Theatre 2016: Review Fifteen

Lawrence After Arabia, Hampstead Theatre, London. April 2016.

On a lovely sunny, if not warm, evening Rebecca and I went out to Hampstead to see only the second performance ever of this play. Apart from the (in)famous film Lawrence of Arabia I didn't know an awful lot about the eponymous Lawrence and so I was hoping for a play that would add more to my knowledge while being enjoyable.

I got just what I wanted, and more.

The play is set in the early 1920s as Lawrence is hiding from the press after joining the RAF incognito. His hiding place is with George Bernard Shaw and his wife who are also helping him to edit his memoirs.

We are also treated to some flashbacks to Lawrence's time in Arabia during the war and how he worked with both the Arabs and the Allies during World War One.  The story telling was clear, the actors brilliant and although there were some modern political messages within the play they weren't added with a crowbar, they felt like things the characters at the time would have said.

The last play by Howard Brenton that we saw, Doctor Scroggy's War, had a good premise but was muddled and felt like three plays mixed into one, but this was clean and informative.  I don't think that it is going to set anyone on fire but I now want to know more about Lawrence and the Shaws and have a stack of new books next to my bed ready to read.  I think that this play might end up in my 2016 Top Ten.

Jack Laksey as Lawrence (photo from Hampstead website)

Theatre 2015: Review Eight

Man and Superman, The Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, London. March 2015.

There has been a little gap in my theatre jaunts, partly thanks to fear of bad weather and partly because the train line between Norwich and London has been so appalling this winter, however recently Rebecca and I had one of our mammoth theatre weekends in London.  Three plays in effectively 27 hours.

First up was Man and Superman which in its own right is a bit of a big-one coming in at over three and a half hours.  Mainly it has to be said due to the author, George Bernard Shaw, who seems never to use one word if fifty will do and then to say it all twice.

That being said this was still, thanks to the cast, an enjoyable experience.  Jack Tanner, Ralph Fiennes, has been appointed an unwilling co-guardian of his friend's daughter Anne.  He is what in the early 1900s was a new man and not keen on this burden and as a radical thinks himself unsuitable for the role and for romance in general. Anne thinks him ideal for the role and also a great romantic catch.

While the acting, costumes and set were all good I did find that some of the ideas that Bernard Shaw put forward as progressive in his time now felt dated and entirely sexist. Anne is not really an independent and intelligent woman but rather a scheming manipulative one who always gets her own way.  Jack and her mother both see through her but seem unable to stop or change her and as a result I never warmed to her character and really hoped that the play would have a different outcome.

The play is so long because stuck in the middle of the action is a dream sequence where Jack Tanner morphs in to Don Juan and ends up in hell debating philosophy with the devil.  This started well and was wonderfully different from the rest of the play but just went on for too long and in the end I did lose a little of the plot and was longing for Andy Hamilton's version of the devil from Old Harry's Game to appear and put an end to it.

Oh dear - again this sounds terribly negative and this isn't quite how I feel about the play. There was a lot of humour and visually it was a treat. It was also brave to stage the whole thing and without the excellent cast this would have fallen completely flat but I do think that a little editing wouldn't have gone amiss, and I was uncomfortable with the way woman in the character of Anne was portrayed.

Rebecca had an interesting idea - the play should be restaged but with the main characters' genders switched...

This play will be broadcast live to cinemas in May but once was enough for me on this occasion.

Theatrical Interlude 13

The Doctor's Dilemma, Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, August 2012

After leaving the stirring production of Henry V at The Globe my theatre going friend and I strolled along the South Bank until we got to the National Theatre.  We did intend to only visit the shop but the lure of the theatre was too strong and on discovering that there were reduced price tickets to a play that evening we were too weak to resist.

The joy of this play was apart from the playwright, George Bernard Shaw, we know nothing at all about it.  It has been quite a time since I've gone so 'blind' in to a performance.

The play itself was very good and very thought provoking, a lot of valid ethical questions were raised and yet at the same time the play was very funny for much of the time. I wasn't quite sure about the ending but I suppose that was the point Shaw was making - doing the right thing, even for the wrong reason, doesn't always get you what you want.

The real star of this play for me was the staging, the sets were beautiful and moved so cleverly that I at least felt I was walking between locations rather than the scenery changing!  This year has been the year of incredible scenery at the theatre, and the use of light through windows especially often makes me forget I am in a dark theatre and not actually in the house/garret.

All in all a surprise evening of theatre that was very enjoyable and proof that if a play is good then it doesn't matter if you don't know the story (or the actors) in advance.