Julius Caesar

TNT

Updating and relocating Shakespeare’s historically based tragedy yields powerful dividends in Gregory Doran’s vibrant production set in a modern African state where Brutus and his co-conspirators convince themselves that Caesar, like his immense up stage statue, has turned his back on the ideals that saw him elected.
It gives an immediacy to what can be a rather static work, turning a soothsayer into a dusty, mud-caked shaman who warns Jeffery Kissoon’s arrogant and unheeding Caesar to beware the Ides of March.

In a strong, all-black cast, even the minor roles make their mark – especially Adjoa Andoh as Brutus’s much loved wife and Simon Manyonda’s Lucius, a somnolent attendant more suited to playing music than going to war.

Joseph Mydell’s Casca and Cyril Nri’s Caius Cassius stand out amongst the knife-wielding senators whilst Paterson Joseph’s complex Brutus sweats beads of conscience, which do not deter him from administering a below the belt death blow to the man who thought he was his friend. And Ray Fearon’s sporty, charismatic Mark Antony, thrillingly addressing the people from on high, exudes the passionate conviction guaranteed to whip the rabble at his feet into a frenzy of retaliation.

Noel Coward, St. Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AU
Tube: Leicester Square
Until 15th September
£15.00 - £49.50rsc.org.uk/whats-on/julius-caesar

Soho Cinders

 

 TNT

 

 

Ten months after its one-off charity performance and over a decade since they first began working on it, Stiles and Drewe’s contemporary new musical, loosely based on the Cinderella story, finally gets a short run right in the heart of gender bending Soho where it belongs – and just a stone’s throw from Old Compton Street where ugly sisters Clodagh and Dana run their strip joint and scheme to inherit the local launderette.

The usual role reversals are re-reversed. These man-hungry siblings are played, full throttle, by a pair of big, busty women – Suzie Chard in eye-poppingly scanty attire, which hasn’t a hope of covering her ample flesh, Beverly Rudd doused in glitter to go to the mayoral fundraiser hosted by the devious Lord Bellingham.

Instead of a demure Cinderella, we’re given rent boy Robbie (he prefers the term “escort”) their step-brother who’s funding his studies by offering extracurricular services. And sympathetic best friend Buttons has become tousle-haired Velcro (a sweet Amy Lennox) who runs the launderette once owned by his mother.

The songs are a happy mix of the catchy, the poignant, the clever and the raucous, with “Gypsies of the Ether” – a duet for Robbie and would-be mayor James Prince (Michael Xavier with the sort of leading man authority guaranteed to garner votes whatever ones sexual orientation) - especially haunting.

Gerard Carey bares his teeth as Prince’s unscrupulous spin doctor, Jenna Russell is touching as his fiancée and Stephen Fry provides a knowing voiceover for an evening which manages to be immensely enjoyable despite a book which (even after such a lengthy gestation) could still be improved.

Soho Theatre, Dean Street, W1D 3NE
Tube | Tottenham Court Road
Until 9th September
£12.50 - £37.50
http://www.sohotheatre.com
http://www.sohocinders.com

The Great Gatsby Musical

TNT

Just a couple of months since a visiting American company gave us every word of Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic 1925 novel in an eight hour marathon, home-grown Ruby in the Dust has slimmed it down to a mere couple of hours including a lavish sprinkling of songs added by composer and lyricist Joe Evans, which isn't strictly necessary but they give the hedonistic flapper era setting a lively kick and add a poignant wistfulness to idly rich and unhappily married Daisy Buchanan’s yearning for her first love.
With a minimal set, it’s left predominantly to the costumes (lovely)to conjure the lazy wealth of the society in which, for a brief period, her cousin Nick (a self-effacing Raphael Vernon) finds himself involved.

Party-going Lucille (Alyssa Noble, who’s also responsible for the choreography) has enough energy for a roomful of revellers, Sean Browne is appropriately unreadable as the enigmatic Gatsby and Peta Cornish brings a heart as well as cynicism to the role of Jordan Baker. Matilda Sturridge’s Daisy has a plaintive catch to her voice and although there’s a certain sacrifice of subtlety in Linnie Readman’s production, the story, as ever, sucks you in to its tragic climax.

Kings Head Theatre, Upper Street, N1 1QN
Tube | Angel
Until 1st September
Tickets: £10- £22.50
kingsheadtheatre.com

The Complete World of Sports (Abridged)

• 

inShare

---

TNT

These three guys just refuse to grow up – Austin Tichenor has been part of the Reduced Shakespeare Company for two decades, Reed Martin joined in 1989, and the somewhat younger Matt Rippy came on board a few years later.

Since it began in 1981, this American company has gone on to tackle (among other topics) the Bible and the history of their homeland, taking shows across the continents.
Though bursting with energy, the current production has virtually nothing to do with the Bard either – apart from a passing mention to Ophelia flunking her swimming trials.

Set in the fictional studio of the Royal Shakespeare Company Sports Studio it sets out to spoof and summarise the history and diversity of sporting activity from archery to wrestling (with a handful of oddities such as bullet-dodging and Quidditch thrown in for good measure) - an endeavour that involves audience participation, characteristic slapstick, and huge dollops of juvenile humour.
They’re a likeable, frequently funny trio who sing rather pleasingly together and know how to engage with the audience. But it wouldn’t do any harm to tighten this “Abridgeathon” even further – cutting or curtailing some of the gags (the Scottish golf skit is particularly irksome) and refreshing American references for the UK run of their revue style show.


Arts Theatre, until 25 August, £22-£35
Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB
Tube | Leicester Square
http://www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Read more: The Complete World of Sports (Abridged) theatre review - TNT Magazine
Follow us: @tntmagazine on Twitter | tntmag on Facebook

Spamalot

• 

TNT

inShare

---

Updated, downsized, nipped and tucked and here for the summer, Christopher Luscombe’s touring production of Eric Idle’s spoof musical passes the time in undemanding fashion, but raises smiles rather than laughs.

At the height of their fame back in the late 60s, the daft schoolboy humour of Monty Python’s Flying Circus was fresh and irreverent, but although Spamalot didn’t surface until 2006, much of it relies on familiarity with the old jokes – and a huge dollop of good will. “Lovingly ripped off” (according to the programme) from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail and turned into a parody of the musical genre, it still has its moments as King Arthur sets off on his quest with the long suffering Patsy (Todd Carty) clip-clopping coconut shells by his side.

But the Knights that say Ni, for example, really aren’t very funny, and nor are silly French accents. And the killer bunny surely belongs in the nursery.

That said, the cast gives it all they’ve got as comedian Marcus Brigstocke as King Arthur (Jon Culshaw takes over till 2nd September) proves he can more than hold a tune whilst his glasses slip (unintentionally?) down his nose. Bonnie Langford’s diminutive Lady of the Lake is a vocal knockout as she duets with Sir Galahad or laments the fact that her role has been mislaid for much of the second act.

And with the perky addition of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (hijacked from Life of Brian) and a Boris lookalike biking through the action, this energetic show still has life in it.

Until 9th September, £15 - £55
Harold Pinter, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN
Tube | Piccadilly Circusatgtickets.com

Vieux Carré

---

TNT

Based on the characters he came across in the early days when he himself was trying to build his writing career, Tennessee Williams’ 1977 Vieux Carré is a somewhat disjointed but evocative portrayal of his experience living in a rundown boarding house in New Orleans almost forty years earlier.

The fellow boarders of his alter ego - an aspiring, unnamed young writer coming to terms with his homosexuality (Tam Ross Williams) – are a diverse lot, carefully watched by the eccentric, mentally unstable landlady (Nancy Crane) who’s made her bed in the hallway under the piano.

An elderly tubercular painter (David Whitworth) with his succession of young male pickups and refusal to acknowledge that he’s seriously ill, a pair of impoverished old ladies reduced to scavenging in the bins for food, and an ailing society girl having a final fling with a drug-addicted strip club bouncer all share the poky dilapidated residence in the French Quarter.

More a succession of snapshots taken by someone who’s passing through than a fully-fledged play, this depiction of a house mouldering in end-of-the-road loneliness is still worth a visit.

The Broadway premiere only ran for a handful of performances, but Robert Chevara’s well-acted production (aided by Nicolai Hart Hansen’s suitably cramped, dingy design) shows that even when well past his best, Williams’ could still conjure intriguing - if not always completely credible - characters.

Kings Head Theatre, Upper Street, N1 1QN
Tube: Angel
till 4th August
(£10- £25)kingsheadtheatre.com

The Fear of Breathing

---

TNT

Subtitled 'Stories from the Syrian Revolution', this collation of verbatim interviews edited by director Zoe Lafferty from material she collected with journalists Ruth Sherlock and Paul Wood could, sadly, hardly be more topical.

The words of protesters, activists, deserting soldiers, the tortured and the bereaved - as well as those of a jovial hotelier in favour of President al-Assad’s regime - create something of the restricted and brutally oppressive atmosphere of a country in turmoil where innocent civilians are shot to order by the militia and the prospect of imprisonment is never far away.

Performed with compassion and conviction against a background of screened footage, it makes for disturbing viewing as social media helps create a Facebook battalion and Adam Youssefbeygi’s student activist is tortured again and again.

Sirine Saba’s subversive DJ shines with an almost innocent belief that peaceful protest will yield results, and a photographer recalls the death of Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, just one of the thousands of victims claimed – and still being claimed - by this violent internal conflict.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED
Tube: Earl’s Court
Until 11th August
£12-£16finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Play Without Words

---

TNT

Ten years after its premiere at the National Theatre, Matthew Bourne’s sultry, sexy dance drama is as dangerously ambiguous as ever.

Inspired by Joseph Losey’s 1963 film noir The Servant, it’s a wordless, moody evocation of the period played out against Terry Davies’ atmospheric, jazz-based score and with each of the main characters played simultaneously by two or three dancers.

It’s an ingenious device which adds psychological complexity to the power struggle between upper class Anthony and his new manservant, the sexual encounter (in triplicate) of Anthony’s classy fiancée with a bit of rough, and his own erotic seduction by his provocative, newly hired housemaid.

Lez Brotherston’s tilting set embraces Anthony’s pristine Chelsea flat, a gay pub and a dark, wet street overshadowed by the Post Office Tower in this sometimes witty, often sinister and always eloquently choreographed account of role reversal in the swinging '60s.

Until 5 August, £12- £50
Sadler’s Wells, Rosebery Avenue EC1R 4TN
Tube | Angelsadlerswells.com

1936

---

TNT

Even at the theatre it’s impossible to forget that the Olympics are upon us, but although Tom McNab’s short play is timely it’s hardly in the running for a medal.

In the course of a rather pedestrian 80 minutes, McNab introduces us (as remembered in flashback by American journalist William Shirer, revisiting a very different Berlin in 1948) to some of the main players – both on the field and off – involved in the run up to the1936 Olympics.

Joseph Goebbels is seen persuading a reluctant Hitler that the sporting extravaganza (already committed to before his rise to power) could be turned into a propaganda exercise for his Aryan ideals. And, with Jews banned from the German team, the threatened boycott by the US comes to a head when leading American official Avery Brundage (sweetened, apparently by the promise of future influence) maintains that politics should be kept separate from sport. McNab makes the point that discrimination was rife in the US too – even if, like the black athlete Jesse Owens, you came home with a quartet of gold medals.

But despite McNab’s own credentials (he’s a former official Olympic observer and coach, as well as a writer) there’s little life on the stage – the information is there, but the dissemination is prosaic.

     

Until 5 August, £25 -£32
Sadler’s Wells
Tube | Angel

A Doll's House

---

TNT

Carrie Cracknell makes memorable use of the larger space afforded by the Young Vic stage and elicits a mesmerising central performance from Hattie Morahan in Simon Stephens’ convincing new version of Ibsen’s 1879 classic.

She plays Nora, mother of three (including a real baby who makes a brief appearance) and loving wife of recently promoted bank manager Torvald. After years of scrimping and saving, it seems their fortunes have finally changed. But Nora has been hiding a secret from her husband and now the debt she has been struggling to repay since he suffered a period of illness threatens to be exposed.

Designer Ian MacNeil has created a rotating apartment. which regularly revolves to reveal bedroom, drawing room, hallway and the austere study where Torvald retreats to work. Within the household walls, he treats his wife like a pet bird– a fluttering, beautiful creature to be admired and kept gently under his protective control.

The unannounced arrival of Nora’s old school friend (Susannah Wise’s practical Kristine, widowed and in search of work) unexpectedly shakes the foundations of the little white lies on which their marriage has existed for years.

Dominic Rowan is increasingly impressive as the superficially decent but ultimately hypocritical Torvald, for whom appearance is paramount and Nick Fletcher proves suitably creepy as the blackmailing Krogstad who wants a second chance.

But this is Morahan’s night as Nora faces up to the real basis of her marriage and desperately dances the tarantella as though her whole future depends on it – which, in a way, it does.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube| Southwark / Waterloo
Extended to 4 August
£10 - £30youngvic.org

Mack & Mabel

---

TNT

The book is as unsatisfactory as the on/off love affair between movie director Mack Sennet and his one-time leading lady Mabel Normand.

But the songs, the staging and the choreography in this tweaked version of Jerry Herman’s 1974 fact-based musical could hardly be bettered.

Told in flashback, as Norman Bowman’s unsympathetic Sennet says goodbye to the Studios where he once filmed his popular, profitable two-reel silver screen hits, it flits from Brooklyn to Hollywood as the industry develops and Mabel is forced to play second fiddle to his overriding passion for movie-making.

Props and paraphernalia line the back wall of the playing area (the band is completely hidden away elsewhere) creating a sense both of former bustle and current decline, as Mack turns Mabel from deli waitress to box office star, only to lose her to a rival studio. But we get only passing detail of her decline into drugs or the scandalous events with which she was linked.

But never mind – this is a very classy production for a fringe venue, with Jessica Martin sympathetic as actress Lottie (who gives up her man and her role when she sees which way the wind is blowing) and Lee Proud’s sparky Bathing Beauties and Keystone Cops routines.

And in Laura Pitt-Pulford’s Mabel, director Thom Southerland has a performer who not only tears at the heart strings but delivers the musical numbers with panache. 

Southwark Playhouse, Shipwright Yard, SE1 2TF
Tube London Bridge
Until 25th August
£10- £22.50southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

St John's Night

---

TNT

Ibsen isn’t exactly renowned for his sense of humour but this rarely performed work, written when he was in his 20s, shows that the Norweigian playwright did have some sense of fun.

Poorly received when it premiered in 1853, Ibsen refused to have it printed in collected editions of his work. All credit to this enterprising little theatre, then, for putting on what purports to be its first full professional staging in this country. That’s not to say that this whimsical tale of missing documents and mismatched lovers, which mocks the naïve city intruder experiencing the joys of native tradition, is by any stretch of the imagination, a masterpiece though.

Louise Calf has a winning naivety as Anne, Ed Birch's Birk matches her sincerity as her stepsister’s reluctant fiancé, and Danny Lee Wynter, in incongruous curly blond wig, hams it up as the ridiculous poet Poulsen who’s surprised to discover that grassy ground can be muddy as well as green.

With a couple of musical goblins, a worried widow (Sara Crowe) and a big debt to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anthony Biggs’ production is hardly a revelation but, performed with tongue-in-cheek frivolity by a lively cast, it’s gently enjoyable whilst it lasts.

Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Until 4 August, £18 jermynstreettheatre.co.uk