25 July 2017. Nina at the Young Vic

This was a confrontational evening. Nina was performed and largely conceived by Josette Bushell-Mingo who opened in an amiable tribute-giving style presenting the life and songs of Nina Simone, including Revolution. Then the event turned dark. She took the interpretation of Revolution as going round full circle and vented her rage (as she labelled it) on the lack of progress with racial equality, specifically Black equality. This continued to the point where she toyed with the idea of shooting all the white people in the audience but fortunately decided not to do that and to present some more Nina Simone material instead.
All this was in the context of Nina Simone herself being inextricably involved in the civil rights movement with her songs having a campaigning message. So it was a revealing evening - both in terms of the history of Nina Simone as well as the current rage felt by Black people, a rage fuelled by every ambiguous or less ambiguous assault on their community at the hands of, particularly, the police.
It was strange as a piece of theatre. Josette called it a play but it seemed odd to witness a personal rage that was - presumably - scripted. Certainly the evening passed a 'makes you think' test but I'm less convinced it made the audience - or performer - think differently.

24 July 2017. Road at the Royal Court

This revival of a 1986 play by Jim Cartwright had a timely feel about it. Set in a domestic road that had seen more affluent days, the play essentially exposed us to the lives of the colourful inhabitants. It felt a bit like a caricature of an angle on Brexit Britain at first - populated by those just about managing at best. The dialogue was interesting - almost poetic or rapping at times. It reminded me slightly of Dylan Thomas.
It was incongruous having this portrayal of urban deprivation playing out in a theatre in the most affluent district of London. Perhaps the location made one think more than had it been in, say, Hackney. And what did it make one think? I'm not sure there were so many takeaways beyond the obvious. These people felt as if in a separate country, somewhat abandoned to their fate and left to drink themselves to death with sex as a highpoint to add to the escape. Frankly, I don't expect to recall much of this play in a year's time but it was certainly an engaging evening and felt a good deal more worthwhile than Gloria the Monday before.

17 July 2017. Gloria at Hampstead Theatre.

I was encouraged to get a ticket by its great reviews. However, I came away feeling that I had had an entertaining evening but one with no lasting effect. In the first half, we have a group of youngish workers in a magazine all vying with each other and back-biting. It feels as if it is going nowhere. Then a spurned colleague flips and shoots most of them and herself. The second half is various stages into the future where three of the survivors vie to publish their memoir of the fateful event. And that, for me, was that. Of course, some people's shallowness is well presented - but does it need a play to point that out?

11 & 12 July 2017. Angels in America at the NT

Although it was possible to see both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika in one day, I decided to split them across two evenings. I was glad I did as I found Millennium's three and a half hours enough for one day. Not that it wasn't good. But I was beginning to fidget, not helped by the war in the row behind between a couple who eat a constant stream of food and those next to them who wished they's f'ing stop. However, by contrast, the four and a quarter hours of Perestroika had me riveted.
The two parts run together seamlessly, so that seeing Perestroika first or on its own would be a foolish move, I thought. There are only a few main characters and they carry betweem the plays. It is hard to say which of them is central but the audience choice for the very loudest applause seemed to go to Andrew Garfield, playing Prior Walter. In brief Prior is suffering the symptoms of AIDS and his lover Louis cannot take the role of carer and moves out. He meets Joseph Pitt a married repressed homosexual whose marriage is in considerable trouble, his wife being a copious user of valium. Joseph works for Roy Cohn, an unscrupulous attorney. Cohn (played by Nathan Lane) is the only 'real' person in the play and he was in fact one of Trump's mentors. He also suffers from AIDS but insists that it is labelled liver cancer.
The two plays follows the twists and turns of the characters between 1985 and 1990. The second play, particularly, makes extensive use of playing out their dreams and these sequences are incredibly effective and well-staged. Indeed the whole near-eight hours felt like a real event - amazing acting, staging and, of course, writing. I imagine the impact would have been even greater when it was written. As it was, I was extremely pleased I joined some internet queue to get my tickets several months ago.

10 July2017. The Tempest at the Barbican

This RSC production with Simon Russell-Beale is stunning in its employment of technology. The opening shipwreck is graphically portrayed - to the extent that it is quite hard to hear all the lines. Luckily, they don't particularly matter and it is the arrival of Prospero (S R-B) that brings us up to date. His acting together with that of Joe dixon as Caliban and Mark Quartley as Ariel stood out.
The tale itself of Prospero's revenge on his disloyal brother and the Neapolitans is - I thought - made worthwhile by Prospero's eventual decision to put aside his outrage and reconcile with his enemies. Otherwise, I was left musing that it was Shakespeare on drugs. The tale turns on Prospero's magical powers and his employment of the invisible sprite Ariel. Maybe I am missing some profound analogy but I did not think it the bard's finest.
Nonetheless, with suspended belief systems, it was an enjoyable evening and made great by the acting and the technology. I cannot imagine how awful an amateur production might be, however.

