This excellent production, which Janie and I saw on the second preview evening, made us feel uncomfortable in many ways. The central subject matter – addiction to violent on-line pornography – is a deliberately discomforting topic. Playwright Sophia Chetin-Leuner takes this topic on in an unflinching yet surprisingly nuanced manner in this play.
It is really a play about addiction taking hold of a bright individual and destroying their life. It just so happens that violent porn is the addiction in this case.
The acting was universally excellent. Ambika Mod, as the victim of the addiction, is, understandably, getting most of the plaudits. She is on stage almost throughout the play and what a challenging role it must be. Will Close, Lizzy Connolly and Asif Khan provide excellent support, playing multiple parts each and doing so convincingly.
Josie Rourke is a superb director. This is the first time we have seen her work since she returned from her career break. She’s certainly still got what it takes.
I said the production made us feel uncomfortable in many ways. Apart from our discomfort with the subject matter…not least the topicality of questions around abusive and violent sex…we were also visually and physically discomforted by the set/seating.
The carpeted set looked like seedy living space from the 1970s or 1980s – deliberately I’m sure. The audience is asked to put shoe covers on when entering, as if to symbolise a need for personal protection…but also perhaps for practical reasons to protect the set.
But most discomforting of all was the seating on those “carpeted steps” doubling as seats. No back support and 100 minutes of tense drama. We walked out of the theatre like John Wayne having just dismounted from his horse…or…[insert your own unsubtle and unsuitable metaphor here]. Still, it was worth it.
Janie and I saw a preview of this play/production. I am writing it up a few days later, ahead of seeing any reviews.
We had been looking forward to this play/production, as usually we do for the excellent small-scale stuff the Hampstead puts on downstairs. And we weren’t disappointed – a well-crafted script and highly professional production, performed by a trio of convincing actors.
We nearly didn’t go. We were exhausted by early evening, having returned to the house that morning to discover that we had been burgled. We’d only just said goodbye to the police and were still anticipating a visit from the forensics people the next day.
We steeled ourselves to the notion that a good piece of theatre would take our minds off our own domestic travails and the notion that “cancelling a treat” is not a good way to try and make yourselves feel better.
By the end of the evening, we were glad we pressed ahead.
We sat next to a nice lady whose face I recognised…it turned out from our previous visit to the Hampstead Downstairs. In chatting we realised that we had all attended the same evening of “The Billionaire Inside Your Head” a few week’s earlier.
We worked out that we’d all been there the same day when discussing the scary “voice in the head” character. The nice audience lady was relieved to learn that I was still alive after “verbally dicing with death” with that character.
To some extent we didn’t get quite what we expected. We thought the comedy element of the play would prevail, based on the description, but actually it is a bittersweet story, full of sadness expressed and supressed, together with an utterly reckless character, the father, who leaves chaos in his wake without recognising that he is a major…indeed at times the sole…cause of that disarray.
Nancy Farino, who both wrote the play and acted as the daughter, Joy, is a new name to us but certainly a name we’ll look out for in the future in both the writing and acting contexts. She was ably supported on stage by Shona Babayemi, as the understated lawyer, and Jason Thorpe as the hapless and hopeless dad.
This production might be remembered the most in theatrical circles for one highly ambitious, coup de theatre action scene, towards the end of the play, which would sound implausible in a tiny studio theatre if I were to try and describe it. But the team somehow pulls it off and the scene works.
However, I think I’ll remember the production more for Joy’s monologues and the depiction of her nightmares/sleep deprivation imaginings in her inner transcendental winter of depression.
It rather helped me and Janie in the recovery of our composure. We are fortunate not to suffer from depression. We’d just had a bad experience which we’ll deal with and move on from.
I wasn’t an unbeliever in this play/production, nor was I completely convinced
Janie and I saw the second preview of this one. Not that the preview lacked the polish of a honed Royal Court Theatre production, but it is possible that a few aspects were toned down/toned up or cut between previews and press night.I am writing this ahead of seeing any reviews, although I shall probably publish it a week or two after press night.
Another thing to say is that we saw this taught, psychological drama around 24 hours after learning of Bobbie Scully‘s unexpected and untimely death, which wasn’t an ideal mood setter ahead of seeing this sort of play.
It probably matters little what I say about this play/production anyway – it had effectively sold out even before the previews, let alone the press night and reviews. And why not? What a stellar list of contributors. We have very much enjoyed Nick Payne’s plays several times before – in particular Constellations was a triumph.
