John Robins & James Acaster – Unity Theatre – 24/07/2013

Like many of their colleagues on the comedy circuit at this time of year, John Robins and James Acaster are warming up and putting the final polish on their routines, preparing for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival and giving preview performances at venues like the Unity.
 
Up for the first of the two hours was John Robins, who beguiled the audience with his laid back delivery before beginning to create some bizarre mind pictures using ingenious word-play. Taking us on a journey from a fraught adolescence past the point of hitting 30, he circles around a particular day in his 20s which he identifies as the happiest day of his life.

Robins’ comedy is rather like one of those skeleton clocks in that he displays the mechanics of the process as part of the performance, making additional humour out of this being a preview show. His self-deprecating style is engaging and has the sort of charm that carries his audience with him.

There is something very satisfying about watching someone juggle with language the way John Robins does. It is the sort of humour that has more of a slow-burn than an explosive effect and that more often gets groans and chuckles rather than full on laughter, which must make it hard to judge. It is, we are told, topical in a way that should not be taken internally, but it nonetheless ends up under the skin. Don’t expect to be rolling in the aisles, but be prepared for an aching jaw from a lot of ridiculous grinning.

James Acaster who followed after an interval is in some ways similar, in that he uses very visual language, but he has a more edgy delivery. He also uses some visual gags and a couple of physical props.

The basis on which this routine is constructed is a supposed obsession with clearing the name of Yoko Ono for the breakup of the Beatles. Comparisons with the band on the Titanic, who probably didn’t like the direction their act was taking but carried on playing together anyway, were the stuff of comedy genius. Here is someone who really gets hold of an idea and runs with it, and once off the ground it did fly like a kite, bobbing about around the audience’s heads and keeping us wondering what direction it might take next.

We might suspect something a little disingenuous about his sudden realisation that he was delivering this material in the Beatles’ home city, but who could blame him for claiming a few more comedy miles from the irony of doing it here.

James Acaster has the kind of surreal view of the world that makes for an unpredictable but mesmerising performance and it certainly hit the mark pretty frequently during the hour long set, getting a good reaction from what seemed a slightly dry crowd.

John Robins and James Acaster are both appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe (Pleasance Courtyard) on most evenings from 31st July to 25th August 2013

Bump by Laura-Kate Barrow, Jollyboat and Pornovision by John Maguire – The Shiny New Festival at the Lantern Theatre Liverpool – 17th July 2013

“If you listen carefully you can hear the rafters breathe...”

Following hard on the heels of Trolley Shaped Bruise (Unity Theatre, May 2013) Laura-Kate Barrow’s “Bump” opens this Friday at Manchester’s 24:7 festival. I got to see it in the second of three preview performances playing at Liverpool’s Lantern Theatre as part of the current Shiny New Festival, whose director Peter Mitchelson has brought it from the page to the stage.

Like its companion piece, the play centres on a chance meeting between two seemingly different characters whose histories unfold and who ultimately find common ground, but the author has treated this premise very differently here.

Opening with Louise, sitting still and quiet in an empty church, we begin to wonder what has brought her here and what contemplations are in her mind. The arrival of Matt, who turns out to have known Louise at school, gives us the opportunity to find out – eventually.

Sarah Keating brings a quiet dignity to the role of Louise, who is at first reluctant to speak at all and slow to trust the questions. Matt is on edge, wired, all fingernail chewing and pacing about. Played by Thomas Casson, almost too tall for the tiny performance space, Matt fills the silence of the church with his constant need to say something, but there are still some wonderful pauses – laden with unspoken dialogue.

 

When direct questioning doesn’t draw Louise out then a word game begins, and the barriers are replaced with a slow-growing trust. A pivotal point is a scene in the church confessional. After this, stories of the past that the two remember from school lead to revelations about what has happened to them in the few years since and the scars that they privately bear. We finally discover the personal crises that have brought them to the place. The resolution, whilst happening a little suddenly, is satisfyingly out of the blue but believable. Two fine performances from Keating and Casson keep us hanging on their every word.

