Othello – The Globe

The return of Mark Rylance to The Globe main stage is the lynchpin of Michelle Terry’s first season as Artistic Director and luring her predecessor back to play Iago in a new version of Othello is a major coup. It’s been a quiet season for Terry so far, not glowing but largely positive reviews for The Globe’s return to its more traditional approach to staging Shakespeare’s work, divested of the divisive sets and sound systems that defined the Emma Rice era. No one loves the traditional Globe more than Rylance and his return can be seen as an affirmation of Terry’s vision. With so much collective experience of staging Shakespeare in this theatre, and the skills of an actor at the helm who in 2016 managed the rare feat of winning an Oscar and being nominated for an Olivier in the same year, why is this Othello not better?

Shakespeare’s enduring story of sexual and political jealousy seems like an easy win for The Globe. Othello is one of the more accessible tragedies; there are no intangible musings on life and death or need to understand how supernatural forces affect human agency, instead Othello is driven by the simple idea of one man deceptively and invidiously poisoning the happiness of another. While the romance with Desdemona is best remembered, the play’s central focus on the misguided friendship between Othello and Iago holds the story together and focuses the expanding drama. Often in Shakespeare, the audience holds knowledge that one or more of the characters is denied, we know when someone is in disguise or when a murder has occurred. In Othello, we are party to Iago’s plot to destroy his friend and Commander, so Shakespeare deliberately makes the viewer both complicit and powerless bystanders in order to build a sense of inevitability in the destruction of the characters and their world.

But like Macbeth the success of this tragedy depends on how effectively their confined scenario is created and how well the psychological development of the characters is managed. To truly believe in Iago’s dastardly plan to make Othello mistrust his wife, the audience must be convinced by his motivation, to understand why he feels aggrieved in the first place and crucially why he chooses this particular path above seeking alternative forms of revenge. Finally, there must also be a sense of the social structure in which they are operating – the separation between male and female characters, the ability to prevent individuals from encountering each other and revealing the truth – which explain how Iago is able to maintain his falsehoods without fear of discovery.

The Globe’s new production is yet to make the most of that audience relationship, building a conspiratorial alliance between stage and viewer that is so vital to understand and engage with the play. Whatever route the Company has chosen is not being effectively communicated, so it becomes difficult to understand why individuals behave as they do and what exactly is at stake. There are several reasons for this; first, there is no clear vision for this Othello and none of the key questions have been answered by the production. It is set in a somewhat ambiguous location with an amusing Russian Revolution meets New Romantic aesthetic, allowing everyone to swirl around in embroidered gowns, woollen trench-coats and berets, but the social and military limitations of Othello’s world are inconclusive.

You never feel, as you should, that Iago’s schemes are able to succeed because the men exist within the confines of a geographical army base and must observe the restrictions of military hierarchy. Thus, unable to daily socialise with the people of Cyprus, or encounter anyone outside army life other than in the play’s early scenes, or able to speak openly to one another while on duty, the suspicion the Iago seeds can take root and fester. The villain knows he would be soon discovered in gossipy society, but within this structure he is able to control the ebb and flow of information reaching him commander’s ears.

Likewise, the physical separation of men and women in the play is deliberate and, by preventing contact between husband and wife for much of the central part of the action, Shakespeare ensures that Desdemona has no opportunity to allay these fears or abut the false accusations until Othello is already past the point of no return. Designer Jonathan Fensom and Director Claire van Kampen never make this clear in The Globe’s interpretation, the audience doesn’t notice the shift in location nor how this creates a new psychological environment in which Iago’s betrayal can freely operate.

While The Globe seems to have returned to a minimal no-sets policy, this has resulted in some curious directional decisions which become equally alienating for the audience. In the opening scene, Iago and Roderigo discuss Othello’s recent marriage, but the actors deliver their lines while circling the stage pillars in rapid figures of eight. This constant movement, and the subsequent breathlessness of the actors, is a bizarre feature of the entire show, with characters frequently moving from one side of the stage to the other mid-sentence, never quite letting the core moments settle or resonate. Perhaps without a set, the space feels intimidating from the stage, but the result is a too frantic production that denies any chance of stillness or the opportunity to build sufficient tension that allow the audience to absorb crucial plot developments.

Utilising the full stage to ensure all sides of the auditorium can see and hear what is happening is great, and there’s nothing more frustrating than all of the action occurring on the opposite side to your seat, but here the constant movement proves counter-productive, actively undermining both the visual and auditory experience of the show. Even from the pit, at relatively close quarters to the stage, it is difficult to hear every word, particularly when half sentences are interrupted by the actor’s movement to another location – presumably the sound quality in the upper levels of the theatre will be hugely problematic. A more effective approach would be to base entire scenes on either side of the space which still balances the action without the whirly confusion of people inexplicably marching up and down. It is a fast-paced play, but this impedes rather than heightens our connection with it, suggesting a fear of exposure that a bare stage may create.

Rylance’s Iago is one of the most anticipated performances of the year, so it’s curious that it should be so unremarkable. With a couple of previews remaining, Rylance hasn’t taken a particular point of view on the character that ties the recitation of the lines to any specific decision about Iago’s motives or purpose. This surprising lack of resolution has much in common with Rory Kinnear’s Macbeth (himself a remarkable Iago in Nicholas Hytner’s 2013 production), in that neither actor seems entirely comfortable in the role or able to make sense of the conflicting ambitions and fears that explain the character.

