Category: Theatre

Game by Mike Bartlett, Almeida Theatre, 28 February 2015

This was a truly shocking piece. In a good way.

Shocking, as in, it left us feeling really quite shaken and discombobulated.

In a way, this was immersive theatre. The Almeida was reconfigured, such that the audience was divided into sections in sort-of booths, from which you could see some of the action live and the rest on screens. You have to wear headphones to hear everything, which increases the confusion between the real and the virtual.

The conceit of the play is that some people who cannot afford good housing choose to live in an attractive-looking home, but the price is that they are spied upon by sadistic paying customers who are allowed to shoot stun darts at the residents “for fun”.

It is a horrible thought. The story plays out in interesting ways, not all predictable. The experience is disconcerting, because, as an audience member, you feel somewhat complicit in the voyeurism and sadism playing out before your eyes and on the screen. Occasionally some of the action takes place within your booth itself.

It made us think about the housing crisis, the ways that computer games and so-called reality television are encroaching on people’s lives and more besides.

 

Excellent resource on the Almeida site about this play/production, including quotes from many reviews and links to full text for some – sparing me the trouble – click here.

We left the Almeida genuinely feeling in a state of shock and spent much of the remainder of the weekend talking about this play/production.

An Almeida special as far as we were concerned.

The Wasp by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 20 February 2015

Janie and I thought this was a really excellent play/production; once again the tiny Hampstead Theatre Downstairs proving to be one of the hottest tickets in town.

Sinéad Matthews is a very special up and coming actress. We first spotted her more than 10 years ago, in The Wild Duck at the Donmar, when she was but a nipper. I don’t think she only does plays named after species of fauna. We have subsequently seen her in Giving, again at the Hampstead Downstairs – click here.

Mercifully the Hampstead now has a good resource for each play/production – click here for The Wasp – as that downstairs space eschews formal reviews and I somehow mislaid the little leaflet thing they give out by way of a programme.

In a way this play is a classic revenge tragedy played out in modern terms in the present day. Perhaps some aspects of the coincidence seemed unlikely when you think deeply about the plot afterwards, but as the story plays out the evening was captivating.

Janie and I like these short plays – 90 minutes or so without an interval – when they are done well such plays/productions keep us gripped from start to finish and we feel thoroughly satisfied afterwards…sans bum ache.

The Wasp deservedly got a West End transfer later that year, but Sinéad Matthews didn’t transfer with it. Nevertheless:

I am pretty sure that Janie and I preceded our Friday evening trip to the Hampstead with a meal at Harry Morgans, so we got home early and thoroughly satisfied that evening.

How to Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris, Royal Court Theatre, 14 February 2015

I have written elsewhere about the Vicky Featherstone regime at the Royal Court seeming to have a relentlessly miserablist agenda.

Janie and I don’t mind gloomy stuff. Crickey, you wouldn’t choose the sorts of theatre that we choose if all you wanted was feel good rom-coms and musicals. But relentless and extreme miserablism?

I can’t remember quite such a quintessentially down-hearted play as How to Hold Your Breath for a long time.

Part of the problem I had with it was my inability to buy into the notion that a financial crisis might have a young, successful, professional Northern-European (presumably German) woman descend from yuppydom to prostitution/migration in but a few days.

Yes of course it is meant to be an expressionistic-type dream play. But to suspend belief sufficiently to buy into a thesis (but for fortune, it might be Europeans desperate to migrate to Africa and the Middle East, not the other way around) it needs sufficient plausibility, which this lacked.

So instead of making its worthy and at times interesting points about inequality, economic power and migration well, it seemed to ram them down our throats to the extent that I (and Janie agreed) almost wanted to throw the metaphorical babies out with the bathwater. Which is a horrible way of putting it, given this play’s unsettling and shocking denouement.

All a great shame because the cast were excellent. Maxine Peake really can act; indeed all of them can. The design was stylish; it was just the unsubtle play that didn’t do it for us. We normally like Zinnie Harris’s plays; we just didn’t like this one.

I can’t remember how we tried to make ourselves feel a bit better with food afterwards – probably Ranoush shawarmas or possibly Mohsen’s Iranian-style kebabs.

 

Little Light by Alice Birch, Orange Tree Theatre, 7 February 2015

Janie and I were on a bit of a roll at that time, as was The Orange Tree.

Little Light by Alice Birch – click here for the Orange Tree resource on that production – was really good.

