Cuckoo by Michael Wynne, Royal Court Theatre,8 July 2023

Artwork grabbed for identification & to assist The Royal Court with this link

Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production, which we saw in preview. The acting was superb. The direction and design very high quality, as we have come to expect at The Royal Court over the decades.

This play was seemingly superficial, yet beneath its slight surface are some fascinating issues of our times. The “joke” that this family is spending its together time with each individual surfing their own virtual world quickly became tiresome – especially as some of audience members nearby were finding it hilarious. But that humorous conceit was soon revealed as a foreshadowing of some darker elements of the characters’ inner/virtual worlds.

Yes, as some of the critics have said, not a lot happens, but this particular “not a lot” is both amusing and highly thought-provoking.

OK, I have a confession to make.

When I booked this, my main criterion for booking it was a recollection that one of Michael Wynne’s previous plays, The People Are Friendly, had pleased us both a lot.

2002, we saw this at The Royal Court (not yet Ogblogged)

Soon after the start of Cuckoo, which shares a couple of the lead actresses and Royal Court production aspects with The People Are Friendly, I realised that we had not liked The People Are Friendly; we found it soap-opera-ish and not to our taste. I was confusing The People Are Friendly with Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice:

I shall revisit the play text of The People Are Friendly before writing up our 2002 experience, as it is possible that I will read more into that play now than we did 20 years ago.

Anyway, apologies to Messrs Wynne and Bean for the confusion. The word “People” in the title shouldn’t be enough for such a muddle really. I just jumped to a conclusion…

…and talking of conclusions, Janie and I both thought the ending of Cuckoo was really rather wonderful, both as a coup de theatre and also as a piece of stage design.

Here again is a link to The Royal Court resources on Cuckoo, which is running until mid August.

While this link should find most/all the formal reviews for you, if you like those and/or don’t trust our judgment.

Not One Of These People by Martin Crimp, Royal Court Theatre, 5 November 2022

“Don’t be alarmed, dear”

Janie and I have seen rather a lot of Martin Crimp’s work over the years. This opportunity, to see Martin Crimp’s latest thing performed by the man himself, seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

Which indeed it was.

Crimp can range from “weird but utterly gripping” to “so weird it is utterly impenetrable”. This piece was somewhere in the middle of that range.

The Royal Court Theatre describes the piece (and has some useful review clips and information about the play/production) here. If by any chance that link doesn’t work, you can read the essence from this scrape.

We found the piece fascinating, we enjoyed many of the vignettes and it got us talking about the piece and the issues raised by the 299 characters afterwards, all of which is a good thing. But within that whirlpool of ideas, while it was interesting theatre, there wasn’t any gripping drama.

Arifa Akbar’s review in The Guardian pretty much sums it up for us.

Chris Lilly also reviewed it on The Reviews Hub.

As always with Crimp, there is some superb writing in there. Janie and I will carry some of the one-liners with us for a long time…

…although the one along the lines of, “a man over the age of 40 wearing a leather jacket – alarm bells start ringing” was a bit near the mark, don’t you think?

The Glow by Alistair McDowall, Royal Court Theatre, 5 February 2022

Our first visit to the theatre for quite a while. The Covid pandemic stopped us in our theatre-going tracks back in March 2020.

Indeed we nearly missed out on this one. I had booked for us to see a preview on 22 January, but the week before the Royal Court wrote to me saying they had to cancel the first few previews due to…you guessed it…Covid.

I called to see if we could get decent seats to see the play relatively early in the run. I spoke with a helpful-sounding Royal Courtier on the phone.

Now let’s see. You were booked in seats E9 & E10 for the preview…

…I can offer you E8 and E9 exactly two weeks later, the evening of 5 February.

Problem solved, I thought. But mischievously instead I said:

…but E8 & E9 is not the same thing as E9 & E10.

I heard a gulp at the other end of the phone, so I thought best to put the poor fellow out of his misery quickly.

…joking! Problem solved.

