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.
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.
We wanted to like this. The story, about a medical scandal and whistle-blowing, set in rural China in 1992, sounded right up our street.
Playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig makes a compelling case for her play here…
…but we found the play itself stilted in style, the characters one-dimensional and the story rather too unsubtly obvious.
Chinese theatre perhaps has some of the above characteristics embedded in its culture, but Janie and I are familiar enough with China – we’ve been going there on and off since 1993 for goodness sake – we just felt that this play missed many opportunities to make its points more thoughtfully.
We felt that a talented cast was doing its best with a lengthy wooden script, so try as we might we couldn’t muster the desire to return for 75-80 minutes more after the interval.
A rare miss from the Hampstead these days, although we have noticed a sense of “playing it safe” creeping in to the upstairs scheduling; hence we’re booking less up there. Our next visit will be downstairs.
This is a fascinating and original piece of theatre.
The audience sits in a circle. Each member of the audience receives a book, which we are taken through as the performance goes on. At some stages of the performance, audience members are asked to read lines or passages of text.
If it sounds weird, that’s because it is weird. But it is a play; the performances are excellent and memorable.
Tim Crouch is an interesting playwright and performer. We have seen his work before; Adler & Gibb which we really liked, plus The Author which we found impenetrable.
This evening’s short (70 minute) piece was not impenetrable but you did need to interpret pictures form the book as well as the words to get the gist of the story. I enjoyed that part of the process more than Janie did.
I was also quite comfortable reading out loud a bit, which I did, while Janie scrupulously avoided eye contact with the performers to be sure that she wasn’t picked for reading out loud.
I am glad that I bought a copy of the book – which is available in paperback to buy – not the hardbacks lent out for performance – because the illustrations as well as the words are a pleasure to look at again and again.
Amsterdam – Keizersgracht Click picture for attribution and link
Gosh, this was a truly fascinating short play at the Orange Tree – our first venture to see a play for some while and a great start, from our point of view, to our autumn season at the theatre. We were seeing a preview.
This is not a naturalistic piece. The cast of four narrate the piece, about an unnamed Israeli violinist who is 9 months pregnant living in an apartment in Amsterdam, on the Keizersgracht (one of the canal-side streets).
Are we merely being taken on a voyage through the violinists own febrile, paranoid imaginings or is this a thriller about the uncovering of secrets from Amsterdam’s era of Nazi occupation or are we witnessing a strange brew, mixing those things?
Janie would have preferred some more answers by the end of it, whereas I thought this 80 minute piece was very deliberately leaving a trail of enigmas and unanswerable questions, while at the same time keeping us entertained and weaving sufficient plot lines to tell a story.
All four cast members were excellent; we’d seen Fiston Barek and Hara Yannas recently at the Orange Tree. Daniel Abelson and Michal Horowicz were also strong.
We’d also seen director Matthew Xia’s work at the Orange Tree recently. The style is a bit “workshoppy”, but I think that is the nature of the play and it is hard to imagine how the piece might work in a more stagey syle.
But the greatest plaudits from me go to the writing. I have now read and seen one heck of a lot of plays, so it is rare now to find a writer’s voice so novel and pleasing. For sure I will look out for Maya Arad Yasur’s work again.
Did Janie and I decompress/discuss at length over Spanish food at Don Fernando’s this time? Of course we did.
Did we get home in time to see Bianca Andreescu beat Serena Williams at Flushing? Yes, but only because Bianca kindly lost 4 games in a row (including a championship point) to keep the match alive long enough for us to get home and see the last two games.
Anyway, returning to the subject of Amsterdam at The Orange Tree; it’s running until 12 October 2019 and we would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes imaginative, modern drama.
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.
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.
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.
Mike Hodd (see headline picture) is one of the founders of the show, was a mainstay at our writers meetings in the 1990s and is a fairly regular attendee at Ivan Shakespeare dinners.
For some reason, Mike roped me into liaising with Emma and Shannon at the Canal Cafe to help pull together the 40th anniversary event.
I take very little credit for the superb evening that ensued, but I did contribute some archival material and I did stitch up some NewsRevue alums by gathering names and serial numbers through the e-mail connections.
