Mojo – Harold Pinter Theatre – 16/12/2013

“There's nothing like someone cutting your dad in two for clearing the mind”

Ian Rickson originally brought Jez Butterworth’s play to the Royal Court stage to award winning acclaim in 1995 and he returns the directorial chair for this revival, with a cast whose ensemble and timing are as slick as the Brylcreem in the dressing room. Butterworth’s dialogue is slick too, filled with a dark brooding menace enhanced with gloomy, claustrophobic sets by Ulzt and a pounding soundtrack from Stephen Warbeck and Simon Baker.

Ezra, owner of the Atlantic Club in Soho, is an ever present but unseen character, whose efforts to prevent rival Mr Ross from poaching his star performer Silver Johnny result in his grizzly demise and he spends much of the second act represented by two dustbins downstage.

Silver Johnny himself is brought explosively to life at curtain up by a Tom Rhys Harries. Harries disappears for most of act one, having been kidnapped by the opposition, and on his reappearance in act two he has a lot of hanging around to do before he springs back into manic action in the closing scenes. Fortunately Mr Harries has youth and apparent fitness on his side and hopefully won’t have too much need of the credited company osteopath - rather him than me though.

The rest of the cast are a motley crew of club employees who are occupied through most of the play in trying to save both the club and their own necks from Joe Ross’s henchmen. Mickey, charismatically played by Brendan Coyle, is hopeful of taking over Ezra’s Atlantic but Potts (Daniel Mays) and Sweets (Rupert Grint) have a more realistic, if somewhat histrionic approach to the situation and the ensuing siege-like situation builds in ever-increasing tension leading to the final tragic conclusion. Mays is superb and special mention has to go to Rupert Grint who, in his professional stage debut here, seems to have risen spectacularly to the occasion. Some commentators have moaned of mumbling but I was seated in one of the most acoustically challenged areas of the theatre in the rear stalls and every word was delivered perfectly well for me. His character earns the nickname Sweets for providing the supply of pills that fuels the cast in their chemical highs and lows and adds other unexpected colour to their lives.

This just leaves Baby and Skinny. Skinny is not the sharpest knife in the box and played with larger than life shambling and a good deal of comic charm by Colin Morgan. He appears to have a less than welcome fixation with Baby, Ezra’s wide-boy son, who in his strangely detached way deals with the bizarre events around him and the gruesome loss of his father. It is in his incandescent performance of Baby that Ben Whishaw all but steals the stage from his fellow cast, and I suspect he could easily walk away with the whole show if he had a mind to. This is a firecracker of a part and Whishaw clearly revels in it without ever overshadowing his colleagues.

Mojo crackles with electricity throughout and its quickfire dialogue – often not for the delicate ear – rattles along relentlessly, keeping the pace moving throughout its substantial two and a half hour running time. This is a great anarchic antidote to the safe mainstream world of much of what’s on offer nearby in the West End. It should sell itself for its fine writing and gritty atmosphere as much as for the star rating of its high profile casting.

Mojo continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre Panton Street until 8th February 2014.

Jumpers for Goalposts – Bush Theatre – 14/12/2013

“It’s a pull, Luke”

Pub licensee Viv has lost her sister and is throwing all her energies into her pub five-a-side team. Well it gives her something to focus on and a way of getting her brother in law Joe to get back in circulation. OK – being the token straight in a gay football team isn’t the obvious answer to his gloom but it gets him out – even if he can’t play. With Joe’s busker housemate Beardy Geoff and Danny, who can get the local sport centre for nothing as long as he cleans up, because of his course, that makes a team, almost. Luckily along comes Luke, who has seen the poster Danny put up in the library – what can possibly go wrong?

At least the team’s name, Barely Athletic, sums up their abilities on the pitch, which lead one well-wisher to suggest that Viv might like to try badminton. They’re never going to beat Lesbian Rovers, Man City are too good for them too but surely they can beat Tranny United – especially when they play in heels...

Successive scenes see the team in the changing room after the matches, picking over the bones of what went wrong and more besides, as the background to each character is filled in for us and they aim for their own individual goals. Mention must go to James Alexander Gordon, who recorded the score announcements that introduce each scene.

Viv tries to persuade Joe to get out more, while he struggles to get her to reflect on her loss rather than pushing the memories to the back of her mind.

Beardy Geoff has dreams beyond busking in Marks and Spencer’s doorway – his sights are set on the main stage at Hull Pride and he brings out his trust guitar to try out a succession of unlikely tunes. He acknowledges that “Go West” is a classic but when Hull is east it seems a bit off message.

But why did Danny only put one poster up, and in the library at that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that he had his eye on Luke who works there and if so why doesn’t he just say something – how hard can that be? And will Luke ever manage to overcome his overwhelming shyness and admit that he fancies Danny too?

The five-strong cast are directed here in superb ensemble by James Grieve in a one-acter that is full of beautifully stylish, witty, touching and above all real dialogue by Tom Wells. Every one of them give striking performances. Vivienne Gibbs’s Viv has stubborn determination, Matt Sutton’s Joe is full of gentle charm and Andy Rush’s Geoff is both engaging and extremely funny.

Ultimately it is the dynamic between Philip Duguid-McQuillan’s Luke and Jamie Samuel’s Danny that carries the emotional heart of the whole tale. It becomes pretty clear early on what the secret is that Danny finds so hard to talk about, but the fact that we find ourselves in on it before he reveals the truth to Luke has our hearts in our mouths as he tries to say the words. We can understand Luke’s reaction, given his character, and equally feel for Danny’s desperate response, but I for one was hard pressed not to cry out from my seat to them to wait and talk it through.

Philip Duguid-McQuillan delivers Luke’s dialogue with incredible flair – the hesitations and finely measured clumsiness are played to perfection and his Luke simply cries out for a huge hug. Jamie Samuel gives a pitch-perfect portrayal of someone who is outwardly confident but has a heck of a lot of insecurities under the surface. It would be a hard hearted person who could fail to fall for Danny - or to give him a second chance.
Re-reading the text after the show, I found the tears coming again as I reached Luke’s final diary speech.

This is really beautiful writing that is able to make us laugh and tug hard on our heart strings throughout, and it had me leaving the theatre with a huge smile on my face. Had I been able to obtain a ticket I would have returned on the Monday before my long weekend in London ended, but it was deservedly a sell out once again.

Jumpers for Goalposts opened at Watford Palace in April and has toured before arriving at the Bush Theatre, where it is playing until 4th January 2014.

This is the first time I have been to the Bush Theatre since their relocation to new premises in 2011. The way they have used the space in the former Shepherds Bush Library makes for a theatre with great warmth and a really friendly bohemian charm. The flexible performance space is an idea size and the bar and lounge areas (at present infused with the smell of mulled wine) are the sort of place you could while away some very happy hours. My thanks go to the Bush team for the warm welcome and for a great evening.

 

 

 

 

Andrew Manze with the RLPO – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – 30thNovember and 5th December 2013

As artist in residency stints go, two concerts are about as short as you can get, but Andrew Manze’s return to the Liverpool Philharmonic was both widely anticipated and worth waiting for. When Manze last appeared with the orchestra it was clear that the performers enjoyed working with him and the results were equally well appreciated by the audience. The rapport was still very much in evidence in both this weeks concerts, and although audiences were disappointing in numbers the response was very enthusiastic.

After the previous week’s Phil concerts celebrating Britten’s own music, Manze had chosen to construct his two programmes around music from some of those whose work had inspired Britten - Purcell, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler and Mozart.

On Saturday, Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson joined the orchestra in a performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations, which was framed by Schumann’s Faust Overture (small but perfectly formed here) and Mahler’s 4th Symphony.

The Britten Song Cycle after Rimbaud is set for “high voice” and is more well known sung by a tenor (most famously of course by Peter Pears) but Larsson made the songs very much her own. With tremendous stage presence she inhabited the strange and shifting emotional world of the poems beautifully and made the very best of the sometimes skittish, often sumptuous settings to connect with the audience in a way that made it feel she was singing to us individually. I don’t remember feeling this well communicated to by a singer since Felicity Palmer peformed Ravel’s Scheherezade. The orchestra supported her with great poise and delicious textures.

Mahler 4 has a curious structure for its scale and needs a conductor who can give it some shape, and Andrew Manze had a very clear vision for it. It had all the dramatic sweep it needed without any of the histrionics it sometimes falls foul of and the Ruhevoll third movement was ravishing. Larsson had of course returned for the Des Knaben Wunderhorn text of the final movement and was able here to show yet another style of delivery in her coquettish portrayal of a child with more than a little wonder in its eyes.

Such a shame that a rare false alarm from the hall’s fire system, barely a couple of seconds after the final notes died away, deprived the performers of their applause.

Thursday saw Andrew Manze back with a programme of Schubert, Schumann and Mozart, with two tiny Purcell arrangements thrown in for good measure. This concert will receive a repeat performance the following evening.

Manze once again displayed his ability to beguile an audience with a fresh take on the familiar. Schubert’s early symphony No 3 was given tremendously elegant treatment here. Tremendously stylish playing too from a pared down orchestra that still gave a rich sonority. The centre movements can all too often end up sounding like something played by a musical clock, but here we were transported to a fashionable Austrian ballroom. A rare treat.

Similarly affecting and unaffected was Ronald Brautigam’s rendering of Schumann’s Piano Concerto with a matching understated accompaniment from the orchestra. No bravura or overt romanticism in this performance, but just a lot of really smooth and measured playing from both orchestra and soloist. Many pianists will milk this concerto for drama and pound out the tunes, but Brautigam found limpid delicacy in it and the notes flowed from the keys in liquid fashion.

In a reference to Britten’s love of Purcell the interval was followed by two miniatures - Andrew Manze’s own highly original arrangement of the Funeral Music for Queen Mary and Britten’s orchestration of the Chacony in G Minor – but they hid themselves almost like a pair of painted miniatures tucked between some full scale canvases in a gallery.

I had not exactly been enthusiastic to hear Mozart’s 40th Symphony (it’s not one of my favourite things) but Manze’s magic worked on this too and it presented itself to me in a new light. Again there was real style in the phrasing and some rhythms that could almost have got my two left feet dancing. The hall may not have been full (it’s that word “Britten” in the concert title that unaccountably puts people off I fear) but the crowd made some noise at the end and were joined by the Orchestra in applauding Andrew Manze, who I think we all hope to see again. Last time he was here floods from a burst water main had blown the power to Hope Street and with our rogue fire alarm this week he may be feeling cursed, but hopefully the response to this performance will convince him that we’re not trying to scare him away...

Britten Centenary Concerts – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – 21st and 24th November 2013

With the hundredth anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth this year, fans both old and new have been treated to a lot of the composer’s work of late and especially this weekend, with the actual anniversary falling on November 22nd.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic are featuring Britten’s music throughout the current season but compiled a full concert of five of his works on the eve of the centenary on Thursday evening, repeating two of them in a mixed programme on Sunday afternoon.

Britten’s birthday fell on St Cecilia’s day and so the concert opener was appropriately the Hymn to St Cecilia – a setting of three poems by W H Auden for unaccompanied choir, which found Vasily Petrenko going back to his Capella School roots of choral conducting. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir made a fine sound featuring some good individual performances by soloists from the choir. The work itself remains something of an oddity, with text that sits awkwardly with the setting at times but it provided a fitting opportunity for the choir to take part in the tribute.

With the orchestra installed on the platform, the concert moved into more familiar territory with one of Britten’s most enduringly popular concert works, the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. Although Billy Budd just tips the balance for me, Peter Grimes is widely regarded as the best of his operas. The four orchestral passages that Britten arranged into a suite manage to capture the range of atmospheres in this turbulent and troubled tale, and Petrenko held the RLPO taut and controlled throughout, with wonderful tension in Dawn and Moonlight while Sunday Morning was as crisply played as I’ve heard it and the closing Storm stunning. Henry Baldwin’s climb to the gallows of the tubular bell added a note of visual drama and the stillness in the wordless “What harbour shelters peace?” before the whirlwind ending was beautifully measured.

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, making her Phil debut, then joined the orchestra for the Violin Concerto. Infrequently played, this is a beautiful piece that deserves more exposure. From the lyricism of the opening through its central frenzied scherzo to the enigmatic almost wistful close, Frang gave a fresh and deeply committed performance. The rawness of some of her eerie harmonics eschewed beauty in favour of atmosphere and sent shivers down the spine. With dazzling accompaniment from the RLPO and Petrenko, it was a disappointment that this was not one of the works to be repeated on Sunday.

Next up was another piece that was sadly not repeated on Sunday – the Sinfonia da Requiem. Its shattering opening had the lady two seats away from me jump out of her seat. This work for me was the emotional heart of the concert. In between the terrifying outbursts of grief and anger in the lacrymosa and Dies Irae the taut, slow-marching rhythms kept the audience on the edge of the seat until the gradual, slow release at the close of the Requiem aeternam. This was stirring and memorable stuff with some notably wonderful playing from some of the winds and timpani and the strings and brass drawing out passages of garment-rending anguish at times.

No concert celebrating Britten in Liverpool would be complete without the Young Person’s Guide to the orchestra, as Malcolm Sargent gave the work its first public performance in Philharmonic Hall in 1946 shortly prior to the first screening of the film for which it was written, so this orchestra can reasonably claim it as its own.

The work is popular for good reason and makes a triumphant close to any concert, as it did on this occasion. Providing an opportunity for every section of the RLPO to shine as the orchestra is gradually dismantled, the extended fugue in which it is reassembled began at greater speed than I can recall hearing and reached a thrilling climax, bringing to an end one of the most memorable evenings at the Phil in the season so far.

On Sunday the orchestra repeated the Four Sea Interludes and a quite possibly more exuberant Young Person’s Guide after the interval. On this occasion the first half of the concert contained two contrasting works by Mahler and Korngold.

Totenfeier was the name Mahler gave to the first movement of his second symphony. In the long creative period for the full symphony, Mahler suggested that his early version of the movement could stand alone as a sort of tone poem. It is a little strange to hear the familiar music diverge occasionally into unfamiliar territory, but it is for the most part the same. Where it differs most in this version is in its ability to be played with more speed and drive, as it no longer has to serve as the solid foundation of a huge symphonic structure. Petrenko and the Phil demonstrated once again the mastery of Mahler’s music that we have come to expect and even the quite young children sitting nearby me were riveted to it throughout.

Vilde Frang then returned to the stage, this time to play the lush and opulent concerto by Korngold. Another piece that doesn’t often get an outing, it has echoes of a Rachmaninov of the American years, and betrays Korngold’s skill with music for the screen. The addition of a vibraphone to the score gives an extra glow to the texture and the whole concerto is as indulgent as a box of truffles, but it manages not to wallow, and the dance-like final movement has a real spring in its step. In this concerto, offering Frang an opportunity to show more of her colour palette, there was beautiful playing both from soloist and orchestra.

Playing the same Norwegian folk tune arrangement as an encore that we heard on Thursday, she added an inadvertent twist when a broken string caused her to do a rapid and seamless swap, handing her 1709 Strad to orchestra leader Jim Clark while she finished the piece on his instrument. Needless to say the audience gave her an even more enthusiastic response than the first time round.

It remains a mystery to me why British audiences seem to shy away from Britten’s music and hopefully this year of showcasing it so prominently might re-ignite interest.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s / Pipe Dreams – Lantern Theatre Liverpool – 19/11/2013

Another evening of fresh, new theatre in the friendly buzz of the Lantern, with this double bill.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s first hit the boards in September as part of the Write Now festival at Unity Theatre, where it enjoyed two performances and collected three performance awards.

If you put John Cleese and John le Mesurier into a cocktail shaker you might well pour out something like Thomas Casson in his portrayal of the hyperventilating hospital administrator Eddie, for which he was named best actor. He is a tall actor and the tiny stage of the lantern makes him appear even more so, exaggerating the larger than life style in which the character is drawn. In his increasingly desperate efforts to save the hospital from threatened closure he embodies so many middle aged middle managers that we have probably all met. Imagine if you can a blend of Basil Fawlty and Sergeant Wilson and you’ve got something like Eddie.

Natalie Kennedy is a delight to watch and is a perfect foil to Eddie in the part of Elaine, as she follows him faithful as a puppy about the set with eyes like soup-plates. She is besotted, but Eddie is so wrapped up in the daily grind it takes him almost the full hour of the one-acter to realise it. Kennedy took runner up best actress at Write Now for this role.

Alongside this comic pairing was the hyper-efficient Cheryl, with Josie Sedwick Davies stepping ably into the part at short notice. She is all flapping hands and short of patience for Eddie and Elaine but not quite on the ball enough to notice the scam pulled off by the rehabilitated convict-come- IT man - Darren Pritchard (runner up best actor). Pritchard plays this very straight, as does Philip Barwood-Scott as Malcolm, grounding the play and setting the parts for Casson and Kennedy into sharp relief.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s was written by Mari Lloyd and directed by Lydia Searle, and it manages to extract a good deal of humour from some of the serious issues of hapless management in the NHS. I’d like to say that at some of the situations were a little far-fetched, but sadly I actually do remember an incident some years ago when a manager in my own workplace held the door for someone stealing a computer...