Ironically, as it turned out, no-one sat in E10 on the evening itself and someone rather tall was sitting in front of E8, so we did, in the end, occupy E9 & E10.

But that’s not so weird a story, whereas the play is a seriously weird story. Here’s the teaser:

Here’s a link to all of the on-line resources at The Royal Court website.

I thought the play was wonderful and awe-inspiring. A sort-of pastiche of scary folk tales and fables, a sort of exploration into perennial abuse of women through the ages and the meaning of autonomy.

Alistair McDowall’s plays are a bit like that. Janie and I both absolutely loved Pomona

…whereas The Glow split our jury, as had X – the other McDowall we had seen at the Royal Court some five years ago. Janie found elements of The Glow disturbing and was disconcerted by the extreme time-hopping involved.

Janie was not quite as disconcerted as the young woman who was sitting in front of us, who nearly jumped out of her skin at the coup de theatre that signalled the end of the first half of the play. The young lady told us after the play that she had recovered herself and enjoyed the play as a whole.

Kate Wyver in the Guardian gave the play/production a rave review.

As did Sam Marlowe in The i...

…and Sarah Crompton in WhatsOnStage.com

Whereas Nick Curtis in the Standard is less sure about it…

…and Lloyd Evans in The Spectator votes it “the worst production of all time”, which only supports my general view that the very best6 plays/productions to some extent at least divide the critics.

This search term – click here – will find you plenty more reviews, including those above.

My own praise for the fascinating play also extends to the superb cast. Ria Zmitrowicz was truly excellent in the lead, ably supported by Rakie Ayola, Fisayo Akinade and Tadhg Murphy. Vicky Featherstone sure knows how to direct and produce this sort of play – who knew?

Not the easiest watch for those easing their way out of the pandemic, but if you want to see a full tilt piece of spellbinding theatre, The Glow might well do the job for you. It certainly did so for me.

I

Four Courts In 25 Hours; Boston Manor Centre Court, Lord’s Real Tennis Court, Royal Court Theatre & Boston Manor Court One, 8 & 9 February 2020

Saturday 8 Feburary, Janie and I went to Boston Manor for an early game of lawn tennis. It was a bit chilly but the sun was shining and the weather was set dreadful for the next couple of days.

So although I was due on court for a real tennis match that afternoon, we both needed some exercise and both fancied some of the outdoor variety.

We had a good game. I thought I played well and hoped my timing would be as good that afternoon as it had been that morning. In the end I think it was.

A quick scrub up and then off to Lord’s in Dumbo for the MCC v Dedanists match.

Parking Up Dumbo…Outside Moreton Morrell in this photo as it happens

The MCC v Dedanists match has been reported extensively on the Dedanists Society and MCC websites. Your truly has written the report. Here is a link to the Dedanists’ Society site.

Here is a link to a scrape of the report on The Dedanists’ site, which might be easier for you once my report is no longer headline news.

Here are some pictures. First up, the Captains:

Carl Snitcher in “thinker” pose
Sam Leigh keeping an eye on the guests, no doubt

Below are some of the spectators, rapt with attention, hanging on every shot:

Here’s me, John Thirlwell and my partner Martin Village (grabbing a coffee) as we came off court.

Here’s a link to all the stills that Janie took that day:

Janie took a few video clips, the first of which illustrates the famous Harris serve followed by the infamous Harris grunt…

…this next one shows some relatively classy play by our standards…

…and this next one includes my incisive calling, an all-time favourite string, “switch…up yours…well played”:

For the uninitiated, the phrase “up yours” is not a petulant expletive in the direction of one’s partner. Heaven forbid. “Up” indicates that the ball will land on the penthouse above the dedans gallery, thus telling one’s partner that there is no need to volley. “Yours” means that the ball, once it descends, is for one’s partner to play.

Considering that Martin and I had never even seen each other play before, let alone played together, I thought we got a lot more of that sort of stuff right than might have been expected.

