An uneven quartet of BBC productions starring Maggie Smith.
Cedric Messina produced the PLAY OF THE MONTH series but also directed their 1972 version of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE; Portia's mix of humour and drama was perfect for Maggie but she struggles with a leaden studio-based production and a subdued Frank Finlay as Shylock.
She starred in another 1972 POTM, Shaw's THE MILLIONAIRESS where she is pure Smith: her fur stole wealded like a weapon, imperiously all wrists, cheekbones and shoulders but it's another underwhelming production.
Also included is her unforgettable Susan, the depressive vicar's
wife whose secret drinking leads to the arms of an Asian shopkeeper in TALKING HEADS, written and directed by Alan Bennett.
Last is Richard Eyre's adaptation of Tennesee Williams' Southern Gothic SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER. Maggie was ill during the filming but her subdued Mrs Venable exudes a patrician power rather than all-out madness.
Shelf or charity shop? Half of the productions might be underwhelming but Maggie's performances make it onto the shelf. Interestingly, the extras make it more of a keeper: there is her episode from the 1967 series ACTING IN THE 60S where she is interviewed by Clive Goodwin and they are later joined by her longtime friend Kenneth Williams to discuss playing comedy. A 1973 apperance on PARKINSON is a great addition when, again joined by Kenneth Williams, they read John Betjemin's "Death In Leamington" to the obvious pleasure of Betjemin.
The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and,
as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast
recording of my life. So here we are... a year and 10 months in the
making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever -
and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to
consider.
I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I
can say that one of the four is better than the other. So let's
go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)
First performed: 1950, 46th Street Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1982, Olivier Theatre, London
Productions seen: seven
Score: Frank Loesser
Book: Jo Swerling / Abe Burrows
Plot: Set in Damon Runyon's New York of gamblers, gangsters and showgirls. Nathan Detroit has nowhere to hold his all-night crap game, the cops have their eyes on him and he is fending off the growing impatience of his fiancee, cabaret singer Miss Adelaide, after an engagement of 14 years. Nathan finds a location but needs to raise an advance payment of $1,000. Desperate for the dough, he bets legendary gambler Sky Masterson the same amount that he cannot take strait-laced Sgt Sarah Brown from the local Save-A-Soul Mission to dinner in Havana. There's no way he can lose the bet... is there?
Five memorable numbers: SIT DOWN YOU'RE ROCKING THE BOAT, LUCK BE A LADY, I'VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE, ADELAIDE'S LAMENT, MORE I CANNOT WISH YOU
GUYS nearly lost out on a shared Number 1 spot simply because I have seen a few productions that I felt had
not done it justice but eventually I had to
overlook this as the first one I saw was definitive and I feel oddly protective of the show. GUYS AND DOLLS literally changed my life.
In 1950, producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin announced a new musical based on Damon Runyan's short stories THE IDYLL OF MISS SARAH BROWN and BLOOD PRESSURE and chose Frank Loesser to write the score, fresh from his debut Broadway success WHERE'S CHARLEY? and winning an Academy Award for writing "Baby It's Cold Outside" the previous year. The job of adapting the stories was given to Jo Swerling who was later replaced by Abe Burrows - however by that time, Loesser had nearly completed the score, so Burrows had the double chore of writing a new funnier script while also slotting in Loesser's songs. He succeeded wonderfully as GUYS AND DOLLS is judged to have one of the greatest books in Broadway history. The show was an instant hit when it opened, winning five Tony Awards and running for 1,200 performances. London first saw it in 1953 with Sam Levene and Vivian Blane repeating their Broadway roles of Nathan and Miss Adelaide. Two years later, Blane played Adelaide in the hit film version with Sinatra, Brando and Jean Simmons.
In 1971 Laurence Olivier was going to stage GUYS AND DOLLS for the National Theatre at the Old Vic with him as Nathan, Geraldine McEwan as Adelaide and Denis Quilley as Sky but his poor health at the time gave the NT Board a reason to cancel it; the thinking being should they really be staging an American musical? In 1982 when Richard Eyre was invited by Peter Hall to stage three shows at the National Theatre he still had to battle this opposition but successfully - and rightfully - argued that GUYS AND DOLLS was as much a classic of American Theatre as anything by O'Neill, Williams or Miller. He had the perfect team with David Toguri as choreographer, set designer John Gunter and lighting designer David Hersey's eye-popping sets featuring Times Square neon signs hanging over the stage and Sue Blaine's vivid costumes.
