Louise's Theatre Reviews

Sunday, 31 May 2009

Painting a Wall *** TNT

Friday 29 May 2009 15:44 GMT

Here’s a play that certainly lives up to what it says on the tin.

The wall in question starts off bare and ends up the colour of pistachio ice-cream. It should have been white, but the four “Cape Coloured” workmen have been given the wrong paint and, as Samson sees it, they’re just obeying orders so they might as well carry out the pointless job, then get paid all over again for putting things right.

South African born, London-based David Lan’s first play (written when he was 22 and first performed in 1974) lasts just over an hour and in that time succeeds in revealing something of the frustration felt by this quartet of various ages under the shamefully repressive laws of apartheid.

Middle-aged Henry doggedly turns up to work even though his daughter died that morning; taciturn young Peter is only allowed to stir and pour, and Samson, mindful of the family he has to support, buries his anger and gets on with the job until, pushed just that bit too far by bolshie workmate Willy, he uncharacteristically vents his rage on the wrong person.

Though more an extended sketch than a complete play, it proves far more rewarding than watching the proverbial paint dry. True, the production occasionally lacks pace (and the wall, limited in size by the tiny playing area, could be finished in half the time).

But the futility of their work, and the restrictions imposed upon them by lack of education and opportunity are convincingly conveyed by a strong cast in which Howard Charles particularly impresses as the defiant Willy.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) till 6th June (£9 - £13)

Saturday, 23 May 2009

Ordinary Dreams ** TNT

Friday 22 May 2009 15:34 GMT

The neighbours are noisy, the pavements are littered with rubbish, and thirty something middleclass father-to-be Miles is getting increasingly anxious as wife Penny goes into labour. Their baby’s arrival sends him into a freefall of short-tempered outbursts as he frets about the messed up world into which his child has been born.

Meanwhile their university friend, working class Dan, is cleaning up his act after being persuaded to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings by Penny (herself a recovering dipso) and has taken up with a cheery younger American artist, Layla, who’s into dream interpretation and all things New Age.

So far, so promising, but having introduced his quartet of characters and their relationships, playwright Marcus Markou doesn’t really know what to do with them. Miles goes on the attack with a heavy-duty candlestick. Then, in depressed hypochondriac mode, he takes to the wheelchair bought on e-bay and daydreams about being the next PM and having an affair. Meanwhile Dan (Adrian Bowers) and Penny are tempted to rekindle their brief attraction from way back. But none of it really engages.

The production boasts a meagre scattering of strong funny lines, but it’s clumsily structured, the fantasy sequences prove ineptly tedious and, without depth or development, it’s impossible to care about any of the characters involved or where Miles’s self-destructive disaffection might lead him.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Charing Cross tube (0870 060 6632) www.ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios till 6th June ( £22.50, £16 Mondays)

The Contingency Plan - On the Beach and Resilience **** TNT

Friday 22 May 2009 15:44 GMT

Interest rates may be dropping, but the level of the world’s oceans is going the other way – and fast – in this excellent pair of climate change plays set in the near future and penned by the aptly named Steve Waters. Though the action they describe takes place almost simultaneously (the second acts of both overlap precisely) each play stands alone whilst complementing the other.

On the Beach takes the more personal approach, with Antarctic glaciologist Will returning to the reclaimed Norfolk marsh where his parents Robin (in whose career footsteps he’s followed) and Jenny, have made their home since before his birth. Here Robin has retreated from academic life following a nervous breakdown brought on by the rejection of his own scientific observations almost four decades earlier.

Set in a Whitehall cabinet room, with a Conservative government in power and the threat of a tidal flood looming, Resilience is more overtly political. But once again the conflict between what science predicts and self-serving expediency dictates is at the core of the growing tension between the protagonists.

Well researched and constructed with a wit and fluency which marks Waters out as a playwright to be watched, both plays are as strongly acted as they’re written. The performances are first rate throughout - Geoffrey Streatfeild makes a passionate, slightly unworldly Will; Robin Soans and Susan Brown double effectively as his devoted parents and, respectively, Robin’s former back-stabbing colleague turned government scientific advisor and the tough Minister for Resilience, Tessa. David Bark-Jones’ incoming Minster for Climate Change (newly appointed thanks to the old boy network) makes an unexpectedly effective adversary despite his primary concern for his holiday cottage, and Stephanie Street’s senior Civil Servant wraps steely determination in a loving, sensuous cocoon to push boyfriend Will into the political sphere.