I have scraped CCTV video evidence of the match highlights from all five of the rubbers, which can be seen in silence but glorious colour, through the following embedded links. We join Tony Friend & Paul Cattermull v Yuri Kugler & Julian Sheraton Davis in the second set with the score at 4-4:

We join Sam Leigh & Simon Martin v Simon Webster & Rodger Davis in the second set with the score at 3-3.

We join Giles Stogdon & Carl Snitcher v James McDermott & David Enticknap in the second set with the score at 2-3.

We join Peter Dean & Giles Pemberton v Johnny Saunders & Linda Sheraton Davis towards the end of the first set with the score at 4-4.

If you are a truly in search of passing some time (nearly an hour), you can watch both sets of the Sebastian Wood & John Thirlwell v Ian Harris & Martin Village match below.

As if that wasn’t enough drama for one day, Janie and I went on to the Royal Court to see All Of It after Lord’s. It was a wonderful 45 minutes of theatre, reported on here and below:

On Sunday morning the wind was howling at 40 mph plus and the weather forecast looked increasingly terrible. But the rain didn’t start first thing and Accuweather suggested that it wouldn’t rain until 11:00, so we decided to brave our regular 10:00 slot.

Just a little bit crazy – picture from some daftness a few years ago

Strangely, there was no-one else around in the park, apart from Linda Massey who was battening down the hatches of the pavilion.

Linda briefly came across to the tennis courts to tell us:

Ok, I am now officially declaring that you two are mad.

Strangely, once we got used to the wind, we had an exhilarating, fun although not exactly classic, game of lawners.

We played on Court One on Sunday, whereas we had played on Court Two (Centre Court) on Saturday. So those two, plus the Lord’s real tennis court and the Royal Court theatre add up to four courts in 25 hours.

Don’t tell Linda Massey, but we went back to Boston Manor Park again on Monday morning in similar weather – again no-one else around – and had another game of lawners. We’re not mad…we’re just a bit mad on tennis.

Tennis

All Of It by Alistair McDowall, Royal Court Theatre, 8 February 2020

Oh gosh yes we loved this short play.

On the back of a busy but fun day…

…we wondered whether we’d done the right thing booking this – especially as the Royal Court rubric on the piece was vague, even by Royal Court vague rubric standards. Click here for a link to the unhelpful material.

The little videos in the Royal Court information resource on this production really do not do justice to the piece or to the production’s creators.

I had booked this production because we had been so impressed by Alistair McDowall’s writing, especially Pomona at the Orange Tree a few years ago:

We’d also been impressed by Kate O’Flynn when we’d seen her perform.

This production of All Of It is only running for eight performances over the next few days, so change your plans, beg the Royal Court to find you a ticket, do anything to get to see it. It is 45 minutes of theatrical delight.

Actually, it is 42-43 minutes of theatrical delight. For the first two or three minutes we were both thinking, “oh-oh”, until we realised what was going on and how the piece was going to unfold.

Then we could relax and enjoy a virtuoso performance of a rather brilliant piece of writing.

The piece is basically a short, lyrical monologue about an ordinary woman’s life. All of it.

Just take our advice and get to see it, but you’ll have to be quick. If you miss the next few days, start nagging the Royal Court to transfer it or put it on again because this production really deserves to be seen by lots of people and should give pleasure to far more people than eight-Royal-Court-houses.

Me, just before I’d seen All Of It

Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. by Caryl Churchill, Royal Court Theatre, 5 October 2019

We have a split jury on this one. I found the production interesting and entertaining in equal measure. Janie didn’t much like it.

You can read the reviews for yourself – click here and then beyond.

Many of the reviews agree with me. Some of them agree with Janie. It was that sort of production.

Sort of four short plays – the longest, Imp, being an hour or so long and comprising the whole second half. I liked that play the best.

The other three were very short and took up the first half, interspersed with a juggler and an acrobat during the set changes between the three.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resources on this production/collection of plays.

Caryl Churchill stuff is always challenging and a bit different…this production was no different…if you see what I mean.

