Our Town

 TNT

Just a few chairs, tables, ladders and a leafy bough hanging overhead comprise the scenery in Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning study of everyday life in the small fictional community of Grover’s Corner somewhere in New Hampshire.

 Written in 1938, it was pretty experimental for the time –with the character of the Stage Manager (a competent Simon Dobson in present day clothes) breaking through the fourth wall to address the audience directly whilst also dropping into the action to serve as a drugstore owner and a clergyman.

Most of the characters make only fleeting appearances over three acts and thirteen years from 1901 to 1913, with the focus mainly on the changing relationship between young Emily whose father edits the local paper and George, the doctor’s son. Between them, the ensemble of fourteen (drawn from a multitude of countries and performing with varying degrees of conviction) play a host of other locals – from the milkman to the alcoholic church organist (whose misery is never explained) and from a university lecturer to a dead woman waiting to welcome another spirit to a different place.

Apparently this reminder to appreciate what one has and to make the most of one’s allocated time has been performed somewhere in the US every night for the last 75 years. Tim Sullivan’s mildly diverting if somewhat underpowered production does little to explain why – but Zoe Swenson-Graham’s Emily glows with optimism in this gentle portrayal of ordinary American life at the turn of the century.

£15+, Kings  Head Theatre,
Upper Street, N1 1QN
Tube | Angel kingsheadtheatre.com

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Infamous : Derren Brown

 TNT

What to say about a show that you’re not allowed to say anything about?

Several times during the course of a superbly entertaining evening, Derren Brown – psychological illusionist and mentalist extraordinaire – entreated punters and critics alike not to divulge what goes on in over two and half hours of mind-boggling entertainment.

But I’m sure he won’t object to my saying that he’s a first rate showman who continues to astound every time he appears on stage, holding the audience in the palm of his hand throughout and accomplishing the seemingly impossible – be it mathematical calculations, feats of memory or soliciting visits from beyond the grave.

Somehow, he seems to get right inside people’s heads and, as one would expect, audience participation features large, ranging from a few moments with a microphone to zoning out on stage during the interval, with the majority of the selections decided, in egalitarian fashion, by the random throw of a high-flying Frisbee.      

With co-writer and director Andy Nyman, Brown has put together a slick show built less on shock factor than previously and more on personal confession.   But I’ve still got absolutely no idea how he does what he does. He may, as he reveals, have been called “dickbrain” at school, but those brains of his have stood him in pretty good stead ever since and I just hope they’re already mulling over the contents of his next mind-bending production.

Palace Theatre
Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V 8AY
Tube | Leicester Square / Tottenham Court Road
Until 17th August£16 - £51nimaxtheatres.com

Pride and Prejudice

 TNT

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the appearance in print of Jane Austen’s ever-popular novel, Simon Reade’s stage adaptation breezes through the husband-hunting escapades of the five Bennett sisters as possible suitors come and go.

Simply staged on a two-tier rotating set of green and gold railings (which at one point become the frames for the numerous Darcy family portraits), Deborah Bruce’s efficient production stays true to the fundamental spirit of the book as the garrulous Mrs Bennett despairs of finding sufficient wealthy, well-connected bachelors to guarantee the financial security and social status of her all-female brood.

Fresh out of drama school, Jennifer Kirby gives a likeably assured performance in the pivotal role of Elizabeth, capturing both her independent spirit and her outspoken wit as she initially despises  - then falls for - David Oakes’ haughty Mr. Darcy.

But, in general, there’s little room for depth or subtlety – partly, perhaps, because of the open air venue (charming though it is when the rain holds off and the temperature improves), partly because of the necessity to strip away much of the original.

So although Ed Birch’s ingratiating clergyman cousin, Mr Collins, gets the laughs with his ridiculous spindly-legged bows and his determination to recruit a wife – almost any wife – in order to please his benefactress (Jane Asher’s disdainful Lady Catherine de Bourgh) it’s a rather too broad interpretation.

But Rob Heaps displays an endearingly puppyish happiness as the somewhat colourless Mr Bingley when he finally gets his sweet-natured Jane, the empire-line dresses place the production firmly in period, and there’s enough dancing in various country homes to make this an enjoyable, if unexceptional, evening.

 

Open Air Theatre
Inner Circle, Regents Park, NW1 4NR
Tube | Baker Stree
£25.00 -£55.00
Until 20th July
openairtheatre.org

 

The Cripple of Inishmaan

 TNT

He’s waved his wand on screen as Harry Potter, whipped off his clothes on stage as a troubled teen in Equus and now Daniel Radcliffe has adopted an Irish accent, a hobbling gait and a mangled arm as Billy, the eponymous youth who lives with his adoptive “aunties” on an isolated Aran isle and dreams of escape.

Set in 1934, Martin McDonagh’s 1990s black comedy mixes fiction with an element of fact (an American film crew really did descend on the area to make the documentary Man of Aran) but the characters are his own.

Pat Shortt’s grubby Johnnypateenmike splits his time between delivering  (usually very tedious) local gossip and trying to kill off his frustratingly resilient old mother (June Watson) with forbidden bottles of illegally brewed booze. The aunts (who run the local store stocked almost entirely with stacks of canned peas) have their own peculiar habits - Ingrid Craigie’s fretting Kate talks to stones at times of stress whilst Gillian Hanna’s down-to-earth Eileen eats the sweets before the customers can even sample them.

