances from his real life to comic effect - his regular visits to the cupboard to hide from creditors and sponging fellow-refugees, the near-poverty that he and his family struggled through, the attempts to pawn the incongruously expensive possessions of his high-born wife Jenny, and the friendship with fellow political thinker Friedrich Engels is turned into a comedy double-act.

The trouble is, it's just not funny enough.  There are a couple of humorous moments and set-ups but they don't quite land - to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, it aims to soar but agrees to perch.  Bean and Coleman's gags keep coming but arrives at a skidding halt when a death happens in the young family but we are being asked to be sorry for an under-written child role and you wonder why the people are so upset when the dead boy has been such an offstage presence.

Rory Kinnear certainly gives a barn-storming performance but it's also a charmless one and you really cannot understand why his egotistical Karl is seen to be the life and soul of the party.  He is also settling into a shtick where he hits consonants like a man hitting a cow's arse with a banjo - a single line that has words beginning with p, b or d are verbal explosions which become very wearing.

Against his bells and smells performance, Oliver Chris was delightfully witty and wry as Engels, frustrated by Marx's inability to settle down and write his long-promised manifesto.  The usually-dependable Nancy Carroll is wasted as Jenny Marx, forever on the verge of leaving her unreliable husband and being noble, and Laura Elphinstone - while giving a good performance as the Marx's maid Nym - again is making bricks from the straw supplied by Bean and Coleman, the women roles are just cyphers.

There was a nice performance by Eben Figueiredo as the excitable Konrad Schramm, a committed revolutionary who hero worships Marx to the extent that he takes his hero's place in a duel - yet another actual incident - and Miltos Yerolemou makes an impression as the explosively angry French political activist Emmanuel Barthélmey but otherwise the supporting cast hide behind wigs and hats, giving hardly noticeable performances.

The revolving set by Mark Thompson was fun as it quickly changed from hovel to reading room to pub backroom but it's distance from the audience made the play again seem too remote and the production benefited from Mark Henderson's moody lighting.

The play ends on almost a Chekhovian note with Marx finally sitting down to write his great work surrounded by his family and close friends which was a nice way to end but I suspect the writers had just blown themselves out.  Nicholas Hytner directs at a frenetic pace but it eventually reflects the slightly desperate air of the writing to be more than it is.

Dvd/150: NATIONAL THEATRE 50 (2013)

A marvellous celebration of the National Theatre's 50th birthday, this 2-disc dvd includes the all-star gala which re-staged scenes and musical numbers from the NT's greatest shows plus the 2-part BBC Arena programme covering the National's tumultuous history, as dramatic as anything ever staged there.

Wonderful archive recordings and footage tell how Laurence Olivier launched the NT at the Old Vic and, in the second programme, how Peter Hall took over with it's move to the South Bank and how his successors Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner have sustained it.  The programme interviews these directors along with the new Artistic Director Rufus Norris.

Also interviewed are Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Tom Stoppard, Peter Brook, Ronald Pickup, Jonathan Miller, Ian McKellen, David Hare, Peter Shaffer, Judi Dench and Alan Bennett.

It's worth it for the footage of GUYS AND DOLLS alone!

Shelf or charity shop? It has a shelf all to itself.

All The News That's Fit To Act...

For films of yore that were based on recent events, the posters would scream RIPPED FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES, that phrase came to mind often when I watched the National Theatre's controversial new production, GREAT BRITAIN by Richard Bean.

The play and the production have been kept under wraps for some time - director Nicholas Hytner was talking about it a year ago, saying he wasn't sure when Bean would complete it.  Lo and behold, the phone-hacking trial ends and the play is delivered. The urge to address every single issue raised by the phone-hacking scandal has been followed by Bean and at times it felt like he had a huge flow-chart on his wall which he duly ticked-off as every note was touched on.  I wish that Bean, rather than being so chapter-and-verse, had put more imagination into the piece.

Before the play started something had already irked me... no bloody programme!  The absurd reason was that because it was put on at such speed no time was available to print one up but when it transfers to the Haymarket in September, they will be on sale there - and they also will try to get some for the NT bookshop when it re-opens.  Gee thanks.  I have seen visiting productions at the NT that have played shorter periods of time and they had programmes printed so why not this one?  They knew who the cast and crew were going to be, they had the rehearsal photographs and all NT programmes are a third-full of paid ads that are the same for whatever production is on that month.  I tell you, the place is going to the bad now they have builders in.