Before 1982 I went to the theatre to look at stars; Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Bell, Cheryl Campbell etc. and that was exactly why I wanted to see GUYS AND DOLLS at the National - Ian Charleson was my new acting hero after CHARIOTS OF FIRE, Julie Covington was a heroine from ROCK FOLLIES and I loved Bob Hoskins from PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY. Of course the show sold out from the off and I was clueless how I would get to see it. The NT then announced they would have a Bargain Night - all seats in it's three theatres at £2 each to personal callers on the day, I was up for the challenge. I arrived at 7am to join one of the longest queues I had ever seen and when they opened, I slowly shuffled to the door, sure it would be sold out - I walked away with two front-row seats! And so it came to pass that at 7:15pm on August 6th 1982, my life changed. I suddenly experienced the alchemy that can happen between an audience and a cast of extraordinary performers, they generated pure stage electricity which we returned with loud excitement. I went back countless times after that performance, even sleeping overnight outside the box office door with other front-row regulars which was a wonderful experience where I made new friends. I went back to relive that magical first time, sometimes it happened, but each experience made me realise that I was now a theatre fan.
'A good cast is worth repeating' was frequently seen at the end of old films so here they are - William Armstrong, Mark Bond, James Carter (equally memorable as Chicago gangster Big Jule and a Havana drag queen!), Ian Charleson (unforgettable as Sky, wry and laid back but singing in a glorious tenor voice), Sally Cooper, Julie Covington (a perfect steely Sgt. Sarah), Irlin Hall, David Healy (winning the SWET Award for Best Musical Supporting Performance as the jovial Nicely-Nicely Johnson), Fiona Hendley, Bob Hoskins (delicious as the exasperated Nathan Detroit), Rachel Izen (giving some serious face as a jaundiced Hot Box Girl), Julia McKenzie (winner of the SWET Award for Best Musical Actress as the definitive Miss Adelaide, hilarious but wistful, a real belter with a bawdy laugh), John Normington (touching as Sarah's protecting grandfather and always able to make me blub singing "More I Cannot Wish You"), Robert Oates, Bill Paterson (a great conniving Harry The Horse), Kevin Quarmby, Robert Ralph, Barrie Rutter (a shuffling Benny Southstreet straight off Runyon's pages), Bernard Sharpe, Belinda Sinclair, Imelda Staunton (a sour-faced Hot Box Girl and a hilariously short Cuban dancer), Harry Towb (a perfect blustering Lt. Brannigan), Larrington Walker, Richard Walsh, Norman Warwick and Kevin Williams (stealing each scene he was in). Stars all, some shining from afar now. This wonderful cast came together one last time in November 1990 to play a matinee and evening performance to honour the memory of both Ian Charleson and Norman Warwick who had both died in the past year: a very special memory.
Needless to say I have yet to see a production to match this although the subsequent revivals of Eyre's prodution gave us a sizzling Sky Masterson from Clarke Peters, Imelda's feisty Adelaide when she took over from Julia, Betsy Brantley's sweet-voiced Sarah and a memorable Nathan Detroit from Bernard Cribbins. The 2005 Donmar production that played at the Piccadilly Theatre couldn't really compete with the show ingrained in my mind but had nice performances from Jane Krakowski as a sexier Miss Adelaide and Jenna Russell as a dry-as-dust Sgt. Sarah. It ran for two years however, The recent 2014 Chichester revival and subsequent West End transfer directed by Gordon Greenberg made me happier though as did the neon-bright performance of Sophie Thompson as Miss Adelaide, Jamie Parker as Sky and David Haig as Nathan Detroit; I remember thinking as my fellow audience members in the Chichester auditorium lapped up Frank Loesser's classic score and Abe Burrows' great gags and sympathetic characters that hopefully there was a young theatregoer who would discover the magic of theatre through this glorious show.
