Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production, which we saw in preview. The acting was superb. The direction and design very high quality, as we have come to expect at The Royal Court over the decades.
This play was seemingly superficial, yet beneath its slight surface are some fascinating issues of our times. The “joke” that this family is spending its together time with each individual surfing their own virtual world quickly became tiresome – especially as some of audience members nearby were finding it hilarious. But that humorous conceit was soon revealed as a foreshadowing of some darker elements of the characters’ inner/virtual worlds.
Yes, as some of the critics have said, not a lot happens, but this particular “not a lot” is both amusing and highly thought-provoking.
OK, I have a confession to make.
When I booked this, my main criterion for booking it was a recollection that one of Michael Wynne’s previous plays, The People Are Friendly, had pleased us both a lot.
2002, we saw this at The Royal Court (not yet Ogblogged)
Soon after the start of Cuckoo, which shares a couple of the lead actresses and Royal Court production aspects with The People Are Friendly, I realised that we had not liked The People Are Friendly; we found it soap-opera-ish and not to our taste. I was confusing The People Are Friendly with Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice:
I shall revisit the play text of The People Are Friendly before writing up our 2002 experience, as it is possible that I will read more into that play now than we did 20 years ago.
Anyway, apologies to Messrs Wynne and Bean for the confusion. The word “People” in the title shouldn’t be enough for such a muddle really. I just jumped to a conclusion…
…and talking of conclusions, Janie and I both thought the ending of Cuckoo was really rather wonderful, both as a coup de theatre and also as a piece of stage design.
Our first visit to the theatre for quite a while. The Covid pandemic stopped us in our theatre-going tracks back in March 2020.
Indeed we nearly missed out on this one. I had booked for us to see a preview on 22 January, but the week before the Royal Court wrote to me saying they had to cancel the first few previews due to…you guessed it…Covid.
I called to see if we could get decent seats to see the play relatively early in the run. I spoke with a helpful-sounding Royal Courtier on the phone.
Now let’s see. You were booked in seats E9 & E10 for the preview…
…I can offer you E8 and E9 exactly two weeks later, the evening of 5 February.
Problem solved, I thought. But mischievously instead I said:
…but E8 & E9 is not the same thing as E9 & E10.
I heard a gulp at the other end of the phone, so I thought best to put the poor fellow out of his misery quickly.
…joking! Problem solved.
Ironically, as it turned out, no-one sat in E10 on the evening itself and someone rather tall was sitting in front of E8, so we did, in the end, occupy E9 & E10.
But that’s not so weird a story, whereas the play is a seriously weird story. Here’s the teaser:
I thought the play was wonderful and awe-inspiring. A sort-of pastiche of scary folk tales and fables, a sort of exploration into perennial abuse of women through the ages and the meaning of autonomy.
Alistair McDowall’s plays are a bit like that. Janie and I both absolutely loved Pomona…
…whereas The Glow split our jury, as had X – the other McDowall we had seen at the Royal Court some five years ago. Janie found elements of The Glow disturbing and was disconcerted by the extreme time-hopping involved.
Janie was not quite as disconcerted as the young woman who was sitting in front of us, who nearly jumped out of her skin at the coup de theatre that signalled the end of the first half of the play. The young lady told us after the play that she had recovered herself and enjoyed the play as a whole.
My own praise for the fascinating play also extends to the superb cast. Ria Zmitrowicz was truly excellent in the lead, ably supported by Rakie Ayola, Fisayo Akinade and Tadhg Murphy. Vicky Featherstone sure knows how to direct and produce this sort of play – who knew?
Not the easiest watch for those easing their way out of the pandemic, but if you want to see a full tilt piece of spellbinding theatre, The Glow might well do the job for you. It certainly did so for me.
…we wondered whether we’d done the right thing booking this – especially as the Royal Court rubric on the piece was vague, even by Royal Court vague rubric standards. Click here for a link to the unhelpful material.
