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Posts Tagged ‘National Theatre’

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Regards Of The Season

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

Ah, Christmas. Season of peace, prosperity and goodwill to all men, right? Hardly. My own experience of the days between 24th and 31st December tend to be a mixture of extreme mind-numbing boredom, interspersed with too much eating and drinking (cue hangovers and indigestion), and, if you’re very unlucky, some apocalyptic family rows to shake things up in between the endless repeats of old films and unfunny festive specials of ‘comedies’.

Thankfully, the National’s top-flight staging of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1980 comedy Season’s Greetings comes as a pleasant alternative to pantomimes. Superbly directed by Marianne Elliott (whose 2006 RSC Much Ado About Nothing was a particular favourite of mine), the top-flight cast raises what would otherwise be an enjoyable but unexceptional piece of festive biliousness into the realms of comic bliss.

The set-up is straightforward. Neville and Belinda Bunker (Neil Stuke and Catherine Tate) are holding a festive party for people including Neville’s former colleague Eddie (Marc Wootton) and his pregnant wife Pattie (Katherine Parkinson). Meanwhile, incompetent doctor Bernard (Mark Gatiss) is preparing his annual puppet show, much to everyone’s dread, his drunken wife Phyllis (Jenna Russell) is on the sauce and a young novelist (Oliver Chris) is getting hormones flying. Oh, and psychotic Uncle Harvey (David Troughton) has a gun and a knife strapped to his leg…

Obviously, things go very, very badly wrong indeed, to frequently hilarious effect. The scene that made me laugh hardest was when Chris’ earnest young novelist tries to explain to Phyllis that he isn’t gay, and that novelists are no more likely to be homosexual ‘than train drivers, for instance’, which leads to much beautifully acted and articulated confusion. There’s an undercurrent of pain, rejection and suffering that makes this a far more enticing prospect than many similar works, as when Parkinson’s character looks down at her drunken husband, passed out, and says ‘I had to fight for that’, but most of the appeal comes from very talented comic actors bringing splendid nuance to their roles, even if Gatiss’ hapless simpering does seem to recall The League Of Gentlemen’s Dr Chinnery slightly too much for comfort.

Nevertheless, a highly enjoyable evening, and one that will hopefully retain its mix of punch and poignancy until the end of its run in March.

Until 13 March. National Theatre, SE1 www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

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The Greatest Dane

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

It’s been a busy last couple of years for starry productions of Hamlet, what with David Tennant at the RSC, Jude Law at the Donmar, John Simm up in Sheffield and now Rory Kinnear in Nicholas Hytner’s new production at the National. This sudden spate of stagings might make even the most committed Bard fan slightly weary, except of course when it’s as gripping and vital as this.

Hytner’s first innovation is to set the play explicitly in a police state. All the characters are being watched, either by the ever-present CCTV or by the suited apparatchiks, forever muttering into their earpieces. The political undertones, so often soft-pedalled in performance, are here brought to the fore. Claudius – riskily but successfully played by Patrick Malahide as a vaguely Putin-esque despot – addresses his public speeches to ever-present  cameras. Dissenters, whether they’re the players, Laertes’ army or even Hamlet himself, are led away by armed men or threatened with torture. Against the ubiquitous sense of violence and paranoia, the question is asked, implicitly; ‘Does one man’s life really matter?’

The answer, thrillingly, is ‘yes’, because Rory Kinnear’s quite astonishing performance more or less redefines what an audience expects from Hamlet. Kinnear has a magnificent speaking voice, perfect comic timing and the rare ability to swing from high tragedy to low comedy in an instant. What he does here, and it’s both mesmerising and eventually highly moving, is to humanise Hamlet completely. His prince isn’t mad, or transfixed with incestuous desire for his mother, or an impotent wretch unable to avenge his father’s murder. Instead, he’s a young man devastated by grief who gradually comes to realise his destiny is one suffused by violence and loss.

This energetic, intelligent staging moves at a tremendous pace throughout its three-and-three quarter running time, keeping the action as gripping as any modern political thriller. It’s always tempting fate to come out with superlatives, but I can’t remember seeing a clearer, more gripping or more emotionally rich production of this great play.

