Tag: Ed Lewis

Scarlett by Colette Kane, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 4 March 2017

I’m almost boring myself by going on about how good the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs is, so goodness knows what effect such comments are having on long-suffering Ogblog readers. But by gosh the quality of productions and performances is high.

The one paragraph description of Scarlett – a play about a woman who escapes to try and start afresh in the Welsh countryside – might not have caught our eye as being different enough, but we set that “synopsis bar” a little lower for the Hampstead Downstairs, as we so consistently enjoy our evenings there.

Yet again, we are so glad we chose to book this one.

Interestingly (and unusually) it is pretty much an all woman production – i.e. the writer, director, designer and all five performers are women.

Here’s a link to the excellent Hampstead resource on this production for all the details.

We had seen a Colette Kane play at the Hampstead Downstairs before; “I Know How I Feel About Eve” about four years ago – that will be Ogblogged in the fullness of time – for now here is a link to an introductory piece/mini-interview with Colette Kane at that time.

In both Colette Kane plays we have seen so far, the writing is delightful and thought provoking. Perhaps she has yet entirely to find her own voice. She is clearly a playwright steeped in modern theatre who knows how to cherry-pick style and tone without quite making her pieces unmistakably her own.

Still, Scarlett is a really superb 75-80 minutes of drama. All five performers are excellent, especially Kate Ashfield as the eponymous lead. All five surprise us a little at some point in the drama, but without interrupting a natural-seeming flow to the simple but compelling story.

Scarlett is very well directed too, by Mel Hillyard. We have seen her work before, quite recently; The Brink at the Orange Tree last April. We were very impressed then too. A young director to watch, methinks.

We started the evening by bumping into John and Linda – a couple we know simply because we quite regularly see them at theatres and who coincidentally (it transpires) live just across the road from the Notting Hill Gate flat. They were seeing Sex With Strangers upstairs – a production that didn’t appeal to us for booking. Janie and I rounded off our evening with some Iranian food from Mohsen.

At the time of writing, Scarlett still has three weeks to run. Janie and I would both recommend it thoroughly to people who enjoy top notch productions of well-crafted, short plays in small theatres.

Platinum by Hannah Patterson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 10 December 2016

Ged Ukulele Barefoot Ladd, not singing “This Land Is Your Land”

Hmm.

We very rarely see a dud downstairs at the Hampstead – Ed Hall’s project to put works on down there regularly has been a raging success as far as we are concerned.

But sadly, I feel obliged to report that this one, to us, was a dud.

The idea sounded great. An iconic 1970s protest songstress, now a recluse, with an estranged daughter and a fundamentally important secret about that iconic career.

Trouble is, that’s about it, plot-wise. The important secret has a rather “so what?”, tenuous feeling about it, while the motivation of the characters to behave as they do/had done in the past, if the secret was so important to them, was utterly dubious.

It was also difficult to care for even one of the three characters, each irritating in their own way: the iconic songstress, the estranged aspiring chanteuse daughter, and the Californian PhD student who has been studying the icon for six years only then to act as the catalyst for the wafer-thin plot to unfold.

Daisy nodded off about 20 minutes into the piece, once it became clear where it was (and wasn’t) going.

I persevered.

I wondered whether the PhD student’s explanation of protest song types, rhetorical and magnetic, was something the playwright had invented for him or whether it was an actual media studies/sociology course thing. Turns out it is the latter and that the explanation as expounded by the character can be found in the Wikipedia entry on protest songs under “types” and that this particular classification should be credited to the late R. Serge Denisoff, bless him.

The actors sang some protest songs along the way, closing with We Shall Overcome and at one point rendering This Land Is Your Land, quite well.

I rather like the latter song but Janie, tragically not steeped in media studies or the sociology of popular culture, perceives it as a nationalistic US song rather than Woody Guthrie’s intended protest song and has banned me from singing it on my ukulele in her presence. She should click the link I have added to the phrase This Land Is Your Land and look at some of the original lyrics. In particular, the verse that reads:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.

…that verse might come back into fashion some time soon. But they didn’t sing that verse in this rather bland play. Pity.

Alligators by Andrew Keatley, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 16 July 2016

By gosh this is one powerful play, with this production proving once again that the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs is one of the hottest locations in London at the moment for showcasing modern plays and emerging talent.

This one all-but caused a domestic between me and Janie. Yes, we both agreed what a good play it was. But our take diverged on the moral dilemmas therein and the extent to which the protagonist was to some extent the architect of his own misfortune as well as the subject of great sympathy.

The plot is simple enough; the protagonist, Daniel (played extremely well by Alec Newman) is a teacher, falsely accused of sex offences by a delusional former pupil, years after the alleged offences.

The complexity comes from Daniel’s less-than-exemplary interactions with the troubled schoolgirl at the time, his with-holding of some of the relevant contextual information from the police when first questioned and his troubling interest in internet porn of the kind that bears a creepy resemblance to the alleged offences.

Janie and I debated our divergent takes on this play to some extent during the interval and more vociferously on the way home in the comfort of our own vehicle. Frankly, I think we were both somewhat in shock.

While Janie and I were personally reconciled by the time we got home and started tucking in to our shawarma supper, we only realised the next morning when we rose to prepare for a day at Lord’s, that we had rapidly polished off a tasty bottle of Jip Jip Rocks Shiraz in double-quick time, which left us both a little sore-headed until the fresh air of Lord’s started to weave its magic on our fevered brows.

As well as Alec Newman, Susan Stanley as Daniel’s unquestionably sympathy-deserving wife, Sally, was an absolute standout in a generally very good cast and production. The full works Hampstead production details can be found on the theatre’s archive – here.

We saw the last night of the run at the Hampstead, but this production really deserves a tour and/or transfer so here’s hoping it will return/run elsewhere.

Recommendations: yes, do see this play if you possibly can. No, don’t fall out over it; the dilemmas are meant to leave you feeling confused, cognitively dissonant and angry. No, don’t knock back a whole bottle of strong wine between two of you afterwards in a vain attempt to make your whirling brain feel better; doesn’t work.