The result is gripping, topical drama and a double bill that shouldn’t be missed.

Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 8QD (Shepherds Bush tube) (020 8743 5050) till 6th June (£15 each play)

England *** TNT

Friday 22 May 2009 15:30 GMT

Against the backdrop of Isa Genzken’s stark sculptures in the Whitechapel Gallery, Tim Crouch and his co-performer recount, with uncomfortable pauses, the progress of a crippling cardiac disease.

Only when the pair meet the widow of the man whose heart now beats in another’s body does the production really grip, as the value of art – in different cultures, to different lives, and in different situations – comes under scrutiny.

Whitechapel Art Gallery, Whitechapel High St, E1 7QX Aldgate East (020 7452 3000). Until Jun 16, £15

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

Pictures from an Exhibition **** TNT

Tuesday 19 May 2009 16:14 GMT

Theatre, dance and classical music come together in the Young Vic’s first co-production with Sadler’s Wells – a vividly nightmarish account of the life of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky who drank himself to death in 1881. His famous piano suite (written in response to the equally premature demise of his close friend, architect and painter Victor Hartmann) forms the musical backdrop to surreal fragments co-choreographed by director Daniel Kramer and performed by red-haired Edward Hogg, seven dancers and an on-stage pianist.

Richard Hudson’s gorgeously lit Alice in Wonderland design flanks the stage with doors of all shapes and sizes – but there’s no escape from the torment inside Modest’s brain as often lurid, sometimes beautiful, scenes chart his troubled progress from nursery to grave, from wealthy childhood to destitute alcoholism. Infants sport giant genitalia made of babies’ feeding bottles, his bohemian drinking companions disappear into the gaping maw of a drinks machine which doles out bottles of vodka and dispenses a pair of dancing bears, a bare-breasted bogey woman haunts his dreams, and epileptic seizures are marked by a discordant score and frantic movement.

It may not stand up to too rigorous analysis, but it’s a brave, fascinating enterprise which blends startling visual images and aural pleasures into a powerfully persuasive, visceral mix.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ tube Southwark / Waterloo (0207 922 2922) www.youngvic.org till 23 May (£22.50, under 26’s £10)

Rookery Nook **** TNT

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Things can be pretty miserable in these credit crunch times, but Ben Travers’ 1926 farce is such pure old-fashioned fantasy that it will make you forget your worries for much of its slightly overstretched 2 hours + running time.

The plot is paper thin, so most of the pleasure comes from watching newlywed Gerald Popkiss and his cad of a cousin Clive trying to out-manoeuvre his sister in-law (Sarah Woodward’s grimly disapproving Gertrude Twine) when a nubile young neighbour seeks refuge from her German stepfather - in her pyjamas.

There isn’t a shred of credibility in the whole affair, but the cast gives it all they’ve got and their efforts pay off - with Lynda Baron’s huffy mountain of a housekeeper distinctly unimpressed by the snooty new arrivals at the country cottage and Mark Hadfield nervously munching his hat as Gertrude’s apology of a husband, Harold. Best of all are Neil Stuke’s flustered man about town Gerald (who ends up with a golf club stuck down his trouser leg whilst trying to resist his attraction to the uninvited, scantily clad guest) and South African actor Edward Baker-Duly’s playboy Clive (as English as cucumber sandwiches and as slippery as an upper-class snake when it comes to a dalliance with a pretty young girl).

Ridiculously silly it may be – and very much a period piece - but, once again, it looks as though this enterprising venue has a hit on its hands.

Menier Chocolate Factory , 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU ( 020 7907 7060) tube London Bridge. Until 20th June

Monday, 18 May 2009

Waiting for Godot *** (unedited)

X-Men veterans Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen make an impressive double act in this music-hall influenced revival of Beckett’s existentialist tragi-comedy in which, as someone famously quipped, “nothing happens, twice.” Their smelly-footed Estragon and weak-bladdered Vladimir are a pair of down-and-out vaudevillians whose interdependency has evolved through half a century of friendship. Whilst they pass the time waiting for the ever absent Godot, they munch carrots, contemplate suicide, and cross paths with Simon Callow’s bombastic Pozzo and Ronald Pickup’s Lucky, a human packhorse with a rope round his neck. Director Sean Mathias has added comic sound effects and a crumbling theatre set, but it’s McKellen’s poignant performance as a doddery, bewildered Estragon which provides the bleak humanity at the core of this 1950’s classic.

Louise Kingsley