Theatre review: The Lady From The Sea

The Lady From The Sea is Ellida (Nikki Amuka-Bird,) second wife to Dr Wangel (Finbar Lynch.) After an initially happy marriage, Ellida has become distant in recent years, and her husband suspects she has unresolved feelings for a lover from her past. In a turn of events that reflects Ibsen's ahead-of-his-time fascination with psychology, the doctor decides on a radical cure, inviting her former suitor Arnholm (Tom McKay) to visit. Wangel's hunch is correct but he's miscalculated: Arnholm isn't the man Ellida still has feelings for. Instead her unfinished business is with a sailor, her first love at the age of sixteen, who vowed they'd be bound forever before running away to escape a murder charge. She believes he's somehow found out that she's married someone else, and her depression comes from feeling she's betrayed him.

Almost-a-review: God Bless the Child

Not quite a review because I didn't see all of Molly Davies' God Bless the Child. Not because I didn't want to, but because 10 minutes from the end the performance had to be cancelled due to one of the cast getting ill. As it's pretty much sold out tonight's audience had to be refunded rather than reschedule to another date, so this is the best I can do as far as reviewing Vicky Featherstone's production goes.

The first time I ever went to the Royal Court Upstairs, it had been turned into a pretty realistic B&B room in Scarborough, and this is the most uncanny transformation I've seen there since: Chloe Lamford has turned the attic space into the primary school classroom of Class 4N, who have been chosen to trial a new government teaching initiative.

Theatre review: Birdland

Simon Stephens and Andrew Scott have previously collaborated to devastating effect on Sea Wall. Playwright and actor now reunite as Stephens writes a full-length play for Scott to star in, headlining Birdland as an international rock star called Paul (I did keep wondering if the character's name was a reference to Scott having played Paul McCartney in the past.) Paul is nearing the end of his second world tour, and his biggest yet. He's accompanied by his best friend and co-songwriter Johnny (Alex Price,) the one real link to his life pre-fame. But on the Russian leg of the tour Paul sleeps with Johnny's girlfriend Marnie (Yolanda Kettle,) who kills herself soon afterwards. With his friend no longer in a mental state to anchor him, Paul heads towards the home leg of the tour with his sanity steadily unraveling.

Theatre review: Love and Information

Nikki Amuka-Bird, Linda Bassett, Amanda Drew, John Heffernan, Paul Jesson and Amit Shah are among the cast of 15 for Caryl Churchill's latest play, Love and Information. Almost as if she'd seen the Royal Court Downstairs' flair in recent years for lightning-fast scene changes and wanted in on the action, Churchill gives us essentially a fast-paced sketch show format. On what looks like the same white box, endless configurations of people and settings appear, to perform vignettes no longer than a couple of minutes at most, some lasting only seconds; a couple of them with barely any dialogue. The significance of some of the scenes is occasionally hard to pinpoint but overall a picture builds up of information in modern life: The demand for it (the opening scene is of Shah demanding a secret from Amuka-Bird,) the overload of it (he soon regrets asking,) and where emotions and individuality fit into a world made up of endless streams of data, both useful and useless.

Theatre review: The Trial of Ubu

Though I'd heard of absurdist classic Ubu Roi I've never seen it, so had a quick online search about it before going to see Simon Stephens' sequel of sorts, The Trial of Ubu. In fact Stephens opens his play with a recap, in puppet form, of Alfred Jarry's play and the fictional dictator's crimes, which gives us the background, as well as allaying the fears of anyone worried that the dog from the Family Ties end credits had been put on trial. This Punch and Judy show is an apt way to tell the crimes of Ubu, the original play having been a satire with a decidedly juvenile side (Jarry started writing it aged 15.) Stephens' twist is to have Ubu tried at the International Criminal Court, the century since the original play having furnished us with real life dictators whose atrocities make him seem less far-fetched.

Stephens teams up with director Katie Mitchell again, and although Ubu himself (Paul McCleary) does appear, it's only very briefly. Instead we almost entirely experience the trial through a pair of translators in their booth (Kate Duchêne and Nikki Amuka-Bird.) I can see how this approach will alienate people who feel robbed of the courtroom drama, but it's certainly an effective way of making the audience view the dark events described from a Brechtian distance. It also means we get a glimpse of how hearing these things recounted day in day out affects people just doing their job. It's a huge ask for the two actresses, Duchêne and Amuka-Bird carry the show not only by speaking out the dialogue of Ubu, his wife, his various generals and victims as well as all the legal teams, but also by giving us an idea of the personalities of characters who have no dialogue as themselves. We do get a glimpse of Ubu himself with his jailer (cute Rob Ostlere) as well as a couple of lawyers (Josie Daxter and George Taylor) disillusioned with the process itself, and so Stephens asks questions about who exactly these things are meant to be for. The opening puppet show proves to have been a good idea as we hear how grotesque comic horrors translate into reality - most notably a gag involving people being chucked down a trapdoor, and what that turns into once taken literally.

With such a strong conceit in the play itself Mitchell doesn't overburden the production with more big ideas but has gone for attention to detail in a clear presentation, the matter-of-factness echoed by Lizzie Clachan's set which extends the Hampstead Theatre's wood panel decor onto the stage. The huge chunks of speech by just two actresses do mean that despite their efforts there were occasional dips in my interest, but considering the format this was a surprisingly small percentage of the time. I can easily see why people might hate this piece (tonight's half-empty theatre was reminiscent of the "bad old days" of two years ago; I could make a comment about the consequences of Hampstead unceremoniously ditching their early booking incentive after a single hit season but.... I just basically did.) But while I wouldn't rush to see The Trial of Ubu again, I'm glad I did go.

The Trial of Ubu by Simon Stephens is booking until the 25th of February at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes straight through.
Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.