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Dance To The Music Of Time

Friday, June 25th, 2010

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Terence Rattigan, long patronised with faint praise as the master of ‘the well-made play’ – i.e. a work that dealt with the social and romantic mores of the middle class and featured smug jokes about gin and tonics and the price of servants – has been rehabilitated over the past 20 years, as audiences and theatres alike have realised that the brilliance of his writing and emotional power of his characterisations and plots, rank alongside the heavy hitters of twentieth century drama.

Thea Sharrock’s new production at National Theatre – his great ‘lost’ play After The Dance – marks the first time it has been produced in London since its short-lived premiere in 1939, confirming Rattigan’s pre-eminence amongst dramatists. It revolves around a group of hedonists, led by dilettante historian David Scott-Fowler (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his beautiful party-girl wife Joan (Nancy Carroll). They lead a privileged, gin-soaked life, full of friends (most notably permanent house guest John Reid, wonderfully played by Adrian Scarborough) and acquaintances, and where any serious chat is ‘a frightful bore, darling’. When David meets his secretary’s fiancee Helen (Faye Castelow) sparks fly; but in this brittle, ephemeral world, a divorce is just something to be laughed at over cocktails. Isn’t it?

Well, no it isn’t, and Rattigan’s play acquires much of its considerable emotional weight from the way in which Joan, who has always been desperately in love with David, deals with the revelation. Throwing oneself into parties and drinking isn’t enough. As one character notes, sardonically, ‘It’s the bright young people all over again, only they never were bright and now they’re not even young.’ Cumberbatch and, especially, Carroll are both sensational in incredibly difficult roles, having to convey jollity, weakness or strength as required and, when the chips are finally down, moral purpose.

They’re ably supported by an excellent ensemble cast including John Heffernan as David’s eager then disillusioned secretary and cousin Peter and Juliet Howland as Moya, a woman for whom the party has gone on for that bit too long. Sharrock’s direction keeps the play moving at a tremendous pace, making the three hour running time pass in the blink of an eye. And make sure that you can either stifle your tears or repress your emotions, as some of the play is deeply moving indeed.

Until August 11. National Theatre, South Bank SE1 www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

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Don’t Beware These Women

Monday, May 17th, 2010

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You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Thomas Middleton. Despite being one of the most talented playwrights of the early part of the 17th century, his work has largely been neglected in performance in comparison to Shakespeare, Marlowe and even Webster.

Judging from Marianne Elliott’s (perhaps ironically) vivacious revival of one of his best known plays, Women Beware Women, it’s not impossible to see why he isn’t as highly thought of as his near-contemporaries – simply put, the verse plods rather than soars, and the black humour overwhelms any poignancy or poetry – but it makes a convincing case for Middleton at least being underrated.

The plot concerns at least two narratives of seduction in 16th century Italy (updated in Elliott’s staging to the 1950s). Bianca (Lauren O’Neil) is an heiress married to the rather wet Leantio (Samuel Barnett, who shone as Posner in the original production of The History Boys), who finds herself drawing the attention of the suave yet lecherous duke (Richard Lintern). Meanwhile, in a parallel storyline, Isabella (Vanessa Kirby), who has been promised to an imbecilic young aristocrat who is most interested in looking up her skirt, is inveigled by her aunt the Duchess (Harriet Walter) into having an incestuous affair with her uncle. Unsurprisingly, it all goes very, very badly wrong.

The chief pleasure of watching Jacobean tragedy, when it’s done by an on-form director and cast, is the seamless way in which horrendously complex plotting eventually resolves itself into a dance of death, and Women Beware Women is justly famous for the concluding masque that leaves most of the cast dead. It’s the coup de theatre of this production, breathtakingly and brilliantly staged by Elliott on the Olivier’s revolving stage as Grand Guignol, throwing in brilliant visual ideas (including literal angels of death) to accompany the final resolution of the characters’ fates. That said, there’s a lot to admire before then as well, with a fine ensemble cast giving their all. Walter, as ever, is brilliant, but the up-and-coming actresses are very strong in difficult roles that require them to be simultaneously empathetic and masculine fantasy figures.

Elliott, who is possibly best known for her award-winning production of War Horse, also directed a revelatory, Cuban-inspired production of Much Ado About Nothing for the RSC a few years ago, which made an old warhorse (sic) of a play fresh, vibrant and sexy. She has done exactly the same here, which makes for a splendid, revelatory evening.

Until 4 July. South Bank, London SE1. www.national-theatre.org.uk

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A Very Assured Evening

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

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How often is it that you can go to the theatre and be physically giddy with laughter for two and a half hours? In my experience, it doesn’t happen very often, which makes Nicholas Hytner’s production of the little-known author Dion Boucicault’s 1841 play London Assurance a delightful surprise. With a top-quality cast including Simon Russell Beale, Fiona Shaw and, delightfully, Richard Briers, this is the kind of Rolls Royce calibre production that the National Theatre at its best specialises in. What with The Habit Of Art, The White Guard and this, the South Bank is very much the place to be.

The enjoyably convoluted plot revolves around the prancing dandy Sir Harcourt Courtly (Russell Beale), a vain man who seeks to marry a young country heiress, Grace (Michelle Terry). His attention is first distracted by the unexpected appearance of his apparently saintly but actually dissolute son Charles (Paul Ready) in the country in disguise, and then by the appearance of the hunting-obsessed (and marvellously named) Lady Gay Spanker (Shaw) and her ga-ga husband Dolly (Briers). Sir Harcourt forms a near-obsessive attachment to Lady Spanker, and hilarity ensues.

Working with a subtly but highly appropriately modernized text (‘script revisions’ are credited to the playwright Richard Bean), Hytner and his formidably talented cast get every single last laugh out of the material, and then several more. Russell Beale, who of late seems to have been specialising in more serious roles, returns to the fops and dandies that he began his career playing, and is uproariously funny as a cross between Uncle Monty and Toad of Toad Hall. He’s very nearly matched by Shaw as Lady Spanker, for whom every intrigue is hilarious, and where everything can be summed up with an apposite hunting metaphor. And then of course there’s the redoubtable Richard Briers, a man of whom it is memorably said that he is ‘a fully armed and rampant Spanker!’

This wonderful play is a hilarious and delightful evening, and highly recommended for everyone.

Until 2nd June. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.

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All White On The Night

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

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It’s very rare that you get to see a new play (or at least, a new adaptation of an existing play), based on a semi-obscure novel, adapted by a writer whose last play in London was a resounding flop and starring a cast of respected rather than famous actors and the result be a masterpiece. Howard Davies’ production of The White Guard is that exception. Adapted by the Australian writer Andrew Upton (also known as Mr Cate Blanchett) from Mikhail Bulkagov’s novel, and subsequent stage adaptation The Days Of The Turbins, this is a sensational experience from start to finish, with brilliant performances matched by an incredible staging.

The action is set in the Ukraine capital of Kiev from 1918-9, as civil war rages throughout Russia, and the supporters of the Tsar (the ‘White Guard’ of the title) who find themselves under attack, first by Ukranian nationalists and then by the Russian Bolsheviks. The country’s puppet leader, The Hetman, is an incompetent and arrogant coward, and the Turbins, around whom the action revolves, are an upper-middle class family loyal to the Tsar and the status quo. Over the play, farce, tragedy and romance all jostle, as the city is brought to its knees.

If this sounds inaccessible or dry, rest assured, it’s anything but. Part of this is down to the brilliance of Howard Davies’ direction, which uses an eye-poppingly detailed set, or series of sets, to convey places ranging from a palace headquarters to a field HQ. Another is the wonderfully witty script, with treasurable lines like ‘I’m not running away…I’m escaping’. And the performances from the fine ensemble cast are all excellent, including Justine Mitchell as Lena, the woman of the Turbin household, Pip Carter as her intoxicated student cousin and, best of all, Olivier Award-winner Conleth Hill as Lieutenant Leonid Shervinsky. Hill gives an awards-worthy performance that mixes swaggering bravado, charm and intelligent pragmatism, and has a moment towards the end with Mitchell (you’ll know it when it comes) that is one of the suavest and funniest things I’ve seen at the theatre in ages.

This will be a huge hit when word of mouth gets out – the first night audience were enraptured throughout. Take my advice and book tickets now, and you’re guaranteed a great experience.

Until June 15th. National Theatre, South Bank, SE1. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

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