As a collection of plays, the production touches on themes such as violence in our society, myths and the relentless desire to turn just about anything into a marketing opportunity. The final play, Imp, brings several of those themes together, subtly, in an understated, domestic chamber play.

Excellent cast, direction and design throughout. But the standout performances, for me, were the quartet in Imp: Deborah Findlay, Louisa Harland, Toby Jones and Tom Mothersdale.

Bus outside The Royal Court, Sloane Square - geograph.org.uk - 1089253
Don’t think we’d have made it if we’d bussed it

We had terrible trouble getting to the Royal Court on time on this occasion – we really must allow more time in future. The journey seems to be taking longer by car now on a Saturday evening and we keep allowing less rather than more time. We arrived in the nick of time. Others didn’t. Our marriage has just about survived the hair-raising journey and the difference of opinion about the production. Just about.

My Name Is Why, A Memoir, In Conversation With Lemn Sissay, Royal Court Theatre, 3 September 2019

Lemn Sissay hopemas xmas partyeventful-org-uk low 18 (5273390039)
Lemn Sissay – from Wikipedia Commons – click pic for attribution

This sounded like a fascinating true story – which it is. Celebrated poet and dramatist, Lemn Sissay, spent his formative years as a foster child and in care where he experienced almost-unimaginable emotional cruelty and neglect.

He has spent much of his adult life working to uncover his true identity (he is of Ethiopian descent), together with a quest to understand his origins and unusually bleak early life.

The problem Janie and I had with this event – a cross between a book launch and a rehearsed reading and an interview – here is a link to the Royal Court blurb – was the sycophantic nature of the audience. The audience/atmosphere encouraged Sissay to freewheel and jump around through his material so much that it was difficult to get to the nub of many of the excellent points he was trying to make.

It didn’t help when his lectern collapsed right at the start. Miranda Sawyer as Chair didn’t really help either as she, bless her, was almost as “all over the place” with the buzz of the fans as was Lemn Sissay.

The nadir came during the limited time for questions at the end, when a friend of Lemn Sissay’s took up a question slot in order to blurt out that she loved him. Even Lemn responded to that one by saying to her, “why don’t you just give me a call to tell me that” and Miranda said, “that’s a comment, can someone else please ask a question?”

Actually the questions were quite good and did help to cover many of the gaps from the preceding hour.

If you want to learn as much about this fascinating book/story in 10 minutes as we learnt in the 90 minute sycophant-fest event, then I highly commend this Guardian article/book review published a few days earlier – click here.

Are we glad we went? On balance, yes. Lemn Sissay is an engaging personality and he has such a troubling-but-interesting story to tell. I’d really like to have a quiet chat with him one day; I suspect he comes across better when he doesn’t have a mob of fans to please.

The End Of History… by Jack Thorne, Royal Court Theatre, 29 June 2019

The play takes place over two decades, starting in 1997 soon after the Blair government took power. It is a chamber play about a nuclear family, the parents being firmly of the left.

The Royal Court resource for this play/production can be found here.

We saw a preview of this play/production and were both really taken with it.

It is hard to explain why this play is so good. It’s just beautifully well written. All of the characters are flawed and yet likeable. We wanted to know what was going to happen to all of them.

The acting is top notch. Lesley Sharp has been a favourite of mine for several decades. David Morrisey is also always good value. Indeed all of the cast were fine actors and well suited to their roles.

No gimmicks – it’s simply a super production of a very interesting new play.

Formal reviews, once they come out, will be available through this link.

If you get the chance to go see it…go see it.

Meanwhile, the drama of our evening was only just beginning when the curtain call was taken. We’d agreed to go on to Jo and Sheyda’s cyber party in Tottenham – another story for another blog piece – except that we decided to change into our gear at the Royal Court.

Having checked with the staff, we ascertained that none of the loos are designated by gender any more; they are designated as “urinals and cubicals” or “cubicals only”, so we would be welcome to change in the outer area of the cubicles one.

