Month: December 2015

wonder.land (NT)

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Damon Albarn’s musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland seems to have been hovering on my radar for a long time. Unfortunately, it has the flavour of a production put together by committee. It is the story of Aly (Lois Chimimba), a contemporary London teenage girl. Her parents Bianca (Golda Rosheuvel) and Matt (Paul Hilton) have recently split up due to her father’s online gambling, which Aly discovered and about which she blames herself for telling her mother. Due to the split, she, her mother and her baby brother Charlie have had to move to a different part of London and she has had to start at a new school.

She attempts to make friends at school using a social network (carefully engineered to offend no one’s intellectual property rights), but her supposed friends bully her. Only Luke (Enyi Okoronkwo), who she rescues from another bully, is sympathetic. The head teacher, Ms A. Mixsome (a divine Anna Francolini) is unsympathetic and orders her to detention yet again. So she enters an online game called wonder.land, which is exciting and allows her to choose an avatar. A very slightly plump mixed-race girl, she chooses the whitest and most princessy avatar imaginable (Carly Bawden), who she calls “allypally32.” She must acquiesce to the game’s one and only “term and condition,” which is that there must be no extreme malice (in the word of Private Eye, geddit?). In the game, Aly must fight her demons and battle for her friends, and even her very identity (there are not one, but three different Alices in this production). The callbacks to Alice in Wonderland were somewhat interestingly done, but seemed unnecessary – why not simply tell a new story?

As a person who moved around a lot as a child and who was always facing a new school. I was sympathetic to Aly’s plight. Teenagers are particularly vicious and they will seize on any perceived weakness. Aly’s desire to escape in an online fantasy world seemed perfectly logical to me. The social network and game in the production, however, seemed very much to be an adult’s view of what life online as a teenager must be like. I did not get the impression that anyone involved with the production had ever spoken to a teenager. Aly’s online world was very much Facebook and World of Warcraft, when from what I understand, it’s all about Instagram, Snapchat, ask.fm and Tumblr for teenagers nowadays.

Some of the songs are fairly good – Aly’s first foray into wonder.land is well done, with the projections, Bawden’s beautiful movement and the music combining to produce something rather lovely. Unfortunately, most of them are more pedestrian, with “Everyone Loves Charlie” an example of a ballad that stops the action stone cold. There are far too many such ballads. (Speaking of Charlie, the baby is portrayed by positively the creepiest doll that I have ever seen. There is rather a funny – and gross – running joke associated with him, but I cannot think why the character was necessary).

Chimimba is effective at portraying a stroppy teenager. However, her singing voice is slight, and she is overshadowed by the stronger performances of Rosheuvel, Bawden and Francolini. One of the most underdeveloped aspects of the production is the relationship between Bianca and Matt (Mum and Dad). One can absolutely see why they fell out, but we weren’t given enough evidence to see why they fell in love in the first place. Perhaps Charlie was there to show that, but I’m afraid he wasn’t quite enough.

I did enjoy some aspects of it, especially Francolini’s performance. She had some very funny and un-PC lines about dyslexia that had me, as an educator, cackling with glee. Her singing was gorgeous and her physical comedy excellent. Perhaps that is the problem: now, I am firmly on the side of the adults. An interesting experiment, but ultimately unsuccessful. I will be very surprised if it gets a West End transfer.

Little Eyolf (Almeida)

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The Almeida has had a good track record lately when it comes to Ibsen. Ghosts was wonderful, with the uber-talented Lesley Manville. I was not previously familiar with Little Eyolf, but am always interested in a new production of the classics. Little Eyolf is about a rural family: father Alfred (Jolyon Coy), mother Rita (Lydia Leonard), and their disabled son Eyolf (Adam Greaves-Neal, at the performance I saw). Alfred’s sister Asta (Eve Ponsonby) lives nearby and often visits, and sympathetic, dynamic Borghejm (Sam Hazeldine), who is romantically interested in Asta, also comes to call.

