Stage-to-screen review: Romantics Anonymous

I've more or less consigned Emma Rice to the same "I'm just never going to see the appeal" box Samuel Beckett has been sitting in, for more or less the exact opposite reasons, for years. But anything resembling live theatre is still a rarity, and Romantics Anonymous is a show that's inspired a lot of love among people whose opinion I consider worth listening to. It debuted at the Swanamaker at the tail end of Rice's notorious run at Shakespeare's Globe, and after playing at the Bristol Old Vic earlier this year it's now returned there to play to an empty theatre with the live performances streamed to computers (the platform they use, TicketCo, turns out to also have an app that works on my TV so that was better than expected.) Based on Les Émotifs Anonymes by Jean-Pierre Améris and Philippe Blasband, Rice (book,) Michael Kooman (music) and Christopher Dimond's (lyrics) musical plays out the familiar French movie trope of quirky misfits finding love.

Stage-to-screen review: My Beautiful Laundrette

Leicester's Curve Theatre continues to dip into its archive recordings to provide online content and fundraise during lockdown; latest is last year's My Beautiful Laundrette, adapted by Hanif Kureishi from his own screenplay. It's something of a rollercoaster ride during the early eighties for an extended Pakistani-British family, rising above the general wave of unemployment by building a small business empire (albeit one that isn't quite as legal and respectable as it initially appears) while at the same time being regularly reminded that they're still viewed by many as an underclass. It's seen through the eyes of Omar (Omar Malik) and his complicated relationship with old schoold friend Johnny (Jonny Fines, who seems pretty spot-on casting for a play about laundry, considering he's always struck me as looking literally very clean, but metaphorically a bit dirty.)

Stage-to-screen review: Death of a Hunter

Fond as I am of the Finborough Theatre, some of its deadly-serious, issue-based programming can be a hard sell. It does produce its share of joyous shows - I still sometimes go on about how funny Quality Street was a decade later, and only last year they camped After Dark up to within an inch of its life - but its online offerings during lockdown haven't exactly been focused on escapism. Which brings us to September's offering, the story of Ernest Hemingway blowing his brains out. Mercifully not in musical form, but in German playwright Rolf Hochhuth's 1977 play Death of a Hunter, which got its English-language premiere at the Finborough in 2018 (this archive recording is being released as a tribute to the playwright, who died in May.) We follow Hemingway (Edmund Dehn) in the last hour of his life, having already decided to follow his father's example and commit suicide.

Theatre review: Beat the Devil

My first visit in nearly six months to an actual theatre for a live show takes me to the Bridge, and while there's a kind of minor triumph to a limited number of venues finding a way around social distancing to present shows despite the indifference of the powers that be, I was also acutely aware of being in the same place where I saw my 2019 Show of the Year: The large space with its seating capacity greatly reduced to allow distance between audience groups, standing in stark contrast to the heaving bodies at last year's Shakespearean party. I guess it would also have been nice if my first tentative venture back out into live theatre had been for some escapism from what's kept us apart all these months, but instead we're right in the thick of it as playwright David Hare came down with Covid-19 at the same time that a belated lockdown was introduced in the UK; Beat the Devil is his furious memoir of his time suffering from a "mediaeval" disease and the actions of those he squarely blames for his having contracted it.

Stage-to-screen review: Three Kings

After a busy first couple of months, theatres' commitment to streaming content has been tailing off as it's become increasingly apparent how much they're being hung out to dry by the government, and their resources to create online content must be running low. But they haven't given up the ghost yet entirely, and the Old Vic's occasional series of broadcasts, "In Camera," has aimed for a particularly authentic feel of a trip to the theatre: The show is performed live and streamed via Zoom; there's the sound of audience hubbub and the ten-minute bell as you take your seat (in front of the computer) and, of course, the show starts a few minutes late. Some of the less appealing features have also come with it: The Old Vic has persisted with a system of staggered ticket prices and the related online queue, despite everyone getting the same view (in theory it promotes a "pay what you can" policy but don't tell me the Duchess of Argyll wouldn't grab a £10 subsidised ticket if she got first place in the queue) and it comes with the pitfalls of live theatre - Three Kings' entire run was postponed twice when its star Andrew Scott had to have minor surgery.

