The Audience

 TNT

Prime ministers come and go – 12 of them over the last six decades - but throughout that time Queen Elizabeth II has remained a constant, holding completely confidential, un-minuted weekly meetings with the current incumbent.

Only the participants will ever know what was really said, but having scored a huge cinema hit with The Queen which heavily featured Tony Blair, writer Peter Morgan has now turned his attention to those private meetings with a batch of the other PMs, imagining the exchanges that might have taken place behind closed doors at Buckingham Palace.

Once again Helen Mirren plays the monarch – and she does it superbly, aging from a pre-coronation 27 year old to well into her eighties, her voice, her shape, her deportment accurately pinpointing various stages in the sovereign’s reign. Costume and wig changes are accomplished (often on set) with astonishingly seamless fluidity in Stephen Daldry’s immensely entertaining production, shedding or adding decades in moments.

Morgan eschews a chronological path (and briefly shifts the location to Balmoral where Richard McCabe’s Harold Wilson – Labour and possibly her favourite? - indulges in a cigar rather than his trademark pipe) but throughout he portrays HM as an exceptionally well-informed woman, isolated by her status and, whilst constitutionally constrained from actually telling her elected subject what to do, making her views known with economic subtlety and a dry wit.

One PM is dismissed in a sentence, others don’t even merit a mention, but (among others) there’s a distinctly frosty handbag to handbag encounter with Maggie Thatcher, a sympathetic one with Gordon Brown, an early meeting with an elderly Winston Churchill and a later one with a make-up wearing David Cameron which – perhaps the ultimate insult - sends the Queen to sleep.

Even if politics aren’t your forte, it all makes for a hugely enjoyable evening and, with the added ingredient of a couple of enthusiastic corgis, has all the hallmarks of a sell-out success

Gielgud,
Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 6AR
Piccadilly Circus tube
Until 15th June
£10.00 - £59.00theaudienceplay.com

The Living Room

 TNT

Though best known as a novelist, Graham Greene (1904-1991) also wrote a handful of plays and achieved considerable success with this wordy but worth-seeing drama which hasn’t had a major UK revival since its 1953 premiere.

As in his books, the dictates of Catholicism loom large as 20 year old Rose and her married, middle-aged psychology lecturer lover try to work out how to pursue their forbidden relationship – a liaison consummated on the night of her mother’s funeral and complicated further not only by his age and marital status but also by the fact that he’s the executor of the will.

Rose has been “bequeathed” to the care of her Catholic great aunts and uncle – an aging trio living in a strange house where nothing is quite where it should be, the bathroom is reached via the cluttered and significantly named living room, and any room in which a death has occurred has been permanently closed off.

The play is packed with symbolism. The uncle (Christopher Timothy) is a wheelchair bound priest whose faith has diminished along with the use of his legs; Caroline Blakiston’s frail aunt Teresa closes her eyes to what she doesn’t want to acknowledge (she seems oblivious to anything but her destination as she traipses to the loo).

The writing is sometimes laboured (Greene often seems to be working out his own personal dilemmas) and Diane Fletcher’s aunt Helen is positively evil in her determination to uphold religious doctrines at the expense of human compassion.

But Tom Littler’s revival still holds one’s interest, ratcheting the emotional stakes when Tuppence Middleton’s vivaciously avid Rose is forced, against her will, into an eye-opening confrontation with the distraught wife (Emma Davies) whose tenuous security she had thoughtlessly planned to destroy.

Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Until 30th March, £20jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

Above Me the Wide Blue Sky

 TNT

 

A slightly apprehensive Italian greyhound is led on stage by solo performer Laura Cubitt. The dog is, at first, reluctant to take to her fur-lined bed, but when she’s gently curled her legs (so slender they look as though they might break in a gust of wind) into a comfortable position, she sleeps, unconcerned, throughout the 45 minute performance as scudding clouds turn to angry orange swirls and the once blue skies turn dull, dead grey all around her.

