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Showing posts with label king's head theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label king's head theatre. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
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Rating: 
I had a bad case of the Monday blues yesterday. I got soaked cycling to work in the rain and soaked cycling home afterwards. So when it came time to leave my warm house to head up to the King's Head Theatre in the rain, I was downright miserable. By the time I got there (you guessed it, soaked), I was sullen and glum - and wishing I was wrapped up in a blanket at home watching Netflix and eating pizza.
But then Opera’r Ddraig's The Elixir of Love began, and all that damp misery immediately washed away. From minute one I had a big smile on my face that persisted throughout the show (and through most of the still wet ride home).
Adapted from Donizetti's 1832 opera L'elisir d'amore, Opera’r Ddraig swaps the Basque village setting for Barry Island, South Wales in 1982 - and retranslates the work to fit the South Walian dialect. It's a smart decision - with hilarious friction generated from the highfalutin' poshness of opera incongruously clashing with working-class characters calling each other twats and telling their enemies to "fuck off already". Plus, as someone from South Wales, I got a kick out of hearing my home town of Pontypridd mentioned in an opera staged in Islington.
The plot finds lonely sadsack Nicky (David Powton) admiring cafe owner Adira (Alys Roberts) from afar. He wishes he cuold work up the courage to ask her out, only for quack salesman Dr Dulcamara (Matthew Kellett) to arrive offering a selection of love potions. Nicky enthusiastically purchases them, only for his romantic rival, soldier Brandon (Themba Mvula) to gazump him with a marriage proposal.
None of this is taken particularly seriously, with the show establishing a light-hearted, gently self-satirising tone early on and sticking with it. But, in an impressive feat of casting and performance, everyone is funny. There are moments where most of the cast is on stage, each providing enough entertainment to carry a show on their own. You don't know where to look for fear of missing out.
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| Matthew Kellett and Alys Roberts |
I hesitate to name many highlights because I enjoyed the whole damn thing. I'm smiling now when I think of Alys Roberts' trying to work out what that awful stink in her cafe is, or when Caroline Taylor suddenly becomes infatuated with Nicky, David Powton enthusiastically spraying himself down with piss, or pretty much every moment that Themba Mvula is strutting about the stage,
But, even within all this, Matthew Kellett's Dr Dulcamara crushes it. He gets the showiest songs, with his salesman's patter mapping perfectly onto Donizetti's music. He gets to subtly break the fourth wall, both singing to Nicky about how amazing his products are while confiding in us how incredibly stupid he thinks these people are. He's far from a villain though, eventually proving to be as gullible and dim-wittted as his various customers.
They're ably supported by careful direction, a fine musical score and a set that's evocative of Barry Island without getting in the way of the performances. I don't have a great deal more to say about The Elixir of Love without getting into hyperbole. It's the opera I'd take someone sceptical about opera to - and it singlehandedly eradicated my Monday blues.
The Elixir of Love is at the King's Head Theatre until 26 October. Tickets here.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
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"A musical about Timpson? The shoe-repairer / key-cutter / sign-maker / trophy-engraver?" I confirmed for Timpson: The Musical immediately - I had to find out what the hell this show was about. My first guess was that it was about the founding of the titular company, but a quick glance through their Wikipedia page didn't exactly suggest high drama (it was founded in 1865 by shoemaker William Timpson and his brother-in-law, apparently without incident).
What Gigglemug Theatre's show actually is is a very silly parody of Romeo + Juliet. So we have two households (the Keypulets and the Montashoes), who are both alike in dignity (as in neither of them have much of it), in fair Victorian London, where we lay our scene. The families have been feuding ever since a confrontation at the 'Invention Convention' many years ago, when Master Keypulet's (James Stirling) idea of "tiny saws" only managed an honourable mention.
But wouldn't you know it - love begins to blossom between the children of these warring households. Keeleigh (Sabrina Messer) and Monty (Maddie Gray) feel an instant connection to one another, with his key apparently destined to fit snugly into her lock. What follows is a loose-limbed and adorably scrappy love story that never takes itself remotely seriously.