 

Laura-Kate Barrow has an obvious skill for creating very rounded characters and natural dialogue, and the script offers plenty of opportunity for the performers to play with time and pacing to hold the audience. Hers is an emerging voice to watch out for in theatre.

 

Bump runs at the Three Minute Theatre, Afflecks Arcade, Oldham St Manchester from 19th to 26th July 2013, and Trolley Shaped Bruise has a script reading at The Lass O’Gowrie at 9:00pm on 23rd July as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.

Sarah Keating and Thomas Casson

Bump was the first of three events I attended yesterday at The Lantern. The Shiny New Festival, which was about half-way through its ten days, presenting three or four items every evening, with special rate multipass tickets on sale each day. Twenty minutes later, Liverpool writer/actor John Maguire presented his new play “Pornovision” which enjoys 4 performances this week.

 

It is unfortunate that none of the online or printed publicity material identifies Maguire’s two co-stars, as they give the best performances in this somewhat schizophrenic work. The title and likely the play itself are probably intended to be provocative, but it didn’t entirely hit its target – maybe because it didn’t have one.

 

Beginning with a doctor telling us we were to see a study of what was going on in the mind of our protagonist, Bartholemew Younghusband (Maguire), what followed was a series of disparate scenes played out between him and his uncredited lodger. Peering through a pair of rather problematic wire rimmed spectacles, we gather that Younghusband has an addiction to pornography. Judging by the laughter, there were still some members of the audience who have not previously heard the joke about gay burglars leaving quiche in the oven. For me this was just one example too many of the gloomy attempts the script makes to define the character as a grimly grimy bigoted heterosexual.

 

The young lady who performed the doctor also appeared in other guises, variously resembling an armour plated Madonna and what looked like a feline pole-dancer, drinking milk from a cat’s bowl. The best humorous passages came from the lodger with genuine stage presence and engineering some great recoveries for Maguire, whose own script tripped him up a few times in this first performance. His ad-lib about the ill fitting glasses raised quite a titter, as did his unexplained but witty near full-frontal nude appearance as a postman. He also managed to improvise his way around some glitches with the props.

 

If there’s an hour of your life you don’t need to keep hold of, Pornovision runs to 20th July.

 

Happily, my evening ended with an hour of musical lunacy from Jollyboat –brothers, Ed and Tommy in a Two-Men-and-a-Guitar revue and describing themselves as Comedy Rockstars.

No strangers to the Lantern’s performance space, Jollyboat have added new material to their act and we were getting a taster of it as it heads toward the Edinburgh Festival. Their very individual re-workings of a variety of familiar songs tread a splendidly balanced tightrope between satire and sheer madness and they never fall off. It is pointless to try and describe any of the material, but safe to say that it would be someone with a very rickety sense of humour who could fail to get a jolly good laugh from this hugely engaging and very funny double-act.

 

You can climb aboard Jollyboat one more time in Liverpool on Saturday 20th July at 9:00pm before they set sail for Edinburgh, where they will be playing at the Base Nightclub, 69 Cowgate from 3rd to 24th August.



Jollyboat

There is a real buzz in the sultry summer air at the Lantern Theatre, where the Shiny New Festival continues to Sunday 21st July. Support this event and let’s hope it returns next year.
 

The Lantern Theatre on Blundell Street in the Baltic Triangle might be off the beaten track, but it is well worth keeping on the radar, as it provides a vibrant, intimate and affordable space for small-scale performance and has a great atmosphere.

The Kite Runner – Liverpool Playhouse – 13/06/2013

We are welcomed to the auditorium by Hanif Khan, sitting downstage left playing tabla. Behind him lies a stark, curved space slightly resembling a skate-park. However, when the house lights dim and the performance proper begins, Barney George’s set comes vividly to life, with the help of Charles Balfour’s lighting and William Simpson’s lavish and complex sequence of video projections, which transform the magic carpet of the stage floor and the backdrop of elegant screens that fall and rise like sails, bird’s wings or maybe even kites.

It is against this background of ever-changing visuals and Jonathan Girling’s atmospheric score, accompanied by live tabla, singing bowls and other tuned percussion, that Giles Croft directs his large cast in this adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel. It was first brought to the stage in Matthew Spangler’s adaptation in San Jose, but is seeing European stages for the first time in this current co-production between Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.

The story follows the mixed fortunes of Amir and Hassan, as their lives take them from Afghanistan to America and back via a series of events, some happy, some tragic, and into the next generation of their families. As we take the journey with them, we learn of the unbreakable ties that bind their lives together despite terrible acts of cruelty and abandonment.

The book is densely written and not always an engaging read, and stage adaptation was bound to be a tricky business. It has been remarked elsewhere that a good deal of the storytelling in this version is delivered to the audience directly by Amir in the first person, acting as narrator. But short of adding another good hour to the running time, I fail to see how the whole of the saga could have been related without cutting out too much back story and meaning, and I for one was happy with the use of the technique as a way of getting swiftly to the point.

It is the dramaturgy that really animates the piece, and the use of “virtual” settings enables the pace to be maintained between scenes so that we really don’t notice the passage of time in the theatre.

The Kite Flying scenes accompanied by wind wands are moments of magic which, along with the evocative score, transport the audience to other times and other places. Initially this magic is what carries us to the Kabul of Amir and Hassan’s happy and innocent childhood – an innocence soon to be shattered.

Ben Turner’s Amir is a big ask with a lot of words, onstage almost constantly for the play’s 140 plus minutes, and he negotiates the repeated segues from child to adult with style. His despair is palpable as his someway cowardly attempts to rescue situations lead to ever increasingly tragic consequences.

Farshid Rokey is heartbreaking as both the lifelong loyal Hassan and, later, as his own mute son Sohrab. The remaining cast members are a great ensemble but special note goes to Emilio Doorgasingh’s Baba, Amir’s father, whose torn loyalties lead to much of the tragedy, and to Nicholas Karimi as the brutal sociopath Aseef, the sort of person, we are told, for whom there is no word in Farsi. His appearance on stage swiftly becomes something that chills the blood.

Adaptation from a novel to the stage will always divide opinion, especially among those who have come to love the original first, but Spangler’s adaptation steers a careful and pretty successful course between retaining the key elements of the story while making it work in physical form – never an easy task when so much depends on invoking the imagination of the reader or spectator. You could argue that more of the spoken narrative might have been played out dramatically, but I think this may have made the piece too lengthy to sustain itself on stage.

The Kite Runner, which takes a very individual view of the human cost of events in Afghanistan under the Taliban, comes to the stage in Croft’s production with sincerity, colour and style. It opened in April at Nottingham Playhouse and spent a brief period in Brighton before transferring to the Liverpool Playhouse this week, where it runs until 6th July. Tickets priced from £12 to £23 are selling fast.
Visit www.everymanplayhouse.com for details.

Lionboy – Liverpool Playhouse – 06/06/2013

It seems somehow appropriate for a show in which everything appears illusory to have been written by an author who doesn’t exist.

The trilogy of books for young people were co-authored by Louisa Young and her daughter Isabel writing under the name Zizou Corder and the resulting story, having been adapted for the stage by Marcello Dos Santos, has an immediate appeal for children and adults alike.

London-based Complicite are well known for their innovative style of theatre, and they always deliver storytelling that is brought very vividly to life. Here, in their first production aimed at a family audience, they do so with considerable flair and create a lively, fast-paced, engaging story.

Adetomiwa Edun plays Charlie Ashanti, the Lionboy of the title, so called because of his ability to talk to cats. He also acts very much in the capacity of narrator, aided by his six fellow actors and an onstage musician.

As the story goes Charlie, who lives sometime in the future, comes home one day to find his parents have gone. They have been kidnapped by “The Corporacy”, a pharmaceutical company who make their money by selling asthma medication. It seems that everyone suffers asthma due to a proliferation of genetically engineered, highly allergenic cats. Charlie’s parents are scientists on the verge of finding a cure for asthma, hence their disappearance.