There was only one choice for a video... THE SOUTH BANK SHOW did a profile on Richard Eyre and his company in rehearsal so here is a wonderful chance to savour the pure pleasure they gave me - Ian Charleson singing "Luck Be A Lady", the opening number "Runyonland", Julia McKenzie and the Hot Box Girls singing "Bushel and A Peck", Julie Covington singing "I'll Know" to Ian, Bob Hoskins with James Carter, Bill Paterson and Barrie Rutter in the crap-game scene, Ian singing "I've Never Been In Love Before" to Julie, and finally David Healy stopping the show as he always did with "Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat".
Richard Eyre's 1990 RICHARD III at the National Theatre starring Ian McKellen was set in the 1930s, finding a natural setting against the rise of Fascist dictators and five years later, Richard Loncraine based his screen version on this production using an adaptation by himself and McKellen.
As good as McKellen is, eventually he becomes wearing; being so close to the script-writing means few other characters get a look in.
Loncraine's film however is excellent: the action is wonderfully thought through to fit the 1930s concept and the production design and costumes won BAFTAs and were nominated for Oscars.
As I said, it's a struggle for the cast to get round McKellen but there is fine work from Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth. Maggie Smith as the Duchess of York, Nigel Hawthorne as Clarence, Jim Broadbent as Buckingham, Kristen Scott Thomas as Lady Anne and Adrian Dunbar as Tyrell.
Shelf or charity shop? Alhough McKellen's Richard is ruling from the DVD limbo of a plastic storage box, it is definitely one to keep for it's ingenuity, dazzling cast and the wonderful location use of Battersea Power Station. St Pancras Station, Brighton Pavillion, Senate House and the former Bankside Power Station, now the Tate Modern building.
The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and,
as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast
recording of my life:
First performed: 1728, Lincolns Inn Fields Theatre, London First seen by me: 1982, Cottesloe, National Theatre
Productions seen: two
Score: various Book: John Gay Plot: In the slums of East London, legendary highwayman Macheth's luck finally runs out as he is arrested and taken to Newgate. Facing the prospect of hanging, Macheath must rely on the help of his mistresses - but will they agree to help if they find out about each other?
Five memorable numbers: I LIKE THE FOX SHALL GRIEVE, LET US TAKE THE ROAD, IF THE HEART OF A MAN, I'M BUBBLED I'M TROUBLED, WHY HOW NOW MADAME FLIRT
THE BEGGAR'S OPERA has galloped down 291 years like it's anti-hero Macheath escaping the law. Along the way it has discarded the satirical contemporary references that would have accounted for it's huge success - many saw in the outwardly respectable but secretly double-dealing Peachum a veiled allusion to politician Robert Walpole - as well as referencing 'superstar' villains like Jonathan Wild, Claude Duval and Jack Sheppard but it has retained it's involving plot, larger-than-life characters and it's over-riding message that what is forgiven if you are rich is criminalized if you are poor. John Gay's original intention was to have the many songs and airs sung with no musical accompaniment but that was considered too avant-garde for the 18th Century - I am sure someone will come up with that idea now and be hailed as visionary. THE BEGGAR'S OPERA was such a success that Gay wrote a sequel POLLY featuring Macheath and Polly in the West Indies but the satire was too biting for Walpole and it was banned for fifty years. BEGGAR was of course the inspiration for Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's THE THREEPENNY OPERA which utilized most of the characters and plotline but the original remains the more sprightly. It was thanks to Richard Eyre and his legendary 1982 National Theatre company that I first saw THE BEGGAR'S OPERA when it seemed a natural complement for their more optimistic GUYS AND DOLLS: Eyre gave it more of a Dickensian feel, the pervading gloom of John Gunter's rickety slum set and Peter Radmore's pea-souper lighting made it feel almost immersive. Giving definitive characterizations were Paul Jones as the cocksure Macheath, Belinda Sinclair as Polly, Harry Towb as a Northen Irish Peachum, June Watson as a bustling "Carry On"-style Mrs Peachum ("not wiv an 'ighwayman, you sorry slut"), Kevin Williams' scene-stealing servant Filch and Imelda Staunton's explosive Lucy Lockett.
Annoyingly, although the Richard Eyre production was filmed for Channel 4 in 1983, there isn't any sign of it on YouTube. Most of the videos are of either amateur productions or Peter Brook's lumpy film adaptation so here is a vocal clip of Jenna Russell as Lucy Lockett in the 1992 Royal Shakespeare Company production singing "Lucy's Lament".
