The Glass Menagerie – Duke of York’s Theatre

It’s a sign that London theatre is beginning to settle back into its familiar patterns when spring and summer heralds the arrival of American stars keen to make their mark on the West End stage. The last summer before covid it was Sally Field and Bill Pullman in the Old Vic’s All My Sons with Pullman clearly enjoying the experience so much he’s back again, rehearsing with David Harbour for performances of Mad House in late June. Jake Gyllenhaal’s acclaimed Broadway appearance in Sunday in the Park With George was scheduled to transfer in that infamous summer of 2020 while Patti LuPone who came for Marianne Elliott’s Company in 2018 has taken the production back to Broadway with her where it is currently playing.

Now it is the turn of Amy Adams, already an acclaimed and multi Oscar nominated film actor with some notable stage experience in the US, making her West End debut in Jeremy Herrin’s new version of The Glass Menagerie, a play that has been perhaps a little over produced in the UK in recent years with notable versions at the Arcola in 2019 and another starring American actor Cherry Jones also at the Duke of York’s in 2017 making her UK debut as the fragile and affected Amanda Wingfield.

As well as seeing Tennessee Williams’s play with astonishing regularity, its basis in the playwrights own family history and experience is its most commonly reproduced fact, and one that gives added meaning and depth to an elusive and delicately crafted piece about a family trapped between their semi-imagined past and a desired future. But focusing almost exclusively on the semi-autobiographical nature of The Glass Menagerie takes away from its more interesting discussion on the haunting reconstruction of memory and the falsity of both remembrances, and indeed theatre, in bringing to life events and people long since faded away. Herrin’s production steps away from some of the more traditional approaches to applaud Williams’s technique as a conjurer, a stager of scenes that capture the fleeting moment and its cumulative effect.

Herrin through his Headlong Theatre Company tends to think a little differently about the productions he directs, telling immersive stories but with lively approaches to engagement including the use of video screens, music and lighting to enhance or amplify the overall experience and to convey complex messages or political themes as he did recently with Best of Enemies and with challenging, almost confrontational pieces like People, Places and Things and The Nether before that. Two big decisions define this production of The Glass Menagerie, the first slightly adjusts how the story is usually narrated which leads to the second, a design choice derived solely from character and the memory theme.

Williams leaves the storytelling duties to his dramatic proxy Tom Wingfield, son of Amanda and brother to the fragile Laura, who steps out of the story to speak to the audience from a period decades later while also performing as himself in the family scenes he is retelling. Herrin has separated these two versions of the man into two characters, one the older version of Tom casting his mind back and critically reflecting on these crucial months in the small St Lewis flat, while the other is the young, frustrated man of the house desperate to escape the stifling heat of his relations and their expectations of and for him.

The result is rather effective, reducing the burden on a single actor to carry most of the show while able to draw a much starker contrast between the young Tom filled with aspiration for adventure and the man who must live with the consequences of his actions at the end of the play, a broken wretch unable to escape his guilt or to reconcile his disappointment with how his life has turned out. It makes tangible a really quite central theme in Williams’s work – the unceremonious shattering of illusion that leaves characters with nothing but despair, breaking through the romance of their intentions and those wistful hopes of something better, to find only ugliness and disillusion when they are left with the truth.

Like Chekov, Williams’s characters are living in falsely created worlds of their own, ones in which hope is the only thing they have to cling to and is often forcibly taken from them during the course of the play. But while Chekhov creations tend to look towards an imagined brighter future blocked merely by practicality – the need to sell a property or to move to the city – Williams’s characters are mired in their past and dream only of a future that takes them back to happier times. The present never seems to exist for them as they lose themselves in the recollection of halcyon days or seek escape to an unspecified future freedom where they will shake off their own personalities and become different, happier people.

Seeing two version of Tom in this production of The Glass Menagerie shows us the inherent falsity in the notion that the future is a better place than the past. The future Tom is not a man who has found contentment or even confidence through travel or experience, and although he has got what he wanted, it is clear that he has never escaped himself or the man that he used to be. It is a smart and meaningful dramatic choice from Herrin, one that grasps the clues that Williams places throughout the text to expand the character from regretful brother to someone who has lost the essence of himself through searching for it, and comes to view the events of this play as the turning point that continues to torture his conscience.

The second choice that Herrin makes is in designing a more symbolic location for the play by using its theatrical status to create sparse representative spaces for the action where this memory momentarily comes to life. There is a deliberate construct in Williams’s play which is essentially false, a story told from one perspective by a man who was there piecing together fragments of memories which he brings to life before the audience. Williams didn’t chose to write this as a 1930s family whose life occurs in chronological procession but as a casting back from the future with all the overtones of regret and melancholy that this evokes. Nor are we to assume that all the scenes necessarily occurred in the order in which we see them – although some clearly follow on from earlier discussion – but are fragments of experience, of conversations and irritations that occur to Tom while living at home with his mother happening across no specified time period. The events we see created could have occurred across weeks, even years building to a point at which Tom takes decisive action – a culmination we never actually see but only hear about in retrospect.

Herrin uses the ambiguity of structure to create two spaces on stage, a central black platform with minimal props where the family home exists and a surrounding area cluttered with junk, furniture and props that nod to a world beyond the Wingfield establishment while also holding a rehearsal room quality. The actors move between these spaces, sometimes sitting and waiting on the edges for their cue but only truly becoming their characters either standing on or in close proximity to the central platform. Designed by Vicki Mortimer who has considerable experience of creating memory-laden sets (see also Follies), the space is purposefully unremarkable, reflecting the layered fictions within Williams’s structure that make his scenarios real but also figments of imagination at the same time.

This illusory quality is aided by the feeling of the 1960s that runs through the visual style of the show, not only in Edward K. Gibbon’s costumes but also Ash J. Woodward’s video design that creates patterns of refracted colour as though we are seeing these people through a distorting prism of glass – manifest in Mortimer’s sizeable glass cabinet filled with treasures that dominates the stage, the only tangible physical object in their home. It suggests that Tom’s memory is not strong enough to create the 1930s without a little of his present era bleeding in, making him unreliable as a narrator who twists and reforms the past in order to understand his present self. This is reinforced by the decision to physically engage in his own memories, interacting with his mother and sister as though he were there, holding up props and squeezing their shoulders, almost nudging his memories to life and unable to resist returning to those times even in this other guise.

