Theatre Review of the Year and What to See in 2020

With a new year fast approaching, it is an interesting time to reflect on small changes across the theatre landscape in 2019 that will continue to shape how UK theatre will look as it moves into a new decade. While there is still a very long way to go in equally reflecting voices from different perspectives and experiences there is a sense – in fringe theatre primarily but slowly making its way into the mainstream as well – of shifting sands and the desire of artistic directors and theatre programmers to present seasons that better reflect the make-up of our multicultural and multinational communities.

Regional Theatre Brings New Perspectives

There are interesting and educative works emerging from companies from around the country; most memorable were Education, Education, Education in which Bristol-based theatre company The Wardrobe Ensemble innovatively unpacked the enduring problems in our scholastic system since the Blair government. Likewise, Helen Monks and Matt Woodhouse’s Trojan Horse which came to Battersea Arts Centre as part of a wider tour examined the nonsense of a Muslim conspiracy in Birmingham schools – a show that went on to play to the communities affected in the hope of finally healing the breach, while Luke Barnes and the Young Vic Taking Part in collaboration with inmates at HMP Wandsworth created the insightful The Jumper Factory currently at HOME Manchester until February.

Meanwhile, the relocation of The Tower Theatre company to Stoke Newington also brought a season of  critically acclaimed comedy and drama including a superb approach to The Beauty Queen of Leenane – with productions of Sweat, A Passage to India and The Norman Conquests already announced for Spring, this is definitely a company on the up. The surface simplicity of a star rating system doesn’t always reflect the potential or the lasting impression that these works in progress are already making, and the role that regional theatre companies will continue to play in 2020 to broaden perspectives.

It may lack the funding and support of theatre in the capital but regional venues continue to punch above their weight; at Chichester Festival Theatre in September John Simm joined forced with Dervla Kirwan for an exciting production of Macbeth – rivaled only by an astonishingly good interpretation at Temple Church by Antic Disposition in August starring Harry Anton as the troubled and murderous monarch – while the wonderful Laura Wade play The Watsons came first to the Menier Chocolate Factory and will take over the Harold Pinter Theatre in May, a must-see deconstruction of female authorship and characterisation.

A late addition to the West End arrived in the days before Christmas as the charming Curtains: The Musical Comedy rescued the Wyndhams with an unexpectedly delightful backstage murder mystery – the West End premiere of Kander and Ebb’s forgotten song and dance show which will shortly resume its tour until April. The Theatre Royal Bath production of Blithe Spirit with Jennifer Saunders and Geoffrey Streatfeild has also charmed its way to a regional tour followed by a West End transfer from March 2020 – the first since Angela Lansbury’s turn as Madame Arcarti in 2014.

Great tours included the fantastic Glengarry Glen Ross which replaced its West End cast with equally impressive performances from Mark Benson and Nigel Harman (the less said about the disgraceful Bitter Wheat the better!), while Inua Ellams’s unstoppable The Barbershop Chronicles continues to run and run two years on. The National Theatre also toured their production of A Taste of Honey which concluded with a West End transfer to the Trafalgar Studios running until February. And not forgetting Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s Six, the one-hour pop sensation about the wives of Henry VIII which toured widely this year earning an Olivier nomination for Best Musical and now a Broadway transfer.

Reimagined Classics

Some of the most exciting work in 2019 have entirely reinvented well-known plays or used innovative techniques to make important social or political statements. Best among them was Femi Elufowoju jr’s The Glass Menagerie at The Arcola Theatre, whose diverse and varied programming entirely reflects the Dalston community it serves. In a co-production with Watford Palace Theatre, Elufowoju jr’s production of Tennessee Williams’s classic play recast the Wingfields as an African-American family to meaningful effect.

Marianne Elliott did the same with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman casting Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke that earned its own West End transfer and found a whole new level to the isolation of the central family and why the American Dream was never for everyone. Add to that Inua Ellams’s exciting and vivid relocation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters to the Biafran War in Nigeria at the National Theatre, and Jamie Armitage’s Southern Belles at the King’s Head which brought two one-act Williams play’s about emotional fragility and class division so sensitively to life, and theatremakers are starting to think more broadly about ways in which the thematic and emotional universality of the classical canon can be reflected on stage.

The West End Finds Breadth and Depth

Those big American dramatists had significant West End success as well with a range of productions celebrating Arthur Miller, including the aforementioned Death of a Salesman as well a disappointing production of The American Clock at the Old Vic, who quickly revived with this year’s most outstanding Miller production, inviting Bill Pullman and Sally Field to star in a very fine and devastating version of All My Sons which also boasted excellent supporting turns from Colin Morgan and Jenna Coleman. A lesser performed Tennessee Williams play also enjoyed a big West End run in the autumn, hailing the return of Clive Owen to the stage as the lead in The Night of the Iguana, a sultry and rewarding version directed by James McDonald.

It was a trend that continued with varied approaches to other classic playwrights, and some of the best theatre came from productions of lesser known works given an all to rare outing. For Ibsen-lovers it was Hayley Atwell who easily gave one of the performances of the year as the complex Rebecca West in Rosmersholm alongside Tom Burke as the eponymous landowner, while Noel Coward has rarely been better served than in Matthew Warchus’s hilarious gender and sexuality-bending version of Present Laughter that put paid to any questions about Coward’s modern relevance. As well as a fine cast including Indira Varma, Sophie Thompson and up-and-comer Luke Thallon on superb form, it also boasted an exquisite central performance from Andrew Scott, every bit as good as his Hamlet in 2017.