What Iago is doing in this play and why, we never really find out. Is he a sociopath enjoying the destruction of people around him for its own sake, or are there more complicated jealousies at work? Kinnear made it clear that being overlooked for promotion turned his Iago against his former friend, but although Rylance’s Iago quickly mumbles something about a rumoured affair between his own wife, Amelia, and Othello, and some attraction to Desdemona, we’re never told why he’s doing it. This is compounded by the unusual speed with which Rylance is delivering the lines, the rapidity of which undermines the clarity and prevents us from understanding the character’s aims, losing that important sense of confederacy between the villain and his audience.

It is quite an unexpected performance, and while the show is clearly attempting to maintain a sense of pace, of events rapidly spiralling out of control that unusually for The Globe brings the show in at around two and half hours, it doesn’t result in a real understanding of the character or his motivation. Anyone who has seen Rylance before will know he is a sensitive and accomplished performer of Shakespeare, he loves to play to the crowd while able to extract the subtle nuances and humanity of his characters, which makes this surprisingly workman-like approach quite inexplicable. Even an underpowered Rylance performance is better than most, and will certainly please his fans, but you’re not feeling a huge investment from him in the role – it’s as though he’s barely there.

Despite the uncertain approach to showing themes and purpose, both André Holland as Othello and Jessica Warbeck as Desdemona fair rather better. While the lack of resolution around them hampers our perspective on Othello’s responses, Holland has a command of the stage that suits the social status of his character. This Othello is confident and comfortable in himself cutting the worries of race and prejudice that other interpretations have emphasised, although Holland uses his natural American accent to convey a sense of ‘otherness’ that still sets him apart from a more diverse British cast. That happiness with his lot means the rapid decline into distrust and anger seems more dramatic. Holland’s Othello suggests a respectful and deep love for Desdemona that feels like a credible marriage, while their final confrontation is loaded with danger and tension.

Desdemona can be a rather thankless part, and even some of the best productions can be dragged down by an insipid interpretation that leaves you wondering why everyone is losing their head over her. Yet here, Warbeck has a rational strength that makes her a worthy match for the army commander, delivering her lines quite naturally without any of the shrill simpering that blights over versions, and making her all the more sympathetic, an innocent fatality in a political game. While it would be useful to see some contact with Aaron Pierre’s Cassio, at least to give Iago’s rumour some grounding, the rest of the cast lack direction. Cassio is likeable, while Sheila Atim’s Emilia eventually has her moment of resistance, but there is too little ambiguity in the overall show design to allow us to understand why Cassio is an obvious target to be Iago’s fall guy (rather than Rodrigo who openly expresses a desire for Desdemona), and what hold he has over his wife to force her complicity.

With press night imminent, there seems to be much to do if this version of Othello is to shine, and although any production can have an off-night similar reports are emerging of rushed lines and audio difficulties across the early run. As it stands, if you have never seen Othello before then this watchable version conveys the basic story, but it never gets to grips with the dark forces at the heart of the play, or the carefully constructed machinations of its villain. The Globe can do better than this, and Rylance certainly knows how the power of this writer in this theatre can be an illuminating combination. It needs to decide what it wants to say and give its star the time to deliver the performance we all know he is capable of.

Othello is at The Globe until 13 October and tickets start at £5 for standing and £22 seated. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1

Exit the King – National Theatre

This week in quite different productions two Kings will be forced to confront the limits of their power, question whether they are fit to govern the realm and contemplate their own mortality for the first time. On both occasions what the audience sees will be the death pangs of their reign, the final struggle for autonomy and influence as they fruitlessly cling to power while those around them slowly withdraw support for their declining monarch, abandoning them to their inevitable fate. With press performances for the emotive King Lear at the Duke of York’s Theatre and the National Theatre’s quirky take on Ionesco’s absurdist drama Exit the King falling on successive nights, thematically there is considerably more that unites than divides these beleaguered princes.

Absurdist dramas are not quite so in vogue as they once were, and while the odd production pops-up at pub theatres and fringe venues, these 1950 and 60s classics rarely make it to the main stages. Modern attempts to recreate the anarchic oddity of their predecessors can feel rather forced or too consciously zany as the rather tiresome Pity provided this week, yet the best absurdist work succeeds and survives because beneath the strange surface it has something important to say about the state of the world or the human condition. Exit the King plays with our fears of death and the harsh inevitability of our demise; prince or pauper, it comes to us all regardless.

The 1950-70s were a hugely experimental time in European drama, and the era has left us with some of the twentieth-century’s best-known dramatists – Pinter, Beckett and Ionesco. But the work can be difficult to watch today with its loops of logic and flights of fancy that can seem daunting and incomprehensible in our relatively conventional West End structures. Pinter’s focus on tone rather than plot can be confusing, while the increasingly elaborate chaos or surreal lack of purpose in Beckett and Ionesco can make it hard to see their point when nothing appears to happen. Fortunately, Exit the King is one of Ionesco’s more straightforward stories with a handy time-limited structure that drives the play.

King Berenger wakes up one morning, over 400 years into his reign, to discover this is the day he will die. Having lived a vibrant life with two wives, both still present at court, and a series of great victories to look back on Berenger refuses to believe this is his last day on earth. Surrounded by his regal first wife Maguerite, and the more vibrant (and much younger) second wife Marie, as well as his physician, cleaner and guard, the King will pass through the various stages of acceptance before the fatal moment arrives, but will he go quietly?

Known for his emotional reinvigoration of the classics including Don Juan in Soho and Three Days on the Country alongside his new work as a writer, Patrick Marber directs with skill, favouring the more macabre and foreboding aspects of the plot over its sillier elements.  And in doing so, Marber highlights the parallels with King Lear. This faux medieval world also reflects a view of power that Shakespeare also knew, of monarchs divinely appointed by God, sitting above the petty rules of the common man. They command, control and shape society around them and believe themselves capable of fantastical acts. When Berenger at lasts realises his powers are waning, Ionesco represents this as a loss of magic, and the protagonist is no longer able to command the air to move or someone’s hat to rise at will. Like Lear, stripped of the ceremony and mystique of kingship all his frailties are exposed and the subsequent decline is rapid.

Both men call upon the natural world as a symbol of their lost power, failing to stem the tides that will engulf them and suddenly buffeted by the same winds as ordinary mortals, no longer shielded by their divine status. We see a physical crack appear in the wall of the palace which only widens as the time draws near, and although Berenger may not be physically cast out as Lear is, in the same way the world starts to recede from him as we hear that the cessation of his reign has driven people from the land, an empty kingdom with a dying King as dispossessed and purposeless as the wandering Lear. And like his Shakespearian counterpart, this causes Berenger to enter a kind of madness, no longer himself as he grapples for the first time not just with his own humanity but the imminent termination of it, as initial denial gives ways to resignation and despair.

Marber has taken quite an interesting approach that retains some of the extremes of behaviour and occasionally the daffy moments that earn some laughs, but he weighs it down with a darker overlay of fear and inevitability. It’s absurd yes, but also unsettling so the humour becomes wry and even uncomfortable as a once regal symbol becomes a frightened man begging for more life. Marber manages the pitch fairly well which veers continually from Berenger’s deep exploratory monologues as he tries to make sense of his life and imminent death, to the brusque management of his final hour by Maguerite, desperate to get on with it.

Designer Anthony Ward has set this somewhere between the aesthetic of Alice in Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts and a slightly heightened mittle-European kingdom, full of medieval allusion, hierarchy and glamour. There is a slight seediness to the visuals which constantly, and deliberately, undercut the regality of the court, everything seems as though it has lived a tad too long with the King himself a vision of grubby excess and entitlement, as though his inevitable demise is now long overdue. It purposefully avoids generating any sympathy for the characters, reinforcing Ionesco’s implication that this is a death that needs to happen. And for the most part it is simply staged with a cracked stone backdrop bearing the royal crest and representing the palace with various hidden doors and window panels that allow Marber to vary the location and height of the production.

As King Berenger, Rhys Ifans turns up the volume on the grimy majesty of the King, not to the point of caricature, but enough to create a slightly off-kilter tone. His monarch is almost distasteful to look at, decked in pyjamas with an overly painted face which as the performance unfolds becomes caked and broken by sweat. Ifans shows the swings of mood from angry determination that he still has power to monumental self-pity and depression, raging and cursing against his fate. But he’s never really pitiable, and even as Ifans holds the room in the numerous soliloquies as Berenger tries to sum up his life, achievements and fears, Ifans ensures he remains an interesting but perishing figure, there to represent Ionesco’s theme on life clinging far beyond its natural expiration.

Equally interesting is the role of Queen Marguerite whose blank honest continually intrudes on her former husband’s self-pity, hastening the King’s end with frequentreminders of the ticking clock. Dressed by Ward, Indira Varma presents a stylish and stately figure, a 1960s Princess Margaret meets Elizabeth Taylor cross in a beautifully-tailored black velvet gown. Yet Varma offers a complex and cleverly ambiguous figure whose own motivations in the management of this death are highly questionable. Why is Queen Marguerite so keen to tell Berenger the truth, is it an act of kindness to prepare him for the worst or does she intend to profit from his passing? Varma visible scoffs every time her rival Marie speaks, showing considerable contempt for her younger and more romantic replacement, and although she allows everyone to moan and wail without interruption, she instantly snaps the subject back to the inevitability of the death on their conclusion. She seems wise and sensible, a much needed refresh in the kingdom, but a giveaway line perhaps in the play’s closing moments as Marguerite eventually guides Berenger towards the light, divesting himself of his body and worldly goods, where she instructs him to give the kingdom clutched in his hand to her – part of the ritual of death or a genuine power grab? Varma never let’s you know for sure, which makes the performance all the more intriguing.

Supporting the leads, Amy Morgan’s Marie is a flouncing French princess, all delicacy and devotion to her ailing husband, preferring to remind him of their happy past than prepare him for the future. Adrian Scarborough never lets you down, playing the comic oddity of the Doctor with a side-line in astronomy and Merlin impressions with verve, while Debra Gillett as Juliette the maid and Derek Griffiths as the Guard making the court announcements well utilise their smaller roles as equally peculiar inhabitants of the strange court of King Berenger. Together, they represent the various classes of an almost feudal structure that flows down from the King, through the middle-class professionals to the working classes at the bottom, a microcosm of the wider society. Ionesco’s point is that fawn and then flee as they do in the face of the King’s demise, death is a classless pursuer and it will be their turn soon enough.

Translated by Simon Scarfield, like much absurdist work of its time, Exit the King is less concerned with plot than with exploring themes of human behaviour. Patrick Marber’s engaging production builds on the central strangeness of Ionesco’s work, attempting to break down our ongoing battle with the idea of death and why no one wants to face it until they have to. The characters may turn away leaving Marguerite to conduct Berenger’s final moments, but would she be so composed when her turns comes? The scale of that question is explored in the way Marber, Ward and lighting designer Hugh Vanstone manage the Olivier stage throughout the production, carving its depth in half for much of the action, with a small apron into the audience, only revealing its full extent, grandness and gravity at the point the King eventually exits, making for a notable conclusion.

With a few days before press night, Marber’s production will inevitably sharpen and while Exit the King takes a more linear approach to storytelling than similar work of its era, the plot itself is deliberately secondary to the themes and behaviours presented, which can be both testing and disconcerting. The association with King Lear is an interesting (and timely) one, allowing West End audiences to see both shows in quick succession and appreciate their grand discussions of mortality all the more. Ultimately, they tell us that whoever you are in life and whatever your achievements, the conclusion is the same – we may never be ready or brave enough to face it but, in the persons of Edgar and (hopefully) Maguerite, we can try to leave good behind.

Exit the King is at the National Theatre until 6 October and tickets start at £15. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1

King Lear – Duke of York’s Theatre

Our collective theatre memory is full of remarkable performances, whenever a show is revived someone in the production or at least one of the critics will refer to a definitive performance they once saw from a great actor of the past, a benchmark for every subsequent version we see. This is particularly true for Shakespeare, so as we continue to revere Olivier, Gielgud and the rest, audiences may begin to think they will never see anything to match them. It’s all nonsense of course, the stand-out performances in any era are often only judged so in retrospect and modern theatre offers much that will be remembered. But once in a while you know you’re in the presence of greatness and Ian McKellen’s King Lear will be talked about for years to come.

Shakespeare’s plays are eternally relevant, whatever the external socio-political circumstances of the times, they fit, and thus King Lear comes around with considerable regularity. It’s a difficult play to pace correctly and can sometimes feel overly ponderous or meandering. By extension the star power of whoever play’s Lear can also drown out the surround cast, diluting the important political and dynastic machinations that drive the plot.

No such worries in this carefully controlled and cohesive transfer from the Chichester Festival Theatre, the latest of their programme to come into town, in which Director Jonathan Munby gives equal weighting to the three elements of the plot, tempering the extraordinary charisma of his leading man by generating interest in the play’s contingent storylines – the grasping power of Regan and Goneril, and the destruction of Gloucester’s family.

The corrupting nature of power and its association with ensuing madness are frequent themes across many of Shakespeare’s political and tragic plays. Macbeth violently seizes power and loses his sanity, Hamlet’s balance is disturbed by his Uncle’s equally aggressive dispatch of the rightful King, while Coriolanus’s delusional obsession with his own popularity leads to tyranny. This version of King Lear uses his faulty decision to share his kingdom as the very essence of his madness. The poor use of power is a symptom of what’s to come rather than his subsequent rejection, placing the monarch in a web of intrigue that seemed always waiting to ensnare him.

With so many shouty Lear’s in recent years, it’s refreshing to see an interpretation that’s considerably more varied, drawing out the sensitive and gentle aspects of lost identity to temper the fewer, and here more unexpected, moments of rage and cruelty. There is a real honesty and sensitivity in the way Lear’s madness is presented, and, as anyone who has lived with dementia sufferers will know, there is huge variety in mood and interaction across any single day. Moments of perfect lucidity are common, intermingled with calm loops of memory and confusion about timelines, while the flashes of bitter anger and frustration pass as rapidly and vigorously as they emerged.

You see all of this in McKellen’s performance, and as he gives away his lands there are couple of small contortions of the face in which Lear struggles to retain his train of thought, and overwhelming emotion tries to force its way up his throat like reflux. This Lear does rage but only rarely, when he is unable to process the responses of those around him or his own feelings. The bitter curses he heaps on Goneril are all the more shocking for seeming to come from nowhere, one minute a reasonable conversation, the next an invective on sterility, before fading once more to a quieter resignation. You see this change of weather pass across McKellen’s face, a clear and subtle impression of those shifting faculties in his mind that become increasingly pitiable, rather than the result of his hateful tyranny. This is a Lear who cannot control what is happening to him and the result is very moving.

This softer approach also makes sense of the notion of injustice that plagues the King throughout the play, and the obsessive way his mind returns again and again to the clawing ingratitude of his two eldest daughters, reiterating the idea of this as a trigger rather than the sole cause of his decline. The melancholic sorrow with which McKellen’s Lear references the cause of his undoing implies the personal loss of a father’s deluded love for his ungrateful children rather than the more bombastic approaches to the character that emphasis the loss of sovereignty. This Lear sees the Duchesses of Cornwall and Albany for what they really are, and it breaks him.

McKellen is so quiet as Lear, with so much of his performance and emotion expressed in small contained movements, a tiny and frail human unable to fight against the elements and fates stacked against him. This stripping of kingship to reveal the fallible man below is something Shakespeare explored many times – not least in Henry V’s pre-battle qualms – and McKellen draws on that to considerable effect to show the easy ruin of a man whose anointed greatness is no barrier to pain, destitution and lovelessness.

McKellen is so memorable in this role because he slowly introduces Lear’s metamorphosis, cracking the surface of the monarch so chinks of confused mind start to show through the performance until only fragments of the true Lear are left, disparate and near unreachable. When early on he lingers a beat too long on a comment about treating Cordelia badly, it is so small a remark you almost miss it, but it reveals everything about the slow tearing at his heart and conscience that McKellen uses to rake across the mind of his character, a constant sense of thoughts in flux and flutter.

Despite his considerable star power, McKellen’s collaborative approach keeps the play perfectly in balance, leaving room for the intricate parallel narratives that reflect his own trajectory and allowing other characters equal space to shine, not least Luke Thompson’s Edgar driven to feign madness away from Court when his reputation is maligned by his base-born half-brother. Thompson’s star has been steadily rising for some time with notable roles in numerous classical productions, including a fresh take on Laertes in Robert Icke’s 2017 Hamlet where his approach mirrored the fatal indecision of Andrew Scott’s protagonist.

The role of Edgar can sometimes be too overplayed, to exuberantly mad when he assumes the name of Tom. Instead, Thompson uses his experience of Hamlet to provide a counterpoint to Lear’s decline, but with more stage time than his previous roles, this part gives him scope to display a range of skills. First seen as a clean-cut hero in appropriate military dress, attending on the pomp and ceremony of Lear’s Court, the panicked Edgar hides himself in the believable feigned madness of Tom, adopting three distinct accents to delineate the various personalities he assumes, including a very passable Scottish brogue as Tom.

There is also a vigorous and well executed fight scene in the play’s final moments as Edgar tries to disarm his knife-wielding brother in hand-to-hand combat, while Thompson also brings to bear all the tenderness and emotional sensitivity that Edgar feels for the destroyed parallel figures of his own father, Gloucester, and his plagued former monarch. He credible assumes the role of saviour, a good honest man whose moral rectitude and kind heart wins the respect of the audience and his kingdom.

There is a semi-religious concept of morality that runs through Director Jonathan Munby’s production, and aside from Edgar the only core player left standing is Anthony Howell’s Albany (who previously worked with Thompson on The Globe’s Julius Caesar), a man betrayed by his wife but presented as upstanding enough to retain his life and presumably the country. Claire Price as Goneril and Kirsty Bushell as Regan deliberately make the sisters initially more reasonable and less caricatured than other productions often do. They both appear modest and stately in declaring their love for their father, but power corrupts them. Price is a despairing country gentlewoman exasperated by her cantankerous parent, while Bushell’s more glamorous Regan has a potent sexually charged relationship with her husband (Daniel Rabin) that seems to quite naturally tip into sadism.

Like Hamlet, King Lear is a double tragedy and both plays show an ordinary family destroyed by its proximity to the throne, innocent casualties of wider political games. The Gloucester subplot is often the most poignant, particularly when the Royal Family are portrayed as unlikable tyrants, and Danny Webb’s Gloucester carefully draws-out all the emotion and sympathy the role can offer. The famous eye gouging scene is brutal as ever, but the clifftop despair and regret for his mistakes are made quite tenderly. As his scheming bastard son, James Corrigan is suitably villainous and calculating, easily pulling the strings of those around him to serve his own advancement.

Munby’s production is still a lengthy affair at around three and a half hours, but all the elements of the story are so well knitted together that it takes on its own momentum, even with a lengthy two hour run to the only interval. But there is a consistent vision for the show which balances and reflects the pitch of the performances, presenting a semi-military Royal state, not dissimilar from our own, that revels in its Court rituals as well its country pursuits. Designer Paul Wills surrounds the stage with a semi-circle of Jacobean panelling, and, in Goneril’s house, presents a dinner party full of men in country tweeds, a macho shooting party that looks, and behaves, like The Riot Club.

The first part of the show is performed on a blood red circle of carpet that becomes soaked in rain water which the actors must slosh around on, as though wading in their own wickedness. Events reach their crisis in an abattoir complete with carcasses and severed animal heads where Gloucester loses his eyes before the interval, but later as redemption and moral correction dominate the story, the circle is made white and the panelling peels back to reveal white walls. The carefully considered symbolism of the staging is subtle but reveals the slow unravelling of privilege, a monarchy wiped out and evil purged from the land.

Unusually, there is still more than a week of preview performances before Press Night, but this Chichester transfer has hit its stride early. After the scramble for tickets earlier this year, hour-long queues, having seats selected for you based on pay bands and crashing websites, just getting to the checkout may have seemed like a miracle, but it was worth it.  King Lear has long been a test for actors of a certain age, but the focus on the star playing the declining monarch can under-power the rest of the story. It’s a relief to see a production that tightens its core, with Munby giving equal weight to each strand so as to build proper momentum. A memorable interpretation with a theatre superstar giving one of his finest and most generous performances.

 King Lear is at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 3 November and tickets start at £25. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1

The Lehman Trilogy – National Theatre

10 years on from the financial crisis and its effects are still with us; continued austerity, political instability around the world and a hankering for the mythological peace of a past that never was. Many reports, books and films have been made to try to explain what happened in September 2008 as banks toppled and governments took strategic decisions on whether to rescue major institutions from bankruptcy. Years of accumulated debt, resold and repackaged, complex and unstable finally brought the house down, and the first to fall was Lehman Brothers, a firm built by three brothers who moved from 1840s Germany to Alabama to sell suits and fabrics, who became the architects of a new mode of business, they were “the middle men”.

A success across Europe since its premiere in Italy in 2015, Stefano Massini’s epic and much anticipated three-hour story of those brothers, their sons and grandsons finally arrives at the National Theatre, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes. Already close to selling-out, anyone with a ticket should congratulate themselves while everyone else should queue for day seats, try Friday Rush or beg for returns because The Lehman Trilogy is utterly spectacular, a rare and beautifully-made theatrical triumph that deserves all the plaudits that will come raining down at this week’s press night.

In 1844, Henry Lehman, known as “the Head”, arrives in America to establish a modest but buoyant clothing store in a small Alabama town. Soon joined by brothers Emanuel (“The Arm”) and Mayer (“Spud”) the business expands, acting as the go-between for the plantation and cotton mill owners while amassing a sizeable fortune. After Henry’s death, Emanuel moves to New York to trade coffee, soon ordering his remaining brother to join him, where they expand their financial interests and their line. Outstripped by the next generation, Emanuel’s son Philip takes the firm in a new direction, but in the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Emanuel’s grandson Bobby inherits the firm and 160 years of trading decisions suddenly come back to haunt them.

Massini’s approach is remarkably theatrical, using a spoken-narrative in which the actors describe their own character’s activities and each other’s, while dramatizing particular conversations or encounters. This becomes deeply engaging and adds a fluid quality to a quick succession of scenes. It departs from films like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short by sidestepping the complexities of the financial dealings that led to the 2008 crash. Instead, throughout each of the play’s three sections, shown together on one night, it is the human story, the family tragedy that Massini wishes us to see, how a man content to own a single shop spawned a trading empire that became greedier with each generation. The monetary complexities of loans to people who couldn’t pay, of buying debt and tricky stock manoeuvres you can find elsewhere, this is not so much what happened as why.

Part I: Three Brothers takes the story from Henry’s embarkation to Mayer joining Emanuel in New York, Part II: Fathers and Sons picks up the story until the morning of the Wall Street Crash, while Part III: The Immortals bookends its narrative with financial crises, finishing on that fatal autumn day in 2008. Over the course of three gripping hours, Massini contrasts growing profit with declining religious observance as the once devoted Jewish family trade-in their sacred rituals to focus on business as usual, and it’s notable that days of mourning and beard growth are, generations later, reduced to a few minutes silence before the continual clamour of the trading floor resumes.

And within that, there is a continual reminder of the wealth and status of America founded on waves of immigration from Europe, with their continual challenge to earn social status. This plays out not only in the original Lehmans trying to win prospective brides among the established elite, but in the growing Americanisation of their children and grandchildren, with Massini arguing that the Lehmans born in the USA have a different hunger, one that breeds confidence and inalienable right. Even in the post-Lehman family era at the end of the play it is a Hungarian who heads the company, a statement on the continued role that immigration has played in the shaping of a superpower.

What Power’s adaptation and Mendes’s direction does so brilliantly is to draw out the changing notion of belief, of fate and of trust. The original brothers have integrity, they believe in the power of their God and ask the men of the South, the plantation owners and local governors, to trust them personally, which they do. A century on and that belief is now invested in the mythical money that sits on balance sheets and trading screens, the men themselves, like Philip, Bobby and their non-Lehman successors at the company feel like Gods themselves, commanding empires of words and numbers, none of it with any physical substance.

Power and Mendes also carefully mark the various times in Lehman Brothers’ history when the firm came close to failure, when the literal and metaphorical fires almost consumed them. The burning cotton fields that led them to their first government investment after the American Civil War sit notably against the dark days of 1929 when somehow the family clung on, emerging into a new era of business even stronger than before, until the post-war division between banking and trading consumed them. There is a huge tragedy about a family who begin and end with nothing. As Simon Russell Beale’s character momentously states in Part III, “they were immortal until they weren’t.”

There really is no better choice for a project like this than Mendes whose recent stage-work has created a feel of epic intimacy. With his King Lear for the National some years ago and in particular The Ferryman (of which Mendes’s direction was like musical conduction), his ability to paint on a huge canvas, to show size, scale, history and reach while at the same time boiling that down to the personal relationship between two people is a pure joy. He wants the audience to care for the original brothers, to appreciate their desire to succeed, their fascination with America and how touching the destruction of their legacy becomes. Yet in every decision, every dream, every change of direction, Mendes makes you feel the long-term ramifications, knowing it’s another step towards their own destruction a hundred years later.

Set-designer Es Devlin has done some of her best work here on Lehman, and like many before her reduces the expanse of the Lyttelton stage by creating a huge glass and steel modern office set with large boardroom and two smaller meeting spaces, amongst which the actors create a century of history. It may have been simpler to fly-in backdrops for each era, but instead the three brothers walk like ghosts around the future, the office-set a constant reminder of where all their effort and toil ended-up. It has an ominous quality that works beautifully with Luke Halls wrap-around video screens that project scenes of the cotton fields of the Alabama countryside one minute and New York skyscrapers the next, all predominantly in black and white, views from the glass office windows, a presence but not a distraction.

Mendes uses both to considerable effect, rotating the set as a nod to the passing years, or during moments of high drama as events spiral out of control. One of the best scenes is during the latter part of the show as the last Lehman, Bobby, and his colleagues do a twist to indicate the wildness of the traders doing their inexplicable work, and rather than rotate the office, the video screen display of stocks start to spin, building to a rapid blur so that it becomes hard to tell what is still and what is moving, a clever and pointed comment about the heady free-for-all that became the 1980s and 90s on Wall Street.

The Lehman Triology has six major characters and a secondary cast of wives, children, colleagues, Rabbis and politicians that could easily require a sizeable company of actors. Unlike earlier version with a much larger cast, Director Sam Mendes slims this down to just three actors onstage for the duration who play all the roles between them and, while dressed for 1844 and standing in 2008, have nothing but words to conjure for us the history and atmosphere of America from the coach-and-horses days of the mid-nineteenth century South to the New York of the twenty-first century. A feat which they achieve extremely effectively and with incredible power.

