Theatre review: An Actor Convalescing in Devon

Richard Nelson's An Actor Convalescing in Devon, about a Shakespearean actor who lost part of his jaw and soft palate to cancer and had to learn how to speak again, was written especially for Paul Jesson - a Shakespearean actor who lost part of his jaw and soft palate to cancer and had to learn how to speak again. The other elements of his story borrow from a variety of other sources and themes though, perhaps too many for a short monologue. Jesson's character, simply called The Actor, is waiting to board a train to Exeter and then on to a friend's country cottage for a long weekend. If he's going there to convalesce it's not so much from his physical illness though - while he was in hospital his partner and fellow actor Michael had a heart attack and, because he wasn't resuscitated quickly enough, suffered brain damage that left him confused about what was reality and what was a story he was performing in.

Theatre review: Farewell to the Theatre

Melancholy is the overwhelming tone of Richard Nelson's new play Farewell to the Theatre, set among a group of English ex-pats in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1916. World War I rages but America hasn't joined yet and on a university campus, British experts are popular on the lecture circuit. Widow Dorothy (Jemma Redgrave) runs a guest house, and is in competition with her late husband's mistress over who can mourn him the longest. Her brother Henry (Louis Hilyer) is an English lecturer at the University, and neither of the siblings seem to be popular on campus. Beatrice (Tara Fitzgerald) is a married former actress having an affair with Charles (cute American actor William French in his professional stage debut,) the new president of the student drama society, while Jason Watkins' Frank is the cake-loving Dickens expert. The most recent arrival is Harley Granville-Barker (Ben Chaplin,) the actor, director, playwright and theorist whose ideas challenged theatrical tradition and who argued in favour of a National Theatre decades before it became a reality. Around this time in his life, Granville-Barker became disillusioned with theatre and eventually left it altogether; he also wrote a play called Farewell to the Theatre, from which this play gets its title, presumably in order to cause maximum confusion. It's also a bit misleading as it's not just Granville-Barker's crisis Nelson's play is concerned with.