New versions of the classics look equally promising in 2020 with Ian Rickson’s take on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya from January with Richard Armitage and Ciaran Hinds while in the same month the Old Vic celebrate Samuel Beckett with Endgame tempting Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe back to the stage. Angels in America writer Tony Kushner adapts Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit with Lesley Manville, while celebrated directed Ivo van Hove brings his international, and brief, versions of both Death in Venice and The Glass Menagerie – the latter with Isabelle Huppert – to the Barbican. And not forgetting a much anticipated To Kill a Mockingbird penned by TV and film writer Aaron Sorkin starring Rhys Ifans.

New writing wasn’t entirely forgotten in 2019 although there seemed to be fewer new plays opening in the West End than we’ve seen in the last few years. Duncan Macmillan’s 2011 play Lungs  isn’t exactly new but it made its London debut with the inspired pairing of Claire Foy and Matt Smith in an emotional story about reproduction and climate change which heads to the US for an off-Broadway run from late March. Simon Woods attracted theatre royalty Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings to star in his first play Hansard at the National in August, a fascinating and honed debut about the political failures of the Left and Right in the last 30 years, while the theatre also hosted the UK premiere of Annie Baker’s The Antipodes another fine installment from a playwright whose reputation grows in stature with each new play. And concluding the year, Mike Lew’s invigorating homage to Richard III and the High School Movie became the wonderfully astute Teenage Dick at the Donmar Warehouse in December.

The Musical Resurgent

But if the West End in 2019 was really defined by anything it was both the reprise of musical theatre and the productions of Jamie Lloyd – with the two themes neatly intersecting in the summer. Not so long ago the musical was widely derided, tourist fodder that serious theatre-goers would actively avoid, but revitalised and mature productions of Follies and Company led to a renaissance for the genre which this year has born considerable fruit. The UK premiere of Dear Evan Hansen won everybody over with the first true musical of the social media age, a new star was born in Jac Yarrow who took the lead in a refreshed revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which added some serious nostalgia factor by adding Jason Donovan to the cast, while the temporary closure of the renamed Sondheim Theatre led to the all-star Les Miserables: The Staged Concert which united old friends Alfie Boe and Michael Ball, the latter adding a new chapter to the show’s performance history by swapping his status as the original Marius for the role of Javert. And proving that musicals can also meaningfully tell more serious real life stories, the Soho Theatre hosted the UK premiere of Max Vernon’s stirring The View Upstairs, with great turns from John Partridge and Declan Bennett.

The musical then is going nowhere in 2020 and some big productions are already lined-up; American film star Jake Gyllenhaal brings his acclaimed turn in Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George to the Savoy Theatre from June, while the dream team of director Dominic Cooke and leading lady Imelda Staunton reunite for Hello Dolly at the Adelphi in August. Michael Ball continues his journey through his career highs by returning to the role of Edna Turnblad in a new version of Hairspray at the Coliseum in April with Lizzie Bea making her debut as Tracy – a production that promises to be plenty of fun. And if you missed it in Regent’s Park in the summer, then Jamie Lloyd’s joyously modern take on Evita transfers to the Barbican in August where the challenge of reimagining his ticker-taped, multi-entrance outside production in a classic proscenium arch auditorium will be an interesting one.

Jamie Lloyd Dominates the West End

And what an exceptional year it has been for Jamie Lloyd, the director’s name seems to be on everyone’s lips as he landed astonishing production after production, reimagining and reinvigorating the classics. The divisive Faustus in 2016 seems a long time ago, gone are the bells and whistles and lurid designs and instead Lloyd’s commitment to the purity of the original text has been an abiding feature of his success in the last 18 months. As the new year began, the West End was in the midst of the Pinter at the Pinter season with Lloyd resuming the reigns for Collections Six and Seven which celebrated and marvelled at Pinter’s playful use of language, most notably in an intense radio play staging of A Slight Ache, followed by a celebrated stage return for Danny Dyer and Martin Freeman in The Dumb Waiter.

Going head-to-head with Atwell and Scott for the year’s very best performances are Tom Hiddleston and James McAvoy who set theatreland alight with their devastatingly raw portrayals of love gone horribly wrong. The Pinter series concluded with Betrayal in March, as fine a production as you’ll see anywhere, with Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox playing the unbearably entwined friends and lovers that was filled with pain, self-destruction and deception which Lloyd steered with an unassuming simplicity that lent unrelenting weight to the emotional entanglements. It rightly earned an acclaimed Broadway transfer in the autumn.

Lloyd rapidly announced a new residency at The Playhouse Theatre where, despite the poor sightlines and eye-wateringly expensive ticket prices, Cyrano de Bergerac has earned wide acclaim with a mesmerising performance of unrequited love, jealousy and soldierly bravado by James McAvoy that runs until February. This must-see production has been inclusively realised, turning what is often a very silly three hour caricature into an outstanding and crushing examination of self-image and emotional laceration. 2020 will also deliver two major West End debuts as Lloyd tackles both Chekhov and Ibsen with Emilia Clarke in The Seagull and Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House, both set to be fascinating but respectful interpretations by a superstar director.

But the new theatre year has plenty more gifts to offer, not least Timothee Chalamet making his West End debut alongside Eileen Atkins in 4000 Miles at the Old Vic in April, Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet at the Young Vic in July, the return of City of Angels, a new play by Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt, a stage version of Upstart Crow and Colin Morgan in Caryl Churchill at the Bridge – with plenty more to be announced. 2019 may not have entirely shaken-up theatreland but the foundations are slowly being laid for greater representation and the inclusion of more voices in 2020. And whether it’s musicals or plays, fringe, regional theatre or West End every bit of the theatre ecosystem has a vital part to play.