When it was announced that US stage and screen actress Laura Linney was to make her UK stage debut directed by Richard Eyre I jumped at the chance to go; since she first came to my attention in the late 1990s, Laura Linney has been an actress that I have admired for her crisp and cool performances in both comedy and drama on both big and small screens. She did not disappoint, she was remarkable on stage... the play however...
It was all the more annoying as Eyre's production is beautifully nuanced and paced throughout it's 90 minute running time, helped by Peter Mumford's subtle lighting and Bob Crowley's elegant set design. Sadly the play - an adaptation by Rona Munro of a novel by Elizabeth Strout - felt too thin for the energy expended on it by the creative team.
Laura Linney played the titular character Lucy Barton, a successful novelist living in her beloved New York with her husband and two children, everything the way it should be. But Lucy is admitted to an up-market hospital with an illness that proves hard to diagnose so her expected short stay drags on for weeks and she feels herself coming adrift from her life despite the trust she puts in her elderly Jewish doctor. Worried how Lucy is alone most of the time, her husband calls Lucy's estranged mother from the Midwest to come and keep her company in the hospital.
This situation is fraught with problems, especially as mother and daughter have had a distant relationship for some years with little points of contact. As her mother bombards her with long-forgotten inhabitants of the same town where Lucy grew up, the daughter muses on their relationship and the more painful memories of living with a father who returned from WWII psychologically damaged.
What her childhood did give Lucy was a yearning to read and write and instilled in her the desire to get away from her limited options for success in her small town and escape to NY to become a writer. A wary relationship develops between mother and daughter again but as soon as Lucy appears to be on the mend, her mother disappears as abruptly as she arrived; it is only later on when Lucy has to re-evaluate her life that she can join the dots between her parents and her own children.
I am sure that people who know the book might get something more out of seeing it dramatized but I found myself enervated by the story which for all it's psychological digging and attempt to write about the current landscape of American lives, I just found to be just a modern take on the big-dreams-in-a-small-city tale which in the past would have served as the engine to many a Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck star vehicle, or a mundane tv-movie of the week.
Added to that, the rather tentative psychological insights of the play - which takes in such touchstones as the Holocaust, the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, and September 11th - reminded me of what Virginia Woolf said of the writing of a contemporary female writer "It aims to soar but agrees to perch". Although to be honest, it was in this last part of the play, when Lucy tells us of all that happened after leaving the hospital, that Laura Linney really came into her own and held us all in the palm of her hand.
Her cool, reserved quality was a good way in to the play and Crowley's spare set of a hospital bed, a night-stand and a chair, meant that all attention was focused on her exquisite performance which included a subtle shift in accent when playing the mother which gave that character a distinctive personality. Linney's humane Lucy Barton held the audience rapt until the final well-deserved ovation.
I am so pleased to have seen this remarkable actress finally on stage in such a nicely calibrated production... it's just a shame I found the play to not be worthy of their talents. I have now been to The Bridge three times and each time have left vaguely unsatisfied. Maybe it's the space itself?
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.
Constant Reader, as you know last year was my year of doing New Cultural Things - e.g. we went to the opera and ballet! The outright winner was the ballet productions but we decided before we put the chill on opera for good, maybe we should see one of the classics at Covent Garden so last week found us there again, clutching tickets to see Verdi's LA TRAVIATA.
One of the reasons I chose this opera was that Covent Garden were reviving Richard Eyre's production from 1994 and if there was a director I would trust with guiding me through the operatic terrain it was him.
Again I am surprised at how productions can be kept for years in a classical company's repertoire - in the 22 years since this production debuted, there have only been 7 years when it did not appear in a season. Two years after he directed this, Richard Eyre directed a magnificent production of Ibsen's JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN with Paul Schofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins. But this production has not been revived year after year, it lives only in memory. Strange... So, apart from that Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?
I must admit I was slightly worried that after a stressful day at work I might just go zonk in the dark but - stop the press - I stayed awake! Not only awake but I enjoyed it too. Yes I still have difficulty with the old problem of two people singing their love for each other endlessly while staring out into the auditorium - but I guess countless musicals are guilty of that too.
