Screaming Inside: HENRY IV at the Donmar

I am still becalmed after seeing Phyllida Lloyd's all-female production of Shakespeare's HENRY IV at the Donmar on Monday.   What is frustrating is I think I can see what her intentions were but they were so smothered with 'concept' that the 400 year old play can hardly be seen under it - especially as it has been filleted down to about 2 hours - 1 hour 50 minutes probably if you take out all the music cues and karaoke singing.

This concept meets you at the door, actually at the door across the road to be precise.  Ticketholders are asked to convene at a bar opposite the Donmar and are then alerted by tannoy that they can enter "the secure unit".  Along the road we trooped guided by ushers dressed as prison officers doing their damnedest to look 'ard.  The whitewashed stone stairs may have been a culture shock to some but personally I was happy to see them again as this was the original entrance to the Donmar in the 1980s and quickly felt the excitement I always did going up them to see Barbara Cook, Nancy LaMott, Elisabeth Welch etc.  No such pleasures tonight.

 

The auditorium is transformed into a fluorescent-lit association room in a woman's prison with uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs dotted about.  Indeed the entire stalls seating has been replaced with said plastic seats so thank God I had the presence of mind to book for the circle.  Brightly-coloured children's toys and furniture are incongruous additions giving the impression this is also the visit hall.

A door is unlocked and the cast troop in and line up, staring mulishly at the audience, before the signal is given for the play to start.  So there's the concept: HENRY IV is being staged by the inmates in a women's prison and during the next two hours it is occasionally interupted when tempers flare between the inmates resulting in the guards appearing to break it up so the play can start again.  My problem with the production is that all this distances you from the actual play - an all-female cast, a play-within-a-play, the concepts unfurl like scrims from above to obscure you from the text.  Am I supposed to be paying attention to the play or to the action surrounding it?

What was sadly amusing was that all these strenuous efforts to make it an immersive, 'realistic' experience only made it feel more phony.  I have no problem with "director" theatre as long as it all goes to serve the play but here I felt at all times Phyllida Lloyd cramming the play into her concept box with no real connection to the text.  In it's favour I will say that it was marvellous compared to the staggeringly awful concept production of EDWARD II seen last year at the National.

This is Lloyd's second "Shakespeare in prison" production which is a collaboration between the Donmar and Clean Break Theatre Group - all very laudable - and with JULIUS CAESAR as the first, I can see the link between them as both deal with top-down power and attempts to overthrow that power by force.  But while I can see how CAESAR could fit within a prison structure, dealing with the race for power when a leader is assassinated, I felt HENRY IV fitted the structure less well.  Yes the major plotline of the HENRY IV PART 1 is Horspur's rebellion against King Henry but where does that leave the more internal, domestic struggle for power between Henry and Falstaff to be the paternal guide for Prince Hal?

Another problem I have with such concepts is that while I have no complaints about all-male or all-female casts all I ask is that the actors can speak the text as if they understand it.  There was also the aural nightmare of strident Northen Irish or Scottish accents, no doubt incorporated here to make it all the more 'real'.

The pleasures to be had from the production were soley down to performances that transcended the sheer obviousness of it all and gave us fully-rounded characters that justified their casting no matter what their gender.

 

Rising above them all was Ashley McGuire who was a wonderful Falstaff, making a memorable first appearance sprawled on a sagging football-shaped beanbag chopping up lines of coke.  Looking like a stroppy refugee from a benefits cheat t.v. exposé, her Falstaff was the self-appointed life and soul of any party and was eager to be the centre of attention no matter how big the lies to get her there.  She spoke the text with real conviction and gusto, finding a natural rhythm in her cockney accent.

The whole prison concept finally paid off in the final minutes when the newly-crowned Hal disowns Falstaff and bans him from the royal presence.  McGuire's angry response brought the guards swarming onto the stage and she was frog-marched away in handcuffs sobbing loudly, the character and the performer's fates mirrored.

Another surprisingly effective performance - cutting a swaith through the concept - was from Sharon Rooney as Hotspur's stressed wife Lady Percy.  Only a sob away from hysteria, she was very moving in her two small scenes by totally playing it straight down the line.  Her final scene denouncing her father-in-law for wanting to perpetuate the killing by citing revenge felt like the heart of the play and I wondered how Lloyd felt that this moment of pure anguish came from a 'real' female character.

Also standing out in a supporting role was Cynthia Errivo who was so memorable as 'Celie' in the Menier's production of the musical THE COLOR PURPLE last year.  Here she more than held her own in two roles: as the conniving Poins from Falstaff's band of miscreants and as the tenacious Earl of Douglass who fights with Hotspur against the crown.  She was great in the battle scene, lashing out in a martial arts stylee against unseen opponants and there slithering down to stage level from the platform above.  She really is one to watch.