As the older Tom, Paul Hilton has command of this story, welcoming the audience but never allowing them to become to comfortably ensconced. As the action unfolds, Hilton is almost ever present, reacting to activity and often wincing in pain as the past swims before Tom once more, wanting to be part of it all once more but increasingly affected by it. There is anger and resentment in the performance, but also frustration with himself as the events and their outcomes visible nag at his conscience. Tom Glynn-Carney plays his younger self as a distant and irritable figure with some affection for his family but using drink, movies and work as a place to escape the responsibilities that claw at him. Young Tom is rarely sympathetic and sometimes even cruel but Glynn-Carney and Hilton align their approaches to create consistency between the eras.

Adams is a superb Amanda, a more mumsy interpretation of the role than often seen but capturing just the right degree of fussing and largely wholesome parent trying to kickstart her children into life while seeing them as an opportunity to live out her own failed dreams. Amanda is a character that also lives in the past creating further layers of memory within Tom’s singular memory, trapped in her own youthful beauty and abundance of ‘gentleman callers’ that belie the regret she feels about the way her life has panned out. Like the older Tom, Amanda is frustrated by her failure to attain the life that was once promised to her, but Adams steers away from the obvious Blanche Dubois possibilities to create a neat, almost prim woman whose softly spoken approach contains real authority in controlling her adult children.

Adams treads a very nice line between being an embarrassing mother and wanting to find something for herself. She allows her character to come alive when Jim O’Connor finally visits, almost flirting with him herself and swept up in her blustering excitement about the evening and its possibilities. Adams shows that Amanda too is looking for escape, not in the physical sense like Tom, but at least in her imagination, allowing hope of something new to take hold of her while never forgetting the economic and maternal responsibilities that return her to the ground. It is a quieter version of Amanda, but very effective in this more symbolic production.

Laura and gentleman caller Jim really have their moment in Scene VII, left alone on stage to discuss the glass menagerie and the fragility of their lives. Lizzie Annis’s Laura has been in the background before this, talked about and momentarily passing through the scene but here she emerges from her shyness and Annis draws the parallels with the delicacy of her ornaments and a similar past-loving hopefulness as her mother. Victor Alli gives Jim a depth of compassion which makes their decisive conversation compelling showing, unlike the Wingfields, that he lives in the present, happy to reminisce for a few hours but upfront and truthful about who he is and his limitations.

Most of this comes together best in the second half of Herrin’s show where the staging concept along with Williams’s story and the performances, catch fire while the first part of the production is still a little disjointed. But as Williams’s structural approach and characterisation start to take hold, Herrin’s production becomes compelling, even haunting in moments that generates spontaneous emotional reactions from its audience. While it is probably time to let the play rest for a while, the three productions in five years have all had something slightly different to contribute and Herrin’s interpretation with Adams at the helm has certainly added further layers of meaning.

The Glass Menagerie is at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 27 August with tickets from £20. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

The Unfriend – Minerva Theatre Chichester

Delayed two years by the pandemic, one of the most hotly anticipated shows of 2020 finally makes it to the stage in 2022. The combination of TV writer and former Dr Who showrunner Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith proves irresistible as The Unfriend finally premieres in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre and it has been worth the wait. A snappy two hour comedy about a family who inadvertently invite a murderer to stay with them, Moffat creates a Pinteresque scenario that embraces its sitcom humour by combining a classic 2.4 children domesticity with a high pitch farce that wonders if knowing an avowed killer can actually improve your life, especially if they don’t behave as you might expect.

The intruder in an established scenario, particularly a domestic space, is a well used dramatic and comic construct, one that Pinter applied to many of his plays to create an unnerving tension, upending the established behavioural rules of that location and upsetting the power dynamic by slowly moving authority and focus from the householder or dominant partner to the interloper who gradually assumes control. The Unfriend uses this idea as its starting point and although not deliberately sinister in tone or narrative, the arrival of Elsa changes a pre-existing dynamic.

What Moffat does so well is to graft this notion onto a traditional sitcom trope – the dysfunctional family with stroppy and uncommunicative teenage children. And the two ideas blend rather well, Elsa retaining the unspoken concept of authority that Pinter would have given her but neither hiding or celebrating her notoriety but becoming a comic catalyst for family transformation that keeps The Unfriend light and largely frothy.

But nor is the play driven fully by finding out whether Elsa is a murderer after all or the concern that she might kill again. In fact, Moffat reveals her background in scene two, establishing immediately that an apparent homicidal maniac is coming to stay and watching the fall out from that knowledge across the play as protagonists Peter and Debbie try to decide what to do, concealing it from their children but equally too afraid to ask her to leave. It is their very Britishness about it that motors the comedy in fact, getting themselves into a series of scrapes and foolhardy situations. Again, these are very traditional sitcom structures which from Frank Spence to Rene Artois only lets the hapless lead make their situation worse as every attempt to improve their lot backfires or adds a new level of misery. And Moffat has a lot of fun tangling his characters in knots that leave them with almost nowhere to go.

The unfailing politeness begins in the very first scene set at the end of a cruise as Peter and Debbie try to escape the acquaintance they have made onboard. As they say their goodbyes to Elsa on sun loungers on deck shortly before the boat docks, they are unable to escape her attentions, the polite chatter escalating as the couple – desperate to make their farewell and leave it at that – cannot find it in themselves to be rude. It is a recognisable scenario, one that adds to its hilarity, as the consequences of an intensely short but functional friendship play out with the inevitable promises to keep in touch, the faux delight at the memories of their trip and eventually the passive aggressive expectation that contact details are exchanged.

Moffat’s point is that this failure to admit these things are any more than what they are is the cause of all the mishaps in The Unfriend, acknowledging what was a contained but time limited relationship and being honest about how they really feel at its conclusion is combined with a desire to please in order to spare the feelings of others and to be considered ‘good’ people even at great expense to themselves. And while the context of this prologue scene could have easily been woven into the text as some form of expositional conversation, Moffat wants us to observe Peter and Debbie’s behaviour to understand why the rest of the story plays out as it does.