In 1847, Marie Duplessis, a courtesan who numbered Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas fils among her lovers, died aged only 23 from TB.Within a year, Dumas had published the roman a clef LE DAME AUX CAMELIAS and, as if to atone for the misogyny of that novel, he adapted it for the stage four years later. Giuseppe Verdi saw the play and was immediately taken with it's tale of the tart with the heart and the dashing but dull hero whose love is ruined by his father and her dodgy lungs. A year later Verdi's LA TRAVIATA premiered - they didn't waste time back then - and despite a disastrous premiere the opera has become one of the greats of the classical stage while the play has inspired countless versions, the most famous being George Cukor's 1936 film CAMILLE with the luminous Greta Garbo as Marguerite.
Told in only four scenes, the opera's libretto alternates between large ensemble set-pieces to more intimate confrontations between the characters and is, of course, borne along on Verdi's sweeping and romantic score. Eyre's production moves between these scenes with ease and in the two intimate ones - Violetta being forced to give up her lover by his disapproving father and the final scene as she struggles for one minute more - they were played with intense directness with no scenic distractions. This revival has been re-directed by Rodula Gaitanou.
Bob Crowley's design ranges from the opulent to the more intimate and in the final scene - in a nod to his design for the original LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES - Violetta's shadowy and stripped-down bedroom is surrounded by slatted windows which also showcases Jean Kalman's exquisite lighting.
Violetta was played by Italian soprano Maria Agresta and she certainly gave a fine performance, the last scene was heart-rending as she briefly rallied at the sight of her estranged lover and the tragic final flutter of life before dying. As I said, she was very good but sadly we were a few rows in front of a mega-fan who bellowed "B R A V A" repeatedly at her every curtain call. I suspect even she would have told him to pipe the fuck down.
I must admit to a couple of surprises: I didn't know that you actually clapped the arias as I thought you sat in dutiful silence till the curtain and - who knew they still did this - Agresta took a bow at the first interval! It threw me completely - it's like if Imelda Staunton took a bow after singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" before the interval of GYPSY. Suffice to say, method acting has not arrived at the opera yet.
Piero Pretti was an equally impassioned Alfredo but the character is such a twit that it is hard to sympathise with him - Robert Taylor was exactly the same in CAMILLE. However I did enjoy some of the supporting performances: Quinn Kelsey's stern father M. Germont who realises too late the depth of Violetta's love for his son, Gaynor Keeble's devoted maid Annina and James Platt's sympathetic Doctor Grenvil.
So there we go.. the first opera I think I have really enjoyed since the mid-80s double whammy of English National Opera productions CARMEN and AKHNATEN - both of which were free as Andrew was working there at the time!
Could this finally be me getting into opera? Watch this space... I am seeing AKHNATEN again at English National Opera this Saturday.
A wonderful collection of Alan Bennett's BBC television work including A DAY OUT, SUNSET ACROSS THE BAY, A VISIT FROM MISS
PROTHERO, OUR WINNIE, A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD,
THE INSURANCE MAN, DINNER AT NOON, 102 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN, A QUESTION OF ATTRIBUTION and PORTRAIT OR BUST.
A 1911 bicycle club's Sunday jaunt; an old couple finding unhappiness in retirement; a retired office worker visited by a boorish ex-colleague; a retarded woman visiting a cemetery with her mother and aunt; an office busybody chattering to the grave; actress Coral Browne meeting spy Guy Burgess in 1958 Moscow; stories from the lives of Kafka and Proust; Sir Anthony Blunt is revealed as a spy, these stories are accompanied by two documentaries of Bennett reflecting on hotels and art galleries.
Among a wide array of acting excellence Patricia Routledge, Coral Browne, Alan Bates, James Fox and Prunella Scales shine.
After delivering a sensitive, subtle performance earlier this year in the Donmar's TEMPLE, Beale is now firing on all cylinders and giving a larger-than-life performance at the Hampstead Theatre in actor/playwright Ian Kelly's MR. FOOTE'S OTHER LEG, based on his biography of the Georgian actor and comedian Samuel Foote.
Ian Kelly has resurrected Samuel Foote from the historical shadows and what a dazzling personality he was. As David Garrick was re-inventing the dramatic theatre to a more naturalistic style of performance and production, Samuel Foote was establishing himself as a gifted comedic actor who subversively flouted the censorship laws by staging his productions in the early evening and calling them "tea parties". His productions were filled with sly satires on public figures and in what must have been a glorious moment in theatre, he appeared as Othello in a production that played as a comedy - now THAT I would liked to have seen!