In some ways this was yet another family drama, but it was very well written and performed. It kept us awake and interested throughout.

Plenty of one-liner reviews in the Orange Tree link above:

 

Islands by Caroline Horton, Bush Theatre, 24 January 2015

We thought this play and its production were just awful.

I seem to recall that it ran straight through without an interval; had there been an interval we would not have returned for the second half of this one. Perhaps there was and we didn’t. The whole experience was so bad we’ve mostly blotted it from our minds.

The subject matter – tax havens and the greed of the super rich – is fair game for theatre. But this was like a really bad copy of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi style with almost no substance – opportunities missed.

If you want to know more about the production, the Bush has a decent stub on it – click here.

I could go on, but I won’t.

 

The Chronicles of Kalki by Aditi Brennan Kapil, Gate Theatre, 9 January 2015

Janie and I went to see this play/production during the hiatus between mum’s death and the funeral. Mum would have wanted us to go ahead with the theatre visit, that’s for sure.

I remember the show being quite magical and fun. Not deep and profound; but a modern telling/adaptation of Indian mythology. It was a good evening at the theatre.

The Gate Theatre has preserved an excellent resource on this production – click here. Why there seems to be an inverse relationship between the ability of arts organisations to put up excellent archive resources on the web compared with their size and scale is a discussion for elsewhere.

Perhaps if we had been more in the mood for challenging theatre we’d have felt more critical too – as it was, Janie and I both enjoyed the escapism of it and some good acting by a young, talented cast.

I think I served up a splendid Big Al pasta dish and salad when we got home, but really my memories of that week are all a bit blurry.

Tiger Country by Nina Raine, Hampstead Theatre, 12 December 2014

Talk about bad timing.

Less than a week earlier we’d seen a play about dementia (albeit a truly excellent one), while mum’s dementia was fast deteriorating:

Visitors by Barney Norris, Bush Theatre, 6 December 2014

…little did we know that we were seeing this play about NHS hospital chaos less than a fortnight before mum was to make her final, one-way trip to such a place.

In truth, although we quite enjoyed this play/production, we found it a bit fast and furious without really saying all that much. We’d felt similarly about the police one, Wildefire, at the same venue a few weeks before:

Wildefire by Roy Williams, Hampstead Theatre, 7 November 2014

As with Wildefire, there was some great acting, some wonderful lines and some super vignettes in there. Indira Varma was excellent, as usual; in fact the whole cast was good.

Perhaps it was just a bit too near the bone for me – not just in the mum aspect but also because I was doing so much work with NHS Foundation Trusts at that time. Definitely worth seeing, but no wow factor for either of us.

Below is a “behind the scenes” video:

Below is the actual trailer for the production:

Here is a link to the reviews – the critics pretty-much universally loved the piece.

Visitors by Barney Norris, Bush Theatre, 6 December 2014

This was a really excellent piece, performed beautifully.

We went to see this only a month before mum died, by which time her dementia was getting rapidly worse. So I went with a mixture of trepidation and eager expectation.

I needn’t have worried – the play handled dementia as its central theme with great balance and dignity. An excellent effort from a young playwright in his 20s.  Barney Norris, you are now on our watch list.

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

All of the performances were good, but Linda Bassett and Robin Soans were both exceptional.

There’s a neat little interview with Barney Norris (playwright) and Eleanor Wyld, one of the performers:

Mostly well received by the critics – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.

Solomon And Marion by Lara Foot, The Print Room At The Coronet, 28 November 2014

We rather liked this piece.

Very South African. It reminded us of Athol Fugard’s style of rural chamber plays.

Both of the performers were excellent – we expected nothing less from Janet Suzman but Khayalethu Anthony was also excellent.

Here is a link to a search term that finds the (mostly excellent) reviews.

We’d like to see more Print Room at the Coronet, but since this piece, on the whole they seem to be choosing stuff that isn’t up our street. Sort it out, Print Room folk.

 

Chimera by Deborah Stein, Gate Theatre, 21 November 2014

Chock full of interesting ideas, this one generated lots of topics for me and Janie to discuss afterwards and had some lovely vignettes within it, yet it didn’t work quite so well for either of us as a coherent piece of drama.

Here is a link the The Gate resource on this production.

Still we enjoyed and were glad we saw this production.

I think it left some of the critics as confused as we were – click here for a search term that finds the reviews.