Putting on an intentionally unpolished production is risky business. For one, you're reliant on the charisma and comedic skills of your actors - nothing kills a show stone-dead more than the sense that those on stage are having a great time while the audience isn't. For another, it's very easy for a show to cross the thin line between "adorably scrappy" and just plain bad.
Timpson: The Musical is never in danger of that happening. The uniformly talented cast are all insanely likeable (I particularly liked Rachael Chomer's Lady Montashoe), with some of the best moments of the night coming when they can't help but break character and feebly suppress their giggles at what the rest of the cast is up to. They're aided by an onslaught of reliably funny one-liners and running gags that don't outstay their welcome, all aided by a brief n' breezy 65-minute running time.
And then there are the songs. This show won't be winning any prizes for lyrical complexity or virtuoso vocals, but they're peppered with grin-inducing rhymes and delivered with so much personality that the occasional flat note is immediately forgiven. My favourites were the very entertaining Gotta Get Up When They Knock You Down and the even-more-hilarious-in-hindsight It's A Tingle.
If I really wanted to I could probably pick some holes in this show, but I don't. Gigglemug Theatre set out to create a very, very silly musical with its tongue firmly lodged in its cheek and they have objectively succeeded. In reviewing any comedy I apply the five laughs test: if it doesn't make me laugh out loud at least five times it's failed. Timpson: The Musical had me throatily guffawing from minute one - I may have even slapped my knee.
What more recommendation do you need?
Timpson: The Musical is at the King's Head Theatre until 27 February. Tickets here.
Friday, November 2, 2018
Friday, November 2, 2018
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A bell rings in a North London pub and someone yells "ten minutes until Brexit!" A collective shudder passes through the well-to-do metropolitan crowd at the idea as we dutifully file into the theatre. I'm shuddering as well - I hate Brexit. It's not just that we're the laughing stock of the world, not just the ridiculous flag-waving nationalism, not just that we're about to commit economic seppuku - but because it is so fucking boring.
I work in politics and law, but Brexit has gobbled up so much the news for so long that even I am beginning to tune it out as white noise. The endless internecine spats in the Tories, the half-assed rebellions of the Labour right, the mewling of the right-wing press and #FBPE types on Twitter. If Britain is destined to end up in a Mad Max style hellscape I wish it'd happen already just so we can get it over with.
But that's not the future that Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky's Brexit imagines. Set a few years in the future, we find Britain still negotiating with the EU and trapped in an extended transition period. New Prime Minister Adam Masters (Timothy Bentinck) is the latest to place his neck on the chopping block - his only ambition to outlast the short 1922-23 premiership of Andrew Bonar Law, who bowed out in under a year (due to throat cancer).
His plan to 'beat Brexit' is zugzwang - a chess term for a situation in which making any move puts you at a disadvantage. Therefore, he chooses to do nothing at all, playing the hardcore leavers against the remainers. The leavers are represented by Simon Cavendish (Thom Tuck): a deeply unpleasant amalgam of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove, while the remainers' champion is Diana Purdy (Pippa Evans), who seems vaguely Amber Rudd-ish (with a pinch of Vicky Ford).
With equal but opposing forces locked in stalemate, his strategy pretty much consists of the classic "hide under some coats and hope that somehow everything will work out". Naturally, this doesn't go to plan - and the play spirals towards farce as the Prime Minister desperately avoids committing to a course of action.
It's a cynical piece of theatre - but then these are cynical times. Perhaps the most believable aspect of it is the lead character's sheer terror of ideology. Towards the end of the play, he bemoans his situation, saying that he's got "a right-wing press that despises my every action - even though I tried hard not to take any. And a left-wing press that despises me for my beliefes - even though I tried very hard not to have any!" Later, a betrayal by his friend and advisor Paul Connell (Adam Astill) prompts the accusation - "you betrayed our friendship for ideology!"
