Red Velvet

 TNT

Adrian Lester gives a superb performance in this new play by his wife Lolita Chakrabarti, a fact-inspired account of the appearance of African American actor Ira Aldridge at the Theatre Royal in 1833.

With a collapsed Edmund Kean unable to continue as Othello – and despite concurrent protests against the Abolition of Slavery Act - Aldridge was drafted in to play the title role.

His Desdemona (Charlotte Lucas’s open-minded Ellen Tree, engaged to Kean’s outraged son) welcomes the opportunity to learn from Aldridge’s less restrained, more passionate style, but resentment and prejudice are rife elsewhere – especially among the critics whose racist reviews ensured that, despite success in Europe, he never played in London again.

Told in flashback, Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural production as artistic director moves smoothly from Poland in 1867 (where an older, ailing Aldridge prepares for Lear) to that fatefully impassioned young man’s interpretation in Covent Garden, before returning to the dressing room in Lodz and an unforgettable transformation.

There’s an occasional awkwardness to the writing, but Lester’s layered performance is mesmerising throughout and his confrontation with theatre manager Pierre Laporte (Eugene O’Hare) is played (by both) with a blazing intensity which is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 24th November
£14.00 - £22.00tricycle.co.uk

Image: Tristram Kenton

Loserville

 TNT

Memorable mainly for its energy and a nastily charismatic West End debut from Stewart Clarke, this geeks vs. jocks musical treads well-worn paths with the added dimension of the school computer nerd trying to beat big business in a race to be the first to make computers communicate with each other.

A collaboration between James Bourne (formerly of boyband Busted) and Elliot Davis, it’s all harmless stuff, set in 1971, as the school nerds, hooked on Star Trek and headed by Aaron Sidwell’s bespectacled computer whiz Michael Dork, finally get the girls of their dreams and successfully send the first e-mail.

It’s as undemanding as High School Musical, the tunes predominantly indistinguishable and the plot – with new girl Holly wanting to be admired for her brainiac credentials rather than her deliberately drabbed-down looks - predictable.

But Francis O’Connor’s jokey spiral notebook design adds a clever touch of wit, the choreography is lively and the performances enthusiastic in a production which will probably appeal mainly to the very young rather than the young at heart.

Garrick, Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0HH
Leicester Square tube
Till 2nd March
£10 - £49.50loservillethemusical.com

Michael Clark Company New Work 2012

 TNT

His dancers rarely smile – it’s only in the final moments of his new double bill that Michael Clark’s androgynous octet, their faces as well-disciplined as their bodies, break into happy grins. 

Now fifty, Clark hasn’t lost his playful streak, though. The classically trained dancer who formed his own contemporary dance company in 1984 makes brief appearances in both sections – semaphoring sharply in the first, hidden in a furry dog costume (a pair of round three-legged stools serving as outsize doggy balls) in the second.

Set to a lilting selection of Scritti Polliti’s songs, and performed against the background of an expanding rectangle of changing light, the almost dreamlike, rather delightful first act highlights the dancers’ poise and balance. One descends from above, still as a statute. Another appears to levitate in a seamless lift.

In their matt black tunics and trousers, they flex their torsos and revisit familiar steps from dance class, bare foot and with no barre for support they extend their limbs and flex their feet with controlled precision in perfect synchrony with the pre-recorded soundtrack.

The second act sees a complete change of mood. Skin-tight unitards shade from burnished gold to red as these rather alien creatures discover the potential of their bodies, testing them as though newly inhabited. Then the stage opens up to reveal Jarvis Cocker fronting Relaxed Muscle. The auditorium vibrates, the dancers reappear in stark costumes of black, silver and white and Cocker, his face painted ghoulish Halloween green, bounds forward, dropping into the stalls and threatening to upstage the dancers in a high energy explosion of movement and music.

Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Tube | Barbican tube
Until 27th October
£16.00-£42.00barbican.org.uk

Cabaret

 TNT

With a lecherous grin and clad in black leather lederhosen, Pop Idol Will Young’s Emcee welcomes us to decadent 1930s Berlin and the tawdry Kit Kat club where Sally Bowles sings for her supper – if she can’t find a man to pay for it for her.

Rufus Sewell’s revival of his 2006 production seems less dangerous than it did originally and Michelle Ryan’s Sally (though she sings well enough and has an engaging stage presence) has a wholesomeness which frequently put me more in mind of Mary Poppins than a good time girl who turns to drugs.

More affecting are Linal Haft’s dignified elderly Jewish fruiterer and Sian Phillips’ ageing landlady, blossoming in the short-lived belief that she’s finally found happiness - until the politics of the period place her in an impossible situation.
Javier de Frutos’s raunchily explicit choreography becomes increasingly athletic, the dancers bodies more disposable, as Hitler’s power waxes. And Young, delivering the chilling Tomorrow Belongs to Me with side-parted hair and a puppeteer’s power, proves that he’s more than capable of taking a leading role in a musical.

Savoy, The Strand, WC2R 0ET
Tube | Charing Cross tube
Until January 19th
£35 - £65 (premium seats £85)atgtickets.com/shows/cabaret/savoy-theatre

Our Boys

TNT

Written in 1993 but set in 1984, Jonathan Lewis’s entertaining and compassionate play is based on his own experiences when a painful medical condition affecting the nether regions disrupted his plans to take up his place at Sandhurst.

He ended up spending time in a military hospital instead, sharing a bay with a handful of squaddies and, as a Potential Officer, very much the outsider.

The shadow of the Northern Ireland conflict looms large - Lewis Reeves’ Ian, drooling and barely able to talk, is confined to a wheelchair after sustaining a head wound; Laurence Fox’s apparently on the mend Joe (referred to as the “Battersea Boner”) is a victim of the IRA bombing in Hyde Park whose anger suddenly explodes.

But there’s also Cian Barry’s frustrated Irish Keith, fobbed off with a psychosomatic diagnosis of the unexplained paralysis creeping up his leg, Matthew Lewis’s Mick suffering the indignity of a late circumcision and Arthur Darvill’s career soldier Parry, petrified of what – if anything – the future holds for him if he’s deemed physically unfit to return to the army.

Lewis has done an excellent job of capturing the camaraderie, the banter, the bravado and the vulnerability – as well as the intermittent rage- of these young men who have served their country.

There are a couple of very funny set pieces – including a game of Russian roulette, Deer Hunter style, involving well-shaken cans of beer illicitly smuggled onto the ward.

And although stronger on character and dialogue than on plot, David Grindley’s richly-deserved revival (with Jolyon Coy as Potential Office Menzies trying but failing to be accepted) proves well worth catching.

Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA
Tube | Covent Garden/ Charing Cross
Until 15th December
£20.00-£45.00nimaxtheatres.com

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

It’s returns and day seats only for Simon Stephens’ first class stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel. Stephens has turned the book into a potential play within a play in which

sympathetic teacher Siobhan (an almost angelic Niamh Cusack) encourages 15 year old Christopher Boone (who, it’s strongly implied, has Asperger’s syndrome) to allow his fellow pupils with behaviour problems to convert his diary of private observations into a participatory stage event.

It’s a clever device which takes us into his head and lets us follow his strictly logical thought processes as he sets out, initially, to discover who killed the neighbour’s dog with a garden fork.

With a mind capable of complex mathematics and logical thought, but unable to deviate from the literal, Christopher can neither lie nor engage emotionally or physically, and the strain and confused pain on the face of his mother (Nicola Walker) is heartwrenchingly sad to witness when she watches the tolerant ease with which Siobhan, the professional, manages to relate to her loved but difficult son.

Luke Treadaway gives a remarkable performance as Christopher – one really feels for him as, alone with his pet rat, he heads for London, confronting the random cacophony and bright lights most of us take for granted. No less affecting is Paul Ritter as his short-tempered but devoted dad.