But when Janie and I went through the “cubicals only” door together, several women in that area started hissy-fitting. How very unwoke and cis-gendered that incident was.

Still, we retired to the relatively pokey but safer space of the disabled toilet to transform ourselves into cyber-folk:

The End Of History…Hertory…Theytory?

The Cane by Mark Ravenhill, Royal Court Theatre, 8 December 2018

We have a split jury on this one. Janie really didn’t get on with it at all, whereas I found it an interesting, albeit flawed piece.

Janie and I saw the third preview, so it is possible the production will change a little before press night…but  I doubt if it will change much.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this play/production.

Cast Picture From The Royal Court Press Release

The Alun Armstrong character is a deputy headmaster, a teacher of 45 years standing, who is due to retire. Maggie Steed is his wife and Nicola Walker is their estranged daughter.

I don’t think it is a spoiler to explain that the central aspect of the controversy in which the central character is embroiled is his use of the cane, until corporal punishment was prohibited in the mid 1980s…

…or is it? The play’s title is The Cane, so it must simply be about that topic. Certainly the cane is a central artifact to the plot…

…yet much of the story doesn’t really add up. Would modern school children really riot against a teacher, days before his retirement, simply because he used to administer the cane 30+ years ago? Surely there must be more to it than that?

Similarly, much of the family’s back story doesn’t exactly add up or reconcile between their memories either. Axe marks on the wall are a visible example throughout the piece.

Janie saw these conundrums (or do I mean conundra?) as signs of weakness in the plot, but I thought the cane was a metaphor for the use of violence as a disciplinary measure generally. I thought the play was a metaphor for power struggles and violence within institutions like schools, within families, between teachers and pupils, between husbands, wives and children.

Still, it was hard to sympathize with any of the characters. In particular, the Maggie Steed character seemed at once pathetically weak and yet hell-bent on making forceful, irreversible decisions in an attempt to assert some element of power. I think Maggie Steed’s voice was failing on our night, which hopefully is a passing issue, but her floundering gestures didn’t really work for either of us. Perhaps she can control and channel those a bit more convincingly between preview and press night.

Janie didn’t find Alun Armstrong’s character sinister enough either, whereas I thought his manner of suppressed violence disguised by a kindly veneer was sufficiently creepy or sinister for me. Vincent Price without the ham.

Similarly, for me, the Nicola Walker character was sinister. We couldn’t get to the bottom of her motivation, even by the end of the play, but I think that air of mystery was the writer’s intention. At first you wondered how this person could be the daughter of those parents – by the end I thought I could see the echoes – a different style of controlling behaviour and a different style of violence – but still those characteristics to the fore.

Personally, I liked the debate about education within the play. In the absence of physical discipline through corporal punishment, how do teachers maintain control. (Answer, in my view, mostly by teaching well.)

There was a fascinating speech from Nicola Walker’s character about discipline the modern way in academy schools – a form of, “eyes front at all times, no talking in the corridors between lessons”. I could imagine that being effective as discipline…but I’m not sure I’d have been any more comfortable in that sort of disciplinary environment than I was/would have been in the old-fashioned “threat of corporal punishment” environment.

Whether that debate would seem as interesting or insightful to those mixed up in the education system (either as parents, teachers or pupils) today I have no idea, but it seemed relevant and interesting to me, sitting (as I do) on the outside of education for several decades.

Before the play we got chatting with a woman in the drinks queue who turned out to be Gaynor ChurchwardMinnie Driver’s mum. It would have been interesting to have learnt after the show what she thought about the play; her life experience of schooling being rather unusual and very different from either of ours. But we didn’t stick around to chat with anyone – we dashed off for a shawarma supper and a reasonably early night.

I agree with Janie to some extent that the piece might benefit from a little more naturalism and direct tackling of the issues/story, but I still found the production a worthwhile and enjoyable evening in the theatre, in the hands of some expert theatrical operators.