TV Review: Talking Heads -Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet / The Shrine

I've been spreading out watching the remake of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads over the summer, and with Nicholas Hytner's London Theatre Company behind the production it's perhaps not entirely surprising that one of the first tentative steps towards bringing live theatre back involves Hytner's Bridge Theatre staging a selection of the monologues with their new actors. I'm not currently planning on watching any of the planned double bills, but I do still have the last of my televised ones to catch up with, and as Sarah Frankcom's production opens with a shot of Maxine Peake's slippered feet walking down the stairs we're in for one of the more bizarre explorations of suburban kinks and secrets from the 1998 series, Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet. The second monologue to have been originally written for Patricia Routledge, Frankcom and Peake seem to have found their own take on the story.

Stage-to-screen review: The Beast Will Rise - Star / Night / Puzzle / Snow

It's been a while since I checked in with Philip Ridley and his lockdown monologue collection: That's because I've been watching them in groups of four or five playlets (you can also read my reviews of the first and second sets) and I'd been waiting for all fourteen to become available before winding the reviews up. But production company Tramp are among those dipping a toe back into live performance, and a final monologue called Cactus appears to be being saved to premiere live. So maybe that'll eventually surface on YouTube as well and I could give that a quick review, but in the meantime parts 10-13 of the sequence feature another one of the somewhat longer speeches, followed by a trio of very short snapshots. They've got a tough act to follow as the 30-minute opener Star is frantically memorable.

TV review: Talking Heads -Nights in the Garden of Spain / The Hand of God

I do like a random connection in my shows and the new 2020 remake of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads has featured Martin Freeman, plus Sarah Lancashire, his intended co-star in James Graham's 2017 comedy Labour of Love, and now Tamsin Greig, who actually appeared as his sparring partner in that play when Lancashire had to pull out. Greig appears in the latest of my double bills, a pair from the second, 1998 series, and although still laced with sadness these are two of the most straightforwardly funny monologues from the collection. The comedy is very dark in Nights in the Garden of Spain, which Marianne Elliott directs, as Greig's quietly unhappy Rosemary uncovers the dark underside of her bland suburban neighbourhood. And all it takes is helping her neighbour deal with the sudden death of her husband - because she's just shot him.

Stage-to-screen review: Reasons to be Cheerful

Punk and jukebox musicals don't seem obvious bedfellows, unless the music comes from Ian Dury and the Blockheads and the theatre company doing the adaptation is Graeae, who champion the work of D/deaf and disabled actors and creatives: Not only did Dury himself have disabilities caused by childhood polio, but he regularly referenced them and celebrated his difference in his songs (most famously "Spasticus Autisticus.") Paul Sirett's book for Reasons to be Cheerful keeps the story very simple as a hook to hang the songs on - not a bad move, given what can happen when a jukebox show overcomplicates its story - and follows Vinnie (Stephen Lloyd) and his best friend Colin (Stephen Collins) as they try to get tickets to a sold-out Blockheads gig in Hammersmith, at the height of their popularity in 1979.

TV review: Talking Heads - A Chip in the Sugar /The Outside Dog / Bed Among the Lentils

It's hard to separate Alan Bennett's Talking Heads from their original performers but my next selection of remakes sees their actors put a new stamp on them. In among the collection of current and future dames each of the two original series had one male monologue, and the original series opened with Bennett himself in A Chip in the Sugar. So if any piece is associated with the writer's distinctive voice even more than the others it's this one, and Martin Freeman is the actor taking on the role of Graham for director Jeremy Herrin. Like most of the actors in this remake Freeman isn't trying too hard to emulate the original accent, which might lose something in authenticity but helps avoid too many direct comparisons. Graham is a closeted middle-aged man who lives with his mother, having had trouble living alone in the past due to paranoid schizophrenia. He's now on medication but his mother's chance meeting with an old boyfriend from her youth unsettles his routine and he starts to think the house is being watched again; except maybe this time it actually is.

Radio review: I Am the Wind

I guess we're now reaching the point where I'm starved enough of theatrical content to be seeking out stuff I strongly suspect I won't like: Nearly ten years ago the Young Vic staged an elaborately designed and directed production of Jon Fosse's I Am the Wind, which came with much discussion of how the Norwegian playwright was one of the most frequently staged throughout Europe, except for the UK where he was virtually unknown. Well in the subsequent decade I haven't seen another Fosse play, nor do I even think I've heard of any major production being staged, so it's probably safe to say the play wasn't the hoped-for London breakthrough. I think the reviews were generally scathing, and my own opinion was that while the production was spectacular I remained unconvinced that there was much of substance underneath it. Now the same English version by Simon Stephens gets a radio production from Toby Swift, and what better way to see if my opinion's changed than by stripping the play down to just words and sound effects?

TV review: Talking Heads - Her Big Chance /Playing Sandwiches

Of the collection of current and future dames in the new version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads the most zeitgeisty is surely Jodie Comer - even with the discussion about Killing Eve largely focusing on how much it falls foul of the law of diminishing returns, she's still one of the biggest names to emerge in recent years. The other big name she replaces in these monologues is Julie Walters, as Comer takes on Her Big Chance. She plays young actress Lesley, who's not very bright but still isn't quite dim enough to fool herself that she's not really being used and abused by the film industry she's trying to break into: More by luck than judgement she lands a role as the villain's mostly-naked girlfriend in a low-budget German crime thriller being filmed in Lee-on-Solent, a distinctly chillier location than the Riviera setting it's meant to be. Her Big Chance is a very cleverly balanced tragicomedy - there's a profound sadness to the inevitability with which every man Lesley meets uses her for sex while pretending to help her career, not just on a one-to-one level but the entire cast and crew barely registering her as a person and walking out on her the morning after the night before.

TV review: Talking Heads - A Lady of Letters /An Ordinary Woman / Soldiering On

I can't realistically brand the new Talking Heads as "stage-to-screen" since they originated on TV in the first place; but Alan Bennett's beloved '80s and '90s monologues have occasionally been produced on stage as well, and this new lockdown version corralled by Bennett's regular collaborator Nicholas Hytner features a new collection of current and future dames who are mostly stage regulars, and some big theatre names directing. So I think we can call them stagey enough to keep my blogging muscles exercised on. Monologues filmed on an existing set - the Eastenders complex - are a clever way of making socially-distanced TV without resorting to the ubiquitous Zoom calls, and while I agree that giving some out-of-work playwrights the job of creating new ones might have been a better way of supporting talent, there's nothing stopping the BBC from doing that as well, and if something's acclaimed as a modern classic it should be able to stand up to reinvention.

Stage-to-screen review: It Is Easy To Be Dead

If UK theatres had anything to celebrate at the moment, the Finborough Theatre would be celebrating its 40th birthday today. Still, it's a milestone worth marking for the ambitious fringe venue, hence my second virtual trip this week to Earl's Court. The Finborough had a unique take on marking the centenary of the First World War, and instead of doing a full season of work in 2014, its THEGREATWAR100 strand staged relevant work intermittently over five years, between the points 100 years from the war's beginning, and 100 years from its end. Even so I was probably still worn down by many shows on the subject when It Is Easy To Be Dead came along in 2016, as despite rave reviews, a transfer and an Olivier nomination, I didn't get round to seeing it live. It now forms part of their online fundraising drive, and despite being inevitably heartbreaking the play has more of a bittersweet edge to it.

Stage-to-screen review: Jane Clegg

It's one of my own personal clichés that the Finborough Theatre approaches programming as if it's the fringe's answer to the National, with the ambition if not the budget to match. It proves true too during lockdown, with the room above an Earl's Court pub matching some of the country's biggest venues, by offering up archive recordings on YouTube for people missing their theatrical fix. Jane Clegg falls into the venue's remit that 50% of its shows be revivals of forgotten classics, as the play was a hit when it debuted in 1913, and its original star Sybil Thorndike kept returning to the title role throughout her career, but the play hadn't been seen in London since 1944 until David Gilmore's revival last year. St John Ervine's play was written with the Suffragettes in the news, and it reflects a new reality where a man might still legally be the king of his castle, but can no longer necessarily rule unquestioned.

Stage-to-screen review: The Madness of George III

National Theatre At Home, which uses recordings made during the NT Live cinema screenings that have become very popular internationally in the last ten years, has been at the forefront of online theatre in lockdown, with whole shows being made available on YouTube for one week only. I only haven't mentioned them on this blog yet because, being predominantly shows from the NT itself, I'd already seen them live and reviewed them at the time*. In recent weeks the NT has expanded the project's horizons though, offering shows from other venues, and with it the opportunity to share in the fundraising drive. This week this means a trip to Nottingham Playhouse, and Adam Penford's production of The Madness of George III. Alan Bennett's enduring play looks at the institution of royalty in all its alienness and pomp, and the frail, sometimes banal humanity holding it up.

Stage-to-screen review: The Beast Will Rise - Wound / Telescope / River / Eclipse / Performance

Back to Coronavirus, lockdown and isolation as seen through the uniquely, romantically twisted viewpoint of Philip Ridley, as I go back for a second selection of online premiere monologues in his The Beast Will Rise series (my review of the first four is here.) The next five feature both the longest and the shortest so far, and while most of them can be seen as having a specific significance to the circumstances under which they've debuted, they all could easily remain interesting taken out of context. Probably the least obviously tied to the theme of lockdown is Wound, in which Mirren Mack gives us a journey into a troubled mind in pain, escape into both self-harm and fantasy worlds, but also a resilience that keeps her coming back to reality. A few months into lockdown and everything being done on Zoom has become visually boring, but director Wiebke Green gives Wound  its own identity with a stark clinical whiteness and maintaining an extreme close-up on Mack's face that heightens the sense of anxiety.

Stage-to-screen review: Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe / Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank)

Playing Shakespeare is the Globe and Deutsche Bank's annual education programme tying in with the GCSE curriculum, creating 90-minute productions aimed at teenagers. Tickets are exclusively given free to schools, and while it's not entirely impossible for regular audience members to get hold of them - I know people who've raved about past productions' playful, irreverent tone - I've never managed to get round to one. Now this year's production, which played in February and March just before the theatres closed, is the latest addition to the Globe's online offerings on YouTube. Ekow Quartey plays the title role in Cressida Brown's modern dress production of Macbeth, as the previously loyal Scottish general whose ambition is fired up by a supernatural prophecy, kills the king and steals his throne, only to find that having unleashed his inner darkness he becomes a tyrant with enemies everywhere.

Stage-to-screen review: Grounded

I didn't so much miss Deafinitely Theatre's revival of Grounded when it played at Park Theatre as actively choose not to see it: Not out of any dislike for the company, but because it was only two years since I'd seen the UK premiere of George Brant's monologue, and I knew there was no chance I could realistically watch another version without comparing it to Lucy Ellinson's extraordinary performance. Even another five years down the line it's hard to feel entirely unbiased towards Paula Garfield's production, despite it inevitably having its own identity because it makes the one-woman show a two-hander, or perhaps two one-woman shows happening concurrently: As part of Deafinitely's aim to produce shows that can be enjoyed together by D/deaf and hearing audiences, Nadia Nadarajah performs The Pilot's lines in BSL, while Charmaine Wombwell provides the English language version.

Radio review: Blithe Spirit

One of the first shows in my diary to get cancelled because of lockdown was the latest revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, but as with so many things the BBC comes to the rescue, with a 2008 radio adaptation by Bert Coules returning to the BBC Sounds app. Roger Allam plays Charles, the novelist who hires a local medium in order to copy her language and mannerisms for a fraud in his upcoming book; but Madame Arcati turns out to be the real thing, and after playing her favourite song in the room where she died, his first wife Elvira's (Zoë Waites) ghost materialises. Unfortunately for Charles, only he can see her, which causes much confusion with his second wife Ruth (Hermione Gulliford,) and soon a rivalry causes chaos in the house between the two wives, one of whom is dead, and possibly turning homicidal.