28 November 2019. God's Dice at Soho Theatre.

This struck me as a well acted and well-staged evening but the play itself did not quite match my expectations. As it is, we have Alan Davies playing a middle-aged physics Professor, Henry, who is tackled by a student - Edie on whether the ideas of physics require as much faith as the existence of God. For some reason (and the hint is of sexual attraction), he embarks on a book looking at the probability and possibility of various miracles such as turning water into wine. The book becomes a best-seller and Henry's status in the world swiftly comes to eclipse that of his rock-star atheist wife Virginia. Mixed in with all this is Henry's colleague, Tim, who employs Epstein-like methods for bedding his students before being sacked by the university after Edie releases a tape of his seduction technique.
So we have, as the crtics point out, something of a muddle of which plot to follow. Is it the domestic issues between Henry, Virginia and Edie or the philosophical issues of God? If the former, then the play by David Baddiel does not really take us anywhere new - We are just presented with a few well-worn caricatures. Sadly though, the exploration of God is also lacking. All we get is the unpicking of a few miracles.
All that said, I found it an evening that passed easily enough and it was quite interesting to watch the domestic drama unfold and the full bizareness of Edie to be revealed - she ends up as a priestess to her Christian sect with a somewhat drooling Henry looking on, having sneaked away without telling Virginia the truth of where he is going.

22 November 2019. Shook at Southwark Playhouse

I heard a great reaction to this new playwright, Samuel Bailey, on Saturday Review and secured a ticket. I'm glad I did. Walking into the theatre space, we find ourselves in a day room of a prison with three youngish offenders attending classes on parenthood. The play focuses on their backgrounds, inter-relationships and contrasting characters and it is all brilliantly well-acted. Above all this is a play that provokes sympathy for these young men whose lives are being wasted in confinement. All three come across as likeable people with potential whose lives have been unnecessarily blighted. Jonjo (Joseph Davies) is in for murder having lashed out at a bullying stepfather; the quick-talking Cain (Josh Finan ) is a recidivist who actually finds life inside better than the alternative; meanwhile Ryad (Ivan Oyik)is torn between being a hard man in the prison pecking order or realising his intellectual abilities by following the path of education. Indeed, this tension between a hard-man image and a softer internal world is one of the themes of the play; another is the waste of lives that prison promotes. Both could, of course be seen as sentimentalism in the case of some offenders and it is hard to say the play is making a new point. But it makes it very well and the audience clearly felt bought into the authenticity of this portrayal and the dilemmas it rehearsed.
As such I can quite see why this play had won the Papatango prize for new playwriting and received some very good reviews. Somehow, it made us feel part of the lives of these three men and able to empathise with them.

21 November 2019. Taming of the Shrew at the Barbican

I really did not get on with this evening at the RSC - to the extent that I decided at the interval that I had had enough. In truth, this might be as much about the play as the production - maybe, even, the production pointed up the shortcomings of the play. Of course, The Bard can write about whatever he likes but I found not an ounce of humour nor thought-provocation in this tale of the taming a spirited spouse. This was very unlike Measure for Measure which deals with another distasteful topic  - the abuse of power. However, it is interesting and a good choice by the RSC by being timely. With the Taming of the Shrew, the company had to rely on gimmicks - such as weird gliding across the stage - to extract any real reaction from the audience. Indeed, the amount of whispering around me suggested that many in the audience were either disengaged or mystified. They could be forgiven because the gender reversal of this production did not seem to work at all. We had a boy called Katherine (the Shrew) and although he was referred to as 'he' other lines retained the original female role (I think). Anyway, we were in a production that largely preserved Shakespeare's text but one that had also made some changes. I do not welcome that, any more than I would expect to go to a Beethoven symphony with some of the notes changed from the original.
So it all felt a bit of a slog to me. And a pointless slog, I'm afraid.

18 November 2019. Measure for Measure at the Barbican

I really liked this RSC production of a tale of the abuse of power. Set in Victorian Vienna, the production set forth clearly the twists and turns of Shakespeare's play. In a nutshell, the Duke of Vienna leaves the City in the care of his Deputy Angelo. The latter immediately imposes a more puritncal regime which catches out Claudio who has engaged in premarital sex with his betrothed, Juliet. For this, he gets a death sentence. To save him, his Sister, Isabella, a novice nun intercedes to plea for clemency. Angelo falls for Isabella and propositions her, essentially offering to spare her brother if she will yield to him. So this is a remarkably contemporary play, getting the audience to ponder on the issues of sexual harassment and the abuse of power.
Angelo is not painted as a man merely wanting a shag. He seems, inappropriately, to have got the hots for Isabella, declaring his instant love for her. So he is played as a rather pathetic old donkey who indulges in a fantasy about this beautiful young woman. What is particularly wrong with it is the abuse of power and this comes across very clearly. As if to emphasis the rights and wrongs, we have the Duke, disguised as a priest, observing all the twists and turns of the play and eventually holding people to account.
All in all, I found it a very satisfying evening and felt moved to look up the more memorable lines afterwards.