20 November 2017. St George and the Dragon at the National Theatre.

I made the mistake of reading the two and three star reviews for this new play before leaving home and so did not exactly hurry to the National Theatre. In the event, I had a better evening than anticipated. The play is somewhat childish and no work of Shakespeare but it does confront us, in its own way, with our contemporary condition. St George moves through three eras charging himself with slaughtering dragons - which one has to interpret as the 'things' that cloud our lives. In medieval times, the job was easy. The blight was a lion living handily in a cave that exacted its toll on the villagers. George engages in a great battle and slaughters this incarnation of the feudal barron. We move next to the Victorian industrial era where the dragon is harder to define but can still be seen as the simple profit-maximizing capitalist system. The dragon has metamorphosed into a top-hatted boss. Finally, we are in our present day. Here the dragon is the most difficult to slaughter. The 'thing' that bedevils us is now within us. The writer, Rory Mullarkey, presents us with hen parties, pub crowds watching football, and workers cleaning up rubbish. He presents us with, what could be summarised as, our God-less lives and - unless I missed something - rather leaves it to us to puzzle the solution.
So overall, I am not so sure the critics got it right. The play is a confrontation and perhaps its playful manner is a necessity to hold the mirror to us. The acting was excellent, especially John Heffernan as George. The play would, however, have benefited from some tightening. It does not take 145 minutes to make these straightforward points.

14 November 2017. Albion at the Almeida.

This is a hefty three hour play, inviting the audience to consider the state of the nation and its divisions. We are in the garden of a grand ancestral home of a formidable lady from London and her rather compliant husband and lesbian (not that she's 'out') daughter. A visit by a successful writer friend soon develops into an affair with the daughter - who was also the object of attention of the lad from next door. Also with us from the outset is the girlfriend of the dead son of the owner. He makes the occasional apparition appearance on stage. To the girlfriend's annoyance the mother has recently scattered his ashes on the garden. The mother gets exasperated that the girlfriend is failing to 'move on' but is given a jolt by the news that the girlfriend is pregnant by the frozen sperm of the son.
The house and garden are tended to by an elderly couple but their placer is usurped by the far more efficient Polish Kristina. The owner restores the garden and has grand designs to get everything back in shape but the project falls through and she eventually sells to the highest bidder who will turn the house into flats, with a piece of garden allocated to each flat. The bereaved daughter in law plans to buy the flat with the garden that has the ashes scattered on it.
So there is plenty here to get your teeth into. The mother seems quite ruthless with a healthy dose of entitlement. She is the caricature of the formidable English upper middle class. The gardener and his wife are the perfect representation of those for whom the world essentially stops at the village boundary. The lesbian daughter and her 'old enough to be your mother' friend go off to live in London, despite the mother's entreaties to her friend to give up the affair. They and the Polish cleaner speak for other sides of Britain.

13 November 2017. The Suppliant Women at The Young Vic

This play by Aeschylus, in a version by David Greig, opens in Greek style with the libation - or offering of thanks - by a representative of Southwark council. She described the financing of the staging and ended by emptying a bottle of red wine across the front of the stage.
The play is unusual by having the Chorus as the main focus. Unusually again, the chorus was made up of local amateurs who had been trained for their role as a group of women who had fled from Egypt to Argos where they ask king Pelasgos for asylum. They are trying to get away from the enforced and unwelcome marriages that they would have to suffer at home. The King, after due deliberation and a referendum, agrees to take them in. However, they are pursued by the men of Egypt. After a confrontation, they are seen off by the king and all seems to end happily.
This is the first play of a trilogy but the other two were lost apart from a fragment that is read at the beginning. It lauds the penetration of the earth by the rain of the sky to give the abundance of life on earth.
The play only lasts ninety minutes and is thoroughly engaging with a musical accompaniment to the rhythmically delivered text.

10 and 17 November. The illustrated farewell, The wind, Untouchable at ROH

I saw this triple bill twice and enjoyed it on both occasions. The first piece, by Twyla Tharp featured Sarah Lamb with Steven McRae and Mayara Magri with Joseph Sissens. It starts off with Lamb and McRae dancing a pas de deux before being joined after approximately 10 minutes by other members of the company. The dancing was precise and engaging, to music - The Farewell - by Haydn.

Next came The Wind, a new ballet by Arthur Pita who had choreographed Metamorphosis. This piece also featured Edward Watson as Mawarra - a ghostly warrior figure overlooking the action. This takes place on a windswept ranch in Texas to which Letty Mason arrives by railroad. She attracts the attention of the cowpunchers as well as the cattle buyer Wirt Roddy. She marries one cowpuncher, only to be raped on her wedding night by Wirt. In revenge, she shoots him. I noticed much more detail the second time. Whether this was the more emphatic acting by Francesca Hayward over Natalia Osipova as Letty, I'm not sure. both got great applause - and flowers - at the end. The husband was played by Thiago soares the first night and Tomas Mock the second. Wirt Roddy's part was taken by Thomas Whitehead and Mattew Ball on the two nights.
The stage was somewhat dominated by three huge windmachines and a railroad track to the right hand side of the stage. The machines were so powerful that their effect could be felt in the Grand Tier. The were used to power visual effects such as the bride's veil streaming out from her bonnet. All in all, I found this an engaging thirty five minutes, with music composed and played on electric violin and slide guitar by Frank Moon.
Finally, we had Untouchable, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter to music of his and Nell Catchpole's composition. The piece seemed to me more abstract, consisting of twenty members of the Company moving in and out of a parade formation. I found my concentration drifted likewise which is not to take away from the piece. It's just that it didn't command my undivided attention.

9 November 2017. Beginning at the National Theatre

This innovative play followed its two characters for the one hundred minutes in the aftermath of a house-warming party held at the female's - Laura's - house. She has locked eyes with 42 year old Danny who stays on after the others have left. Both fancy each other but he is more than hesitant. She  is 38 and confesses that she wants a father for a would-be child. More immediately, she also wants to have the ensuing Sunday as a couple, rather than her suffering the singledom than she finds so difficult. We witness them both finishing off the wine, with him dodging around the room to avoid physical intimacy and even starting to clean up after the party. Only after a good hour and quarter, does she unlock his unwillingness with words "I want you" - or similar.
It is an interesting evening, as we witness the realities of many people's reluctance to just get down to business - particularly as he takes on board his potential responsibilities for the child that will be conceived. The acting by the two characters, constantly on stage, was excellent.