On his journey, Charlie joins a circus ship and meets a variety of weird and wonderful characters, including some circus lions who he befriends.
This framework allows for a flight of imagination and some fantastical sets and costumes. The stage is designed in something like a big top layout, but the central, circular section of the roof of the set and the surrounding lighting gantry are mobile and enable various transformations, including a couple of very effective segments of shadow puppetry.
The extensive musical soundtrack comprises a mixture of live and recorded sound, most of which is written and performed by Stephen Hiscock, who occupies a fair part of the stage area with his array of exotic percussion instruments.
Adetomiwa Edun’s reputation goes before him, and it is hard to believe that he’s in his late 20s, as he plays the part of the 11 year old Charlie. His delivery of the text is superb and his cat-like movement as he depicts the conversations with lions delights the audience. He also shows that he can act standing on his head – literally.

The rest of the cast are a well balanced and multi-talented team, best demonstrated in their performances as a circus troupe, including at one point an aerial performance by Lisa Kerr. Robert Gilbert, a graduate of Liverpool’s LIPA, is excellent in his fast talking part of Rafi Sadler, a scheming but lovable rogue of a character who ducks and dives his way through the tale, while Victoria Gould has the children booing and hissing with her portrayal as the evil Chief Executive of The Corporacy. Femi Elufowoju Jr, Clive Mendus and Dan Milne complete the line-up.

Director Annabel Arden has performed a juggling act of her own in managing to get the story to tread a line that will appeal to audiences of all ages. The children in the theatre were captivated by the story, getting involved almost panto-style in booing and cheering at the twists of fortune, and screaming dutifully when wet “eels” are thrown out over their heads. Meanwhile there were equally as many grinning faces on the adults present, showing that the production works for everyone.

Lionboy is a hugely entertaining night out for everyone. Adults without children shouldn’t be put off by the material; if you like having a smile on your face come and see it! Meanwhile, this is a tremendous introduction to the theatre for children. Don’t wait for the Panto to take your family out - get yourselves to a performance of this.

Having opened at Bristol Old Vic and spent a week in Liverpool, Lionboy is touring via Oxford Playhouse, 11-15 June, Warwick Arts Centre, 18-20 June, West Yorkshire Playhouse, 25-29 June, Wales Millennium Centre, 3-6 July and Unicorn Theatre London, 9-21 July.

Beautiful Thing – Liverpool Playhouse – 29/05/2013

It’s hard to believe that it is 20 years since Jonathan Harvey’s “Urban Fairytale” first came to life at London’s Bush Theatre. It is probably through the film that followed 3 years later that most people have become familiar with the work but, whilst the film has become a classic, the stage version from which it grew has more power to touch audiences.

I have seen different stagings over the years, but this 20th anniversary production directed by Nikolai Foster strikes just the right pitch in revisiting the work for both new audiences and those who already love it.

Both Beautiful Thing and Harvey’s “Canary” (premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2010) are very dependent on the period being established so that the treatment of the characters has place and meaning. This is why any attempt to update the references to contemporary events and people would be inappropriate. Mentions of Bill Beaumont on Question of Sport and “that bloke from Erasure” do not date the play as some have suggested; they set it in its context. Good writing does not date – it ages – and Beautiful Thing has aged very well indeed.

Whilst this is very much a gay-themed play, the miracle of it is that what we see is primarily a love story between two teenagers who are coming to terms with themselves and how they fit into the world around them. It is the fact that there is no foot stamping, banner waving feel to it that really set it apart 20 years ago, and continues to do so now. The two lovers are both teenage boys but their feelings, uncertainties, fears and search for happiness are just the same as everyone else’s.

When it was written, Beautiful Thing broke boundaries by standing up as a play that asserts its equality by being a positive, happy story about growing up gay, at a time when gay theatre and film was almost exclusively either campaigning or tragic. It found its place by making us laugh, cry and leave the theatre smiling, and it still has the same capacity today.

Colin Richmond’s atmospheric design was conceived after research trips to what remains of the Thamesmead housing estate where the play is set. A balcony outside the doors to three flats is lit by numerous bulkhead light fittings and a deft piece of theatrical sleight of hand transforms it into the interior of Jamie’s bedroom and back without interrupting the flow. At one point we are tricked into seeing both interior and exterior simultaneously. As the play opens, David Plater’s lighting and some haze effects create the atmosphere of a steamy hot summer afternoon - remember those?

On the balcony we meet Jamie (Jake Davies) bunking off school from games and Leah (Zaraah Abrahams) the girl next door, who is excluded from school, looking at a rainbow. Leah’s obsession with Mama Cass provides us with most of the soundtrack, including the opening music.

They are joined by Jamie’s single mother, Sandra (Suranne Jones) and then the other neighbour Ste (Danny-Boy Hatchard) and the cast is completed by the arrival of Oliver Farnworth as Tony, the rather spaced-out artist boyfriend to Sandra.

The abusive relationship that Ste has with his father and brother (only heard as offstage voices) means that he occasionally escapes to stop over with Jamie and it is on one such night that their top-to-tail sleeping arrangement provides the opportunity for the pair to discover their feelings for each other.

Ste’s family life is a disaster, Leah hates her mother and Sandra’s affair with Tony is burning itself out as fast as the spliffs he smokes. The only relationship that actually seems to have any genuine love in it is that between Jamie and Ste and the cast all agreed, in their post show discussion on Wednesday evening, that they are probably still together today.

The real highlights of this production lie in the chemistry between Suranne Jones and her onstage son Jake Davies, and that between Jake and Danny-Boy Hatchard. In a world where we expect everything at breakneck pace, Nikolai Foster has encouraged his cast, especially Jamie and Ste, to have the courage to play some scenes with a beautifully measured stillness and delicacy of touch. Some of the dialogue between them superbly revealed their fear and awkwardness fighting with their longing for affection. When your best mate is “one of the lads” and adored by everyone in the school, how does a wimp who hates football but knows all about Cagney and Lacey and the Sound of Music find the strength to dare, and to explain how he feels. With the help of a salad, a copy of “Hello” and a bottle of Body Shop Peppermint Foot Lotion of course...

There are passages of astonishing tenderness from these two remarkable young actors - a hand reaching out, longing to touch - a head resting gently and silently on a friend’s bruised back – a stolen kiss when saying goodnight and the simplest of words that lead to an embrace. There is nothing graphic about any of these scenes, just an aching honesty and gentleness that is genuinely a beautiful thing. Just in case anyone was worried about being a little red round the eyes going to the bar in the interval, one of Harvey’s crack-shot touches of humour closes the first act with the sound of music, and we have to forget for the moment that Jamie is supposed to be fifteen, going-on sixteen.

“Some things are hard to say”, Jamie tells us, and that is certainly true even today. What we need to recall is that, when this play was set, two teenagers in a same-sex relationship was a much bigger deal than it is now. In a backlash against the gay community following the AIDS crisis, it had seemed as though a lot of the advances made in the general acceptance of gay people had been lost. It took courage to be open with friends, but usually a lot more to be open with family, and Jamie’s horror that his mother had discovered that he’d been to a gay bar is easy to understand. Suranne Jones gives a superb performance as Sandra, but it is in this coming-out scene especially that stamps a seal of excellence on it. She is fighting with her emotions as much as Jamie is with his own, but at the end of the day all she wants is the best for her son. As I type the words “He’s good to me” I can feel again the emotion at that point in the story, where Jamie gives the ultimate justification of the relationship he has with Ste.

In the closing scene, as the music soars and the lights fade we don’t want it to end – we want to know what happens next. Some people want a sequel, but maybe we are better off making our own minds up. I for one like the idea that this cast have, in believing that this is a relationship made to last.

Tony gets dumped by Sandra along with the garbage, which is a shame, as Oliver Farnworth’s portrayal is lovable. He may be on his own planet but he has a heart of gold and although he might say the wrong things all the time he means well. Zaraah Abrahams is marvellous as the difficult teenager who is a mystery even to herself at times.

Jake Davies and Danny Boy Hatchard are fearless in their performances. Davies has wit and enthusiasm to temper his uncertainty while Hatchard gives a great portrayal of a lad whose body has grown up too fast for him and is desperately trying to grow into it – confident in a gawky, awkward way, but able to turn to softness when the moment calls for it. How could Jamie have failed to fall for him?

This gentle, funny, bittersweet reading is most certainly a Beautiful Thing. It has been playing to almost sold-out houses at the Liverpool Playhouse, where it closes on Saturday evening. It will transfer to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds from 3rd to 8th June and then to the Theatre Royal Brighton from 10th to 15th June.

For details, go to www.beautthing.com

Rossini - La Donna Del Lago - 28/05/2013

Royal Opera House Cinema, live transmission, seen at FACT Liverpool.

It has been some decades since Rossini’s two-act “Melodramma” after Walter Scott has been performed at the Royal Opera House. In fact it rarely gets an airing at all which is a shame, as it contains some beautiful writing, both for a strikingly lavish romantic orchestra and for its bel canto singers.

There appear to be two major challenges that any company contemplating a production of La Donna Del Lago have to face; finding a well-balanced cast capable of doing justice to the heavily demanding roles and coming up with a suitably effective staging that makes sense of some of the more troublesome plot points. The Royal Opera have certainly surmounted one if not quite entirely both of these hurdles in this musically stunning and visually ambitious production.

The story, plundered from Walter Scott’s 1810 narrative poem, is a sort of four-cornered love triangle between the King of Scotland who falls for Elena, who is in turn in love with Malcom, a sympathiser of the Highlanders who oppose the King. Elena’s father Duglas (an old friend of the King) has however promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to Rodrigo, who is a Highland Chieftain, in the hope of reconciling the clans and restoring peace.

Now pay attention because there might be questions later…

Just in case it gets too easy to follow, the King disguises himself and uses the well-known Scottish pseudonym of Uberto, whilst the part of the burly Malcom is a trouser role, taken by a mezzo-soprano, although this trouser role has no trousers because the men are all in kilts.

Finally, despite the fact that she is apparently in all other ways an ordinary woman, Elena is required to make her entrance from the depths of the lake in which she resides (don’t ask – I have no idea).

To make sense of all this, director John Fulljames has chosen to re-cast the two minor roles of Albina and Serano as representing Rossini and Scott, who effectively create a second, framing plot in mime, giving the impression that they are telling the story to their friends. This makes Albina into a second trouser role (with trousers). It also causes a few crossed wires in the storytelling when she and Serano actually do have lines to sing.

In Dick Bird’s finely detailed, dimly lit opening set there is no lake in sight, as the action begins in what seems to be a cross between a gentlemen’s club and a museum, with an atmospheric painting of a highland scene on the massive, oak panelled rear wall. Our Lady of the Lake appears suspended in a glass display case, her diaphanous costume floating gently about her creating a strangely underwater feel. As she is released from her captivity and awakes, the King swiftly removes his robe and crown so that he can assume the less kingly persona of Uberto and try to woo the beauty he sees before him.

Scott and Rossini slide open the panelling to reveal a cavernous revolving stage which contains a cylindrical stair-tower on which most of the remaining action takes place. This provides height and movement and an effective setting for most of what follows. Various other changes to the set during the interval allow for some picturesque scenes of hanging corpses and dimbowelling of deer during act two.

There are love scenes between Elena and Malcom, unsuccessful wooing from the disguised King, a battle in which Rodrigo is slain and, finally, the unmasking of the King’s true identity before he pardons Malcom and gives his blessing for Elena to marry him. In the closing scenes we are returned to the museum, in which the protagonists are mysteriously reinterred in their display cases.

As a concept aimed at making sense of the difficult plot I am left undecided whether it is fully successful, but it looks great, it is wonderfully executed and it is very atmospheric.

What really makes this production memorable is its outstanding cast. Joyce DiDonato’s Elena is simply beautiful. She tempers her fine coloratura with a legato that gives it a romantic lilt to match the silken playing of the orchestra. Daniela Barcellona is a perfect match and it is probably the duets for the two Mezzos that are the finest parts of the evening. Barcellona even manages to have us believe her alpha-male character despite the theatrical device of the travesty role.

Colin Lee has overcome his earlier illness to take up the part of Rodrigo and he too is in fine voice, making a commanding presence on stage. There is no doubting the pin-sharp accuracy of Juan Diego Flórez's singing, but there were times when he seemed a little forced, as though he felt the need to over-project.

Simón Orfila gave suitable gravitas to his Duglas while the veteran Robin Leggate as Serano and Justina Gringyte's Albina (complete with trousers) managed to vocally survive the incongruity of their schizophrenic transformation into storytelling poet and composer.

The cast was completed by Christopher Lackner and Pablo Bemsch as bard and soldier, and the fine voices of the ROH Chorus.

The Royal Opera House Orchestra under Michele Mariotti were characteristically superb in this, one of Rossini's most romantic and ground-breaking scores

Live transmission to cinemas worldwide gave a huge audience a rare opportunity to see a work that infrequently sees the light of day. Camera work was excellent, giving some welcome views of the full stage among the tighter close up shots. The sound was well reproduced too, with great clarity of the splendid singers as well as good depth to the orchestral texture.

There are four more performances of La Donna Del Lago at the Royal Opera House, with the last in the run on 11th June 2013 and there are a very few tickets remaining.

Children of the Sun – National Theatre, Lyttelton – May 2013

It had been a Sunday Matinee performance at the Lyttelton, and as I paused halfway across Waterloo Bridge to take the early evening air I found that I was still physically shaking from the impact.

When Maxim Gorky’s play had its 1905 Moscow premiere the audience began to flee their seats in terror during the closing scene, in which the townspeople invade the Protasov household. Political unrest was running at such a pitch that they were in fear of an uprising and they believed that the theatre was under attack.

It seems that director Howard Davies wanted to recreate the same degree of horror for a comfortable modern London audience and I would say he certainly achieves this in his utterly terrifying, incendiary conclusion to this new adaptation of Children of the Sun. So much so that it took a few hours for me to fully recollect the excellent drama that had gone before it.

At the play’s opening we were faced by a solid brick wall filling the proscenium, with Roman, the Labourer, trying to mend a sticking gate. The wall descends into the stage to reveal Bunny Christie’s splendidly detailed set design. Here is the heart of Pavel Protasov’s house, a kitchen into which his chemical experiments appear to have overspilled from the laboratory, housed in something like a conservatory stage left. Upstage we see through huge glazed doors into the yard beyond and the same brick wall seen from the inside.

Something else that is overspilling is the residue from Protasov’s experiments, which has been leaking from the house’s septic tank and polluting the town beyond, much to the growing displeasure of the townspeople, who are now blaming him for the onset of a cholera epidemic.

Distracting him are Nanny, an old family retainer, and Protasov’s neurotic sister Liza. They urge him to challenge the local blacksmith Yegor, who has been beating his wife, but Protasov is more interested in getting Yegor to line the tank with copper.

Protasov, played by Geoffrey Streatfield, manages to remain oblivious to almost everything around him unless it concerns his experiments. His wife Yelena (Justine Mitchell) is becoming weary of her husband’s lack of interest and is becoming more drawn to Vageen, a local artist (Gerald Kyd). His Sister Liza (Emma Lowndes) is heading for a major breakdown and refuses the advances of the Vet, Boris (Paul Higgins). Meanwhile Boris’s sister Melaniya (Lucy Black) is intent on seducing Protasov himself, but he appears almost wilfully unaware of her feelings. When she says she will do anything for him he just asks her to supply him daily with fresh eggs from her hens.

The cast are all excellent and although the piece could very much centre around Streatfield’s Protasov he gives a very generous performance which allows the other characters equal standing, while Howard Davies helps to wring a good deal of humour from the text. Especially striking are the three strong female roles of Yelena, Liza and Milaniya, who carry most of the narrative.

Andrew Upton’s new English version of the text is generally very convincing, although some rather modern sounding usage of expletives occasionally sounds a little clunky.

At 2¾ hours a piece like this could easily drag, but the pace was maintained exceptionally well and there was no fear of this at all. The gradual build-up of tensions between the characters, and the sense of ensuing menace from the increasingly angry mob outside hold the audience through to the sudden acceleration of the plot in its closing pages.

Completed with lighting by Neil Austin and a score from Dominic Muldowney this is a very stylish and satisfying piece of theatre.

The final denouement quite literally takes the breath away, but beware - if you sit in the first four or five rows, it may singe your eyebrows...

Children of the Sun runs at the Lyttelton Theatre until 14th July 2013