For such a savage satiric player as Foote, it was remarkable that he became a friend of both the future George III when he was Prince of Wales and his younger brother the Duke of York. Indeed it was the Duke of York who was instrumental in the first major crisis in Foote's life. Attending a royal house party, Foote accepted a wager to race the Duke's horse which ended in disaster when he was thrown from the horse resulting in his left leg being crushed and an immediate amputation.
Astonishingly Samuel Foote was back on stage within months of the accident and retained his popularity in roles which were written to feature his disability. However, what was undiagnosed at his accident was a head trauma which led to spells of troubling personality disorders. He parlayed the Royals' guilt in his accident by getting them to grant a Royal charter for his theatre, the Theatre Royal Haymarket. One wonders whether his brain injury may have led him to his second disaster? He wrote a play satirising the Duchess of Kingston who had been involved in a salacious divorce case and she retaliated by seeking out reports from former-employees of his that he had made homosexual advances to them.
The following year the Duchess was tried for bigamy and Foote could not resist staging his play again just as the press reported another allegation of sodomy against him. Foot's luck ran out and he was sent to trial, although he was released on a technicality, with the King's veiled assistance in asking Foote to stage a Command Performance. It says a lot for Foote's bravery that he still faced an audience at the Haymarket even while he was being traduced in the papers. The trial robbed him of his career and his health and he died the following year in Dover, waiting for a boat to take him to exile in France. He was 57 and had lived life to the brim.
Kelly's play could be accused of trying to cram too much in and the play sometimes wanders off to show Foote's connections with the electrical experiments of Benjamin Franklin who was a keen London theatregoer and his friend surgeon John Hunter who explored the subject of neuro-science. Where Kelly excels is in the backstage world of the 18th Century West End with actors bitching about each other, the helter-skelter staging of productions and the glowering indifference of the grumpy stage manager.
Ian Kelly has also written himself a tasty supporting part of the Prince of Wales and very funny he is too as the foppish twit destined to become George III who of course had his own flirtations with mental instability. There are also excellent supporting performances from the always-dependable Jenny Galloway as the dyspeptic stage manager, Micah Balfour as Foote's black servant Frank and Joseph Millson is very effective as David Garrick, changing from a thick-tongued northern theatrical newcomer to a pompous Shakespearean star actor who nevertheless can forgive Foote his excesses.
First seen as a heavily-brogued Irish ingenue, Dervla Kerwin gives a delightful performance as the 18th Century actress Peg Woffington, who worked often with both Foote and Garrick and was the latter's mistress for a while. She suggests the star quality that Woffington must have had which made her adept at both comedy and drama, and equally switches from being a brassy and hard-living actress to the reflective woman who learns she has cancer. It's the best performance I have seen Kerwin give.
Richard Eyre's direction elicits these fine performance and his delight in the theatrical material is palpable. He has found his perfect leading man in Simon Russell Beale who brings Samuel Foote to such vivid life. It's remarkable how each new portrayal one sees of his show an even deeper versatility from this actor who should be even more feted than he is. He truly is the successor to Ralph Richardson, an actor who can play a wide-ranging array of characters - both dramatic, tragic or comical - but always retain a real humanity.
He is given ample opportunity to show all these sides as Samuel Foote and creates such a warm, likable, 'human' personality that it is a relief that Kelly ends the play with Foote down - threatened with public humiliation - but not out - his bravery in going out onstage before his audience. Whether as the eager new actor, the bitchy star of his own comedies, writhing in agony as he is operated on, flying into frightening rages or begging for affection, Beale is never less than stunning.
Eyre has reunited his design team from GHOSTS and again they deliver: Peter Mumford's lighting is fluid and evocative while Tim Hatley's set and costumes are a constant delight. The Hampstead Theatre run sold out very quickly and the very exciting news is that MR FOOTE'S OTHER LEG will transfer to the Theatre Royal Haymarket from 28th October to 23rd January. Somewhere there will be a one-legged ghost very happy although the current Haymarket theatre building is to the right of where Foote's Haymarket stood. Either way, run - or hop - to see it!
