Lingua Franca *** TNT

Peter Nichols is well into his eighties now and although his latest comedy looks at the world with a young man’s eyes, he emphasises the casual thoughtlessness of youth by integrating a couple of more mature characters, their opinions tempered, like his, by a lifetime’s knowledge

Like much of Nichol’s work, it’s based on his own experience – in this case working in a language school in Florence. Set in the mid fifties, it’s an excellent excuse to bring together a mixed bag of teachers from different corners of the world. Already in situ are Abigail McKern's no-nonsense Australian lesbian Madge doing her reluctant best to stay one step ahead of the students when asked to teach a language she doesn’t speak; Rula Lenska’s elegant Russian Jew; Ian Gelder’s celibate English gentleman, Jestin, who apparently finds all his pleasure in observation and the arts; desperate, lonely Peggy; and the school’s Jewish Italian principal who conveniently ignores his marriage vows whenever a new female teacher turns up.

The arrival of Steven (Chris New, convincing as the Nichols character) allows Jestin to share his passion for the city with the equally enthralled newcomer, and also gives Peggy misguided hope of romance. Newest recruit Heidi (a nubile Fraulein with dodgy views of Germany’s recent history) stirs up all sorts of trouble.

Enjoyable though it is, director Michael Gieleta’s production would benefit from reigning in a couple of the unnecessarily bigger performances - this is a small space and, though surely cast with an eye on a transfer, it wouldn’t hurt to remember that it’s not on a large West End stage yet.

And although Nichols gives a far from comprehensive analysis of the diverse, uneasy attitudes in post war Europe, the reconstructed lessons involving knives, forks and spoons prove that the writer of Privates on Parade still hasn’t lost his comic touch.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court (0844 847 1652) finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Until 7th August £15 -£18

La Bete *** TNT

Mark Rylance gives a five star performance in American David Hirson’s interval-free spoof in the style of 17th century French dramatist Moliere.

Spraying food through goofy teeth, he delivers a virtual monologue of self-aggrandising, rhyming couplets, touching on everything and nothing in a comic tour de force which takes up over half an hour of what is otherwise a not particularly distinguished play.

He’s a farting, burping populist, a street entertainer whose lowbrow work is anathema to Elomire (Frasier’s David Hyde Pierce), the high-minded court playwright who proves little more than the serious foil to Valere’s vulgarity. And Joanna Lumley has even less to do as their capricious royal patroness in this insubstantial 1991 oddity which loses its focus in an uneven debate and a not very funny play-within-a-play.

Comedy, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN (0844 871 7622) Tube: Piccadilly Circus Until 4th Sept (£15 - £50)

No Idea *** TNT

This likeable “go with the flow” two-hander is the first show to emerge from Improbable’s Associate Artist Project, a new venture offering support to those with whom the innovative performance company has previously worked.

Actresses Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence are just like any pair of young women – except that the diminutive Lisa often uses a wheelchair and is a fraction of the height of her “normal” friend. So when, armed with a tape recorder, they set about gathering proposals for their new devised show the suggestions generated by members of the public revealed subliminally contrasting attitudes depending on the way in which they were elicited.

Punctuating their interpretations of the results by playfully, but tellingly, rearranging life-sized tripartite photos of themselves, the duo mimic, explore and act out the various ideas – including a catchy Dickensian song and dance routine, executed by Lisa (in top hat and waistcoat and with her infectious grin in full-on mode) which, as Rachael accompanies her on the keyboard, expounds the advantages and drawbacks of having a much commented upon cheeky face atop a tiny body.

A short, gently probing affair, it shows the strength of their friendship whilst exposing how swiftly character judgements are made according to appearances and the circumstances under which one or the other of the duo is, for different reasons, unintentionally sidelined.

It’s a long way from conventional theatre but, unfussily staged under the direction of Improbable’s Lee Simpson, makes its point in an original and unpreachy way.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ Tube: Southwark / Waterloo (0207 922 2922) youngvic.org
Until 31 July £17.50 (under 26’s £10)

Love the Sinner This Is London

Former lighting designer turned playwright Drew Pautz puts the church’s attitude to homosexuality under the spotlight in his new play, heavy with symbolism, which questions the present day challenges facing both the clergy and the religious layman

From an erudite and very funny opening scene at a multinational Anglican conference (held in an unspecified African country) where the views expressed by the African bishop are at defensive odds with those of the other delegates, Pautz then makes the issues more personal, moving to the hotel room where married British businessman Michael (a volunteer taking notes at the meeting) has just bedded young black porter Joseph. Now, the previously accommodating Joseph insists that a worried Michael must help him get to England.

Back home, Jonathan Cullen’s increasingly guilt ridden and evangelising Michael runs into trouble not only with his desperate-to-conceive wife (Charlotte Randle) but also with his employees as he forces his beliefs into the workplace. The unannounced arrival of the ever-resourceful Joseph (Fiston Barek making an impressive debut) adds to his problems as he tries to do the right thing having already done the wrong one.

