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...