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.