Similarly, Nicola Walker has long-impressed us as an actress. Although perhaps better known to most as a TV actress we have seen her several times on the stage, on at least one occasion (The Curious Incident…)directed brilliantly, as in The Unbelievers, by Marianne Elliot.
The list of recognisably excellent cast and creatives went on. That’s why we booked early. That’s why lots of people booked early.
The story is almost as unpleasant a scenario as you can possibly imagine. A middle-class family’s teenage son doesn’t return from school one day and disappears without trace. Did he run away? Was he abducted? Did he run away and then subsequently meet his demise? The play shows the impact of this horrifying event on the family, especially the mother, Miriam (Nicola Walker), over a number of years.
Janie got more out of this one than I did.
It felt, to me, as though the piece had been written as a virtuoso piece for the lead actress, which it undoubtedly is. Only an actress of Nicola Walker’s quality could carry such a part through 100 minutes or so of unbroken drama, during which she barely leaves the stage.
But the piece has a relentless gloom about it; it is not a spoiler to say that neither the family, nor the audience, get any answers to the mystery, The whole point is that the tragedy comes down to the belief the individuals involved, cast and audience, have in what might have happened and therefore how to live with the unknown.
Some elements of the play work brilliantly, especially the scenes where this question of belief is explored and illustrated through the drama.
But much of the play especially early scenes, felt like up-market versions of those television police procedurals that, frankly, I’d pay good money to avoid having to see. [Insert your own joke about the BBC licence fee here.]
I also found the light relief scenes rather forced and did not get the desired sense of relief from them. Janie thought they worked well on the whole for her, so perhaps that was more about my sombre mood than the scenes.
I was unconvinced, for example, by the character Anil, who came from a Society for Psychical Research-like organisation. He was trying to be intensely caring and professional, yet was unable to stop himself from answering his phone while in a meeting with distressed people. I think my unbelief in this character was down to the writing, rather than Jaz Singh Deol’s acting. Similarly, Harry Kershaw’s character Benjamin, the loquacious puffin-boffin fiancée of one of the daughters, given the context, was almost impossible for me to believe in, other than as a playwright’s device to try to lighten the mood of an increasingly dark play.
Nick Payne is a fine writer, it was a superb team of cast/creatives, and The Royal Court puts on fine productions, so Janie and I won’t be dodging these people and places in future – far from it.
But this one just missed the mark for me and only just made the mark for Janie.
This was a really interesting and enjoyable evening at the theatre. We saw the second preview, so you might be reading this ahead of formal press night.
Janie and I highly recommend this play/production.
We are big fans of the Hampstead Downstairs, which rarely disappoints us.
There seems to be something about Anna Ledwich’s work as a director (which we have seen several times), when she works with Allison McKenzie, that attracts quirky people to sit next to us:
Differently quirky people this time – no drink spillage but very interesting chat before the show…unfortunately they were a pair who like to chat to each other during a show as well, but never mind.
Meanwhile Allison McKenzie as Voice/Nicole opened the piece by talking at us, the audience…and then did so again a few times during the play. Be prepared to be challenged in more ways than one!
The play is about OCDs and the voices/compulsive thoughts that some people have in their heads constantly. The character Nicole is the personification of that voice to Richie, Nathan Clarke’s character. He and Ashley Margolis, as Nicole’s son and the OCD-challenged young man’s hapless yet caring friend, riffed off each other extremely well. All three performers were excellent.
As is so often the case at the Hampstead Downstairs, the design team somehow manages to get a lot of theatre out of a small space through ingenuity and some pretty impressive choreographed movements by the performers.
Enough of me prattling on. If you haven’t booked it yet, Janie and I suggest that you book it before it sold out. Read all about it here.
And if you are one of the people who was lucky enough to be in the audience on Saturday and you work out who I am, you might, if superstitious, be relieved to know that I am writing this on the Monday after, so I didn’t die the day after we saw the show. No fictional voice in the head bullies me!
Oh boy was I excited ahead of this one. Janie and I don’t usually go to see plays when we have seen an excellent production before. But we are huge fans of Strindberg and this just seemed too good to miss.
Tom Littler, Director, pairing up again with Howard Brenton adapting a Strindberg play. We loved their version of The Dances of Death at The Gate
Despite the risk of over-expectation, Janie and I were wowed by this production of Creditors at the Orange Tree, which we saw on the day of the first preview.
