Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing(Jamie Lloyd Company / Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

I went on quite a bit in my review of Jamie Lloyd's Tempest about the fact that the entire production seemed to exist only to satisfy an obscure beef that His Exalted Brittanic Excellency, The Right Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB had with a dead man, and the way that was reflected in a production the director's heart didn't seem to be in. At least, whatever other reservations I might have with the second half of this Shakespeare season at Drury Lane, Lloyd's Much Ado About Nothing has the feel of a show he actually had an idea for. Another heavily edited text doesn't only lose a whole swathe of characters but also the play's military context: Soutra Gilmour's design leaves the huge stage mostly bare except for constantly-falling pink confetti, turning it into the dance floor of an 80's/90's- themed disco (although the amount of plot that's dependant on texts and people checking each other's Instagrams suggest we're in the present day.)

Theatre review: The Tempest(Jamie Lloyd Company / Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

Apparently when John Gielgud ended his run as Prospero at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1957, he foretold that Shakespeare would never again be performed at the venue, which would become a home for big musicals only. No doubt any suggestion of snobbery was fully intended, but it's also probably fair to say that a vast stage and 2000+ seat auditorium might be easier to fill with a big spectacle than with a production of a play that comes around every couple of years in London alone. But the theatre is now owned by His Exalted Brittanic Excellency, The Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB, who has enlisted Jamie Lloyd to end the 67-year Shakespeare drought at the venue with a starry mini-season inspired by the noblest of all intentions: Proving that a man who died a quarter of a century ago was wrong about that thing he said that one time.

Theatre review: Sunset Blvd

I often grumble about the work of His Excellency The Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB, but have a soft spot for Sunset Boulevard - one I've never been entirely sure how much to credit to Lloyd Webber (music,) Don Black and Christopher Hampton's (book and lyrics) 1993 musical itself, and how much to my fondness for Billy Wilder's original 1950 film. Well, this should settle some of that at least, as the latest West End revival comes courtesy of director Jamie Lloyd and designer Soutra Gilmour, whose signature style inevitably strips away the usual trappings of faded Hollywood glamour so associated with film and musical alike. But their monochrome style does make for a different kind of link to the age of black and white movies. 

Theatre review: The Effect

Easily one of the best plays of the 2010s, Lucy Prebble's The Effect returns to the National Theatre where it premiered, but it swaps the studio theatre for the Lyttelton, and the theatrical richness and tricksiness of Rupert Goold for Jamie Lloyd's simultaneously stripped-back yet brash style. Lloyd brings a design coup, as Soutra Gilmour reconfigures the Stalls and stage to make a traverse, putting the quartet of characters under the kind of intense clinical scrutiny their minds and bodies are subject to in the story. In a large medical complex - the ruins of an old mental asylum are still on the grounds - a group of volunteers take part in a medical trial. Connie (Taylor Russell) and Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) flirt with each other from the get-go, but as their time isolated from the outside world goes on, they seem to be falling violently in love with each other for real.

Theatre review: The Seagull

Jamie Lloyd's latest West End season was meant to run at the Playhouse, where its first show, Cyrano de Bergerac, played in early 2020. The follow-up production of Chekhov's The Seagull was of course a casualty of Covid, and now that it's returned its original home has been taken over by the Kit Kat Club. So instead Lloyd has regrouped at the Pinter, home of his previous season, for a production that continues to go for the same stripped-back aesthetic, but with a very different result than Cyrano's rap battle fireworks. Lloyd uses Anya Reiss' 2012 version of the play, which means the setting is the Isle of Man in the present day, where frustrated young writer Konstantin (Daniel Monks) lives at his uncle Sorin's (Robert Glenister) house by a lake. If their lives are usually quiet and uneventful that's not what we see, because all four of the play's acts take place during visits from Sorin's sister, Konstantin's mother.

Theatre review: Cyrano de Bergerac

“They set in in the 17th century, gave him a long nose, maybe made it a bit funnier... but for the British, Bergerac will always be John Nettles.”