The little videos in the Royal Court information resource on this production really do not do justice to the piece or to the production’s creators.
We’d also been impressed by Kate O’Flynn when we’d seen her perform.
This production of All Of It is only running for eight performances over the next few days, so change your plans, beg the Royal Court to find you a ticket, do anything to get to see it. It is 45 minutes of theatrical delight.
Actually, it is 42-43 minutes of theatrical delight. For the first two or three minutes we were both thinking, “oh-oh”, until we realised what was going on and how the piece was going to unfold.
Then we could relax and enjoy a virtuoso performance of a rather brilliant piece of writing.
The piece is basically a short, lyrical monologue about an ordinary woman’s life. All of it.
Just take our advice and get to see it, but you’ll have to be quick. If you miss the next few days, start nagging the Royal Court to transfer it or put it on again because this production really deserves to be seen by lots of people and should give pleasure to far more people than eight-Royal-Court-houses.
The Alun Armstrong character is a deputy headmaster, a teacher of 45 years standing, who is due to retire. Maggie Steed is his wife and Nicola Walker is their estranged daughter.
I don’t think it is a spoiler to explain that the central aspect of the controversy in which the central character is embroiled is his use of the cane, until corporal punishment was prohibited in the mid 1980s…
…or is it? The play’s title is The Cane, so it must simply be about that topic. Certainly the cane is a central artifact to the plot…
…yet much of the story doesn’t really add up. Would modern school children really riot against a teacher, days before his retirement, simply because he used to administer the cane 30+ years ago? Surely there must be more to it than that?
Similarly, much of the family’s back story doesn’t exactly add up or reconcile between their memories either. Axe marks on the wall are a visible example throughout the piece.
Janie saw these conundrums (or do I mean conundra?) as signs of weakness in the plot, but I thought the cane was a metaphor for the use of violence as a disciplinary measure generally. I thought the play was a metaphor for power struggles and violence within institutions like schools, within families, between teachers and pupils, between husbands, wives and children.
Still, it was hard to sympathize with any of the characters. In particular, the Maggie Steed character seemed at once pathetically weak and yet hell-bent on making forceful, irreversible decisions in an attempt to assert some element of power. I think Maggie Steed’s voice was failing on our night, which hopefully is a passing issue, but her floundering gestures didn’t really work for either of us. Perhaps she can control and channel those a bit more convincingly between preview and press night.
Janie didn’t find Alun Armstrong’s character sinister enough either, whereas I thought his manner of suppressed violence disguised by a kindly veneer was sufficiently creepy or sinister for me. Vincent Price without the ham.
Similarly, for me, the Nicola Walker character was sinister. We couldn’t get to the bottom of her motivation, even by the end of the play, but I think that air of mystery was the writer’s intention. At first you wondered how this person could be the daughter of those parents – by the end I thought I could see the echoes – a different style of controlling behaviour and a different style of violence – but still those characteristics to the fore.
Personally, I liked the debate about education within the play. In the absence of physical discipline through corporal punishment, how do teachers maintain control. (Answer, in my view, mostly by teaching well.)
There was a fascinating speech from Nicola Walker’s character about discipline the modern way in academy schools – a form of, “eyes front at all times, no talking in the corridors between lessons”. I could imagine that being effective as discipline…but I’m not sure I’d have been any more comfortable in that sort of disciplinary environment than I was/would have been in the old-fashioned “threat of corporal punishment” environment.
Whether that debate would seem as interesting or insightful to those mixed up in the education system (either as parents, teachers or pupils) today I have no idea, but it seemed relevant and interesting to me, sitting (as I do) on the outside of education for several decades.
Before the play we got chatting with a woman in the drinks queue who turned out to be Gaynor Churchward…Minnie Driver’s mum. It would have been interesting to have learnt after the show what she thought about the play; her life experience of schooling being rather unusual and very different from either of ours. But we didn’t stick around to chat with anyone – we dashed off for a shawarma supper and a reasonably early night.