For up to date reviews in 2020, follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog   

 

Curtains: The Musical Comedy – Wyndhams Theatre

Christmas is the perfect time for a murder mystery, the dark nights, the cold weather that makes you want to bustle up and the obligatory frustration of people gathering together for enforced celebration feel like the perfect setting for a bit of seasonal homicide. From Agatha Christie to Georges Simenon, plenty of mysteries have been based in the festive period, usually in isolated mansions, cut off by blizzards from the the outside world as a disparate family or group with an axe decide to grind it. And for an audience, we love the opportunity to embrace the cosy drama of it all, relishing the chance to pit ourselves against the lone detective as we work out the connection between the victim, suspects and plenty of unearthed secrets.

Curtains: The Musical Comedy arrives in London at just the right time and while it’s not set at Christmas or even discernibly wintery, it nonetheless feels like a perfect festive treat in the most theatrical of wrappers. And it is certainly a gift to the Wyndhams Theatre after the disastrous Man in the White Suit crashed out of the West End after horrible reviews and poor ticket sales, leaving a 4 week slot available for this transfer (and the West End premiere) of Kander and Ebb’s musical which has been touring the UK in the last few months, earning critical and audience applause – a feat it repeated at last week’s press night.

Curtains is in some ways a strange splicing of theatre and narrative styles, simultaneously – and ambitiously – telling the story of a murder but also the journey from out of town flop in Boston to viable Broadway show, along with the backstage politics that make every member of this large Company a potential suspect. Naturally, across its 2 hours and 45-minute run-time these different strands compete for primacy with the murder investigation often taking a backseat as other storylines are established and followed with greater energy.

The mixed-style of the piece also merges songs written specifically for the Western musical-within-a-musical that the Company are producing, as well as numbers sung by the characters playing actors and their detective behind the scenes, which adds to what is a rich and complex proposition for any stage musical. Yet somehow it works, the energy of it carrying the show between delightful set-pieces while steadily advancing the plot – this is more than just a whodunnit, Kander and Ebb want to immerse you in the theatrical world of actors, producers, directors and investors to understand quite what’s at stake when putting on a show.

Famed for creating Chicago and Cabaret, John Kander, Fred Ebb and book writer Rupert Holmes created Curtains  in the early 2000s with an eventual Broadway transfer in 2007, and the whole show is an unabashed celebration of musical theatre. And in a strong year for new London productions, Curtains finishes 2019 on a high with a true song and dance show that glories in its love of the stage and the process of putting on a production. It is a very different style of show to the sultry atmosphere of Kander and Ebb’s earlier work, a glossier, glitzier and somewhat sanitised vision of human nature where not even some silly murders will stop the show from going on.

It has tones of 42nd Street and A Chorus Line on stage in the way it blends the action in front of and behind the curtain, but there’s also plenty of old Hollywood in there too with the 1959 setting allowing the design and choreography to draw on the big MGM movies which set the standard for song and dance on film. The central premise of Curtains is a theatre-loving detective who needs to simultaneously find the killer by refusing to let the cast and crew leave the building while helping them to fix the ailing Robin Hood musical that has failed to impress the Boston critics – the fact the story of the Nottinghamshire outlaw is relocated to the Wild West doesn’t raise so much as an eyebrow, so it’s best just to go with it. It is a fun twist on the generic Colombo-type investigator by giving him a sideline in amateur theatrics and a director’s eye for detail and drama.

There is plenty to enjoy in Paul Foster’s production; the staging of the Western sections take on a heightened quality to differentiate them from the rest of the story with some zesty numbers, well choreographed by Alistair David, that reference the golden era of Hollywood. The Act One finale ‘Thataway!’, the eventual restyling of ‘In the Same Boat’ and ‘Wide Open Spaces’ in Act Two are particularly enjoyable calling on influences from the Cyd Charisse sections of ‘Broadway Melody’ in Singin’ in the Rain and there’s a clear nod to Oklahoma and, of course, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in the light and upbeat dance stylisation that emphasies open gestures and Technicolor charm directed right at the audience.

There are some great dance performance here too across the ensemble who tirelessly provide a lot of the texture with syncopated group numbers that draw on line and folk dance, while the foregrounded performance of Alan Burkitt as the Robin Hood character (actor Bobby in the backstage world) is full of balletic skill with his performance of the jazz choreography particularly accomplished. His “pas de deux for two” partner Elaine (Emma Caffrey) who likes to be known as “Bambi” is a great match for him in the penultimate number in an impressive sequence.

Outside of the ailing show, the suspects pile up – as do the bodies – although the show doesn’t have the usual drive and looming sense of doom that characterises most murder mysteries. Depending on what you’re hoping for from Curtains that may be a negative as the story frequently digresses to focus on other types of theatrics, but the possible motives abound and as the story unfolds various characters come more firmly into the spotlight which draws the plot back to the central puzzle. Across Act Two this eventually builds to a high stakes denouement that makes for a satisfying conclusion to the murder, romance and musical rewrite co-plots as well as throwing up a few surprises to tie-up loose ends.

While primarily known for his work as a comedian Jason Manford proves he’s a rounded theatre performer at heart, instilling his interpretation of Detective Frank Cioffi with boyish excitement at being among a company of actors. There is a glee in his interactions with the various suspects that calls on the character’s experience as an amateur and dreams of joining a professional company, so Manford finds lots of humour in Cioffi’s semi-star-struck interactions. There’s also a nice symmetry to the parallel plots which centre around Cioffi’s problem solving ability and Manford makes it entirely credible that the policeman could sift through the evidence while simultaneously offering independent advice on the musical’s failings. Finally, Manford’s Cioffi offers a surface naivety, developing a sweet intimacy with suspect Niki that keeps the audience guessing about the outcome, while his singing voice in their duets ‘Coffee Shop Nights’ and ‘A Tough Act to Follow’ is delightful.

Carley Stenson’s lyricist turned replacement leading lady Georgia is wonderfully sympathetic, wowing the audience with an early rendition of ‘Thinking of Him’ before delivering the sassy ‘Thatawaty!’ in her Western role that shows her character’s developing confidence. There’s a love triangle with Burkitt’s Bobby and Georgia’s songwriter ex-husband Aaron played by Andy Coxon (from 6 January this role is played by Ore Oduba) whose lovelorn version of ‘I Miss the Music’ is a treat. As well as showcasing her dance skills, Caffrey’s “Bambi” also well represents the pushy young actress desperate to improve her part by stealing the limelight but resentfully held in check by a critical mother, which Caffrey vividly creates. And not forgetting a great turn from Samuel Holmes as snooty English director Christopher Belling whose razor sharp put-downs and one liners lift many a scene.

Further texture comes from the characters who represent the business of show, especially the excellent Rebecca Lock as producer Carmen, locked in battles with her husband and balancing the budget as she decides to defy the critics and take the show to Broadway somehow. Lock has some great numbers including the hilarious ‘It’s a Business’ which is a fierce dismissal of art in favour of theatre’s money-making purpose. And the different theatre perspectives are completed by a fleeting glance at an evil critic from the Boston Globe, Daryl Grady (Adam Rhys-Charles) whose hatchet job propels the show as well as inspiring the comic song ‘What Kind of Man’ sung by the creative team behind the Robin Hood musical. With all of that happening backstage, there’s plenty to kill for.

Curtains isn’t a perfect show and for something that shines a spotlight on the complex relationships and trade-offs behind the scenes, the characters are largely impressionistic, while at times it becomes overly distracted by the numerous romantic entanglements rather than tightly focusing on murder, mystery and motive. But, there is so much love for musical theatre, the process of co-creating a show as well as the joy of song and dance that the warmth and enthusiasm of this production is sure to win you over. Concluding its West End engagement, Curtains goes back on the road until April visiting venues across the country including Sunderland, Llandudno, Liverpool, Glasgow and Southampton, and while now may feel like the right time of year for a cosy puzzle don’t miss the chance to see this charming show in a venue near you. Perhaps murder mysteries aren’t just for Christmas after all.

Curtains: The Musical Comedy is at the Wyndhams Theatre until 11 January with tickets from £17.50 and then touring until 11 April. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog   

Teenage Dick – Donmar Warehouse

Shakespeare and the High School rom-com go way back; the universality of his plays make them suitable for adaptation to a number of different environments and in the prescribed social structure of the American High School with its strict categorisations, power plays and love of social gatherings (proms, pep rallies and elections) it is a perfect setting to explore some of Shakespeare’s most enduring themes. Gil Junger’s 1999 reworking of The Taming of the Shrew became the accomplished 10 Things I Hate About You, a high point of the genre that made stars of Julia Styles and Heath Ledger, while Baz Luhrmann took a more traditional approach to the language if not the style of his 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet starring pin-up Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. And plenty of High School movies have at the very least referenced or borrowed plot points or ideas from Shakespeare including Never Been Kissed in 1999 whose heroine played by Drew Barrymore adored As You Like It.

In this context, Mike Lew’s new stage adaptation of Richard III feels surprisingly at home in its new world of teenage angst and social divisions set against the backdrop of the Senior Class President elections at one normal American High School. Taking Shakespeare’s overarching plot, some characters and themes as inspiration, the way in which the two genres have been melded together is remarkably sophisticated although on the surface Teenage Dick looks and sounds like your almost average US teen movie. And while the adaptation has not found universal favour among the critics, anyone growing-up in the era of the High School rom-com will delight in its affection for the genre and an approach that celebrates rather than dilutes Shakespeare’s text.

From the mid-1980s with The Breakfast Club to the mid-2000s when High School Musical signaled the end of the golden age of this enduring genre, for 20-years the US high school movie was a relatively low-budget staple of productions aimed at the teen audience. While the tone varied, they all had their stock formula, usually some kind of disaffected loner or outsider drawn into the world of the cool kids in order to effect change, social realisation and self-belief. There were highs like Heathers (1989) and Mean Girls (2004) – both now stage musicals – as well as the satire Election (1999) and there were plenty of lows too but the genre launched the careers of actors from Paul Rudd to Lindsay Lohan, Zac Efron to Rachel McAdam, Alicia Silverstone, Emilio Estevez and countless others who all went on to bigger, albeit quite different careers.

In Teenage Dick Lew absorbs all of this to believable create Roseland Junior High where jock Eddie is gunning for re-election as Senior Class President having served in the position for two years based entirely on his good looks and football-star status. Surrounding him in what is a very small cast for this kind of setting, we have a teacher Miss York looking to promote social equality and justice, therefore easy to manipulate, and the outcasts demarcated by their disabilities. But integrating Shakespeare into this context makes Lew’s approach so much more interesting than that and soon the audience is questioning whether the apparent divisions we are shown are only truly visible to Richard Gloucester, our protagonist and potential villain.

The central role is recognisably Richard III and those who know the play well will enjoy watching his masterful manipulation of friends and teachers as he manoeuvres himself into candidacy while letting his helpers think it was their idea. But in our more enlightened times, Lew deliberately sidesteps the notion of a truly dastardly Richard while also deciding to tone down the violence to make it appropriate for the High School setting. Instead, Lew asks interesting questions – as Shakespeare does to a degree – about the perception of Richard’s disability and its role in preventing others from seeing him as a leader. Most importantly though, we see clearly how Richard fails to see past his own physical appearance and it is this misconception about others that drives his behaviour and the action of the play.

What is so interesting about Teenage Dick is that there are no straightforward heroes and villains, so we see both Richard and Eddie behaving badly, squaring-up to one another while also being reminded that they are essentially children, 17-year olds acting out with a greater capacity for emotional development than the early part of the play suggests. The audience becomes complicit in its categorisation of the characters into their High School cliches before Lew spends some time in the second half revealing more complex truths beneath the surface.

Richard’s plan to bring about Eddie’s downfall initially seems straightforward and entirely justified when the popular boy taunts and mercilessly bullies Richard, using his disability against him. Eddie’s arrogance and use of offensive language to describe Richard’s condition pit the audience against him while he appears equally cruel in dumping the play’s love interest Anne Margaret before the action begins. Yet as with Shakespeare’s version, our changing opinion and understanding of Richard starts to recast the people around him, including Eddie so before too long other traits including his friendship with Barbara Buckingham known as “Bucks” and his clear popularity at the Presidential Debate force us to re-evaluate our judgement of him. This is only given greater emphasis by the shocking revelations and events of the last section that makes us wonder if, as our narrator, Richard has been manipulating the perspective of the audience as well as the characters.

Lew follows Shakespeare and incorporates aspects of his work in interesting ways across the play, occasionally having Richard break into a flowery Elizabethan structured speech (something which “Bucks” reminds him repeatedly is weird) and maintaining the wonderful soliloquies in which the protagonist directly addresses the audience in spotlighted revelations of his evil plans – there’s even a very funny moment when “Bucks” is onstage for one of these and thinks her unresponsive friend has just gone to “his happy place.” More humour comes from the occasional phrase borrowed from other plays including Julius Caesar – it is used sparingly but adds to the semi-artificiality that both the High School setting and Shakespeare create in allowing Richard to narrate his own story.

But Lew also gives Shakespeare short shrift for his treatment of women and the expansion of Anne Margaret’s character to create the central romance as well as delving into her backstory, aspirations and own feelings of self-exclusion which are meaningfully explored. There is a very sweet tentative chemistry that builds between the initially nervous Anne and Richard, two people from quite different cliques who find humanity in each other, and it is this which prevents Lew’s play from becoming either too snide or too lightweight. The effect of Richard’s decisions have significant consequences for this character and Lew gives her a chance to meaningfully address the viewer and stake her claim to relevance beyond Richard’s existence.

Lew has stipulated that both Richard and “Bucks” must be played by disabled actors which makes perfect sense in this version of the story. Daniel Monks is superb as the teenage Dick of the title, a young man tired of being defined and reduced by his physical appearance so decides to assume the mantle of the villain – as his Shakespearean counterpart does – to upset the balance of power in the school. What makes Monks’s performance so interesting is the conflicted perspective he brings to the role and not only does his Richard believe he is a good person using nefarious means to bring about a greater good, but sometimes he really is.

This nuance is evident all the way through the show and while it takes Richard to quite different places, navigating both a sensitive and sweet relationship with Anne Margaret that develops a real emotional honesty, and into some much more controversial territory as he schemes and undermines his friends, Monks retains the oily fascination of the original character who cannot see beyond his own image and uses that to blame others, while finding a large degree of empathy for his genuine social struggles. And this makes his final actions all the more shocking as he loses control and perspective.

The supporting cast is equally fine, particularly Siena Kelly as the compression of two Shakespearean originals to create a young woman desperate to hide from the spotlight to focus on her dream of becoming a dancer, but she learns to care for Richard and Kelly makes her trajectory extremely moving. Ruth Madeley is a calm presence as best friend “Bucks”, the only character to remain rational throughout, refusing to be blinded by Richard’s obsession with Eddie and finding plenty of comedy in their sparky interactions. Susan Wokoma is fantastic as the enthusiastically naive teacher unwittingly drawn into Richard’s plans, while Callum Adams as Eddie and Alice Hewkin as Clarissa perfectly represent their High School tribes but get to offer some deeper sense of motivation and emotion beneath the surface.

It all looks wonderfully recognisable in Chloe Lamford’s basketball court setting, with floor markings and hoop redolent of any secondary school gymnasium. Characters are dressed appropriately for their social status with Richard in the trademark black jeans and t-shirt of the outsider while sweatshirts and school-branded baseball jackets mark out the sporty boys. The transformations are quickly managed by Director Michael Longhurst who takes a cinematic approach to scene changes using speedily rearranged furniture and lighting to maintain pace. The ball scene is simply and effectively achieved instantly establishing the characteristics of an event we’ve seen in countless movies, but it is the inclusion of projected social media feeds, hashtags, tweets and characters filming on their smartphone that brings this up to date, skewering our modern obsession with an instant visual record and online responsiveness that magnifies every humiliation and private moment.

The murderous tension doesn’t build in the same way as Shakespeare’s original and that sense of deathly danger is all but expunged, yet at only 1 hour and 50 minutes rather than three hours something has to give, not to mention that the idea of mass murders in a High School setting would be in pretty poor taste. Lew has nonetheless created a version of Richard III that suits this context extremely well asking the audience to consider attitudes to disability, power and social structures that perpetuate all kinds of inequality. Teenage Dick may make less sense to those who bypassed the High School movie, but Lew’s play is funny, sad and meaningful, and like Joel Edgerton and David Michod’s film The King, Lew demonstrates that Shakespeare’s characters, plots, structure and themes are just as important as his verse and vocabulary, proving that Shakespeare’s understanding of human nature is as relevant to a battlefield in Leicestershire as it is to a High School gym in America.

Teenage Dick is at the Donmar Warehouse until 1 February with tickets from £10. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog   

A Taste of Honey – Trafalgar Studios

A Taste of Honey is one of the great British mid-century plays, a piece of theatre written by a 19-year old in 1958 that seems to scream in the face of the witty middle class comedies and highly wrought dramas that came before it, placing not only two women centre stage but offering an unflinching examination of working class life in industrial Salford. The century before, Victor Hugo described the poverty of women as a far greater burden than that of men for the further bodily degradation it can lead to, and Shelagh Delaney uses this idea in her debut play, trapping mother and daughter in a lifestyle forced on them by the social limitations of the time, while giving them a pride and resiliance to bear their situation with an outward strength.

