Di is Dead - Liverpool Playhouse Studio - 17/04/2013

In “Di is Dead” Robert Farquhar has written something of a tour de force for a solo actor and Francis Tucker brings it to life with a sparkle in his eyes, fire in his heart and a voice to stop clocks.

Rarely have I sat and been mesmerised quite so completely by a torrent of words and a stream of consciousness as this.

With little more than a chair and an overcoat for company on the Playhouse Studio stage, he stops us in our tracks from the moment he swaggers into view.

The premise is simple - a guy to whom Princess Di was only ever a face on the front of the tabloids finds himself strangely affected on seeing the extraordinary public reaction to her sudden death. Looking for a subject to write about, he decides that this is material enough and embarks on a journey, during which he meets a frustrated woman, gets complicatedly involved and then meets himself coming back.

Describing much more of the narrative would only detract from the magic. Suffice to say that the story is both hilarious and telling. It takes a very off the wall look at how one particular event in social history seemed to bring a collective wobble to the British Stiff Upper Lip. In other hands that may have become maudlin, but with this kind of writing and delivery it is a tremendously entertaining and cathartic experience.

Farquhar's script vies with Niagara Falls for its flow and Tucker has the huge presence to carry us over the precipice and have us ride the rapids with him, as he negotiates the dangerous territory of such a solo performance.

Francis Tucker is a favourite at the Everyman and Playhouse in the rock and roll Panto. He has long since won the hearts of Liverpool audiences for his larger than life performances. This material is possibly less far flung from that territory than it might seem. There may be no Technicolor costume, but the relentless dialogue and the mischievous delivery have the audience in uncontrollable laughter through much of the play’s unbroken 80 minute span.

If you were to ask anyone to name two influential and opinion-dividing female figures from the late 20th century, you'd be fairly sure to get the same two answers quite often. Poetically symmetrical then, for the opening night of a play inspired by the death of Princess Diana to be slightly disturbed by loud fireworks outside the theatre marking the day of another woman’s funeral. You couldn't plan that!

Di is Dead runs at the Liverpool Playhouse Studio Theatre until Saturday 27th April.

Follow this link for more info or to book tickets: http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/show/Di_is_Dead/932.aspx

or view the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO9bo8LD6ZI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Francis Tucker - Photo © Brian Roberts

The Place Beyond The Pines - FACT Liverpool - 13/04/2013

Director Derek Cianfrace presents us with a film of three halves that takes us through two generations in its 140 minutes on the screen.

It was with more than a little trepidation that I read some of the advance notices of this film to be told that it "intertwined" three stories and “crossed generations”. I had visions of getting temporal seasickness, like I had during Trance last week.

Much relief, then, to find that the interconnected stories in The Place Beyond The Pines are told in linear fashion. Descriptions of it as a sort of Triptych make perfect sense, as it can be read as a single continuous narrative that almost but not quite falls into three segments.

Ryan Gosling is “Handsome Luke”, a small-time motorcycle stunt rider with a travelling fair, whose uncomplicated life is set off kilter by a meeting with an old affair, Romina, played by Eva Mendes. Romina has a one year old child, Jason, who was fathered by Luke but as she has now moved on and has a new partner she chooses not to tell him. Her mother is less discreet though, and lets the cat out of the bag. Seeing his son rocks Luke’s foundations and he lets the fair move on without him with hopes of becoming a father to Jason. He is offered work by an auto mechanic Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) but this doesn’t pay enough, so the pair take to bank robbery so that Luke can make enough to buy into his son’s life.

Enter Bradley Cooper, as Avery Cross, an ambitious cop who finds himself in the right place to bring Luke’s new career in crime to an abrupt end. 

Avery is badly injured in the process and while recovering has his own life-changing epiphany when he picks up a sleeping child and realises that some of his decisions will take a lifetime to come to terms with. We follow him through some of his own questionable career moves until he finally sees the chance to make his own father proud. 

It is the third episode in the story that briefly feels more like an inbuilt sequel, until we discover the coincidence that brings old family rivalries to a potentially tragic conjunction. It might seem like a slightly too neat and tidy ending but it is satisfying for all that, as we see that a resolution might only be found somewhere in a place beyond the pines. 

Ryan Gosling plays a character that we could easily fail to care about, but he plays it with such genuine depth of feeling that we do care a great deal. The internal struggle he has between his aggressive nature and the unexpected love he finds for his boy does create the central emotional core of the film. 

This sets a benchmark against which Bradley Cooper has to set his portrayal of Avery. He almost achieves it but his character remains a little two dimensional by comparison. It is hard to find sympathy for Avery except in the central part of his story, where he sees the effect his actions have had on another family’s lives. Avery is the one character who ages most successfully in the final act, although I understand that there was some digital assistance to make him appear younger in the earlier part of the film. 

Eva Mendes gives a strong and convincing performance as Romina although, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the female characters seem only to be here to prop up the story of the male leads. So much so that we have to prompt ourselves to remember Rose Byrne as Jennifer, Avery’s wife, who is only there because his son needs an onscreen mother. Mahershala Ali as Romina’s partner does a stalwart job too, but he too is only really there because the plot requires it. 

Ben Mendelsohn delivers well in his rounded portrayal of Robin, the robber turned mechanic who provides Luke with a home and employment of sorts, while Ray Liotta is memorable for all the wrong reasons leading a group of Avery’s corrupt Police Department cronies. 

It is in the last episode when Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan come up with two of the film’s most compelling characters as the teenage AJ and Jason. I genuinely did feel like personally wringing the smugness out of AJ and he plays this deeply unpleasant young man with obvious relish. Dane DeHaan though is the big success of the latter part of this picture, and it is his final departure from the screen that leaves us with the conclusion that Cianfrance is a consummate storyteller. 

Production and costume design along with an interesting and varied score manage to set the period for the film well and to give it great atmosphere. 

At 2 hrs and 20 minutes, some of the audience commented that it could have lived with leaving a bit more on the cutting room floor, but for my money the pacing held me there throughout, with a small wobble around the transition into the third segment. 

Some fine performances and well balanced direction make this a picture well worth going to see.

Rachmaninov & Beethoven – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – 10/04/2013

Beethoven Violin Concerto & Rachmaninov Symphony No. 1
Viviane Hagner, Violin; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko.

I have had a vinyl LP of Rachmaninov’s first Symphony since I was around ten years old and nearly wore the grooves off it before replacing it with a couple of CDs some years (sorry, decades) later, both of which have been well loved. It therefore came as something of a surprise to me to find that so many of my friends at the Philharmonic Hall on Wednesday evening had never heard it before.

It is a shame that this symphony so rarely gets an outing, as it is a splendidly original and interesting work, and so much more Russian in character than Rachmaninov’s later symphonies. It is also sad that its premiere was such a resounding flop, resulting in the young composer enduring a long period during which he was unable to write.

That said, it’s written in such a way that it is easy for it to become rather turgid and overwrought in the wrong hands. Fortunate then that we had Vasily Petrenko with the orchestra, preparing it this week for a recording to join the second and third, already released to great acclaim.

Dark storm clouds lour over the first symphony from the outset and, despite passages of calm where the sun tries to shine through, the sense of foreboding remains in the background throughout. Even the two heavy chords of the decisive ending sound more like a threat than a resolution. Each movement begins with a differently coloured statement of the same four-note figure that haunts the entire work. At the beginning it raises the curtain on a heavy sky before the first movement makes its decisive progress. In the centre two movements it more gently introduces less threatening material but the finale launches into a menacing march-like section, becoming increasingly urgent and frenetic until it collapses under its own weight to end in a dark, brooding coda and those two heavy, dull doom-laden chords.

Now: reading back over that paragraph I feel I’m not exactly selling the idea of this symphony that I have loved so much for so many years – somehow I’ve made it sound rather bleak – but in fact it is a spectacularly brilliant piece of writing with great dramatic flow and splendid orchestration. In the hands of the RLPO under Vasily’s direction it really delivers on its promises. The orchestral playing and balance were superb, and even sitting further over to the side and closer to the violins than my usual position I was still able to hear detail in the brass and woodwind that I haven’t noticed previously. (This was an extra dose for me tonight – I’m back in my normal seat for the repeat performance tomorrow.)

There are some awkward decisions to make regarding tempo, especially in some of the gear-shifts in the last movement, and it can often feel awkward and disjointed, but Vasily has a clear view of the structure and makes some great calls on these.

It’s easy to be disappointed when hearing a rarely played piece that you’re very fond of, but this was a very satisfying performance indeed. I’m looking forward to a re-run tomorrow and, of course, hearing the disc when it appears.

Prior to the interval we were in territory that few could be unfamiliar with, in Beethoven's glorious Violin Concerto. Viviane Hagner has a beautiful tone and her reading of this perennial favourite was luminous. As with all the Beethoven we have heard him conduct, Vasily managed to bring the orchestral score from the page with a colour and originality that meant that even the familiar can sound fresh and vibrant, as though we're hearing it for the first time.

The RLPO and Vasily Petrenko can be heard in Rachmaninov's second and third symphonies on EMI classics.


Viviane Hagner - Photo © Michael Borggreve

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg – Liverpool Playhouse – 08/04/2013

I was about 5 years old when this play first appeared in 1967, so seeing it 45 years later affords me a fascinating and more than occasionally unnerving opportunity to make some comparisons in morality, perceptions, and attitudes.

Author Peter Nichols tells us in the excellent programme notes of the difficulties of gaining a license from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office to perform Joe Egg in its early days. It’s very strange to look back at this now, as the questions of taste and decency under scrutiny are mostly things that no-one would bat an eyelid at today. Mild innuendo or references to sex made when there is a young person on stage would hardly be a barrier in our society. However, terms that have all but been expunged from our modern vocabulary pop up frequently and casually in the text and make our hair stand on end. To a 1960s or ‘70s audience it would have seemed quite ordinary to use some of this pejorative language that is no longer in any way considered acceptable.

Simon Higlett’s stylised and immaculately dressed set drops us straight into period, and here we meet Bri, a disillusioned teacher (Ralf Little) who I could swear used to take me for geography 40 years ago. Bri is eventually joined by his wife, Sheila (Rebecca Johnson) and then their daughter Joe (Jessica Bastick-Vines).

Both parents love Joe, but her severe disability is placing unbearable strain on their relationship. Bri paints cowboy scenes and Sheila has started amateur dramatics to give her a rest from the day to day caring, but even this has only served to add further jealousies to the already wobbly equilibrium.

By the time we reach the end of act one we have already had a good measure of both laughter and tears and when the interval is announced in heart rending fashion it's hard to see where else the play can take us.

Cue act two, in which we meet Owen Oakeshott and Sally Tatum as Freddie, the am-dram leading man and Pamela his wife, followed by Bri's mother, Grace, played by Marjorie Yates.

There follows a whirlpool of political incorrectness of truly astonishing proportions but we are able to see that much of what is being said is the norm for the time. Nonetheless much of the dialogue has the capacity to stun one moment while getting belly laughs the next.

More than this, the emotional complexity of the situation really begins to unravel. We are simultaneously sympathetic and horrified by the tribulations facing all the characters, including the increasingly incapacitated Joe.

Moral dilemmas vie with emotional needs and there seems to be no way out, save the unthinkable.

The genius of Nichols' writing is that he forces us to see the situation from a multitude of points of view, testing our responses to every challenge and effectively asking us to examine how we might fare, given similar circumstances.

A collection of disarmingly frank and honest performances by the six-strong cast draw us in and we ride the rollercoaster with them to the end. Jessica Bastick-Vines is quite extraordinary as the wheelchair bound daughter, unable to control the ever increasingly unpredictable and spasmodic behaviour of those upon whom she depends for her very life.

The remaining quintet all deliver characterisations that hold a mirror to some of our darkest thoughts. From Bri's cruel jokes to Pam's almost obscene self obsession we see the extremes of their struggles to cope with reality. Grace and Freddie offer ever more absurd advice and Sheila, occasionally resorting to flights of fantasy, tries to get by on a dream of some miracle.

As long as the audience turn off their mobile phones there are extended passages in which the stillness is so intense a pin dropping daren't make a sound, while there are frequent opportunities to laugh out loud or even entertain a little audience participation - hands on your heads everyone?

Stephen Unwin's assured direction is informed by his personal experience of caring for a severely disabled child, as was Peter Nichols when he penned the work almost half a century ago.

Times and attitudes may change but the basic truths remain the same, and this new production comes across the broken fourth wall as freshly as though it were written yesterday.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg runs at Liverpool Playhouse until 27th April, after which it transfers to the Rose Theatre Kingston.

Marjorie Yates, Ralf Little, Owen Oakeshott, Sally Tatum
Rebecca Johnson, Jessica Bastick Vines
Photo © Liverpool Echo, Andy Teebay