I agree with Janie to some extent that the piece might benefit from a little more naturalism and direct tackling of the issues/story, but I still found the production a worthwhile and enjoyable evening in the theatre, in the hands of some expert theatrical operators.
Janie and I loved this short piece. It was funny and intelligent and emotionally complex…
…a superb debut play for Anoushka Warden. It turns out that Anoushka Warden is more or less telling her own story – about growing up with a mother who transforms from a loving parent into an all-but estranged mum running a cult’s outpost in Canada.
It also transpires that Warden works for the Royal Court as head of PR – explained in the interview/preview piece linked here. That might explain why Vicky Featherstone chose to direct it herself but also brought in the very promising director Jude Christian to co-direct.
It’s a one woman show – this must be the first time we have ever been to see a brace of one woman shows in the same weekend – the other being Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at the Gate the previous day:
Actually I think we should start an actress emancipation campaign on the back of this weekend’s experience. In Twilight, Nina Bowers had to play 20 different parts and also serve the intermission tea and biscuits – yes really…
…while My Mum’s A Twat, albeit a less physical show, is running twice nightly, so poor Patsy Ferran will be on the stage for in excess of two and three quarter hours each night with not much more than 30 minutes break between performances.
And what a fine performance My Mum’s A Twat was too.
The main criticism seems to be that monologue itself is a limited dramatic form. I see that point, but it is also a very powerful form when done well…and this one has been done very well. The mixture of humour and sadness really works; you sense that the character/author has been both strengthened and emotionally damaged by her maternal experience.
We don’t have a picture of Anoushka Warden’s mum, so here is a picture of Janie’s mum instead. The use of this picture to illustrate this Ogblog piece does not in any way suggest that we think that Janie’s mum is a twat…
…so in the interests of balance, here is a picture of my mum (who also wasn’t a twat)
At the time of writing, My Mum’s A Twat only has a few more days to run at the Royal Court and is sold out. I hope it will get its deserved extension or transfer so that more people can get to see it.
Many months ago, when I read the sparse Royal Court promotional synopsis of this play, to Janie, she said, “surely not?” But I said, “it sounds weird and intriguing, I’d really like to give this one a go”.
Eric Miller, a Belfast loyalist, believes that his new born granddaughter is Gerry Adams.
I was also attracted by the fact that this was to be a joint production with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and that the magnificent Stephen Rea was going to be in it.
Several months later, when (as is often the case) we have both forgotten what we booked and why, Janie asked me again what the play we were due to see that evening was about. I told her. “I can’t believe we booked that,” said Janie. “It was my idea; my bad if it’s no good. But I have a feeling it’s going to be something special”, I replied.
It really is something special.
When we got to the Royal Court, we went to see Simon David in the bookstall to buy our programme and find out what he thinks. Simon is often quite critical and we don’t always agree with him. “It’s marvellous”, said Simon, “I’ve seen it twice and am hoping to sneak in again this evening to see it for a third time.” He did.
When we sat down, the lady sitting next to me said, “you’re in for a treat this evening. I don’t often come back to see a play a second time, but I’ve come back to see this one again. The acting is just marvellous.”
Frankly, I might look at the script to get my head around some of the incredible dialogue again, but having experienced this extraordinary piece as a member of the audience, once is enough. It is unusual and special and a very clever piece; it is superbly acted, provoking laughter, thought and horror in equal measure. But once is enough.
From the very first scene, when Eric (Stephen Rea) calmly asks his psychiatrist, “why are you a nigger?”, through the flashbacks where we learn of Eric’s delusion about his granddaughter and his back story from the troubles, the piece is funny and yet chilling.
When the play pans out to its inevitably horrific conclusion, of course you know that discrimination, extremism, prejudice and terrorism are no jokes. This play/production works the audience’s cognitive dissonance like a maestro conductor with a great orchestra and a fine symphony.
