Theatre review: A Man for All Seasons

Robert Bolt's 1960 play A Man for All Seasons is considered something of a modern classic, and one that seems to attract actors to revisit its lead over the years - Martin Shaw previously played Thomas More in 2006, and returns nearly two decades later for this touring production finishing its run at the Pinter. Covering the familiar ground of Henry VIII's spilt both from his first wife and the Catholic Church, it does so from the point of view of More, the Lord Chancellor whose refusal to undermine the Pope's authority and subsequent fall from grace saw him posthumously considered a martyr and saint by the Church. When we first meet him he's managing to hold on to his power and influence, but as soon as it becomes impossible to accept Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon without also endorsing the idea that the Church ruled wrongly on the issue, he quietly resigns his position.

Stage-to-screen review: An Ideal Husband

With London theatres now closed for the foreseeable future the focus has very quickly shifted to how those of us who spend far too much time there can get our regular fix from home. Streaming quickly jumped in to take the strain and there should be plenty of culture available soon with the BBC planning a whole online festival, and a number of individual recordings starting to show up. In the meantime there's also a few existing platforms available; Marquee TV is one I only heard of recently, and which seems to lean heavily on the side of opera and dance, so its theatre offerings consist almost entirely of shows I've already seen. Their library does include almost all of Classic Spring's Oscar Wilde season from 2017-18 at the Vaudeville, including one installment I skipped at the time, An Ideal Husband. Jonathan Church directs a Wilde play with a more overtly political slant than most.

Theatre review: The Price

I’m not aware of any particular Arthur Miller milestone this year (both his centenary and the tenth anniversary of his death would have been in 2015) so maybe it’s just a case of everyone having the same idea that’s led to so many theatres staging his work this year. In a couple of months’ time two of his most famous works will be back in London but first a couple of lesser-known pieces; and while at times The Price justifies its comparative obscurity, for most of its lengthy running time Jonathan Church’s production makes a strong case for the revival. Both written and set in the 1960s, the story is nevertheless rooted in the Depression of the ‘30s. The Franz family were children of New York millionaires who lost everything in the Crash except for their house; their mother having died around the same time, they moved everything into the attic so they could let out the rest of the building.

Theatre review: Taken at Midnight

With the true scale of Hitler's plan years away from becoming generally known, the 1930s saw many in Germany start to fear their chancellor was far more dangerous than he appeared, but the world at large wasn't yet willing to risk taking action against him. In Mark Hayhurst's Taken at Midnight, one dissenting voice within Germany is Jewish lawyer Hans Litten (Martin Hutson,) who in a case against the Nazi party's militant Brownshirts dared to call Hitler himself to the witness stand. It was a deliberate humiliation that wouldn't be forgotten: Once the party come to power, Hans is arrested in the night and imprisoned "for his own protection." As the Nazis' power becomes absolute, he is moved from concentration camp to concentration camp, tortured for information on his former clients. His mother Irmgard, meanwhile, doggedly pursues the SS for news of her son, campaigning for his safe release.

Theatre review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Probably the last of the major Brecht works I hadn't yet seen, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is the latest of Jonathan Church's West End transfers from Chichester. The satire on the rise of the Nazis recasts Hitler as Arturo Ui (Henry Goodman,) a ludicrous small-time gangster in Depression-era Chicago. He's dismissed by all as an insignificant fool but when a cauliflower cartel corrupts the respected Father of the City, Dogsborough (William Gaunt,) it opens up an opportunity for Ui. Stumbling onto a plot to misappropriate funds he blackmails Dogsborough into letting him set up a cauliflower protection racket. Soon Ui and his henchmen convert fear and violence into political power as well, and while the body count rises in Chicago, Arturo has his eye on neighbouring towns and their greengrocers.

Theatre review: Singin' in the Rain

A watery mini-theme at the theatre this week, although unlike last night there wasn't much fear of getting splashed in the second row of the Palace's balcony. (Though not marked as such on the ticket, these £25 seats certainly conform to the title of my blog. There's a lot of safety rail to look through, and in this case the busy bobbing heads of the people in front of us to negotiate around. You can't really see the steps at the front of the stage, but the production doesn't use them too much. If you don't mind having to lean forward and look through the gaps in the railings, you can see almost everything. The balcony's most disconcerting element is its proximity to the Independence Day flying saucer that makes up the ceiling and looks poised to attack.)

A previous adaptation of Singin' in the Rain at the Palladium was the first thing my sister saw on stage, and I'm told she demanded to be taken again straight away. So for an early birthday present Jonathan Church's Chichester production from last year, now arrived in London, seemed a good choice. I just hope the new leading man, Adam Cooper, is nicer to the backstage crew than his 1980s predecessor Tommy Steele, and they don't (allegedly) piss in his water tank before the big number.