The structure could be tightened – and the confrontations between husband and wife lack both the credibility and the bite of the previous scenes - but Matthew Dunster’s production boasts a fine cast (including Ian Redford’s benign Archbishop Stephen who lacks the decisive edge exhibited by Scott Handy’s equally convincing PR man) and Pautz shows himself to be a writer to watch.

Cottesloe

Wolfboy ** TNT

Instead of getting to play baby of the family Joseph in an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, “Any Dream Will Do” finalist Daniel Boys finds himself woefully underused as Christian, the older brother of suicidal teenager Bernie in Russell Labey’s musical version of Canadian Brad Fraser’s macabre play from the early 80’s.

Bernie is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital which seems to employ just a single nurse (who doesn’t sing, but shags Christian) and a solitary doctor (whom Christian talks to but we never see). The victim of a troubled childhood, Bernie refuses to speak to his brother. Meanwhile the occupant of the adjacent room won’t talk to anyone because he thinks he’s a wolf. But after a nastily sadistic start, the two young patients develop a relationship which requires them to whip off their vests and show off their bodies whilst referring to each other as Dorothy and Toto.

It’s a grim, underwritten tale of lycanthropy, abuse, and the exchange of bodily fluids which isn’t helped by some dire dialogue and clumsy staging. And surely in a tiny space like this it really shouldn’t be necessary for the performers to be miked.

Boys’ Christian and his damaged sibling (Gregg Lowe’s vulnerable but sullen Bernie) duet yearningly but this violent, gory four-hander is going to have to rely on the pulling power of its homoerotic content and of former Hollyoaks actors Paul Holowaty and Emma Rigby, rather than on merit, to fill the seats.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross tube (0844 871 7632)
ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until 31st July £25.00

The Tempest & As You Like It *** TNT

The second year of director Sam Mendes’ Anglo-American Bridge Project couples two Shakespeare plays with shared themes. Both feature a daughter whose exiled father (a Duke) has been usurped by his own brother, as well as at least one pair of head-over-heels young lovers.

Juliet Rylance shines as a naive Miranda and cross-dressed Rosalind, whilst her real life partner Christian Camargo’s whey-faced spirit Ariel fares far better in a low-key but atmospheric Tempest than does his rather insipid Orlando in a lusty AYLI heavily tinged with gloom.

Michelle Beck’s noble Celia gives devoted support, Thomas Sadoski and Anthony O’Donnell are a vibrant comic duo twice over, and although Stephen Dillane’s melancholy Jaques effortlessly commands attention, his low-key Prospero takes understatement a step too far speaking in frustratingly hushed, barely audible tones.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB (0844 871 7628) Tube: Waterloo oldvictheatre.com Until: 21 August
£10-£47.00 each play

Classic Moments - Hidden Treasures *** TNT

Stephen Sondheim, master of musicals, celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year but on the whole London has been a little slow in marking the event. This intimate venue got in early, hosting an interesting revival of Anyone Can Whistle (one of his less successful enterprises) back in March, Assassins finishes a short sold-out run at the Union in Southwark at the end of the week, and Into the Woods at the Open Air Theatre and Passion at the Donmar are on their way.

But if you want to get a taste of the variety of his clever, often cynical, lyrics and music and haven’t managed to grab a ticket for what’s turned out to be a “returns only” Prom at the Royal Albert Hall, then this selection of comparatively unfamiliar numbers, picked from over a dozen of his shows, provides a pleasant alternative.

A cast of five (accompanied by the musical director at the piano) sings their way through nearly thirty songs. There’s been no attempt to link them but they flow smoothly enough. Some fare less well stripped of their original context - my companion, a recent fan, was somewhat bemused by references to a cow and beans - but most of them stand easily alone.

Laura Armstrong is suitably flustered when her shoe gets stuck On the Steps of the Palace. Every Day A Little Death comes across as poignantly piquant as ever and Everybody Wants A Maid is cheeky fun even though the vaudeville comedy is rather over-egged.

Several of the interpretations would benefit from being considerably less emphatic, but, in a space this small, at least you’re guaranteed to hear every one of Sondheim’s witty words.

Jermyn Street Theatre SW1Y 6ST (020 7287 2875) Tube: Piccadilly Circus jermynstreettheatre.co.uk
Until 24th July £18.00

Welcome to Thebes *** TNT

Moira Buffini re-imagines the Thebes of Greek mythology as a contemporary Liberia-like state, turning Eurydice, the usually silent wife of Creon, into his widow and putting her centre stage as elected president of a new democracy made bankrupt by civil war.

After an intermittently slow first half, this skilful reworking springs back to life when the promise of aid from David Harewood’s imposing, Obama-like Theseus, first citizen of superpower Athens, is threatened both by the refusal of Nikki Amuka-Bird’s Eurydice to be treated as anything but an equal and by the scheming opposition.

Confidently directed by Richard Eyre, this is a big, brave, ambitious production, combining a playful attitude to the source material with unflinching honesty about the devastation of war and the eternally tricksy nature of political manoeuvring.

Olivier at the National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX (020 7452 3000) Waterloo tube nationaltheatre.org.uk
Currently in rep until 19th August but has been extended – dates not yet available £10 - £30 as part of the Travelex season

Salome *** TNT

The domain of King Herod is a dark, oily mess of gritty sludge in Jamie Lloyd’s contemporary production (for Headlong) of Oscar Wilde’s one act biblical tragedy. It’s not at all what one would expect from the pen of the aesthete who crammed The Importance of Being Earnest with witty words and social niceties.

Zawe Ashton’s Salome is a spoilt princess – a self-professed virgin who seems more knowing than any lady of the night and inspires lust in the soldiers who watch her preening in her unzipped to the waist combats. Only the prophet Iokanaan, shackled in a subterranean cistern, wants nothing to do with her. And he’s the one she wants to kiss.

Designer (Soutra Gilmour) and director certainly create an atmosphere of sleazy debauchery, but Iokanaan’s words are so distorted whilst he’s underground that it’s impossible to make them out. In contrast, the desires of Con O’Neill’s masturbating Herod are all too clear. No wonder his wife Herodias (Jaye Griffiths) is none too pleased over his fascination with her provocative daughter – until, that is, Salome reveals the prize she wants in return for her dance.

There isn’t a veil in sight – this Salome grabs her ghetto-blaster and changes into a pink wig, chunky boots and clinging see-through dress to gyrate before her step-father.

Yet dark though it is, the production is so much on a sustained in-yer-face note that one barely flinches when, her wish granted, Salome lasciviously caresses the gory, severed head of the man who spurned her.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU 020 7722 9301 Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com until 17th July (£15-£25)

Tap Dogs **** TNT

Even Dein Perry, the Aussie originator of this plot-free, ultra-physical show admits that there’s only so much you can do with two arms and two legs – and that from the man who choreographed part of the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But what he does he does extremely well and with a few tweaks and additions, Tap Dogs has been touring the world for fifteen years since it originally appeared in the West End in 1995. Sensibly keeping the running time short, he’s choreographed a sweaty, testosterone-filled 80 minutes of tap routines.

Inspired by the steelworkers whom he once worked with, his hoofers are a far cry from the top hat and tails glitz usually seen on screen. These well-muscled guys sport jeans, t-shirts and heavy work boots and strip to the waist as the temperature rises.

A couple of blonde female musicians provide the (too?) loud percussive score as the six performers bounce off tilted girders and scaffolding, constructing the set as they go. They tap suspended upside down in one routine, skilfully incorporate synchronised basketballs in another, then send sparks flying with blowtorches and douse the front rows of the audience (protective plastic provided) as they slosh around in water. On press night, building site Foreman Adam Garcia (his hand already heavily strapped after a rehearsal injury) briefly missed his footing but it just added to the energy emanating from the stage in a fast-paced, power-house of a show which, within its limitations, goes down a storm.

Novello Aldwych, WC2B 4LD Tube: Charing Cross 0844 482 5170 delfontmackintosh.co.uk tapdogs.co.uk
Until September 6 £17.50-£49.50

The Late Middle Classes - This is London

The combined reputations of Harold Pinter as a director and Simon Gray as a writer weren't enough to secure a West End transfer for this at least partly autobiographical memory play after its Watford premiere in 1999. A boy band musical snapped up the space instead.
The intervening years have claimed the lives of both Pinter and playwright, but finally this sardonic but affecting portrayal of characters from the not so distant postwar past has made it to central London courtesy of David Leveaux's enjoyable and appropriately ambiguous revival.
Topped and tailed by the now grown up Holly's unannounced visit to his former music teacher, Austrian refugee Mr. Brownlow (an intentionally unappealing Robert Glenister), it takes place mainly in the 50's, when Holly was a pubescent schoolboy under pressure from his mother to win the scholarship to Westminster that would enable the family to relocate to the capital without the worry of school fees.
Frustrated by a life offering her little more than tennis, gin and cigarettes whilst she waits for her pathologist husband to come home from the hospital which seems (with suspicious frequency) to require his evening services, she's a compulsive attentionseeker who makes far too many emotional demands on her only son, whilst paying scant attention to his adolescent vulnerability. Helen McCrory plays her with the tight, flamboyant vivacity of a woman who might crack at any time.
As her husband, Peter Sullivan's dry, detached Charles is happy to delve into the bodies of the dead, but, in a cleverly comic confrontation, is far too uncomfortable to tell Holly about the birds and the bees.
Preoccupied with their own concerns, neither parent pays much attention to Brownlow's increasing interest in his star pupil. Invited back for extra lessons, Holly is plied with tea and cake by Brownlow's nervously worried, sherry-sipping mother (Eleanor Bron) whose desperate denials of any Jewish connection reveal her barely concealed fear of being ousted, once again, from her home.
It's more a study of people than plot, but Gray's dialogue often sparkles, Mike Britton's wallpapered-over set mimics the suppressed feelings pushing against the surface, and Harvey Allpress (who shares the role with two others) gives an astonishingly assured performance as polite young Holly, caught up in the middle of adult emotions he can only begin to understand.

Donmar

Sucker Punch **** TNT

It’s a story that’s been told before – of discovery, determination, and then swaggering pride before a fall. But Roy Williams adds an extra dimension by locating this trajectory of two black teenage friends, from delinquency to top level boxing, firmly in the ’80s. It’s a time when white trainer Charlie thinks it’s fine to refer to his protégé as “boy”, won’t let him date his daughter and claims the punters don’t care who wins. All they want is to see black guys beating the shit out of each other.


The stylised fights are thrillingly choreographed, the young actors toned and totally convincing. If the smell-the-sweat staging sometimes blurs the dialogue, it’s a small price to pay for a ringside view of this short, punchy play. 


Royal Court Theatre, SW1W 8AS Tube: Sloane Square (020 7565 5000) royalcourttheatre.com
Until July 31 £10-£25

read more: http://www.tntmagazine.com/tntreviews/archive/2010/07/07/sucker-punch-theatre-review.aspx#ixzz0tN4Yx2aZ

Lilies on the Land **** TNT

When the men joined up, the women had to do their bit for the war effort and the Lion’s part’s enjoyable new play does an excellent job of recreating what it was like to leave behind family, friends and flushing toilets to get mucky down on the farm during World War II.

Based on letters from, and interviews with, original Land Girls, this likeable celebration of the Women’s Land Army tells the story of four women who exchanged their skirts for regulation green jumpers and khaki dungarees. No matter what their social background or where they came from (and most came from the towns and cities), they were expected to learn to plough and plant, get up at dawn and work till late to make sure that the cows were milked, the potatoes dug and the ewes safely lambed.

Upper class Poppy ditches her fashionable outfits and falls for a pilot; gay Vera, relishing the opportunity to wear trousers, finds affection from a fellow Land Girl; Margie gets a sad, solitary billet with an exploitative farmer before she’s moved to more congenial accommodation; and a rogue mouse finds its way down myopic Peggy’s ample cleavage.

Cleverly interweaving songs of the period with a wide range of experiences (both pleasant – dates and dances with Canadian servicemen, and unpleasant – the unwanted attentions of farm labourers and Italian POWs) director Sonia Ritter’s entertaining and informative production is engagingly performed and makes a well-deserved and belated tribute to the women who helped keep the country going when the doodlebugs threatened.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB Tube: Leicester Square 0845 017 5584
liliesontheland.com artstheatrewestend.com Until July 17 £15-£35

Miss Lilly Gets Boned or the Loss of all Elephant Elders *** TNT

American playwright Bekah Brunstetter imaginatively links a death-row elephant suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder with a born again Baptist virgin in her intriguingly titled new play, and designer Libby Watson rises magnificently to the challenge, combining an eau-de-nil pachyderm “prison” with a Sunday school classroom, a couple of bedrooms and a gym.

Pacing upstage is Harold, a rumbling, six-year-old orphan elephant (convincingly played by a blank-eyed James Russell who must have spent most of the rehearsal period observing at the zoo). He’s been sentenced to public execution for goring a woman to death, and animal psychologist Vandalla (Sheena Patel with a white coat, a sympathetic manner and a grant that gives her the time to devote to the recalcitrant creature) is trying desperately to understand what’s going on in his troubled head.

In another continent, 31-year-old Miss Lilly teaches Sunday school, talks to God and tends the potted plants while dreaming of being deflowered by Hugh Grant. When Will Kemp’s handsome, grieving South African widower Richard (known as Dick) comes to collect his disruptive 10-year-old son from class, it seems as though her prayers have been answered.

Brunstetter draws parallels between the damaged boy (Milo Rechler) and the damaged beast, and highlights the conflicting crossover of the needs of Lilly and Dick, of humans and animals. Both strands of this touching comedy lose their way towards the end, but there’s enough emotional honesty and quirky humour to make Lily Bevan’s production well worth a visit, and Lorna Beckett gives an irresistible performance as the yearning Lilly who thinks she’s found happiness but, when the inevitable happens, loses her hotline to God.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court 0844 847 1652
finboroughtheatre.co.uk Until 10th July £11-£15