Theatre – Ian Louis Harris

I, A Facilitator: Beyond The Library, The Mulberry Bush by Angus Wilson c/w Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 29 October 2024

Angus Wilson from Wikipedia, used on the same fair use basis as Wikipedia.

I wonder whether Angus Wilson would have seen the funny side of this?

As it happens I wasn’t working on Monday (the previous day). In fact, Janie and I had just got home from a specialist’s rather gloomy prognosis on my right hip (“got to go”) and were just heading off to play tennis…

…yes I know those two phrases seem incongruous, but if the hip is more or less worn out I might as well wear it out completely before it goes…

…when I picked up an utterly unexpected e-mail from the Royal Court Theatre.

…I found you from your website, as you wrote about Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant.

I’m reaching out from the Royal Court Theatre’s Living Archive, where we’re working on a series of events called Beyond the Library and I’m hoping you might be able to help us with a last-minute facilitation opportunity tomorrow at 5.30pm.

I know this is very out of the blue and very short notice, but we’d be grateful for your consideration…

Included was the script for The Mulberry Bush and a Facilitator Guide.

I did indeed write about Giant by Mark Rosenblatt:

Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 21 September 2024

It was obvious to me that someone had pulled out at the last minute and that the Royal Court was a bit desperate. There was a modest fee to be had, but not at the level that would get me out of bed unless I was interested/intrigued. I was interested/intrigued.

I picked up the phone and explained, truthfully, that my primary emotion was one of imposter syndrome at the thought of helping them with this. Yes, I am a seasoned facilitator, but normally for organisational/strategic topics, not the arts. Yes, I was familiar with Giant. And yes, as it happens, I have read some Angus Wilson in my time – probably more than 40 years ago. But I have never read or seen The Mulberry Bush.

I’m sure you’ll be great at it. Don’t worry about not being an arts facilitator. We’re looking for diversity in our pool of facilitators.

I suppose I offer diversity from your regular drama facilitator, but perhaps not the kind of diversity you are looking for in your stats.

Janie thought I’d get a buzz out of doing it and was prepared to put up with me hijacking the afternoon to prepare the event, so I said yes.

Janie even did some research for me, finding this excellent documentary about Angus Wilson:

I enjoyed reading The Mulberry Bush and then did some digging into how it was received when it was first shown at The Royal Court. Spoiler alert: it was not received well. I was reminded that I have heard of the play simply because it was the very first play that George Devine put on in 1956 when he started up the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. It actually felt like an extraordinary honour to be facilitating the Royal Court’s event on the topic of that seminal production.

Here is the review from The Birmingham Post:

Mulberry Bush Birmingham Post 06 Apr 1956, Fri The Birmingham Post (Birmingham, West Midlands, England) Newspapers.com

Here is Ken Tynan’s Observer review – sadly a bit difficult to read from the Newsppaers.com scan, but you should get the gist:

Tynan Mulberry Bush 08 Apr 1956, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Anyway, I got my facilitator notes ready and sent them across on the Monday evening – here they are if you want to read them, and then got on with my other activities for the next 20 hours or so.

Coincidentally, my other activities that Tuesday morning included going through my Autumn 1984 diaries, where I discovered my very first visit to the Royal Court. 8 December 1984, to see The Pope’s Wedding – what a cast! That Living Archive looks like a fabulous project, btw, and I shall no doubt be contributing observations from my 40 years or so of visiting The Royal Court.

When I got to the flat, I was able to locate my copy of Hemlock & After by Angus Wilson, but I didn’t have time to do more than skim it.

Still, I was one step ahead of my victims…I mean, the attendees, and that one step ahead seemed to be enough to get me through on the evening.

It was a pretty lively, bright bunch; a mixture of drama students, young folk new to working in theatre, writers and a few more senior folk who were just interested in having a book club style discussion.

Everyone contributed and I thought the quality of the discussion was very high. But then, what would I know? I’m not really an arts facilitator. The feedback was good, so I think it went well.