Charles Dance, Nicholas Farrell and Geraldine James are such fine actors and professional folk all, we should not be surprised that their performances seemed as polished as one might expect deep into a run. Only the curtain call (if you can call it a curtain call in a curtain-free, in-the-round place like The Orange Tree) showed signs of under-preparation. At a first preview, that surely can be forgiven, or even awarded laughter and additional applause, which it was.
The evening started slightly oddly. We arrived at The Orange Tree early enough for a pre-show drink. The gentleman serving behind the bar, whom I did not recognise, looked up at us and said:
I’ve just been reading your blog.
When Janie expressed surprise, both at the fact that the gentleman recognised me and that he had been reading my blog, the gentleman said:
He’s got a very recognisable face. And there aren’t many people who blog about both The Orange Tree Theatre and Lord’s cricket.
We then all three had a brief chat about Middlesex cricket before parting company, in our case with our drinks.
I’d be less recognisable if someone stopped taking all those double-selfies
Returning to The Orange Tree’s production of Creditors, there is clearly something that really works when Howard Brenton adapts Strindberg plays and Tom Littler then directs them. Those two seem to “get” Strindberg, creating an atmosphere, setting the scenarios and pacing the text masterfully. In the hands of a fine acting trio such as Dance, Farrell and James, it is a gob-smackingly good 90 minutes or so of theatre.
Such a shame (for those without tickets) that the run has sold out, but there will be a filmed version of this production available for streaming in October and perhaps this production will get a transfer. This really is one of those productions that theatre lovers should have a chance to see. Janie and I feel hugely privileged to have got to see this production on its very first airing.
Whose “bright” idea was it to book a play about dementia and stuff for a week after mother-in-law Pauline’s funeral – which was the closing scene of Pauline’s long, slow demise at the hands of that disease?
OK, so it was my idea. But, to be fair, the idea of seeing this piece had been brewing in my mind for some time, given that Lydia White was appearing in it.
After all, Lydia is my best mate John’s daughter and has been helping me to grapple with the shreds of my so-called singing voice for some five years now. Still, I had told John early in the year that I thought that the subject matter would be too close to the bone for Janie at this time and that the journey to the Arcola too far for my healing bones in May, just three months after my hip replacement.
Between February and April, though, the hip replacement went well and Ben Schwartz had coincidentally arranged to see this very show in Leicester – one of several stops on a tour scheduled to finish at The Arcola in London. When Ben reported back to me in April that the play, and Lydia, were the bees knees – (expressed with well-chosen, professional words to that effect) – I decided to book the show. I suggested to Janie that I’d go it alone on the Saturday matinee, while she was having her hair done. But so impressed was Janie with Ben’s informal review, she decided to move her hair appointment and join me.
That was on 16 April – about 12 hours before Pauline expired.
Still, coincidence followed coincidence when I told John that we’d be going along after all, as he reported back that he and Mandy would be at that matinee with several friends.
In Other Words…
“But what about the play and production?”, I hear frustrated readers cry.
Matthew Seager plays the male lead, as he has in previous productions of his play. He and Lydia certainly make this piece fly. [Insert your own joke here about the production flying to the moon or being a play among the stars].
Strewn with Frank Sinatra songs, it is the sort of play that could easily come across as mawkish or cloying, yet Seager somehow manages to avoid those pitfalls, while retaining warmth, humour and empathy. The fact that he spent a considerable amount of time working in care homes before writing this play might well have helped in that regard…as does an evident talent for playwriting of course.
Both performers did a great job of transforming their body language in a near instant, as the scenes move backwards and then forwards again in time. Matthew’s physical changes were the most profound ones, yet Lydia’s subtle transformations from lovestruck young woman to worn-down, middle-aged accidental-carer were in some ways even more impressive for their subtlety.
But then, I’m biased. After all, Lydia has almost managed to make an audible silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is my voice.
There is a scene during In Other Words in which Matthew’s character explains how bad he is at singing and demonstrates same with a bit of Sinatra. I asked Matthew after the show if Lydia had taught him how to feign singing that badly. Matthew’s reply:
Whose “bright” idea was it to book a play about family funerals, eulogies and stuff for the day after Pauline’s funeral?
OK, so it was my idea. But I had the idea to book this back in early March, not even three weeks after I came out of hospital with Pinky. Janie and I love the Hampstead Downstairs – I spotted that this play was only an hour long and that the production had Rosie Cavaliero playing the lead.