Although it was easy to admire Jude Anouka's Hotspur, ultimately her bull-in-a-china-shop approach to the role was wearying and was played too much on one note, surely one should feel some sorrow when Hotspur is killed in battle?  It is noted in the play that there is a duality between Hotspur and Prince Hal, almost two sides of the same coin, but like Anouka's strident performance, Clare Dunne's unrelenting loudness - and in a mind-numbing Northern Irish accent too - made me recoil from both her and the character and felt she showed no real depth to Hal.  It was a shame too that not more could have been found for the ususally vibrant Jackie Clune to do but she did impress as the vainglorious Owen Glendower.

Oddly I felt no surprises from Harriet Walter as the haunted and troubled Henry IV, she played the role exactly as I suspected she would.  Still there were a few moments when she did deliver; in the confrontation scene between the King and the rebellious Worcester (very well played by Ann Ogbomo) and in the deathbed scene when the King is reconciled with his son but fortells the disaster that will befall the country during the War of The Roses.  Walter certainly had the right look: looking like a dessicated, drawn old lag, hidden away from any daylight for years.

Up until now I had never seen HENRY IV on stage, my only experience of it being through two excellent filmed adaptations: Orson Welles' haunting CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1966) and Richard Eyre's excellent BBC adaptation for THE HOLLOW CROWN trilogy (2012) so it's a shame I did not feel more disposed towards this production.

I have heard it rumoured that the third in Lloyd's "Shakespeare In The Nick" projects will be KING LEAR... hasn't that poor old bugger suffered enough?

MUSICALS - from stage to screen and back again...  A trip to the theatre & cinema and a viewing of a dvd have made me brew on the subject of the musical.

On Friday Owen, Angela & I went to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama to see the final year students in a production of the great musical CITY OF ANGELS. Not seen in London for 15 years, this hugely enjoyable show won Tony Awards for Best Musical and also for the three writers: composer Cy Coleman, who wrote among others SWEET CHARITY, lyricist David Zippel who went on to Disney's HERCULES and MULAN and for the book by Larry Gelbart, the writer of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM and TOOTSIE. It was a good opportunity to see the show again and do a bit of future star-spotting.

The show is a challenge to any production team as it tells two stories consecutively with the same actors doubling up across them. Set in 1940s Hollywood, in one story we follow Stine, a New York writer, adapting his gritty crime novel CITY OF ANGELS into a script for an interfering and tyrannical producer/director while at the same time we see the story taking shape with private eye Stone hired by the glamorous Mrs. Kingsley, wife of a rich and infirm man, to find her missing step-daughter.

 The production needs to find a way of clearly defining the two stories so they can co-exist side by side and occasionally bump into each other at crisis moments in Stine's mind. The Guildhall team managed this ok with the sliding 'train carriage' set behind a film screen that raised for the 'film noir' story with the 'real-life' scenes played on either side of it. There were occasional longueurs during the scene changes which broke the rhythm but apart from that it was ok.


The actors certainly put their all into it although some were noticeably vocally strained by the Coleman's jazz-influenced score. Sadly the most vocally unsure was Rhys Rusbatch as Stone. Although fine playing the hard-talking, broken-hearted gumshoe he just got through most of his numbers but his climactic duet with his long-lost love was a bit all over the place, a shame as this scene is particularly affecting with Gelbart dropping the gags and writing with a bruised sadness worthy of Chandler. Leila Farzad as the fatale femme Alauara Kingsley was also a bit wobbly when singing in her upper register however she was very impressive as the wordly-wise actress wife of the producer/director in the 'real life' scenes.

The inherent problem with this productions is that every one is the same age so when a role calls for an older actor a lot has to be taken on trust. This was the case with Peter McGovern as Buddy Fidler the cut-throat producer/director who always has his eye on the Oscar. McGovern was out of his depth and although there were young executives aka Irving Thalberg, you can't help feeling that it was the one role that needed experience to get the jokes across.

The two stand-out performances were from Robin Steegman and Natalie Irene. Steegman played Oolie the archetypal private eye's secretary with a crush on the boss in the 'film noir' scenes and Donna in the 'real life' scenes, the producer/director's hard-working secretary whose affair with Stine leads to trouble. Irene played Stine's editor wife Gabby who hates what the west coast is doing to her husband's ideals and Bobbi in the 'film noir' story, Stone's cabaret singer fiancee who vanished out of his life when he took the rap after she shot a film producer. Both had fine voices and put their big solo numbers across with great style - Oolie/Donna's rueful song of the singleton "You Can Always Count On Me" and Bobbi's great torch song "With Every Breath I Take".

Catching the eye also were Daisy Keeping and Gwilym Lee. Keeping played ingenue-on-the-make Avril and 'film noir' jailbait teen Mallory and did a good job with the character's innuendo-laden "Lost & Found" while Lee as Stine's embittered ex-colleague Lt. Munoz also made the most of his big number "All You Have To Do Is Wait" with Seamus Maynard, Daniel Rose & Julian Pinder. The students in the pit band were also great.


