LONDON TRIP REVIEWS

Dec 00

Long Day's Journey Into Night  5th Dec 00    Another showcase of British understatement.  In the U.S., this play typically crackles with terrifying passion.  Here, although director Phillips's restrained production allows Jessica Lange to take center stage as a heartbreakingly vulnerable, desperate Mary Tyrone, it also made me wish O'Neill had stopped writing after Act Two.  By then he had said just about everything there was to say about his unhappy family; & the actors'  focus on dialog over action failed to catapult his long, verbose script off the page.  A wrestling match in Act Three woke me up again; but too many scenes had the actors simply sitting in chairs around a table, talking.  Charles Dance, a wonderfully talented actor, made the most subdued James Tyrone I've ever seen -- English, not Irish-American.  For O'Neill fans, this production is worth seeing.  But if you have the choice, see this (or any O'Neill play) in a fringe theater or the U.S. or Ireland instead of the West End.

Life X 3    7th Dec 00    If you loved Yasmina Reza's "Art," you'll probably enjoy her "Life X 3."  One couldn't ask for a better cast:  Harriet Walter and Mark Rylance are one couple, Imelda Staunton and Oliver Cotton the other.  The four actors are so accomplished and so unlike each other that they're able to make the most of the contrasts on which the play hinges.  In form, "Life X 3" is like an extended exercise for a playwriting class:  Take one situation (a couple arrives a night early for a dinner party) and change a few things -- chiefly, one character's reaction to another's provocative remark -- to show how things could come out completely differently.  Does A answer B's veiled insult with an angry retort or a gracious change of subject?  When B makes a pass at C, does she repulse or welcome it?  In playwriting class, Reza would win high marks for her ingenious theme and variations:  Each one is plausible, each one unpredictably different from the others.  On the other hand, as a play, this one-act script is what a jaundiced observer might call a white canvas.  One comes out of the theatre saying, "Yes, that' s just how people are, isn't it?  Where shall we eat?" rather than in a blaze of illumination about the human condition.

The Cherry Orchard   12th Dec 00    There's no substitute for competence!  The extraordinary Redgraves, with able assistance from director Trevor Nunn, adaptor David Lan, a fine supporting cast, and the National's skilled production team, make this the most compelling "Cherry Orchard" I've ever seen.  In the wrong hands, Chekhov's depiction of upper-class Russian ennui can be eye-glazing.  Here, every moment overflows with poignance and nuance.  You know from the opening scene, where Ranevskya and her entourage return to not just the home but the nursery of their childhood (at one point, Corin Redgrave absently climbs onto his old rocking horse) that this is a deeply informed, insightful production.  Each character is vividly drawn and thoroughly plausible; the tensions between characters hum like plucked strings.  For once we really believe these people have spent their whole lives together in this place.  The technical support of ingenious sets, gorgeous costumes, and effective lighting add up to a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts -- as a play should be.  If you love "The Cherry Orchard," or if you're dubious about Chekhov and probably will never see it again, this production is one not to miss.

Noises Off  12th Dec 00. Quite possibly the funniest play ever written.  If you haven't seen it before, don't miss the National's zippy, hilarious production.  Act 1 finds a second-rate acting troupe crumpling from exhaustion onstage during a marathon dress-and-tech rehearsal.  In a few hours they are to launch their provincial tour of "Nothing On," a slapstick farce.  By now the tensions among the cast are as numerous as the multiple doors the characters dash in & out of.  Affairs, rivalries, & enmities keep the pace frantic, along with dropped lines, missed cues, and lost contact lenses.  Act 2 literally turns the set around and takes place entirely backstage, during a performance that barely manages to proceed as the actors silently act out their loves and hates behind the scenes.  That would be funny enough -- but then Act 3 caps off the mayhem by putting us in the theatre for a full performance, completely screwed up by now by the offstage plot.  I've seen "Noises Off" in three or four different productions and I still laugh aloud all the way through.  However, I was sorry Michael Frayn felt he had to update the script; references to contemporary celebrities and events mostly went over my head, and created, I felt, a few soft spots in the play.  Still, you'll have to wait a long time for a funnier evening of theatre.  And if you want to renew your hope in popular culture and modern civilization, go to "Copenhagen" as well -- the other end of the theatrical spectrum, a brilliant serious play with nary a love affair nor pratfall in sight -- and be astonished by the extraordinary range of this playwright.

Merrily We Roll Along   13th Dec 00     Stephen Sondheim took an idea from Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" in writing this musical comedy back to front:  We begin with the fabulously successful popular composer Franklin Shepard (another hommage?) giving the commencement address at his old high school.  The students sing the anthem Shepard wrote for his own commencement, and time begins rolling backward.  At a gala Hollywood party, at power lunches, then further back to events where the participants were still young, hopeful, and idealistic, we watch Shepard make the choices that have won him fame and fortune but cost him a string of broken marriages, partnerships, and hearts.  At each step, he yields to the temptation to make more money, achieve more popularity, even though he knows he is betraying his own dreams as well as those of his friends and family.  A joking remark early in the play suggests that ultimately, Shepard gets the worst of his Faustian bargain -- though he's lost his innocence and his ethics, his success won't last.  The plot, obviously, is a familiar one.  What's original and holds our interest is Sondheim's clever interweaving of story, characters, and music -- and the Donmar Warehouse's creative affection for his work, which they stage better than perhaps any other company.   All the songs are a pleasure to listen to; one of them is absolutely riveting.  In this intimate space, we are part of Franklin Shepard's circle of friends:  even though we know from the start who wins and loses, we're still fascinated to watch how it all came about.

Madame Melville 13th Dec 00:   This slight but charming extended one-act is most innovative in giving us an inside look at female friendship and daily existence through the eyes of a dazzled adolescent.  As the women friends, Irene Jacob and Madeleine Potter are superb.  The main story, of a student seduced by his teacher, is more predictable and mundane.  Macauley Culkin, alas, shows the same limits as most American actors whose background is film.  In the play's opening scene, where the author is looking back at his youth, Culkin might be reading his lines off a teleprompter.  He projects precisely the same shy taciturnity as the adult Carl and the young Carl -- no gained maturity, irony, or self-awareness distinguishes that introductory scene from the long flashback that follows.  In a nutshell, I found the play enjoyable but not memorable.

(Carol Verburg)
verb@networksplus.net