Essentially a two Act drama which is then broken into a number of scenes taking place across the several days that Elsa spends with the family, the action of The Unfriend coalesces around “before” and “after” moments. We see the minutes prior to Elsa’s unexpected arrival as Debbie and Peter discover her secret via a very funny American-style crime series on YouTube and panic about how to defer her visit, beginning a number of running jokes including one about Peter’s mother that becomes a core looping point. The introduction of Elsa into the family space is very pointed, her bold, blunt and dismissive gregariousness providing a fierce contrast with the silent fury and emotional withholding among this British household who struggle to communicate or listen to one another.

A key reference point here is Joan Cusack’s groomed and charmingly evil nanny in Addams Family Values who conceals an equally murderous backstory. Elsa’s immediate assumption of their space and refusal to be cowed by their reserve creates some quite broad comedy but in this first Act, we see the threat she poses as a disruption to their routines and established stability (if not their lives) as the parents fail to tackle her or manage the dialogue as they hoped.

Act Two fast forwards a few days to the end of the week to show the effect she has had on them all. While Debbie and Peter are no nearer to getting her to leave, there has been a positive transformation in family relationships with the individuals in the household taking better care of themselves and each other under her influence. Elsa’s Pinteresque power is at its height having manoeuvred herself into a leading role by bringing change and improvement while continuing to pose a threat (still unknown to the children). The drive again comes from muddled attempts to speak with her and the failure of Debbie and Peter to be open or take charge.

The devil is in the detail of course and never more so than with comedy, and the humour is often very specific, more situational or linguistic than shaped by character traits or failures. The Unfriend is a light farce so the laughs are broad but the show doesn’t rely on slapstick, physical mishaps or people running in and out in a frenzy, instead any physical humour in the show comes from character appearance and sudden changes in behaviour – for example the controlled use of the slightly underwritten but stereotypical teenagers – or from comic facial expressions and reactions from the actors as events occur that become harder to rationalise.

A major strand of humour comes through the minutiae and pettiness of suburban living, using the lurking neighbour as a means to explore the additional pressures on the family about walled boundaries, hedgerow placement and car parking spaces while enduring nosey social judgement about their recycling habits and ‘fit’ with the area. It grounds the louder comedy of Elsa’s character in a more tangible reality of routine and ordinariness, making for an interesting and often very funny contrast with the elaborate serial killer set-up, referencing exemplars of suburban snobbery such as Keeping Up Appearances and The Good Life as the modern family try to balance internal and external expectations, finding little true privacy in their own home.

Directed by Mark Gatiss, The Unfriend draws all of these strands together fairly consistently, maintaining a good pace throughout, building mini peaks of comedy on the route to a bigger finale at the end of each Act. And on what is essentially a static set beyond the ship-based preamble, that is not easy to do with all the action occurring in the same unchanging living room space throughout – although fans may note the Number 9 briefly glimpsed on the front door. Robert Jones’s two-room set is a typical residential new build house made to look open plan for the audience’s purposes by removing walls around the small kitchen. There are demarcated zones in which Gatiss directs the action and with limited movement between these spaces (certainly not at speed as a physical farce might employ), the placement of characters on the sofa, the space behind it, the kitchen or on the stairs which lead to an unseen upper level are important. It is testament to Gatiss’s direction that the simplicity and its limitations are barely noticeable. Jones also gives enough of an impression of the grandeur of the cruise ship with only a few loungers and a painted backdrop in the opening scene to create a contrast with the crowded domesticity to come where physical and emotional baggage is more noticeable.

Frances Barber’s performance as Elsa is the centrepiece and Barber looks to be having a great deal of fun in this early preview performance. Her character is both oblivious and shameless at the same time, never hiding who she is and certainly not apologising for her demeanour or the things she has done. Yet Barber’s Elsa is a warm, unexpectedly life affirming creation as well, bringing light into this household and a simplicity of vision that has eluded the family previously. There is much joy to be had in the second half particularly as more of Elsa’s past and her own attitudes are revealed, but Barber creates a woman that the audience can like, her warmth making her appealing and with a view of morality that proves an interesting take away.

As Peter, Shearsmith probably has the very best of the comedy, creating an archetypal harassed dad trying to juggle work, family and neighbourhood responsibilities with the arrival of a tricky houseguest. Often on the backfoot and forced into embarrassing or socially uncomfortable situations, Shearsmith mines every opportunity the lines offer with impeccable comic timing while also looking for opportunities in between, measuring out often quite subtle reaction moments with care to generate maximum impact. Elsa may be the focus but it is Peter that the audience looks to for response and comment on the unusual events that occur. Shearsmith successfully grasps that responsibility, proving the everyman anchor and the put-upon protagonist that the show needs him to be while landing every opportunity for comedy.

Amanda Abbington’s Debbie feels increasingly like a secondary character however, taking an equal share of the conversation early on but is either absent or allowing / expecting Peter to lead most events in the second Act. Abbington gives Debbie some distinctive characteristics, including a flash of anger as her frustrations flare, particularly as the couple find themselves increasingly hemmed in, and Debbie is the one to connect the strangeness of a supposed poisoner improving her domestic life. There is good support from Michael Simkins as the persistent neighbour whose innocent gall fuels an important subplot while Maddie Holliday and Gabriel Howell as teenagers Rosie and Alex are suitably whiney and then improbably charming in their periodic appearances that nicely up the ante for their desperate parents.

The Unfriend is not a perfect comedy; a few more performances ahead of Press Night will tighten the flow and there is an irrelevant anti-vax joke that even the writer didn’t seem to recognise, but it is great to see this play finally staged nearly two years on with the talents of its original team at an important out of town venue. Its conclusion about the fluidity of facts weighed against the imposing effects of personality adds a political spin that feels very contemporary, leaving us with one important recommendation – to be less British and unfriend while you still can.

