Porgy and Bess

TNT

There’s just till the end of the week to catch the glorious singing of Cape Town Opera in the Gershwins’ 1935 American folk opera, here relocated from the slums of South Carolina to an apartheid era township in South Africa.

With its combination of sophisticated score and catchy rhythms, it hovers somewhere between the genres of musical theatre and opera, but it takes those classically trained voices to do it full justice – and on that front this company (accompanied by the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera) really delivers.
Physically, director Christine Crouse hasn’t quite mastered what to do with the large onstage chorus, and there’s a roughness to the choreography, but that barely matters when the singing is so heartfelt and affecting.
At the performance I saw, Gloria Bosman made her mark in the minor role of no-nonsense Maria, Philisa Sibeko delivered a sincere “Summertime,” and Mandisinde Mbuyazwe grew into the role of violent Crown. And when Nonhlanhla Yende’s reformed Bess and powerful bass-baritone Xolela Sixaba’s crippled Porgy declare their unlikely love in “Bess, You is My Woman Now” you really hope against hope that their happiness will last.

English National Opera at the London Coliseum St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4ES
Tube: Charing Cross
Until 21st July £12 - £97.50

The Physicists

 This is London

When Swiss playwright, novelist and essayist Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote this surreal comedy in 1961, nuclear war and consequent destruction seemed a very real threat. Half a century down the track, his absurdist humour seems somewhat dated, and one would hope that scientists are more wary of the horrors their research might unleash.

White doors proliferate in Robert Jones’ floor to ceiling design for the luxury sanatorium where nurses are being strangled and Sophie Thompson’s malign, humpbacked grotesque Dr von Zahnd has three special patients under her care. One (Justin Salinger) thinks he’s Newton, another (Paul Bhattacharjee) believes he’s Einstein, and the third, Möbius, really is a physicist – but he’s spent years labouring under the delusion that King Solomon is paying him regular visits.

Nothing is quite what it seems, however, and Jack Thorne’s lively version just manages to keep the momentum of the often Ortonesque comedy going as the real agenda of these privileged inmates is revealed. But it takes the appearance of John Heffernan’s excellent flesh and blood Möbius to anchor Josie Rourke’s production of this rather heavy-handed satire. Desperately sad, and sacrificing his own personal happiness for the greater good, he’s all too aware of both the academic thrill of unlocking the secrets of physics and the implications of scientific development untempered by a moral code.

Donmar to 21st July

Henry V & The Winter's Tale - Propeller

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TNT

Under the direction of Edward Hall, all male touring theatre company Propeller has tackled both these strongly contrasted Shakespeare plays before - Henry V back in 1997, The Winter’s Tale more recently in 2005.

Stopping off at the Hampstead theatre (where Hall is also the current artistic director) both these productions are delivered with the speed, clarity and invention – and, of course, lack of female cast members - one has come to expect from his company, but it’s the former which proves the more impressive.

That’s not to say that The Winter’s Tale doesn’t have a lot going for it- but mainly once we’ve left behind the formality of the court of Leontes, the jealous King of Sicilia who needlessly suspects his wife of infidelity with his best friend.

Once we’re in Bohemia, the mood lightens and the sombre steel set gives way to the bucolic frolics, Glastonbury style, of the rustic community where his baby daughter grew up. Tony Bell (who’s been with company from way back) lets rip with a leather-trousered Autolycus, stripping the Young Shepherd (Karl Davies) of everything but his hat without him even noticing, whilst a backing group of sheep (actors in Aran sweaters and woolly headgear) adds to the atmosphere.

In contrast, the still, final moments of reconciliation prove unexpectedly touching even though Queen Hermione is played by a man.

With its muscular, testosterone-fuelled solders in sweaty vests and battle-stained combats acting as both participants and chorus, Henry V is a completely different affair. They sing and they chant as they follow their king (a down-to-earth Dugald Bruce-Lockhart) into battle against the French.

Hall’s production is vibrant and powerful, capturing the rowdiness, the camaraderie and the sad waste of war as well as the gentle humour of the linguistically challenged wooing scene which brings this history play to an optimistic close.

Until 21 JulyHampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU
Tube | Swiss Cottage
hampsteadtheatre.com

Birthday

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TNT

In a neat bit of role reversal, Ed is heavily pregnant and about to be delivered of a full term baby in Joe Penhall’s highly amusing new play.

Whilst his high earning wife, Lisa (Lisa Dillon) looks on (she’s already been through one traumatic birth herself) and fails to come up with his raspberry leaf tea or find a doughnut shaped cushion, Ed tries to get comfortable on the narrow hospital bed, lifting his regulation gown every so often to expose the huge hairy bump from which their second child is due to be extracted. Meanwhile a rather too casual midwife (Llewella Gideon) - definitely no advert for the NHS -wanders in and out promising the arrival of an anaesthetist who’s too busy with emergencies to administer effective painkillers until an enthusiastic young registrar (Louise Brealey) finally realises that this isn’t heading towards a straightforward C-section.

If you’ve ever given birth yourself, held the hand of someone in the final stages of labour or watched TV’s One Born Every Minute, you’ll recognise the indignities of this “natural” process (from catheters to prodding latex gloves) and have a good laugh in the process. But expectant first time mothers might want to steer clear as Stephen Mangan’s excellent Ed, with his tousled, slightly puppyish demeanour experiences “man pain” like no other in Roger Michell’s deft 90 minute production.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube | Sloane Square
Until 4th August | £10 - £28
royalcourttheatre.com

The Drawer Boy

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TNT

Back in 1972, a group of actors from Toronto visited the farmland communities of Ontario in search of material for a devised work – The Farm Play - based on their experiences.

Canadian playwright Michael Healey’s touching 1999 three hander pays tribute to those who took part, focussing on a student actor, Miles, and the two men, (Angus and Morgan) friends from boyhood and World War II veterans, who let him observe and take part in their day to day lives.

The play takes its title from the artistic skills Angus hoped to develop – before, that is, a wartime accident in London addled his memory and limited his future. He can handle the farm accounts and make sandwiches, but that’s about it, and his chief delight is listening to Morgan tell their story over and over again.

Eleanor Rhode’s production is beautifully played – by Simon Lee Phillips as the gullible townie Miles who appropriates their personal history and uncovers the truth, and by Neil McCaul as the gruff yet tender Morgan whose relationship with John Bett’s childlike, dependant Miles evokes echoes of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED

Tube:  Earl’s Court

Until 14th July

£12-£16

finboroughtheatre.co.uk 

Fear

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TNT

Writer and film director Dominic Savage seems to have been a bit too busy lately.  His recently screened five part semi-improvised TV drama series True Love proved a thin disappointment despite the strong casts, and, short though it is, there’s not enough flesh on his first stage play either. There’s far too much reliance on Ed Clarke’s sound design to create an atmosphere of brooding menace and, although it begins promisingly enough it never goes far beyond stating the obvious.

Gerald and Kieran both love the luxury that money can buy, but their worlds are at opposite ends of the rich/poor continuum. Whilst sleek financier Gerald (Rupert Evans) is about to close a deal that will make him and his pregnant wife £12m better off, young thug Kieran is staking out the streets with his admiring sidekick, identifying likely targets by the status symbol brands they wear.

It’s pretty obvious that their paths are going to cross and there’s a real air of danger in the confrontation between these representatives of society’s haves and havenots.

Aymen Hamdouchi is powerfully intimidating as the angry Kieran, and takis’ underlit set smoothly evokes the homes of both men as well as the street. But, like chunks of the dialogue, Gerald’s reappearance as a Banquo style ghost and his wife’s foolhardy decision to open the door to a rough stranger strike an unconvincing note.

Savage fails to explore the issues he raises and, even at 80 minutes, the evening feels far too long.

£10-24, Until 14 July
Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ
Tube | Shepherds Bushbushtheatre.co.uk

Democracy

TNT

It probably helps, initially at least, to know something of the history behind Michael Frayn’s fact-based 2003 award winning drama set in the period immediately following the election of SPD leader, Willy Brandt, to the post of Chancellor in 1969.

The stage is filled with men in suits – each with their own political agenda - but attention soon focusses on Aidan McArdle’s shock-haired Günter Guillaume, a Stasi infiltrator who, by dint of making himself indispensable and always ready to help, manoeuvres his way up from insignificant junior aide to personal assistant to Patrick Drury’s charismatic Brandt as he works towards the unification of East and West Germany.

From then on, this intelligent and witty revival makes fascinating viewing as coalition power struggles take place behind the scenes and the relationship between the spy and the man he’s betraying become increasingly friendly - with Guillaume growing in admiration for the womanising leader who, for his part, eventually comes to regret that he didn’t trust his initial instincts and turf him out long before he insinuated his way into his personal and political world.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
Tube | Waterloo
Until 28th July | £10.00- £45.00
oldvictheatre.com

Dr Dee

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TNT

Though hardly a conventional opera, this melodious co-creation from Blur’s Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris (who also directs) proves a gorgeous visual feast which begins and ends with free-flying ravens.

One-time favourite at the court of Elizabeth I, Dr Dee (b1527) was a prominent mathematician and alchemist whose voracious appetite for knowledge finally led to his downfall. Flashing back from the deathbed where he lies, an out-of-favour old man nursed by his daughter, Albarn and Norris conjure key moments of his life with masques, shadows, and computer graphics of swirling, complex calculations.

It’s not always immediately clear what’s going on (and surtitles might have helped) but it almost doesn’t matter as Dee’s love of books is conveyed by ever-expanding concertinaed tomes and his gilded royal patron is raised on high above her amassed flotilla. And when, in a Faustian pact with the medium Edward Kelley (countertenor Christopher Robson) he agrees to share his wife in exchange for the ability to communicate with the angels, her horror is palpable.

The orchestra in the pit is enhanced by musicians on a rising platform and, perched aloft, the guitar-playing Albarn watches over his creation, his husky tones blending with the more musical theatre voice of Paul Hilton’s intense, driven Dee in Norris’s eye-catching production.

£29 -£125. until 7th July
English National Opera at the London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4ES
Tube | Charing Crosseno.org

Mary Shelley

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TNT

      

Daughter of 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (who died just days after giving birth) and radical philosopher William Godwin, lover and later wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and teenage author of Frankenstein - the early life of Mary Shelley offers rich pickings for playwright Helen Edmundson and Shared Experience, the company for whom she has successfully adapted several classic novels.

Naomi Dawson’s set of crammed moveable bookcases evokes the impoverished circumstances which, her father (now married to Sadie Shimmin’s fretting fusspot) hopes, will be alleviated by his financial dealings with Shelley. Approval turns to disapproval, however, when Kristin Atherton’s headstrong Mary falls for the already married young man and elopes to Europe, taking her younger stepsister (Shannon Tarbet’s pert, optimistic Jane) with them and upsetting still further her troubled half-sister Fanny.

Edmundson constructs an engrossing story enhanced by Polly Teale’s fluid direction which brings to life a suicide, a hasty sea crossing and the miserable lodgings which soon persuade them to return home and, later, seek reconciliation with William Chubb’s docile until roused Godwin, who was, perhaps, at least partly the inspiration for Mary’s ground-breaking novel.


Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Until 7 July | £14.00 - £24.00
Tube | Kilburn
tricycle.co.uk

DruidMurphy

TNT

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The three plays of Druid’s celebration of Tom Murphy, one of Ireland’s greatest living playwrights, span a quarter of a century of his work - all touching on the theme of emigration and ranging from his first success in 1961 to Conversations on a Homecoming, which premiered in 1985.

Each stands completely alone (though brave souls can catch all three on cycle days) but it’s the still shocking early piece A Whistle in the Dark, set in Coventry in 1960, which proves the most memorable with its portrayal of the Carneys, an Irish immigrant family of brawling, boozing thugs, unwelcome guests in the home of Michael (Marty Rea) the eldest of five brothers. Married to a local girl and determined to avoid the mindless violence instilled by their braggart (but ultimately cowardly) father (Niall Buggy), he’s caught between family obligations, his wife, and a strong desire to stop his youngest sibling from following a path of criminality, bloodlust and senseless tribal rivalry.

Conversations sees another Michael returning from the States after a decade as a struggling actor. Life hasn’t worked out how he or his stay at home contemporaries had hoped, and, as the reunion in the local Galway pub wears on and pint follows pint, the disillusioned bitterness of his old mate (Garrett Lombard) overflows and Michael’s nostalgia for the possibility of resuming his old way of life dims.

Finally, Famine (1968) depicts the devastating effects of the Great Famine which began in 1845 when the crucial potato crop failed and emigration or death by starvation became the only options for many of those who lived on the land. Garry Hynes’ production incorporates several profoundly moving tableaux as the body count rises and Brian Doherty’s County Mayo village leader is rendered progressively more helpless as government help fails to materialise. But though it, too, is powerfully acted, the writing doesn’t always hold one’s interest in what was a tragic and defining period of Irish history.


Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU Tube: Swiss Cottage
Until 30th June
£29 each play or cycle days £66 for all three hampsteadtheatre.com