Like, no shit, dude. If Brexit gets anything right, it's the failure of centrist politicians to understand their own ideology. Brexit's PM paints himself as the epitome of non-ideological moderation, treating 'remainer' and 'leaver' as equally valid abstractions that must be placated rather than understood (notably he merely glances through their lengthy policy proposals).
The conclusion is a reminder that doing nothing can be far worse than being decisive, that convincing yourself that market and social liberalism combined with a soft nationalism isn't ideological but 'common sense' is ridiculous. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of far-right leavers, but at least it's an ethos. It's a smart conclusion to a perceptive piece of drama. But, sadly, there are a couple of flies in the ointment.
The dowdy set design of a couple of chairs and a scuffed, cheap desk against a plain black backdrop does little to convey the wood-panelled gentlemen's club atmosphere of No. 10 and the Houses of Parliament (and I doubt whether any contemporary PM would wear a three-piece suit on a day-to-day basis).
Plus, for a comedy, Brexit just doesn't have that many laughs. There's a couple of cringey panel-show style political jabs that pass over the audience without so conjuring so much as a titter, and while the play does eventually conjure up a couple of genuinely funny moments they are few and far between.
Brexit nails the philosophical morass of its subject, rightly portraying the process as some nebulous concept that means different things to everyone: a Gordian knot that can never be satisfyingly sliced apart. As a piece of drama? It's a bit too loose, languid and mildly diverting - throw in a bit more bite and passion and you'd be onto something.
Brexit is at the King's Head Theatre until 17 October. Tickets here.
Production shots by Steve Ullathorne
Friday, September 7, 2018
Friday, September 7, 2018
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During the opening scene of David Eaton and Fiona English's Hamilton (Lewis) I'm warned that I won't get much out of it if I'm not familiar with (a) Hamilton, the hit musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda or (b) Formula 1 racing.
Uh-oh.
Pretty much everything I know about Hamilton comes from the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and I'm completely clueless about Formula 1.
In practice, this means that the majority of the gags go right over my head. The majority of the audience is clearly familiar with the musical, so all it takes is for a certain beat to start playing to arouse ripples of giggles. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there slightly befuddled trying to work out if I've missed a joke I should have been able to get, or whether the scene I'm watching was actually part of Lewis Hamilton's life, part of founding father Alexander Hamilton's life parodied via Lewis Hamilton, or simply a surreal moment in its own right.
You could argue that attending a show billed as a musical parody and not knowing the show being parodied is a fool's errand (and you've got a pretty good point), but surely a really good parody should be able to stand as a piece of theatre in its own right without every audience member possessing intimate knowledge of the subject?
And, while I might be expecting a bit much of a show that freely admits they came up with the title first and worked backwards, it doesn't have much to say about Lewis Hamilton. This is a ridiculous comedy, but even so our hero doesn't have a narrative arc so much as a narrative flatline. There's a muddled moral about him losing sight of the pleasure of racing in favour of publicity and sponsorship that doesn't go anywhere and the frequent hints that he's secretly gay never sat quite right with me. It ends with the show admitting that Lewis Hamilton's life doesn't make for a satisfying musical, so at least they're aware of it.
That's far from the only moment the show makes excuses for itself. One thing I do know about Hamilton is that it's a densely lyrical rap musical. Hamilton (Lewis) does have the occasional rap number, but in the opening, it's explained that songs like these are really, really hard to write - so much of the show is going to be a traditional musical. Oh. Okay.
I'm probably coming down too hard on the show. It's not that I had a bad time - the cast (Letitia Hector, Liberty Buckland, Louis Mackrodt and Jamie Barwood) are all fine performers and wring the material like a wet dishcloth to squeeze out every drop of comedy they can.
But the show spends an awful lot of time making light of the fact that it's been slapped together very quickly and that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Points for honesty, but identifying your shortcomings doesn't magic them away. If you're a Hamilton fan this might be worth a look and if you're a Lewis Hamilton fan this might be the one chance you get to see a musical about him, but it didn't do a lot for me.