This co-production by the National Theatre, directed by Bijan Sheibani, has toured much of the UK this year earning rave reviews and now arrives at the main house of the Trafalgar Studios for an extended run. The last time this play was staged in the West End was also a National Theatre production, with Lesley Sharp and Kate O’Flynn in the leading roles and it continues to fascinate in frequent revivals around the country.

In our more permissive times, with greater equality rights and the expectation of work for self-sustenance, the position of women 60-years on should be very different. Yet Delaney’s insight feels as fresh and relevant as ever, as socially dictated notions of beauty, of promiscuity, motherhood and even marriage have changed far less than we imagine, making the characters of Helen and Jo still all too rare stage examples of complex and contradictory female leads.

Sheibani’s touring production sets Delaney’s play in a different context, and, as he did with his exuberant production of The Barber Shop Chronicles, uses music to underscore and drive the drama as well as linking to Helen’s former life as a club singer. It evokes the wider feel of the late 1950s and early 60s, the shifting tone of the decade and the sultry romance of its music, while connecting with the notion of impossible dreams that the play explores. This is a key theme in which both women pursue and hope for a better, easier and more respectable life knowing that they have only themselves and the grim reality of their lives to fall back on, something from which neither will ever escape.

There is an almost cinematic inclusion of live music – a drum kit, double bass and piano – which used in this way captures beat and rhythm within the action, underscoring moments of change, redirection and dramatic intensity in a scene while linking to the movie history of this piece. It’s a technique that Ed Stambollouian used to great effect in Pinter at the Pinter Collection Four last year for his vibrant interpretation of Night School, and while Sheibani applies the concept to set his production of A Taste of Honey apart, the overall effect inventively opens-out the emotional and political undercurrents of the play while creating a directorial flow between scenes that seamlessly shifts the action across ten-months in which the lives of Helen and Jo change but also stay remarkably the same.

There are so many fascinating aspects to this play that capture a particular moment in time including attitudes to inter-racial relationships and homosexuality, but are also timeless in their concern for the circularity of women’s lives and how easily history repeats itself. All of these themes emerge strongly in Sheibani’s production that simultaneously emphasises traditional social structures and its power balance while bringing an energy through the music and the staging that shows a generation on the cusp of change as Jo’s more relaxed attitudes to race and sexuality clash with Helen’s dismissive and sometimes traditionally bigoted expression. And as much as they appear to fight against it on the surface, both still hide behind the desire for respectability, fearing the gossip and disgrace that comes from stepping outside social norms.

Yet, even in 2019, there is still an expectation that all women want to be wives and mothers and it is this which makes the production feel so vital. The lack of maternal instinct or care both Jo and Helen express remains quite pointed, so when Helen abandons her 17-year old daughter at the end of Act One to follow her latest man, it remains a shocking and selfish moment, despite being a frequent occurrence as Jo later explains. Likewise, after Jo is abandoned by Jimmie she openly expresses a desire to kill the unborn child she doesn’t want. Both still create a frisson through the audience, and here Delaney’s (and Hugo’s) point is writ large, women caged by circumstances and forced into roles they have neither the desire or capacity to play with no means of support or escape.

It’s clear in this production how similar Helen and Jo really are, with Sheibani emphasising the frightening repetition of history in which Jo first despises then seems doomed to repeat the mistakes of her mother in a life filled with a succession of ineffectual men, momentary pleasures and unfulfillment. There is a feel of endlessness to their days with Helen having only reached her 40th birthday with plenty of life – and even the possibility of further children – still open to her, while the slow heat-filled months of Jo’s pregnancy seem to drag for her, a grinding cycle in which both struggle to maintain hope as each disappointment returns them back to the start before it all begins again when the next man comes along.

The character of Helen has been interpreted in various ways, but here she is a Diana Dors-type, perfectly made-up and stylishly dressed at all times even with a heavy cold at the start of the play. She makes for a stark contrast with her dank surroundings, the utilitarian privation of her one-room flat is a place she barely notices as she thinks ahead to the next opportunity. Both in spite and because of her past, there is a pragmatic dignity about Helen, she knows her worth and can take care of herself after every mishap, refusing to succumb to any form of emotionalism, insisting to her daughter that she must carry on, head held high come what may.

Jodie Prenger makes Helen less girlish than some interpretations but still a tenacious and glamorous figure, supported by a couple of musical numbers from the era that suit her voice and style. She has a seductive quality that explains her continued allure to certain types of terribly inappropriate men, while suggesting this hard surface knocked into shape by a life of relying solely on her wits and her charms to get by. Prenger makes Helen at once world weary, knowing (like the Mistress in Evita) that she will inevitably end-up alone again, but also hopeful that her past can be erased by marriage to the right man, a dream of suburban comfort and domesticity that motivates Helen to pick herself up after every knock.

But Prenger also finds the conflicting emotions beneath the surface, the confusion of a woman who wants to feel maternal, to love and to help her daughter but cannot subsume her own desires. You see clearly Helen’s fear that Jo will repeat her mistakes while doing little to prevent it, and when her relationship with Peter first soars and then crumbles rapidly into alcoholism and implied domestic violence, a fascinating collection of expressions sweep across Prenger’s face in quick succession, fear, anger, determination and regret vie for primacy as we see Helen trying to save face as she searches her inner reserves for the strength to endure her latest bad choice.

Jo has a lot of growing-up to do across the two hours of Delaney’s play, starting as a sullen and disapproving schoolgirl who encounters her first taste of love, heartbreak and the inevitable consequences of freedom in just a few months. Gemma Dobson navigates the extremes of the role with skill, conveying Jo’s youth and naivety extremely well while also showing her maturity and self-sufficiency as the action unfolds. There is a sense that Jo was never really a child, unable to enjoy the same careless freedom as others, shaped by her often absent mother whose refused intimacy breeds a stubborn resentment in Jo. Dobson’s Jo develops an interesting chemistry with Prenger, a convincingly taut mother-daughter relationship that feels complex but also satisfying, knowing that they will always return to each other somehow.

