Forty Years On
Man to Man
by Manfred Karge
The English Stage Company at The Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea until 24th October , on tour until 7th November , then on international tour
Review by Patrick Shorrock
As part of its Seventieth Anniversary celebrations, the Royal Court has revived its forty-year-old production of Manfred Karge’s Man to Man: the story of a woman (Ella/Max, played by Tilda Swinton) who takes on her late husband’s identity just before Hitler comes to power and is unable to let it go. Director (Stephen Unwin), designer (Bunny Christie) and performer (Tilda Swinton) are all the same as they were forty years ago, but there is no hint of this as a museum piece, and they have all clearly come to it fresh. In addition, Karge has added a couple of additional scenes to include the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the resurgence of the right wing in the recent German polls.
Unwin says in a programme note that the piece is a ‘study of survival in a terrifying world’ and ‘explores the deepest forms of alienation – in which all identities are fluid and everything that is solid melts into the air’. The play doesn’t provide answers or even much by the way of narrative clarity. Initially, Ella/Max’s change of gender seems to be about economic survival – she takes over her husband’s job – but then it isn’t possible to switch back, despite being subject to conscription, although, now she doesn’t present as a woman, she is likely to avoid sexual molestation and rape.
Read more…River Reveries
Three Men in a Boat
by Al Smith, based on the novel by Jerome K. Jerome
Rose Theatre Productions at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 10th October
Review by Gill Martin
The warning was clear at the entrance to the auditorium of the Rose Theatre: This show contains strobe lights, explosions and severe maritime incompetence.
Male incompetence meets hilarious farce, slapstick humour, vaudeville theatrics and rollicking musical score in a show based on Jerome K. Jerome’s classic novel Three Men in a Boat.
The book was published in 1889, has never been out of print and has spawned a couple of movies and two TV series. Now is its enjoying a world premiere as a musical showcasing three lifelong chums Jerome, George and Harris.
It’s a friendship tested to the limit as their river holiday in a hopelessly unsuitable rowing boat sets off from Kingston-upon-Thames, home of this very theatre, to the dreaming spires of Oxford where Harris is to marry Petronella, his fiancée of a dozen years.
Read more…Afternoon Delights
The Lover and A Slight Ache
by Harold Pinter
Questors Productions at the Questors Studio, Ealing, until 26th September
Review by Andrew Lawston
There’s an entry in Alan Bennett’s diaries where the BBC phone him to discuss how they ought to mark Harold Pinter’s fiftieth birthday, and after the call he thinks that he ought to have suggested a minute’s silence.
The “Pinter Pause” has become so widely recognised as one of the playwright’s techniques, that I’ve seen productions where parts of the audience start sniggering knowingly as soon as an actor stops to draw breath. Pinter himself said that directors should feel free to cut them.
All of which is to note that David Erdos’s new productions of Pinter’s one act plays The Lover, and A Slight Ache in the Questors Studio largely avoid the pauses, and sensibly proceed at a brisk pace, as though the director is mindful of the running time printed in the programme.
Read more…Itching to Scratch
Witch
by Jen Silverman, after Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 12th September
Review by Polly Davies
I can’t say that the idea of a modern take on a Jacobean morality play sounded very appealing, but how wrong I was. This is a fabulous production of Jen Silverman’s witty and clever adaptation of The Witch of Edmonton. And to be honest it doesn’t bear a great resemblance to the original 17th Century version. True some of the names are still there. It still features a woman generally regarded as a witch and yes, it still has a devil, but that’s about it. And director Alexsandra Marzocca and the production team make the most of a very promising and unashamedly feminist script.
Read more…Semi-Opera but Not Half-Baked
The Tempest, A Semi-Opera
by William Shakespeare, with compilation of music by various composers*
Vache Baroque in collaboration with Out of Chaos at The Vache, Chalfont St Giles until 6th September
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Since its premiere, Shakespeare’s The Tempest has generated a huge amount of music to accompany its performances. This is hardly surprising, when it abounds in opportunities for music and masques, Ariel is given songs to sing, and Caliban describes the Isle where it is set as ‘full of noises’. So, it makes a kind of sense for Vache Baroque to put the play on in a performance where the main priority is the music and to call it a semi-opera.
Semi-opera, with its combination of spoken text and musical interludes is a response, so the programme says, to English audiences’ dislike of fully sung Italian operas. It remains misconceived to lovers of full-fat opera: a self-sabotaging, pragmatic fudge that puts music and drama into separate boxes, when the whole point of opera is that music and drama need to confront and strike sparks from one other. Purcell’s King Arthur and his The Fairy-Queen are hard going when performed with the full spoken text: the musical interludes ruin the dramatic momentum, and the resumption of purely spoken text after sung music feels like an anti-climax, particularly when this annoying spin goes through several cycles.