Also, I note, that the Beyond The Library series, which had plenty of spaces left for the November & December sessions when I looked on the Tuesday, has now (by Sunday) sold out. I understand that The Royal Court is considering extending the idea into 2025, so watch that space if you are interested in future such events.

It was hard work preparing, at such short notice, a discussion around a play I had never read or seen before. I fed back that 28 days would be a more suitable advanced notice than 28 hours under normal circumstances. But then, as Angus Wilson said in No Laughing Matter:

“Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it.”

Brace Brace by Oli Forsyth, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 26 October 2024

Janie and I were really taken with this one.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resources on this play/production. The advance description pretty much tells you all you need to know/ought to know before you see the play.

We didn’t see any reviews of the play/production before we went. Here is a link that should find most/all of the reviews.

The piece seems to have divided the critics/reviewers. The conventional press focuses on valid criticism that some elements of the plot seem unconvincing. It is hard to imagine a hijacker, who, only by dint of a passenger intervention, fails to kill hundreds of people in a plane crash, being allowed to walk free on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

But we saw through that to enjoy the dilemmas and interpersonal drama between the honeymooners whose life was ripped apart by the incident.

Oli Forsyth clearly has talent as a writer and should persevere; I’m sure there should be better yet to come from him.

But our praise is really for the production. Excellent acting, especially Anjana Vasan as the “have a go hero”, but also Phil Dunster and Craig Els. Also hats off to the production team, in particular director Daniel Raggett, who certainly helped get a quart of entertaining drama out of this pint-sized (70 minutes) play. Big ups also to Alex Payne & George Mann (fight and movement directors respectively), who managed to achieve some excellent effects in an unusually tight and three-dimensional performance setting.

Yes, there is violence in this play, but it isn’t gratuitous violence, as it is central to the story and the unfolding plot. Janie, who is even more allergic to stage violence than I am, didn’t spot the essence of the coup de théâtre at the end of the play…possibly just as well, given her reaction when I explained it to her afterwards. 😜.

Running only until 9 November 2024. It deserves a longer run or a transfer.

The Moat by Mark A C Brown, Network Theatre, Preceded By Hamsters v Dedanists Real Tennis Match At Hampton Court Palace, 17 October 2024

Hampton Court Palace – Moat by N Chadwick cc 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons

A long but very enjoyable day.

I had been democratically pressganged into match managing the annual Hamsters v Dedanists real tennis match at Hampton Court Palace, about which I have Ogblogged plenty in the past, e.g. my first encounter with that court and fixture five years ago:

How I Lost My Virginity Three Times In Less Than A Week, Yet Didn’t Lose A Match, 10, 14 & 15 October 2019

There will be a match report from the 2024 fixture in the fullness of time, which I shall be sure to link here once that epic has been written, approved by the libel lawyers and published…

…UPDATE – the lawyers have done their worst – here is a link to a scrape of that Dedanists’ page.

What better way would there be to round off a day of real tennis at a formerly moat-protected palace than a visit to The Network Theatre in Waterloo seeing one of my real tennis pals, Ian Falconer, perform in a play named The Moat.

If you need proof that Ian and I can form a formidable real tennis partnership, look no further than the following “lowlights” reel from the MCC tennis weekend earlier this year in which, as a strange reversal of the natural state of things, Ian played second fiddle to me in the absurd matter of leaving the ball to win points.

Absurdity being another helpful link between real tennis and the play, The Moat, which is grounded at an interesting junction between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of Cruelty.

The playwright, Mark A C Brown, describes the play thus on his website – click here for more on him and his work:

The Moat is an absurdist comedy set in the not too distant future in which the world is perpetually ablaze. Those who can afford it live amidst the inferno in moated communities. and one couple is trying to put on a dinner party. It would be going great if people would only stop dying and the fire would stop getting closer and closer.

