(21 Feb 2007)

I returned to New York where I live about a week ago from one of my frequent theatre trips to London. I hadn’t been there in six months and didn’t realize how much I had missed until I was well into a week of running from theatre to theatre soaking up the quality and variety that one so often finds across the pond.

Here’s a rundown of what I saw:

Frost/Nixon (Gielgud): I managed to catch the next to last performance of Peter Morgan’s new play which chronicles the events surrounding a famous series of TV interviews that Sir David (then at a low point in his career) conducted with the (then disgraced) ex-President of the US. It was a good show that is transferring to New York. I’ll be recommending it to friends especially because of the fabulous performance as Nixon by an old favorite of mine, American actor Frank Langella.

I’ve been following Langella’s career closely for more than 30 years. Looking at his weathered, craggy face now, it is hard to believe that he used to be a most appealing romantic lead—at Williamstown, the best Cyrano I have even seen (sorry Sir Derek, Sir Antony and others) and at Lincoln Center, a most attractive young Shakespeare in Cry of Players. But his stage career has had plenty of downs to, so it is really thrilling to see that despite the fading allure, the consummate acting skill remains. Without ever imitating Nixon, Langella gets the essence of the man in the phrasing, the use of the hands, the facial tics and the overall awkwardness. I know that Langella lost out on the Olivier Award to Rufus Sewell (a still gorgeous guy who gave another terrific performance in Rock ‘n’ Roll), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Langella cop another Tony here on his home turf. He already has two.

Michael Sheen has rather an easier time of it playing the charming and relatively glamorous Frost. He does well. So too the rest of the cast. It was particularly interesting to see the reaction of the audience to the actor playing John Birt who has recently been in the news in connection with upheavals at the BBC. Director Michael Grandage makes slick use of a bank of TVs and appropriate videos.

The sold out audience was enthusiastic. Me too.

Cymbeline (Lyric Hammersmith): Caught the last performance of Kneehigh’s latest offering which got only so-so reviews from the big London critics but which garnered much enthusiasm from a young audience. This was a slapstick show with a wire cage strewn with assorted objects as its centerpiece set to a loud rock score featuring plenty of crotch-grabbing and other guaranteed crowd-pleasers. And since the Shakespearean original is pretty messy, this probably wasn’t the worst version I’ve ever seen. The performers were very appealing and energetic and I must admit to a emitting a few snickers.

I am looking forward to seeing what Director Emma Rice will be doing at the National in the spring.

Fanny and Faggot (Finborough): Young playwright Jack Thorne is having a good year. In addition to the two short interlinked plays I saw at the Finborough, he’s got another new play, Stacy, being produced at the Arcola. These two fringe theatres generally have good taste in new stuff and, from what I saw, their enthusiasm for Thorne’s work seems justified.

Act I of F and F is about two pre-teen girls who play around and talk themselves into murder. One—the instigator—gets a long jail sentence, the other goes for sympathy and gets off lightly. It might all be pretty hard to take except that Thorne gets the dynamics of the situation just right—especially in the way he grasps where a seemingly innocent obsession with bodies and sex and violence can lead.

In Act II, it’s 10 years later and the girl from Act I who got the long jail sentence has escaped from a minimum security lock-up with a cellmate and they’ve met up with a couple of horny young male soldiers for a weekend of fun in a motel room. Again, Thorne gets the atmosphere just right. It was all more than a bit raunchy and disgusting but riveting nonetheless.

Another real attraction of the Finborough production was a fabulous young actress—Elicia Daly—who played the instigator. Keep your eyes pealed for her next performance!

The Man of Mode (NT Olivier): Nick Hytner has made no secret of his desire to make the classics more palatable to young audiences, but in my opinion his production of The Man of Mode which is set in the near contemporary London equivalent of the bars and shops of New York’s Meatpacking District in no way conveys what Restoration Comedy is all about. While the audience eats up inter-scene action straight from the nearest velvet-roped dance club, but the tittering is more about familiarity than it is the recognition of a satire on a debauched elite.

The confusion starts right in the first scene—a Hytner concoction where Dorimant is undergoing the Vogue photo shoot treatment. It’s scene-setting but totally removed form the real milieu of the play. Then, there are the three mistresses—an aggressive redhead businesswoman (!), her pal who withholds her sexual favors (!) and an Indian girl who may otherwise be auctioned off in an arranged marriage (!) These characters are totally alien to the modern bar scene. As is the centerpiece of the show—Sir Fopling Flutter, the man of mode himself—an Elvis-like creation who occasionally flutters on and about.