7 July 2017. Touch at Soho Theatre

This engaging 90 minute play followed the life of a 30-something living in a rather squalid flat and deciding what she wanted from life. She starts with a rather controlling but conventional boyfriend; then a girl from the gym becomes a centre of attraction; at the same time a man she met on a spanking website comes to visit her; finally she is joined by her old/ex-boyfriend from Wales. At the end of the play, she seems to be giving up on London to go back home and have babies - her ex's preferred path. But the conclusion is left ambiguous.
It was an entertaining time, marked out by some witty lines from Vicky Jones and an excellent hour and a half on stage by Amy Morgan

6 July 2017. Salome at the National Theatre

This new play had received some pretty poor reviews and the Olivier theatre was half empty. As it was, I found the time did not drag though I could see that somehow the play as it is misses the mark.
First of all, what's it all about and do we care? Basically, we have the Romans under Pilate in charge of the Jews - led by Herod who seems to have an incestuous obsession with his daughter, Salome. The question to be answered is why she goes on to demand the head of John the Baptist, thereby provoking civil unrest. The answer seems to be that it is her answer to her father's offer of what she wants if she will dance (provocatively) for him and his men. The problem is it is a very simple storyline but one that is perversely hard to follow. There is the older and younger Salome on stage - that is fair enough and easy to assimilate. Then we have the Romans and Jews. Again, reasonably clear. But then we have John the Baptist, who in the programme is called the zealot, unhelpfully speaking in Hebrew but replied to in English. To make it more difficult and odd, the subtitles of his lines are always party obscured by other actors because they are projected so low down on the back of the stage. All this accompanied by a couple of wailing women who got on my nerves after a while. Surely they didn't wail the whole time in those days.
So the story was not so great and we are left with the language and spectacle - an abstract rather than figurative event. As I said, the time passed and not so slowly. The language certainly wasn't beautiful - like Beckett, say. And the spectacle on stage only really got going towards the end.
What about the acting. They seemed excellent and got a good dose of applause.
So, overall, I don't think I'll have the ghost of a memory for this in a few months time and certainly wouldn't go and see it again. But at no time did I - or anybody else - reach the 'I can't stand any more' threshold

5 July 2017. Ink at the Almeida

By mistake, I had booked a matinee performance and went in on a beautiful sunny day thinking 'this had better be good'. Fortunately it was. The story is of the first year of the Sun newspaper in the ownership of Murdoch and the Editorship of Larry Lamb. The story itself is quite interesting but I did not feel it had that many 'makes you think' lines. What made me think more was that the play managed to engender a certain sympathy for Murdoch and his organ and it also confronted the audience with issues that seemed so controversial at the time but nowadays seem less discussed - in particular what is the role of a newspaper. Is it to convey news or to have a good laugh, giving people what they want? - TV and tits. I suppose there were various other 'take what you like' conclusions such as the motivating power of a single objective - in this case overtaking the Mirror in a year and the power of teamwork.
The play decided to portray Murdoch quite sympathetically. He merely wanted to run a newspaper as a business. Bertie Carvel played him as the nicer and more refined of the two - he and Lamb. His body language was always rather stooped and he was presented as slightly prudish and less ruthless than his lieutenant with a slight Reginald Perrin manner.
The acting throughout was great and the energy made me glad I saw the matinee - On such a hot day, it was hard to imagine them doing the whole thing again with only a two hour nap.

3 July 2017. Anatomy of a Suicide at the Royal Court

The sort of title that encouraged my friends to look at me with incredulity. However, this was a great play. Its subject matter is the exploration of the extent to which whatever culminates in suicide is passed through generations. Although some reviews seem to pounce on the idea that the author must be arguing for some sort of genetic linking, this did not seem to me to be necessarily the thesis. It could equally well be the disturbed upbringing that repeats itself. Either way, we follow three generations of women, the first two of which have committed suicide and the third - a lesbian - is determined to be sterilised to ensure that she is the end of the line.
The subject matter ids interesting but the play's strength lies in the innovativeness of having the three generations on stage at once. We gradually make sense of it all and have to tune in and out of the different conversations taking place. sometimes two women use identical words. The genius of the direction by Katie Mitchell is that, although we think we are choosing which of the three to concentrate on at any one time, this choice is probably being manipulated and there is no sense of ever feeling one has missed some vital development.
The acting was also superb and dependent upon impeccable timing. Definitely one to see again, I felt.