Louise's Theatre Reviews

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Country Magic *** TNT

Friday 24 April 2009

Though more than a touch melodramatic - and considerably overwritten for modern tastes - this romantic fable from the hand of Edwardian playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has a heart-warming core which offers hope and comfort for damaged souls in search of happiness as it warns about the cruelty of judging by appearance.

Premiered as The Enchanted Cottage in 1921, it hit a chord with a post- war audience, was filmed a couple of years later and again in 1945. Director Phil Willmott’s adaptation, aided by Robin Don’s deceptively simple, partly translucent design, wisely remains true to the original period.

It brings together an emotionally and physically crippled upper-class ex soldier, Bashforth, and an exceptionally plain country girl who shows him kindness. Isolated (by choice) in a remote cottage, with just a mysterious widowed housekeeper for company, Bashforth can’t come to terms with all that his First World War wounds have deprived him of - his looks, his stability, his carefree social past. But when a marriage of convenience turns into true love, is it witchcraft, delusion or something else which makes the ugly beautiful?

There’s little subtlety in this play – Bashforth’s interfering relatives and the awkward rector with his heavily pregnant wife are broadly drawn, rather unsympathetic, comic characters, and much is made of the disfiguring growth on his sister’s nose. But Jamie Hinde brings dignity to the role of fellow ex-serviceman, Hillgrove, blinded in battle yet able to see more clearly than the others of his class, and, with its touching message, it’s hard to dislike this sentimental and somewhat dated piece of whimsy.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk till 9th May (£9 - £13)

Alphabetical Order *** TNT

Friday 24 April 2009

The Hampstead theatre continues its 50th birthday celebrations with a moderately enjoyable revival of Michael Frayn’s hit comedy which started life at this address in 1975, then went on to win an Evening Standard award when it transferred to the West End. Human nature hasn’t changed much over the intervening years, but the setting in which his characters find themselves – the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper – now has the historic whiff of a bygone era. Nowadays, background information can be gleaned with the click of the mouse, but, when Frayn was a reporter, the articles clipped manually from publications on a daily basis were a vital resource.

The trouble with Lucy’s library, though, is that the idiosyncratic filing system she inherited is in total chaos – even the alphabet seems to have taken on its own crazy logic – and staff are as likely to pop in for coffee as for information. Help arrives in the form of immaculate young Lesley, a humourless second-jobber with a compulsive desire to create order and a disagreeable habit of putting her new colleagues into neat little categories, too.

Frayn’s characters are all recognisable stereotypes – Jonathan Guy Lewis’s indecisive academic turned leader writer who sees so many sides to everything that he can never commit; the widowed features editor with her sights set on Gawn Grainger’s alcoholically monosyllabic hack; the chatty messenger nearing retirement. And the intended humour of the first act is far too forced.

But thing’s improve after the interval when the frantically ingratiating pace slows and reality bites, and Imogen Stubbs is perfectly cast as much-loved but scatty Lucy, with her £5 fur coat from Oxfam and a messed up social life to match her disorganised library.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) until 16th May (£15-£25 -under 26’s £10)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf **** TNT

Friday 24 April 2009 16:45

There’s no escaping the vitriol of Edward Albee’s 1962 drama – not for new biology professor Nick and his wife, nor for the audience when they share a post-party nightcap with long-married couple Martha and George.
The intimate staging sucks you right into the living room of their New England home, a battlefield for their booze-fuelled slanging matches.

Hopelessly out of their depth, Mark Farrelly’s ambitious Nick and Louise Kempton’s naïve Honey are pawns in games of ‘Hump The Hostess’ and ‘Humiliate The Host’, ruthlessly played by Tracey Childs’ Martha and her spouse. And, as failed academic George, Matthew Kelly oozes a cruel, crumpled inadequacy fostered by the destructive co-dependency of a barren, hate-filled marriage.

Trafalgar Studios 2, SW1A 2DY Charing Cross (0870 060 6632). Until May 9. £27.50

Friday, 24 April 2009

Dimetos (Donmar) - This is London

It's difficult to imagine two more different enterprises than Douglas Hodge's most recent ventures. Having handed over the role of transvestite Albin in the stillrunning La Cage aux Folles (for which he won an Olivier award), he's now turned his hand to directing one of Athol Fugard's more obscure plays (written in 1975), a highly allegorical work set in a nameless country and, on the surface at least, devoid of the South African playwright's usual political concerns.

Disillusioned by life in the city, Dimetos, a brilliant engineer, has exiled himself from the city where he made his reputation and, with his faithful housekeeper Sophia and pubescent niece Lydia, retreated to a remote village, convincing himself he can be of as much use to the local people as he was to the townsfolk. The arrival of an eager young man intent on luring him back to solve their problems upsets the equilibrium of their semi-isolated existence and brings tothe fore emotions which, until then, had simmered, unacknowledged.

Hints of Dimetos's covert passion are there right from the start, as Holliday Grainger's glowing Lydia is lowered, stripped to her undergarments, to rescue a trapped horse. And it is apparent, too (though not to the selfishly preoccupied Dimetos) that Sophia (a fine, restrained Anne Reid) has followed him out of more than just a sense of duty.

It's a frustratingly symbolic piece, lending itself to various interpretations, yet never really convincing. But Hodge's atmospheric production, Bunny Christie's design of rough wooden walkways, planks and knotted ropes, and, most of all, Jonathan Pryce's portrayal of the desperate, grizzled Dimetos overcome the irritation of some indulgent chunks of dialogue. Plagued by demons and rarely at rest, the manifestations of his inner torment and frustrated creativity exert an irresistibly powerful hold.

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

The Fever *** TNT

Tuesday 21 April 2009 14:11 GMT

Here’s an odd one - the Royal Court‘s Wallace Shawn season kicks off with arevival of his 1990 monologue which aims, among other more far-reaching concerns, to make you feel guilty about going to the theatre. A programme note states that it was originally intended to be performed in private apartments by a single person of either sex and of flexible age.

This time round it’s the turn of award-winning actress Clare Higgins to address the audience – but not, as one might expect, in the more austere intimacy of theTheatre Upstairs but on a rehearsal room style set in the comfortable main house.

Taken ill in an unnamed, war-torn and impoverished country, the narrator (Higgins in blue jeans and crisp white blouse) recounts how she wakes in the night, flushed and feverish, with new and recurring thoughts of the inequity of life. Lying on the bathroom floor, she recalls her enjoyment of fine food and restaurants, the pleasure of visits to the theatre, and all the benefits that her privileged New York upbringing has led her to believe are hers by right. But although she is more than willing to give a needy beggar a handout, the prospect of giving away all her money - of sacrificing her lifestyle to alleviate the suffering of the poor - is one to which she, guiltily, cannot subscribe.

Higgins is a highly skilled and watchable communicator and delivers what proves to be a temporarily convincing argument, but although it prods the conscience, this 90-minute analysis of what Shawn ultimately calls the corruption of liberal, middle-class existence doesn’t completely stand up to closer scrutiny.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Sq, SW1 (020 7565 5000). Until May 2. £10-£25

Plague over England *** (uncut)

Theatre critics don’t often write plays – they’re far too busy picking holes in work that others have poured their life and soul into in the hope of a favourable notice. In almost two decades of reviewing for the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh has made more than his fair share of bitchy comments, but, after a sell-out season at the tiny Finborough last year, his play about Sir John Gielgud’s brush with the law has made it into the West End.

The famous thespian was accused of importuning for immoral purposes when he was caught cottaging in 1953, not long after he’d been knighted. De Jongh surrounds this real event (and the emotional impact it had on the usually discreetly homosexual Gielgud) with various fictional characters including the enticing “pretty policeman” who arrests him in a public lavatory, the judge’s son who witnesses the event and is equally seduced, and a civil servant considering electrical aversion therapy as a means of changing his forbidden sexual preferences.

Michael Feast, looking spookily like Gielgud and capturing his mellow tones, brings both gravitas and vulnerability to the pivotal role, John Warnaby doubles effectively as a camp critic and an intolerant Home Secretary, and, although the writing is competent rather than inspired (some of the jokes are decidedly laboured), overall De Jongh offers an interesting and entertaining account of a not so distant era when even private acts of gay sex could result in criminal prosecution.

Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2 ( 0844 579 1973)
Until 16^th May (£46-£26)

Plague over England *** TNT

Tuesday 21 April 2009 14:00 GMT

Theatre critics don’t often write plays, but Evening Standard reviewer Nicholas de Jongh’s play about Sir John Gielgud’s brush with the law (he was caught cottaging in 1953) has made it to the West End. While the writing is competent rather than inspired, De Jongh offers an interesting account of an era when even private acts of gay sex could result in criminal prosecution.

Duchess Theatre, Catherine St, WC2B 5LA Covent Garden (0844 579 1973). Until May 2. From £26