The next night Owen and I went to see the film version of MAMMA MIA! Now a brief personal history. Yes I did used to be an ABBA fan back in the day - before you ask I was a Frida person - but then I worked with Ann for 5 years at her actor's agency where ABBA was played 24/7. I grew SO familiar with every single note of their product that it means ABBAsolutely nothing to me anymore. Sadly this realisation happened just as they started getting reassessed, their naff image seemingly banished for ever and the impossibility of escaping the music anywhere.

So how come I have seen MAMMA MIA! three times on stage? Well the first time was accompanying my Ma on free tickets, the next time was again free at a dress rehearsal when Susannah Fellows took over as Tanya and finally was in Toronto as a birthday present for Owen who hadn't seen it. So I feel I am in a good position to review it.

Let's say that it won me over in the 'second act'. For most of the time though I was totally gobsmacked at how bad it looked. In a rare occurrence the film is produced, directed and written by the same three women behind the stage show, Judy Craymer, Phyllida Lloyd & Catherine Johnson, none of them with any previous big screen knowledge. And that is where the danger lies.

The film's opening has Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) setting up the plot by telling two friends that she has invited three of her mother's ex-lovers to her own wedding to find out which of them is her unknown father. She found their names from her mother's diary and she reads them entries from the diary: cue song: "Honey Honey".

All the film's problems can be found in this brief segment. The cinematography is appalling, at one point Sophie stands in front of a sunlit blue sea which glares so badly you cannot focus on her. I have no idea if this is the fault of the cinematographer or director Lloyd just having no idea where to put the subjective eye of the camera on the three chattering, mugging, jumping-up-and-down actresses so she relies on the editing of Lesley Walker to cut it in such a way to give it a sense of urgency. All it does is throw so many bad angles and bad shots at you that the mind reels. This opening works ok in the theatre where you are focused on the stage and ready to take in the set-up while looking at three actresses within a well-lit stage set but on a massive screen it just clicks straight into over-edited overkill.

The same misjudged tone bedevils the first section of the film with the musical numbers over-edited to within an inch of their lives, the actors registering emotions as if the camera was at the back of the balcony and always, that awful camera work. For some unknown reason during the first scene where Meryl Streep confronts her ex-s Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellen Skarsgaard, it is filmed in a shaky point-of-view shot of the three men explaining their motives for being there - it's just all so wrong!

Another thing that struck me as odd is how a major balls-up in the script is made worse on screen. Sophie quizzes the three men about the summer 21 years before when they met her mother and Harry (Firth) says he met her during the punk days referencing his Johnny Rotten t-shirt while Bill (Skarsgaard) says it was the summer of hippy love! Now on stage this wonky timeline barely registers - it's spoken it's gone - but here the camera lingers on snapshots of them in appropriate punk and hippy outfits. Now there has already been play on the fact that Donna (Streep) wants her Greek hotel to be online so being generous and dating the film from 1999 when the show opened in London, that would make it 1978 which could *just* accommodate a punk reference - but the summer of love?? It's just so lazy.


Despite the clueless cinematography and unsure tone remarkably the film calms down in the second half largely in part to the actors who all appear to be having the time of their lives. The men, having the most under-written roles, hit their marks and do little to rock the boat - I must say of the three I liked Colin Firth the most, not a phrase I am given to saying a lot.

I was a bit worried that Julie Walters would use the film as a mug-fest but she was quite restrained for her and Christine Baranski was a real hit as too-rich and too-married Tanya. The good thing about the plot of MAMMA MIA! is that it identifies that the most interesting relationship is between Donna & Sophie, the free-spirited mother and the daughter who wants marriage - and a father figure.

Despite being a bit annoying at the start with her over-reactions, Meryl Streep gave a fine performance as Donna and was in good voice for her two big moments in the second act: the little-known song "Slipping Through My Fingers" is used perfectly in the scene where Donna helps Sophie dress for her wedding day and then turns on the emotion for "The Winner Takes It All" confronting Brosnan as the actual father.

But again this scene triggered something in my mind that it never has in the theatre. As an 11 O'Clock Number it works fine - the opening line of "I don't wanna talk..." being a great lead-in for any song - but what exactly do the lyrics have to do with the actual character singing them? It's more likely that it's a big weepie ballad that fits where a big weepie ballad is needed, the characters certainly haven't had enough scenes together to warrant it. This probably troubled me having seen CITY OF ANGELS the night before where the lyrics *have* been written specifically for the situation and the character and where Stine's lacerating climactic number "Funny" fits perfectly.

Later on we watched Owen's dvd of XANADU which he bought after we saw the stage version earlier this year in New York. Now it's been years since I have seen it but I had forgotten how grindingly naff it was. It's so vapid it practically vanishes while you are watching it just like Kira the muse from Zeus played by Olivia Newton-John has a habit of doing.

Of course what it does have is a couple of great songs by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar but after refreshing my memory of the film I can now fully understand the jaw-to-the-floor amazement when it was announced that a stage version was going to skating into the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. But luckily the script was entrusted to gay writer Douglas Carter Beene who went to town taking the piss out of the original plot and the whole premise, leading to a stage musical that was hugely entertaining.

Which brings me back to where I came in!