Beyond the Horizon & Spring Storm This is is London

This thoughtful, cross-cast pairing of early works from the pens of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill provides a welcome opportunity to catch the UK premiere of the former’s Spring Storm, and to witness their initial explorations of themes which were to recur again and again in their later and better known dramas.
Set on a Connecticut farm, O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon (his first full length play, which premiered in 1920 and won a Pulitzer Prize) depicts two devoted brothers, one of whom loves the land whilst the other plans a life of travel, adventure, books and poetry. Both have fallen for the same girl (Liz White’s Ruth, her youthful anticipation turning to worn down bitterness and regret as the years pass) and, in trying to do the right thing by each other, end up crushing their own dreams and damaging themselves and their loved ones.
Written in 1937 when he was a student, and then discarded, Spring Storm (Williams’ second play) also has a young girl at the apex of a problematic romantic triangle. A forerunner of Blanche Dubois, Southern belle Heavenly (White again) is irresistibly attracted to Michael Thomson’s virile, bluecollar Dick (the names say it all) but is also reluctant to dismiss the wealth and social approval which marriage to well-educated, well-connected Arthur would provide. Arthur, in turn, dallies heartlessly with the spinsterish librarian (Anna Tolputt) who (intellectually, at least) would, in all probability, suit him far better.
There’s tragedy here, too, but also humour – in Heavenly’s coquettish attempts to seduce Michael Malarkey’s ineffectual Arthur and, especially, in Jacqueline King’s deliciously funny portrayal of her unstoppably snobbish mother.
Each play stands alone, but seen together they highlight the similarities between two giants of the American theatre and prove a feather in the caps of both the hosting National and Northampton’s Royal & Derngate where Laurie Sansom’s sensitive and atmospheric productions originated.
Cottesloe

All The Fun Of The Fair *** TNT

What’s left of the curly dark hair is grey, but David Essex’s eyes still twinkle and although his voice has gravelled with age, this funfair musical woven around his ’70s hit songs surely has a nostalgic audience ready and waiting to listen to them all over again.

There’s not much depth here, but forget your critical faculties and you’re in for an enjoyable, tender-hearted fairground ride with a handful of younger performers.

Garrick Theatre, WC2H 0HH ( Leicester Square) 0844 412 4662 until Sep 5(£25-£55) garrick-theatre.co.uk

Unedited version

What’s left of the curly dark hair is grey, but David Essex’s eyes still twinkle and although his voice has gravelled with age, this funfair musical woven round his 70’s hit songs surely has a nostalgic audience ready and waiting to listen to them all over again.

An illicit affair, the dying days of the Wall of Death, plus a father and son at odds about almost everything are crammed into under two hours, along with over 20 of Essex’s hits. There’s not much depth here, but forget your critical faculties and you’re in for an enjoyable, tender-hearted fairground ride with a handful of younger performers – including Michael Pickering’s two-timing, athletic Jack and Tim Newman’s mentally challenged Slow Jonny – who hit the notes the charismatic Essex can no longer reach.

Oliver! *** TNT

Whatever you think of the man and his music, there’s no doubting that Andrew Lloyd Webber really knows how to market a show.

The hunt for a new Dorothy to go skipping down the yellow brick road next year, looking for The Wizard of Oz, drew to an emotional close over the weekend (the box office is apparently booming) and the publicity generated by his previous TV search for unknown talent has already ensured the success of Rupert Goold’s restaging of Sam Mendes’ 1994 production of Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s perennial favourite dating back to 1960..

After over a year, the “I’d do Anything" winner, Jodie Prenger, with her larger than life personality, has handed over the coveted role of Nancy and moved on to other projects. But with those wonderful songs (it’s impossible to leave the theatre without at least one number buzzing insistently in one’s brain), a host of hungry orphans singing the praises of Food Glorious Food, and a gaggle of light-fingered urchins who think It’s A Fine Life, this family show will always be bigger than any individual element.

Anthony Ward’s design is terrific – narrow, gloomy Victorian streets descend to Fagin’s subterranean lair, festooned with pick-pocketed handkerchiefs, or open out to the bright, airy vista of wealthy Mr. Brownlow’s fashionably spacious abode.

Griff Rhys Jones’s Fagin is more avuncular, less sinister, than one might expect, though his vocals are clear. And Kerry Ellis (the new Nancy) needs a touch more passion and exuberance as she Oom-Pah-Pahs through the Three Cripples’ Public House.