Once the production has been through press night and formally reviewed, you should find the reviews here. Janie and I will then find out which of us is “right”. 😉 

Instructions for Correct Assembly by Thomas Eccleshare, Royal Court Theatre, 7 April 2018

While the previous evening at the Finborough Theatre worked well for us in pretty much every respect…

White Guy On The Bus by Bruce Graham, Finborough Theatre, 6 April 2018

…this evening at the Royal Court – the opening night of Instructions for Correct Assembly – did not.

We arrived at the box office to the dissonant tones of a shouty man, who apparently did not understand what a member of staff was saying to him, tearing that poor member of staff off a strip. The evening went down hill from there.

We were told that the show was approximately 110 minutes without an interval – that is a worrying sign to me. It sometimes means that the play is so absorbing, the creatives feel it best not to break the spell with an interval. But more often it means, “best not to let the audience out for an interval, they might not come back”.

The bar was overcrowded and it took an age for us to get a couple of glasses of juice ahead of the show. The crowd seemed unusually down-beat for an opening night. This all gave me a sense of foreboding, which I did not share with Janie, other than to say, “I’m not sure I’m up for these heaving theatre bars any more”.

The audience did not get less irritating when we entered the theatre. A very tall couple entered the row in front of us – the female of the pair wearing a high-hair do reaching “fairly tall gentleman in a top hat” heights. “There’s lucky”, said Janie when they sat down a few seats to the right of us – at that juncture the seats in front of us were still free.  In the end, though, in front of Janie, a very fidgety man. To the left of her, the type of people who forget that they are not in their own living room. Around the place, several mobile phones went off during the show.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource for this play/production.

Within about five minutes, I guessed that this play/production would not please either of us. At around that moment, Janie turned to me and whispered, “I’m not going to like this one – I can tell”.

What can I say about this play/production?

I had high hopes for it when we booked it. We had found an earlier Thomas Eccleshare play, Heather, at the Bush Studio, fascinating, just a few month’s ago:

Heather by Thomas Eccleshare, Bush Studio, 11 November 2017

But while that one was an innovative, quirky hit for us, Instructions for Correct Assembly kept missing the spot.

A couple who lost their only child in his early adulthood, try to build and train a robotic replacement.

There were some excellent lines. Eccleshare can write. The jokes when the couple did (or didn’t) turn the “opinionated dial” on the robot’s control panel were sometimes funny, although it was basically variants of the same joke several times over.

There were some excellent performers on show – their talents underused and misused on the whole. The only performance of note was Brian Vernel as the robot/druggie son.

There were some excellent illusions to assist with the creepiness of the robotic doppelganger idea – the production team clearly wanted us to experience the uncanny valley, as indeed the neighbour/friend characters get freaked out in the play.

Why the non-robotic characters were made to dance robotically during some of the scene changes is anybody’s guess.

The whole thing added up to very little in our view – a fascinating subject but a very poor play. The comedy of trying to assemble a robot much like an Ikea flat pack bed felt trite and inconsequential, while the tragedy that had befallen the family sat uncomfortably (indeed melodramatically) with the comedic element.

Below is a trailer/interview for this play/.production:

Perhaps we wouldn’t even have bothered to turn up had we watched that video in advance.

Once this show is reviewed, those reviews and other resources will be available through the search term links you can find if you click here.  My guess is that those involved in the production and their loved ones would do best by not looking.

As we were leaving the auditorium, a small group of nice, older people were struggling because one of the women’s coats had got caught in the chair mechanism. We tried to help, but agreed in the end that they should wait for some assistance once the place emptied and the lights went up. The man, whom I recognised as a regular, said to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “we need the instruction manual for the chair”. Sadly, that was probably the most entertaining line of the evening.

Out in the lobby, the same shouty man from our arrival was tearing some other poor member of staff off a strip about some issue or another, this time about the exits. It was so bad, Janie remarked afterwards that she suspects that shouty man has a serious brain disorder. The irony of that notion – both with the subject matter of the play and the way we felt about the evening we’d just experienced, was not wasted on me.

Instructions for Correct Assembly is one to avoid.