To get the absurdity started before arrival, it is very clear on the Network Theatre website (and Ian Falconer’s entreaties to his cohort of ticket-holders) that the place is not exactly easy to find.

Network Theatre is rumoured to be difficult to find, so check out the map and directions below before your first visit.

We’re not on maps, but you can find Lower Road under Waterloo Station, leading off Waterloo Road, opposite Sainsbury’s.

Lower Road is a service road under Waterloo Station so you will need to ask for Network Theatre at the security gate (bring your e-ticket confirmation for access) and pass the loading bays before you find us on the left.

This video posted on YouTube shows you the way from Waterloo Station concourse.

If you have three minutes or so to watch the above-linked video, it is a masterpiece of suspenseful hand-held cinema, making The Blair Witch Project look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.

In Ian Falconer’s words:

…go down a long, murky tunnel… hopefully you make it and have time for a drink in the theatre bar beforehand…It’s a crumbling theatre space; don’t expect luxury – it’s very fringe!

Actually I got there in good time and my companion for the evening, Chris Swallow, a senior professional from the MCC real tennis court, had got there even earlier than me. It wasn’t quite as crumbly as Ian Falconer had led us to believe…

…let’s be frank, you can pay three figures for a West End show ticket and find yourself in a fairly crumbly place. And in that West End theatre you are unlikely to find such helpful and mostly friendly people as the volunteers who keep the Network Theatre going.

Returning to the play and production. The play is unsubtly allegorical, as indeed it is clearly intended to be. The party-throwing couple within the moat are supremely confident that their security systems and their moat can protect them from the incendiary dangers beyond, despite the clear and evident danger from the events we witness (or learn about) in their immediate vicinity. [Insert your own favourite social/political allegory here.]

Despite the characters being absurd caricatures of their types, the play works because it has an integral dramatic arc and a narrative line, with one or two sub-plots, that support that arc. After a while, I was able to “go with the flow” of the absurdity and enjoy the play. I only occasionally feel this way about absurdist pieces; on those occasions they tend to be written masterfully by playwrights such as Eugène Ionesco or Václav Havel.

I sense that director David Whitney has worked with writer Márk [sic] A C Brown before, which will surely have helped make the production flow, as this was not a simple piece to put on in a small fringe theatre. I thought the production values were very high given the constraints. I commend all of the crew as well as the cast – see this link for details; all shall have Ogblog tags.

Ian Falconer was excellent as the the lead character, Andre. I’m not just saying that because he is my friend. Of the supporting cast, I (and indeed Chris Swallow also) would single out Orietta Wanjiru Subrizi who played the part of delivery girl Eden with the right blend of contained gusto.

I do worry slightly about Ian becoming typecast in absurdist, allegorical plays about fire-engulfing situations. I note from his CV Fire in the Basement by Pavel Kohout and Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Parenthetically, my own trip to see Huis Clos, in 1989 (35 years ago…gulp), at the Lyric Studio, was in such a hot situation we the audience felt that we were experiencing the play in sense-around:

Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre, Lyric Studio, 5 August 1989

Mind you, as Ian Falconer’s nephew pointed out over drinks in the Network Theatre Bar afterwards, my regular choice of water bottle, for tennis and theatre alike, might have been designed for the play The Moat:

*My thirst extinguishers tend to get dented by cricket balls and hard tennis balls*

The New Real by David Edgar, The Other Place, 14 October 2024

Not to be confused with The Other Palace, in Westminster, which I visited with my old school pals a few days earlier…

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

…this visit to The Other Place, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, was the excuse for me and Janie to take a short break in that wonderful town this autumn.

A Short Autumn Break In A 15th Century Cottage In An Old Market Town Part One: Stratford-Upon-Avon, 13 to 16 October 2024

We’re big fans of David Edgar’s plays. Indeed, this was our second David Edgar premier in the past few weeks – his plays seem to come along with the regularity of London buses these days (nothing for ages, then two together):

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

But in truth I cannot rave about The New Real the way I raved about Here In America.