The bones of Dickens’ novel are there, though sanitised. But, who can resist the heart-rending poignancy of As Long As He Needs Me, the plangent Who Will Buy? as it blossoms into life-affirming joy, or Fagin craftily Reviewing the Situation when he realises his life of crime is no longer going to pay?

Theatre Royal Drury Lane Catherine Street WC2B 5JF (Charing Cross/Covent Garden tube) 0844 482 5157 olivertickets.co.uk £17.50 - £65.00 Currently booking till 26 Feb 2011

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky ** TNT

Each of the three playwrights who collaborated in the writing of this multi-scened, pre-apocalyptic drama have previously produced work I’ve enjoyed and admired – David Eldridge’s Festen, Robert Holman’s Making Noise Quietly, Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock .

But, though eight years in gestation, their combined efforts creating this tale of five generations of the dysfunctional Benton family waiting for the world to end finally lost all credibility when it culminated in a chat about cheese. As the final three weeks of life as they know it draw to an end (cosmic string is the culprit, not some man-made disaster) the five estranged Benton brothers are drawn back to the pig farm where their mother Margaret still lives.

Confusingly, black sheep Jake ( he got his girlfriend pregnant decades earlier) looks almost as old as his septuagenarian parent, whilst youngest sibling Philip is a mere schoolboy, the same age as Jake’s grandson (a biological mystery which gets at least some sort of explanation before the end of the evening).

Philip (Harry McEntire) seems to have developed the knack of time-travelling - at one point we see him wondrously cradling his own mother, as a baby, as he turns away from the adulterous coupling of her mother with a German refugee. Yet he’ll never have the chance to explore his own sexuality.

Edward is a homeless junkie living rough. Apathetic James, for reasons best known to himself, tells his wife (who seems to have food constantly on her mind) to kill his beloved dog rather than take it along with them. And in perhaps the most memorable scene, Nigel Cooke’s cancer-ridden William (who’s unlikely to last even as long as the doomed world) stands naked and vulnerable in a tin bath as Anne Mitchell’s Margaret tenderly bathes his agonised body.

To be fair, most of the time one can’t really distinguish which writer is responsible for what, but all the same I was constantly reminded of that childhood pencil and paper game in which one player draws a head, folds the paper and passes it on for the next person to add their contribution and so on until a whole body has been produced.

It’s a weird, convoluted exercise, but although well acted and with moments of insight (plus a final, uplifting explosion into light of an otherwise bleak set) these fragmentary glimpses of lives without a future fail to engage.

Lyric Hammersmith, King Street, W6 0QL (Hammersmith Tube) 0871 221 1726 lyric.co.uk Till 5th June (£10-25)

Women Beware Women **** TNT

Marianne Elliott’s darkly atmospheric revival of Thomas Middleton’s 1621 tragicomedy of lust and corruption relocates this Jacobean revenge drama from Renaissance Florence to an opulent fifties setting where newly married Bianca is first secreted away from covetous eyes by her spouse, then seduced by the immoral Duke who bends her to his lascivious will.

Harriet Walter is on fine scheming form as widowed Livia, a sleek, black-gowned procuress abetted by Andrew Woodall’s devious courtier who plans to marry off his Ward (prancing, punkish Harry Melling) to her niece, who is herself duped into an incestuous affair with her uncle.

Moody jazz accompanies the slow revolve of Lez Brotherston’s richly oppressive set and the final elegantly staged bloodbath seems a just reward for all the convoluted bad behaviour that has gone before.

Olivier at the National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX (Waterloo tube) 020 7452 3000 nationaltheatre.org.uk Currently in rep until 4 July £10 - £30 as part of the Travelex season

Dream of the Dog *** TNT

Delayed since last year, South African playwright Craig Higginson’s short new play, Dream of the Dog, which premiered at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, finally makes it to the Finborough in a taut, strongly cast production directed by Katie McAleese.

In KwaZulu-Natal, shortly after the millennium, elderly white couple Patricia and Richard are getting ready to leave the farm that has been their home for decades. She’s physically frail but mentally astute; he’s suffering from progressive dementia as he grabs a spade, intent on digging up the sadness of their life together.

With their bags already packed, a dog’s warning bark announces the unexpected arrival of “Look Smart”, the garden boy whom Patricia nurtured and educated until, 15 years ago, in his teens, he ran away and completely vanished.

Now their roles are reversed. Employed by the development company which purchased the farmstead, he’s brashly confident, sometimes threatening, as he confronts his onetime mentor about the truth – as he sees it - behind the terrible death which precipitated his sudden disappearance.