With nothing to do to pass the time, Radcliffe’s Cripple Billy (there’s nothing politically correct about McDonagh’s work or the locals he portrays) has turned to books and staring at the cows – but he’s determined to grab the chance of a screen test on a neighbouring island.

It’s an effectively understated performance which contrasts well with Sarah Greene’s abrasive Slippy Helen, a foul-mouthed little minx with a penchant for cracking eggs over all and sundry.

There’s more than a touch of pastiche about London born and raised McDonagh’s writing, but his dialogue fizzes with cruelly funny brio and, fully acknowledging this, Michael Grandage’s snappy production makes you laugh even when you know you shouldn’t.

 

Noel Coward, St. Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AU
Tube| Leicester Square
Until 31st August
£10.00 - £57.50
MichaelGrandageCompany.com delfontmackintosh.co.uk

Sweet Bird of Youth

 TNT

The considerable talents of Marianne Elliott (who directed both the unmissable The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and War Horse) can’t disguise the fact that this 1959 Southern drama really isn’t Tennessee Williams at his best.

Even so, it was a celebrity magnet at its West End premiere in 1985 when movie legend Lauren Bacall took on the role of insecure, fading film star Alexandra del Lago (aka the Princess of Kosmonopolis) and now it’s former Sex and the City siren Kim Cattrall who’s looking for oblivion in the arms of gigolo and would-be actor Chance Wayne, a Gulf Coast drifter whose ambition and imagination far exceed his actual achievements.

She has wealth and, he believes, influence – both of which he means to deploy in an attempt to win back his childhood sweetheart, Heavenly, whose father wants him run out of town - or worse – after what he did to his daughter on his last visit.

Cattrall’s red-wigged Alexandra reveals the vulnerability of a pill-popping, gin-guzzling woman who believers her career is over (though one would expect anyone who wakes up with no idea of where she is to look considerably more raddled) and also demonstrates the imperious grandeur of a diva used to having things her own way.

Seth Numrich does a decent job as Chance, increasingly desperate and reluctantly coming to realise that, pushing thirty and with his hair starting to thin, his body won’t be in demand for ever.

But it’s only after their first over-long opening scene together that things really get interesting as Owen Roe’s red-faced, blustering, hypocritical Boss Finley (Heavenly’s father and local political bigwig) gives vent to his bigoted views and his racist plans to protect the purity of innocent white women.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
Tube:-Waterloo
Until 31st August
£11.00- £52.00
(some tickets for £12 bookable in advance for under 25’s)oldvictheatre.com

Bracken Moor

 TNT

A down-to-earth confrontation between a worried foreman concerned about hefty job losses and wealthy Yorkshire pit owner Harold Pritchard who is determined to close the local mine evolves into a more domestic melodrama of unexplained happenings and ghostly interventions in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s slightly spooky new play, a co-production between Shared Experience and the Tricycle theatre.

For a decade, the tragic loss of their then twelve year old son Edgar, who died stranded down a disused mineshaft, has blighted the Pritchard household.

Now, in 1937, idealistic and somewhat effete young Terence with his confrontational views has arrived with his mother and father to revisit the oppressive house where the parents of his childhood best friend, soul mate – and (had he survived) potentially more - still live in unhappy gloom.

Almost immediately he seems to be being taken over by a strange force which Helen Schlesinger’s unremittingly grief-stricken Elizabeth is convinced is her own dead son trying to communicate with her.

Daniel Flynn’s unbending industrialist determined to find a rational explanation, Joseph Timms convulsing convincingly before the eyes of Sarah Woodward’s no-nonsense, fiercely protective Vanessa and Simon Shepherd’s indulgent, none-too-bright Geoffrey Edward (his concerned parents) all give good performances in Polly Teale’s austere production.

But much as I’m a fan of the previous work of both company and playwright, on this occasion Campbell’s plotting and social concerns put me in mind of too many other more satisfying plays - from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls – to make this foray into the supernatural and psychological more than passingly entertaining.
                         
Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 20th July
£14.00 - £28.00tricycle.co.uk

Rutherford & Son

 TNT

 

In 1912, Githa Sowerby scored a remarkable success with her first play – this fine drama about a Northern family dominated by a single-minded industrialist who puts the future of the glass manufacturing company he has nurtured far above the happiness of his own children.

In an era when women weren’t expected to be playwrights, it was initially put on under the name G.K. Sowerby and its psychological sensibilities likened to those of Ibsen.

A century later, Northern Broadsides’ production (unobtrusively edited by Blake Morrison and directed with a sure hand by Jonathan Miller) confirms its enduring merits - and relevance - as widowed capitalist Rutherford’s malign influence on his offspring is made apparent, along with his passion to secure the future of a company under threat in difficult economic times.

There are welcome touches of humour – especially from Kate Anthony’s Aunt Ann who is never short of something to complain about. But Rutherford’s loveless household is gloomily oppressive – his social snobbery blights any chance of happiness for his thirty-six year old daughter, one son has become an ineffectual clergyman, and the other (despite an expensive Harrow education) has returned from London with a working class wife and no desire to take over the works.

Well written and astute (despite the occasional drift towards melodrama) this is a very welcome revival in which Catherine Kinsella’s acutely observed, constantly snubbed Mary reveals unexpected mettle and Barrie Rutter’s tyrannical paterfamilias leaves no doubt about the determination of a man convinced, no matter what the cost, that he always knows best.

St James, 21 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA
Tube: Victoria
Until 29th June
£15 - £50.00stjamestheatre.co.uk