The Unfriend is running at the Minerva Theatre Chichester until 9 July with tickets from £21. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

My Fair Lady – London Coliseum

Henry Higgins is a problem. The question facing the creative team behind the London transfer of Bartlett’s Sher’s production of My Fair Lady, which opens at the London Coliseum this week, is what do you do about a lead character whose attitudes to women, to the sacred preservation of language and to poverty are at best dismissive and at worst, openly offensive? One of the greatest stage and screen musicals of all time, the comic extremes of Higgins views, aired frequently throughout the story, are easy to dismiss as being of their time and, even in the context of the narrative, shown to be of step with others. But a contemporary production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s story cannot avoid the conclusion than Higgins is the very epitome of a toxic bachelor and Sher’s team must decide whether he should be rewarded for it.

Last year, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre faced a similar dilemma with its portrayal of Billy Bigelow in Carousel who, in the original score and romanticised Hollywood movie, is able to gain entry to heaven despite repeat acts of domestic abuse. Not so in Timothy Sheader’s production and Billy was given a slightly different kind of ending. Higgins is even more overt in his disdain for other people, and the snobbish superiority of his manner to Eliza – that he would treat a Duchess the same as a flower girl – may give him plenty of humorous lines, but in this entirely faithful adaptation, Sher’s production asks whether Higgins really learns anything about himself in the course of his encounter with Eliza Doolittle and whether his attachment to her is anything more than a personal indulgence.

It has been more than two decades since My Fair Lady was last seen in London in a fateful production that paired Martine McCutcheon with Jonathan Pryce, and the show itself in many ways is exactly the same as it was in 2001 and in 1956. Purists will be delighted that Sher’s production is true to Lerner’s lyrics and book while a full orchestra fills the Coliseum with Loewe’s unparalleled score. From Wouldn’t It Be Lovely to I’m Getting Married in the Morning, I Could Have Danced All Night to On the Street Where you Live, visually and musically, Sher’s production is entirely traditional, retaining the same period setting, full Edwardian costumes and every recognisable line.

The surprise here is in creating a show that is in look, feel and style exactly the My Fair Lady we all know, even if only from the indelible 1964 film, and without changing a single word, making the audience think again about the characters and their behaviour to one another. This is a story that pivots on the choice and pronunciation of language so hearing again Higgins’s repeated use of ‘baggage’, ‘guttersnipe’ and ‘squashed cabbage leaf’ feel uncomfortably different in 2022. This Cinderella story of a young woman’s transformation from ugly duckling to swan becomes mired in Higgins’s problematic insistence that Eliza has no feelings of note, that she has no right to live if she ‘utters such depressing and disgusting sounds’ and that credit for her triumphant appearance at the Embassy Ball is his alone.

Sher presents Higgins exactly as he is, a man who believes women are vague, eager to be married and objects to be dispatched, that they are ‘exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hags’ and that men are intellectually and culturally superior. None of this is softened or altered, and although he is a character that audiences have only ever been asked to take semi-seriously in his rants – particularly in Rex Harrison’s charismatic performance – and who is deeply affected by the presence of Eliza in his life, he still curses her intention and scoffs at her liberty until almost the last moment in I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face while still wanting her around to continue to support his lifestyle, locating his slippers and liaising with the housekeeper on his breakfast choices.

What you see in this production is, then, in some ways what we always see, a man of his time and an eager bachelor. Yet, a barely perceptible shift has occurred where inclusion, individuality and class are no longer tightly controlled by white Oxbridge-educated men who determine what is considered an ‘acceptable’ speech pattern and dialect, or the eugenicist undertones that imply one life is more worthy than another. In a subtly cast contemporary light, Higgins’s attitudes are far more damaging and deplorable than their surface comedy suggests. And while Eliza expresses precisely the same sentiment that Willy Russell’s Rita would later experience, that education leaves her in a no man’s land between one class and another, the swan Higgins has created is far less content or at ease with herself than the young flower girl he met in the Covent Garden piazza.

So is Higgins a villain? Well not quite. Although selfish and driven by a Leopold and Loeb feeling of superiority over his fellow men, his motives are reasonably pure and he genuinely believes that what he offers Eliza will improve her life and give her the kind of choices she lacks in her original state. That she feels far more caged after her transformation is an unforeseen outcome of their experiment and his growing feeling for her is testament to a respect that grows between them. Higgins is capable of some change, moving towards a more generous acceptance of the capacity for growth in others than he previously possessed. However, like Billy Bigelow, does Higgins learn or do enough to earn a happy ending? In 1964, George Cukor and Hollywood clearly thought so, in 2022 that is not so clear and in creating a final ending for Eliza and Higgins that weighs-up the balance of morality across the three hours of performance, Sher consults George Bernard Shaw’s original script for Pygmalion.

So while Higgins becomes more ambiguous, Eliza is given greater clarity, with an enlarged spirit of independence and personality that give her far greater agency. When she arrives at Higgins’s door, Eliza is already a woman who has financially supported herself since her father abandoned her years before, who moves without fear around the late night streets of London and is confident in herself. Unafraid to ask for what she wants or to fight back when being maltreated, her quest for self-improvement is presented as a determination to take control of her future and a reflection of the respect with which she wants to be treated. Language, for her, is the tool for that but Eliza retains her savvy natural instincts. It is a shame that Sharif Afifi’s Freddy is played as a buffoon, rather than a credible suitor, throwing away both Lerner and Loewe’s sublime On the Street Where You Live but also the realistic prospect of marriage for Eliza, no one in this production could believe for a second that such a shrewd woman would consider this Freddy as a realistic option.

And while he may not think so, the audience is encouraged to see her as Higgins’s equal from the first, a woman who disregards social convention and the expectation of others as highly as her tutor prizes them. She scowls and scorns him repeatedly during their lessons, standing up to his bullying and refusing to broken by either his methods or his overbearing nature. The more he treats her as a semi-invisible living doll (as Mrs Higgins notes), the more unyielding Eliza becomes and the more determined to succeed, as much to spite him as to work towards her floristry shop aspiration. In Sher’s production, we note that while Eliza’s speech pattern may change, she holds on to a connection to the woman she was six months before, retaining the better part of her courage and self-sufficiency that allows her to face a different kind of future – far more bravely than Higgins does in fact. That instinctual ability to find her own way and to make a final choice that will be of most benefit to herself is an indication of her essential resilience and her intellect, underpinning the notion that the only person who transforms Eliza is Eliza herself.