Alfred has just returned from a hiking trip in the mountains, and has resolved to spend more time with little Eyolf and to make him his life’s work, abandoning the book on which he had been spending the bulk of his time. Rita resents this, and would like for Alfred to devote himself to her, as he had earlier in their marriage (before Eyolf’s birth). There is a great deal of affection between Alfred and Asta, and Rita resents this too. Alfred feels a great dealt of guilt, as Eyolf’s disability is the result of an injury which was suffered when he fell off a table as an infant, neglected as Alfred and Rita were making love.

Following a visit from the Rat-Woman (Eileen Walsh), where her rat-banishing services are declined and an uneasy feeling left in her wake, a tragedy ensues. The main protagonists are devastated, and the tensions that had been simmering below the surface come to the fore. Alfred and Asta’s relationship is explored, and Alfred and Rita’s relationship will never be the same. The acting was very good generally, but I must admit to thinking that Coy’s Alfred was nowhere near charismatic enough to warrant such excesses of devotion.

The highlight for me was Eve Ponsonby’s Asta, who played the part beautifully and whose highly strung tension was palpable. Her love for her brother shone through, and her nervousness about the situation was illuminated throughout. Lydia Leonard (most recently seen by me in the BBC’s Wolf Hall) was also very good in the fairly thankless role of Rita. It was an interesting role in the sense that it could easily have been a modern woman. There are plenty of women who do not particularly enjoy being mothers, and who resent that their children take some of their husbands’ affection away from them. It is simply not acceptable, in our modern cult of parenthood, to admit it. It does not necessarily take away from one’s love of one’s children to admit that one is not particularly good at raising them, and yet no one would ever dare say such a thing.

It was an interesting play, well staged and well acted. But I was glad it was only 80 minutes long. The emotions were too intense and the play too claustrophobic to warrant more. I enjoyed it, and I’m glad I saw it. But it was not on the same level as Ghosts. That, however, is Ibsen’s fault, rather than that of the production or the actors.

Guys and Dolls (WE from Chichester)

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Does the world really need another production of Guys and Dolls? This Chichester transfer garnered rave reviews in its original incarnation. For my part, I still recall fondly the recent production with Douglas Hodge. It is, of course, a cracking musical with great songs and a superior book and it’s always a pleasure to see it. This production was very enjoyable, but there wasn’t much novelty to it.

The cast was delightful. It was great fun to see Sophie Thompson as Adelaide and David Haig as Nathan Detroit, the first time they have acted together as a couple since their immortal Lydia and Bernard in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Siubhan Harrison was a charming Sarah Brown and Jamie Parker a really excellent Sky Masterson. The supporting cast were also very good.

Guys and Dolls is about a somewhat anarchic prewar New York, where the archetypal guys and dolls drink, gamble and generally enjoy themselves, and Sarah Brown’s mission (clearly modelled on the Salvation Army) attempts to save their souls. Masterson takes a bet from Detroit that he can’t get Sarah to accompany him to Havana. They go, of course, have a lovely evening and discover that they are very much attracted to each other. Their respective lifestyles seem destined to tear them apart, until Masterson makes one last gamble on love. The songs are the heart of this musical, with “A Bushel and a Peck,” “Adelaide’s Lament,” “Luck be a Lady,” and “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” hands down classics.

Sophie Thompson is an excellent comic actress, and she didn’t disappoint here. She was, perhaps, a little more subdued than I would have liked to have seen. Her singing was secondary to the comedy, and so I would have liked a little more breadth. But her wistfulness added an interesting tone to Adelaide that I hadn’t seen before, and it was overall a very good performance. David Haig was also very good, although I would have liked to see a little more chemistry between the two. I enjoyed Haig’s performance as the craps game facilitator rather more than his interactions with Thompson. I believed that Thompson loved him, but not necessarily the reverse.

