Having missed the National Theatre production of Medea in the theatre I was pleased to catch up with it and, especially, Helen McCrory’s performance for she was on blistering form.
NEWS: Full cast announced for the West End transfer of Young Vic & Good Chance Theatre’s The Jungle
The full cast has been announced for the West End transfer of Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s The Jungle, a National Theatre and Young Vic co-production with Good Chance Theatre, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE – West End ★★★★
It’s all elegantly if slightly laboriously done in studied anachronistic style, delivered facing out to the audience as if emphasising precisely its decorative home.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE – West End ★★★
A Woman of No Importance is the most Shavian of Wilde’s plays – in fact with a slight reshuffling of the cast the same company could present Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession also produced in 1893 and wherein the same issue of parentage is concealed.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE – West End ★★★★
At its heart is Eve Best: mournful and troubled in black velvet, hair tumbling, a humble church-mouse amid the quipping brittle socialites. Her wronged Mrs Arbuthnot is the emotional and moral core of the play.
STEPPING OUT – West End
There may be few real surprises to be had at Stepping Out but what Maria Friedman’s production here at the Vaudeville does, is to conjure a marvellously congenial atmosphere which is ideally suited to the play.
Two perfect tickets for ladies’ nights: The Girls & Stepping Out
If you’re seeking life affirmation, celebrations of female solidarity (of a quintessentially British variety) and general uplift, my two current West End recommendations that tick all three boxes are The Girls and Stepping Out.
STEPPING OUT – West End
It is both Amanda Holden and Tracy-Ann Oberman who for me totally steal the show as busybody Vera and Maxine respectively. Holden is delightfully over the top only to crushingly bring you to realise the truth behind her need to be seen as the perfect wife.
STEPPING OUT – West End
Maria Friedman’s loving redirection of this gentle classic comedy poses no questions of understanding. We merely spend a couple of hours (plus wholly comprehensible interval) in the company of seven women and a lone man, amateurishly learning tap at evening class.
WINTER SOLSTICE – Orange Tree Theatre
A day or so after Theresa May’s keynote speech about Brexit the words Europe and European carry an electric charge. For Leavers, they represent the evil empire; for Remainers, a world we have lost. In this context, seeing a play by Germany’s most performed playwright feels more than usually significant.
WINTER SOLSTICE – Orange Tree
Roland Schimmelpfennig’s 2013 play Winter Solstice receives its British premiere at the Orange Tree in this Actors Touring Company production directed by Ramin Gray. And it is well worth the effort as though it may flirt with the experimental, it also cuts through to the elemental – as piercing an insight into the rise of the far right as we’ve seen on any stage.
STEPPING OUT – Touring & West End
Stepping Out is very much an ensemble piece, no individuals character can be classed as the lead. It is clear that this all-star ensemble – including Amanda Holden and Tamzin Outhwaite – are very comfortable working together.
THE TEMPEST – Shakespeare’s Globe
For a departing artistic director, especially here, Shakespeare’s last plays are a natural choice: great poetic anthems of reconciliation and renunciation. Hence this winter Cymbeline, Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and now The Tempest, with the poet’s strange final moment of burying the book, abjuring rough magic, abdicating. Dominic Dromgoole, after eleven adventurous, globe-circling years here, is the first to stage a farewell in winter, in the little candlelit Wanamaker playhouse completed so beautifully on his watch.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE – Shakespeare’s Globe
Measure For Measure is one of Shakespeare’s problematic
plays, a comedy that can be difficult to come to terms with for modern
audiences. The mix of bawdy banter and religious fervour is a heady one and Dominic Dromgoole, in his last
directorial outing as Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s
Globe, gives both sides of the argument equal time.
By now I’ve grown to expect an interesting preamble whenever
I see a show at the Globe, from the decadence of Cleopatra’s court to the
capering of a Dromio in Comedy of Errors it pays to be in your seat early… Even
I wasn’t prepared for the anarchy of bawds and whores cooing at the audience
and dragging punters into their houses while the constable gives chase. Its
choreographed anarchy and brilliant fun!
At it’s heart the
show swings around Angelo and Isabella, the former a pious lord who rules
Vienna in the stead of the departed Duke, the latter the sister of a man
sentenced to death for impregnating a young lady who was not his wife. Kurt Egyiawan makes for a particularly
rigid Angelo and the scene where he fails to control his lust for Isabella’s
purity is beautifully played. Mariah
Gale’s Isabella is a beacon of wholesome devotion, save for the moment her
brother begs her to offer up her body in payment for his freedom and she lashes
out at his face. She gives her character layers of conflicting feelings, though
sometimes her voice fails to carry nearly as well as her castmates.
The drama of Isabella’s dilemma is a stark contrast to the
slapstick comedy elsewhere as prostitutes and men of ill repute are rounded up
by the dim-witted Constable Elbow. The two tones give the play some much needed
levity but occasionally threaten to overwhelm the seriousness of the story.
The whole is orchestrated with aplomb by Dominic Rowan’s fast-talking Duke.
Often portrayed as a wise and benevolent benefactor, Rowan gives him the air of
a man making it up as he goes along and never truly sure of what will happen
next. A refreshing take.
As Dromgoole’s globe farewell this is perhaps a lacklustre
choice, but not for want of some great ensemble work. Even in baking heat the
cast were a blur of motion – not easy in woollen costumes that had already been
worn once that day I’m sure!
AH, WILDERNESS! Young Vic, SE1
THE SANDS OF TIME YIELD UP THEIR DREAMS This is Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy: the moment when from his vortex of family addiction, illness, loneliness, romantic seaward longings and deep human empathy came a spurt of hope. It is set … Continue reading →