Word-Play was definitely not a miss for us, far from it, although Janie did find the short scenes with the actors playing different characters in different times and places more than a little disconcerting.
But we both agreed that the acting by all five cast members; Issam Al Ghussain, Kosar Ali, Simon Manyonda, Sirine Saba, and Yusra Warsama, was superb. Many of the scenes worked terrifically well, especially the more intimate ones. Word-Play is a very ambitious piece of writing and we shall certainly look out for Rabiah Hussain’s work again.
I have an idea for a musical. It is called The Last Five Decades. The musical opens at the end of the story.
Writer, Ivan Hershey, optimistically sings, “Technically Speaking, You Are Not Really A Shiksa, Goddess”, while actress, Leylah Wasp, laments, “Still Kvetching”.
The story goes back in time more than forty years, until a finale, in which we see Leylah’s dad, Jim, in his youth, mournfully singing “Stereotype” at a meeting for budding college journalists. Jim imagines that he looks like Terry Hall from The Specials, but actually, as he is sporting a Spurs scarf and Doc Martens, Jim inadvertently projects the look of a right wing yob. Unaware that five decades of friendship are about to be launched, young Ivan tries to disconcert Jim by cheerfully belting out “Children Of The Wind”from Rags, evoking the intrepid spirit of refugee diaspora people everywhere.
In many ways, going to the Garrick Theatre to see The Last Five Years felt a bit like going to a familiar but occasionally-visited city like Manchester. Although London is of course my home City and under normal circumstances Janie & I see stuff regularly, this was our first trip “up west” for more than 18 months. It was the first time I’d been on the Tube for more than 18 months.
Queues and sanitiser…We did as we were told and got there early
Lockdown of course changed all our lives in a great many ways. One of those ways, for me, was that I started to take singing lessons from Lydia. My early music teacher, Ian Pittaway, says that her work with me has been utterly transformational and he means that in a good way. He even forgave her for blowing out my singing lesson last week, in order to fit in an additional rehearsal for The Last Five Years. Ian says I don’t need a note, Lydia.
The Garrick folk handed us this note
Was Lydia good in this show? Of course she was. Superb. She has tremendous stage presence to add to her technical abilities acting and singing.
Her opposite number for the afternoon, Lenny Turner, a debutante in this production, was excellent too.
In truth, Janie and I are really not musicals people, so the show itself is not to our taste. But we can appreciate a solidly professional and excellent production when we see one, which this most certainly was.
Janie and I found ourselves sitting quite close to “Lydia’s contingent”, with John, Mandy & Bella a couple of rows behind us; Mandy’s sister Mary & her husband Alan immediately behind us. Their daughters next to us…
…I probably hadn’t seen Mary & Alan since John & Mandy’s wedding more than 30 years ago. Nevertheless, Mary apparently spotted me immediately on arrival in the auditorium and told Alan that she had spotted me. So now I know; lying low for 30 years and wearing an FFP2 mask is insufficient disguise if I want to hide from Mandy’s kin.
After the show, we all gathered outside the theatre beside the stage door. As well as the above crowd, Angela (from those good old days) was there, as were a great many other people we were meeting for the first time; one of Mandy’s friends from Saffron Walden, Lydia’s boyfriend Jack, his family, plus many of Lydia’s friends and colleagues.
Janie had a long-standing engagement with her Samaritans cohort that evening, so had pre-warned us that she wouldn’t be able to stay for drinks; she left us about half an hour after the show, at which point we were still waiting for Lydia to emerge through the stage door. I wonder whether we looked like a bunch of groupies? Who cares.
Soon enough, Lydia did emerge to enjoy a further rapturous greeting and we soon set off for Koha in St Martins Court.
The fortunes smiled on us. The weather was mild and dry. Koha seemed able to provide us with as much seating outside as we needed to imbibe and chat at length. A couple of hours simply flew by, before we all went our separate ways.
But the main purpose of the day had been to support Lydia’s performance in the Last Five Years. It really was a delight to see her performing so well and so thrilled at the end of the day with how well it had all gone.
…we were really looking forward to the other piece running concurrently at the Finborough, Checkpoint Chana, but we found it comparatively disappointing.
The topic is interesting – an academic/poet accused of making anti-Semitic references in one of her poems. But as a play it really didn’t work. The poet is also meant to be a soak – so there’s a lot of soak-laden drama involved, which tends to leave us cold.
There’s a lot of telling rather than showing in this play – which tilts it towards melodrama.
I thought it was almost a good short play, but could have done with a heavy prune/edit/revision. Janie really didn’t like it and thought the whole thing beyond redemption.
The subject matter overlaps with several plays we have seen lately – not least the notion of bad parenting sometimes emanating as much if not more from the mother than the father. Also the notion of major personality and mental health issues being passed down the line.
…but in the case of Yous Two, these serious issues are portrayed in a mostly comedic, or at least light-hearted style. The mother is dead and the father is trying his best…which isn’t to say that he is doing very well in many of the parenting departments. The daughter is sassy and clever and wants life to progress for her in a hurry.
I was more impressed by the play and the acting than I was by the set. The whole play takes place in the tiny bathroom of the father and daughter’s grubby pad. The (perhaps unnecessary) full length panels depicting the outside and inside walls of the bathroom adversely affected sight lines for most of the audience, at one end or both. I think that could have been avoided without detracting from the claustrophobic feel.
Worse; the layout of the bathroom was contrary to all common sense – with the toilet backing on to the inside wall and the radiator backing on to the outside wall. Yes I know some botched up bathrooms might end up designed that way, but given the sight-line problem and the illogical nature of the obstacles causing the sight-line problem…
If directors can get type cast in the same way as actors, Chelsea might expect to be directing plays set in bathrooms for the rest of her career now…so she should get her head around plumbing and the basics of design around utility services. I did also wonder, briefly, whether the notion of “kitchen sink drama” has now been superseded by a new genre; “bathroom tub drama”…yes, I obsessed.
So to get back to the bit that really matters, we did really like the play and we thought all of the performances were very good.
All of the protagonists were there the night we went – Chelsea Walker, Georgia Christou the writer etc, as we were there on a preview night.
Unusually for downstairs, there was a proper programme for this show and apparently there will be a press night and formal reviews. Perhaps there has been a permanent change of policy downstairs?…the ushers were unsure. We have long felt it is a shame that some of the wonderful things we have seen downstairs don’t get formal reviews, although we did understand the “freedom for experimentation and innovation” thinking behind the policy. Times change.