Jamie Lloyd is a director known for being able to get big names on stage, rather than one who has an unofficial company of actors he keeps working with; but one regular collaborator is James McAvoy, who takes the lead as Lloyd launches his latest West End residency, this time a selection of eyewateringly-priced international classics at the Playhouse. And if there's any doubt that this opening salvo is going for a stripped-back style, the one thing that everyone automatically associates with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac doesn't make an appearance on McAvoy's face. In 1640 Paris, soldier Cyrano is notorious for three things: One is his proficiency with a sword, which sees him able to take out multiple assailants on his own, and also means he can take brutal revenge on anyone who seems to be making fun of his second notable feature, his unusually large nose. But it’s the third thing that becomes central to the play’s plot, and therefore the only one that Lloyd actually stages in a literal way.

Theatre review: Evita

Regent's Park Open Air Theatre says they only cancel 5% of performances due to bad weather; I must be particularly unlucky then because I'm averaging 33% over the last two years. So this is my second attempt at Jamie Lloyd's take on Evita; regular readers will both know I regularly grumble about not much liking the work of The Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB, while consistently finding reasons to go and see it anyway. In this case, it's the fact that the Open Air will be trying to recreate the success of 2016's revelatory Jesus Christ Superstar, and getting Lloyd for it is something of a minor coup for the venue. Evita is ALW and Tim Rice's take on the controversial figure Eva Perón (Samantha Pauly,) First Lady of Argentina during the 1940s and seen as the power behind the throne for her populist husband Juan Perón (Ektor Rivera.)

Theatre review: Betrayal

I've seen Pinter's Betrayal twice before, most recently eight years ago in the same theatre that's since been named after the playwright, and where it returns now; Jamie Lloyd's light touch with Pinter's work makes this probably the best production of it I've seen. Lloyd's Pinter at the Pinter season was meant to have ended with Pinter Seven, but whether it turned out they'd leased the building for longer than intended, or that Tom Hiddleston was interested in taking part and could put some bums on seats, his company have added this one last run to the bill, the one-act play about a love triangle with its famous reverse-chronology structure. Zawe Ashton plays gallery owner Emma, whose marriage to Robert (Hiddleston) is ending after he admitted to cheating on her; in a night-long heart-to-heart, she retaliated by confessing she'd had a seven-year affair with his best friend Jerry.

Theatre review: Pinter Seven - A Slight Ache / The Dumb Waiter

In what was originally meant to be the season’s finale before one more show got added to the end, Pinter Seven is the busiest I’ve seen the theatre during this run, probably due to the combined star power of Martin Freeman and Danny Dyer you slag. They appear together in The Dumb Waiter, and the double bill also stars Gemma Whelan and John Heffernan, the latter of whom has previously played one of Dyer’s ancestors. Although I don’t suppose Dyer brings that royal connection up much. As well as the casting, two of Pinter’s more accessible short works have to be part of the draw; although given who we’re talking about “accessible” still means a lot of very dark humour and an almost indescribable sense of existential menace. This menace gets personified in A Slight Ache, the 1957 radio play which forms the first act you slaag.

Theatre review: Pinter Six - Party Time / Celebration

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This installment of Pinter at the Pinter hasn't invited the critics in yet.

I booked for all the Pinter at the Pinter shows before they'd been retitled to give each anthology a number, so I've ended up with Pinter Six before Pinter Five; as the season is (currently) due to conclude with Betrayal seeing some of it in reverse order seems apt enough. Jamie Lloyd directs the shortest double bill so far, starting with Party Time, which I couldn't help thinking of as what it would be like if Pinter had written The Masque of the Red Death, except the plague outside is all the partygoers' doing, and they're cheerfully set to make things a lot worse. Accordingly, the majority of the characters on stage may be laughing and drinking wine, but Soutra Gilmour's designs keep everything positively funereal, in all-black outfits and a torchlit black box set that could have come out of a vampire movie.

Theatre review: Pinter Three - Landscape / Apart From That / Girls / That’s All / God’s District / Monologue / That’s Your Trouble / Special Offer / Trouble in the Works / Night / A Kind of Alaska

If there’s a running theme to Pinter Three, the hendecuple* bill that continues Jamie Lloyd’s collection of the playwright’s short writings to mark ten years since his death, it’s a kind of bittersweet romance. It’s something that becomes most apparent in Night, the penultimate piece in which Meera Syal and Tom Edden play a long-married couple whose love seems to remain genuine and strong, but whose memories of their relationship differ entirely: They each remember their first date completely differently, and may in fact be recalling encounters with different people - but does it even matter? The evening is bookended by the longest plays, and Night’s miscommunication somewhat mirrors the opener, Landscape, in which Beth (Tamsin Greig) and Duff (Keith Allen) have a conversation consisting of two entirely different threads – he recounting his day, she remembering stories from the early days of their relationship.

Theatre review: Pinter Two - The Lover / The Collection

Jamie Lloyd’s Pinter at the Pinter season continues with a double bill that he’s directed before, in this same theatre ten years ago when it was still called the Comedy. If Pinter One was bleak and timeless, Pinter Two is more broadly comic, while Soutra Gilmour’s design places it firmly in the early 1960s when the one-acters were both written. In The Lover a cheesily domestic married couple prepare for their day; Richard (John MacMillan) is off to work, wishing Sarah (Hayley Squires) a fun afternoon with her regular lover. He’s not jealous – it would be hypocritical, since he’ll be taking the same afternoon off to spend with a whore. After the interval comes The Collection in which the same actors play another married couple, whose complex sex life takes in unsuspecting outsiders when James (MacMillan) barges into Bill’s (Russell Tovey) house and accuses him of sleeping with his wife.

Theatre review: Pinter One - Press Conference / Precisely / The New World Order / Mountain Language / American Football / The Pres and an Officer / Death / One for the Road / Ashes to Ashes

Preview disclaimer: Pinter One invites the critics in next week.

Pinter One is the collective name being given to a nonuple bill of short writing by Harold Pinter that launches Pinter at the Pinter, the Jamie Lloyd Company's ambitious project to stage all of Harold Pinter's one-act plays at the Harold Pinter Theatre. I'm going to be using the word "Pinter" a lot over the next few months, is what I'm saying. Originally announced as a quadruple bill, other poems and sketches have been gradually getting added so that the evening's full title should now be Press Conference / Precisely / The New World Order / Mountain Language / American Football / The Pres and an Officer / Death / One for the Road / Ashes to Ashes. Which may explain why they renamed it Pinter One. Lloyd directs the first eight playlets and poems in a selection linked by an overtly political theme.

Theatre review: Apologia

Add to the list of things I never realised I needed to see: Alicia Florrick’s mom, Martha Jones, Fit Dad and my first Malvolio, all on stage together. Plus the woman who woke Peter Hall up from his nap that time, although she’s got a bit better at the acting since then. Following The Pride a couple of years ago, Jamie Lloyd revives another Alexi Kaye Campbell play at Trafalgar 1, with Stockard Channing taking on the role of esteemed art historian and 1960s political activist Kristin in Apologia. The setup is the well-worn dinner-party-from-hell format, as Kristin hosts family and friends to celebrate both her birthday, and the publication of her latest book, also titled Apologia. This one’s marketed as a memoir of her life, which makes the fact that it doesn’t even mention the existence of her two sons (both played by Joseph Millson) an omission which seems to distill their relationship.

Theatre review: Guards at the Taj

The Bush has just reopened after a major rebuild of its new building, that comes with reserved seating and new separate entrances for the box office, auditorium and toilets, which should hopefully all add up to a less nightmarish time in the bar area. It looks nice enough, although let's hope Madani Younis doesn't have any ideas about it being the most beautiful theatre there ever was or ever will be - if Guards at the Taj is anything to go by I'd hate to think what he might do to the builders. Rajiv Joseph's play takes its theme from a popular myth about the building of the Taj Mahal: Over the 16 years of its construction it was hidden behind temporary walls, and only its architect and the men building it were allowed to see it before it was finished, on pain of death to anyone who snuck a look. Joseph sets his play on the night before the unveiling, with Taj Mahal out of bounds for a few more hours.