After an interval came the second play of the evening, Pipe Dreams, written and directed by Sarah Van Parys. Pipe Dreams was originally presented as part of the Luxembourg ten minute theatre festival last year and Van Parys has now fleshed it out into a full one act play, lasting approximately an hour. The promo material tells us it now makes less sense than before.

Despite programme references to absurdists Pirandello and Ionesco, most of us would probably be rather more likely to recognise Beckett in this play, which is certainly absurd and often surreal - increasingly so as it progresses.

A besuited neighbour played by Robert Moore comes and goes and tries to make some sense of things. The cast heet describes him as Narrator but perching Puck-like on a window ledge to observe the action he acts rather more in the role of chorus.

In their sitting room a mildly clumsy, tea slurping John (James Price) and his partner (Shawney Ross) appear to re-live the same sequence of events over and over again, becoming ever more frustrated by the crazed interjections from Lee Burnitt and Claire Bryan’s Nigel and Wife. Most bizarre of all though, are the repeated appearances of Jack Spencer as a debt collector – at first seemingly ordinary, if a little off balance, but with each entrance becoming odder and odder in both manner and attire.

All six of the cast gave engaging performances, but it is the extremes of John and the Debt Collector that defined this piece for me. James Price balanced his delivery so as to make John appear ordinary despite the situation, while Jack Spencer’s obvious delight in layering the madness on the Debt Collector was mesmerising.

Despite the deepening mayhem that surrounds them, our hapless couple seem to end the play on the way to some sort of resolution or at least resignation.

This double bill played two nights at the Lantern Theatre Liverpool on 18th and 19th November. Keep an eye on their website, as shows mostly have short runs and seats sell out quickly.

The Grand Gesture – Liverpool Playhouse – 12/11/2013

Aladdin may have only just started rehearsals but you could be forgiven for thinking that the Panto season has already arrived at the Playhouse this week with the arrival of Northern Broadsides and their latest touring production... until the interval.

In its opening musical number, Deborah McAndrew’s freely adapted version of Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide manages to find an original rhyme with its lead protagonist’s name, Simeon Duff. It has been re-set in “a port in the north west of England” and this opener might draw us to the city it is playing in this week. By the time we have met all the other characters however, we could be anywhere between Heysham and Grimsby!

Simeon Duff is fed up. He is doomed to staying at home while his wife Mary goes out to work and it’s denting his pride. When some confusion over a sausage leads people to think he’s ready to end it all, he begins to think that might be for the best. Unfortunately this seems to offer endless possibilities for various townsfolk to have someone make a Grand Gesture in the name of their personal cause.

His landlord has taken fees from them all and arranged the event before Simeon’s feet start to get as cold as his sausage.

There is a serious point underlying all this, and in these times of austerity some of it could become a bit too close for comfort in a more serious reading, but McAndrew’s earthy, comic script and Conrad Nelson’s uproarious direction ensure that it keeps the laughometer needle well up the scale.

As we have come to expect from Northern Broadsides, there are a great many larger than life characterisations, none more so than Alan Chadwick’s Al Bush, Robert Pickavance's outrageous Victor Stark and Alan McMahon's Father McCloud. But the show is stolen by two strikingly sympathetic performances by Mike Hugo and Samantha Robinson as Simeon and Mary, and by Angie Bain’s teacup and egg-nog wielding Sadie, who seems to make more than a gentle nod toward Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle.

All the music in the show is performed live on stage by the actors and while this is a little incongruous in some places it provides a lot more opportunities for humour and shamelessly dreadful rhymes, and later adds weight to the drama.

The set by production designer Dawn Alsop is imaginative and about as off kilter and distressed as the lives of its inhabitants and Mark Howland has lit the piece imaginatively too, although I could have done with slightly less of it in near total darkness in the early scenes.

Russian literature and drama is very much in evidence on the stage at present and I have seen at least five examples this year, from Gorky to Gogol and Dostoevsky to Bulgakov and ranging from the surreal and absurd to social realism. This re-imagining of The Suicide aims straight for the absurd and gets there with a lot of humour. We’re told that Stanislavski fell off his chair laughing when he first read the original, and it seems that this irreverent romp of an evening has set out to do the same to its audiences, but with the traditional twist in the tale.

Set your minds in Panto mode for the first act folks, but be prepared for an emotional shift in act two, when the play really reveals its heart on its sleeve.

The Grand Gesture is at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 16th November 2013. It then continues its tour at the Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough and the Viaduct Theatre Halifax until 30th November.

1984 – Liverpool Playhouse – 29/10/2013

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

It is some years, no - sorry - make that some decades, since I read Orwell’s 1984, but it is hard to forget the key elements of what might now be seen almost as prophetic rather than the dystopian vision it has long been sold as.

In this new stage adaptation created for Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan our memories of the story, whether real or borrowed, can only serve to heighten the sense of tension and suspense that gradually builds in the theatre.

The curtain rises on Chloe Lamford’s set, which gives the feel of some shabby civic office or institutional space from somewhere in the last century - the kind of place we might find in the neglected recesses of a solid old town hall. The tiled suspended ceiling has been folded up at a steep angle to create a surface that doubles as a screen onto which live images are projected simultaneously with the action onstage, beginning with a picture of Winston Smith’s hand as he begins to write a journal.

Most of the cast are wired for sound so that their voices can at times be projected at us through speakers along with these images, underlining the idea that everything is being watched via the telescreens. Unreality looms heavy as we are pulled back and forth from scene to scene by this audio-visual device as well as a dynamic lighting and sound plot by Natasha Chivers and Tom Gibbons. There are blinding lights and washes of ominous electronic and percussive sound that sweep over us in scene transitions.

We are meant to feel unsettled, as most of the characters certainly appear to be, going about their repetitive day-to-day and occasionally repeating the same lines and actions too. A trolley of Victory Gin wheeled increasingly mechanically round the stage as others polish imagined furniture among the dusty shelves and numbered doors.

A large and meticulously rehearsed cast create far more characters than seems possible, but this too adds to the general sense of unease as the plot creeps gradually upon us through the performance’s unbroken 100 minute span.

Tim Dutton as O’Brien and Hara Yannas as Julia give strong pivotal performances here. Dutton oozes urbanity in his earlier appearances but becomes increasingly sinister as time passes, eventually becoming a figure of menace. Yannas, conversely, begins as a mysterious figure who we are reluctant to trust but gradually draws us in.

Mark Arends in the central role of Winston Smith, however, surely has the heaviest weight to carry. An interesting casting choice here. Orwell used terms like “fattish” and “devoted drudge” to describe Smith, while Arends is sharp-eyed and very slight in build. He gives a tremendous portrayal of pent-up nervous energy and certainly embodies the idea of an internal tension that becomes visible. He plays the part as an intellectual determined to fight against any kind of oppression. His persistent resolve to hold on to his knowledge and beliefs becomes unbearable.

The transformation scenes that lead to our eventual arrival in Room 101 are truly terrifying pieces of staging, made all the more visceral by the long, gradual build-up of tension and suspense and the fact that the piece is played through without an interval ensures we are never let off the hook. One great theatrical moment is the reveal in which we finally see that Winston and Julia’s secret meeting place is far from private.

Many scenes are played out almost in the manner of some of the great stage illusionists, and there are moments where we are left wondering whether we actually saw what we believe we have seen.

Robert Icke’s last appearance at the Playhouse was in the in-house production of the Alchemist, and those who saw that piece will recognise the ability to convey claustrophobic settings and desolate space, both in his direction and in the staging concept.

I still have an indelible image of Mark Arends atop a staircase as Malcolm, as the lights cut to black on the closing night of Macbeth at the old Everyman – then he played a dignified and statesmanlike role. I suspect I may struggle to erase the memory of him as Winston too, but for different reasons. Here he carries the emotional weight of a highly concentrated adaptation of this disturbing tale and does so with a fearless passion.

Brace yourself and hold on to your seats – this is powerful stuff.

1984 runs at the Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 2nd November 2013, and there are very few seats remaining, so hurry if you want to catch it here.

The production continues its tour at the Sherman Theatre Cymru from 5th to 9th November and West Yorkshire Playhouse from 12th to 16th November. It will transfer to the Almeida Theatre Islington from 8th February to 29th March 2014