Read more…Lashing Out
by Steve Thompson
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 22nd August
Review by Polly Davies
One of the most obscure parts of the Westminster system that dominates politics in the UK must be the Whips Office. Vague stories of Gavin Williamson’s tarantula and Boris Johnson’s use of the whips to throw colleagues out of the Tory party make it to the front pages, but it is still largely a closed book. So, it was with a sense of trepidation that I took my seat for a matinée performance of Steve Thompson’s Whipping It Up. It was reassuring to find the small studio audience space filled up quickly.
The intimate space of the studio is the perfect setting for the play. Walking through the office to reach my seat meant I already felt I was in that office; the desks, phones, decorated Christmas tree and scattered drinks and nibbles set the scene perfectly. Within five minutes I was hooked.
Read more…Cut-Back Styling
The Barber of Seville
by Gioachino Rossini, libretto by Cesare Sterbini after Pierre Beaumarchais
Opera Kipling at The Gatehouse Upstairs, Highgate until 9thAugust
The energetic and inventive Opera Kipling (OK) presents Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere Di Siviglia) in their trademark, re-imagined way. This opera is based on the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beauchmarchais and, following the success of OK’s impressive Marriage of Figaro last year (which is based on the second part of Beaumarchais’ trilogy, albeit the opera is by Mozart), I had high hopes for this production. In the end it was a lovely, enjoyable production but didn’t quite meet the standard set previously.
A well-known and accessible comic opera, The Barber of Seville, follows Count Almaviva’s spirited attempts to win the heart of the young, beautiful and wealthy Rosina. With the scheming barber Figaro at his side, Almaviva works to outwit her controlling guardian, Dr Bartolo, who plans to marry her himself for her fortune.
Read more…Double Trouble
Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado about Nothing
by William Shakespeare, adapted by Tom Littler
Orange Tree Theatre and Guildford Shakespeare Company at Thomas’s College, Richmond until 22ndAugust
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Tom Littler has had the audacious idea of turning Love’s Labour’s Lost into a prequel of Much Ado about Nothing and putting both plays on as a single piece. As he concedes, this requires a degree of what he engagingly refers to as ‘stitching’, as well as renaming of some of the characters (successfully with Berowne – Benedick and Rosaline – Beatrice, but less so with some of the others).
Love’s Labour’s Lost is a strange play that starts off frivolous and witty with four potential sets of lovers. Even though the men are supposed to have sworn off women in favour of academic study for a year, they pair off relatively easily with the women. But the play ends with them all agreeing to something like a trial separation that requires the men revert to their studies for a further year. This downbeat ending does seem to beg for some further development and resolution. So, it’s a far from bad idea to give Beatrice and Benedick some back story, especially as Berowne and Rosaline are similarly sparing lovers.
Read more…Unboxed
Precious Little Talent
by Ella Hickson
Putney Theatre Company, Breaking Point Drama Festival at the Putney Arts Theatre until 25th July
Review by Heather Moulson
Set in a high-rise in Manhattan, Precious Little Talent is an examination of awkward relationships.
It opens with a vibrant start from the leather-jacketed Sam, and one is instantly drawn to this fresh young New Yorker. Then, when he encounters a reluctant English tourist Joey, there is the making of of a romance. As Sam, Caleb Clarke opens an endearing and honest performance.
Sam faces a prospective Christmas as a carer for George, who has Lewy body dementia. Nick Hall, as the proud older man who is resistant to Sam’s care, performs with dignity and intelligence. He is a very natural actor. Sam and George share a strong rapport, leaving us to question who is really dependent on whom.
Read more…Four Grannies of the Apocalypse
Escaped Alone
by Caryl Churchill
Putney Theatre Company, Breaking Point Drama Festival at the Putney Arts Theatre until 25th July
Review by Heather Moulson
Initially, on first impression, the set of Escaped Alone has a touch of Ayckbourn. Three women of a certain age sit in a suburban garden for a summer afternoon tea gathering and natter. Their chat ranges from trivial, keys being misplaced, to the more consequential health worries.
Then a neighbour, Mrs Jarrett, gatecrashes the get-together to become the fourth party around the tea-tray. The uninvited caller seems to blend in naturally with the other women from the moment she sits down, but her conversation is wholly different.
Read more…