Hamilton (Lewis) is at the King's Head Theatre until 22nd September. Tickets here.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
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Rating: 
Would you fuck a robot? My instinctive answer is no. The corpse-like uncanny valley creepiness of Real Dolls is nightmarish, it seems gross to have some kind of animated woman-shaped object hanging around, and let's face it, it's essentially a really expensive, overcomplicated wank.
But according to the programme for Nessah Muthy's new play Sex With Robots And Other Devices, I might soon be in the minority for holding this opinion, as a 2016 study indicates that more than 40% of heterosexual men they surveyed could imagine buying a sex robot for themselves now or in the next 5 years.
It's a common observation that domestic technological development is driven by sex, with the porn industry's adoption VHS cited as a reason for Betamax's failure, early adoption of the internet fuelled by easy access to porn and now robotic technology being used to create quasi-lifelike sex dolls. Sex With Robots imagine the future that might be around the corner, presenting a series of situations in which problems arise with the new robotic partners.
These vignettes are performed by Isaura Barbé-Brown, Deshaye Gayle and Eleri Jones, and take place in a world where sex robots are still a novelty but increasingly common, with the 'rules' on interacting with them still solidifying. We see a woman recovering from a miscarriage ordering a replica of herself to fulfil her partner's needs, someone using a robotic version of themselves to care for their Alzheimer's suffering partner, a man forever reliving one amazing night with his ex-partner, people dealing with overly attached robots, worrying about consent issues with them and so on.
It's a broad, intelligent and imaginative tapestry, and the cast do a great job of quickly sketching out individual characters. Best of the bunch is Isaura Barbé-Brown, whose performances as various robotic characters send a shiver down the spine. She's got a masterful control of body language, her movements landing just on the right side of inhuman.
The show trips a little as the subject is a bit over-familiar these days: leaving aside the fact that this feels pretty Black Mirror-y, there's been numerous stage shows that have explored the same territory recently - for example, AI Love You at Vault Festival and Instructions for Correct Assembly at the Royal Court.
Slightly more egregiously the quickfire vignettes mean we get a lot of setup and not much resolution. So, we see a woman beginning to get jealous of her husband using a robotic replica of her, but do not see that spill over into confrontation. The Alzheimer's patient never has the moment of clarity where she realises what her partner has done. A woman disturbed by her partner setting the robot to 'sin mode' is merely in the early stages of perturbation rather than exploring what this means for their relationship and so on (frustratingly, we also never learn exactly what 'sin mode' entails, or for that matter, how robot sex differs from human sex).
It results in a consistently interesting yet slightly shallow work that's content to posit questions but won't attempt any answers. The obvious response to that criticism is that as this is speculative there simply aren't answers to be had - but that strikes me more as a failure of imagination.
You won't regret seeing Sex With Robots. It's a nicely written, smartly turned out and precisely performed bit of drama. But if it were allowed to breathe a little more and expand its dramatic morsels into something more substantial it'd be a great play rather than 'merely' a good one.
Sex With Robots And Other Devices is at the King's Head Theatre until 2nd June 2018. Tickets here.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Friday, January 12, 2018
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Rating:
The East End of London occupies a large place in the British collective identity. This is the land of pearly kings and queens, florid slang, Jack the Ripper, Eastenders, the Kray twins, grimy boozers, jellied eels and thinly romanticised poverty. But this East End is quickly fading from reality; its real estate gobbled up piecemeal by its prosperous neighbour The City and its long-term residents emigrating to Essex.
Where does this leave Steven Berkoff's East? First performed in 1975 and based on the playwright's Stepney childhood, the play was billing itself as “elegy for the East End and its energetic waste” even back then. So how does it stand up forty years on - when the life experiences of its older characters have faded from living memory?
Pretty well, as it turns out. The five-strong cast (James Craze, Jack Condon, Boadicea Ricketts, Debra Penny and Russell Barnett) portray a gaggle of characters who feel as if they've congealed out of the collective subconscious of the East End. This gaggle of grotesques speak in a blasphemous yet vivid fusion of jumbled Shakespearian quotes, rhyming slang and a fuckload of swearing.