Amara Okereke is outstanding as Eliza with a vocal that rivals Marnie Nixon. While it would be so easy to play her like Audrey Hepburn, Okereke finds entirely her own beat, exploring Eliza’s multifaceted personality while using both songs and scenes to create her own, distinct version of the character. Her cockney accent is authentically rooted in South London while her transformed voice retains a nicely false note of refinement, slightly over-pronounced, that makes Zoltan Karpathy’s suspicions of her origin more credible. But Okereke’s biggest achievement is to make Eliza feel real, a women plagued by self-doubt and aspiration in equal part, entirely sympathetic, scrappy and determined to forge her own path, and while she accepts help from Higgins, she never needs him or allows herself to rely on him.

Reprising his Lincoln Centre performance, Harry Hadden-Paton is bullish, self-satisfied and commanding as Higgins, a man unused to being challenged, particularly by women who, when he gives them a second thought, expects others to bow to his superior mind and reasoning. Hadden-Paton finds tones of humility in there somewhere, a spark of feeling that offers up the possibility of redemption and prevents Higgins from becoming too flat while delivering the songs with vigour and certainly singing them unlike Rex Harrison. Higgins, of course, never sees himself as a bad man and that is the greatness in Hadden-Patton’s performance, Higgins doesn’t purposefully offer himself up to be judged, that rests entirely with the viewer.

To do all of this within the chocolate box tradition of My Fair Lady is fascinating and Sher’s production applies many of the same staging techniques that his version of To Kill a Mockingbird is using only a few streets away. Michael Yeargen’s set is a series of watercolour flats that drop or are consciously wheeled into place to suggest the façade of Covent Garden, railings and the market scenes while some moveable lampposts and disconnected door frames stand in for Wimpole Street. Broadway often romanticises the classic film musicals and draws on the Technicolor studio production style as its theme – see also An American in Paris. The concept here is semi-fantastical, a heightened version of a London that never existed in which real characters and emotions take place in front of painted scenes visibly wheeled around in choreographed patterns by the actors in a sort of Brechtian escapism.

Like Atticus Finch’s house, Yeargen’s design for Higgins’s home is a block set that both moves in from the back of stage and has the capacity to rotate, giving a multi-room view of his Victorian townhouse that includes the Study / Library with spiral staircase and the hallway where Eliza dreams of Higgins’s death at the hand of the King. Catherine Zuber echoes Cecil Beaton in the costume design, creating a homage to his vision particularly for the stylish Ascot sequence, Eliza’s beautiful ballgown and even nodding to the lines and shape of her leaving Wimpole Street outfit, although Zuber exchanges the dour peach for a hot pink. There are plenty of choices here that pay court to the very specific look that My Fair Lady has and its audience might expect while also introducing some bolder tones that stand out in a large auditorium.

Yet, the size of the space does have its downsides and the pre-sized set blocks and scenarios occasionally looks a little swamped in the Coliseum. With a relatively small ensemble cast, this is most noticeable in the two numbers that really ought to fill the stage. The Ascot scene with only two lines of well dressed aristocrats looks very sparse at first with almost no set to offset the large gap at the back of the stage – not even some silhouetted horses projected across the back wall. A similar issue afflicts the Embassy Ball where only a dozen couples stand to one side in what should be a crowded society event full of whispers and intrigue. Covid safety and budget aside, what should be set piece moments feel a little underpowered compared to the dense decoration of the Higgins residence.

Part of this is a lack of dance incorporated into this interpretation on a sizeable stage made for ballet and opera, which last year was filled to capacity by teenage dance fanatics in Hairspray. My Fair Lady on stage actually has very limited full ensemble choreography until late in the second half when Alfred sings I’m Getting Married in the Morning, and here Sher’s production comes alive with a spectacular performance from Stephen K. Amos, departing from the Stanley Holloway take, to create a colourful pub-based extravaganza filled with can-can dancers, working men and plenty of table-hopping joy. In a sequence that lasts several joyous minutes, Trude Rittmann’s choreography is multi-tonal as Alfred celebrates and mourns his last night of freedom, lighting up the show with an energy slightly lacking from those other big ensemble pieces.

If you want to see a My Fair Lady that feels like a scene for scene remake of the film, then this production will not disappoint, but equally for anyone looking for a more contemporary resonance beneath the surface, then that is certainly here as well. Sher’s re-examination of the show’s central relationship and shifts in the balance of power are enlightening, proving the modern musical doesn’t have to be gritty or necessarily stripped-back to find new meaning.

My Fair Lady is at the London Coliseum until 27 August with tickets from £20, followed by a UK and Ireland tour. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Age of Rage – Barbican

The work of Ivo van Hove has proven divisive, the extent to which the director incorporates cinematic styles and influences into his work is a question of personal taste, so while some critics and audiences find work like All About Eve gimmicky, his parred-down version of The Human Voice was also criticised for not being gimmicky enough. So, it is interesting to look at the techniques he employs with the Dutch theatre company Internationaal Theater Amsterdam where the boundaries of all forms of artistic expression are easily and innovatively blurred. Building on long, immersive dramas including the acclaimed Roman Tragedies, Age of Rage, staged at the Barbican for only four nights, put a rock and roll spin on five stories in Greek tragedy emphasising the female impetus for violent revenge.

van Hove’s best work has focused on female protagonists and he is a director that acutely understands and can convey the interior female experience. And while there may be plenty of techniques employed in their presentation, these never detract from or overshadow the emotional substance of the lead and her context. The simplicity of the stripped-back staging choices for Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre sit alongside public-private divisions explored in All About Eve and the truly personal and deeply affecting experience in The Human Voice where unobserved deterioration was powerfully captured. Here in Age of Rage, van Hove’s work, co-adapted from Euripides and Aeschylus by Koen Tachelet, follows a notable drama trend in restoring and more fully excavating the role of women in Greek tragedy and returning a sense of agency, danger and determinism to their lives in a period usually associated with male bombast, war and all forms of directed masculine violence.