Yet, Jo is more sensitive than Helen, lacking her experience of life and not yet sure who she is, Jo dreams of romance and escape in a far more sentimental way than her mother. Even after her abandonment, Jo continues to daydream about Jimmie and an idealised form of love and relationships that he embodies for her which Dobson makes credible and sympathetic as the character indulges her hope of escape and freedom from the confines of her homelife. Through this, the audience is shown that Jo cannot cope alone and her rapid adoption of Geoffrey as pseudo-husband and companion is setting in motion a chain of events that will ultimately lead to Jo becoming a version of Helen.

Stuart Thompson makes his professional debut as Geoffrey – a character whose open homosexuality was radical ten years before decriminalisation – and brings a warmth to the role as he also weighs-up the veneer of respectability, considering on the one hand whether to pursue a relationship with Jo while bringing domestic calm to their grimy flat. Thompson also provides some musical linking between scenes in Act Two, while Geoffrey’s dedication to Jo is tested by Helen’s return, allowing the actor to align the character’s weaknesses with the other men in the play including Tom Varey’s volatile Peter and Durone Stokes’s Jimmie.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set suggests the deprivation of the Lancashire slums but the one-room flat takes on a homeliness as the story unfolds with minor changes to the decor that reflect the central characters’ evolving relationship, while Paul Anderon’s lighting takes the audience from the sensual and atmospheric musical scene changes to the intense heat of summer as the two women are caught in a glare of social expectation. Occasionally the lines feel a little stilted largely due to the self-conscious stageyness of Delaney’s writing in places that creates an occasional sense of artificiality in the the drama, but Sheibani’s innovative use of music to underpin key moments in the story helps to galvanise the production – although the permanently onstage musicians could look a little less bored, they are as visible to the audience and as integral to Sheibani’s vision as the actors. Still, Delaney’s play feels as prescient as ever and with its comment on the burden of expectation placed on women, class struggle, race and sexuality, more than six decades on it’s lost none of its bite.

A Taste of Honey is at the Trafalgar Studios until 29 February. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog   

Cyrano de Bergerac – Playhouse Theatre

It has been an extraordinary and prolific year for Jamie Lloyd with a huge array of works in performance that have earned considerable acclaim. As 2019 dawned, we were in the midst of the Pinter at the Pinter season with Collections Five and Six facing the press shortly after the New Year. In February, Danny Dyer and Martin Freeman completed the anthology series with The Dumb Waiter, and then there was Betrayal. Brilliantly reimagined for the Harold Pinter Theatre, the production starring Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox tranfered to Broadway where the New York Times reviewer hailed it an interpretation he seemed ‘destined to think about forever.’ But Lloyd was far from finished and an extraordinary reinvigoration of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita dominated the Regent’s Park Summer Season which gave fresh life to what many had felt was a 1970s period piece.

Lloyd excels at deconstructing classics and remodelling them for modern theatre, simplifying and decluttering the history of performance to find new emotional resonance in the original text. Any of the aforementioned productions may well feature in the forthcoming awards season (with Evita already taking trophies at the Evening Standard Awards), but before the year ends Lloyd has one more gift for us, the launch of a brand new season at The Playhouse Theatre where regular collaborator James McAvoy stars in the inaugural show, an achingly modern and exciting version of Cyrano de Bergerac adapted by Martin Crimp.

Crimp in fact bookends the year, staring 2019 with his fascinating (but hugely divisive) When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, a reworking of Pamela starring Cate Blanchette and Stephen Dillane. Cyrano de Bergerac is one of the last West End shows to face the press this year and Crimp has captured the essence of Edmond Rostand’s late nineteenth-century original with its devotion to language, poetry and the power of words to convey every aspect of human emotion. It is notably a verse play, one that uses groups of rhyming couplets throughout its five act structure, so the easiest path to contemporisation would be to turn it into a prose piece, but Crimp resists and instead utilises the rhythms and speed of urban poetry and rap to give his characters and themes their modern voice.

It is very skillfully done, sustained across the three-hour run-time to both hilarious and emotive effect. As Cyrano and his agitator lock horns in the opening Act their ensuing duel essentially becomes a poetry slam, trading insults in the back and forth at a blazing pace with considerable rhythmic complexity. Crimp plays with the language so that the rhyme is sometimes masked, coming mid-sentence and even occasionally mid-syllable or using assonance to prevent the dialogue becoming too sing-song in the delivery. But there is also a consciousness about the way characters speak, drawing on Cyrano’s renown as a soldier-poet and actively commenting on the mutual skill of the verse club that gathers at Ragueneau’s cafe, as well as distinguishing the marked shift to prose occurring during the period of the play’s setting (1640-1655). It is a subtle meta-theatrical expression that  adds social commentary while also marking a key shift in the history of performance, creating the notion of something significant coming to an end which frames the plot.

In bringing Cyrano de Bergerac to the stage, Jamie Lloyd once again demonstrates the clarity with which he always sees a classic text, stripping away the layers of earlier interpretation and popular culture expectation to deliver something that feels admirably pure. Soutra Gilmour designs an MDF box with only a few microphones and chairs from which the actors will use words to create this pseudo-seventeenth-century setting. Later, the back of the box lifts out to create more performance space with wooden steps to give added depth to the war scenes and Jon Clark’s atmospheric lighting design to subtly shift the mood from the bawdy humour of the encamped poet-soldiers to the dimly lit interior heartache of Cyrano’s tortured soul.

The emphasis as ever with Lloyd is on the text and like his radio-play staging of A Slight Ache in Pinter at the Pinter Collection Seven, the strength of language is relished and celebrated, allowing the emotional force of the work to build and resonate. Lloyd controls the fine balance between the play’s strong masculine energy coming from the encamped army and the softer mood of both the romantic plot and the emphasis on poetry and expression. Both elements work comprehensively and credibly together, feeding the unfolding narrative with Lloyd easily switching the tone as the two stories enfold and intersect.

The sense of machismo is particularly felt in the early scenes as the intensity of Cyrano’s arrival and his laddish interaction with his comrades builds to a bare-chested maul that instantly establishes their Company dynamic and loyalty. Yet, the group equally express their sensitivity and individuality through the poetry competition that ultimately makes the return to war and the seeming hopelessness of their predicament in the penultimate scene so effective, the careful staging creating order and unison in their coordinated movement and military stance.

Crucial to the establishment of Cyrano as a character, the audience needs to believe that he is both a military leader and overwhelmed by unrequited love for Roxanne. And while previous interpretations have emphasised the comedy, particularly Cyrano’s enormous nose (on screen especially), McAvoy’s approach eschews a nasal prosthetic to create a man tormented by inner demons that affect the way he seems himself and his own attitude to happiness. At every point McAvoy radiates complexity with a duality that feels almost Macbeth-like, as a powerful masculinity visible to the outside world fights with a broken interior life that alters his destiny and purpose. Driven by inevitability, where Macbeth is motivated by power, Cyrano is by an ungovernable love he can neither satisfy or resist, one that will consume and ultimately destroy him.

Always a strong stage presence, McAvoy delivers both aspects of Cyrano’s personality with skill, creating an imposing soldierly presence, glowering and menacing as he takes control of the play scene, a man comfortable with the use of violence and its consequences as well as arrogant about his own ability to make demands and control situations. In the emotional unfolding to come, the way in which McAvoy slowly dismantles Cyrano’s outward armour is extraordinary, revealing the layers of self-abasement beneath. In a number of highly affecting soliloquies in which McAvoy holds the audience in thrall, Cyrano painfully describes observing the normalcy of other people, jealously noting the couples around him and piteously describing the physical deformity holding him back from the easy happiness of others.

The decision to avoid a fake nose is a shrewd one in this stripped-back production which adds a layer of deep psychological wound to Cyrano’s soul, allowing the audience to wonder if the barriers he perceives to his own happiness are truly physical or just in his mind – an outcome that adds to the growing heartache that increasingly pours forth. Even the comradely ribbing he receives from his fellow soldiers may reflect the group sensing weakness and, like children, using it to test the limits of their commander’s authority.

McAvoy is also a very fine theatre technician, relishing the complexity and challenge of Crimp’s complex rhythms to which he proves himself more than equal. The urban poetry rolls beautifully, and sometimes at considerable speed, in McAvoy’s native Scotch, with the actor mastering the rhythm so well that the dialogue springs naturally from the character and not enslaved by the artificiality of the tempo. Whether as himself or in an entertaining impersonation of love rival Christian’s very different speaking style, McAvoy uses his voice as an instrument to create and alter the tone of Cyrano’s expression, taking a more forceful approach to instructing his men while speaking in a lower, softer register, almost a whisper at times as he conveys the sincerity of his love for Roxanne when narrating the letters he writes so passionately to her, full of desperate yearning and painful separation.

These declarations are sentimental, even sugary and could so easily sound comic, but the sad tenderness with which McAvoy delivers them reveals the full excavation of soul the character experiences as hope is slowly and movingly extinguished. It is a wonderful performance, full of raw melancholic heartache that will make you simultaneously despair for his anguish and thrill at such a meaningful return to the stage.

With a scheme offering reduced price tickets to those on low incomes or wouldn’t usually go to the theatre, the supporting cast will feel like a recognisable community and a rare opportunity to see a classic work performed by a company that reflects the audience watching it. This may be badged as 1640 but dressed in jeans and tracksuits this feels like London in 2019. Anita-Joy Uwajeh’s Roxanne is charming but tactless and selfish, pursuing her physical attraction to Christian without noticing Cyrano’s desolation. Crimp has used the character to make a number of contemporary points about the changing position of women, and it is notable that Uwajeh delivers a performance in which Roxanne takes charge of her own destiny, outwitting the men folk and determining a path for herself,  not letting so much as a battlefield stand in her way.

Eben Fugueiredo as Christian has an entertaining swagger that masks his own degree of doubt concerning his intellectual and romantic qualities, drawing him reasonably into Cyrano’s scheme, and while there is a moment in Act Four that feels awkwardly show-horned into the play to make an unclear point, Fugueiredo delivers Christian’s comic gormlessness well. Tom Edden as finger-drumming baddie De Guiche is also a comic delight, using a clipped RP delivery to convey the character’s evil machinations with glee, while Michele Austin adds a maternal touch as Cyrano’s friend and eventual confident Ragueneau, as well as embodying the community which her cafe serves and supports so well.

The simplicity of Jamie Lloyd’s approach seems deceptive at first, unsure whether the empty staging can truly sustain momentum over three hours, but the intimacy created by the microphones and the focus on the emotional and military currents of the play becomes utterly engaging. Freed from is exaggerated comic overtones and reimagined for the modern stage with a contemporary cast, this feels at every moment like theatre at its most exciting, liberating and inclusive. You always know that a production by this Company will play with your preconceptions to deliver something new, but Lloyd still manages to dazzle and surprise. It has been an exceptional year for the director and this latest collaboration with James McAvoy ensures that for Jamie Lloyd 2019 ends on a high.

Cyrano de Bergerac is at the Playhouse Theatre until 29 February with tickets from £15. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog