27 December 2018. The Cane at the Royal Court

This challenging play by Mark Ravenhill has an air of menace from the start. We are in the living room of a teacher's house which is under siege from a group of pupils. They have found out that he used to be the one tasked to administer 'the cane' back in the days when it was legal. His daughter - herself a teacher at an Academy school arrives and appears to be willing to help him write a report rebutting Ofsted criticisms of the school. However, her motives are compromised by her school being prime candidate to take over the runner of her father's. As events unfold, she pours a pot of coffee oto the laptop, destroying the draft report.
The play explores the complex relationships between the couple and their daughter. It appears they were glad to see the back of her when she grew up, having had a turbulent time during her upbringing, including her going for her father with an axe, the scars of which attach remain in the wall to this day. However, then the mother and daughter gang up to force him to bring the cane down from the attic and he appears both a bully and quite vulnerable.
While the play can be seen as a metaphor for the 'me too' movement and designed to get the audience thinking about the appropriateness of trying people for things that only now are crimes, it struck me as more psychoanalytic. The cane, once an object of fear from childhood, becomes less of a threat when confronted - even though it is capable of drawing blood. The father is shown as vulnerable to the uncovering of his past and at the same time to have a bullying side. The more one ponders, the more one sees.
The acting seemed to take a few minutes to warm up but ended up as a tour de force, interrupted during the 100 minutes only by a slight problem with the set. Alun Armstrong played the father, Maggie Steed, the mother and Nicola Walker the daughter in this excellent evening under the direction of Vicky Featherstone.

22 December 2018. Party Time and Celebration at the Pinter Theatre

This brace of plays was part of a season of short plays by Harold Pinter. The first featuring two couples and one foursome had an air of menace throughout. They waxed lyrical about their charmed life and lovely country club while - as it became apparent - a cleanup operation was taking place in the streets outside. One of the privileged asked about her brother only to be hushed up - the mystery quickly solved when he enters through a bright door covered in blood - one of those subject to the cleansing. What are we to make of it? At one level, Pinter shows us the idle bourgeoisie carrying on their charmed lives while a different world is acted out on the proletariat. The play also captures some lovely truths about the country club set - how very civilised they are and anyone who deviates is kicked in the balls and thrown down the stairs.
Celebration appeared lighter featuring a table of two as well as a table of four hugely nouveau riche out celebrating.  The dialogue captured perfectly the characters who played against the foil of the restaurateur and his front of house manager. To start with the couple and the foursome are disconnected but about halfway on e of the four says the woman in the couple reminds of someone he shagged behind a filing cabinet. She recognises him too and the tables come together. Although a delicious embodiment of the characters, I am less clear of the takeaways from this play. The acting, though was fabulous.

17 December 2018. The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Barbican

I'm afraid I only quite enjoyed this production, having gone with high expectations from my memory of the 1985 Bill Alexander production (with the wives plotting at the hairdresser's). This production was just a tad too bawdy I felt and I also don't personally like when the text is altered with additions and modernisations - e.g., a reference to Brexit and to singing at Cardiff Arms Park. To me, it creates a muddle.
That said, it was a pleasant and amusing evening and the acting was excellent. The setting was more Chingford than Windsor and the ladies reminded me slightly of Abigail's Party. Rebecca Lacey and Beth Cordingly were great as Mistresses Page and Ford, the objects of Falstaff's affections. Likewise Falstaff himself, played by David Troughton.
The production by Fiona Laird was inventive and navigated us well though the potentially confusing story of disguise and rivalry. A good start was the introduction of all the characters before the action started. It is a slightly strange play with the action of the first half seeming rather drawn out while the second half felt quite hurried. But, short of checking the text, I assume that's down to Shakespeare.

6 December 2018. Spring Awakening at the Young Vic

This challenging work was very well staged and performed at the Young Vic, having been on tour as part of the theatre's YV Unpacked outreach programme.
Written by Franz Wedekind in 1891, the play deals with the sexual awakening of its teenage cast and covers rape, pregnancy, abortion, death, suicide, masturbation and homosexuality amongst other topics. The trick that the production by Caroline Byrne achieves is to stage the subject matter in a clear but tasteful way.
This takes a good deal of creativity which is evident from the outset as we walk into the theatre to find the lead female character - Wendla - hidden under an enormous dress which her mother entreats her to put on - presumably to hide her sexuality. The girl pleads to wear her more childish dress for another year and goes on to get pregnant by the confident youth Melchior. She develops anaemia, has an abortion and dies. Meanwhile, Melchior's friend, Moritz, was excellently played in a way that conveyed his ignorance and innocence that led him to suicide.
This all sounds pretty unbearable but it was an engaging 75 minutes that got worthy applause.

5 December 2018. Uncle Vanya at Hampstead

This play by Chekhov evokes a mood of listless claustrophobia in the winter countryside. Hampstead staged a version written and directed by Terry Johnson that seemed to spare no expense in terms of the set, complete with trees and period furniture. The part of Vanya was played by Alan Cox who conveyed well Vanya's frustrations with Prof Serebryakov - his brother in law by marriage to Vanya's deceased sister. Also noteable was Alice Bailey Johnson who played Sonya the Professor's daughter who has been left marooned in the country estate and looking for a mate. The Professor's beautiful new and younger wife was cast perfectly looks-wise in Abbey Lee. To start with, she seemed to me a bit expressionless but perhaps this rather detached rendition suited the part - a young woman in a rather contrived marriage to a man old both physically and psychologically.
All in all, I thought this was a good evening but the slowness and bleakness resulted in a certain amount of fall-out at the interval. This was rather a waste, as the play required the viewer to relax into the gloom of life in the big house.

23 November 2018. Ballet Triple Bill at the ROH

The programme consisted of:

• The Unknown Soldier, a new work by Alastair Marriott to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War.
• Infra by Wayne McGregor
• Symphony in C by Balanchine

In the first piece the dance was mixed with filmed recollections by a veteran soldier and by a woman who had fallen for one of the boys going off to war only to have him reported killed in action. This was very effective for me and conveyed the reality and horror better than the dance which by its nature is beautiful rather than evocative of the trenches. However, the dancers - Matthew Ball and Yasmine Naghdi - illustrated the story very clearly and the arrival of the telegraph boy was a particular scene that sticks in the mind.

Infra, I had seen before and again was struck by the extraordinary feats of the dancers who achieve movements that seem easy and yet impossible. With music by Max Richter, the work features an LED screen above the dancers conveying the city crowd going about their day and contributing to the sense of anomie / alienation that the work puts across.

Symphony in C seemed an overall jolly pieces with the dancers in tutus and music by Bizet. A good send-off into the winter night.

15 November 2018. Twelfth Night at the Young Vic

This production described as a musical adaptation of the Shakespeare work was good fun but not a lot more than that for me. It marked the opening of Kwame Kwei Armah's time at the Young Vic and achieved a high degree of audience engagement. They unlikely tale of mistaken identities and disguise was conveyed more clearly than any summary would manage. The acting was great with Gerard Carey somewhat stealing the show as the conceited Malvolio.
My hesitation, as with the National's Tempest, is to know what lines came from Shakespeare and which were invented for this adaptation.
All in all, a good evening out but not really compulsory viewing. 

12 November 2018. Macbeth at the Barbican

This RSC production was directed by Polly Findlay. It followed, for me, fairly hot on the heels of the Rufus Norris version at the National.
The most memorable and startling aspect of the RSC production was the use of children as the witches. Dressed in red, they had an almost satanic feel to them and were certainly unsettling. As with the National production, my issues were more with the play than its rendition - in particular the over-hasty and unplanned murder of the king and subsequent murder of his guards. However, in this production, the latter murders seemed more plausible.
The acting was very good, particularly Niamh Cusack as Lady Macbeth. She positively spat out her contempt for her husband's (played by Chrisopher Eccleston) lack of resolve.
The Barbican theatre was on the night of my visit like a giant school outing and it must be a testimony to the quality of the production that one would never have known the audience was mainly schoolchildren while the play was taking place.
 

9 November 2018. The Wild Duck at Almeida

This translation / version of Ibsen's play by Robert Icke got a poor review in the Guardian but rave reviews elsewhere. At the outset, I rather sided with the Guardian. The play's dipping in and out of theatre with asides as to what the character was really thinking or what the context was of the plot (e.g., Ibsen himself fathered a child by one of his servants) became a bit tedious and distracting to me. However, I found that I warmed to the event as it unfolded, partly because it is a gripping story and it is also thought provoking - Are we better off knowing the truth or living in a happy delusion?
The outline of the plot is that Charles Woods (a name substituted by Icke for Werle in the original) has had an affair with a servant, Gina. He has engineered her marriage to James Ekdal and they have a daughter - Hedwig - with macular degeneration. James's father, Francis, was Charles Woods's business partner but has fallen on hard times since being disgraced and sent to prison for his assumed liability in a forestry scandal. The play opens with Charles Woods's son, Gregory,  returning home after a long absence, He takes it upon himself to make his friend James aware of some horrid truths - not the least of which is that the daughter who James had believed was his, in fact was fathered by Charles Woods - who himself is now suffering from advancing macular degeneration. The unhappy ending is that the daughter Hedwig shoots herself having lost James's love - whereas the meddling Gregory had advised her to sacrifice her beloved wild duck that she kept in the loft - a fairytale territory visited by her and her grandfather and where they kept other animals including a collection of rabbits,
The play was good at getting the audience involved in the unravelling of the Ekdals lives and in provoking irritation at Gregory's self-righteous interference. The acting was excellent - including the child who played Hedwig. All in all, I thoguht a good evening and one that will stay in the memory.

18 September 2018. Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre

The draw of Ralph Fiennes was matched by the acting of Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra in this pacy production of what must be a difficult play to stage. There are multiple changes of scene from Eqypt to Rome and back again. In addition, the play - for me - lacks the depths of Shakespeare's finest works. Essentially, we have Antony posted to Egypt where he has fallen for the charms of Cleopatra and is living a somewhat hedonistic ex pat lifestyle. Returning to Rome, he agrees to marry Caesar's sister, Octavia, as a way of sealing his loyalty. This relationship has nothing of the spice for Antony to compare with that with Cleopatra and he reestablishes himself in Egypt. Conflict with Rome ensues and Antony decides to engage with the Romans at sea. This proves disastrous and he accuses the Cleopatra's Egyptian navy of betrayal. She takes herself off to her burial monument. Thinking she is dead, Antony makes a bungled attempt at suicide. On learning that she is in fact alive, he goes to the monument and dies in her arms. She goes on to kill herself with the aid of an asp, in order to avoid being taken to Rome and humiliated by Caesar.
There is plenty to think about in all this and the plot kept me engaged. However, it is easy to lose track of the detail as the battles and changes of scene unfold. It would probably be very useful to see the production on a second visit. A few people left at the interval of what proved to be a quite long evening - around 3.5 hours.

10 September 2018. The Humans at Hampstead Theatre

To be honest, I found this one act play dull and without a single takeaway. It seems strange to me that people have so enjoyed the play itself - The high quality acting being another matter. In fact, the flyer informed that it was winner of the Best Play for the 2016 Tony Awards, being a 'stunning portrayal of the human condition'.
The Humans concerns three generations of a family meeting for Thanksgiving in the newly acquired apartment of one of their two daughters and her partner. The other daughter - a lesbian who has recently split up from her relationship and who seems to have some sort of colo-rectal problem - is also present.
The dialogue is fair enough and probably reflects quite well the sort of exchanges that happen at big family gatherings - but there seemed to be nothing exceptional about it; nothing to justify going to the theatre and forking out one's cash. OK, there was a bit of a bombshell when the father owned up to having lost his job because of a dark act at the school where he worked, but this really felt no more than a bit of soap opera.
On the other hand, the set was great and the acting superb.
Undeniably, several in the audience seemed to adore it all, as if it hit some nails firmly on the head. Maybe it resonated better with its original American target than it did with me.

7 September 2018. The Second Violinist at the Barbican.

I found this a riveting eighty minutes as we watched the story of this anguished musician. Written and directed by Enda Walsh, this production brought us the Irish National Opera accompanied by Crash Ensemble working from the composition of Donnacha Dennehy.
The production makes full use of technology with a large screen backdrop onto which is projected the text messages of our 'hero'.
The story is complex but in a nutshell concerns the breakdown of Martin, the eponymous second violinist. Played by Aaron Monaghan, this character does not speak but observes the operatic trio of Matthew, his wife Amy and Amy's old friend Hannah. They seem to be at crossroads in their marriage and we are left to piece this as a stage in Martin's own life.
Adding to the complexity, we are told - by text - that Martin's favourite composer is Carlo Gesualdo. It is revealed by others on the internet that Gesualdo is the influence on Dennehy's score and also that his story is woven into the plot of the opera. Amongst other details, Gesualdo happened to murder his wife and her lover.
Frankly, this was a piece that needed a second viewing to capture all it had to offer and I hope I will get the chance to catch it again.

5 September 2018. Home, I'm Darling at the National theatre

Home, I'm Darling had an air of darkness, despite the frivolous wrapping. It concerns a contemporary couple who - really at the wife's instigation - are living as if they were in the 1950s. She is a 'good little wife' who has her husband's slippers warmed and the paper ironed ready for him. Her mother who fought for women's equality finds this all infuriating and is far from amused at the request by the daughter to help fund the social experiment. The lifestyle also leaves the husband's female boss somewhat open-mouthed and he blames the general awkwardness of this encounter on his being passed over for promotion. The experiment disintegrates but, more importantly, we get an insight into the fragility of Judy - (played by Katherine Parkinson) - whose idea it was.
This was an interesting and entertaining evening with an excellent set and tight direction by Tamara Harvey.

26 August 2018. Pericles at the National Theatre

This was an uplifting evening, as far as I was concerned. It was the result of a bold outreach move by the National Theatre under Rufus Norris, being part of the Public Acts initiative. A small company of professional actors were supplemented and greatly outnumbered by groups drawn from a variety of sources. Some of these joined in the play generally as citizens and fishers and pirates, for example. Other groups gave cameo performances, including the London Bulgarian Choir and the Youthsayers Ska Band. One way or another the stage was filled with people of all ages, ethnicities and abilities. This was a bold experiment that worked extremely professionally and was a testament to the skills of Emily Lim as Director.
The play itself follows the life and wanderings of Pericles and in particular the apparent loss of his wife and baby daughter at sea leading on to their reunification some sixteen years later. Pericles was played enthusiastically by Ashley Zhangazha, ably matched by Naana Agyei-Ampadu as his wife, Thaisa. Also particularly memorable was the ultra-camp display by Kevin Harvey as Boult. Whilst the National Theatre followed the plot faithfully, this was described as "a version" by Chris Bush. This meant that it was pretty unclear which words were from the bard and which were substitutions by Chris Bush. Whatever the answer, it all worked very well and provided a pleasurable ninety minutes - albeit a time extended by a problem with the scenary at about the half way stage. 

14 August 2018. Allelujah at The Bridge

I went along with high expectations of this new play by Alan Bennett and came away rather disappointed. It struck me as more of a pleasant evening out than a particularly provocative / thought-provoking piece of writing, despite its potential. The play is set in a geriatric ward where the award-winning matron turns out to be the administrator of early terminations for patients who become incontinent. Although various sins of the Tories are mentioned, the play does not seem to take the audience anywhere new. Bed-blocking, efficiency-savings, immigrants' status are not novel and are not given any new twist.
The fact that the cast burst into song from time to time only added to my curmudgeonly attitude. Surely we were well away from the reality of the geriatric ward and suffering a ruse to create a feel-good factor and send us home happy? For me this was not worth the £65 and I was only glad I hadn't splashed out £90m on a super seat. With these prices, the WestEnd needs to deliver.

6 August 2018. The Lehman Trilogy at the National.

This was something of a tour de force for the three actors who occupy the stage for three hours (with to intervals). The play charts the story of Lehman brothers from the arrival in the 1840s of Henry, the first, eldest, brother in America to the downfall in 2008. Henry is joined by Emanual and Mayer to run the general store in Alabama in the heart of cotton-growing country. They soon evolve the business into one of cotton trading - buying and pooling local harvests and selling to New York where they also set up offices. Then we have the next generation who take the firm forwards as an investment banks, relying on shrewdness to spot opportunities like the railroad. Finally we come to the post war era and the firm's undoing. The trading arm is shown as a less-than-understood cash cow run by outsiders that eventually brings the whole firm down.
It is a fascinating evening that is successful because of an excellent story, fabulous acting by Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley and an incredible production by Sam Mendes.

3 August 2018. Julie at the National.

I did not find this the most memorable piece of theatre. It is presented as an update of Strindberg's work, set in a large house near Hampstead Heath. Here we find a party in full swing, complete with cliches. Julie is the troubled rich kid who has hangers on rather than true friends and who seeks solace in the servants' quarters where she flirts with Jean, the driver from Cote d'Ivoire. He succumbs all too readily to Julie's  seductions, readily forgetting his partner Kristina who also works in the house. He immediately suggests Julie fund a venture that they can share in the Cap Verde islands. Before they run off, she feels obliged to kill and liquidise her bird - an event so theatrical as to be ludicrous, though I heard one or two members of the audience wondering if it had 'really' happened. Of course, all does not end happily but I wonder what we are meant to be left thinking. It all felt a bit obvious. Nonetheless, the staging was terrific with a very dramatic set revealing from time to time the party in full swing in the background. The night I went, Julie's part was taken by her understudy - she carried it off very well and I don't think Vanessa Kirby would have allayed my doubts about the play itself.

1 August 2018. Lies at the Almeida

A theatrical event rather than a play, Lies sought to put the ticket-payers into the role of bankers and participant-observe as chaos unfolds. It didn't really work for me as it quite failed to makes any lasting insightful point about how the recent crash - or any crash - happened. All I was left with was the generalised notion that banks are prone to increase their level of risk-taking as time without a crisis goes on, using systems under which they can't lose until they do. This point was made by dividing ticket payers into groups who played at casino-style tables, engaging in pure dice-rolling. I was unconvinced how this extrapolated in any authoritative way to the real world and felt I'd have been better off reading up on the subject - or, indeed, going to the Lehman trilogy. The end when some 'banks' got into trouble happened too quickly and with too little explanation as far as I was concerned.
All in all. I find myself agreeing with the Evening Standard far more than the Guardian - though a subsequent review in the latter mirrored my views better.

28 May 2018. Translations at the National Theatre

I did not really get along with this Brian Friel play quite as well as the very positive critics. It is set in Ireland and concerns the translation of place names into English for the occupying English army who are making a map of the area. We start off in a hedge school school where the Gaelic-speaking locals are receiving a classical education of Greek, Latin as well as maths. Only the twins are missing from the lessons.
The arrival of the English interrupts - indeed brings to a close - this lifestyle. The two characters we see are a pair of differing ranks, the junior striking up a relationship with one of the local girls - despite the language barrier. He goes missing and the presumption is that the twins have murdered him. Terrible retribution is threatened on the community.
Of course it is an interesting evening, dealing with the power of language and the attempted extinction of culture and a way of life by an occupying force.

30 April 2018. Absolute Hell at the National Theatre

This revival received poor reviews and I am inclined to agree with them. Thankfully, the production had been pruned by the time of my attendance but it still seemed an over-long and rather pointless evening. The setting was a members' club in Soho  - possibly based on the Colony Room Club - and all we really had was various interchanges between the patrons. It just about passed the time but there are cheaper ways of doing so. Writing this a month afterwards, there is really nothing memorable to note down. A dull evening.

25 April 2018. Triple Bill at the ROH

This was a very varied triple bill. It comprised the very modern Obsidian Tear, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, the very traditional Margueritem and Amand by Frederick Ashton and the purely pleaurable Elite Syncopations by Kenneth MacMillan.

21 April 2018. Steps back in time at the Barbican

This brief programme of early Kenneth MacMillan works in the Pit was absorbing. We sat in close proximity to the dancers as they performed two very emotional works that had not been seen for many years. The first, House of Birds, starred Meaghan Grace Hinkis and Thiago Soares. The second - Laiderette - saw Soares paired with Francesca Hayward. This told the sad and emotionally charged story of an outsider who is picked upon and ultimately humiliated by her colleagues. Between these two pieces was an extremely brief Danses Concertantes, the whole event lasting a little over 45 minutes.

Afterwards there was a very interesting discussion led by Kenneth MacMillan's widow and including viviana Durante who had produced the event and Maymi Hotta who had retrieved the works by painstakingly watching 16mm film.

17 April 2018. Macbeth at the National Theatre

This production of Macbeth had not received good reviews. The Director, Rufus Norris, was accused of mauling it somewhat. The set was extremely bleak and the witches' rather animal noises at the opening was quite off-putting, I agree. However, overall the acting by Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff in particular made it a worthwhile evening for me. The problems for me are more with the play itself - particularly Macbeth's indecent haste in doing away with Duncan as well as the rather implausible way in which he murders Duncan's two guards. He and Lady Macbeth appear when Lennox and MacDuff arrive in the morning as if nothing had happened; then somehow he had murdered the guards in a fury at them murdering the King. That aside, I thought Anne-Marie Duff conveyed particularly well the ruthlessness and single-mindedness of Lady Macbeth - though again the play gives no build up to her character before the witches give Macbeth the idea that he will be King.

16 April 2018. The Writer at the Almeida

I find it quite hard to know what to make of this play. It felt quite experimental and held my attnetion most of the time. The words themselves were at times poetic. However, the points it made seemed quite trite and I'm not sure I properly understood what this writer - Ella Hickson - was trying to achieve with some of the twists and turns - e.g., the introduction of a real baby on the set.
We start with the relatively easy half hour of dialogue between a male director and a young aspiring writer in which she treats him to an angry feminist rant about the male domination of theatre and how impossible it is for a young writer top know if her work is really any good if the approving director also asks her to sleep with him.
Then the supposed very awkward female writer and overbearing male director of this piece appear and answer a Q&A with (planted) members of the audience.
Next we have a vignette of the life of the writer who has been offered the chance to write a film script. Her football-boot selling boyfriend is exasperated at their reluctance to accept the role - so exasperated that he empties their meal onto her laptop.
Then there is a piece in a forest where the writer gets into lesbianism.
The director comes on and says that the play needs a proper ending and the forest scene is too weird.
The proper ending is the writer and her girlfriend living a quite bourgeois life and experimenting with a strap-on / dildo.
It was definitely well-acted but I'm afraid that if the purpose of writing is - as the play suggests - to change the world, this piece failed for me.

9 April 2018. The Great Wave at the National Theatre.

This upsetting play is apparently based on truth. It tells the story of two sisters Hanako and Reiko whose quarrels as teenagers leads to the fateful night that Hanako storms out to go to the beach, never to be seen again. It turns out she has been abducted by North Koreans who use her to teach one of their nationals to be be Japanese so that she can operate as a spy. Hanako in turn is forced to become Korean and eventually has a daughter by a man she is paired with. Meanwhile, back in Japan, the family lead a relentless campaign to get the Japanese Government to acknowledge the abductions. Pushing particularly hard is the boy (Tetsuo) who used to visit the sisters and who provoked Hanako's fateful trip to the beach on the night of the abduction. Both he and Reiko - who had spoken harsh words that night - are consumed by an unremitting guilt.
Several years later, the Korean spy is arrested and confesses to having been taught by Hanako. At last her existence is confirmed. Now, and eventually, the governments act and the Koreans allow the return of those Japanese who wish to make the journey. The family are rewarded by the arrival of Hanako's daughter but not Hanako herself. She has been embroiled in recriminations over some doodlings by her daughter who has been denounced by her schoolmates. The grand-daughter is some comfort for Etsuko - Hanako's by now dying mother but we are left feeling her pain and filling in the gaps of the decision-taking that Hanako has gone through.
It is an absorbing and fast-paced evening that makes full use of the revolving stage with the Japanese and Korean locations appearing and disappearing with immediacy. I found it an upsetting and thought-provoking experience - particularly at the level of how stupid actions (the rows and dares of the abduction evening) can have horrific consequences. Sometimes the lines and delivery felt a bit clunky but that really did not matter to the overall impact of the evening.

6 April 2018. Bernstein Triple Bill at ROH

The triple bill to mark Bernstein's centenary opened with Wayne McGregor's Yugen. Everything about its brief 19 minutes was spectacular. The opening with the dancers silhouetted against light boxes certainly had the wow factor. The dancing was rivetting, especially, Sarah Lamb. The music was the choral Chichester Psalms featuring a male solo treble. A great start to the evening.
On the other hand, the revival of Liam Scarlett's The Age of Anxiety left me less moved. It is danced in costume and the story of four lonely souls getting drunk did not engage me I'm afraid.
The final piece - Corbantic Games - by Christopher Wheeldon - was more to my taste. It is in five movements featuring various combinations of dancers. It was enjoyable to watch though I found the breaks rather disjointing. 

27 March 2018. Summer and Smoke at Almeida

This rave-reviewed production by Rebecca Frecknall of Tennessee Williams's play was engaging from the start. The audience is presented with a semi-circle of nine pianos from which the actors emerge and retreat. The star of the evening is undoubtedly Patsy Ferran who plays Alma, a sheltered daughter of a pastor. She has longings for John (played by Matthew Needham), the boy next door who is following in his father's footsteps as a doctor.  The play essentially plays out the evolution of their doomed never-to-start relationship. First John wants Alma; then, once she is ready, he has married someone else.
It is a thoroughly absorbing evening but frankly it was not one that I found myself thinking about nor remembering for long in any detail. The point of the reviews also seemed to concentrate very much on the quality of the acting.

26 March 2018. Hamlet at Hackney Empire

This RSC touring production was well worth seeing. Hamlet was played by  Paapa Essiedu and the setting in Africa worked well and without distraction.

24 March 2018. From the House of the Dead at the ROH

Tickets for this excellently staged opera by Janacek had obviously proved hard to shift as the ROH offered them at half price a few weeks before the event. I'm glad I took up the offer though it was not an event to send one home with a cheery smile.
The action is set in a Siberian prison and is apparently based on a biographical novel of 1862 by Dostoyesky. Gloom and brutality abound but so too does humanity in the worst of circumstances. There is not a huge plot within the prison itself and most of the lines are different prisoners recounting their past. Sung in Czech, the surtitles are a must but as they are often in quotes reflecting a tale being told, I must admit I got lost at times. On reflection, I also wonder on the significance of the different tales apart from that of two prisoners who find they are connected by one woman. Nonetheless, the air of menace and hopelessness was well-conveyed and in every respect - the cast, perhaps starring, Willard White' the orchestra under Mark Wigglesworth and the direction by Krzyztof Warlikowski were excellent.

23 March 2018. Network at the National Theatre

This was a phenomenal evening. From the off, it was thoroughly engaging with the set creating the recording studio of UBS, where anchorman Howard Beale - played superbly by Bryan Cranston - has entirely lost any belief in his job. Overtaken by cynicism, he declares he will commit suicide on air. The first reaction of the executives is to remove him and there is a wonderful scene of him being man-handled from his desk as the live broadcast continues. Immediate reflection suggests that his antics have converted his show from a ratings failure to a huge hit. He is re-established with carte blanche to say what he really thinks.

His new remit results in him giving vent to the fury of the Trumpian crowd with his "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more" rallying cry. Cleverly, Ivo van Hove gets the audience to refrain these lines and in a further ingenious touch Howard comes and sits with the audience for a while towards the end.

The whole two hours was brilliant and resulted in a spontaneous standing ovation for Bryan Cranston and the rest of the cast. Although based on a film from 1976 by Paddy Chayefsky, the contemporary relevance of the evening felt very strong. We dealt with the Trump fury as well as the ownership and cynicism of the media and I bought the text afterwards to re-read some of the set speeches.

22 February 2018. Satyagraha at the ENO

This opera featuring the music of Philip Glass is 'made' by the spectacular and arresting direction of Phelim McDermott. The piece tells the story of Gandhi working with Indians in South Africa at the start of the twentieth century. There is really very little to be written in the synopsis but the three and a half hours passed for me completely effortlessly. Judging by the applause, the same was true for the rest of the audience. Gandhi was played by Toby Spence and he was very much the star of the show. But surely the night will primarily be remembered for the staging as well as the playing of the score by the orchestra under the direction of Karen Kamensek. The music itself was manna for Glass fans but felt very much like another three hours of his familiar composition.
Most critics were also very positive of this event.

15 January 2018. Rita, Sue and Bob Too at the Royal Court

I had seen the 1986 film of this work and was curious to see how it would convert to the theatre - only to find out that it had started as a Royal Court production in 1982.
So, we started out with four seats representing the car - Bob driving and the two girls in the back. Soon, Bob has managed to have 'a jump' with both girls - or have they managed to have one with him? It is a clever play that confronts one with and gets one to confront apparently simple matters. Was Bob wandering because his wife was so unresponsive to his needs? What was the friendship between Rita and Sue when both were seeing Bob secretly as individuals? Were the relationships simply transactional? How justified were Sue's parents in pushing all the blame onto Rita?
We also got a good evocation of the bleakness of the lives that these people were leading. The girls had few prospects and Bob was suffering from a good deal of anxiety about his employment. We were explicitly reminded of the impact of Thatcherism which had a resonance for the issues of today. for these people, there is no strong argument against Brexit - if anything, it is a non-question and one that deserves a random response.
The acting was great and got well-deserved applause. The set worked well and it was an engaging production. All in all a good 80 minutes for a £12 Monday ticket.

10 January 2018. Mother Christmas at Hampstead Downstairs.

Billed as a 'darkly festive comedy', this play opened with the third generation at the traditional family reunion dressed as a penguin. Then we were introduced to her mother and uncle as well as her grandmother. Rapidly, old tensions re-asserted themselves and the play progressed through two further reunions with no noticeable improvement in relationships. This was despite the pivotal Davina (mother and daughter) coming quite resolved not to re-wind old tapes with the benefit of her Buddhist karma. Yet within minutes, the old rows re-played. Mixed into this pot was Peter, with whom Davina had had a fling but who was also the object of the grandmother Maggie's (Diana Quick) affections. She was widowed at the first reunion and her libido had - she reported - come back with a vengeance.
It was an interesting play, confronting us with the possibility or otherwise of change. It also had some barbed lines at other aspects of psychology including attachment theory and the limits to attributing one's issues to one's parents.
Although amusing, it was really quite a dark play. There were moments when I did not find the acting wholly convincing, funnily enough when a row was not taking place!