The production is elaborate, with clever sets and snappy costumes (particularly the plaid suit worn by the redheaded Mrs. Loveit), but the cast is uneven. The secondary characters and the three women are fine but I found the two leading men, Tom Hardy as a Dorimant who can’t stop grinning, and Rory Kinnear as a just plain smarmy Flutter, off-putting.

The rest of the audience seemed to love it. Not me.

The 39 Steps (Criterion): Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, this is a scene-for-scene theatrical recreation of Hitchcock’s classic chase film. It’s brilliantly done by a cast of four. I wouldn’t want to give away any of the clever ways in which such scenes as an escape over the Scottish highlands are depicted. Suffice it to say that it is great fun. And even better if you’ve just seen the original film. Don’t miss it—and they have a Tuesday (!) matinee.

The War Next Door (Tricycle): This new play, at the usually reliable Tricycle, was a bomb. On a chic all-white set, there are two flats side-by-side. In one, an excessively politically-correct young white solicitor (who never dated whites) and his black wife acting are aggressively upwardly-mobile. But what should they do about the Muslim family that lives next door that has a teenage son who seems to do nothing but lurk and a father who seems to be regularly beating his pregnant wife. There’s lots of pious talk (and one moving soliloquy by the Muslim wife), a few fisticuffs, and it all ends in a (literal) conflagration.

I suppose that the situation has parallels to developments that led to the Iraq war but it’s so convoluted and pretentious that I, for one, didn’t care. The acting was OK; they play less than that.

The Dumb Waiter (Trafalgar Studios 1): This is classic early Pinter, very much focused on the art of double entendre and other wordplay. It’s all about two assassins—their names are Ben and Gus but I’d call them Dumb and Dumber—who are waiting in a grungy basement for orders to execute their next “job.” The action includes numerous trips to a non-flushing loo, requests sent through the on-stage dumbwaiter from a restaurant above, filling those requests with scrounged provisions, elaborate polishing of guns and a denouement that is more than a bit surreal.

It contains many well-worn Pinter quirks like monosyllabic dialogue and plenty of gallows humor. But Jason Isaacs and Lee Evans have got this stuff down pat. It is very funny and over in a mere 55 minutes.

Dirty Dancing (Aldwych): God knows what possessed me to spend £47 on a ticket to see a recreation of the Jerry Orbach-Jennifer Grey film in which I regularly wallow when it is shown on cable TV. I guess it must be the fact that it seemed to be so popular despite truly dreadful reviews.

Well, the reviews were right. It is dreadful. But none of that seemed to keep the audience from whooping it up to the golden oldies that constitute the score and snapping up the £18 T-shirts being hawked in the lobby. Any show that relies on a turntable that goes up and down at least 50 times in the course of the evening is not only a boring but also a dizzying experience. Unlike the theatrical means used in The 39 Steps film recreation, the ones used here are not unusual and not clever. So why not just stay home and curl up to the telly with a bowl of popcorn. It’s alot cheaper.

The cast—with one notable exception—is adequate. I’m certain happy to see that David Rintoul (Dr. Findlay himself!) and the quirky Issy Van Randwyck have found employment as Dr. and Mrs. Houseman, the parents of “Baby” (Georgina Rich), the teenager at the center of the action. Rich is more homely than Grey was, but is a good dancer. The real find is hunky Josef Rogers in the Patrick Swayze role of the dance instructor who opens “Baby’s” life to swing and sex. Rogers is wonderful to look at and a great dancer. But not worth the price.

Therese Raquin (NT Lyttleton): This is the classic Emile Zola novel, dramatized here by Nicholas Wright, which has a relatively thin plot that is greatly aided by theatrical magic. Therese has been married off by the aunt who raised her to the aunt’s ineffectual son, Camille. But Therese is in love with and having an affair with a family friend Laurent. Therese and Laurent conspire to kill Camille during an outing. The aunt (Camille’s mother) and everyone else close to the family, including a former police inspector, buy Therese and Laurent’s story that Camille’s death was an accident. A year later, the aunt suggests that Therese and Laurent marry. The rest of the play deals with the tragic effects of their guilt including a spectacular depiction of a struggle that ensues during their wedding night. Kudos to Charlotte Emmerson and Ben Daniels in these two tough (both psychologically and physically) roles. And additional kudos to the elegant Judy Parfitt at the aunt.

Marianne Elliott stages it all with great skill on a vast dark set by Hildegard Bechtler. The costumes are starched and perfect. I mentioned that Hytner has been criticized for trying to modernize everything, though I really don’t blame him for trying where it is appropriate. It was not appropriate here. He didn’t do it. And it works.

There Came a Gypsy Riding (Almeida): Another trip to London, another Irish play about angst. That’s about the gist of it. This time it is Frank McGuinness’ exploration of the emotional effects of a son’s suicide on each member of a middle-class family. The main character is the usually estimable, here maudlin, Imelda Staunton as the mother of the deceased. There’s also Aidan McCardle, last seen by me as Richard III, as the somewhat passive brother. And there’s a sister and a father too. Each in turn gets to reveal the effects of the death on him/her. It’s all quite predictable.

What will make this show unforgettable for me is a staggeringly funny performance by the wonderful Eileen Atkins as the family cousin-neighbor who finds the body and withholds the cryptic suicide note until the others are “ready” for it. She has such impeccable timing and is almost unrecognizable in a spinster bun. Her performance is just great and really the only excuse for seeing this subscription-filler production.

The Seagull (Royal Court): Ian Rickson’s valedictory production as Artistic Director at the Royal Court was the one of the finest (of many) productions of The Seagull that I have ever seen. This was especially appreciated coming as it did after the really weird Katie Mitchell show at the National last year.

This time the sets and staging were traditional—complete with abeles in Act I and mild decay in Act II—but the interpretations of the characters were more raw and dramatic than in other interpretations. This was particularly true of Kristin Scott Thomas’ Arkadina, much more of a shrew than I’ve seen before. But, as always, whenever she was one stage, you couldn’t take your eyes off Scott Thomas’ magnetic presence. Mackenzie Crook’s Konstantin was more emaciated and emotionally constipated than usual. As Trigorin, Chewetel Ejiofor was especially warm in his soliloquy on the joys and angst of being a writer in Act I though a bit unconvincing as the hen-pecked lover in Act II. Overall, the level of acting was very high—even at the performance that I saw where the original Nina had to be replaced because of appendicitis and the last-minute substitute, the beautiful Anna Madeley, carried on while occasionally consulting a script.

A terrific way to end the Chekhov centennial.

Happy Days (NT Lyttleton): Fiona Shaw would seem to have been born to play Winnie in Beckett’s paean to the end of life. Perhaps she’s still a bit too young to get all of the pathos out of the image of being swallowed up by the earth that dominates Beckett’s vision. As directed by Deborah Warner, Shaw certainly found all of the humor. I won’t quibble. It was a most enjoyable production.

Boeing Boeing (Comedy): Talk about a terrific way to end a trip! What an unexpected pleasure! Well, not really unexpected. After all, the cast included my long-time fave Roger Allam, the ineffable Frances De La Tour, and that man for all seasons Mark Rylance. But it was a farce and, in my opinion, farces are not good unless they are perfect. The last perfect one I remember is Frayn’s Noises Off. I’ve seen a couple of productions of Feydeau over the years but they’ve never measured up. Last year’s revival of See How They Run came close but no cigar.

It may not be Noises Off, but Matthew Warchus’ production of Marc Camoletti’s script (as translated by Beverley Cross) is perfect. I haven’t laughed out loud so much in a theatre in years.

Here’s the plot: Aging Paris-based lothario Bernard (Allam) has three mistresses cum fiancées—all stewardesses of the 1960s variety. His life is an endless round of schedule juggling, ably though sulkily abetted by his housekeeper (De La Tour). Into this ménage arrives Robert (Rylance), his rube of a friend from Aix, just as the weather and other calamities contrive to upset the smooth functioning of Bernard’s life. Of course, he goes immediately to pieces and it becomes Robert’s mission to keep the various mistresses happy and away from each other with a facility that belies his seeming lack of sophistication. It ends in a pillow fight but all is well!

Allam is great when he has to play suave, a bit shrill when he’s going bonkers. De La Tour can’t be bettered when it comes to playing cynical. But Rylance is perfect. Every twitch, every eye movement, every pause in place. They are all ably abetted by the trio of statuesque broads who play the American, Italian and German stews. Michelle Gomez as Gretchen, the German, is especially strong.

The set, mostly white and featuring seven doors, is sleek. Like the action, the costumes and props are color-coded. It’s all a hoot. Don’t miss it!

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