Siubhan Harrison was a lovely and charming Sarah Brown with a beautiful voice. She acted well, as you could just see how she was falling for Sky and the subtle turn of her lips as she found it hard to keep from laughing at his ploys. Jamie Parker was similarly restrained in his attraction, but it was clear. He is an excellent actor, and we are lucky to have him on the London stage. The two had superlative chemistry, and that is what really makes or breaks a production of Guys and Dolls. Parker is more an actor than a singer, but I was generally impressed with his singing when it was in the tenor range. He had lovely, dare I say Sinatra-esque phrasing and a beautiful tone. He is not, however, a baritone, and when the songs dipped into a lower register his projection suffered.

The ensemble was also very good, with lovely singing and dancing throughout. The sets were a little basic for the West End but generally good. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and am perhaps a little churlish in looking for novelty. When a production is as charming and well put together as this one, why quibble?

Henry V (RSC Barbican)

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I think I could watch Henry V every month and not tire of it. I know that it is bombastic, warlike, simplistic. And yet it has some of Shakespeare’s most stirring speeches and his most beautiful poetry. It is remarkably funny. It is one of his best plays, and I would like to have a 12 or 13 year old to take to it, as it can be a wonderful introduction to Shakespeare (as an entire play, rather than the abridged versions that can be fabulous for children).

Unfortunately, I would not particularly recommend this production. Perhaps it is unfair of me, as the last play I saw at the Barbican was Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, with Es Devlin’s stunning set. But this stripped down, bare bones production felt lost on the Barbican’s huge stage. The cast were professional and excellent actors to a man (and woman), but some of the interpretive choices did not work for me. It was staged as a stage production, with Oliver Ford Davies’ Chorus making knowing winks to the audience about the staging. But I’m afraid it just looked like they were cutting costs.

I saw Alex Hassell’s Henry IV Part I and II and enjoyed his performances as Prince Hal very much. (It is for that reason that I suspect I may be being unfair to the production, as the stripped down sets for those did not bother me. Devlin’s exquisite – and no doubt expensive – set has spoiled me). However, what worked for me in his performances as Prince Hal, that lordling air of ennui, meant that I did not enjoy his Henry V nearly as much. I think I understand what he was going for – he was trying to illustrate the difficulties inherent in the transformation of a callow pleasure-seeker to a warrior King. Unfortunately, it ultimately came across as simple weakness. And the famous speech on the eve of Agincourt sounded merely desperate, rather than stirring in a Churchillian sense.

The supporting cast were very good, of course. The RSC does not admit mediocre actors. Daniel Abbott (Gloucester) Martin Bassindale (Boy), Antony Byrne (Pistol), Sean Chapman (Exeter), Oliver Ford Davies (Chorus), Nicholas Gerard-Martin (Orleans/Ely), Robert Gilbert (Dauphin), Jim Hooper (Canterbury), Jane Lapotaire (Queen Isobel), Sam Marks (Constable of France), Dale Mathurin (Bates/Bedford), Chris Middleton (Nym/Warwick/Governor of Harfleur), Evelyn Miller (Rambures/Lady-in-Waiting), Keith Osborn (Montjoy/Scroop), Sarah Parks (Mistress Quickly), Leigh Quinn (Alice), Joshua Richards (Bardolph/Fluellen), Simon Thorp (King of France), Obioma Ugoala (Grey/Gower), Andrew Westfield (Westmoreland/MacMorris) and Simon Yadoo (Cambridge/Williams/Jamy), were all very good.

I must particularly praise Jennifer Kirby as Katherine. She was delightful  in all of her scenes, an excellent physical comedienne. And her scene with Henry at the end was the first time I truly believed in him as a King. They had delightful chemistry and he was playful, authoritative and affectionate with her. I enjoyed that scene more than any other in the play.

So a serviceable interpretation. Not bad of course, but it did not attain the brilliant heights that this play can so easily access. I hope not too many adolescent school groups see it, as they will not see Shakespeare’s magic here.