Highly recommended, but (as they used to say on the telly when I was a child) not for people of a nervous disposition.
Pomona was set in a dystopian Manchester, either in the near future or right now. X is set on a space station on the planet Pluto (“nay, not even a proper planet, a dwarf planet”, I hear you cry) in a dystopian future, perhaps a long time in the future, perhaps sooner than we think.
Vicky Featherstone really is becoming the queen of dystopia; for pity’s sake cheer up, Vicky, it might never happen. But these days you don’t very often go to the Royal Court in search of being cheered up; in some ways you never did. The Royal Court audience loves a good kitchen sink drama and indeed we sort-of got one of those; especially the first act, which is set in the space station’s living/eating area.
I liked the oldest character, the mission captain; the only character who really remembered meat, trees and birds therein. He also clung to some small physical artefacts as symbols of “real life”; the inference was that the younger characters lived more or less entirely virtual existences without physical artefacts at all.
Perhaps this point about excessive reliance on 1s and 0s rather than real existence was a clue to the title and symbolism X, which remained obscure, at least to me and Daisy, throughout the play despite the importance and several uses of X as both a symbol and word.
In truth, Daisy wasn’t really in the mood for theatre even before we set off for the Royal Court, but I know that “her sort of play” would have lifted her mood, while this really was not her sort of play.
X is an extremely cold play in every sense. It’s set on Pluto for a start, where the average temperature is −229 °C. Further to suppress Janie’s mood, the Royal Court was almost as cold as Pluto itself for some reason that evening and the bar staff put ice in our drinks despite our specific request for our drinks to be ice free. Perhaps the latter was a small nod towards Ed Hall’s idea at the Hampstead to have themed bars for several productions?
X isn’t really my sort of play either, but there was plenty in it to keep me interested, in suspense during the show and thinking a lot afterwards. Indeed it made both of us think a lot afterwards.
While this cold play simply made Daisy feel low, it left me with confused emotions. The few moments of tenderness and kindness in the play, were beautifully handled and were a glorious reminder of people’s inherent benevolence, even in situations which are sure to test the very limits of humanity.
Janie and I both agreed that Jessica Raine as Gilda, in particular, was superb. I actually thought the whole piece was very well acted.
As we left the theatre, just before we stepped out into the cold, wet evening, I spotted the playwright Simon Stephens deep in conversation with a younger fellow, who Janie believes she recognised as Alistair McDowell himself. Quite likely, as the production is still in preview.
No, X did not quite connect in the way Pomona did, but this is only Alistair McDowell’s second major go and I still think we have a rare and original talent on our hands in him. Perhaps his next go will be just a little more down to earth, which might enable me to persuade Daisy to give him another chance.
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.
A weird and dark play about an extreme capitalist. We like Dennis Kelly’s plays – they are always entertaining with dark twists and lots to think about. This one was no exception.
Writing up this play now (march 2018), in our Brexit/Trump infused society, the play seems very relevant and prescient.
The fine actor Tom Brooke seems to thrive on Dennis Kelly plays. Actually the whole cast was good. I think this was our first sighting of Ned Bennett’s work as a director (assisting Vicky Featherstone on this one) – our next sighting being the tremendous Pomona at the Orange Tree – even weirder:
I wrote “very good indeed” in my log for this one, which means that we both must have thought it very good indeed.
Paines Plough tended to do good stuff and Vicky Featherstone knows how to direct. This long precedes her dystopian miserabilist phase at The Royal Court, of course, although it had traces of misery in it.
In those days the Lyric Hammersmith Studio was putting on quite a lot of good stuff of this kind and getting good notices in places that mattered too.
According to my diary, we ate at Riso in Chiswick afterwards. I cannot find anything about it on-line and cannot remember anything much about the place. My handy copy of the 2003 Harden’s suggest that the place was not so memorable. That might explain it.
Still, the play/production was memorable, which matters more.
