Trelawny of the Wells

This is London

Since artistic director Josie Rourke began her tenure at the intimate Donmar, the space has been transformed for every production. For the stage directing debut of successful filmmaker Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina), designer Hildegard Bechtler has created a progressively stripped away illusion of a proscenium arch to embrace talk-of-the town actress Rose Trelawny’s lodgings, a grand Cavendish Square residence and backstage at the theatres where Arthur Wing Pinero’s gentle comedy unfolds.

Written in 1898 and with ‘some most respectful additions and ornamentation’ seamlessly supplied by Patrick Marber, it’s an affectionate account of the Victorian theatre in flux which needs a light touch to sustain it. But for much of the first half Wright’s production is too effortful as Amy Morgan’s Rose gives up her career for love. Moving into the home of her sweetheart’s stuffy upper class relatives ‘on approval’, she soon finds the atmosphere so suffocating – even a sneeze is greeted with disapproval – that she returns to her ‘gypsy’ friends and the theatre, only to find that she no longer quite fits in there, either.

Individually, several elements work well enough – Ron Cook on fine comic form as landlady Mrs Mossop (he also doubles as disapproving, snuff-sniffing Sir William); Daniel Mays’ lanky leading man swallowing his pride (if not his affectations) when financial circumstances demand; Maggie Steed whose perfectly timed delivery of a mere handful of lines split over two characters couldn’t be bettered.

But it’s only after the interval that Wright seems to trust the material sufficiently to let the cast move towards being sympathetic, credible people rather than the annoying caricatures whose theatrical demise the play itself predicts. The results, briefly, are surprisingly quite moving as the old shows signs of giving way to the new and acceptance and tolerance herald the possibility of a different future.

 

Donmar

 

Once

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Though in most ways this stage version of John Carney’s understated, critically acclaimed 2006 low budget film could hardly be more different from the average West End musical, it, too, has the most meagre of plots.

Adapted by Enda Walsh (whose work is usually much, much darker) it’s already been an award-winning hit on Broadway, but the boy-meets-girl scenario which unfolds demands a mellow indulgence – and director John Tiffany has helpfully ensured you can grab a pre-show or interval pint from the on-stage Dublin bar to put you in the mood.

The supporting cast of versatile actor musicians (niftily choreographed by Steven Hoggett) add humour and enormous zest with their stomping renditions on mandolin, accordion, cello, violin and drums.

At the centre, over a brief few days, a Dublin busker and a Czech immigrant mother bond (mainly through her persistence) over a faulty vacuum cleaner and a shared love of creating music. Zrinka Cvitesic’s piano-playing Girl (neither of the lead characters is named) is endlessly encouraging, Declan Bennett’s guitar-playing Guy is raw and disillusioned. Both have unfinished business from previous relationships hovering over them.

But, as befits a bittersweet love story which crosses cultures with the help of song, their duets - including the Oscar-winning "Falling Slowly" are beautifully haunting.

Phoenix Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0JP
Tube | Leicester Square
Currently booking until 30th November
£19.50 - £67.50oncemusical.co.uk

On Approval

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Although it rather runs out of steam towards the end, Fredrick Lonsdale’s slight social comedy, a West End success in 1927, has its fair share of biting put-downs and wry observations as a wealthy widow takes steps to find out if her devoted admirer really is the man for her.

A gentleman without significant means, Richard has spent decades never managing to pluck up the courage to declare his feelings. Having endured a disastrous marriage to a drunkard, Maria Wislake decides to take matters into her own hands – suggesting they spend a chaste month together at her country home in Scotland where she can make up her mind about his true character.

They’re joined by her young heiress friend Helen (whose father made his fortune in pickles) who is besotted with the caddish (and now bankrupt) Duke of Bristol who has unrepentantly squandered all his money on affairs with married women.

It’s rather dated, a bit repetitive and can’t compete with the wit or psychological acuity of either Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward. But it’s light-hearted fun nonetheless, as Sara Crowe’s demanding, irredeemably bossy Maria and Peter Sandys Clarke’s unforgivably selfish, self-absorbed Duke push Daniel Hill’s bumbling Richard and Louise Calf’s sweet-natured Helen into admitting just how obnoxious the objects of their misplaced affections really are.

Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Until 4th May, £20jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

My Perfect Mind

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This uniquely idiosyncratic concoction is, in essence, a show about not doing a show.

In 2007, when the now 76 year old Edward Petherbridge arrived in New Zealand to play King Lear, he found himself instead half paralysed in a hotel room after suffering a stroke. Not, one might think, the stuff of a warm, life-affirming entertainment, but that’s exactly what this evening of whimsy, anecdote and extracts from the Bard proves to be, never following a straight path if a roundabout one beckons.

Written in collaboration with Told By an Idiot’s multi-accented, many-wigged Paul Hunter (with whom he shares the tilted stage) and director Kathryn Hunter (who has herself played Lear) and drawing on his published memoir Slim Chances and Unscheduled Appearances, it will probably appeal most to those with a particular fondness for theatre.

But even if you know nothing about Shakespeare or Petherbridge’s thespian career, there’s much to enjoy in this fluid 90 minutes spent in the company of a veteran actor whose air of gentle vagueness belies his skills not only as a seasoned performer but (with a touch of the Rolf Harris’s) as a more than competent artist as well.

 

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Extended to 4th May
£10 -19.50youngvic.org

The Thrill of Love

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On 13th July 1955, 28 year old Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in the UK. Just weeks earlier, on Easter Sunday, the peroxide blonde hostess had deliberately pumped a string of bullets into her violent lover David Blakeley (one, ill-aimed, ricocheted and injured a passer-by) before handing over the gun to an off-duty policeman and confessing her crime

Playwright Amanda Whittington has done her homework, looking into psychiatric and official reports of the time, but the structure mutes the noir-ish atmosphere created by Jonathan Fensom’s blood-red set and the accompanying Billie Holiday soundtrack. Ellis’s story is told through the well-worn device of a (fictional ) police inspector (the only man on stage) trying to get beneath the calm exterior she presented in court in order to understand why she offered nothing in the way of defence, refusing even to divulge how she came to have a loaded gun in her possession.

Still, the sad story of a much abused good-time girl - eager for fame, fortune and the flashy glamour offered by the wealthy clientele of the Knightsbridge nightclub she managed - is compelling. And Faye Castelow immerses herself completely in the character of Ellis, damaged by the men she met as well as by the miscarriages, abortions, booze and drugs which came with her chosen lifestyle.  

 

St James, 21 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA
Tube: Victoria
Until 4th May | £15 - £40.00
stjamestheatre.co.uk

Third Finger Left Hand

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Rummaging through an old shoe box of photographs, Grace and estranged older sister Niamh flash back to their childhood to find out where and why their relationship foundered and recrimination set in.     

Based on the lives of his own siblings who grew up in Preston in the ‘70s with a violent father and much-loved mother, Dermot Canavan’s touching and warm-hearted two-hander (his first full length play) paints a picture of youthful rebellion against a backdrop of the liberating excitement of discovering Northern soul at Wigan Casino.

Amanda Daniels (who has already played the part in York and Edinburgh) reprises the role of Grace who stayed behind to pick up the pieces, whilst Imogen Stubbs gives the more glamorous Niamh a restless exuberance – until illness cruelly strikes. Both are excellent, and if the play (with its evocative personal references) is stronger on atmosphere than plot, that’s more than compensated for by the infectious likeability of Ian Talbot’s production which blends sadness and disappointment with unfulfilled optimism and some joyful time-warp dancing to the Tamla Motown tunes of the era.

 

Trafalgar Studios (2) | £15.00 - £30.00
Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
Tube | Charing Cross
till 27th April

The Book of Mormon

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It couldn’t possibly live up to the hype but this irreverent Broadway hit musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the guys who created South Park) and Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez is fast, frequently foul-mouthed and lots of fun as the unlikely pairing of naïve Utah mission school graduates Elder Price and Elder Cunningham arrives in an AIDS-ridden Uganda – so different from The Lion King - to convert the natives.

Their colleagues have had zero success – not a single baptism between them - but when all-American golden boy Price cracks, geeky misfit Cunningham calls on his overactive imagination to add colour – and frogs – to the dull text of the Latter-Day Saints.

Filthy but rarely really offensive, the satire is soft and (despite a one-eyed war lord and the threat of female circumcision hanging over Alexia Khadime’s Nabulungi) there’s a feelgood atmosphere running right through.

The cast – including the local doctor with maggots in his scrotum – give it their all. Powerfully-voiced Americans Gavin Creel (well-cast as the fervent, square-jawed Price) and Jared Gertner (simultaneously endearing and annoying as dumpy sidekick Cunningham) are, intentionally, almost cartoonish whilst home-grown Stephen Ashfield’s Elder McKinley tries (but doesn’t quite succeed) in quashing his own homoerotic thoughts as he leads the clean-cut, well-drilled Elders in a nifty song and dance routine.

Not exactly ground-breaking after all, but a really good night out.

Prince of Wales , Coventry Street, W1D 6AS
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Currently booking to 11th January 2014
£37.50 - £72.50 (+ premium seats £125.00)bookofmormonlondon.com

Peter and Alice

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Perennial fictional favourites Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan live on in adult minds long after childhood is a distant memory. But what about the youngsters who originally inspired their magical tales of adventure, conceived respectively by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) and J.M. Barrie, both of whom nurtured close relationships with young children?

In 1932, the centennial of Carroll’s birth, Alice Liddell Hargreaves and 35 year old publisher Peter Llewelyn Davies really did meet, when shortage of funds compelled Alice, by then an octogenarian widow, to sell her original manuscript.

It’s this meeting which forms the starting point for John Logan’s 90 minute new play, which brings together Skyfall stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw (both on excellent form – with Dench conjuring a childlike wonderment as she remembers her girlhood talks with Nicholas Farrell’s stuttering Dodgson and Whishaw troubled and wounded by too much family tragedy).

It raises questions about the legacy of fame, the pain and pleasures of growing up, the true nature of the unusual friendships, but does so in a frequently overwritten and heavy handed manner as it intermingles real events in their lives with sections of the writings which immortalised and (almost certainly in the case of Peter) damaged them.

Christopher Oram’s dingy store room set lifts to reveal a beguilingly bright toy theatre which encompasses various layers of fantasy as Peter and Alice, their fictional selves and their literary creators mix factual snippets with fiction.

But, although Logan’s concept is intriguing, the Skyfall scriptwriter should be very grateful for the depth that the film’s M and Q bring to their performances in what would otherwise be a rather mundane exercise.

Noel Coward, St. Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AU
Tube | Leicester Square
Until 1 June
£10.00 - £57.50michaelgrandagecompany.com

The Low Road

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Set primarily in the mid eighteenth century with a brief detour to the present day, this picaresque new play from Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright Bruce Norris boasts a cast of twenty playing a multitude of characters as it follows the fortunes of one Jim Trumpett, abandoned at birth on the doorstep of a Massachusetts whorehouse and destined to come to a sticky end.

Bill Paterson’s Adam Smith (the Scottish moral philosopher and father of modern economics who penned The Wealth of Nations) drily narrates the amoral Trumpett’s journey from cradle to early grave as he takes – and makes – every opportunity to line his pockets whilst maintaining that he’s the illegitimate son of George Washington.

With its nods to Brecht and to The Beggar’s Opera, Dominic Cooke’s efficient production of this sometimes long-winded satire on capitalism has its highpoints and boasts some fine work from the ensemble - notably Simon Paisley Day as a superior British officer and a smugly wealthy 21st century descendant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s dignified slave purchased by Trumpett and then temporarily shackled to him by a highway robber, and Elizabeth Berrington’s Belinda chairing a conference that gets out of control.

And Johnny Flynn does a more than decent job as the arrogant, amoral, affronted antihero who is only interested in making money – no matter what the cost to anyone else.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube | Sloane Square
Until 11 May
£10 - £28royalcourttheatre.com

The Winslow Boy

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Based on a real life 1908 case in which a young cadet was expelled from the Royal Naval College for allegedly stealing a five shilling postal order, Terence Rattigan’s accomplished 1946 drama moves the event forward a few years to the period just before the First World War and restricts the action to the family’s Kensington drawing room.

It is here that paterfamilias Arthur Winslow, a retired bank employee, decides that his 14 year old son Ronnie (who vehemently protests his innocence) should have the right to a fair trial and solicits the services of a high profile barrister (Peter Sullivan’s arrogant Sir Robert Morton) to take on the establishment and secure justice for his boy.

Over a two year period, we hear about the slow progress of the case – and witness the human and financial cost to the whole Winslow family as the battle continues. Whilst young Ronnie himself has moved on (as much, anyway, as the intrusive press coverage will permit – no change there, then) the futures of both his older brother and suffragette sister are compromised in different ways. But despite the remonstrations of his wife (Deborah Findlay) and his own deteriorating health, Henry Goodman’s convincing Arthur rarely wobbles in his steadfast belief that his son should be given the chance to clear his name.

Lindsay Posner’s straightforward production makes no attempt to hide the fact that this is very much a period piece - but one whose central themes still resonate.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
Tube:-Waterloo
Until 25th May
£11.00- £50.00
(some tickets for £12 bookable in advance for under 25s)oldvictheatre.com

Proof

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Athletes and footballers may have a comparatively short shelf life, but when it comes to peaking early it seems mathematicians are way up the top of the list. That certainly seems to have been the case with recently deceased university professor Robert in American David Auburn’s prize-winning. play which premiered in 2000 and arrived here a couple of years later with Gwyneth Paltrow in the role of his daughter, Catherine, who fears she may have inherited her father’s mental instability along with his mathematical talents.

Polly Findlay’s revival can’t boast such starry casting, but her taut, absorbing production, played out on the neglected back porch of their Chicago home, is marred only by one shifting accent in an otherwise perfect cast.

A ground-breaking genius in his early twenties, Robert spent much of his later years compulsively filling notebooks with nonsense and being cared for by Catherine who gave up university to look after him. Now Hal (Jamie Parker, excellent) one of his former graduate students, thinks there’s just a small possibility that he might unearth significant work hidden somewhere in all those scribbles.

Auburn steers well clear of any complex mathematics, but the all-engrossing excitement of academic pursuit at the highest level - and the counterproductive cost at which such brilliance sometimes comes - are convincingly captured by both Matthew Marsh’s Robert and Mariah Gale’s fragile, wary Catherine.

And currency analyst Claire (Emma Cunniffe) - her bossy but well-meaning older sister who flies in from New York to take control - shows that life can be much less of a rollercoaster if one isn’t quite so gifted.

Menier Chocolate Factory
53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU
Tube | London Bridge
Until 27th April
£27.50 - £ 35.00 (MealDeals £35.50 - £39.00)menierchocolatefactory.com

Mies Julie

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Even with minimum tweaking, Strindberg’s 1888 domestic drama fits perfectly into a 21st century South African setting. Director and writer Yael Farber takes things even further, giving us not just a doomed love affair which crosses social boundaries but one that – albeit briefly – transcends racial ones and is a fight for the land as well.

Instead of a triangle involving the daughter of a Swedish count, his cook Christine and her valet fiancé, Farber gives us an emotionally unstable young Afrikaans woman who taunts and verbally abuses her father’s Xhosa servant John in a sadomasochistic power struggle which, even in post-Apartheid South Africa, can still only end in tragedy.

And Faber’s Christine (Thoko Ntshinga) is here John’s hardworking mother who, ironically, devoted more time to bringing up Julie than her own son.

The ghosts of the past haunt the stage in the shape of Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa’s Ancestor, her other-worldly chanting an eerie background to the growing tension in this brutally physical, visceral production. And as the Freedom Day celebrations continue out of sight, the body heat emanating from Bongile Mantsai’s John and Hilda Cronje’s Julie is as palpable as the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Karoo farmstead to which they both lay claim.

 

Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, W6 9RL
Tube | Hammersmith
Until 19th May
£25 - £26riversidestudios.co.uk

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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After a deservedly sell-out run in the National Theatre’s smallest space, Simon Stephens’ clever adaptation of Mark Haddon’s award-winning book makes a gratifying transfer to the West End.

Luke Treadaway reprises his knock-out portrayal of Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome who sets out to discover who killed his neighbour’s dog with a garden fork. Though incapable of lying, unfalteringly literal, and freaked out by human contact (a cautious, slow motion variation on a “high five” is all he can cope with, even with his distraught parents), Christopher is highly logical and very persistent - traits, which take him on a path of unsettling discovery when he turns detective against his father’s wishes.

Within Bunny Christie’s cube of a design, Frantic Assembly’s choreographed movement and flashing video projections recreate the sensory overload which assails the terrified boy as he makes the journey (solo, apart from his pet rat) from the comparative calm of Swindon to the bustle of London.

And Marianne Elliott’s sympathetic production manages to get right inside Christopher’s head, with Treadaway – restless, fidgety, with a mass of quirky behavioural problems - both infuriating and sympathetic as the troubled teenager who finds comfort in the predictable order of mathematics and the undemanding company of animals.

Apollo theare Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Currently extended until 4th January, 2014
£12.00- £57.50curiousonstage.com

Paper Dolls

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Orthodox Jews and Filipino drag queens make an unlikely pairing but Philip Himberg’s play with music (based on Tomer Heymann’s 2006 documentary film) poignantly proves that, with a bit of tolerance and understanding, the most improbable clashes of race, faith, culture and sexual orientation can result in something truly life-affirming.

Leaving behind a country where families traditionally look after their own old and infirm, the five Filipino men who comprise the singing Paper Dolls live in Tel Aviv, constant companions and carers for sick, elderly Jewish men who can no longer take care of themselves – and whose own relatives are unwilling or unable to take on the job.

But in their spare time, they toss their long hair, put on elaborate dresses they’ve fashioned out of newspaper and strut their stuff in the hope of finding fame with a bit of help from their number one fan, gay Israeli Yossi.

Like their drag act, Himberg’s play isn’t exactly polished – it touches too briefly on too many issues.

But there’s an infectious quality to Indhu Rubasingham’s immensely likeable production which makes one forgive the flaws and hope that Chiqui (Ron Domingo), his dissatisfied younger brother Jiorgio (Jon Norman Schneider), tubby Zhan (Angelo Paragoso) who needs two people to shoehorn him into his slinky costume, and recently arrived Cheska won’t fall foul of exploitative nightclub managers, immigration laws or acts of terrorism.

And in the touching relationship between Francis Jue’s Catholic Salvador (known as Sally) and Harry Dickman’s cancer-ridden Chaim, there’s a tenderness and affection built up over the years which more than borders on the familial.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 28th April
£14.00 - £22.00tricycle.co.uk

Longing

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Making his stage playwriting debut, award-winning novelist and screenwriter William Boyd has neatly conflated two of Chekhov’s short stories - A Visit to Friends (1898) and the more substantial My Life (1896) - into a single dramatic comedy which embraces many of the elements familiar from the Russian playwright’s most famous works.

There’s the changing social atmosphere, which sees the landowning classes losing their property to the unrefined nouveau-riche, a marriage embarked on for the wrong reasons and doomed to result in unhappiness, a young idealist, a feckless husband (Alan Cox) too fond of booze and hopeless financial schemes, and unspoken, unrequited love which almost (but not quite) finds fulfilment – all played out against designer Lizzie Clachan’s attractively dilapidated summerhouse flanked by silver birches.

Boyd’s adapted combination doesn’t match the depth of Chekhov’s masterly plays (The Cherry Orchard was itself an expansion of the shorter tale’s material). But Nina Raine’s sympathetic, well cast production is always watchable and is blessed with exceptionally strong performances from Tamsin Greig (almost unbearably moving as outwardly resilient, no-longer-young doctor, Varia) and Iain Glen as charismatic but indecisive Kolia – now a successful Moscow lawyer visiting after a decade away, but still an emotional infant unable to commit.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU
Tube: Swiss Cottage
Until 6th April
£22-£29hampsteadtheatre.com