But the play's the thing...  Paige Britain (no, it's not the subtlest of plays) is an ambitious news editor on the red-top rag The Free Press who will stoop to any level to get a scoop which fits the remit for the newspaper: Tits, Bingo and The Death Penalty For Paedos.  No matter how unreliable the story it gets printed because the news room's mission statement is "we go out and destroy other people's lives on your behalf".

At the play's start, the news room's jubilation at unveiling a possible kiddy-fiddling priest is mitigated by his suicide.  But never mind, there is always another story... a topless model can be a figurehead for whatever crass campaign the paper is running, there's always a sportsman involved in a kiss-and-tell, a politician to be set up - and the breaking news of two little girls who vanish one afternoon gives them a peach of a story that they can exploit mercilessly.

Paige's tactics get an unexpected boost when the sports columnist reveals how he gets his scoops: by listening to the subject's mobile phone voicemails which is easily done as so few people change the factory-setting pin numbers for their account - and The Free Press has all the factory codes...

A story is printed of a star cricketer having an affair which is based on a phone message but unbeknownst to the hacks, the cricketer has gone to a solicitor about a possible invasion of privacy - how else could they have got the quotes?  This thread of the plotline weaves through the following action as Paige gets bolder with her dealings with the police and politics.  She starts sleeping with the Assistant Police Commissioner to get inside news on how the kidnapping case is progressing and also to promote him in the newspaper over his bumbling and PR disaster-area of a boss.

A quietly ambitious Tory leader is targeted by the Newspaper's Irish proprietor and is told that the newspaper will back him in the upcoming election for his guarantee that the proprietor's bid for a national TV channel will be waived through, needless to say the politician also becomes Paige's bed-partner.

Paige doesn't always get what she wants - the Proprietor ignores her when the paper's editor moves to become the new Prime Minister's PR man (ringing bells?) and promotes instead a horse-loving, wife of a soap-star from his NY office to the editorship so she can figurehead a campaign against child-abusers (sound familiar?) although she has no involvement in the actual office.

But the persistent solicitor cannot be ignored and soon Paige's empire of deceit begins to come increasingly under pressure from both internal and external pressures.  How will our quick-thinking anti-heroine get out of this?  Ah how indeed.

For all that is wrong with the play there is also a lot right with it too, namely in the savagely funny performances and every so often Bean drops the satire to reveal his anger at the use of people's lives for cheap copy and the heirachy of corruption that taints those in power - "20 people who talk to 20 people who talk to 20 people".  However I thought it interesting that Bean played down the fact that without other journalists digging, the full extent of recent shenanigans would never have been made public. 

Hytner directs the play with a whiplash energy, the action's ability to crack along helped immeasureably by Tim Hatley's design of sliding screens which give the play an almost filmic pace.  Neil Austin's lighting is also a key component in the production's success as well as the video clips by 59 Productions which punctuate the action with crashing headlines commenting on the plot in particular the Dail Mail ones which always related it to illegal immigrants!

Oddly enough the play only seemed tentative in it's ending which was obviously tacked-on by Bean after the court case ended.
 

Billie Piper was excellent as Paige, a woman with pure newsprint running in her veins but for all her work, the character remained a cypher.  A quick insight was given that she always felt left out "of the big party" which is a bit negligble and the fact that the men are only truly conquered by her having sex with them is too obvious.

She is surrounded by an excellent cast including Robert Glenister as the inventively foul-mouthed editor Winston Tikkel who makes a disasterous move into politics and Oliver Chris as the Assistant Police Commissioner who discovers a conscience too late.

Aaron Neil steals every scene he is in as the buffoonish Police Commissioner ("More black men than white men have been shot by the police on my watch - but I will rectify that") while there was good work by Kiruna Stamel as the crusading solicitor as well as from Harriet Thorpe, Andrew Woodall, Ross Boatman, William Chubb and Nick Sampson.

I must admit my mind occasionally wandered back to 1985 and David Hare & Howard Brenton's equally savage PRAVDA at the Olivier Theatre.  It stays in the mind primarily for Anthony Hopkins now-legendary performance as the South African newspaper owner Lambert La Roux determined to blow apart the crumbling British press establishment as well as destroying the campaigning journalist seeking to expose him.  What a different world that seems now in view of GREAT BRITAIN's exposure of current practices.

Remembrance Of Things Past

Ooo catchy title... I must copyright that.  Oh.

Right, Constant Reader, now that I have found my voice again, time for a bit of a catch-up on productions seen.  But I have seen so many!  I will do it in bite-size chunks.

New plays, not too many.

The latest of Peter Morgan's factional musings on the reality lived behind lives in the public eye found him returning to the ultimate person who is known to all but known to none, our Brenda.  He hit pay-dirt with her in 2006 with THE QUEEN and THE AUDIENCE reunited him with the film's leading lady Helen Mirren.  La Mirren hasn't done too badly out of HRH either and here she was given the opportunity to give a tour-de-force performance as Morgan bounced hither and yon across the six decades of the Queen's rule giving her minutes to change costumes, wigs and playing age.

Indeed it was a remarkable performance with Mirren finding a quiet through-line amidst the skilful onstage quick changes and turning on a sixpence from the young Queen finding her feet with Churchill to the slow, slightly stooped Matriarch running rings around Cameron.

The problem I had with Morgan's play was also it's purported unique selling point.  As Morgan has as much idea as we do in what takes place when the Queen meets the Prime Minister in their private weekly meetings, each section settled into a pattern of the Queen playing Devil's Advocate with whoever she was meeting so ultimately Morgan's script played it safe and certainly did nothing to shock or provoke it's - ahem - audience.  His most controversial gambit was to have the Queen haunted by her teenage self which didn't really amount to anything that would have him dragged to the tower.

 A play by Peter Morgan about the Queen starring Helen Mirren on Shaftesbury Avenue is going to attract a certain public and they were out in force when I went.  EVERYTHING got a round, the curtains, the frocks, the set, needless to say the Corgis.  The only real frisson during the show was in the enjoyable sparring match between Mirren and Haydn Gwynne's basilisk Margaret Thatcher - you could almost feel a large section of the audience having to choose between two heroines.  Seeing it a week or so after the absurd blanket canonisation of the old bitch it was good to see Morgan's jaundiced view of her.

 

Morgan obviously has a soft spot for Harold Wilson as he appeared three times: as a gauche bull-in-a-palace at their first meeting (cute but quite far from the truth I suspect), a PM-out-of-water in Balmoral and his announcement of retiring.  Richard McCabe played him very well - not so much an impression as 'an impression' if you get my drift.  His performance in the final scene was particularly touching.  Paul Ritter's turn as John Major was very entertaining and Michael Elwyn was a silky, deceptive Anthony Eden.  Edward Fox was a last minute replacement for Robert Hardy as Churchill and it showed.

Stephen Daldrey certainly kept the traffic of the stage moving briskly and Bob Crowley's design was spare and elegant.  I just wish Morgan's play - apart from the Thatcher scene - hadn't felt so damn timid.

Mirren and McCabe won this year's Olivier Awards for Best Actress and Supporting Actor which just happened to be two categories that A CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME wasn't nominated in - lucky for them as it swept seven other categories including Best Play, Set, Lighting and Director.

Now, some history.
I have never read Mark Haddon's novel the play is based on as I spent a lifetime one evening watching his play POLAR BEARS and as that arsed me off so much I couldn't bear to set foot on him again.  I was aware of the basic premise but it was interesting to be one of the few in the packed Apollo Theatre who didn't know what was about to transpire.  By the way, we appeared to be sat in the designated American section - it was like being back on Broadway.

Luke Treadaway might have won the Best Actor Olivier award but the slacker doesn't do Monday or Tuesdays - they just don't have the range any more - so I saw Johnny Gibbon in his West End debut.  He certainly gave a relentless performance as the autistic teenager Christopher Boone who, when his neighbour's dog is killed with a pitch-fork, decides to find out not only who the killer is but the other mysteries in his life.  I am sure a long career beckons.

I must admit the plot itself didn't offer too many surprises, when the killer is revealed it was all a bit obvious - and was quickly dispensed with - the dead dog being the McGuffin to get us involved in Christopher's journey to find the missing mother he had been led to believe was dead. 

We experience his disorientating journey from Swindon to London through his eyes and this is where Marianne Elliott's production triumphs.  Elliott, set designer Bunny Christie and lighting designer Paule Constable combine to give us stage image after image which are haunting, delightful and exciting.  There were plenty of younger types in the audience and it made me wish that hopefully a good number of them will be excited by what the theatre can do in the hands of an accomplished team.

However, like a number of other productions this year, I came out thinking that I wasn't as blown away as I had been led to believe I would be.  The problem here was that the acting wasn't really all that.  Performances were either drawn larger-than-life or so muted as to be anonymous.  Even Niamh Cusack - so good recently in two productions at the Old Vic - here barely registers as Christopher's teacher.  We pride ourselves on the quality of British stage acting but more often than not, what you get are performances that have you wondering whether they bothered putting the understudy slips in the programme.  Just saying.

But as a work of theatrical possibilities?  Dazzling.

I have also had two dollops of Alan Bennett.  Earlier this year I had read his memoir A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE'S so I was curious to see the play UNTOLD STORIES which drew on part of it.

 

The play took two parts, the first half was a theatrical amuse-bouche called HYMN that was almost over before it began, a 30 minute reflection on the music Bennett remembers having an influence on him growing up.  More than anything it got us accustomed to Alex Jennings' unerring and affectionate interpretation of the author.

The main part of the evening was COCKTAIL STICKS in which Bennett turned his attention to the subject of his parents.  When I read A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE'S I had found it unbearably moving as Bennett gave us his recollections of growing up with his loving but socially embarrassed parents to whom the world seemed a party they didn't have the courage to attend.

They were played by Jeff Rawle and Gabrielle Lloyd with a gentle charm and as, in the book, Lloyd as his mother moved more centre-stage as she slipped into the twilight world of dementia.  Ultimately I think it works better on the page, especially the final section where Bennett turns his quiet anger on the institutionalised stripping away of any dignity his mother had at a pace with the dementia stripping away her identity.

After this it was natural to see Bennett' s latest play PEOPLE at the Lyttleton.  Now I had been one of the 8 people who saw THE HISTORY BOYS in the same theatre and not liked it.  Indeed I recently saw the screen version and again, found little to enjoy outside of Frances de la Tour's caustic performance.  So here was a chance to enjoy her playing the lead role for a change.  I presume it is what one could call a play of ideas, the trouble being that it is all ideas and no play.

A packed Lyttleton audience laughed itself through the play while I sat with the occasional half-smile.  Bennett has worked himself up into a right old state initially about the National Trust and on a larger scale, the idea of a culture, an identity that can similarly be shaped and packaged and sold back to you.  I have no problem with this argument and occasionally a point was made that shone through.  I just didn't buy the package.

Frances de la Tour played Dorothy Stacpoole, the heir to the crumbling stately home that has been in her family for years.  Now just she and her equally eccentric companion Iris live there so she is a sitting target for a beady-eyed consultant for the National Trust, played by Miles Jupp who was taking a break from being a panellist on innumerable quiz shows, and her Reverend younger sister (Selina Cadell).

The answer to Dorothy's problems appear to arrive in the bizarre twist of an ex-lover appearing who is now a porn director who asks for his latest film to be shot in the house.  We then had a lengthy scene of the filming which made laboured use of knob jokes, social embarrassment and the like to little purpose other than for Frances de la Tour to swish around in a 1960s style couture ensemble.

Ultimately Dorothy cannot keep the real wolves from the door and the house is taken off her hands and renovated fit for the paying proles consumption.  But she still had a trick up her sleeve...

Frances de la Tour was as watchable as ever (the cast even included her brother Andy as a vicar) and she found wells of sympathy for her improbable character and it was amusing watching Linda Bassett make bricks from straw as her bizarre cohort but otherwise it just seemed to ramble on taking a long time to get to an obvious pay-off.  The ubiquitous Bob Crowley's dark and cluttered set was obviously going to be given a make-over and it was Constant Reader, before your very eyes.

It was pointed out by director Nicholas Hytner to Bennett that the National Trust share more than just initials with the National Theatre and it was a peculiar sight to see the well-heeled audience hooting with delight as Bennett took less-than-veiled potshots at their ilk.

Ultimately it all felt rather like Bennett was having his cake and eating it too.

Still, always nice to hear Petula Clark singing DOWNTOWN.



This week the time had come to go back to the bosom of the Bard, namely Nicholas Hytner's production of HAMLET at the Olivier Theatre.Right from the start, with the roar of a fighter plane and the appearance of Francisco, Bernardo and Marcellus in greatcoats carrying assault rifles, the production sets up a Denmark on a war footing while the second scene presents us with a West Wing-style court with Claudius giving his opening speech to a news camera team while security men and apparatchiks linger in the background.

Yes it's a very 21st Century Elsinore, well alluded to with little details like Hamlet and Laertes having to obtain Claudius' signature to leave the country with their passport as evidence and Polonious showing Ophelia surveillance photographs of her with Hamlet as well as planting a tape recorder in the book she carries in the 'Nunnery' speech scene.It was earlier in the day that I realised this would be my first HAMLET at the Olivier since seeing Ian Charleson - gulp - 21 years ago. I have blogged before that I doubt I will ever see a HAMLET to rival Ian's - his suffering from the AIDS virus which would claim him less than three months later gave his performance a power beyond the written word. Indeed once or twice I found myself moist-eyed remembering him, in particular the "We defy augury" speech which I will never hear bettered.

From his opening scene Rory Kinnear set off on an interesting course: pugnacious and sardonic, a hard-edged melancholia but with a very masculine gentleness in the soliloquies which he spoke beautifully so you almost felt you were hearing them a-new. His was not the most immediately winning of Hamlets but I warmed to his performance and this seals his place at the top-table of current stage actors. It also seemed to be more of a performance than a star turn so he certainly banished memories of Jude Law.The other big selling point of the show was to see Clare Higgins as Gertrude and she gave a memorable portrayal of a professional First Lady who grabs the nearest drink whenever she feels the attention is off her which, of course, sets up her incredulous refusal at Claudius' entreaty for her not to drink in the final scene. It was good that the modern dress choice of the production didn't mean they dropped the end of her speech about Ophelia's drowning - "her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up" which was absurdly cut in Michael Grandage's production at the Wyndhams last year.

Oh and speaking of that production, sadly here again Gertrude has to suffer the indignity of having practically the smallest royal wardrobe! Mind you, she was spared the indignity of Penelope Wilton's cardigans, going instead for a tight-fitting sheath dress, occasional matching suit and tottering high heels. Sadly while she was being bounced from couch to couch in the closet scene the thought of Miss Piggy suddenly sprung to mind. Don't blame me Clare, blame Vicki Mortimer's costume and the hair-stylist.

Sadly for me, the biggest mis-step in the production was the Claudius of Patrick Malahide. I was looking forward to his interpretation but again, very early on I got the mental image of Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" and nothing in his vocally thin performance could shift that.David Calder has also a bit of a let-down as Polonious (looking frighteningly like Charles Clarke!) - this is where the Grandage production triumphed in the great double-act of Kevin McNally and Ron Cook in these roles. However Calder was more effective as the Gravedigger. Giles Terera was also a lightweight Horatio - mind you, he was scuppered from the get-go by the awful idea of having him wear light brown hush-puppy boots.

I liked Ruth Negga's contemporary Ophelia very much although I'm not too sure of the directorial conceit of having her wheel a shopping trolley around in her mad scenes. It was however a nice touch to have her distribute her character's props badly wrapped-up as gifts to the others during the "Rosemary" scene instead of the usual straggly weeds.

Hytner has added a tiny silent scene after her final scene where Ophelia is snatched by two secret service men and bundled away. I am not sure if the idea of Claudius having Ophelia bumped off actually works - does he suspect her derangement would lead her to betray him? - but it was an interesting touch.

Alex Lanipekun's Laertes was easily swamped by whoever he was playing against but Jake Fairbrother was a very convincing Fortinbras - again sharing his obituary of Hamlet with an embedded tv news team.

It is a tribute to Hytner's direction that the three and a half hours running time slipped by unnoticed and he kept a grip of the narrative throughout. Vicki Mortimer's palatial boxed set swiftly changed from location to location with a particular emphasis on windows and hidden doors and Jon Clark's lighting design also deserves praise.

Sometimes it does you good to leave the city... especially from a stalls seat in the Olivier Theatre.

Earlier this week Owen and I saw the last preview of Nicholas Hytner's revival of Dion Boucicault's comedy of manners LONDON ASSURANCE.

It was an evening of revisits... the first time I had been back to my beloved Olivier since the rather woeful NATION and it was a welcome return to the work of Boucicault whose epic comedy THE SHAUGHRAUN worked so well in the Olivier back in day - bejesus it was 22 years ago!!

As the programme notes, Boucicault seems to be the bridge from the post-Restoration comedies of Congreve and Sheridan to the 'modern' works of Wilde and Shaw. It is certainly worth noting that these five playwrights were all Irish - Congreve was born in England but raised and educated in Ireland.

Boucicault's plays usually have a highly theatrical style, teeming with larger-than-life characters sweeping through melodramatic plots with hissable villains and fainting heroines.

He had started out as an actor then tried his hand at writing. Three years later he presented a farce to Charles Matthews who co-ran the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden company who advised him to try his hand at a comedy dealing with 'modern life'. The result was LONDON ASSURANCE which was staged in 1841 to an immediate success. This set him off on a life of roaring success and crashing failures, several debatable marriages, the initiation of copyrights for authors and box-office royalties. His life would make a great play!

The play has been given a textual revision (!) by Richard Bean which I presume has given it a slight update but the plot is pure post-Restoration: the vain and overbearing Sir Harcourt Courtly has a large London townhouse, a wardrobe of outlandishly modern clothes, an idea of his own importance and a bank account running low on funds.He shares his house with his son Charles who he believes to be a studious and mild lad although Charles sneaks out nightly for a life of drinking and gambling. Sir Harcourt is arranging with his landowner friend Max to marry his 18 year old niece Grace but this means Courtly - to his horror - has to venture into deepest Gloucestershire to close the deal! Little does he know that Charles is also on his way thanks to Max extending an invitation to the cockney chancer Dazzle who helped Charles home that morning!
Once there, the practical Grace is appalled at the overdone Sir Harcourt but finds herself to be falling in love with a young stranger - yes you guessed Charles in disguise! Another spanner is thrown in the romantic works with the arrival of the gloriously named Lady Gay Spanker, a country wife addicted to hunting who Sir Harcourt is soon making a play for - despite the presence of her geriatric husband. Complications ensue...

Nicholas Hytner keeps the pace going at a rapid rate, buffaloing over some of the more dodgy plotting to build up a frenzy of fun and bringing out the best in his fine ensemble.
Nick Sampson steals every scene he is in as Courtly's unflappable butler Cool - a career awaits him for all those gentleman's gentleman roles not played since the loss of Gielgud! Matt Cross also makes a big impression as Dazzle the flyboy floating through life on his wits. Mark Addy too made a real impact as Max, the avuncular country householder.

Michelle Terry followed up her role as Helena in last year's ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL with a sparky performance as Grace, another resourceful young woman. She was ably partnered on stage by Paul Ready as Charles, again following up on his fine performance in last year's less-than-great TIME AND THE CONWAYS. There was an effective cameo from Richard Briers as the doddery but game Mr. Spanker.

Ruling over the evening however is the killer-diller duo of Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw.
Simon Russell Beale came to prominence in the 1980s playing over-made-up fops in several RSC restoration comedies so this is familiar territory to him - but by God he is wonderful at it. He cut an outrageous figure, first in a flowing brocade dressing gown and then in a purple cutaway all topped off with suspiciously dark curls, he mines seams of comedy with ease. He timed his laughs with the preciseness of Mussolini's timetables - especially when telling Max about how his wife ran off with his best friend *beat* *beat* "And I miss him". Another memorable performance.
Fiona Shaw isn't an actress I usually go out of my way to see but back in 1983 I saw her on the Olivier stage in her debut as Julia in Sheridan's THE RIVALS and it's a joy to see her return to High Comedy from the wastelands of The Waste Land and Mother Courage. I suspect most actresses would let the name - Lady Gay Spanker - do most of her work for her but Shaw is intelligent enough to seek out the character too and gives us a rambuncious, cigar-smoking, whisky-swigging, good-humoured lady of the land - the scenes between her and Beale are easily the high points of the evening.

Mark Thompson's sets are a delight and the whole production has a timeless gusto that will keep the Olivier Theatre busy for some time.