Bunny Christie’s design and Paule Constable lighting (a flashing grid of lights and numbers) mimic the sensory overload which assaults Christopher’s brain, Frantic Assembly orchestrate the fluid movement and Marianne Elliott (co-director of War Horse) brings it all together with her customary flair.

Cottesloe

The Hotel Plays

 TNT

In addition to his best known full length works (which included A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Tennessee Williams also knocked off over 70 one act plays before he choked to death in a New York hotel in 1983. Defibrillator theatre company has teamed up with the Grange Holborn Hotel to put on three of these more experimental pieces, previously unperformed over here and each taking place in a different suite.

Written in 1970, Green Eyes is the most disturbingly powerful and voyeuristic of the trio. A young bride (Clare Latham) is covered in bruises, and her angry serviceman husband, home on leave, dog tags round his neck, wants to know why. Up close and personal, there’s nowhere for the audience to hide and Matt Milne’s simmering rage – at the new wife he should probably never have married and at the actions he’s been ordered to carry out in uniform - fills their small New Orleans hotel room.

In The Travelling Companion, an aging, drug-dependent, homosexual writer (based on Williams himself) finds that his latest pick-up is reluctant to fulfil the implicit terms of his employment until he manoeuvres a way for the young hustler to share the room’s double bed.

Finally – and most amusingly- Sunburst sees a wealthy old spinster (a former actress unable to walk after a sudden illness) turn the tables on a scheming bellhop (Charlie Hollway) and his rather dim-witted gay lover who have their sights set on her diamond ring. Carol Macready has a glint in her eye as the indomitable Miss Sails who isn’t going to give in easily.

It’s a shame the atmosphere is broken between each playlet as we’re guided up the stairs to the next suite, but staging them in a hotel is a neat idea and these little morsels from the pen of a great American playwright whet the appetite for something more substantial.

Grange Holborn Hotel, Southampton Row, London, WC1B 4AR
Tube | Holborn
Until 27th October
£20.00thehotelplays.com

Let it Be

TNT

More work seems to have gone into the pre-show and interval Q & A’s projected on the mock 60s TV screens flanking the stage than on the construction of this so-called musical.

With barely a dozen lines of spoken dialogue during the course of the whole evening (and that’s probably being generous) this tribute show is basically a more-or-less chronological string of Beatles hits with the Fab Four’s sartorial development charted by changes of costume and wigs (some disastrous – the busby-sporting Paul I saw looked, at one point, as though he’d been recruited from sentry duty at Buckingham Palace and hadn’t had time to remove his headgear).

The songs, though, are ageless, and the cast (five selected each performance from a batch of eleven – the extra one, clad in black, shakes his tambourine stashed away in an upstage corner) does a very decent job of demonstrating the talented versatility of the mop-haired Liverpudlians to the younger members of the audience whilst taking the grey-haired oldies for a trip down memory lane as background projections recall pyschedelia, flower power, anti-Vietnam protests and, earlier, the hysteria of the massive Shea Stadium gig in 1965.

And the cringe-making TV adverts of the period are a hoot. Locked firmly in the past, they make a diverting contrast to the way in which the music of John, Paul George and Ringo developed from the early days of “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love “ to the later, more poignant “Eleanor Rigby,” “Hey Jude” and the eponymous “Let it Be.”

Prince of Wales , Coventry Street, W1D 6AS
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
To 19th January 2013
£20- £60LetItBeLondon.com

Bully Boy

TNT

After 20 years, the space where the former Westminster Theatre used to stand is back in business as the St James, a spanking new venue with a studio as well as a steeply raked main house.

Kicking off the inaugural season is broadcaster Sandi Toksvig’s heartfelt two-hander which brings an inarticulate squaddie accused of gross misconduct face to face with an educated Falklands’ veteran, now a major and confined to a wheelchair.

An eight year old boy has been thrown down a well in an unspecified country in the Middle East, and it’s the major’s job to find out exactly what part Private Eddie Clark from Lancashire played in the fatal event. On the surface, they could hardly be more different - but a sudden explosion changes the dynamic of their relationship, exposing the trauma that combat stress can inflict on servicemen of all ages and backgrounds.

Anthony Andrews (all disciplined stiff upper lip until an extended drinking session reveals the damage beneath the immaculate uniform) and Joshua Miles (edgy, agitated, constantly running his fingers through his hair as though trying to erase memories he cannot forget) give powerfully convincing performances.

Patrick Sandford’s short, thoughtful production is a timely reminder that young men who serve their country overseas often bring an internal conflict back home with them – an emotional scarring emphasised by the inclusion of some unsettling statistics.

St James, 21 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA
Tube | Victoria
Until 27th October
£20.00 - £40.00stjamestheatre.co.uk

Three Sisters

 

TNT

 

It took me quite a while to warm to Aussie Benedict Andrews’ unorthodox adaption of Chekhov’s 1901 classic about three sisters longing for the impossible and a return to their beloved Moscow. But against the odds, this defiantly anachronistic production (which he also directs) proved surprisingly moving, especially in the closing moments which leave the three disillusioned young women (first seen as emotionally and physically distant from each other as Johannes Schütz’s stark, raised, tabletop set allowed) clinging to each other for support, alone and stranded on a mound of earth, preparing to face a new, bleak future.

Vanessa Kirby’s blonde, bored Masha, married to a schoolmaster she’s come to despise, drowns her frustration in drink and falls, heavily, for the new commander, the philosophising Vershin (impressive William Houston) who’s tied to an unseen suicidal wife by familial duty. Irina, the youngest, has, at first, a naïve certainty that hard work will make her happy even though Olga, their oldest sister, is already a worn-out spinster after just a few years as a teacher.
Their brother Andrey (Danny Kirrane) slobs around in tracksuit bottoms and mistakenly believes he’ll find happiness with a heavily tattooed local girl and Michael Feast’s fond, drunken old doctor Chebutykin knows right from the start that his life has been wasted,

Different, challenging but ultimately engrossing, this reworking won’t appeal to purists - but then it’s not every production of Chekhov that boasts a remote-controlled helicopter, a foul-mouthed Masha, and the symbolic dismantling of a set which takes over an entire scene.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Extended to 3rd November
£10.00 - £30.00youngvic.org

Hedda Gabler

TNT

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It’s clear right from the start that this Hedda has made a mistake in marrying kind but prosaic scholar George Tesman.  

In a silent prologue, the general’s daughter stares forlornly out of the huge windows of the lovely (and overly expensive) home he thought she wanted, trapped in a glass cage of boredom where nothing pleases her - not least her inordinately proud and puppyish husband (Adrian Scarborough) who’s still tied by the apron strings to his aging Aunt Juliana.

Sheridan Smith’s Hedda indulges in teasing banter with Darrell D’Silva’s Judge Brack (a sleek, silver-haired predator intent on adding her to his conquests) but there’s also a dangerously manipulative creature at work behind her masklike smile.

It’s no surprise to learn that she was a hair-pulling bully at school who tormented Fenella Woolgar’s nervously defiant Thea, who, it transpires, is now unexpectedly linked to Tesman’s debauched but brilliant academic rival.

Faced with a future of relentless tedium, Hedda’s destructive instincts resurface – initially in spiteful insults, then growing into something far more tragic.

Anna Mackmin’s production does full justice to the unexpected humour in Brian Friel’s lively, frequently anachronistic version of Ibsen’s domestic drama and (having scored an award-winning hit in Legally Blonde) Smith, tiny, dissatisfied and with a fatally malevolent streak, proves that she’s every bit as capable of playing 19th century nasty as 21st century nice.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
Tube | Waterloo
Until 10th November
£11.00- £50.00oldvictheatre.com