These are tour de force performances from Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley, who work superbly together to create a much wider ensemble with just a few “bankers boxes”, the cardboard storage containers that so many employees used to remove their things from their failed company, as props. Russell Beale’s Henry may be short-lived but has a determination to succeed, and as the “Head” establishes what will be a considerable legacy. But Russell Beale clearly has most fun as comic sketches of so many other characters, girlish debutants and embittered wives, precocious children and eventually a more substantial role as Emanuel’s son, the rather cold Philip, who first inherited the business, shocking his father with the shift from products to money as its core focus.

As Emanuel, Ben Miles brings confidence and command to the suave middle brother who charms the Alabama gentry as easily as his wins-over New York society. Emanuel is the most ambitious of the brothers, eager and determined to expand, but shrewd in his choices and it is no surprise that it is his line that inherits the bank. Miles lends him great charisma which he later brings to the smaller role of Herbert (Mayer’s son) who utilised the family charm and killer instinct to become Governor of New York and eventually a Senator. Miles also brings home the stark personal cost of financial collapse at the start of Part III, ominously and emotively revealing the quick success of stockbroker suicides in 1929.

Mayer Lehman is the most reticent of the three, and Adam Godley reveals a quieter, more thoughtful character, nicknamed “Spud” as a child, and not considered the intellectual equal of his siblings. Yet, he rises to the occasion after Henry’s death to partner his remaining brother in the firm. Godley also plays Emanuel’s grandson Bobby (Philip’s son), an aloof aesthete who invests in art while, as an old man, takes the firm into the computer age, heralding its own destruction as the company owner  unable to understand the mechanics of the business he’s running.

You are completely in their thrall from start to finish, fully invested in the simplicity of the story-telling as the actors transport you with them across country and through time. The Lehman Trilogy is a substantial achievement, a beautifully balanced depiction of the role of one family in a much wider history of America. It’s focus on belief – first in God and then in money – argues that the financial crisis was caused by wider society turning its face away from the banking industry, unable and unwilling to comprehend the complex systems it had generated, because all the while the money kept rolling-in that faith was justified. Ultimately though, this brilliant and powerful piece of theatre reveals the sadness of legacy, how easy destruction can be when you reach too high, and the tragedy of three brother betrayed by their own successors.

The Lehman Trilogy is at the National Theatre until 20 October, and tickets start at £15. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore – Noel Coward Theatre

2018 is becoming quite the year for Martin McDonagh; in January his last major play Hangmen opened in New York taking most of its original London cast, then in late February the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri won two Oscars, and in October his latest play A Very Very Dark Matter starring Jim Broadbent about Hans Christian Andersen heralds the Bridge Theatre’s autumn season. In the meantime, a beautifully pitched revival of McDonagh’s 2001 play The Lieutenant of Inishmore about a cat-loving terrorist in1990s Ireland is now playing at the Noel Coward Theatre and guaranteed to draw audiences with star Aidan Turner in the leading role.

With a exceptional version of Translations running at the National Theatre, and more Friel to come at the Donmar later this month with their revival of Aristocrats, London is enjoying a mini-Irish season. Across these plays, there is an examination of the changing relations between our two countries, as well as open-ended questions about nationality and language that have shaped both nations over hundreds of years. With Brexit drawing focus once again to the Northern Ireland boarder, this timely combination of plays have concurrent themes about identity formation, conflict and the future development of two countries whose history is inextricable entangled.

McDonagh has always been very astute in capturing the contrasting and multifaceted nature of the individual, delighting in the unexpected foibles and ridiculousness that bring humanity to some of his darkest creations. Often focused on the perpetrators of extreme violence, many of these characters are given an unexpected softer side, so whether its Brendan Gleeson’s hired assassin with a passion for the medieval architecture of Bruges, a former state executioner running a local pub or a cat-loving anarchist, extreme and almost surreal though it can be, within McDonagh’s work there is always a kernel of truth about human behaviour that lurks beneath the surface. However violent their career choices, there is always pride, attachments and fallibility that make them more rounded.

This also serves to emphasise the fate of the many innocents who get caught in the cross-fire, those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely outside of the central plot and suffer as a result – be it children, neighbouring cats or racist dwarves. McDonagh’s scenarios have a warped moral dimension to them, ensuring that the bad people tend to pay for their crimes in outrageously violent ways, retaining a reasonably straightforward perspective on good and evil, punishment and justice.

As a very black comedy, The Lieutenant of Inishmore on the surface is essentially a tale of in-fighting between various subsets of a terrorist organisation, a disagreement about the etiquette and degrees of violence to be employed in pursuit of their cause. But the unspoken context here is the fraught aftermath of a colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland that has driven this group of men to seek destructive and murderous means to achieve liberty for the North. McDonagh takes a tongue-in-cheek approach but as each hilarious scene builds to a beautifully pitched comic conclusion, the contextual reality of this era, of the fragility of political peace processes, of generations of people driven to extremist behaviour remains striking.

Set on the Island of Inishmore off the coast of Ireland, teenager Davey delivers the corpse of Donny’s black cat which he found in the road with his head staved in. Unfortunately for Davey, the cat – Wee Thomas – really belongs to Donny’s son Padraic, a crazy and violent terrorist working for the INLA, who instantly breaks off the torture of a drug dealer to rush home to see the cat he adores. Teaming-up with Davey’s sister Mairead who enjoys shooting the eyes out of cattle and pursued by an assassination-squad of INLA colleagues, Padraic’s fury is enflamed by meagre attempts to substitute his beloved moggy for another. But, who really killed Wee Thomas and will anyone live to tell the tale?

