Statement of Regret, The National Theatre (Cottesloe), London

Don Warrington as Kwaku Mackenzie in Statement of Regret.

Rating: ****/5

Saturday, 26 January 2008.

Much like The Vertical Hour, this production in the National's intimate Cottesloe auditorium of the latest Kwame Kwei-Armah play, Statement of Regret, also directed by Jeremy Herrin, blends the personal and the political. Set in the offices of the IBPR, the Institute of Black Policy Research, the play's proceedings follow the institute's leader, Kwaku, his office staff, and their many concerns surrounding the black community in Britain, where Afro-Caribbeans and West Indians are often pitted against one another and resentments within the black community, as well as biases from the white community, are all far too common.

Kwaku, however, is not merely the leader of the IBPR. He is also the patriarch of his family, some of whom are employed in the office, including his wife, Lola; his son, Kwaku Jnr.; and his bastard child, Adrian. Family resentments blend with policy concerns in a way that seems far more seamless than those similar attempts that Hare takes on in The Vertical Hour. 

This top-flight cast, especially Don Warrington as Kwaku, deliver the goods in a powerful production directed by The Vertical Hour's Jeremy Herrin with functional sets by that production's designer, Mike Britton. Britton wisely gives us a realistic office setting, placing Kwaku's office ominously above the shared workspace of the others, and allows for the effective disintegration of their common space as the tensions build in the second act. Kudos as well to Chu Omambala in the role of Idrissa, a temperamental but respected member of the office community, who is one of the only intelligent gay black characters in a position of power I've seen on a professional stage in some time. His is a sensitive performance that manages to avoid stereotyping.

I've read reviews of the production that believe it brings up more issues than it can properly tackle, but I think that it tackles it's primary subject, one's heritage in juxtaposition with one's ideals and achievements, very well. Kwaku, who has been dealing poorly with the death of his father, is in constant need of guidance he can only receive through imagined conversations with his father, and his sons, in the wake of his slow and steady decline toward madness, are consequently deprived of their own father's love and council. 

It's a fascinating production that moves forward steadily, something with which to credit Herrin. By the end, you're haunted by the ghosts of the characters' pasts in a way that only the late great American August Wilson could have evoked as strongly. It's clear that Kwame Kwei-Armah, whose Elmina's Kitchen was the first play by a black author to transfer to the West End, is a talented new voice in British theatre. Hopefully he'll continue to provoke audiences in years to come in plays as fascinating as this one.

Women of Troy, The National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

Kate Duchene (second from left) and cast in the National's Women of Troy.

Rating: **/5

Friday, 25 January 2008.

I love being challenged by a piece of theatre possibly more than anything else in the world. To me, theatre has the potential certainly to entertain but most importantly to inform and to provoke. Since morality plays were in vogue in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and even earlier - drama has been a source of education. And director Katie Mitchell's latest production at the National Theatre, of a new translation of Women of Troy by Don Taylor, is certainly an interesting if flawed example of the power of theatre to develop in dynamic and thought-provoking new ways.

Favoring mood over plot, this production resets the action of the play from a realistic ancient Troy to an industrial holding bay, complete with a lift and a loading dock. Comments from the chorus, standard to Greek plays, are initiated by the simulated opening of the symbolic fourth wall between the players and the audience, signified by the sound of a door gliding open on mechanical tracks and a sudden concentration of light. This is a production that blends time periods liberally. Swing dancing abounds and pillars of sand spout from above. There is certainly no shortage of stage trickery. You get the picture, but what does it all add up to?

Dressed to the nines in evening gowns, the women of Troy in this production seem more like scorned lovers at a prom than prisoners of war, in limbo as they wait for their assignments as subordinates to the Greeks. Kate Duchene as Hecuba gives the evening's standout performance, full of ragged despair and hope beyond hope as the woman who may have borne the most casualties of all the women. Hers is a performance full of grief. Watching her claw at her dress compulsively, one can sense the profundity of her loss in the mere movement of her hands.

On the flip side of the acting spectrum, as Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, actress Sinead Matthews performs rather less well, hurrying through dialogue in such a breathy demeanor so as to sacrifice meaning for movement. 

The physicality of the production as a whole, however, is impressive. Mitchell has obviously put much thought into the various elements of the play, particularly the integration of design and performance and the abbreviation of the text for her shorter, 80-minute production. She gives us many fascinating images to chew on, but one could chew on them for days on end perhaps without ever reaching any sort of satisfying conclusion. 

The final image given to us is one of neat resolutions, but what has come before has been so muddled that such a neat bow at the end seems almost inappropriate. Still I found myself wanting more guidance from Mitchell's directorial hand throughout. Mitchell seems dead set on creating theatre in a way that is distinctly her own, her marks on the text as clear to an audience as John Doyle's in one of his actor-musician productions of a Sondheim musical. But part of what makes the role of director so important in theatre is his or her ability to place a stamp on the production and, like a playwright, to assert a point of view. Mitchell's point of view seems to be heading in divergent directions. She presents us with a wide range of images, but leaves her audience to do its own sorting - compelling perhaps, but not fulfilling. With more consideration for text and less pure aestheticism, Mitchell could be a great theatrical director. For now, though, she seems instead a great visual artist.

The Lover/The Collection, The Comedy Theatre, London

Rating: ****/5

Thursday, 24 January 2008 (in previews).

Shamefully, I'd never seen a production of a play by eminent British playwright and recent Nobel winner Harold Pinter until attending a preview performance of the star-studded The Lover/The Collection at the West End's Comedy Theatre. Starring Richard Coyle, Gina McKee (Notting Hill), up-and-coming film actor Charlie Cox, and veteran Brit Timothy West, there is no shortage of acting chops on display.

The first play, The Lover, is one of those plays with a twist that carries its game on for a bit too long. But its leads, Richard Coyle and Gina McKee, do the best they can with the material, and they bring out the best in some great one-liners, peppering on a layer of sex appeal as well for added measure.

The Collection, a more ambitious play and far more successful play, focuses on the effects of infidelity on a young couple. McKee and Coyle are once again husband and wife (though their characters differ in some ways from their respective roles in The Lover), while Charlie Cox takes on the role of the lover and Timothy West that of the lover's hilariously stodgy older friend and flatmate.

The two plays display the wit and wordplay that are signature to Pinter's style, and these particular actors seem to be absolute perfection in their respective roles. Director Jamie Lloyd directs the production briskly amidst serviceable designs from Soutra Gilmour. Special note should be given to music and sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, who provide an appropriately jazzy vibes-and-bass-punctuated score. 

The moment where the production hits the most spot-on note comes at the end of The Collection. The final moment of the play, which could very easily have ended the evening on a decisive note, without the question mark thusly deserved, but instead Pinter leaves us with a menacing look on McKee's face that leaves an audience pondering the mysteries of love and relationships long after the close of the curtain, a feeling sadly missing from much of today's new plays.

Much Ado About Nothing, The National Theatre (Olivier), London

Simon Russell Beale as Benedick and Zoe Wanamaker as Beatrice are standouts in Much Ado About Nothing.

Rating: ****/5

Tuesday, 22 January 2008.

The Bard abounds in London this season, the West End alone having already played host to marvelous star-driven productions of Macbeth (with Patrick Stewart), King Lear (with Ian McKellen), and Othello (with Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor). Having written inarguably the most durable canon of English-speaking plays, Shakespeare and his ability to reach even the most modern of audiences with timeless characters and themes, is to be commended for achieveing a four-for-four score so far.

This latest Shakespeare production, on display in repertory at the National's intimately vast Olivier auditorium, relies less so on star power, employing instead the veteran talents of Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker in the comic roles of Benedick and Beatrice respectively. Employing older actors in these two roles than are usually considered, Nicholas Hytner manages to keep the plot rolling along at a swift pace this fast and funny production.

The story, one full of misunderstandings and plenty of ribaldry, allows for Beale and Wanamaker to shine. With their beady eyes and perfect time, this plucky pair gets all of the biggest laughs. Still, the supporting cast, including Oliver Ford Davies as Leonato, Susannah Fielding as Hero, and Daniel Hawksford as Claudio, also get their chance to shine. Though the pair of young lovers have the challenge of animating rather typical romantic comedy roles, the two are lively enough to keep us interested in their rather predictable plot line. 

The fantastic rotating set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, is also to be commended for allowing the proceedings to shift from the intimacy of a private room to more public spaces seamlessly. Behind the revolving portion of the set, atmospheric evocations of the Sicilian setting remind us of the locations we're in.

Shakespeare plays are some of the most difficult to stage and to perform well, as evidenced by the great number of bad productions, but the London stage seems to be on a roll this season. It's the ability of the actors and director to step away from preconceived notions of Shakespeare plays as dusty texts, the stuff of what Peter Brook would call "the deadly theatre," and bringing a sense of immediacy to the proceedings that makes this and other recent Shakespeare productions so successful. Resetting the play is not necessary; the past is doomed to repeat itself. The challenge is to change with the times.

The Vertical Hour, The Royal Court Theatre, London

Anton Lesser and Indira Varma in David Hare's newest play The Vertical Hour.

Rating: ***/5

Monday, 21 January 2008.

When eminent British playwright David Hare's latest play, The Vertical Hour, opened on Broadway last season, it was an event: the first time he'd premiered a play in the United States before a London production. And certainly there was a reason for this choice; Hare's play is all about the interplay between Americans and the British, as much as his last play before this one, Stuff Happens. 

Nadia Blye (Indira Varma) is a former war correspondent, having spent time in Bosnia, Iraq, Israel, Palestine -- all of the hot spots of the Middle East. On holiday with her fiance Phillip (Tom Riley) in rural England to meet his father Oliver (Anton Lesser), a general practitioner escaping a murky past, Nadia's relationship is tested by ghosts from their pasts and her fiance's. The vertical hour of the play -- literally the time immediately following a crisis during which redemption is actually possible -- refers metaphorically to a night that Nadia and Oliver spend together late in the wee hours of the night, philosophizing and discussing their pasts together.

When I saw the play on Broadway, I respected the text immensely despite the less than adept performance of the production's Nadia Blye, Julianne Moore. Indira Varma proves a much more emotionally adept Nadia, packing the charm of Julia Roberts and the looks of Idina Menzel, but still I couldn't help but notice flaws in the writing I hadn't quite caught onto before. Hare's use of direct audience address periodically through the piece, for one, seems unnecessary in so long a play with so much time to place exposition within other scenes, and scenes involving Nadia's discourse with students seem heavy-handed in contrast to the more sensitive central scenes.

Another problem of the production, at least in comparison to its Broadway counterpart, is the performance of Anton Lesser as Oliver. While Bill Nighy played the roll as a jittery, imposing figure, Lesser is a much humbler, less physically daunting man, and I had a harder time believing him as a ladies' man as he's described in the text. Where Nighy oozes with lasciviousness, free love, and the concealment of secrets, Lesser seems much more a pent-up poetry-lover at heart.

The design of the production now on view at the Royal Court Theatre, by Mike Britton, is noticeably sparser than that on Broadway, where more literal sets were by Scott Pask, costumes were by Ann Roth, and lighting was by Brian MacDevitt. This production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, strips the play to its bare essentials. Its longest and most adept scenes, those set in the English countryside, feature hazy neon lighting on a sparse set that merely suggests the outdoors, a framed screen obscuring limbs of trees that hover overhead. Tables and chairs are enough to suggest most of the proceedings. Though I appreciated the more sumptuous design of the Broadway production, I'm not sure that the minimal approach isn't an improvement, leaving Hare's words to do the work in a production that, in the end, is so much about the text.

The play is one long sparring match after another, between Nadia and her students, between Nadia and her fiance, between Nadia and Oliver. If one isn't prepared for polemics and plenty of politics, this is not the play to choose for a night out. Going in with an open mind, however, there are plenty of interesting debates that arise to challenge an audience, no matter its political allegiances, in this fascinating play. Most importantly, is it betrayal to a cause to engage in discourse with the enemy in order to affect change or is it betrayal not to, a dilemma Nadia faces head-on when recounting to Oliver her visit to President Bush as a political advisor on the Middle East.

There's no accounting for who will enjoy this production. It's not the best play ever written, and it certainly won't go down in history as such, but Varma's performance and Hare's interesting political dialogue make for what is at the very least an engaging night of theatre.

"Happy Days" are here again.

Well, after a relatively restful winter break, it's finally back to London for me and my theatre illness. I think I really do have some sort of theatre addiction, but it's definitely not something I'd like to kick any time soon.

Over the winter break, I took two brief trips to New York City to remind myself of how much I love the New York theatre scene. I'm not sure which I love better for theatre: New York or London. But either way, I do have a sentimental attachment to New York, and it was nice to have gotten the chance to visit and to take in two shows, one on Broadway and one off. 

August: Osage County, a new play by Tracy Letts, the author of the play-turned-film Bug, is a production that started at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, a theatre known for its ensemble acting. Transfering the play, a property without known actors or a well-known source material, to Broadway was risky, but, because critics have heralded the play, it looks as if its limited run at the Imperial Theatre (a large theatre to fill), will pay off. Personally, I felt that the play, which has been compared to O'Neill's family dramas, was a bit lighter on substance than I would have liked. Its ending packed a wallop and its hard-working cast made it compelling, but the sharp dialogue felt more showy than genuine to me. It's a play sure to be a contender once the time comes for Pulitzer selection and one that's shown up on plenty of critics' top ten lists, but I still think I'll be rooting for the underdogs instead.

The other play I saw in New York this winter break, a production of Samuel Beckett's 1960 play Happy Days, struck my fancy far more. Starring Fiona Shaw and directed by renowned British director Deborah Warner, the production is on tour from the National Theatre in London, a theatre I've come to know and love over the past few months. In New York, it played at Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Harvey Rose Theatre, a space bearing many similarities in its style to Peter Brook's Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, a theatre that felt to me incredibly lived-in and full of life.

Fiona Shaw gave one of the most thrilling performances I've ever seen in the piece, which focuses on ever-sunny Winnie, buried up to her waist (and later her neck) in sand, and her compulsion for filling the hours between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleeping." It's not a very mainstream play, but at the same time its humor abounds and makes the piece far more accessible than it would seem at first glance. Most importantly the play reflects the truth of its audience's day-to-day routines, so that by the time we've laughed our way through the 100-minute production we realize we've not only been laughing at Winnie, we've also been laughing at ourselves.

This semester is already off to an impressive start!

On Friday night, I went back to the National to see Present Laughter, a production of a 1942 Noel Coward play that was far more remarkably funny than I ever could have expected, having not previously known the joys of Coward. Starring Alex Jennings (most known for playing Prince Charles in The Queen), the production, which features lavish sets, played around with acting types of its time to hilarious effect. For a production that lasted three hours, there wasn't a dull moment in evidence, thanks to the brisk production of Howard Davies's production.

Sitting in my seat at intermission, I couldn't help but think how much I've genuinely come to love the National Theatre, having seen an array of plays in its three variously sized auditoriums (Chatroom/Citizenship; The Emperor Jones; Rafta, Rafta...; War Horse; The Women of Troy; and Present Laughter, with Much Ado About Nothing, Major Barbara, and Statement of Regret soon to come). They really do a great variety of modern and classic works and with consistently sumptuous acting. We really need a national theatre in the U.S., a place where great writers, actors, and directors want to work, and a place where government arts funding is bestowed generously without checks on the productions' content.

On Saturday, I made the long trek out to the Watermill Theatre in the little village of Bagnor out near Newbury, England, in order to see the new John Doyle-directed production of Merrily We Roll Along. It was certainly a good thing I left plenty of time before the show to get there, because, even after the hour-long train ride to Newbury and the twenty-minute bus ride to the Hare and Hounds Inn, there was still a half-hour rural hike by foot into the village before I was finally at the theatre. Savoring a much-needed glass of wine before the show, a nice couple (Tony and Jean) offered me a much-valued ride back to the train station after the show. The trip out of London really served to show how nice the English people are. People were very helpful at the bus station and very friendly at the theatre. 

As for the show, I was very much anticipating the production because of the recent Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd and Company that I'd seen, also directed by John Doyle and featuring Stephen Sondheim-penned scores. John Doyle, who frequently makes use of the actor-musician tradition in his productions, is really a very deft director of musical theatre. Some would say his actor-musician technique has worn out its welcome, but I think it really adds opportunities for introspection in regards to plot and character. Why does a particular character play a particular instrument? How do the characters and their instrumentations come together? It's not haphazard in a Doyle production, or, at the very least, an audience is left to read additional levels into the text. 

I'd been wanting to go to the Watermill Theatre for years now, and the production certainly wasn't a letdown. It's a show I've seen several times before in college productions, and one that I love even more every new time I see it. Focusing on a group of friends, starting with their disappointing midlife crises and commencing with their optimistic beginnings (running backward in time), Sondheim and book writer George Furth, have really created a deft portrait of the loss of innocence. In his production, Doyle added additional layers to the piece by including filmic production elements, including an ominous and centrally-placed film projector, on which new rolls of film are fitted to unwind during each successive new scene. Characters throughout the piece are also left to unspool rolls of film symbolically, a touch that could have seemed more tedious but which I appreciated within the context of this production, which overall succeeded in stripping away the material to its bare essentials. 

What I was most thankful for was the retaining of the brass elements within the show's orchestrations. What left me most cold about the recent revival of Company was its lack of brass. Company and Merrily are Sondheim's two most brass-heavy scores, owing to the New York hustle and bustle evident within both pieces. Without the brass, Company felt entirely too cold, but this Merrily is full of blood and verve and life. Doyle manages to be inventive and faithful at once, and it's really added up to a satisfying production that I hope will transfer to bigger houses in London and/or New York to reach larger audiences. The lucky few who travel out to the Watermill to see it in its original incarnation will most certainly not be disappointed. I know I wasn't.

And so my spring in London is off with a bang! This week, I'm looking forward to the London premiere of David Hare's The Vertical Hour at the Royal Court which I admired during its stint on Broadway in late 2006, and the production of Much Ado About Nothing starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre. Next weekend will also be interesting, including a return visit to The Women of Troy at the National and a first trip to Statement of Regret in the smaller Cottesloe Theatre at the National. Next Sunday I'm also taking in Cat Power's concert at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. It's a busy week! I'll be back to report more in the near future!