Like Jermyn Street Theatre’s 15 Heroines shown during lockdown and more recently Kyo Choi’s Galapagos, the understanding and presentation of women in Greek mythology as victims and chattels is being revised, and while the murder, rape and bestial transformation by the Gods of women has informed subsequent gender structures, expectations and behaviours, the consequences of these actions when instigated by women were severe and often gruesome for the men who betrayed, captured or violated them. Age of Rage places those female stories centre stage, showing how female-driven revenge truly shaped the lives of men.

Telling the story of the Trojan War through the fortunes of Agamemnon’s family, this production explores notions of inherited trauma and inter-generational suffering by comparing concepts of individual and national sacrifice. When Agamemnon slaughters his daughter Iphigenia to guarantee favourable winds for the Greek fleet, it sets in motion a chain of events that play-out over the 3 hours and 45-minutes of this intensive drama. Structured around five related and consequential narratives – Iphigenia in Aulis, Trojan Women and Hecuba, Agamemnon, Elektra and Orestes – there are both dynastic and thematic links across the show that see some of the same events occur in different places and periods, while subsequent characters feel the impact of those who came before. The extent to which individuals are used or destroyed to pay a larger debt is significant and the ruination of the innocent looms large across the show. The death of Iphigenia to support someone else’s family, another man’s war and the whims of the Gods is crucial to understanding the female position in Age of Rage and the events their fury unleashed.

Mother and daughter relationships disrupted by male intervention occur again and again. When Clytemnestra discovers her husband’s betrayal, the conversation focuses on why Agamemnon chooses to sacrifice their daughter in order to rescue Helen, his friend Menelaus’s wife. From here, two particular narratives emerge that flow through the remainder of the production; the first is the role of Helen in causing all the events that follow and her active part not just in the deaths of thousands of men in the ten year conflict that ensues, but also as the cause of innocent deaths among civilians where several male parents choose to offer up their children to the Gods for her sake and the victory of Greece over Troy for which the women of the story violently resent her. The second is the role of the Gods in guarding and shaping events and the extent to which mortals have any control over their destiny. The arrival of Cassandra in one of the later segments with her prophesies that come to pass are part of a theme about ritual and practice in Greek life, examining how far the behaviour of everyday Greek citizens is fundamentally driven by religion and the space between the divine and human, especially in maternal decision-making.

Although men are in the foreground in determining the narrative direction of Greek tragedy – they start and conduct the wars and sacrifice the children – their emotional life in Age of Rage is, on the whole, relegated and associated with compliance with social dictates and religious expectations. Likewise, the consequences for them are largely political, having to balance this pleasing of the Gods with adhering to the mob and honouring bonds of fraternity with other men. We see them interacting in formal structures as comrades, war leaders and as politicians choosing to support or condemn behaviours based on the exacting strictures of “manly” behaviour. No amount of pleading prevents Agamemnon and others from sacrificing Iphigenia or Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena, thus the King remains immune to the wailing of women in order to do his duty as a man. This is most notable when Orestes is chastised by his grandfather Tyndareus despite avenging his father’s death because he is seen to have been coerced by his sister Elektra. In the male-structured world in which Age of Rage takes place, deference to any woman in the play is perceived as weakness from which only disgrace can follow.

That the women break through this structure to dominate and fundamentally shape the play is vital, emphasising the cost of these choices, of the human pain and consequences that mires the Atreus family across multiple generations. This tension runs through the show, pulling the female characters into the centre of the drama and creating psychologically complex creations who are in equal parts sympathetic and monstrous, instigating murderous crimes that emerge from their earlier maternal wounds and long-festering resentments. Men may create dangerous situations and embark on drawn-out, complicated wars, but it is the women who hold on to their hurts and wreak a terrible devastation that shakes the very foundations of morality, bringing social upset. From Clytemnestra’s brazen murder of her husband and subsequent flaunting of her lover to the aggrieved Hecuba physically attacking men with her loyal followers and Elektra castrating the body of her mother’s lover, Age of Rage is a ferocious statement of strategic female power and bodily vengence.

And in van Hove’s production, that power extends to an extraordinary visual experience that seamlessly combines theatre, a heavy metal soundtrack, dance and an operatic grandeur that is intense, bold and fresh in its vision while never drawing attention from the emotional volcanoes erupting between the characters. Jan Versweyveld creates a representative metal framework around the stage from which items including bloodied corpses can be dropped into the centre of the action, or the rigging used as additional platforms to alter the staging levels by creating opportunities for the Chorus cum dance troupe cum mob to observe the very public behaviours of their royal family. Into that almost Brechtian space, van Hove allows his creativity to flow freely, unconstrained by the more timid styles of British theatre, using a vast video backdrop – largely used for colour and pattern that cinematic relay – and minimal props to set the scene.

The first Act, lasting around two hours, opens with a deep heavy metal prologue played on electric guitar with bursts of flashing light also designed by Versweyveld. Throughout this first section, the tone is trashy glamour, a rock concert of sound and colour drawn together in An D’Huys’s grungy sequin costume design that gives the piece a seediness that prevents the audience from connecting to closely with characters whose moral and personal aptitudes will never be straightforward.

The tone is different again in Act Two as the story accelerates a generation to become a revenger’s revenge, blurring the boundaries of crimes and their appropriate punishment. Focusing largely on Elektra and Orestes, this becomes a pastoral piece far from the sheen of the court where a base of mud physically and metaphorically mires the characters. Fed by constantly dripping water from the rigging, it represents people now steeped in generations of corruption, staining their lives and anyone who comes into contact with them – not least the crisp cream suit of Tyndareus denoting a man very much out of place in this agrarian setting. Smell too becomes an important storytelling device, expanding the sense of immersion as the fragrant incense and turbine-driven smoke of Act One give way to the earthy freshness of wet mud filling the auditorium as these former aristocrats, almost God-like in their power, status and (notably) seemingly immune from consequences, are physically brought down to earth where their bodies join the thousands of others who die in this story either in combat or in sacrifice. Blood will beget blood Macbeth states, and so it proves.