There is a huge amount of technical skill involved in creating a show like this, one which mixes an implied menace with an almost cartoon-violence that is deliberately unrealistic enough to prevent the violence overwhelming the humour. There is a kind of joy in the build-up to some of the more extreme aspects of the show, which become darker as the plot unfolds, and Christopher Oram has done an impressive job with some slightly heightened but still ghastly-looking props, particularly in the glorious finale.

The penultimate scene too runs beautifully but is full of carefully timed stage-craft that is considerably more complicated than they make it look. It’s a high-stakes scene, probably the most fraught of the play as all the plot elements come together in a Tarantino-style face-off between the various characters. It’s rare to see something like this on stage because it’s so difficult to accomplish in real-time, but Oram’s team has delivered a series of splatters and explosions that can be triggered at exactly the right moment, and even more importantly, create just the right effect, at the right angle on the set and characters – a not insubstantial achievement.

Tone is equally hard to manage in a show like this, and it can be extremely difficult to make it just black enough without becoming too grim, while keeping the lighter stuff in check so that it doesn’t become too farcical – McDonagh wants you to see a touch of reality in his characters, to believe them capable of their extreme actions, but at the same time to chortle at their ludicrous sensitivities and grasp of morality. Director Michael Grandage has got this exactly right, allowing the story to build in the early scenes, enjoying the sillier moments, while still creating sufficient investment in the characters as we build to the more shocking plot devices.

At less than two hours with an unnecessary and distracting interval, the play has only nine scenes across which a full and engaging plot is presented and concluded. Grandage manages the transitions using the main stage for Donny’s farmhouse, and locating other scenes in front of a curtain, a papier mache and paint affair fashioned to look like the Island of Inishmore from the air. This all works very nicely, maintaining the flow while separating between the moments where characters are in transit from their more rooted and identifiable existence in Donny’s home. It is also hilarious, sometimes overt and silly, while at other times more subtle, with throw-away references or character-traits that add extra layers for those who want to see them.

With the stars of long-running and much-loved TV dramas, it’s (shamefully) all too easy to forget their range of skills and the diversity of their work elsewhere. As Ross Poldark, Aidan Turner became an overnight sensation which four series on shows no signs of abating, but the character offers only a limited outlet for his acting portfolio. With hints that the next season may be the last, this seems like an appropriate time for Turner’s return to the stage, to start thinking about life beyond the tricorn hats and slow-motion horse-riding, and to remind the acting world that he has plenty more to offer. His role in the superb BBC adaptation of And Then There Were None offered a charged and dangerous presence, while here in The Lieutenant of Inishmore he comprehensively proves he also has a talent for comedy.

As Padraic, Turner switches in an instant from violent fiend to cat-loving softie, frequently breaking down into tears even at the thought of any harm befalling his precious puss. His first appearance sets-up the rest of the show, as Padraic tortures a drug dealer suspended upside down from the ceiling, Turner elicits just the right balance of silliness in McDonagh’s text, landing a great line about selling drugs to Protestants and, when he hears of Wee Thomas’s illness, the slightly squeaky and tremulous way he asks to speak to his cat on the phone has the audience in stitches.

Turner’s Padraic is definitely a man with no regard for human life, happy to sacrifice his dad and neighbours for the cause, a man with a proclivity for blowing-up chip shops and an anarchic temper. Turner continually balances a growing menace with the heightened nature of the characterisations and scenario to emphasise the ridiculousness of Padraic’s extremes of hate and love (for cats). A final memory of Padraic winsomely stroking a dead cat while referencing 90s TV show The House of Eliot is an image that will stay with you. Turner is genuinely very funny with a shrewd comic timing and clearly enjoys the whole thing tremendously

Padraic’s dad, played by Denis Conway is wonderfully dry, offering an understated but sharp portrayal of man fearing the wrath of his crazy son but with no more interest in anyone’s life but his own. He plays the straight man in a hilarious double act with Chris Walley’s Davey, as the pair embroil themselves in a number of enjoyably daft schemes to hide Wee Thomas’s death from Padraic. Making his stage debut, Walley is given a terrible curly mullet, of which Davey is inordinately proud, and the actor holds his own very nicely in an impressive ensemble.

The only woman in the story, Charlie Murphy’s Mairead is a cold ruthless attacker of cow’s eyes which she shoots out for practice. A dedicated revolutionary, far braver than anyone else in the show, and proud of her skills as a crack shot from a decent distance, 16-year old Mairead is desperate to join the INLA and has an eye for her hero Padraic. Murphy brings a soldier’s composure to the role of the psychotic youngster with a casual approach to life and death, a cool logic that is both comical and terrifying. You’d never want to cross her but in a world of gun-toting men you also slightly root for her.

With McDonagh and Turner’s names attached to the project, there’ll be no concerns about selling tickets so critical support becomes less necessary, but with press night on Wednesday they’re sure to get it anyway. This version of The Lieutenant of Inishmore is an impressive technical accomplishment supported by very fine performances from the ensemble, that has plenty of layers to unpick. More than anything, it’s just a great shoot-em-up farce, a darkly comic treat with a black black heart. It may be a good year for Martin McDonagh, but with so much of his work available, it’s great for us too.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is at the Noel Coward Theatre until 8 September, and tickets start at £10. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1