Fevered Sleep’s latest production (it’s not really a play) is a long list of life-enhancing imagery, relating predominantly to the natural world of birds and trees, dogs and foxes, cows and beaches, which a relaxed Cubitt relates from a central square of raised, polar paving dotted with lights which dim and flair, bathed in evocative sounds and surrounded by shifting skies projected on wraparound overhead screens.

Each mini moment lives briefly in the present – but then the mood changes, and as Cubitt looks back at a happy childhood, it becomes a matter of what there used to be but is no longer as she works backwards through the same, less embellished, list.

But one gets the idea long before she’s returned to her starting point, and what starts off as restful becomes tedious. The silent Italian greyhound with her appealing eyes and fragile limbs – be careful how you treat me - says it all just as eloquently and in far less time.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
0207 922 2922
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Until 28th March £19.50
youngvic.org

A Chorus Line

 TNT

This stripped down musical broke new ground when it arrived from Broadway in 1976. Instead of lavish costumes and elaborate sets it goes behind the scenes to give a taste of the sweat and desperation of the audition process. Only in the finale – One (Singular Sensation) - do we get a glimpse of the anonymous glitz these hoofers aspire to be a part of.

Until then it’s almost two interval-free hours of black mirrored walls and leotards as the hopefuls are, briefly, considered as individuals and put through their paces for a place in the eponymous line up.

After the first swift, savage cut, demanding director Zach (ex Eastenders John Partridge, initially calling on the sharp dance skills acquired during his Royal Ballet School training, then a disembodied inquisitorial voice from the back of the auditorium) barks instructions at the remaining 17, prising out confessions about their personal lives as he works towards the final selection.

A solo dance for Scarlett Strallen’s Cassie (who tried – and failed – to make it in LA and now wants back in the chorus) is a bit of a let-down. But otherwise, although it’s no longer cutting edge, director Bob Avian’s revival (he co-choreographed the original production) still makes for a pleasingly entertaining night out – thanks to the late Marvin Hamlisch’s memorable score, the cast’s fast footwork, and Leigh Zimmerman’s older, wise-cracking Sheila, hiding her insecurity behind an immaculate carapace of cynicism as she heads for the dancers’ scrap heap at thirty.

London Palladium, Argyll Street, W1A 3AB
Tube | Oxford Circus
Currently booking till 18th Jan 2014
(£19.50 - £65.00)achoruslinelondon.com

The Tailor-Made Man

 TNT

With help from writer Amy Rosenthal and the addition of Adam Meggido and Duncan Walsh Atkins’ songs, Claudio Macor’s peek behind the hypocritical glamour of tinsel town in the twenties has been expanded from its 1992 fringe origins into an entertaining musical.

Told in flashback and based on fact, it tells the story of William “Billy” Haines, the defiantly gay star of the silver screen whose film career was cut short when he refused to toe MGM Studios’ line and hide his homosexuality behind a sham marriage to fellow star Pola Negri.

Though partial to cruising, he lived with his partner Jimmy Shields for nearly 50 years until his death at the age of 73. When he was arrested in 1933 for picking up a sailor and control-freak movie mogul Louis B Mayer (Mike McShane) terminated his contract and scuppered his chances of acting elsewhere, the pair continued their Hollywood associations, setting up a successful interior design business for the rich and famous.

It’s an interesting story in itself, with its references to the prevailing double standards which quietly sanctioned a wealthy married tycoon buying leading roles for his long-term, equally unfaithful mistress (Faye Tozer’s brash Marion Davies) and all sorts of other sexual shenanigans so long as they were kept under wraps.
The sound levels need adjusting – the lyrics aren’t always clear, which is a shame. But there’s good, very well-sung support from Bradley Clarkson as devoted lifelong partner Jimmy, and Dylan Turner is suitably cocky (if not very likeable) as the once golden boy Haines with a wisecracking arrogance to match his on-screen persona.

Arts Theatre
Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB
Tube | Leicester Square
Until 6th April£20- £39.50
artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Macbeth

 TNT

Though frequently referred to as “the Scottish play”, Shakespeare’s shortest work has rarely felt so rooted north of the border as it does in director Jamie Lloyd’s gorily visceral production. It's the first in the radically reconfigured main auditorium, which now seats the audience on two sides of the stage.

Set in a dark, dystopian Scotland several decades in the future, it’s a cruel, feral reading in which the porter (usually the drunken comic relief) joins the hired murderers in Banquo’s despatch, the witches wear gasmasks and Claire Foy’s wan Lady Macbeth still mourns a child lost in early infancy.

At the troubled centre is James McAvoy’s virile, axe-wielding Macbeth – a warrior through and through who comes back from war unable to embrace his wife when he first sees her and, later, with deliberate brutality, repeatedly thrusts his sword into Macduff’s young offspring.

Much of Lloyd’s post-apocalyptic vision works – the flashing lightning which separates scenes, the gushing blood which pools on the floor, the regicidal thane in his ragged clothes puking into a grubby toilet - but when the focus temporarily shifts to Malcolm (who seeks safety in a lighter, brighter England) the pace slows drastically pushing the running time to not far short of three hours.

But McAvoy is electric – vicious in battle, racked by visions and, finally, a sardonic observer of the tyrant he has become by bringing murder into his own home.

 

Trafalgar Studios
Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
Tube | Charing Cross
till 27th April (£10- £54.50)atgtickets.com/trafalgarstudios

Dear World

 TNT

In 1969, less than six months after Paul Nicholas and Annabel Leventon began taking their clothes off in the first London production of the then controversial musical Hair! , this peculiar oddity by Jerry Herman opened – and soon closed – on Broadway. Now – fully clothed and in possession of their bus passes – they’re reunited in veteran choreographer Gillian Lynne’s small scale UK premiere.

Broadway star Betty Buckley isn’t exactly in the first flush of youth either, but as the eccentric Countess Aurelia who sets out to save post war Paris and the world from the greedy capitalists who believe there’s oil to be found beneath the Café Francis, she holds this completely bizarre combination of whimsy and political satire together – and sings some pretty decent numbers too, which, individually, are far stronger than the show as a whole.

Not that it’s necessarily the fault of Lynne or her cast (which also includes her husband as one of the corporate trio).

But if you’re prepared to just go with the flow of what must surely be a labour of love and enjoy its unrealistic optimism, then the daffy comedy of Aurelia’s cronies (Rebecca Lock’s Gabrielle holding conversations with her imaginary dog, Leventon’s equally dotty Constance hearing non-existent voices) then this musical chamber piece confection, based on Giraudoux’s wartime play The Mad Woman of Chaillot, offers intermittent pleasures.

Charing Cross Theatre
The Arches, Villiers Street, WC2N 6NL
Until 30th March
£15 - £35 (premium seats £42.50
charingcrosstheatre.co.uk

If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep

 TNT

Anders Lustgarten is a political activist as well as a playwright and he’s not happy with the state of the nation.

His new 75 minute play – part satire, part rather heavy-handed polemic – boasts some topical gibes and some witty lines, but is too didactic to completely succeed as drama.

A cast of eight plays over twenty characters including the group of pinstriped suits who propose monetising social behaviour in order to eradicate a culture of dependency – and, of course, make a profit. Their privatisation policy leads to hospital staff refusing to treat a retired nurse with an injured arm (the quickest way to cut waiting lists is to keep people off them) and a possibly innocent first time offender on his way to university being coerced into pleading guilty (with the promise of a glowing reference on leaving jail, recidivism rates will tumble).

The second part takes place in a dilapidated courtroom where a group of protestors intend putting current capitalist systems on trial and various characters from the first section reappear, including Lucian Msamati’s knifed African immigrant McDonald, now with the power of an unwelcome Health and Safety inspector.

But though Lustgarten’s arguments are heartfelt his characters are, too often, merely mouthpieces, which makes it only fitfully possible to really engage with Simon Godwin’s appropriately austere production.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube || Sloane Square
Until 9th March
£10 - £28
royalcourttheatre.com