I also suggested that the event include a smoker, in line with a tradition we had back in the 1990s of having after show parties at which we performed party pieces. Mike particularly liked that idea so it simply had to happen.
But the organisation of the event was really down to Emma, Shannon and the team who did a cracking job.
First up was a pre show drinks reception, at which some of us (encouraged to dress up), looked like this:
Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and Me.
Then we watched the current show. An excellent troupe comprising Dorothea Jones, Brendan Mageean, Gabrielle De Saumarez and Rhys Tees under Tim MacArthur’s directorship.
Before the smoker, Shannon and the team played us a wonderful 40th anniversary video compilation of pictures and video clips from across the decades. Here is that very vid:
I was proud to have supplied some of the clippings contained therein and moved to see the video and ponder on just what 40 years of a show really means.
Then the smoker. I was really delighted that current/recent cast and crew joined in the idea and chipped in with their own party pieces, which were very entertaining.
From our own “Class of ’92, there were several contributions, captured pictorially by Graham Robertson, with thanks to him for the following pics.
Mike Hodd made two excellent contributions to the smoker;
a very amusing stand up set in which he somehow managed to extract humour from Parkinson’s disease. I shall never again be able to dissociate in my mind the film Fatal Attraction from the affliction fecal impaction;
a slow build routine in which he was an auctioneer trying to fob off some utter tat as masterpieces. Great fun.
Gerry Goddin
Gerry Goddin performed an audience participation routine in which we joined in a song about “mutton dressed as lamb” to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown. Gerry dealt with my heckling so masterfully that some people thought the heckles had been planted; they had not.
Barry Grossman
Barry performed a stand up comedy routine with masterful poise. I thought we were all supposed to be writers who cannot perform.
I wanted to celebrate one of my classic songs from 1992; the second of mine to be performed in the show but a perennial:
Chris Stanton was the performer who made my debut contributions to NewsRevue such a success in 1992. He too was at this party and performed a couple of classics brilliantly well; A Loan Again and also John Random’s classic 0898 song. No photo of the Chris’s performance as yet – unless Graham finds one of those amongst his collection.
Jonny Hurst also celebrated John Random’s ouevre with a rendition of the wonderful “Tell Laura A Liver”.
This was in part done to honour John Random’s recent selfless act to donate a kidney out of pure altruism to an anonymous recipient. To complete the honouring of that extraordinary good deed, Jonny and I jointly segued the liver song into a visceral medley including a specific piece we put together to honour John’s donation:
WHO DO YOU THINK GOT YOUR KIDNEY, MR RANDOM?
(Lyric to the Tune of “Who Do You think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”)
THE MAIN REFRAIN
Who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Since your organ donation? Was it a girl for to stop her renal pain? Was it a boy who can take the piss again? So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
FIRST MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns – he came to town The age of twenty-one He did assume a nom de plume And took the name Random.
FIRST REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
SECOND MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns did not return With kidney number one But kept his sense of humour… (pause) …And is ready with his pun.
SECOND REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
It was a great party, it was a terrific show and it was a superb smoker. A truly memorable event to celebrate 40 years of a wonderful show.
As John Random said in his preamble to the smoker, NewsRevue has initiated so many careers and transformed so many lives over those decades. And for those of us who have formed enduring friendships, it is hard to express our gratitude to Mike Hodd and those who have kept the NewsRevue torch burning week in week out for forty years and counting.
A rare miss for us at the Bush Studio. Nothing wrong with this play or the production, but it simply didn’t float our boats. It sounded modern, witty, interesting from the description, but in truth it is simply the story of an extra-marital affair.
I got a bit more out of it than Janie did, in that I felt able to enter the couple’s world. But in truth the story was very simple and the characters were so much the architects of their own misfortune it was hard to sympathise with them.
Below is the trailer for this play/production:
We ran into a gentleman I know as a nodding acquaintance from the health club, BWW, who sat virtually next to us. I wonder what he and his companion made of it. I might one day find out.
Janie was underwhelmed by the acting. I thought both were fine, I think it was the roles that were underwhelming and that the man, Jon Foster, in particular did not seem especially well cast. We’ve seen him several times before when, in my view, better cast and therefore better able to shine.