The striking language is overlaid on top of energetic and lively physical performances. Characters turn into motorbikes and are driven around the stage, fall into a cod music hall mime act, run through about twenty different kinds of dance in a minute or, simply and effectively, arrange themselves into expressive Hogarthian dioramas.
All that muscular propulsiveness pays off gangbusters. Each of the characters brims over with life - be it testosterone-infused braggadocio, indignant femininity or racist bitterness. It feels as if the primordial spirits of the East End are being summoned, spilling their guts in front of a contemporary audience they occasionally perceive through the slats of reality.
Each of the performers gets their own monologue in which to shine. My highlight was Russell Barnett's patriarch nostalgically reminiscing about Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts and the Battle of Cable Street - he was on the side of the fascists. It's just an outright great bit of acting, Barnett gradually building up from a light-hearted introduction all the way to his veins furiously throbbing on his bald head as he flicks baked beans everywhere and overturns the dinner table. As he joyously recounted kicking someone's teeth in I couldn't help but think of the footage from the neo-Nazi marches in Charlottesville: this character might be a mouldering pile of bones by now but his spirit remains very much alive.
Though I got the most of out of Barnett's monologue, the rest of the cast all excel. The appropriately named Boadicea Ricketts bemoans her femininity and wishes she was born a man, Jack Condon moons after an unapproachable woman on the 38 bus and James Craze delivers an effervescent, heartfelt paean to every conceivable variety of cunt.
It's difficult not to get caught up in the sheer liveliness of the show: though the characters are off-putting in so many ways they're also palpably alive. You sense that while the neighbourhoods and characters of East are quickly being relegated to the history books, they're not disappearing without a fight.
It's a fantastic bit of theatre and a testament to Berkoff's skill at melding words and motion. Definitely worth the trip - preferably with a seat in the front row.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
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Nothing puts hairs on your chest like being the object of satire. This is Tom Glover's Wet Bread, a one-woman show that takes down of 'yer typical die-hard left-wing activist who abhors meat, engages in endless political campaigns, tries to stand up for the downtrodden and creams their knickers at the mention of Jeremy Bernard Corbyn.
As a die-hard left-wing activist who abhors meat, engages in endless political campaigns, tries to stand up for the trodden and creams his knickers at the mention of Jeremy Bernard Corbyn, I found plenty that made me uncomfortably shift in my seat.
Our heroine Adele (Morag Sims) is anti everything: meat, Israel, military intervention, climate change, homelessness and, above all else, the fucking Tories. We meet her haranguing an undecided voter just before the 2015 general election, eventually yelling "Fascist!" at her and stomping off in a huff.
Glover and Sims quickly sketch a portrait of someone whose heart might be in the right place but whose social skills leave much to be desired. Adele is constantly haranguing her friends and family, eager to impress her many viewpoints upon them. Her holier-than-thou attitude drives one of her friends to give her an ultimatum: you have a year to change the world through protesting or you give up politics for good. And so, with the gauntlet lying at her feet, Adele gets to work.
What follows is a gradual and frustratingly slow process of enlightenment, wherein Adele's various efforts to improve the lives of the local and global downtrodden founder on the rocks of reality. It turns out that women suffering domestic violence don't need to be told of the existence of shelters, that leading an anti-fracking sit-in doesn't work if you turn up when the building is closed, and that you cannot rehabilitate a piss-sodden alcoholic tramp through the force of your personality alone.
Unsaid throughout is the suspicion that Adele is just virtue signalling her way through life. Are her various campaigns and arguments borne as much from a desire to convince herself that she's a 'good' person rather than having a genuine desire to make the world a better place. This is something I can quite vividly identify with - and I have a great example.