As an exercise in artistic creativity, van Hove’s easily combines theatre and dance to tell the story and understand its wider impacts. Dance is often a separate moment in UK theatre, either it is its own distinct art form or a chance to pause for a specific number within a musical or opera. But in Age of Rage, all kinds of contemporary dance is integrated into the narrative either reflecting the ritualistic moments associated with worship, the “headbanger” style of heavy metal which exemplified the uncontrolled female fury of the title or used as a Chorus that combines movement and song to comment on and progress the story. There is less sense of separation between these different media and instead van Hove is telling the story simultaneously via dance, music and dramatic exchange, each woven into the other, raising and enhancing each style to provide an integrated and often booming experience. Although opera itself is not used, the grand narrative approach, big characters and stylised visual design is operatic in scale, enough to capture the inter-generational themes, life, death and the god-drivers while still retaining its intimate and psychologically-intensive character focus that examines the human and family cost of tragedy.

The performances are equally bold and deep, particularly Chris Nietvelt’s Clytemnestra flaunting her womanhood and sexuality in a low-cut sparkly halter neck dress and knee-high boots while being vigorous in her maternal grief for a daughter snatched away. Later, as she overtly parades her liaison with a younger man and years of embedded rage that boil over, Nietvelt creates a complex, contradictory and rounded Queen who evokes quite opposite reactions. Hans Kesting as Agamemnon and Gijs Scholten van Aschat as Menelaus are ultimately weak men able to use their indiscriminate power but both unable to hold on to their wives or recognise any free will that might exist to defy the high price asked by the Gods. Hélène Devos dominates the second half as a fiery Elektra resenting every moment of her poverty and using that resentment to fuel a sustained rage over more than a decade while quickly manipulating brother Orestes (Minne Koole) to act in the destruction of their mother. Outside the core family, Janni Goslinga as Hecuba powerfully conveys the cost of motherhood while Ilke Paddenburg as Iphigenia and all the sacrificed children makes an important point about the universality of that grief as the body count racks up with visual representation on screen as dancing figures lost forever.

There is real moral complexity in Age of Rage that not only passes between generations but also refuses to let one act expunge other faults – Clytemnestra may have just cause to murder her husband but her lascivious lifestyle means her own death is equally justifiable. With smoke, wind machines, video design, brash costumes, music and mud, van Hove’s show on paper seems like a lot, bold and gaudy, yet in practice it has emotional depth and an energy that is redolent of European theatre and of the lives Greek tragedy represents. Performed for only four days, Age of Rage was a thrilling retelling of familiar stories, a rare chance to see a van Hove grand vision come so vividly and memorably to life.

Age of Rage ran at the Barbican from 5-8 May. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Oklahoma! – Young Vic

Productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals have undergone quite the transformation in the past 12 months with versions that return to the source text to reimagine and reconsider shows like Carousel and South Pacific for the twenty-first century by returning the darker, often violent, subthemes that beat beneath the surface or to reposition some of the attitudes to race, gender, conquest and even physical attraction that reflect contemporary morality. Now, the Young Vic presents a rather sexy version of Oklahoma! that replaces twee interpretations of cowboy country with a throbbing desire that inflicts the inhabitants of this rural town, and becomes a fascinating technical exercise in deconstructing a musical.

Oklahoma! is perhaps not the best loved Rodgers and Hammerstein show, its dual romance plot is pretty thin and it lacks an expansive moral message to pin the show together. And while there is plenty of crossover with scenarios in Carousel – the same small community, the same drum beat of violence and notions of performative masculinity amidst non-conforming women and a similar commercial connection to the landscape – a set-to over a barn dance and bake sell doesn’t have quite the same sense of life and death jeopardy as some of their more accomplished work.

But Hollywood has much to do with interpretation, toning down the raunchier aspects of Oklahoma! to pass the censorship requirements but also to create romanticised versions of the great American past. What directors Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein have done at the Young Vic is to pull back the gingham curtains to reveal a showing that is teeming with unfulfilled sexual desire among a group of young characters confused about what their futures hold and unable to articulate or fulfil those needs. Looking again at the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Fish and Fein set notions of true love aside and instead look at the causes and sometimes hefty consequences of desire as unrequited passions, sexual jealousy and denial drive the characters to extreme behaviours.

And in doing so, the directors open up a far murkier version of this story, one in which the two love triangles, Laurey-Curly-Jud and Ado Annie-Ali-Will, have less clear cut resolutions, leaving the audience uncertain about the destined lovers and losers as well as where they should place their sympathies. Ado Annie, principally a comic creation, is also a woman embracing her sexual liberation, control of her own body and the freedom to ‘flirt’ with as many men as she chooses, an agency that the Young Vic’s production wholeheartedly embraces. Yet, her actions not only cause hurt to others that arouses a dangerous jealousy, but her fun is ultimately dampened by the old-fashioned morality represented by her father that, in resolution, ends up clipping her wings rather than freeing her. And this show is not afraid to leave us with that somewhat dissatisfied feeling that Ado Annie has been cheated out of becoming the women she wanted to be by embracing someone else’s notion of tradition.

Likewise, there is something deeply unsettling about the central relationship between Laurey and her contentious beaux Curly and Jud. Usually presented as unsavoury, predatory and a bit weird (and therefore undeserving of love), Jud is the easy villain of Oklahoma!, his lurking presence designed to make the audience root for Curly as the avowed and deserving lover of the plucky Laurey. But it’s not quite so clear cut in Fish and Fein’s new interpretation, and while Jud may be a friendless loner, there is a nervy sensitivity that asks whether, knowing of his affection for her, did Jud deserve to be used by Laurey and have his hopes raised? And is Curly’s reaction proportionate?

At the same time, Curly is by no means a straightforward hero; he too is drawn to Laurey but at no point does he declare his love for her or, in the early part of the musical, any clear intention to marry her. Instead there is a physical chemistry between them that drives their intention, corrupting their behaviours in the remainder of the story. Here Curly’s reaction to Jud feels extreme – if he loved Laurey and she loved him there should be no reason to fear Jud – which implies that Curly either has no better purpose in pursuing Laurey and fears exposure, and/or that his competitive spirit is aroused by the presence of second suitor, that winning rather than the girl of his dreams are the ultimate motivation.