As these representatives of the old and new regimes try to make sense of what really happened, the on-going legacy of Apartheid is exposed – in the polite dignity of Gracy Goldman’s black servant, Beauty, in the resentment of Ariyon Bakare’s “Look Smart”, still seething angrily beneath the sheen of his sharp, corporate suit, and in Janet Suzman’s rational, resigned Patricia, forced to revisit and re-evaluate the disappointments and inequities of the personal and political past.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. (Earl’s Court Tube) 0844 847 1652
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Untl 22nd May Tickets £15 - £18

Eurydice ** TNT

Initially beguiling, American playwright Sarah Ruhl’s updating of the Greek myth of Orpheus in the underworld loses focus early on and fails to live up to the likeable charm displayed in its opening scene.

In source versions, the emphasis is on Orpheus, the poet and musician who is given a single chance to descend into Hades and reclaim the bride he lost on their wedding day.

Ruhl, however, focuses more on Eurydice, creating a dead father (Geff Francis) who writes to her from beyond the grave. Bijan Sheibani’s playful production first has the young lovers frolicking, in goggles and swimwear, at the edge of the sea. A proposal and a wedding party swiftly follow, but with the lure of a letter from her father, a “Nasty Interesting Man” entices Eurydice to his high rise apartment and a sudden fall to her death.

With a chorus of disapproving Stones (Big, Little and Loud), worms seemingly operating a postmortem postal service between this world and the next, and water cascading from above and bubbling from below, there should be enough in this tale of loss to easily sustain its comparatively short running time.

But amiable though the leads are (Osi Okerafor’s leggy Orpheus who hears music in the depths of his soul and Ony Uhiara’s wide-eyed Eurydice with her passion for books) this patchy analysis of young womanhood caught between paternal and husbandly loves proves dramatically whimsical and emotionally inert.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (Tube Southwark / Waterloo) 0207 922 2922
www.youngvic.org Till 5th June £17.50 under 26’s £10

Psy **** TNT

Canadian circus company Les 7 Doigts de la Main is back with a fourth show, Psy, which purports to explore various problematic aspects of the human psyche - from addiction to paranoia through mania and hypochondria.

There are, in fact, 11 members of this talented troupe on stage, and each one is given an individual chance to shine as well as performing together in a sometimes jaw-dropping display of dexterous coordination and acrobatic skill – a sort of Cirque du Soleil without the extravagant costumes, and all the more empathetic for it.

Guillaume Biron’s superbly controlled Michel Michel hears voices in his head which inform the way he elegantly twists, turns and balances on a fixed trapeze; agoraphobic Lily finds freedom swinging high in the air across the stage, Florent LeStage’s amnesiac doesn’t know his own identity but is pretty nifty with the clubs and walking stick which he juggles with insouciant ease; and the uncontrollable temper of Olga Kosova’s Suzi finds fiery expression in a deft display of whirling knives.

Julien Silliiau’s Addict can’t escape his spinning German wheel no matter how hard he tries, whilst OCD sufferer Tom interrupts every action with an uncontrollable smoothing of his clothes. Nael Jammal’s Jacques dons a blank white mask which adds a sinister simian overtone to his hand balancing routine, and tumbler Dexter with his multiple personality disorder is teeterboard propelled onto the roof of a symbolic two storey building .

Most appealing of all, Heloise Bourgeois’ insomniac Claire (partnered by William Underwood’s paranoiac) flips and slips elegantly down the Chinese pole, never quite hitting the ground as she clutches her pillow like a sleepy child.

You won’t learn much about their various neuroses, but this slick, hugely enjoyable show proves that you don’t need high tech (or high prices) to bring the circus to town.

Peacock Theatre, Portugal Street WC2A 2HT (Holborn tube) 0844 412 4322
www.sadlerswells.com Until 15th May (£10 - £36)

Grumpy Old Women Live 2 - Chin Up Britain *** TNT

Their waistlines have thickened and the wrinkles have multiplied, but there’s still a lot of life and hope left in these three women of a certain age as they rage and rampage around a colourful kitchen set.

The precursor of this spin-off from the TV show hit the stage four years ago, and, with various casts, has toured both nationally and internationally (including a visit to Oz) speaking out for the hot-flush but not yet carpet-slippered brigade of middle-aged women.

Co-scripted by Judith Holder and comedian Jenny Eclair (one of the original performers and the most uninhibited of the trio) it calls on women get the nation back on track with a variety of unlikely suggestions, whilst complaining about embarrassing leaks, the length of the Christmas holidays and snoring, ageing partners with droopy genitals.

Though high on energy, there’s barely a suspicion of subtlety in this sequel and a tendency to labour the humour. But, every so often, this Grumpy Brigade (Eclair plus the more refined Susie Blake and comparative youngster Wendi Peters) hits just the right comic note – ruefully observing that looking in the mirror is like seeing your dad in drag, likening sex to making your own pastry (“you know you should, but you don’t know if you can be bothered”), and dealing with tampons when you’re not only menopausal but also very, very forgetful.

At their best, (and if you’re in the right age group) they can be pant-wettingly funny. For the rest of us, a drink or two beforehand is all that’s needed to compensate for a lack of bite and ensure an enjoyably uncomplicated evening in the company of three women who steadfastly refuse to grow old gracefully.

Novello Aldwych WC2B 4LD (Charing Cross tube)0844 482 5170
delfontmackintosh.co.uk Until 5th June (£15 - £35)

The Real Thing - unedited

That most intellectual of playwrights, Tom Stoppard, first got personal and let the feelings show in this 1982 domestic drama about marriage, infidelity and living with an actress – all things he knew more than a little about.

Using a clever “play within a play structure” which finally comes full circle, he lays bare the emotions which successful dramatist Henry – perhaps even unknown to himself - conceals behind his articulate wit. Inextricably in love with Hattie Morahan’s teasing thespian Annie (who broke up his first marriage and is now being unfaithful to him) Toby Stephens’ excellent Henry shows just how deep the hurt can go in a fine revival which is both a paean to the dexterous use of language and a dissection of what it means to be in love.

The Real Thing **** TNT

Playwright Tom Stoppard first got personal with this domestic drama about marriage, infidelity and living with an actress – all things he knew more than a little about – in 1982.

Using a clever “play within a play” structure, which finally comes full circle, he lays bare the emotions which successful dramatist Henry conceals behind his articulate wit.

It’s a fine revival, and is both a paean to the dexterous use of language and a dissection of what it means to be in love.

Old Vic, SE1 8NB Waterloo oldvictheatre.com Until Jun 5. £20-£47

Posh **** TNT

Privileged, pompous and destined for a lifetime of entitlement, the ten student members of Laura Wade’s fictitious Riot Club have an unshakeable belief in their inherent superiority and the power of money and class to excuse any bad behaviour.

Her vividly executed new play shines a critical light on the loutish activities – puerile initiation ceremonies; excessive drinking with bin bags at the ready, the mandatory postprandial trashing of private property – indulged in by this small selection of the elite.

Lyndsey Turner’s strongly cast production proves horribly entertaining (David Dawson’s gay Hugo, a don in the making, particularly impresses). But it’s a lousy advert for Oxbridge - and an even worse one for aspiring PM David Cameron, a former member of the exclusive Bullingdon which this roistering dining club reputedly resembles.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS Sloane Square tube www.royalcourttheatre.com 020 7565 5000 Until 22nd May (£10-£25)

Little Gem **** TNT

Three generations of Dublin women with overlapping but very different lives are the subject of actress turned playwright Elaine Murphy’s first play, a trio of interlocked monologues simply staged with a scattering of projected images and a chair for each actress to sit on.

Amber has just finished school, likes a good time and has an unreliable boyfriend with a wandering eye. Her dowdy mother Lorraine might just be heading for a breakdown, with her compulsive urges to tidy and clean overflowing disastrously into her job as a shop assistant. Seated in the centre is Lorraine's own mother, sixty-something Kay, still devoted to her husband of over forty years, but with an itch that he can no longer satisfy since his stroke. Her determinedly cheerful face tells both of a lifetime of happiness with the man she loves and of sadness at the changes his illness has brought about.

In the course of a year, there’s a birth and a death and quite a bit of sex. Amber is forced to grow up, Lorraine lets her hair down and finds romance in the most unlikely place (as well as finally completely freeing herself of all attachment to the junkie ex-husband who left her to bring up their daughter alone) and Kay goes shopping for a Rampant Rabbit (though she chickens out and settles for a smaller green model instead).

It’s a tender, funny slice of everyday life with engaging performances from all three women - Sarah Green’s Amber coming to terms with new responsibility, Amelia Crowley’s Lorraine admitting to herself that tidying up isn’t necessarily the route to fulfilment and, best of all, Anita Reeves’ indomitable Kay ensuring that this heart-warming production definitely lives up to its name.

Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 8QD (Shepherds Bush tube) (020 8743 5050) www.bushtheatre.co.uk till 22nd May (£20 {Saturday matinees £15})