There was a lot to like about The New Real. Terrific cast who all acted superbly well. Excellent production using the traverse stage and screen effects well. But the overall effect of this rather long play was a sense of over-stimulation by the end of it. So many ideas about politics. So many screen and stage effects. And relatively little human drama to illustrate rather than declaim the points David Edgar wanted to make.

Anyway, despite both coming out of the experience with headaches of over-stimulation, we’re both glad that we have seen this play.

Here is a link to the RSC resources on this one, which will tell you all about the cast and creatives and that sort of thing.

Here is a Google search which should find reviews for this play/production. I believe many/most reviews express a similar view on this play/production to ours…but perhaps with a bit more critical heft than I choose to muster.

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

Olly Goodwin having received his Olly-Vier Theatre Award from Rohan Candappa

The above quote comes from Germaine Greer. It is apposite to both elements of the enjoyable evening I am about to describe.

“It was Candappa’s fault, Sir”. That non-quote is nevertheless true – this evening would not have happened, had it not been for Rohan Candappa doing his thing, both in terms of keeping us ’73-’80 Alleyn’s alums together and in helping to promote writing and theatrical talent.

Kat Kleve first came into my orbit when she worked with Rohan on One Starts in a Barber’s, One Starts in a Bar, which several of us Alleyn’s alums first saw at the Gladstone Arms in the autumn of 2018, after which it went to Edinburgh the next year and ultimately Kat’s bit ended up being Rohan’s first Lockdown Theatre production, And You Are? You can read all about it by clicking here or the link below.

And You Are? by Rohan Candappa, Lockdown Theatre Company, 24 March 2020

At the time, I gave that piece the wildest praise I could conjure at the time:

Better than watching Boris Johnson telling you what to do and what not to do – Ian Harris, Ogblog.

Strangely, neither Kat nor Rohan latched on to that quote for promotional purposes at the time. Pearls…

…anyway, this time around Kat is performing her own show, written with Lizzy Connelly, named Tink. The play did famously well at Edinburgh in 2023 and now has a London run at The Other Palace. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Hence Rohan’s idea for us alums to meet up there for a bite, a drink and a show.

As coincidence would have it, Olly Goodwin was a Trustee of The Theatres Trust back when The Other Palace was just an idea. Olly was instrumental in helping that project get its planning permission. If you have ever wondered why that building has a glorious but perhaps incongruous-looking marble staircase…

…ask Olly. And if you have ever wondered why Rohan thought fit to award Olly Goodwin with an Olly-Vier Theatre Award…see headline photo…the answer is intrinsically connected to the above coincidence.

The food was pretty good and the serving staff delightful at The Other Palace, even when Olly exclaimed:

Hey, why have you served Ben with his drink before serving mine, which I ordered earlier?…

…ignoring the large glass of wine that the waitress had placed in front of him a few moments before serving Ben. That wine glass is also commemorated in the headline picture.

Here is the whole scene just before we went into the theatre…except that my lens isn’t wide enough to have captured all the group and I have cruelly left out our ringleader, Rohan.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that Rohan is like a kid in the proximity of a candy store on such occasions.

Actually, we all tend to display our inner overgrown schoolboy modes when we get together, which is at least some of the point behind getting together. As Germaine Greer said:

You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever.

Anyway, recollecting our youth over dinner will have helped prepare us for the coming of age musical, Tink, which we then went down the Olly Goodwin Memorial Marble Staircase to see.

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Here is a link to the Other Place information and resources on this show.

Here’s the trailer:

The conceit of the piece is that the central character – this is a one person show – is a modern Tinkerbell, growing up in the early 21st century rather than the early 20th century character in Peter Pan.

Not in truth my type of show, but Kat Kleve is a very talented and versatile performer, so there was plenty to enjoy in the performance.

It’s basically a coming of age story set in a fairies and elves context, which seemed startlingly like a human context to me. I liked the agonies Tink goes through around trying too hard to be the best at everything (which, it seems, is not guaranteed to make you popular – who knew?) and the social mores around how to dress and behave at teenage parties.

Especially interesting, to me, was the business around social media, which hadn’t been invented when we were kids. I’d long suspected that it is probably even harder to bee a teenager now than it was back in our day – this play illustrated some of the reasons why.

The songs are not really my type of songs either. They reminded me a little of Ed Sheeran and Meghan Trainor style singer-songwriter songs. Very well delivered, though. Here is an example of one of the songs:

That style of song might be spot on for the intended audience for this show, which I imagine to be a bit younger than me. We were there for the opening night and didn’t feel out of place, but I suspect that the average age of the audience will come down a decade or two on most other nights…

…apart from the nights for which Rohan is taking a posse of his friends.

The show runs until 20 October, so if you are reading this in time you might well want to click this link and grab some tickets, before dynamic pricing takes Kat Kleve out of your price range.

Beryl Cook: A Private View, Written, Performed & Painted by Kara Wilson, Finborough Theatre, 5 October 2024

Tea In the Garden by Beryl Cook, Copyright The Artist, fair use for this piece, low quality image via Wikimedia Commons

This was an interesting and enjoyable visit to the Finborough, albeit not the most drama-strewn visit we have ever made to that place.

Beryl Cook is an interesting character in that she found art later in life and lacked both the inhibitions of her generation and the pretentions of her chosen field. But she basically led a conventional provincial middle-class life that lacked drama. The play is therefore a collection of Beryl Cook’s own comments and things said about her in interviews. Interesting, but not dramatic.

The thing that makes this performance piece unusual is that Kara Wilson, in the persona of Beryl Cook, paints an artwork during the hour of the show. That aspect was truly fascinating.

As we understand it, The Finborough arranged this run with Kara Wilson at relatively short notice, when the theatre’s autumn plans went awry.

This engaging theatrical work enjoyed a successful run at Edinburgh – many of the formal reviews you might find about it relate to that run, although several are now emerging from The Finborough run too. Click here for reviews.

We also enjoyed the discussion afterwards.

Don’t you find it difficult to perform a solo play and paint at the same time for an hour?

…asked Janie, which I imagine was a question that had passed through everyone’s mind, but no-one had yet asked the question.

Yes, very.

…said Kara.

Good answer.

If you get to this review in time, this run is on until 26 October at The Finborough – click here for tickets and/or The Finborough’s stub on this production if you are interested in that.

My English Persian Kitchen by Hannah Khalil, Soho Theatre, 30 September 2024

This show is an excellent and unusual experience in the theatre. Based on a true story, Isabella Nefar is superb as a young woman who escapes to England from an abusive marriage in Iran. She doesn’t find London life easy either, but takes solace in cooking Persian food to remind herself of the home she might never see again.

While telling her gruelling story, she also cooks Ash-e Reshteh; Persian noodle and herb soup, which after the show she serves to anyone in the audience who fancies it…which was almost everyone.

Aware that the play was this kind of thing, we got to the Soho Theatre a little early to try to get front seats. We knew that the visibility would be fine just about anywhere, but the smells would be subject to the inverse-square law and we wanted to smell this play.

We ran into a couple of people we knew while queuing: Sara Amini, whom we had met in Stratford when we attended a talk about the play Englsh in May:

English by Sanaz Toossi, The Other Place, 13 May 2024

…and also our friend Jacquie from the Boston Manor tennis courts, which was a little more of a surprise in this context.

Anyway, we got the front row seats we fancied and were entranced by the short show.

Unusually for us, we ventured to the theatre by tube rather than car, as Soho is such a awkward place for driving. A points failure near North Acton confounded us, sending our West Acton bound tube to Hanger Lane instead, making our return journey a little fraught. Fortunately we’d had a bowl of soup to sustain us and hadn’t left our dinner cooking at home when we went out!

*Contemplating the yummy soup, not the journey home*

This show previewed at Soho before a very well-received Edinburgh run and then a short reprise at Soho. It was very well received by the formal reviewers – click here for plenty of links.

Hopefully My English Persian Kitchen will be revived elsewhere, so that more people can get to see it, smell it and eat it.

Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, Royal Court Theatre, 21 September 2024

Roald Dahl‘s books and stories were a significant part of my life as a child and teenager growing up in the 1970s. Dahl’s widely publicised anti-Semitic remarks in the early 1980s shocked me at the time.

Giant is about Dahl and those remarks, set during an imagined afternoon at Dahl’s Great Missenden house in 1983.

I grabbed a couple of “first Saturday preview” seats for this one as soon as tickets became available for Royal Court members. I am glad that I did.

Mark Rosenblatt surely wrote most if not all of the play before the events of 7 October 2023 and for sure no-one knew that the Israeli Defence Forces would be bombing Beirut a couple of days before the first Royal Court preview. The play seemed extraordinarily topical, even though that topicality was inadvertent.

It is a very well-written play, depicting Dahl as a charismatic yet monstrous character. An extremely eloquent disruptor, who would use the power of his words and status to charm or bully as he saw fit. Everything I had read about Dahl suggest to me that the character was well researched and brilliantly depicted by John Lithgow, who is clearly a top draw stage actor.

Other real people from Dahl’s world were depicted: Felicity “Liccy” Crossland whom Dahl married soon after his public anti-Semitism row, and Tom Maschler, who was head of Jonathan Cape, Dahl’s publisher.

Into this mix, Rosenblatt throws a fictional character, Jessie Stone, who works for Dahl’s US publisher. Unlike Tom Maschler, who seems (or at least purports) to be able to manage Dahl’s wonky characteristics, the Stone character confronts Dahl directly with her concerns about his remarks, with predictably scary results.

*Wondering whether anyone in the audience can tell that I am “one of them”.*

There were some similarities between this play and the wonderful David Edgar play, Here In America, which we saw (also in preview) at The Orange Tree last week:

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Although the moral dilemmas in the two plays are different in nature (do you grass on your old mates to protect your career? Do you apologise for things you said even if you did really mean them?), both plays are based around true characters and real events and both plays are structured around a visit to the home of the maligned protagonist.

Janie enjoyed both plays/productions but preferred Here In America to Giant, primarily because she found the moral dilemma more paradoxical. By the end of Giant, Janie was convinced that Roald Dahl was a ghastly character with scarily racist views.

I found the arguments suitably nuanced in both plays and enjoyed both for their excellent acting and production, as well as the quality of the writing/drama.

However, I did sense that Here In America diverged from the historical reality of its situation less than Giant.

In Giant, the conceit of the play suggests that Dahl might have made his most outrageously and blatantly anti-Semitic comments as a result of being cornered by his publishers and fiancée on a single afternoon. In reality, Dahl made many such comments in several interviews/conversations over an extended period of time. Dramatic licence, I accept, but it made Giant, for me, a little less convincing as a dramatic whole.

There are some terrific speeches and lines in the play. Janie and I are glad we bought the play text so we might refer back to some of those. Romola Garai was excellent as Jessie Stone; her speech at the end of the first half of the play was a coup de theatre.

Elliot Levey’s performance as Tom Maschler also stood out. Several of his lines, explaining how you can be an overtly English Jew without obsessing about Israel and while feeling more English than anything else, certainly resonated with me. As did his speech about not feeling the need to apologise for the actions of the Government of a country in which he held neither nationality nor residency. And as did Maschler’s speech about low-level anti-Semitic remarks and sneers being essentially harmless and part of the price for being a Jew in England at that time.

I was very much reminded, by this play, about my own strange experience, around the time the play was set, with an overt anti-Semite, Don Knipe, who, in his terms, obviously didn’t mean people like me and my family, whom he loved…he meant all the other Jews.

Strange Case Of Dr Green And Mr Knipe…And Beluga Caviar And Scotch Whisky And A Bust Of Hitler, c22 December 1981

Indeed that experience is so strange, I realise, on reflection, that Don could easily have been a Roald Dahl short story character. Click the above link if you dare. But I digress.

There was a lot to think about in the play Giant and we’ll go on thinking about it for some time, no doubt.

The short Royal Court run (to 16 November 2024) is already all-but sold out, but surely this excellent play/production is lining up for transfers; both sides of the Atlantic, no doubt.

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Name Names, Tomorrow…Playing Call My Bluff In An English Class, Was It 1S Or 2AK? 1974 or 1975

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.

The Box by Brian Coyle, White Bear Theatre, 30 July 2024

All production photos by Alex Walton

I received a kind invitation to see and review this play/production – a fairly rare occurrence for me at a location and on a day that I was able to do. Janie has been summonsed to the Old Bailey (she claims it is jury service) so I ventured south of the river alone.

I’d never been to The White Bear Theatre, Kennington before. It is a “room above a pub” theatre, much in the style of, in the old days, The Bush (The Bush Theatre now has its own swanky space around the corner from the old pub), The Gate (which has moved from above a pub in convenient Notting Hill to an inconvenient space in Camden) and The Finborough Theatre (which is still in its original location, but currently has no pub underneath!). Indeed The White Bear appears to be, much like The Finborough, a magnet for new writing, which earns it a huge thumbs-up from me.

*The White Bear is just around the corner from picturesque Cleaver Square*

I suspect it is the Finborough connection that led to my e-mail address being in Sarah Lawrie’s e-rolodex, as she produced a couple of productions there which I had reviewed favourably: Scrounger by Athena Stevens and Death Of A Hunter by Rolf Hochhuth.

OK, so I had not seen Sarah Lawrie act before, but I had seen director Jonathan Woolf act a small part in a big production: Travelling Light at the RNT, in 2012 just before “I parted ways” with Nick Hytner the following year.

Can Sarah act as well as produce? Can Jonathan direct as well as act?

***Spoiler alert*** – yes they can.

The Box is a fringe-theatre-style one hour drama. Very much the style of play we like.

I found the first 20 or so minutes bemusing. I know I was supposed to be bemused, but perhaps just a bit too long or a bit too bemusing.

I wrote the word “disjointed” in my jotter. I also wrote “collection of vignettes”.

But soon the drama and tragedy that underpins the play was unfolding and the meaning of those disjointed scenes became apparent.

During the initial scenes, I was unimpressed by the acting; it came across as am-dram overacting. Frankly, I was surprised that both performers were fringe-award-winning actors based on those early scenes. But once it became clear that I was witnessing, in those early scenes, fine actors playing the role of ordinary folk acting out fantasies, I was with the message. How could I not be, given that Janie and I have Ged, Daisy and a cast of thousands to play with?

How this might play out in the USA, where even fringe audiences are prone to walk out after 10 or 15 minutes if they are displeased, I don’t know. That’s worth the playwright and cast thinking about, though, as the play struck me as having an American feel to it that could, with minor revision, do well over there.

I was reminded of:

…all of which are very successful American plays. That is not to say that the play is derivative, but several of its themes share themes with those plays.

I thought both performers were very good indeed; as the play went on and as the tragedy became clearer, they performed dramatically but without melodrama. Sarah Lawrie in particular came across as a sympathetic character, but as the story unfolded the bottled-up anguish of Martin Edwards’s character also came to the fore.

If you want to see this production at The White Bear, you only have until 3 August to see it. It deserves a bigger audience than it is getting at that small but sweet space. But then, how often do I find myself thinking that about fine drama at fringe theatres?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: