Large Theatres – Page 11

A TASTE OF HONEY

OLDHAM COLISEUM

Written by Shelagh Delaney

Directed by Chris Lawson

Sixty years on from it’s première at Joan Littlewood‘s Theatre Royal Stratford East Helen and Jo are doing another moonlight flit as A Taste of Honey opens at Oldham Coliseum. Traipsing through the auditorium with their flimsy suitcases and cheap coats you can almost smell the whiff of stale perfume, gin and despair as they pass. The creation of 18 year old Shelagh Delaney, this gritty Northern drama was penned in two weeks as a defiant young woman gave a voice to the women around her. Salford in the late Fifties was grim and this production speaks of the harsh reality of poverty, race and homosexuality in a post war working class community. It is a celebration of strong women making the best of their assets and getting on with life regardless of what fate chucks in their path.

Director Chris Lawson clearly has great affection for the characters and seeks out their softness and humour as well as their grit and shrewish spitefulness. Gemma Dobson plays Jo as a fresh faced, teenager with traces of childish puppyfat who may despise her mother’s lifestyle but who is quick to clumsily adopt her coquettish mannerisms. The tragedy here is a child-woman growing up too fast as she seeks out a little attention and affection in a bleak environment. Dobson nicely threads the line between childish naivety and the bleak cynicism of one who has seen too much too young. Kerrie Taylor embodies the world weary Helen with a rake thin brittleness that on occasion lights up with the seductive sinuousness of Marilyn Monroe. This good time gal is bleakly aware that her 40 year old body will only do so many times around the block before it is discarded back in the gutter. There is little likelihood of cosy, happy endings for either woman yet they both retain pride and stoicism.

The traditional men here are bluff, gruff and casually cruel like Peter who Phil Rowson plays with rakish energy as a drunken Spiv. The others who have not been to war are softer and kinder. Kenton Thomas brings a sweetness to sailor Jimmie who is charmed by Jo and her acceptance of his race but leaves without ever checking if she might be pregnant. Max Runham as the kindly art student who befriends Jo is delightful as he veers between wistfully “playing house” and desperately trying to fit into societal norms while waspishly expressing his true nature.

Sammy Dobson has created a set that perfectly evokes a grimy, Northern street. All smoky brickwork and smoggy air with an interior of peeling wallpaper and nicotine colours. The threadbare furniture sags and creaks and retains its grimness even with the glamour of Helen flitting in or out, or the occasional brightness of a bunch of conciliatory flowers. The moments when the stars glitter through the roof is a clever touch bringing hope and magic into these gutters or perhaps the poignancy of fragments of broken dreams.

The music here is another snapshot of this era of post war Britain just before the freedoms of The Sixties. The use of dance and movement to the music allows the scenes to flow and the characters to escape reality while a records spins on the turntable. Sixty years on from Delaney’s triumph there are sweeping changes in society and many of Salford’s grim back streets are gone forever. Watching the revival of this play brings cosy childhood reminders of watching black and white episodes of Coronation Street, however it is also a potent statement about today’s sanctions and the unremitting destruction of our social welfare system. If writing this play today, I imagine Delaney might have Jo and Helen at a food bank and queueing for a bed at a hostel for the homeless.

At Oldham Coliseum 25th May – 9th June

Images by Joel Chester Fildes

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Large Theatres, Uncategorized

HOME, Manchester

Written by Eugene O’Neill

Directed by Dominic Hill

This is co-production by HOME and Citizen’s Theatre of Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical and Pulitzer award winning play. Director Dominic Hill has shaped an exquisitely raw study of a family trapped in the throes of addiction and regret. Written in 1942 it covers one fateful day in the life of the Tyrone family as they acknowledge the hopeless reality they exist in and the ways in which they each seek to escape their pain. As younger son Edmund reflects, Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? Each one of them is a shadow of their original selves, consumed by their addictions and in Edmund’s case; quite literally by tuberculosis.

Tom Piper has created a haunting and deeply evocative set for this production. It is the bare exposed bones of a house reflecting the exposed failings and regrets of the family. It looked unfinished like the framework of a house where the architects plans got lost or waylaid and no one had the skills or temerity to try to fill in the gaps. In a similiar fashion Mary Tyrone is such a childlike wraith she has never fully grasped her role as a homemaker, wife or mother. The foggy opaqueness of the walls echo the transparency of this family’s lies and excuses. There is nowhere to hide and as the projected sounds of restless movement or conversation echoes from rooms further back in the house, it feels like the audience has no choice but to eavesdrop just like the family do.

The design of the house also echoes the theme of the fog which prevails throughout the play. It is a potent signifier of the ways in which each of the family seek to lose themselves from reality in a fog of alcohol or morphine or memories. As Mary reflects how I love the fog, it hides you from the world…… No one can find you or touch you any more. Tellingly it is the foghorn she hates, a blessed beacon of safety for some, but for her a wretched call back to reality.

It is the profoundly narcissistic Mary who dominates the play with her desperate neediness and appalling insensitivity to the feelings and needs of her family. Bríd Ní Neachtain embodies the essence of this fluttering morphine addicted waif. She is girlish and gay or plaintive and rueful, then flits into prickly, resentful and defensive. Her performance brings alive every facet of a women who was spoilt and cosseted by her father and husband, but who has been disappointed by marriage and family life and aging. This lying dope fiend is at times truly a fiend as she deflects her own shortcomings unto her family. One son is cruelly scapegoated for the death of her middle son while the youngest gets no comfort when diagnosed with consumption but is vilified and blamed for making her worry and therefore need her morphine fix. Yet this performance by Nì Neachtain also evokes pity for this once pretty and talented young women who has become an aging embittered addict.

George Costigan does a warmly, upbeat James who desperately hopes that each trip to the sanatorium for his wife will bring a permanent cure, yet who quickly moves to defeated and despondent as he is disappointed once again. An actor who gave up artistic success for financial security, yet is trapped as his lifelong fear of penury and the poorhouse mean he cannot enjoy his wealth. Costigan fills the role, perfectly evoking James’s Irish background from the Irish Famine and poverty while delighting in his passion for Shakespeare and his boyish glee as he opens yet another fresh bottle of whisky. He also brings the meanness of an unpredictable drunk who can be despicable to his boys one minute while hugging them the next.

Sam Phillips as Jamie is a beautiful wasted drunk who has learned to be wily and full of self pity and excuses from his addict parents. The true degree of family damage is surely in his final scenes with brother Edmund when he chillingly warns his brother against himself The dead part of me hopes you won’t get well. Lorn MacDonald as Edmund is heart rending as he is in denial about his health and when the worst is confirmed he realises that no one in the family is equipped to support him. Wheezing and glistening with tears and spittle his performance is haunting and raw. This family emotionally flay each other through the course of this long day and MacDonald displays every moment of pain on his pale, anguished face. The only truly cheery spirit is the maid, a lively Dani Heron who is not contaminated by the family dynamics and is happy to join her mistress in a whisky.

This is such a bleak insight into addiction and co-dependency in a family and O’Neill was writing about his own family as the only one still alive. It reminds us all of how the echo of past family stories define the present and often the future. It was one of the last plays he wrote before becoming unable to write due to Parkinson like symptoms affected his hands. There is a brutal irony when he describes his mother’s trembling hands in the play and in recalling her drug addiction at a time when his own wife was also an addict. As Mary says The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too. This is a family who need to cling on to their tragedies in order to justify their failures.

It speaks as clearly today as it did when first published of the destructive impact of addiction and unresolved grief. Performed in Glasgow and now in Manchester it is doubly pertinent today as both are cities with drug problems and a growing issue of homelessness. As James relates his fear of the poorhouse it is a sobering reminder that in Britain today there are no longer even poorhouses just pavements.

HOME 10 – 26 May

Images by Tim Morozzo

Three Sisters

Large Theatres, Uncategorized

Royal Exchange Theatre

By Rashdash

After Chekhov

Three Sisters is the latest show from multi-award winning Rashdash and is co-produced with the Royal Exchange Theatre with whom they are Associate Artists. This is a gutsy and vibrant challenging of the narrative conventions of the classics in theatre. In taking a play by Chekhov and experimenting with the form Rashdash are exploring who the classics are aimed at. Do they still have a relevance in theatre today? Who gets what from them and in what’s ways can we alter them to continue to get something powerful and enduring from them?

Why do the men in this play have all of the lines?

Rashdash rip up the script, burn the frumpy black dresses, bare their maidenly breasts, crank up the volume on the piano and add some strings and drums. This is Chekhov in a mash up with Vivienne Westwood and The Slits. This is sexy, vibrant, caustic and clever. Packing a hefty feminist punch and some serious theatrical clout while also remaining playful and whimsical, Three Sisters is truly a thing of joy from start to finish.

These three sisters are not muted and still. They are not passive Barbie dolls but are Action girls in crinolines. There are no sepia tones to this production, instead there is a kaleidoscope of colour. There are frequent moments where tableau scenes are staged then fractured and fragmented as the performers hold up a prism to see women as so much more than pliable, passive vessels to be moulded by male writers into their version of womanhood. These women are messy, imperfect, funny, clever and complex. They have mastered social media as well as the piano. They are cultured and educated with their own opinions, and can also cry in a supermarket and “dance it out” like they’re on Greys Anatomy. They own their own bodies and wear whatever they choose, if they strip off on stage it is their decision and has a function rather than being sexualised. They wear comfy knickers, will massage their perineums with olive oil to avoid tearing in childbirth and will rail against the passage of time as a slow, slow bastard cunt!

Performance is meshed with music,song and movement so there is always a sense of flux and change. Even in moments where there is a static snapshot of stillness there will be music or the movement of a statue or the TICKTOCK digital display flashing. Nothing stays the same. The scenes are constantly shifting as the pile of disguarded clothing gets bigger as if to say plays like bodies can be dressed or styled in an endless array of guises. The nod to Shakespeare in some of the fashion choices is a witty reminder of just how many of our classic plays were written by men and are now being revisited from a female perspective- most recently Othello at Liverpool’s Everyman.

Rashdash are all accomplished musicians and with the addition of Chloe Rianna on drums and Yoon-Ji Kim on violin and synth, they move through a range of styles from classical to trippy, punk and blues. The soundscape is as varied as the costumes and the women on stage. Olga Helen Goalen, Masha Abbi Greenland and Irena Becky Willie all sing, and they all deliver whether alluding to mainstream pop Adele and Katy Perry or spitting out a punk lyric or belting out a torch song. The lyrics are mercilessly clever, and often wickedly funny. All three deliver strong performances that have an essence of each sister.

This production works across enough levels to be a success whether you know the original or not. A Chekhov aficionado will get the references to their mother’s broken clock or the spinning top given to Irena. They will see the irony of Olga idly wishing she was more able to do something about homelessness when of course the sisters are about to lose their family home. Whereas fresh eyes see a topical issue being raised that they have probably walked past on their way to the theatre. The haze of smoke alludes to the nearby town on fire but could just as easily refer to Grenfell Towers. Masha can be a modern woman dealing with heartbreak by swiping Tinder or a sister in an unhappy marriage seeking solace within an army garrison.

Moments on stage such as Masha reading out multiple reviews of the original play or being literally squashed by volumes of the classics poke fun at our obsession with the relative safety of tradition in theatre while reminding us of the need for joyfully subversive new works. Rashdash pull back the curtains and fill the stage with fresh air and new opportunities. Three Sisters can challenge existing lovers of the classics and bring new vibrant audiences to look at established works. The Royal Exchange Theatre is currently also showing The Cherry Orchard on it’s main stage. Like a beautifully deconstructed cheesecake on Masterchef Three Sisters is a brilliant take on the original classic.

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester 3rd -19th May

The Yard, London 22 May – 9 June

Tobacco Factory, Bristol 12 -16 June

Images by Richard Davenport

Othello

Large Theatres

Everyman, Liverpool

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Gemma Bodinetz

In this new production of Othello the past and present collide. A hand-embroidered hankerchief and a smartphone symbolise our human need to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted; and the destructive power of betrayal and fake news. Director Gemma Bodinetz and the repertory company at the Everyman have produced an Othello that is absolutely fresh and timeless. There is no sense of the frustration of a 400 year old play being shoehorned to appease or entice a modern audience. It just works from start to finish. The much heralded casting of Golda Rosheuvel as a female Othello is both exciting and intriguing. However this becomes at times almost irrevelant as it is the emotional depth and intensity of her performance that stand out as the most pertinert aspects of this casting choice.

Golda Rosheuvel is Othello as an army General that is female, black and gay. She is successful, respected and courageous. It could have been so obvious to play her Othello as a butch lesbian with a crew cut and and a jutting jaw. Instead we see a strong, intelligent woman who has the quiet certainty of being in love and feeling loved. She is not large in physical stature and is womanly whether in battle fatigues or a simple flowing gown. She is measured and reflective in all areas of her life until confronted by Iago whose thwarted ambition and jealous vilification of others conspire to destroy her faith in love and honour.

Patrick Brennan is undeniably effective as the charming manipulator dripping his poison with all the reasonableness and solicitation of a corrupt politician at a General Election. His Iago is odious as he reveals his plans to the audience and truly terrifying in his own certainty regarding his actions. He is the epitome of the reasonable white man hellbent on obliterating anyone who is “other”, as he moves around the stage spitting honeyed venom like Trump on Twitter.

Cerith Flinn plays Cassio as a taut, muscled squaddie with a heart of gold whether fighting honourably on the battlefied, carousing with a bottle in hand or wooing the winsome Bianca – a delightfully comedic Leah Gould. His Cassio is a fitting replacement for Othello as a young soldier with a pure heart and good intentions.

Emily Hughes performance is fresh and vivid. She combines girlish delicacy and youth with gritty determination to seek out fairness and equality for others. She is fair and beautiful but her character is what really defines why Othello loves her. She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them.

The swift unravelling of Othello’s calm reason into jealous, vengeful rage might seem at odds with this professional soldier and loving wife. Iago has broken the implicit trust essential between comrades on the battlefield and partners in a happy marriage. The result is a tortured woman stricken with epilepsy and deep emotional trauma. A modern take on this might well be an Othello suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) who is battle scarred and reacting to new trauma with paranoia, dissociative seizures and the hyperarousal of murderous rage.

The final scenes played out in a floaty, white gauze bedchamber are gut wrenchingly poignant. This gossamer veil highlights the ephemeral nature of life and gives a dreamlike softness to both the brutality and the tenderness of the murder scene. Such betrayal and heartbreak plays out and the emotional struggle for Othello is palpable. Even knowing the end of this 400 year old play, expectations feel suspended as if on a heartbeat the outcome might still go either way.

At pivotal points the audience are spotlit by powerful searchlights or the beam of a single torch. On reflection it feels like an invitation by Shakespeare and also by Bodinetz to look at ourselves and those around us and reflect on what we see. Perhaps there is an invitation to start accepting ourselves- regardless of gender or ethnicity as all being capable of strong and powerful emotions. That does not have to be dangerous when we recognise they can make us protective, nurturing parents, successful and happy in our relationships and productive in our work. It is only when we use labels to divide and diminish that we lessen ourselves and our humanity. Like Othello – male, female or gender neutral we are perfectly imperfect. No more and never any less.

OTHELLO Sat 28 April to Tues 10th July

Images by Jonathon Keenan

The Cherry Orchard

Large Theatres

Royal Exchange Theatre

By Anton Chekhov

Translation by Rory Mullarkey

Directed by Michael Boyd

Rory Mullarkey and Michael Boyd are the first Russian speaking Translator/Director team to pool their skills and mutual love of Chekhov to create a new British translation of The Cherry Orchard since Michael Frayn in the Eighties. The result is a success that retains and celebrates the comedic elements while also balancing the tragedy and loss from the past with the fears and hopes of a dawning new age. Little actually happens in this play but it is always engrossing as obvious outcomes and solutions are evaded in favour of unsolved problems and enigmas. Chekhov was a doctor as well as a writer and in this, his last play there are acute observations of the human condition but no diagnosis.

The most striking element of Tom Piper’s design for this production is the starkness of the set. Apart from a few falling blossoms the audience are left to imagine the lush white blooms in an orchard that is the one remarkable thing in this entire province. The once grand house is also left to the imagination as the set is a huge expanse of bare wooden floor, a single chair an occasional table and a hundred year old bookcase. The wooden floor dominates as if it hints at what will become of the soon to be felled cherry trees. It is like a blank canvas awaiting a fresh start having probably been stripped of its plush furnishings to meet the mounting debts. When Uncle Leonid makes an impassioned speech to the bookcase it is both ridiculous and poignant as it represents the grandeur of a fast diminishing lifestyle.

Despite the bareness of the stage this is a production that is full of imagery and references to colour. The orchard is the white of Lyubov’s girlish summer gown, the white of torn up telegrams, and old money. The white of a ghostly balloon moon and of innocence and purity. The blacks and greys of duty, servility and squashed hope is there in Firs’ uniform and Vavara’s drab clothing. The cherry pink of Lyubov’s velvet dress is the pink of ripened sexuality and the cherry jam of yesteryear. The yellow gold of Lopakhin’s polished shoes alluding to the brassy nature of new money. The casting choices also make a provocative colour statement about history of slaves/serfs and masters. All the family in the house are white actors while the staff or children of serfs are all actors from other ethnicities. Emma Cains also cleverly uses the trajectory of the costumes styling to reflect the move from the past towards a new age and new freedoms.

There are some especially strong performances with Kirsty Bushell as Madame Lyubov deftly portraying the fragility of a woman seared by grief whose party girl approach to heartache keeps her constantly on the move like a beautiful butterfly. This is a woman whose husband died of champagne while her little son Grisha drowned on the estate a mere six months later. Seemingly careless and insouciant she flirts and flits around giving out gold to strangers when she is about to lose her family home. If kisses were roubles this family would be debt free. At moments when her gaiety fractures Bushell is raw with tangible pain. The scene where Grisha is on the chaise longue beautifully captures the fractures in Lyubov’s life -a mother mourning at her son’s funeral wake bleeds into a riotous house party. Rosy McEwen as the disappointed and disillusioned Vavara is as pale and luminous as the haunting moon. The restraint and delicacy of her performance is beautifully balanced as she yearns to be both a wife and a nun. Jude Owusu as Lopakhin is a seamless blend of arrogant new money and success with hints of an awkward lovelorn son of a serf. A self made man who is rightly proud of his achievements yet is tongue tied and paralyzed to speak his feelings.

The threads of the past, present and future are ever present. Ancient butler Firs can only remember the past but will be the last living soul in this house. The child haunts the house in timeless fashion observing everything silently. New love affairs begin, old ones may start again and some remain as simply frustrated yearnings. Chekhov throws up possibilities like blossom petals and this production casts them up in the air with real love and delicacy.

Royal Exchange Theatre 19 April-19th May

Images Seamus Ryan

Corrido de la Sangre

Cabaret, Large Theatres

HOME

The Tiger Lillies

Director Mark Holthusen

Writer Pedar Bjurman

Music and Lyrics Martyn Jacques

The Tiger Lillies have been delighting and possibly revolting audiences for nearly 30 years. This “anarchic Brechtian street opera trio” are Grammy nominated, world class purveyors of unapologetically deviant and defiant shows. Commissioned by HOME, Manchester, Corrido de la Sangre is a vivid, glorious celebration of the rip roaring circus that is the Mexican Day of the Dead. Ruthless and gruesome no one escapes unscathed as this dark and gleeful trio play their twisted tunes.

Three musicians on a stage within a stage, pasted in garish make up and suitably clad to evoke their long dead characters, this corrido band rises from hell to play again and tell the ghastly tale of their demise. From the opening number it is clear that this is no grotesque parody but is a high calibre, darkly anarchic cabaret.

The band are skilled musicians playing a range of instruments from piano and ukulele – Martyn Jacques to upright bass and musical saw – Adrian Stout and Jonas Galland on a range of drums. Martyn Jacques sings with a laconic and dispassionate falsetto that can be pure and sweet or acid sharp and vitriolic. At times it feels like Dave Vanien from The Damned has met Noel Coward in the catacombs and formed some unholy musical alliance with a mariachi band.

The lyrics of each song drive the narrative along with vivid imagery that is not for the mawkish or easily offended. Orphan is sweetly plaintive and poignant, La Bruja mournful and haunting while Scarface is a shocking and visceral description of the ghastly disfiguring of a young women. I bought the soundtrack and I’m still humming along to the bizarrely upbeat Good Doctor and the haunting Borderland.

Visually it is gorgeous. The staging is intimate, and the combination of projections, shadow puppetry and papercut artwork create a constant feeling of wonderment as reveal after reveal alters the staging like a kaleidoscope and creates a sense of the performance being peeled back through the years like Russian dolls unfolding in size. The backdrop gives a sense of the decaying splendour of old Mexico and the ragged holes suggest the disintegration of cloth like flesh from a corpse. The projection of colours and shapes from fiesta lace and flowers to the gold of icons weeping blood to Mexican skies and flames of hell is visually stunning. It evokes the magical realism of Frida Kahlo but with the scale of Diego Rivera folk art murals. Director Mark Holthusen has created a beautiful visual spectacle that pulsates like a vast beautiful beating heart.

As the good doctor says – Once you are in, you can never get out. Leaving the performance at HOME last night I was tempted to ask for a lock in and for the deadly trio to rise again and sing another corrido.

At HOME 20th April – 5th May

Viva

The Tiger Lillies

Images by Jonathon Keenan

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE : A play with music

Large Theatres, Musical

EVERYMAN

Written by Anthony Burgess

Directed by Nick Bagnall

A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to watch a rehearsal of A Clockwork Orange taking place in The International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester. It was quite fascinating to watch this young repertory company test out ideas and work on songs and choreography with director Nick Bagnall and choreographer Etta Murfitt. It was abundantly clear that this was a project spilling over with fresh juice and with no sign of any element being coldly mechanized. Thankfully this production has reached perfect fruition with its wonderfully, pithy songs and dialogue from Burgess, and excellent full bodied performances from the cast.

The staging looks startlingly simple with its neon lighting and milk white cube structure. Some of the cast are already on stage all clad in white. It is sleek, clean and pure in its sterility. As the music floods in and Alex starts to conduct there is so much beauty on stage it scarcely matters that he is conducting with a flick-knife rather than a baton. In the blink of an eye the floor can open up with options for grand entrances and dramatic or comic exits. Molly Lacey Davies and Jocelyn Meall have designed a set that is deceptively simple but is a treasure trove creating a myriad of moods and settings. The aversion therapy scenes are visually quite stunning. They are visceral and shocking and evoke something akin to Christ on the cross with Alex wearing the dystopian equivalent of a crown of thors as he looks down on the horrors mankind is capable off.

The Everyman Company take on a multitude of characters and breathe life and authenticity into them. There is a bloodied rape victim tied with vivid blue clothesline cord, Deltoid evoking a saturnine Alastair Sims, the writer F.Alexander is bludgeoned and his beloved wife is viciously assaulted. Amongst the brutality there are also moments of vaudevillian humour with little gems of Elvis type lookalikes, puppet wielding government ministers, and allusions to Jimmy Saville wearing a I’m a Pedo medallion and clutching a fat cigar. Alex and his Droogs are relentless in their thirst for life and all of its juice. Nothing in life, bar the music of Beethoven appears to be sacred.

Burgess created an intriguing and provocative hero who is thuggish yet also cultured and intelligent. George Caple brings a freshness and energy to Alex making his character always likable regardless of his monstrous crimes. The scenes during his treatment with the Ludovico Technique are deeply moving and hard to watch. Watching him in those scenes was chilling and reminded me of speaking to prisoners from Park Lane Hospital who went through similar classical conditioning procedures and covert sensitisation for crimes of sexual violence in the 1980s.

Richard Bremmer is always charismatic on stage whether he is threatening as Deltoid, delivering a wonderful ruddy, drunken priest or strolling across stage in a tiny satin robe with a curly pigs tail. Liam Tobin embodies the earnest writer F Alexander, and sings beautifully as he poignantly mourns his wife. Zelina Rebeiro is always engaging and especially so as she transforms into a sulty temptress to haunt a traumatized Alex. Phil Rayner from Young Everyman Playhouse(YEP) has really grown in confidence and created some great comic moments.

Nick Bagnall has honoured this play with music ensuring that the vision Burgess had in 1986 is finally realised on stage. The songs are a gleeful celebration of music hall tradition. The musicality of the lyrics make the Russian/Cockney slang of the Nadsat seem instantly more accessible and reminiscent of the joy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The use of musician and percussionist Peter Mitchell is inspired and really adds to the look of the piece as well as the sound, in that he evokes all the youth and energy of another Droog.

A Clockwork Orange asks us to look at the power of choice. Is it better be bad of one’s own free will than be good through scientific brainwashing? In a world where we are all at risk of brainwashing through the daily assault of the internet it is vital to be challenged and reminded of how we exercise our own free will. This piece is brutally violent and yet also angelic at times. The cast move around the audience as they come and go, and address us directly at times, even inviting us to applaud the outcome of Alex’s aversion treatment. As we applaud we are of course colluding with the destruction of choice; it is a relief when Alex finally reverts to his old ways and finds his own way to redemption.

Burgess said “I do not like this book as much as others I have written. I have kept it, till recently, in an unopened jar- marmalade, a preserve on a shelf, rather than an orange on a dish.” I hope that he would approve of the vibrant juicy nature of this production.

At Everyman 14 April to 12 July

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

MINEFIELD

Large Theatres, Uncategorized

HOME

Written and Directed by Lola Arias

A LIFT production

A leading voice in Argentinean theatre Lola Arias has created something quite extraordinary with Minefield. Bringing together on a stage, six veterans of The Falklands War who do not speak each other’s language and who were facing each other on the battlefield in 1982. This theatrical venture is itself a potential minefield as it is a piece of lived history representing their individual, unique experiences of the war. This is not theatre retelling the history of either a war, a country, or of particular regiments in specific battles but it is a deeply personal sharing of what it is like to live through a war and forever carry the emotional consequences like a permanent kit bag.

The six men are all now veterans in their fifties. David Jackson spent the war listening and transcribing codes while sometimes keeping one ear tuned to Tony Hancock on BBC World Service. He is now a psychologist counselling veterans having himself suffered PSTD (Post traumatic stress disorder). Lou Armour was front page news in both countries when taken prisoner in The Falklands at the outbreak of the war on 2nd April 1982 . Now he teaches children with learning difficulties and may have caught the acting bug. Sukrim Rai was one of the reknown Gurkhas who now works as a security guard and can finally live in the U.K.

The Argentinians are Ruben Otero who survived 41 freezing hours in a lifeboat after the ARA General Belgrano was sunk. He wears a t shirt stating the Malvinas belong to Argentina and plays in a successful Beatles tribute band. Gabriel Sagastume was a reluctant soldier who is now a criminal lawyer and is absorbed by details of the war. Marcelo Vallejo was a mortar direction controller, who struggled with PTSD and depression. He survived addiction and a suicide attempt by drowning. After support and treatment he learned to swim and is now a successful triathlon champion.

The reality is they are neither heroes or monsters but just a group of guys sent to do a job. The major difference between them is language and the overhead subtitles are a constant reminder of how differences can be overcome.

The men’s stories are told in chapters using a range of techniques. The use of rubber masks effectively put Margaret Thatcher and General Galtieri on stage. Screen projections show the exquisite minutiae of love letters to Gabriel’s wife or tiny airfix soldiers on a map retelling a story of hungry men pinching food from a farm and being blown up by a land mine. A tiny plastic leg in a stripe sock evokes the remains of a lost friend and comrade. Front page images from GENTE in Argentina show Lou after his capture. Powerful usage of sound includes the sound recording of the actual jet fighters that nearly killed David and his comrades. At other times the men become a group singing and playing guitar and drums together. There is the light relief of a squaddie’s disco or the thundering drum solo of Ruben whose shouts for help went unheeded for 41 hours. An Argentinian wallet gratefully given to a fearsome Gurkha who felt it was better to capture than kill. The poignancy of Marcelo donning the battered cape he retrieved from the Malvinas 27 years later. A close up of Lou as he remembers the death of a young soldier who in speaking English as his dying words has haunted Lou ever since.

A therapy session between David and Marcelo is a powerful reminder of how this piece has worked as group therapy for these men. Cathartic at times and also re-opening old wounds on occasions such as April 2nd, the Argentinian Remembrance day. The skill of this piece is to never preach but to seek to share, reflect and understand how our past informs our present. As a psychotherapist I appreciate the delicate balance that Lola Arias has created and maintained in this group therapy approach to this piece of unique verbatim theatre.

Minefield has brought together six men who are united by sharing the same experience of losing friends and leaving them behind on a rocky, unforgiving landscape. This war lasted ten weeks according to Google, but for these men it was 74 days because each day mattered just as each life lost, injured or mentally scarred mattered. They mattered then and they still matter now. As they perform their last song together they unite as a potent force asking their audience,

What would you fight for? Would you go to war?…..Have you ever killed anyone?… Have you watched a friend die?

The final words are from Sukrim in his native language. Translated they simply and wisely say,

Killing is never winning. Fight with the pen NOT with the bullet!! If the pen wins, fine… If not, nobody is killed.

HOME

Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival 2018

LIFT Festival 2018

All images by Tristram Kenton

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk

Large Theatres

HOME

Writer Daniel Jamieson

Director & Co-Choreographer Emma Rice

Kneehigh & Bristol Old Vic

Originally performed as Birthday over 25 years ago The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is a celebration of love and art on so many levels. The love child of writer Daniel Jamieson and director Emma Rice who also acted in the original,it was revived in 2016 and has been a hugely successful production for Kneehigh and Bristol Old Vic. This lush homage to another set of young lovers- artist Marc Chagall and his beloved muse and first wife Bella Rosenfeld paints a picture on the stage that is both sensual and transcendent.

The love story is told in flashbacks as a widowed Chagall recounts the romance over the telephone to his son-in-law, the art historian Franz Mayer. They met and fell in love in Vitebsk, Belarus in 1909 and married in 1915 when Chagall returned from successes in Paris and Berlin. Trapped in Russia because of WW1, they were to witness the Russian Revolution and Chagall established the Vitebsk Arts College and painted in the Moscow New Jewish Theatre. Bella gave birth to their daughter Ida and carried on her own writing. They later fled to Europe, before WW2 and the Holocaust forced them to escape France on 1941 for America where Bella died in 1944.

The central performances are flawless. Marc Artolin and Daisy Maywood are utterly believable and sing, dance and emote with a form of enhanced theatricality that perfectly fits this dreamy, magical piece. The sense of a place so vibrant and colourful reduced by war to memories and black and white postcards is beautifully evoked. Every movement is choreographed to create a sense of immersion in Chagall’s paintings and in their hopes and dreams, and their visual and sensory world. Also on stage throughout are multi-instrumentalists Ian Ross and James Gow who bring another layer of rich authenticity playing music with French, Yiddish and Russian influences and a definite klezmer vibe.

Magical touches like a red helium balloon floating away as a fleeting love interest blushing like a radish. Colourful hats portraying animals from his paintings and symbolic fruits like the etrog are images from a lost world as the honeymoon trunk is unpacked. The inspired wit of using puppetry chairs to allow the lovers to dance the Hora or chair dance at their wedding which symbolises that in a good marriage you always strive to go ever higher, as these soaring lovers did in so many of his paintings. There are moments where images from paintings come to life through tableau scenes like when a canvas of a rabbi is unfolded in front of Bella and her own arms come through it as life and art merge.

Designer Sophie Clist has created a set which is compressed yet airy. It allows paintings to come to life and lovers to soar. It also gives a sense of a boat at sea, a reminder of the dispossessed on the move, always either leaving or returning. The lighting by Malcolm Rippeth has all the vibrancy of classic Kneehigh productions but in this piece is even more potent. The painterly depth and richness feels almost visceral at times with the wedding scene having a neon quality. Everything here is heightened and vital, from the tick of a clock and the slow drip from the ceiling to the lily white face and blackberry curls with eyes so blue like splinters from heaven.

Rice and Jamieson have created something of timeless tenderness. A lost world is seen again as we walk in the lover’s shoes through extraordinary times in history. The unpacking of the shoes and journals is utterly poignant, a reminder of so many journeys and stories recorded, and evoking the piles of shoes in Auschwitz belonging to the Jews who couldn’t escape. Chagall comes vividly to life as a pioneer of Modernism and as one of the most famous Jewish artists of the twentieth century. His Bella is painted as he saw her long flying over my canvas guiding my art…..Love and fantasy go hand in hand.

HOME until April 7th

Tour details

Images by Steve Tanner

Miss Saigon

Large Theatres, Musical

PALACE THEATRE

A Cameron Mackintosh production of Boubil and Schõnberg’s Miss Saigon

Directed by Laurence Connor

This smash hit production of Miss Saigon opened in London in 2014 and has been on a UK tour since July 2017. Landing in Manchester with as much drama and pizzazz as the much lauded helicopter in Act 2, this show delivers on every level. Performed all over the World since 1989, Miss Saigon is a world class production that updates the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly. It tells the story of a doomed love affair between an honourable American G.I and a young peasant girl turned prostitute during the Vietnam War.

This is a lush, Technicolour experience with a lavish set, inspired lighting, sound and projections and a huge cast who sing and dance with real passion and commitment. The energy on stage never wavers and through multiple seamless set changes the story unfolds without a single glitch.

The big musical numbers are real crowd pleasers. The Movie in My Mind highlights the dreams, aspirations and coping strategies of the girls who survive by selling their bodies to the American soldiers. I Still Believe depicts the agony of two women loving the same man as Kim (Sooha Kim) and Ellen (Zoë Doano) sing with heartfelt poignancy and raw passion. The plight of the mixed-race children ostracised after the war is told in Bui Do sung as film footage displays the plight of abandoned, fatherless children. The most hi- octane numbers are undoubtedly The American Dream with the powerhouse performance of The Engineer (Red Concepción) with a white Cadillac driving on stage.

Kim’s Nightmare is the most powerful number. The roar of the helicopters moving over the audience before appearing to land on stage to evacuate the troops is genuinely tense and exciting. This scene at the Embassy gates is powerful and the switch that allows us to experience both sides of the gates is inspired. The Vietnam War may have ended over 40 years ago but this is a timely reminder of the dispossessed and vulnerable as the Syrian refugee crisis unfolds.

The performances are strong with Ashley Gilmour epitomising the all American hero and Na-Young Jeon as a sassy, sexpot Gigi. Sooha Kim brings great emotional range to her performance as Kim. She moves fluidly from reticent, shy country girl to pragmatic prostitute and eager young bride to determined survivor and fiercely protective mother. The undoubted star is The Engineer who gleefully steals every scene. Red Concepción is an exuberant, unapologetic master of sleaze and manipulation.

I’m not a fan of musicals and approached Miss Saigon with a degree of scepticism but it is a genuine feast for the eyes and ears. It is a real spectacle to behold and the hype is well deserved. The standing ovation at the end was clearly not the first and will definitely not be the last for the powerhouse experience that is Miss Saigon.

Images by Johan Persson.

Booking for Palace Theatre until May 12th.

Tickets for Nationwide UK tour.