Back in the day, Rosie stormed NewsRevue with her performances, not least a cracking, seminal job with one of mine, Domestic Fuel, which became a NewsRevue classic…
…so I was keen to see her perform again after all these years. I booked the very last night of the run to give my hip sufficient time to repair ahead of a “cheek-to-cheek” hour on those Hampstead Downstairs pews.
While my mother-in-law Pauline’s demise this spring was not entirely a surprise, I could not have known in early March that she would die some six week’s later and that the funeral would be the day before we saw the play.
The timing could have been worse. Given the central conceits of the play revolving around funerals, eulogies and things going badly wrong for a family before during and after…I guess seeing this play the day BEFORE delivering Pauline’s eulogy might have terrified me. Whereas, seeing the play the day after simply reinforced my view that I had needed to write with care and deliver the eulogy with dignity:
All three members of the cast – Rosie Cavaliero was joined by Holly Atkins and Archie Christoph-Allen – performed admirably, directed well by Lucy Morrison. The set made excellent use of the limited space downstairs, creating a sense of the claustrophobic atmosphere in a home that has become a hoarding nightmare – we have Naomi Dawson to thank for that.
It is an excellent short play. The notion of someone getting emotionally stuck in their past reminded me a little of Kevin Elyot’s excellent plays My Night With Reg and The Day I Stood Still:
Except in Personal Values, the “stood still” syndrome manifests itself in an extreme hoarding disorder and the “syndrome” is family-originated rather than through romance and otherness.
We were left in no doubt as to the growing up era upon which the sisters were reflecting. Rosie’s one chance in the play to show off her ability to deliver a belter of a song was a pivotal scene, excellently done, when the sisters started singing and dancing to Temptation by Heaven 17:
It was preceded by some business, which amused me a lot, around a Casio keyboard which the Rosie character had put up for sale on E-Bay at the behest of her sister and then bought back from herself, because she couldn’t bear to part with it. When she demonstrated the instrument it had the Nightbirds (Shakatak) riff programmed into it:
So very early 1980s, both of those tracks. Mercifully, although I am prone to mentally and digitally hoarding this stuff, I am not tempted to rush out and secure those tracks on vinyl…or am I?
The reviews for Personal Values have mostly been terrific, deservedly so. Headline ones are shown on the Hampstead resource – here’s the link again.
Once again, the Hampstead Downstairs has done the business. Janie and I really like that place. And it’s great to be back at the theatre, even if, for the time being, limiting ourselves to short plays for Pinky’s sake.
Janie and I love the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. Have I made that point on Ogblog before? [About 40 times – ed].
Here is yet another example of excellent theatre work down there.
In truth, police procedurals don’t tend to float our boats. They tend to be somewhat formulaic and usually more than a little predictable. Perhaps the term “procedurals” is a bit of a giveaway in that regard.
This piece worked well and kept us rapt with attention, through the quality of the writing, directing and acting.
Elements of the conceit of the play required a little too much suspension of belief for me. The play opens with the statement that the average missing person/abductee is killed 72 hours after the abduction, which is supposed to keep us in suspense as the clock ticks down to the 72 hour mark while the central interrogation takes place. But of course such averages are meaningless averages, as almost all cases result in murder very quickly or the death of hostages after an extended period of time. Almost none would reach resolution at the 72 hour mark.
Yet in suspense and rapt with attention we still were, on the back of the quality of the writing, directing and acting. Have I mentioned that aspect before? [Yes, but keep going. ed].
Jamie Ballard, Colm Gormley and Rosie Sheehy all act their parts extremely well. The twists and turns in the story seem credible and natural in their hands. Jamie Armitage wrote and directed this piece. I usually think that writers directing their own work is a bit of a mistake, as a good director can often dredge depths in a piece that the writer cannot find. But in this instance I think the combined role works well. The use of cameras/video, for example, is clearly an integral part of both the writing and the way the story is depicted on stage.
The worlds of tennis and theatre were intertwined for several centuries from the Renaissance onwards. I describe these connections in some detail, in the context of late Renaissance England, in the performance piece I wrote for The Gresham Society event at Hampton Court in the summer of 2023:
And there is surely no-one in the world who knows more about late medieval tennis and theatre than Cees de Bondt, who wrote THE book about tennis in Renaissance Italy, including a whole chapter entitled Tennis Courts Used As Theatres.
So, when Chris Bray, the senior real tennis professional at Lord’s, told me in early December that Cees de Bondt would be visiting in early January, that Chris thought we’d have a lot of shared interest in Renaissance tennis to discuss, and asked whether I would like to join them for lunch, I said:
yes please.
Then I got one of my attacks of imposter syndrome. I thought, I’d better mug up on the subject of tennis in Renaissance Italy, so I ordered a copy of Cees’s book, and, ahead of its arrival, arranged an appointment with the MCC library copy of said book.
My copy arrived during Twixtmas. I was just over half way through the book come the appointed day for the lunch, 9 January. I brought my copy with me for Cees to sign. I even remembered to bring a pen with me for the signing, which is more than can be said for my own first ever book signing:
Cees and Chris Bray go back several decades, to 1986 to be precise, when Cees and the Dutch Real Tennis Association had their first real encounter with real tennis. It was very kind of Chris to invite me to join them for lunch. Also at lunch was Cees’s charming travelling companion, Lenne Van Leusden, who is studying English and Theatre at University.
I told Cees that I had quite a few questions for him about Renaissance tennis in Italy.
That’s OK, I have a few questions for you too,
said Cees, before answering my questions very thoughtfully and engaging in lots of interesting discussion about real tennis, past present and future.
Some of Cees (and Leene’s) questions, to me, were about theatre, not least because they were keen to find some good serious, perhaps fringe, theatre to see that weekend.
Rather short notice, I thought, but I skimmed through the listings with them pointing out one or two possibilities, before mentioning A Good House at the Royal Court, as Janie and I would be going to that one on Saturday evening.
As luck would have it, there was a pair of good seats available for that evening (returns I should imagine given the dearth of seats left for that night), which Chris Bray helped them to snap up after our lunch and the mini-tour of Lord’s upon which I hastily took the visitors.
Lord’s Pavilion (top) & Villa D’Este (bottom) – A Good House brings good fortune, eh?
Janie and I arranged to meet Cees and Lenne for a drink before the play at The Royal Court, which was a lovely opportunity to continue our conversations, a little more in the modern theatre context than the medieval tennis context this time, and for Janie to meet these good people.
A Good House, Royal Court Theatre, 11 January 2025
We loved this play/production. By we, I am sure I can add Cees and Leene to the votes of me and Janie. We saw the first preview and/but the production was very slick and the play seemed to work extremely well, so we imagine we saw the production pretty much as it will run.
Amy Jephta is a South African playwright and this piece is very much a modern South African play. It is a co-production with the Bristol Old Vic and The Market Theatre Johannesburg, the piece having been commissioned jointly by The Royal Court and The Fugard Theatre.
While the piece is firmly rooted in a South African style middle-class suburban community, the issues with which the piece grapples: community, identity, race, class and the fear of invasion from the outside…
…all seemed to be very relevant and topical issues to Western societies, indeed the whole world today.
The play was funny (mostly but not only “comedy of embarrassment”), dramatic, sad and thought-provoking. The acting throughout was excellent. Stand out performances, for me, were Sifiso Mazibuko and Mimî M Khayisa, who played Sihle and Bonolo respectively, but all four other performers, Kai Luke Brummer, Olivia Darnley, Robyn Rainsford & Scott Sparrow performed their parts very well.
This production runs only until 8 February, so I would suggest that interested readers book early to avoid disappointment, as we’ll be most surprised if the formal reviews after press night on 17 January don’t lead to a rush to snap up the remaining seats.
In short, Ruairi Conaghan’s uncle Rory was brutally gunned down during the Northern Ireland troubles when Ruairi was a young lad. The trauma of that family tragedy manifested itself big time in Ruairi after he had played IRA bomber Patrick Magee and moved on to the role of The Player King in a major production of Hamlet.
Lies Where It Falls is Ruairi Conaghan’s before, during and after story of his near-breakdown some ten years ago – forty years after the tragedy.
Janie and I both got a great deal out of this piece and Ruari’s performance.
We stayed on for a panel discussion which included playwright Seamus Finnegan, director, teacher and writer Andy Hinds, plus multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Corie McGowan.
In truth, the panel discussion did far less for us than the gripping piece. But it did give me the opportunity to ask Ruairi the question that had been burning in my mind through most of the play:
IAN: Was/is the process of writing and performing that piece cathartic for you?
RUAIRI: Writing it was cathartic for me, my performing it is cathartic for you, the audience.
Good answer. Good writer. Good performer.
Lies Where It Falls got deservedly rave reviews at Edinburgh this year and should progress to bigger audiences elsewhere than the short run at the Finborough Theatre allows.