What unfolds in the final moments of this production is the result of this complex mixture of emotional and physical desires that is, it seems, deliberately designed to leave a sense of discontent with the conclusion. As the townspeople rapidly close ranks, the truth of Jud and Curly’s final encounter is foggier than previously seen, a statement that morality and justice are not fixed certainties but that the community can influence them for their own ends. And while Rodgers and Hammerstein have tied up all the love story loose ends with two couples in the ‘right’ relationship, this is not the happy ending you might be expecting and instead Fish and Fein leave you to feel disquieted and even sullied by our observation of this tale.

Part of the reason for that is a series of technical decisions that keep the audience on the outside and prevents the viewer from becoming too invested in anyone. Laura Jellinek and Grace Laubacher nod to Soutra Gilmour’s recent work for Jamie Lloyd (particularly Cyrano de Bergerac and The Seagull) by covering the Young Vic auditorium in untreated and bare slabs of MDF into which two shallow bunkers have been carved out for the onstage band. In what feels like a homage to Lloyd’s style of theatremaking, the set becomes a representative space with some trestle tables and fold-up chairs in which imagined scenarios take place, allowing the text and songs alone to move the physical location from Aunt Eller’s farmyard to the venue for the box social and its environs. Eschewing elaborate scenery feels appropriate for the way in which Fish and Fein mine beneath the surface of Oklahoma!, while the occasional use of handheld microphones is an emphasis device that has had considerable impact in Lloyd’s recent work.

This production makes its most experimental contribution through Scott Zielinski’s complex lighting design that takes the musical in a new direction, drawing attention to different emotional emphases and carving really interesting boundaries between fantasy and reality, not only in the purposeful ‘dream ballet’ but especially within the everyday interaction. Zielinki’s choices are designed to alienate the audience, keeping the house lights up for much of the show which makes it frustratingly difficult to focus at times but ties into Fish and Fein’s vision for a show that denies investment in the characters and traditional notions of emotional involvement in their lives. That concluding feeling of contamination, of being tarnished comes partly from this stark visibility, making the audience complicit in the outcomes of the story, blurring the line between the characters and us, all under the same unforgiving bright lights.

But this is not all Zielinki has to say and lighting, or its absence, becomes a pointed communication choice throughout. When Laurey and Curly first connect, it happens suddenly in a deep green pulse that almost freezes the frame – more a Royal Court trick than a typical musical moment. In the Second Act, a deep orange and red starts to creep into the lighting tones, taking Laurey from her dream self confronting her emotions at the end of the ballet to a touch of twinkly romance in the false half light that feels laden with doom. But it is the absence of light that becomes pivotal when Zielinki employs two periods of blackout. The first is uncomfortably long, a total absence of light under which Jud and Curly intensely contend, speaking with whispered heaviness into the microphones to create a disembodied experience – echoing Mrs Danvers urging the second Mrs de Winter to destruction. A partial blackout with fairy lights happens in the second half as well, another emotional turning point which brings events between Jud and Laurey to a head. This is really interesting work from Zielinki, taking what is often perceived as a sunny musical and creating so many textures within the Young Vic space that provoke bodily reactions that accentuate the disorientation and ambiguity the production is aiming for.

The venue has assembled an excellent cast whose performances dig deep into the moral turpitude of the characters and their unsavoury behaviours. Anouska Lucas is in fine voice as Laurey, a happily independent woman who doesn’t need a man to improve her lot but finds herself almost undeniably attracted to Curly. Lucas and Arthur Darvill have an intense chemistry as the would-be lovers, with Lucas capturing the subtle but sultry physicality of her character, almost Katherina Minola-like in her self-possession and determination to fight for her independence while equally confused when she accepts Jud’s date in spite of herself. Lucas’s voice really is stunning too, deep and bluesy when she sings People Will Say We’re in Love and wistful during the toe-tapping number Many a New Day.

Darvill too is excellent, a confident figure who swaggers into town but with real affection for Eller and a strong desire for Laurey, although it is the darker strands that Darvill finds most interesting, leaving the audience unsure whether or not Curly is a good man. A recourse to violence, to getting what he wants at any cost runs through the character and whether he’s manipulating Jud into ending his life, which Darvill does in hushed and hurried tones, or acting reflexively in the final moments, Darvill’s Curly isn’t a man to admire, a dubiety that he evokes well. Many of his songs are consciously performed into a microphone while playing guitar but Darvill excels in spinning the musical numbers, giving those famous pieces Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ and The Surrey with the Fringe on Top a fresh, less orchestral feel, playing with pitch and trills to bed them into the country-blusey sound of this production.

The rest of the cast are excellent too, the ever-amazing Marisha Wallace is a comic joy as Ado Annie, revelling in her sexuality and selling every cheeky moment to an audience who adore her from the start. Liza Sadovy, fresh from her Olivier award-winning triumph in Cabaret, is commanding if underused as matriarch Aunt Eller whose match-making attempts motor the drama while James Davis and Stavros Demetraki as Ado Annie’s lovers Will and Ali have a great time as hilarious rivals who lighten the mood. Particular plaudits to Patrick Vaill who makes Jud an awkward outsider but belies his villain status with an emotional depth that makes his big pathos number Lonely Room especially affecting and leaves you questioning the outcome of the show.

This is not the jaunty Oklahoma! many may be expecting and in a period of significant rethinking and repositioning of the musical, this almost abstract approach feels like a natural progression. With some striking design choices, not least the sparring use of Joshua Thorson’s intimate facial projection, Fish and Fein have created something that disconcerts more than entertains, its dissatisfactory feeling engineered through a deliberate combination of theatre techniques designed to distract and disengage the audience from the characters to make broader points about destructive jealousy, female agency and townsfolk closing ranks against outsiders. This is not an Oklahoma! to love, but its staging choices and intent to challenge the viewer make it an interesting experiment in dramatic practice.

Oklahoma! is at the Young Vic until 25 June with tickets from £10. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog