Kafka's Ape **** -TNT

Friday 27 March 2009 16:50 GMT

Kathryn Hunter goes ape in Colin Teevan’s adaptation of Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy. Though not the first time that this versatile actress has played a member of the opposite sex, on this occasion she takes to the stage in top hat and tails with the mannerisms of a male monkey breaking through the humanised surface
So, addressing the audience directly, Red Peter relates how he was shot and captured on the Gold Coast, then transported to Europe in a cruelly cramped cage – interrupting his story to offer a banana and groom the hair of a front row spectator. He tells how (in the belief that his only chance of survival was to copy his captors) he learnt to behave like a human – spitting, scratching and drinking rum just like the sailors on board ship – before making the choice between life in the zoo or the music hall.
Hunter swings chimp-like from a wall, or bounds, hunched, across the stage, arms swinging, then fixes the audience with a penetrating, quizzical stare. It’s a remarkable solo performance which renders Red Peter’s story both funny and touching, a sad satire of assimilation which leaves him uneasily trapped in the no man’s land between simian and sapiens.

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Kafka's Ape

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 27 March 2009 16:50 GMT.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (0207 922 2922) Until 9th April (£17.50, £10 under 26)

Deep Cut **** TNT

Thursday 19 March 2009

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Deep Cut

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Thursday 19 March 2009 14:12 GMT.

Over the last 15 years, this intimate theatre has built an excellent reputation for its “Tribunal Plays,” thought-provoking dramatisations from Nuremburg to Guantanamo of some of the most controversial inquiries of recent decades.

Philip Ralph’s exposure of the apparent cover-ups and incompetency of the investigations into the cause of death of four trainees at the Deepcut army barracks in Surrey, between 1995 and 2002, is, like its precursors, based on verbatim accounts and original source material. But, tellingly, on this occasion there is no sense of a courtroom format – hardly surprising as there has never been a full judicial inquiry. Yet on the evidence presented, the verdict of suicide in all four cases seems, to say the least, grossly inept.

Focussing mainly on the family of Cheryl James (a lively 18 year old who, it was ruled, shot herself whilst on guard duty) Ralph shows her parents fighting to understand exactly what happened to their adopted daughter and being thwarted at every turn by the army, the police, the justice system and the government. Evidence also comes from one of Cheryl’s contemporaries who (whilst acknowledging the challenges of the training environment) saw no sign of a mindset that might have led to her taking her own life.

But the most damning testimony comes from forensic scientist Frank Swann whose refusal to testify without an independent public inquiry seems, with hindsight, to have been a serious error of judgement. From his analysis of the pattern of splattered blood to the impossible angle of a fatal shot, his findings alone should be enough to reopen every one of these cases and start the process of finding the answers to the questions which still remain painfully – and shamefully - unanswered.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 (020 7328 1000) to 4th April (£10.00-£20.00)

On the Waterfront **** TNT

Friday 13 March 2009 16:55 GMT

Like Arthur Miller’s contemporaneous stage play A View From the Bridge, Elia Kazan’s gritty 1954 film was influenced by the anti-communist witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Both works explore the predicament of conflicting loyalties, transposing events to the harsh, New York quayside, but Steven Berkoff’s innovative and highly stylised production of the movie is a far more expressionistic affair than the equally fine, more naturalistic revival of Miller’s drama currently playing a couple of streets away.
The New York docks are conjured by a bleak, toppling two-dimensional Statue of Liberty, the golden-flamed torch replaced by a longshoreman’s threatening grappling hook. A slow-motion chorus morphs from intimidated dockers, to rain-coated mobsters, then transforms itself into a loft packed with cooing, jutting pigeons.
Against this stark backdrop, Terry Malloy (the failed boxer immortalised on screen by Marlon Brando and here given a performance of swaggering inarticulacy tinged with growing vulnerability by Simon Merrells) is torn between loyalty to his brother and the union boss Johnny Friendly and his love for the sister of the man whom he unwittingly delivered into their murderous hands.
Played out with the intensity of a Greek tragedy, and with Berkoff himself a menacing central presence as the corrupt Friendly, this is a gripping reinvention of a classic which grows in power and poignancy right through to the final, moodily atmospheric curtain call.
Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, SW1 (0845 481 1870) to 25th April (£15-£45, some £10 day seats available)

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On the Waterfront

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 13 March 2009 16:55 GMT.

Over There *** TNT

Friday 13 March 2009 17:02 GMT

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Over There

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 13 March 2009 17:02 GMT.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, playwright Mark Ravenhill suggests that the merging of the two cultures and ideologies wasn’t a completely welcome – or easy – event. His initially intriguing new play (influenced by interviews conducted in Berlin and part of the Royal Court’s season of works about Germany) brings together Karl and Franz, two young men brought up on different sides of the wall.

The twist is that they’re identical twins who were separated as toddlers. Whilst their mother took Franz to grow up in the comparative consumerist opulence of the West, Karl stayed behind in the East with his socialist dad. Now, both their parents are dead (symbolism looms heavily throughout) and there is no need for passes and permits if they want to spend time together.

Karl gradually takes on more and more of his sibling’s characteristics, wearing an identical suit and becoming a second father to his little nephew (portrayed by what, from where I was sitting, looked like a bright yellow sponge – representing, presumably, a new, unfettered generation ready to soak up influences from all sides). Despite the surface advantages, though, he cannot find contentment in an overwhelmingly materialistic, reunified society.

The performances from real life twins Luke and Harry Treadaway are excellent as, right from their first brief meeting in 1986, they eerily finish each other’s sentences. But, by the time they’d stripped to their respective red and green underpants (with Karl’s body smeared in a surfeit of ketchup and chocolate cream cakes) Ravenhill’s need to shock diminishes what has gone before.

And, when Franz takes a subsuming, cannibalistic bite from his brother’s corpse, the effect is risibly nauseating rather than politically powerful.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (020 7565 5000) to March 21st (£10-£25)

Toyer ** TNT

Saturday 14 March 2009 11:21

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Toyer

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 13 March 2009 16:52 GMT. It was last updated on Saturday 14 March 2009 11:21 GMT.

Things get surprisingly hot and steamy in this nasty psychological thriller, a deeply unpleasant two-hander which tries to keep you guessing. It’s a tricky feat to pull off – with only a couple of protagonists, the twists (even if you can’t guess exactly what they’ll be) can only go one way, then the other.

Unfortunately, American Gardner McKay (who died in 2001) wasn’t a sufficiently skilful writer to let the audience make its own deductions when the tables turn, and frequently falls into the trap of adding cumbersome explanation to what is already obvious.

With a mysterious serial sadist on the loose, Maude (Alice Krige) really should know better than to let a stranger into her remote LA apartment – especially as she’s the psychiatrist dealing with the trail of crudely lobotomised female victims he’s left in his psychopathic wake. But when Al Weaver’s boyishly gangly Peter fixes her car, she not only opens the door to him but beds him too, despite his disconcertingly creepy behaviour.

It all makes for a pretty unpleasant experience which aims to shock and titillate, and one can only feel for the two performers who, night after night, are called upon to act out this implausible game of cat and mouse.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2 (0845 017 5584) until 21st March (£ 22.50-£29.50)

The Family Reunion

T.S. Eliot’s 1939 verse play conjures up another era and a different way of life in an atmospheric revival, staged as the centrepiece of the Donmar’s festival commemorating the work of the American born playwright. It’s quintessentially English, with the sands of time draining remorselessly into the corners of Bunny Christie’s gloomy, wood-panelled country house set where the aristocratic Monchesey family has gathered to celebrate the birthday of the steely, controlling matriarch (Gemma Jones) and the anticipated arrival of her three sons. But it also draws on the tradition of Greek tragedy with a quartet of antiquated relatives forming a bemused and amusing chorus trying to make sense of events, and the three Eumenides (here reimagined as ghostly little boys) pursuing Sam West’s tortured Harry. Returning home after an 8 year absence and the death of the wife whom he professes to have pushed overboard, he cannot escape the guilt within which follows him wherever he goes.

The heightened, poetic language veers from the totally obscure to the eerily disturbing, but the quality of the acting and the bleak intensity of Jeremy Herrin’s stylish production more than compensate for the frustratingly abstruse and seemingly nonsensical passages.

Donmar to 10^th Jan

A Miracle TNT ***

Monday 09 March 2009 12:08 GMT

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A Miracle

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Saturday 07 March 2009 10:45 GMT. It was last updated on Monday 09 March 2009 12:08 GMT.

Molly Davies’ Norfolk-based play, the second in the Royal Court’s New Writers Festival, doesn’t have the sassy polish or assurance of Shades which kicked off the 2009 season, and, at a mere 75 minutes long, barely qualifies as a full-length play. But there’s no doubting the sincerity of this intense, well-acted drama, which explores dreams turned sour and lives – old and young – full of disappointment.

It focuses mainly on two teenagers who, at just 19, already find themselves in places they really don’t want to be – Amy a reluctant single mum working in a chicken nugget factory and with no concept of the needs of her year-old baby, and old school friend turned soldier Gary, back on two weeks' sick leave and fantasising about a different future. But Davies doesn’t ignore the unwelcome changes forced on older generations. Amy’s protective gran, in her 60s and saddled with the care of the unwanted infant, unintentionally thwarts any chance of a lasting bond growing between mother and child, and the recent loss of his pig farm has driven Gary’s dad to the verge of suicide.

The smell of earth hits you as you enter the auditorium, and a sense of empty flatness, sucking the life and ambition from its inhabitants, prevails. A kids’ roundabout provides the only touch of fading brightness in a design which incorporates a kitchen, a bedsit and farmyard bags of animal bedding.

Grass sprouts sparsely, but like the squashed hopes of all Davies’ characters, it seems to be fighting a hopeless battle in the bleak, rural wasteland she portrays.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (020 7565 5000). Until March 21. £10-£15

Unbroken TNT ***

Thursday 05 March 2009 10:32 GMT

Austrian dramatist Arthur Schnitzler’s turn of the century La Ronde has provided the inspiration for numerous playwrights - most recently Joe DiPietro whose F**king Men puts a snappy gay slant on a daisy chain of relationships which come full circle by the time the curtain falls.

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Unbroken

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Tuesday 03 March 2009 12:03 GMT. It was last updated on Thursday 05 March 2009 10:32 GMT.

Apart from an implied suspicion of homosexual attraction, Alexandra Wood’s new cut-down dance/physical theatre version (lasting less than 50 minutes) is completely heterosexual. Economically staged, with just two performers playing three parts apiece (without even as much as a change of costume) Unbroken makes considerable demands on their ability to differentiate between the characters they portray. The actual seductions (evocatively choreographed by Ugo Dehaes) range from the tough to the tender and reflect the underlying emotions, but the delivery of the already underpowered dialogue fares less well.

Gemma Higginbotham proves more adept than hernmale counterpart - there’s little, vocally, to distinguish between the rockstar, infertile partner and unhappy husband with whom she couples.

The loveless staging, with the audience ranged in long rows facing the fist-punched, featureless backdrop, offers little joy and is a constant visual reminder that sex – perfunctory or otherwise - doesn’t always lead to happiness.

Gate, Pembridge Road W11 (020 7229 0706) Until 7th March (£16)

Be Near Me - Donmar This is London

Ian McDiarmid has not only adapted but also takes the central role in his stage version of Andrew O'Hagan's third novel. A co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland and directed by John Tiffany, it's simply staged on an almost bare set with the cast – the citizens of the unwelcoming fictional Ayrshire town of Dalgarnock – seated upstage as disapproving observers. A rug, a chandelier, a few chairs are all that's usedto conjure up the rectory and coastalbleakness of the parish where fifty something Roman Catholic priest DavidAnderton – half English, half Scottish by birth, but completely English by education– lives.

With his taste for literature and fine wine, he's something of a misfit in this divided community of unemployment and neglect, and takes to spending far too much time in the company of 15 year old tearaway schoolboy Mark (Richard Madden) and his girlfriend Lisa (Helen Mallon). It's a reckless and unlikely friendship destined to lead to trouble.

With her forthright observations, Blythe Duff's ailing housekeeper Mrs Pooleprovides a morally and intellectually challenging foil to McDiarmid's effete, basically decent Father David. But despite the rough, restless, mouthy energy injected by the wayward teenagers, just as with the novel, you'll need patience to reap the rewards of this slow-paced psychological study of a priest who no longer has a calling.

Woman in Mind **** TNT

Friday 27 February 2009

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Woman in Mind

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 27 February 2009 11:18 GMT.

Middle-aged, middleclass housewife Susan steps on a rake, knocks herself out and emerges concussed and confused and apparently living two parallel lives – the one mundane and how things really are, the other a dream from a Mills and Boon romance. Her boring, bearded vicar husband is transformed into an athletic and markedly younger man; the sulky son who refuses to talk to his parents is replaced by a pretty blonde daughter; and, instead of a widowed sister-in-law with her disastrous efforts in the kitchen, there’s a dashing, considerate brother in pristine tennis whites.

Alan Ayckbourn’s clever but increasingly bleak comedy (written in 1985 and which he directs himself) is often extremely funny as Susan interacts with her charmless spouse (Stuart Fox) and the bumbling doctor (Paul Kemp) who has admired her, silently, from a distance since the moment they first met.

But, as in much of his writing, there is also a deep sadness. And, as Susan’s fantasy world turns menacing and collides with reality, Janie Dee’s beautifully nuanced and touching performance reveals all the poignancy of a sadly disappointed woman spiralling towards a complete mental breakdown.

Vaudeville, Strand WC2 (0870 040 0084) to 30th May( £46- £26)

A View from the Bridge **** TNT

Friday 27 February 2009

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A View from the Bridge

This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 27 February 2009 11:06 GMT.

Over half a century since its Broadway premiere, Arthur Miller’s hard-hitting drama proves its staying power in Lindsay Posner’s engrossing revival. Like the central character in the contemporary On the Waterfront currently playing nearby, hardworking Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone finds himself torn between conflicting allegiances.He owes his loyalty to his wife and the illegal immigrant cousins who lodge with them, but he can neither acknowledge nor deal with the feelings he has for his niece, Catherine.

Married Marco (who only intends to stay long enough to make money for his family back in Sicily) isn’t a problem, but, with his light-hearted, jokey manner and blonde hair, his younger brother Rodolpho just “ain’t right” in Eddie’s eyes – especially when he shows more than a passing – and reciprocated - interest in Catherine, who could be his passport to a new life in the US.

Ken Stott’s superbly troubled and powerful performance simmers with uncontrollable emotion, ratcheting the tension as his jealousy takes over. He’s well matched by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as his sad, hurt wife Beatrice, the unheeded voice of reason and all too aware that her husband’s concern for her dead sister’s child has gone way past the merely protective.
A timeless tragedy not to be missed.

Duke of York’s, St Martin’s Lane, WC2 (0870 060 6623) to May 16. £21- £50.50