Theatre review: Fatherland

Frantic Assembly’s verbatim piece Fatherland is the brainchild of director Scott Graham, composer Karl Hyde and playwright Simon Stephens, who come from Corby, Kidderminster and Stockport respectively. Their idea was to return to those home towns and conduct a dozen interviews with local men about fatherhood – most of them fathers themselves, all of them at least having something to say about their own fathers. The resulting play puts their thoughts and memories on stage in a text put together by Stephens, sometimes set to music by Hyde, and brought to typically physical life by Graham, but the actual interview process and creation of the play ends up being as much if not more of what it’s about: As well as casting actors to play their subjects, the trio put versions of themselves on stage too, with Nyasha Hatendi’s Simon and Declan Bennett’s Scott leading the interviews while Mark Arends’ Karl absent-mindedly records everything in the background.

Theatre review: Things I Know to be True

Frantic Assembly use their signature physical style on an unlikely genre, the family melodrama, for Australian playwright Andrew Bovell's Things I Know to be True. The title refers to a mental list kept by Rosie Price (Kirsty Oswald,) a young woman on her gap year in Europe, who gets fucked in more ways than one by a handsome Italian and, heartbroken, makes an early return to suburban Adelaide and her parents Fran (Imogen Stubbs) and Bob (Ewan Stewart.) The baby of the family, Rosie's list is of comforting things about her family and how she'll always know where she stands with them, so of course she's barely back before it all starts to change. Eldest brother Mark (Matthew Barker) has been dumped by his long-term girlfriend due to a crisis he's not yet shared with the others, while Ben's (Richard Mylan) big-spending lifestyle is clearly leading to trouble.

Theatre review: Othello (Frantic Assembly / Lyric Hammersmith)

Othello is the second Shakespeare play this year that I've already got three productions of lined up. Like The Merchant of Venice the first I'm seeing is a return visit to a production I saw some years ago; and like The Merchant it makes for quite a challenge for the future versions to rise to. Frantic Assembly revive their heavily edited, dance-infused version of the play which moves the action from a military encampment in Cyprus, to a violent gang based in a Yorkshire pub called The Cypress. The landlord's daughter, Desdemona (Kirsty Oswald) has secretly married the leader of the gang, Othello (Mark Ebulue.) The secret causes a fuss when it comes out, but it's soon forgotten in the aftermath of a conclusive victory over a rival gang, in which Othello's popular new lieutenant, Michael Cassio (Ryan Fletcher) plays a major role.

Theatre review: The Believers

Cynical, spiky and driven to the end of their tethers by their difficult child Grace, if Joff (Christopher Colquhoun) and Marianne (Eileen Walsh) had any belief in god it would be pushed to the limit by their home getting flooded. In this hour of need they're taken in for the night by the neighbours they barely know: Ollie (Richard Mylan) and Maud (Penny Layden) are religious and new age-ey, and to complete the contrast their own daughter Joyous seems to be practically perfect in every way. Although they're polite because of their circumstances, the two couples' differences, especially with regard to faith, make for an instant dislike. But a few drinks and joints later Joff and Marianne allow Maud and Ollie to perform a simple blessing over Grace that they believe will calm her down. It does, but the effect on both families ends up being a lot more drastic than expected.

Theatre review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a huge hit a few years back and clearly remains beloved: Simon Stephens' stage adaptation for the National Theatre sold out its entire run long before it even started previewing. 15-year-old Christopher Boone has behavioural problems on the autistic spectrum (contrary to what the book's original blurb stated, Haddon doesn't like his character's condition labelled as Asperger Syndrome.) He dislikes strangers and human contact in general, screaming in panic if even one of his parents touches him. He does like animals though, as well as maths and the colour red (but definitely not yellow or brown.) At the start of the play Christopher lives alone with his father in Swindon, his mother, as far as he knows, having died two years earlier. When he finds his neighbour's dog violently killed and is falsely accused of the crime, he sets out to discover who really did it - only to find a lot more secrets than he was expecting.

Theatre review: Lovesong

For the second night in a row I'm at a play featuring a long-married couple right at the end of the woman's life, which is a bit unfortunate as it's hard to take tonight's show entirely on its own merits. At least Frantic Assembly's Lovesong is the superior show by some way. Written by Abi Morgan, Lovesong shows us British dentist Billy and his librarian wife Maggie, who moved to small-town America about 40 years ago, alternating between those early days of their marriage and the final week as Maggie prepares for her death. Edward Bennett and Leanne Rowe play the young couple, Sam Cox and Siân Phillips their older selves. The action is kept pretty simple but stays interesting throughout, the younger duo creating their memories together, the older not always recalling them as they package up the belongings they've built up along the way. (One stark contrast with And No More Shall We Part is that here Maggie's decision to choose when she dies has been made and discussed offstage, Morgan's narrative more interested in presenting the whole picture of how this rounds off the couple's life, than in presenting the moral dilemmas.)

This being Frantic Assembly, directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett keep things visually interesting with sparingly-used projections and ventures into dance - though at times they jar, at others these movement sequences add much to the show's heart, and Carolyn Downing's sound design is hauntingly used. The performances are excellent as you'd expect, although knowing how good a comic actor Ed Bennett is, it always feels a bit of a waste seeing him in a straight drama.

The story is overshadowed by the couple's inability to have a child (I think the point of them having moved to America was to have them take a while to make friends, leaving them with only each other in the absence of a child) and once again there's suggestions of infidelity (though here it felt more organically integrated into their life story.) Jan was my theatre companion tonight and he felt the fact we largely saw them in difficult times was suggesting they'd had unhappy lives overall. I wouldn't agree, I thought the way the older couple were still going strong said that ultimately we were being shown a happy relationship. The unfortunate timing of another of my accidental "theme weeks" meant I was kept at a bit more of a distance than I might perhaps have been. No such problem for much of the audience, which despite the Lyric Hammersmith's usual high percentage of (well-behaved¹) school parties contained rather a lot of audible sobbing by the end.

Lovesong by Abi Morgan is booking until the 4th of February at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes straight through.

¹except for the one girl in the row in front of us who I'm sure spent much more time looking at her phone's brightly glowing screen than at the stage