Just before the play began I was locking up my bike outside the pub when I saw a drunk, homeless woman career into a telephone box and smack into the pavement with a painful thud. I went over and collected the stuff she'd dropped and put it back in her carrier bags, checked it she was okay and helped her to her feet. Fair enough, you might think, seems like the decent thing to do. And yet, while doing all this I couldn't help but think, "the people sitting outside this pub must think I'm dead awesomely kind and super empathetic and just oh-so-amazing in general".
It's vain and self-centred thinking - you could even argue that I'm exploiting this poor woman's misfortune to get a dopamine hit of self-righteousness. But regardless of whether I was puffing up my mental plumage or not, I got her off the pavement. After all, if the end result is positive, then the internal motivation is irrelevant. Wet Bread understands this: while Adele might take in a homeless man mainly as an 'I told you so' move to win an argument, she ends up doing some genuine good in the world.
The show begins to wind up with a plea to tolerate philosophical and political differences, with an exhortation to value what unites rather than divides us. Very laudable, though sadly Wet Bread it concludes on a sour note with our political warrior erecting a final set of protest signs: "Stop Fighting" and "Just Love".
This is wishy-washy feelgood bullshit. If you stop fighting and start loving then the assholes are going to run rampant. Sure, Adele's fighting is largely futile (Glover is depressingly dead-on with his critique of mass marches), but even if it is self-aggrandising it's better than nothing. For a character like Adele to wave a placard that says 'stop fighting' is just depressing. And "Just Love" is precisely the kind of gloopy meaningless marketing rubbish that's gotten us the shitty, individualistic society we're in today.
It's a real shame, up to the last couple of minutes Wet Bread was reflecting some of my worst qualities back at me and giving me a lot to think about. It's a good show, well-performed and ploughing some extremely fertile comedic soil (with more than a shade of the excellent Citizen Smith). But the concluding statement of the piece is a bizarre call to inaction that really rubbed me up the wrong way, as if it was setting the parameters of what political activism should be (i.e. safe and unthreatening).
Wet Bread walks down a compelling path. It's just a shame that disappointment lies at the end of it.
Wet Bread is at the King's Head Theatre tonight and Thursday. Details here.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
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As someone who's been in too many relationships with bonkers women, Meriel Hinsching's Attic contained many familiar moments. This 45-minute long miniplay bills itself as examining a "dangerous, boundary-pushing relationship" and "the dark, animalistic and unconventional sides to love".
Our not-so-starcrossed lovers are Leonie (Phoebe Stapleton) and Bay (Connor Harris) (a confession: throughout the play I thought Leonie was calling him 'bae'). Bay seems like a pretty straightforward kind of guy: he's processing the death of his sister and seeking some kind of intimacy. We encounter the pair post break-up and, though Bay has a new girlfriend, the flame still burns between them.
Bay is a fairly understandable but Leonie is trickier to diagnose. She's an overly aggressive conversationalist, physically stand-offish and prone to rambling monologues and melodramatic suicide threats. She appears to be written as a rare and unique person who sees the world through a strict anti-bullshit filter.
That's the intention. But, to be frank, she's basically 'yer textbook asshole.
That's the intention. But, to be frank, she's basically 'yer textbook asshole.
Leonie is impossible to sympathise with, and over the play's 45 minutes Bay's continuing involvement with her goes from perplexing to outright surreal. I wouldn't exactly say the play glamorises an abusive relationship, but it certainly approaches it with weird romanticism. At first, this sour note is intriguing: where is Hinsching going with this strange set-up? But, by the time the curtain falls, it feels flimsy in an icky sort of way.
Much of this is down to the power imbalance between Bay and Leonie. If they were as fucked up as each another then fine: there are worse ways to spend an evening than watching two horrible people spiralling life's plughole. But the fact that Bay seems like a pretty normal kind of guy (and a somewhat vulnerable one at that) creates a weird disconnect.
But bubbling away under all that is that Stapleton and Harris simply don't have the romantic chemistry to make this work. If there really was some spark between them they could harness that and blast through the other deficiencies, but they seem less like lovers drawn to one another like moths to a flame and more like two strangers tolerating one another.
Attic ends up a baffling and unfocused play. I never for a moment felt like Leonie and Bay's relationship was pushing any boundaries or was particularly unconventional. Instead, you get a clumsy relationship drama between two uninteresting characters that doesn't go anywhere interesting or have much to say. It's nowhere near the worst thing I've ever seen, and at least it's mercifully short, but there's precious little here to recommend.
Attic is at the King's Head on the 2nd and 3rd of July. More information here.
Attic ends up a baffling and unfocused play. I never for a moment felt like Leonie and Bay's relationship was pushing any boundaries or was particularly unconventional. Instead, you get a clumsy relationship drama between two uninteresting characters that doesn't go anywhere interesting or have much to say. It's nowhere near the worst thing I've ever seen, and at least it's mercifully short, but there's precious little here to recommend.
Attic is at the King's Head on the 2nd and 3rd of July. More information here.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
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It's 1942 in Nazi-occupied France and ten men sit in a holding pen as the Nazis decide which of them are Jewish. It's 1956 and playwright Arthur Miller waits on a bench outside a courtroom in Washington waiting to be grilled by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It's 2017 and roomfuls of refugees sit in legal purgatory in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre awaiting judgment. Hannah Arendt's identification of the "banality of evil" remains as accurate as ever - the mechanical processes of bureaucracy allowing individuals to deny responsibility.
First performed in 1964 in New York City, Incident at Vichy is an Arthur Miller play that's fallen through the cracks. Earlier this year it was revived at the Finborough Theatre where it played to sell-out audiences and now it transfers to the King's Head in leafy Islington. It's a sleek and streamlined piece of theatre: ten men sit on a bench in front of a white background fearfully discussing why they've been detained and what might happen to them. They represent various archetypes: the artist, the businessman, the communist, the aristocrat, the boy, the old man, the Roma, the actor, the waiter, and the military man.
The rhythmic metal clanging of the cell door punctuates the action as the men are escorted through to examination room where they're given ritual emasculated, their cocks examined to see if they're circumcised, which is all the proof the Nazis need to consign you to the death camps. Some return from the examination clutching release papers. Most do not.
Over 85 uneasy minutes the characters pick over their lives, the political situation, and their personal philosophies. Most of them begin from a place of stunned disbelief: surely being detained is something that happens to other people? But there's rub, one day the other person is going to be you. They gradually process their situation, realising with increasing desperation that nothing and no-one is going to save them. Then comes muttered rumours of trains packed with Jews heading to camps in Austria and the murmurs of vast incinerators.
It's a taut, smart as hell piece of drama - you'd expect no less from Arthur Miller. What most impressed upon me was the futility of petty squabbling in the face of evil. Each of these men recognises that they're at the mercy of a sadistic nightmare regime, yet they simply cannot come together in organised resistance. Their differences range from political, social, physical - or, simply, cowardice. We repeatedly hear that there's just a single guard on the door and if all the men rushed him at once at least some of them would get away. But it is impossible for them to act as one, even if they're all facing the same fate. It's precisely this communal inactivity that allows for (insert your own oppressive organisation here) freedom to realise their twisted views.
But though it's a great idea to revive this and despite the satisfyingly meaty ideas being explored, the production is somewhat hamstrung by uneven performances. Some members of the cast stand out a mile - with Brendan O'Rourke's communist electrician is a powerful stage presence from the moment the house lights go up. Most of the men are nervously leaning back, but he stares out into the audience, seething with class injustice. PK Taylor's actor is also a real treat, nervously burrowing down into denial and refusing to face up the situation he's in. Jeremy Gagan's mute old man, despite not saying a single thing throughout the play, is also excellent - giving the play it's most memorably moment as he throws his hands to the sky and silently screams.
Yet these delights are offset by some intense stodginess from Henry Wyrley-Birch as a former military man now hiding in the country with his family. Throughout the play the character never fully comes into focus, exacerbated by him having the shoulder a lot of the more philosophical exposition.
Then there's Lawrence Boothman's neurotic artist. I've got to hand it to Boothman, he sure does do a lot of acting, twitching, staring and fidgeting in reaction to every single line dialogue. Approaching this role as a histrionic and very camp Scotsman is perhaps the production's one genuine misstep, the character and performance coming perilously close to derailing certain scenes.
Incident at Vichy is undoubtedly a great play. The best plays about Nazism send a cool chill up the spine, scary in a way that surpasses any horror film. This does that, and the quality and scope of Miller's writing shines through, despite a somewhat uneven production.
Incident at Vichy is at the King's Head Theatre until 25 June. Tickets here.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
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A.C. Smith's Phoebe is an odd little play populated by characters that're slightly, but not entirely, skewiff. It's part of #Festival46, a showcase for work from some of the most promising new talents, meaning you get interesting and experimental works with the odd rough edges. Phoebe is very much that: a show that contains umpteen great things, but never gels quite as firmly as it should.
The eponymous Phoebe (EJ Martin) is an awkward young woman of indeterminate age. The youngest of three siblings, she works in an opticians and can't quite seem to find a place in the world. Her parents are overbearing, her older sister Ingrid (Louise Torres-Ryan) is consumed with work and, most worryingly, her older brother Freddie is missing. He's left his job, his emails go unanswered and his house is vacant. His mysterious disappearance consumes Phoebe, who decides to play detective and find him.
On top of all that Phoebe has made friends with an urban fox (also named Freddie) who's been disturbing neighbourhood bins. This raises the hackles of her nosy neighbour, who launches a campaign to snuff out Freddie. With the fox culling specialist en route, time is running out for both Freddies.
Along for the ride is the similarly awkward Paul (Loz Keystone) a flighty young fellow who's been hanging around the opticians trying (and failing) to pick out a new pair of specs. He's clearly enamoured with Phoebe, though both are too socially clumsy to confess their feelings for each other.
We experience the story through Phoebe's eyes, the other two actors cycling between different characters as the story demands. These characters tend towards the grotesque: her Mum a barely sane nervous wreck, her Dad casually domineering, her neighbour a manipulative harpy, the foxcatcher a swaggeringly masculine dickhead and so on. Kindness is in short supply in this world and, though the staging is minimal, through an effective ambient soundscape we sense the oppressiveness of the urban environment.
That makes the tiny moments of kindness all the more effective. Phoebe's care for the fox, transplanted from that her of absent brother, is beautifully communicated. As is Paul's goofy sweetness, best exemplified when he gifts Phoebe a book and the moment he holds her hand for the first time.
It helps that all three actors put in top notch performances. Loz Keystone, as well as having a marvellous name, has comic timing so precise it may as well be laser-guided. Every single moment he's on stage he's doing something funny, from the casually misogynist exterminator to his gentle, nervy would-be boyfriend. He exhaustively mines every last atom of comedy from the material, singlehandedly responsible for the lion's share of the laughs.
Great though he is, it's EJ Martin who provides the emotional core It's fascinating to watch her react to the other characters: half sussing them out, half confused at how they could behave so wickedly. Her changes in facial expression are almost microscopic - curling her lip with disappointment as someone apparently betrays her, or smiling at a tiny moment of triumph. She manages to be both vulnerable and faintly scary at once - no mean feat!
There's a bevvy of great theatrical moments here - their effectiveness only somewhat diluted by some iffy scripting choices. There's a needless bit of fourth wall breaking early on that should have been left on the cutting room floor (though this may have been an adlib), the parents err somewhat too far on the side of unbelievable and the sister appears to be undergoing constant mood swings - one minute she's cold-hearted, the next warm.
Despite that, Phoebe is an undeniably promising piece of writing. It's a sensitively, imaginative told story that, with eyes squinted, feels as if it could be a contemporary, adult take on Roald Dahl. Though it began at half nine and ended sneaking up on 11pm I deeply enjoyed myself. Can't wait to see what AC Smith does next.
★★★
Phoebe is at the King's Head Theatre until 30 July. Tickets here.
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