Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre)

This year's Twelfth Night productions have leaned extra heavily on the idea of the play as a melancholy one, and while the cliché about it being Shakespeare's farewell to straightforward comedy tends to be code for "we forgot to make it funny," the Open Air Theatre managed a version of that approach that really worked for me. Sad clowns are clearly the order of the day at the Orange Tree as well, where Tom Littler's production sets the action in the 1940s, presumably very soon after the end of the Second World War given the whole stage becomes a War memorial inscribed with names. Anett Black and Neil Irish's designs are in mournful monochrome apart from the yellow stockings, and at the start of the play Olivia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is in mourning for her father and brother, both recently deceased, and judging by the portraits in uniform in her cabinet, both killed in action.

Theatre review: Nachtland

Despite an incredibly irritating social media publicity campaign (who were those messages raving about the show months before it opened even meant to be from, anyway?) I've been looking forward to the Young Vic's Nachtland: Marius von Mayenburg's dark satire (translated here by Maja Zade) has a viciously clever premise, and Patrick Marber's production has a great cast. The resulting evening is an entertaining one, but a frustrating one as well. The audience enter to Anna Fleischle’s set absolutely covered in dusty old props, which the cast clear away before the action starts: Siblings Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Philipp (John Heffernan) are clearing out the house of their recently-deceased father, bickering about who looked after him when he was alive and whose story it is to tell even as they narrate it to the audience.

Theatre review: Shaw Shorts

If you don't count a couple of false starts in autumn 2020, there's a nice symmetry to my first theatre trip after the third lockdown being to the Orange Tree, where I also saw my last show before the first lockdown. Let's hope it's a good omen for this reopening being the one that sticks and marks the start of things going back to normal. It is just a start though, and for now most venues are taking baby steps: For Paul Miller that means a return to one of his theatre's signature playwrights, Bernard Shaw, in intimate mode - Miller directs a double bill of short one-act comedies about marriage, extra-marital affairs and the adherence to social expectations that stops couples from making the choices that might actually mean happy lives for them. They can be booked separately but they really are very brief, and since they're very close thematically it makes sense to see them in the double bill they're calling Shaw Shorts (I mean "Shawts" was right there but I guess after the last 14 months everyone's too tired for shenanigans.)

Theatre review: While the Sun Shines

I sometimes wonder, if anyone's still alive and staging theatre in 100 years' time, which plays by current writers will be the ones they're remembered for, and whether their biggest hits in their lifetime are forgotten while their flops get regarded as classics? Will Monster Raving Loony be thought of as James Graham's masterpiece, while Ink is an obscurity, a slightly baffled tone to the Wikipedia footnote about all the awards it won? It's been the fate of so many playwrights over the centuries* that you can't help but wonder, and the latest piece of evidence comes from Terence Rattigan: The writer sometimes described as an English Chekhov, whose Browning Version and Winslow Boy among others are considered 20th century masterpieces, had his biggest-ever commercial hit with an amiable but decidedly slight, bed-hopping wartime comedy. The latest in the occasional series of Rattigan and Shaw rediscoveries that seem to be the Orange Tree's most reliable rainmakers, While the Sun Shines hasn't been staged in London for decades, and while Paul Miller's production packs in the laughs it's unlikely to lead to any major reevaluation of the play itself.

Theatre review: Holy Shit

After a couple of years closed for major redevelopment the Tricycle Theatre has reopened with a controversial (for reasons that elude me) rebranding. Kiln is, admittedly, quite a hard word to say if you've got a cold, but I don't know that I'd call that reason enough to have protests in the street on press night, which actually happened because people... I don't know, needed a reason to get out of the house? Why have a certain group of old white men taken offence at everything this theatre's done ever since an Asian woman took over as Artistic Director, WE MAY NEVER KNOW. Slightly-awkward-to-say venue names aside, I liked the redesign of the building, which keeps the basic structure of the old Tricycle but with a bit more café space, and toilets you're not instantly convinced you'll get murdered in. The auditorium also keeps the same structure (including the old proscenium arch visible in the background) but with more comfortable seating and what looks like decent sightlines (though quite a few rows near the front of the stalls now seem to require looking quite far up to the stage.)

Theatre review: The Lottery of Love

Its programming is fairly varied but Artistic Director Paul Miller's productions of classics a couple of times a year have become a signature of the Orange Tree. He usually picks British plays from the last century or so, but this time he's ventured a bit further afield, to the 18th century French writer Marivaux and his comedy The Lottery of Love. Sylvia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Richard (Ashley Zhangazha) have been promised to each other since childhood, and are about to meet for the first time. Their fathers have both agreed they only need to go ahead with the marriage if they like each other, and Sylvia wants to make sure she catches Richard as he really is, not just on his best behaviour. So she hatches a scheme, agreed to by her father Mr Morgan (Pip Donaghy,) to trade places with her maid Louisa (Claire Lams,) and get all the gossip from her prospective husband's servants.

Theatre review: The Philanderer

Bernard Shaw's The Philanderer is set in and around a gentlemen's club with a difference: One that allows in both ladies and gentlemen, on the proviso that the women be approved as "un-womanly" and the men as "un-manly." It's Shaw's response to the scandalously independent women of Ibsen - the club is called The Ibsen Club - and sees its titular character use women's new wish for independence and equality to carry out his affairs without being expected to commit. Charteris (Rupert Young) is sort-of considering settling down with the widow Grace Tranfield (Helen Bradbury,) but first he needs to get rid of his other lover, Julia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett.) He tries to dump her, reminding her that she bought into a relationship where she could break it off at any time so the same applies to him. When that doesn't work, he tries to marry her off to another of her suitors instead.

Theatre review: Pericles (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

From no Shakespeare at all in its first two winter seasons, Dominic Dromgoole's swansong at the Globe is an all-Shakespeare season in the Swanamaker. I hope this doesn't become the norm, as I liked having the indoor playhouse as a place to showcase other Jacobean playwrights and works that don't often see the light of day. Of course, even a Shakespeare play can be pretty obscure, and as the theme of the season is to play four of the late romances in rep, two of the quartet are rarities. The reason we seldom see the first is that, apart from the entirely lost plays, Pericles is the one of which the least has survived. The version we have is reconstructed from a a dodgy quarto of fragmented scenes, some attributed to Shakespeare, some to George Wilkins. So it's episodic, inconsistent and full of bizarre tangents and plot contrivances. But Dromgoole opts to view the problems as strengths, playing it as a kind of silly alternative to the Odyssey.

Theatre review: The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare's Globe)

My second (though not my last) Merchant of Venice of 2015 is one of the tent poles of the "Justice and Mercy" theme in this year's Globe season. Already deep into debt, Bassanio (Daniel Lapaine) believes marrying a wealthy heiress - who also happens to love him - will solve all his money problems. But in order to get to Portia (Rachel Pickup) and the eccentric conditions under which she has to choose a husband, he needs another loan. His merchant friend Antonio (Dominic Mafham,) confident of his investments paying out soon, is willing to secure the loan from Jewish moneylender Shylock (Jonathan Pryce.) But while Venetian society as a whole is openly prejudiced against the Jews who keeps its business running, Shylock has always found Antonio's behaviour particularly egregious. As a gesture of his power over him, he gets the merchant to sign a clause allowing him to cut a pound of flesh from his body if he defaults on payment.

Theatre review: This Was A Man

Among the plays the Finborough unearths that haven't been performed for decades, there's the odd one that hasn't been performed at all, at least not in this country. That's how they can produce the UK premiere of a play by a beloved, long-dead author: Noël Coward's This Was A Man was banned in 1925 for its flippant approach to marital infidelity, and ended up getting its first outing on Broadway instead. By the time the Lord Chamberlain's office had lost the power to ban plays, this one was long-forgotten, so Belinda Lang's is the first production to dig it up in decades. Edward (Jamie De Courcey) is an artist who's started to get some success with his portraits of society women in uncomfortable poses (it makes them feel like they've got their money's worth.) But he's not happy, because his wife Carol (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) has been carrying out a string of affairs, often in public.