What Janie and I both agreed was that we didn’t sense the sexual chemistry the play was supposed to conjure. But we did have Nuki afterwards, by which I mean, a takeaway meal from Nuki’s Thai Kitchen. Very tasty.
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.
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.
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:
In late May, I got this slightly strange message from Rohan Candappa:
Ian, are you around on 18 June? I’m doing a reading of a new piece of work about getting an eye test and the meaning of life at The Gladstone.
As it happened, that afternoon was the only slot I had available to go into the City to do City-based work stuff and that evening also happened to be a free evening.
As it turned out, the day became a flurry of unwanted activity (not least a hoo-ha with Axa PPP regarding Janie) and then a bit of a rush to complete my City work, but still I got to The Glad in time for a pie, drink and chat with the pre-show diners, not least Johnny Eltham and Rich “The Rock” Davis.
Johnny Eltham was in especially skittish mood that evening, making some unusually disparaging remarks about my Jacobean music and mode. The Rock was his usually Rock-like self.
Others in attendance that evening included Paul Driscoll, Simon Ryan, Steve Butterworth, Dave French, Terry Bush, Jan and her friend Charmaigne, David Wellbrook and we were also blessed by the presence of The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey.
Last but not least, some minutes into Rohan’s performance, the late Nigel Boatswain arrived.
Something a bit misty-optic-like about the lighting
The setting; an Optometrist’s practice, is not exactly home turf for me, as I don’t yet need anything to adjust my eyes and have only had my eyes tested twice in that regard.
The phrase, “is it better with or without”, used many times, apparently, in the search for the optimal optical specification, provided the basis for Rohan to wander off on an existential angst-fest in which the said search might be a proxy for the meaning of life.
As is always the case with Rohan’s work, the narrative takes you into some detailed areas about which you have thought little, then makes you think about some big stuff and also at times makes you laugh a lot.
For reasons that seemed to make sense at the time but to which I cannot really back track, Rohan ended up getting the audience, led by John Eltham, to sing (or rather, “dah-da-da”) the theme to The Great Escape.
I feel bound to say that Johnny Eltham’s efforts dah-da-da-ing that particular tune ranged from poor on melody/harmony to utterly dire on rhythm. Elmer Bernstein was no doubt turning in his grave. And after all those back-handed compliments and disparaging remarks from Johnny about my Jacobean musical efforts too.
After his performance, Rohan told the assembled throng about Threadmash and asked David Wellbrook to retell his moving piece on the subject of Lost and Found from Threadmash 2 (below currently is my piece from that Threadmash – but I might at some stage persuade David to let me publish his Threadmash 2 piece as a guest piece:
It was a very stimulating evening and/but I was really quite tired once the performances were over, so I made my excuses and left promptly. Terry also left at the same time as me, so we had a chance to chat pleasantly until we parted company at Bank, where east is east and west is west.
So is life better with or without evenings like this? With – no question. Thanks, Rohan.
I have long been a fan of Caryl Phillips‘s writing; I discovered his novels in the mid 1980s and have several of his books in hard cover.
So I was excited to see that he had written a play, although, when I booked Strange Fruit at The Bush, I didn’t realise that it was an early work, written in the early 1980s, prior to the first of the novels.
I think Janie and I saw a preview, although it is hard to tell at The Bush when press night might be without doing deep research.
In any case, we found the production slick and the acting truly excellent.
Written and set in the early 1980s, the play covers some fascinating aspects of African-Caribbean culture and issues from that time, many of which resonate strongly with issues of migration and identity in our current troubled times.
In truth, the play is somewhat unsubtle, starting in a rather tinny, scene-setting style and tending towards melodrama at the end, in ways that Caryl Phillips clearly ironed out as a writer very soon after writing this play.
But there are flashes of brilliance in the writing and the characters, while somewhat stereotypical, are tragic and engaging.
In fact, the whole piece is engaging throughout; although the play is rather long for the simple story it tells, the piece held our attention throughout.
This is not a play that will cheer you up if you seek some light entertainment. It will make you think about the issues and if you like visceral drama then it is most certainly for you.
.jpg)
