Theatre 2017: Review Twenty-eight - Against

Against, Almeida Theatre, London. September 2017.

Well a week on and I still don't know what to make of this play. And reading online reviews I don't think that I am alone in this.

I liked a lot about this play. The characters & the individual stories all had me captivated. The basic idea is that Luke* (Ben Wishaw), a rich entrepreneur with an interest in space travel, has received a message from God to "go where the violence is." He uses his fortune to move into communities where violence has happened (a town after a school shooting, a university with a sex assault scandal). He stays long after the mainstream media have gone to try and get to the heart of the community and encourages people from all sides of the story to talk with him and publish their tales on his website.

All well and good, but then people who don't think their stories are being told start to question and criticise and things unfold and not for the good.

This strand of the play was great but then there were the odder parts - Luke's relationships with women, the story of his father, and his business rival (definitely not Jeff Bezos & Amazon) sat oddly in the play for me and I think that the scenes with the two workers in the non-Amazon were worthy of their own play (perhaps with Luke's story as the secondary line).

I'm also not at all sure what the message of the play was - there were so many ways to read it that it left me confused.  I know that some audience thought is good but not knowing at all if it is a nihilistic play or an optimistic one is a leap too far.  I can also see other's criticism that calls it highly misogynistic on reflection many of the female characters only existed as ciphers, however I did like that the stage (almost) nudity was completely equal!

We saw a lot of Ben Wishaw in this and I do think that he held the play together, with a weaker actor I think I'd have lost patience with this play totally, where as now I am at least still spending a lot of time thinking about it even if I can't work out if I liked it!



*I am guessing that Luke is supposed to be a version of Elon Musk, especially once we meet Jon later on.

Theatre 2017: Review Twenty-Six: Ink

Ink, The Almeida Theatre, London. July 2017.

Wow - what a play. I am so glad that after a dip in June that the plays I've seen in July have meant that summer 2017 hasn't been a washout after all.

This is a play about the newspaper industry in 1969/1970. Rupert Murdoch has just bought a failing newspaper, The Sun, and challenges the new editor to make it outsell The Mirror within a year. He doesn't really care how this happens...

The first act is quite light, the explanation of how Larry Lamb sets his paper up is actually done through a song and dance routine - don't wince it was amazing! There is lots of humour as a bunch of misfits come together and turn a broadsheet paper into a million copy selling tabloid.

Act two is much, much darker as Lamb's ruthlessness to meet the target knows no bounds.  At times the actions taken are heart stopping and also very prophetic as to where the press, and in particular The Sun, have gone since.

This was an incredibly strong play and my two complaints  about it are personal to me. I am a printer's daughter and knowing what Murdoch did to the print trade in the 1980s it was very disconcerting to feel any sympathy for him while watching the play. Secondly I am also very much pro-union and seeing them in a less than favourable light was again not a comfortable watch!

As I said criticisms very personal to me and this was a brilliant play. It left me wanting to know more and I was very pleased to see a list of references in the programme so I can find out more!

Theatre 2017: Review Eleven - Hamlet

Hamlet, Almeida Theatre, London. March 2017.

Reading back through this blog it becomes obvious that while I love Shakespeare seeing the plays performed by anyone other than the Globe often leads to disappointment.  I also struggle hugely with Hamlet as a play - my confession is that I've never really understood what the fuss was about and why this is considered one of the masterpieces of theatre.

I didn't enjoy the Barbican's Hamlet a couple of years ago and I had reservations about the was Shakespeare is staged at the Almeida from when we saw Richard III last year so why on earth were we going to see a four hour version of Hamlet at the Almeida?!

As the play started my trepidation grew yet further as this was a Hamlet in the modern world, complete with big screens and breaking news on cable television. Old Hamlet's ghost is first noticed on the CCTV...

However this version worked absolutely and the time flew, in fact I was quite sad as I realised we were entering the final act.  The updating of the setting worked perfectly, all of the cast seemed real and alive - they all had an (unspoken) back story and the tragedy that unfolded seemed real.  Hamlet was a broken man after the death of his father and swift remarriage of his mother.

When he learns that his uncle/step father murdered his father he tips from grief into insanity and although he claims he is feigning the madness I utterly believed that he lost his grip on reality and became mad.
Equally I believed that Claudius and Gertrude did love each other, that it wasn't just regicide and a power grab. The play was just a series of tragic accidents. The only time I fell out of love with this play was late on when poor Orphelia has become unhinged due to grief too. She seemed sidelined and unbelievable and her death/suicide was almost glossed over, as was the later graveside scene.

This small point didn't detract from the play however and for me this was a fantastic afternoon of theatre and  I finally see why this play is one of Shakespeare's masterpieces.

We decided to see this play mainly because of the lead actor, Andrew Scott, and we've been caught out by this before but our gut instinct was right. His delivery of the lines was spot on and at no point did I think I was watching Andrew Scott play Hamlet - I was just watching the tragedy of a Danish family fall apart.

Theatre 2016: Review Twenty-two

Richard III, Almeida Theatre, London. July 2016.

This was the third version of Shakespeare's Richard III that Rebecca and I have seen. The first was the stunning Mark Rylance/all male cast version at the Globe back in 2012 and it is always going to be hard for any other production to come close to this.

The star casting of Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave made getting tickets to this difficult but Rebecca managed it, although the seats were possibly a little more restricted view than we thought from the size/shape of the theatre - not that we were complaining for the price!

The play starts in the modern day with the dig in the Leicester car park where the remains of Richard III were found and this open pit remains on stage throughout, sometimes used for bodies to fall into, and at other times covered but always visible as a reminder of how the play was going to end.

It was a hot night in a dark theatre and I was tired yet I was kept engaged throughout this production which is a real positive but yet again I failed to quite connect with what was on stage.

Fiennes started evil in his portrayal of Richard and it had nowhere to go from this, people were laughing at his lines and actions but for me I didn't find him at all likable at any point and so he never had my sympathy. I also found his very graphic sexual actions, especially the rape, just too much to watch. Scenes like that could never have been performed until recently and the power in these scenes has always, for me, come from the words and again these scenes just felt a way to up the evil even further.  However as I'd never had any sympathy for this Richard I didn't need to see him be nastier still.

The mix of modern costumes and mobile phones along with swords and the famous "a horse" line also didn't work for me, although the main proponent  of this, Hastings played by Globe stalwart James Garnon, did manage to make the language seem natural and to fit with the staging - even when he was using a mobile phone.

My main issue with this production was with the staging, the Almeida is a small theatre and so to have the entire play performed to only 4 rows of the stalls was unforgivable. The attempts at including the audience could never work as so much of the play just didn't reach out.  I think the only time the gaze of those on stage included the circle was the curtain call.  I've also read reviews since seeing the play which talk about clever staging ideas that were totally invisible from our seats, and much of the circle from what I can tell from peeking around in the interval.

This was certainly better than the version of Richard III we saw at the Trafalgar Studios a couple of years back, and  I am a little tempted to go and see this in the cinema at a National Theatre Live broadcast just to see if a 'perfect' view does make a difference.

Theatre 2015: Review Thirty-Four

Medea, Almeida Theatre, London. October 2015.

After a surprisingly enjoyable Bakkhai and a throughly disappointing Oresteia I really wasn't sure what to expect with my third Greek play of the year, and this was possibly the best way to go in.

This was a retelling of the play with a very feminist slant which while being quite a good play I really am unlikely to have gone to see it without the title.

I am an oddity, I like Greek drama - I like seeing Greek drama as it was written (and yes that does include in the original language). I like the plots, the style and the language and not one of these elements was really present in this play.

However I didn't hate it, I liked the nods to the original, for example, as in the original,  Medea's husband has left her for a younger woman but in this version rather than actually being royal she is just her daddy's princess.  Other bits were funny and although not as good as in the Bakkai I liked what the chorus were trying to do.

However as a modern play about a woman breaking down after her husband has left her... it all felt a little bit like I'd seen or heard it before.  It was competent and I didn't hate it but if that was a person's introduction to classical Greek drama they are in for a big shock when they see a more authentic version.

Also unlike the poster intimates, and early images led me to believe, this was a remarkably violence free interpretation of the text and I think that it lost out because of that, I know that the idea was you don't have to use violence to hurt people but that is what the original is about.

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-One

Bakkhai, Almeida Theatre, London. August 2015.

The trouble with booking theatre in advance to ensure you get a ticket is that things like Tube strikes can crop up.  Luckily there are two train routes to London and one of these put the theatre in easy, if up hill, walking distance and so Rebecca and I weren't troubled by the strike at all.

I confess that I like Greek drama, to the extent of going to see it (and mostly enjoy it) even when it is performed in Ancient Greek and I was looking forward to this, even with it being a reworking of the script - but then what translation of a play that is 2000+ years old isn't?!

The story is a tragedy. The God Dionysus has been denied his status by the city in which he was born, and his mother branded a liar for claiming to have been Zeus's mistress. The young God has returned to Thebes in order to make the city accept him. He has turned his aunts mad and created a cult of women living in the hills above. His cousin, Pentheus, now king of Thebes really refuses to acknowledge Dionysus and so the two come face to face and the God systematically destroys his family and city. Cheerful stuff!

The staging was both wonderfully traditional, just three actors and a chorus, and cleverly modern (the chorus were all female) and from the start I was hooked.  There has been a lot of comment about the role of the chorus in reviews, and a lot of it has been negative. I however found them to be fascinating. A group of 10 women spoke and moved in absolute unison as well as singing many of their lines in a truly hypnotic fashion. The comments have called these interludes overlong and confusing yet when you go back and read a translation of the original play this is just how they come across. The Chorus speeches are the longest in the play and they do transform between Dionysus' supporters and the women of Thebes and to be honest even in the original text you are wishing they'd get on with it. In this version their singing did help me overcome this problem and I was swept away by the sound.

The three lead actors, male, played all the rest of the roles and while Ben Wishaw is getting all the credit for this play (and somewhat deservedly - he is totally compelling on stage) I found the stand out to be Bertie Carvel, who played Pentheus and his mother. Watching his downfall at the hands of a vengeful God was stunning and then to see him transform into his mother, also driven mad by Dionysus, was brilliant.

Much has also been said about Wishaw's costume in the play:

but again this androgynous look is a stage direction from the original and isn't there as a 'shock' tactic. Wishaw carries the look very well and there is a moment in the play when he fixes Pentheus' hair which was one of the most erotic pieces of theatre I've seen this year - and again this is in the original and is not a modern reading.

All in all I enjoyed this play, I wasn't sure about the Chorus arriving in modern dress with suitcases at the very start but it won me over and I find myself unable to stop thinking about the play which is a good sign. It may yet end up in my top 10 of the year.

The one downside for me is that however accurate and good Wishaw is in his costume he did remind me of both Conchita Wurst and the guy who play Jesus in the 1970s film version of Jesus Christ: Superstar!