Theatre review: Killer

In the second of two Philip Ridley plays running in rep underneath Shoreditch Town Hall, Jamie Lloyd returns as director and Soutra Gilmour as designer, but the creatives who have the most obvious impact are sound designers Ben & Max Ringham and George Dennis. Killer is a collection of three monologues, each with a grisly theme as the title (and the fact that it's Ridley) suggests, performed by John MacMillan in the dingy basement rooms. It's a promenade piece that opens with the audience sitting in a circle, facing away from MacMillan in the middle; the lights go out and he narrates a young teenager's fascination with a new gang who - reminding me of the far-right party in Moonfleece - embrace a fascist style and a philosophy based around preparing for an inevitable apocalypse. When the narrator tries to join the gang they have a brutal way of initiating him.

Theatre review: The Pitchfork Disney

Last year Jamie Lloyd's ongoing West End projects kept getting bigger, and arguably lost the plot in the process - I made his Doctor Faustus my Stinker of 2016. Perhaps Lloyd himself feels the scale of things had got a bit out of his control because his first few projects of 2017 see him taking a step back towards something a bit more intimate - although not necessarily low-key, as he opens a mini-season of Philip Ridley plays at Shoreditch Town Hall with the playwright's 1991 debut, The Pitchfork Disney. Presley (George Blagden) and Haley Stray (Hayley Squires) are 28-year-old twins and the only survivors of the apocalypse - at least that's the story they tell themselves to justify their childlike lives cloistered in an East London flat. In fact ever since their parents died a decade ago - probably murdered, possibly by Presley - they've retreated into a co-dependent world of dark fairytales, drugged into sleep much of the time and hardly going out except to stock up on the chocolate that seems to be all they eat.

Theatre review: Doctor Faustus (Jamie Lloyd Company / Duke of York's)

Doctor Faustus' charmed 24 years on earth seem to pass him by in a matter of seconds, a process that Jamie Lloyd's production has cunningly reversed for the audience. Christopher "Kit" Marlowe's anti-hero is an academic, frustrated by the limits of human knowledge and willing to sell his soul to find out the secrets of the universe. He conjures the fallen angel Mephistopheles (Jenna Russell) to do the deal: She will serve Faustus for 24 years, after which he will spend eternity in Hell - a deal he makes flippantly since he doesn't actually believe in Hell (despite having a conversation with an actual demon at the time.) But this isn't quite Marlowe's version of the play: Lloyd uses a text that replaces the middle two acts, in which Faustus travels the world using his magic powers to expose the corrupt and impress the powerful, with a completely new script by Colin Teevan in which Faustus (Kit "Christopher" Harington) becomes a Vegas magician.

Theatre review: The Maids

In the play considered Jean Genet's masterpiece, The Maids are Solange (Uzo Aduba) and her younger sister Claire (Zawe Ashton,) downtrodden and patronised but allowed into any corner of their Master and Mistress' lives. They've already used this insider knowledge to take revenge on the Master, Claire having sent the police an anonymous letter detailing certain illegal activities that have now landed him in prison. They'd like to go one step further with the Mistress (Laura Carmichael) though: When she's out they like to dress up and rehearse ways of murdering her. When they hear the Master has been released on bail, they realise he'll soon figure out who framed him, and decide they have to turn their fantasy of killing the boss into reality - but despite a poisoned cup of tea it proves harder than they thought.

Theatre review: The Homecoming

Jamie Lloyd has dropped the "Trafalgar Transformed" branding but he still returns to Trafalgar Studio 1 for his third season of plays; and after the first season's The Hothouse, both Harold Pinter and John Simm are back on the menu with The Homecoming. Somewhere in a dodgy corner of East London is the house where Teddy (Gary Kemp) grew up; he left six years ago, just about keeping in touch enough to let his father Max (Ron Cook) know that he's moved to an American university to teach philosophy. What he neglected to tell his family was that just before he left he got married; so his return in the middle of the night is a surprise but an even bigger one is his wife Ruth (Gemma Chan.) The menacing, aggressively macho environment is one Teddy soon regrets returning to. But far from feeling threatened, Ruth actually seems to thrive in her new surroundings.