Ophelias Zimmer – Royal Court

What does Ophelia get up to during Hamlet when she’s not on stage?

If you’ve ever wondered about that (and I have to admit I hadn’t) then Ophelias Zimmer is the play with all the answers, or mainly one big answer: Not much.

I’m not going to try and hide the fact that I found Katie Mitchell’s production incredibly boring, but I didn’t dislike it and I suspect that boredom is exactly what she wanted to convey in showing us the young girl’s very dull existence.

 

Ophelias Zimmer, which translates as Ophelia’s Room, is an alternative take on Hamlet, created in association with Berlin’s Schaubühne with text by Alice Birch and essential design by Chloe Lamford. The all-British team brings their German show (in German with English surtitles) to the Royal Court and it’s a very good fit.

Jenny König plays Ophelia, daughter to Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain to the King of Denmark. She is an obedient daughter to her father, and is guided by the memory of her dead mother, whose voice we hear over the speakers, giving her advice on how to protect herself from the influence/violence/treachery of men. A very interesting addition.

She also happens to be the Prince of Denmark’s love interest. Her days revolve around a basic routine: flowers from Hamlet, a morning walk on the Elsinore grounds, a catch up with her dad, a little bit of reading, a letter from the Prince — represented here by cassette tapes of Hamlet’s voice, which vary from overly romantic to slightly obscene and eventually to pure outbursts of rage (a whole cassette of “fick dich”s is really quite hilarious as a come back from a rejected lover!) etcetera. Nothing changes at all, until the day of the royal wedding of Gertrude and Claudius (Hamlet’s widowed mother and his uncle). Ophelia isn’t even invited to the wedding – I’ve never noticed, and I’m sure most productions include her in the wedding reception anyway, but she isn’t amongst the guests in the stage directions, how rude! – but her routine quickly changes after that. Suddenly there are no flowers, no letters, Hamlet is clearly distracted.

If you don’t happen to know Shakespeare’s tragedy inside-out, you will miss out on a lot of references unfortunately. Everything that happens in Ophelia’s room makes sense of something that has happened or is about to happen in Hamlet, and some of the connections are very satisfying. I’ve always been confused by how Ophelia suddenly claims that the Prince’s madness must be connected to his love for her, but here we are shown exactly where she gets that idea from, as a manic Hamlet (the excellent Renato Schuch) visits her room armed with a portable LP player and some very intense dance moves. You can’t blame the girl for running off to her father Polonius after that.

Things quickly turn very dark after Hamlet kills her father, as you’d expect, and Ophelia’s descent into madness is not altogether natural but very much aided by a creepy doctor, which made the whole thing far more believable.

The ending is sad and wonderfully staged, with Lamford’s simple set undergoing an impressive transformation that brings together the romanticised death of Ophelia as Gertrude tells it in Hamlet and the grim reality of a young girl’s desperate taking of her own life.

The tag line for the show is ‘A new work exploring Ophelia, freed from Hamlet’; she may have been freed from Hamlet the play, but she appears more trapped than ever.

Ophelias Zimmer is on at the Royal Court until Saturday 21st May 2016.
TIP: The best value for money tickets at the Royal Court are up in the Balcony. It’s only a small theatre and if you get seats bang in the middle of rows B or C the view is brilliant and they’re always under £20. If you’re lucky enough to be under 26 then you can get cheap tickets all over the theatre.

Red Velvet – Garrick Theatre

The story of African-American actor Ira Aldridge is an uncomfortable one to tell and it certainly doesn’t show the British theatre industry in a very good light.

Lolita Chakrabarti‘s important play, which originated at the Tricycle Theatre in 2012, shows Aldridge both towards the end of his life, and at the beginning of his European career, when in 1833 he is asked by visionary theatre manager Pierre Laporte (an excellent French-accented Emun Elliott) to replace the most celebrated actor in London, playing the title role in Shakespeare’s Othello.
Adrian Lester gives an incredible performance, changing from the young, passionate and perhaps naïve Aldridge playing the Moor in London, to the celebrated but somewhat defeated old man playing King Lear in Prussia. He is surrounded by an excellent ensemble who, in the London scenes, bring to life a typical 19th century theatre company whose terribly English sensibilities are shaken up by Aldridge’s arrival. The contrast between the stiff acting style of the Londoners and the more naturalistic approach of the American actor make for some hilarious farcical scenes. Charlotte Lucas‘s leading lady Ellen is particularly good at this, and these scenes show off the skill and humour of director Indhu Rubasingham (you can recognise her style from one of my favourite shows of 2015).

While London is rattled by revolts over the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, this very white group of people is being asked to work elbow to elbow with someone who looks like one of their servants. Some of them, like abolitionist Henry (Alexander Cobb, who shines for his comic timing), are intrigued by Ira but still approach him as one would an exotic animal; others are openly opposed to him joining, let alone leading the company, like Charles (played with unbearable entitlement by Mark Edel-Hunt), who walks out on the job, rather than sharing a stage with Mr Aldridge.

With only one afternoon of rehearsals, the company performs that same night to a full and seemingly enthusiastic house; but the morning papers are filled with reviews that can’t see beyond Aldridge’s race and disapprove of the idea of giving him the job rather than using a blacked-up white actor as was the custom. (This, if you can believe it, was still acceptable as late as 1990 when Michael Gambon played the Moor in Scarborough. And, by the way, white singers still use brown face paint when performing in Verdi’s opera version, although the New York’s Metropolitan Opera officially announced last month that they will stop this “charming” tradition).

[As a side note, if after seeing this play you find yourself comforted by the fact that we’ve come a long way from this kind of racist criticism, just think of the surge of disgusting racist comments online when the brilliant Cush Jumbo played Nora in a Manchester Royal Exchange production of A Doll’s House. That was in 2012. This mentality of hatred is far from extinguished unfortunately.]

The total refusal of acceptance that Aldridge is faced with in London has a deep effect on him, and his career is only allowed to flourish away from England and through some tough compromises which are made evident at the very end of the play. The last scene is quite chilling and leaves us with the sense that, in spite of a lot of apparent success, this man’s spirit has in fact been crushed.

Although the play’s focus is of course Aldridge, Chakrabarti manages to sneak in two other stories of oppression and exclusion: first there is Connie, the theatre maid played by a quietly mesmerising Ayesha Antoine. She spends the first half as an almost invisible presence, taking in all that is being said about the riots and the arrival of the new actor, without uttering a word. I watched her throughout, dying for her to speak, and in the second half she finally does. Her conversation with Aldridge was one of my favourite moments in the play. The second side-story is that of Halina (played by a gutsy Caroline Martin), a Polish journalist come to interview the great actor before his Lear performance. She is hoping that a scoop piece on Aldridge will help her advance in a workplace dominated by men where her high competence is bypassed and her visits to the unisex toilet are announced to the whole building. The addition of these two stories next to Aldridge’s is a clever move from the writer to remind us that be it issues of race, class or gender, we are all fighting one and the same fight. Brilliant.

Red Velvet is on until Saturday 27th February as part of the Kenneth Brannagh season of Plays at the Garrick Theatre.

TIP: You can enter a lottery for £15 tickets every day through the Today Tix app. The tickets are on the front row and you will feel completely immersed in the action. Good luck!

Young Chekhov Season – Chichester Festival Theatre

NB: I reviewed these shows when they were at the Chichester Festival Theatre but they are all transferring to the National Theatre’s Olivier from July! If you can handle that much Chekhov I would recommend doing a full immersion and booking for one of the three-play days to see them all in one go!

Although London’s theatre scene has more than enough to offer, theatres further afield often programme something so irresistible that will persuade me to put on my best travelling clothes and venture out of the capital, and the Young Chekhov Season at the Chichester Festival Theatre was one too good to miss. Departing artistic director Jonathan Kent presents us with three of the Russian master’s early works, in a new vibrant versions by David Hare.

I personally really love Chekhov‘s work, as long as his humour isn’t completely disregarded by a heavy-handed director, and luckily Kent’s productions really play on the comical nature of the writing, whilst dealing with the tragic moments in a most truthful and touching way. Sadly I didn’t have a chance to see all three (I missed Ivanov), but I spent the afternoon in the company of The Seagull and the evening watching Platonov, a completely new play for me.

In The Seagull the all-important Chekhov humour is taken great care of by the wondrous Anna Chancellor as Arkadina (the scene where she convinces her lover to not leave her is something to behold!), an attention-seeking, jealous and selfish actress who cannot stand not being the centre of everyone’s universe and is a horrendously unthoughtful mother to Joshua James‘ Konstantin. He dreams of becoming a truthful writer but is consumed by his love for aspiring actress Nina, an excellent Olivia Vinall. Tensions are already high between these three (the dynamics between the green and the seasoned actress reminded me a lot of the 1950 film All About Eve), when Nina meets Arkadina’s current lover, acclaimed writer Trigorin (an incredibly unlikable Sam West). Nina, infatuated with the idea of the famous writer, inevitably falls for the older man and everything that he represents. He in turn falls for her adoration of him, hoping that her youth and beauty will somehow give his own life a renewed energy. Of course it all goes wrong and their relationship destroys the fragile Konstantin and more than anything demolishes Nina’s confidence. In her final scene, we see a fantastic transformation in Vinall: all her vibrancy has been sucked out of her by the selfish Trigorin who wanted to feel young again, and all that she is left with is total self-destruction. Both Vinall and James are incredibly touching in the second half, and as horrible as it is to see the younger generation so altered by the events of the play, it is even more disturbing to see how Arkadina and especially Trigorin are perfectly able to put that particular chapter behind them and carry on with a game of tombola.

After the harrowing ending of The Seagull (and a spot of dinner), Platonov hits us with a whole new playful energy. To begin with at least, this is almost a farce following Platonov, a provincial Don Juan described as “the only interesting man in the region”. James McArdle in the title role is all charm and cheek and you can (to a certain extent) understand how every woman in the vicinity seems to fall at his feet. Every single woman: from brilliant widow Anna Petrovna (an incredibly sensual Nina Sosanya), via his brother-in-law’s sweetheart Maria (a hilarious and adorable Sarah Twomey), and married woman Sofya (a totally different, headstrong performance from Olivia Vinall), not forgetting his rightful wife Sasha (Jade Williams). Each and every one of them seems to think Platonov is the answer to all their prayers, they project onto him all their hopes and dreams and take very little notice of the fact that he is actually quite a pathetic man, too lazy to show any sign of ambition or courage. There is some talk of women’s emancipation in Platonov, and they all have their moments of bravery and/or brilliance at some point, but ultimately this is quite a misogynistic play. Luckily the actresses do their utmost to turn this around and Platonov gets the end he very much deserves after causing havoc around him.

In spite of my issues with the play itself, I did thoroughly enjoy the production and McArdle gives a masterful performance, at its best in his soliloquies, which are performed directly to the audience. He draws us in and manages to charm each and every one of us, just like he does everyone on-stage.

The Seagull & Platonov are two very different plays, although themes of money and betrayal appear in both, which made my day go surprisingly fast and it certainly didn’t feel like watching more of the same. On top of the excellent performances from the cast, the shows are aided by some beautiful design: Emma Ryott (costumes), Mark Henderson (lighting) and especially Tom Pye (set) all deserve high praise for transforming the Festival Theatre’s stage into the Russian countryside. Pye manages to create a lake on the stage, which is put to great use (especially by Vinall who spends most of The Seagull in it), and the scene changes into interior settings are particularly clever. It’s a wonderful theatrical experience in its entirety, aided by the beautiful setting of the Festival Theatre (and the friendliness of their staff I must say), and you’ll be surprise how enjoyable Chekhov can be when it’s done right.

The Young Chekhov Season is on until the 14th November at the Chichester Festival Theatre. I would suggest seeing at least two of the three plays to fully enjoy the transformations in the company of actors and to appreciate what an enormous enterprise this is.

TIP: Travel-wise, if you buy your train tickets at least a week in advance and it’ll cost you only £11 each way.
As for theatre tickets, the Festival Theatre does £15 tickets on the side of the stage which are great value for money, I’ve seen a few shows from those now and I’ve never had a problem. And if you’re lucky enough to be under 25 years old, you’ll be able to see these excellent shows for only £8.50!

People, Places and Things – National Theatre (Dorfman)

⭐️2016 winner of 2 Olivier Awards:
Sound Design (T.Gibbons) & Best Actress (D.Gough) ⭐️

NB: I reviewed this show when it was at the National Theatre in 2015 but People Places and Things is transferring to the West End from the 15th March 2016. There are some affordable tickets for the onstage seating which is always an experience! book here!

I have been following the work of Headlong Theatre Company for 8 years now and I find I am never disappointed after one of their shows. In fact, I count some of them amongst my favourite theatre experiences ever (The Effect, also at the National, will stay with me forever, I am sure of that), and even when they haven’t completely won me over, they have always managed to interest me and often surprise me.

So expectations were high as I walked into the National’s Dorfman Theatre for Duncan Macmillan‘s new play People, Places and Things, which follows actress Emma as she voluntarily commits herself into a rehab centre to tackle her substance abuse problem.

Under the clever and always ingenious direction of Jeremy Herrin, Denise Gough as Emma gives one of the most affecting performances I have seen all year. Her portrayal of addiction is masterful and, although the character is hardly likeable, we do feel deeply for her. It’s especially heartbreaking for both her and us to realise, just as she starts to get better, that the damage she has caused around her simply cannot be repaired.

A strong ensemble creates the population of the rehab centre, with the excellent Barbara Marten multi-rolling her way from a no-bullshit doctor, to a birkenstock-wearing, irritatingly calm therapist and finishing off with a pretty brutal (though not unjustified) mother who gives Emma a potentially fatal dose of tough love.

Just like in the American The Motherfucker with the Hat, another play about addiction seen at the National earlier this year, the protagonist’s road to recovery follows the twelve-step program, a set of principles that form the basis of the Alcoholic Anonymous organisation, with a religious influence and the heavy undertones of a creed rather than a treatment. The cynical Emma is as skeptical as I am about it to begin with, and it takes her a couple of goes to fully buy into “the program”. She eventually seems to embrace it as her only option to avoid complete self-destruction.

As gloomy as the subject is, Macmillan’s script is full of humour, with a couple of moments involving falafel and the purpose of saying Amen (You have to say Amen. – Why? – It’s like pressing Send on an email) getting full-blown laughs from us. But the play doesn’t shy away from the darkness of addiction, and Herrin’s production is at its most powerful when portraying what’s happening in Emma’s head: through impressive projections by Andrzej Goulding (on a slick and multi-functional box of a set by Bunny Christie), we see her surroundings crumble, and the clever employment of 6 Emma duplicates gives us the full sense of her out-of-body experience preceding her frequent black-outs.

What the play’s title refers to is the idea that as long as addicts can avoid the people, the places and the things that trigger their substance abuse, then they will be able to make a full recovery. This, as Emma soon realises, is almost impossible to achieve outside the walls of the rehab centre, and seems to incarnate the frustrating impracticalities of “the program”.

People, Places and Things is at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre until the 4th November.

Tip: I saw the show from one of the £15 restricted view seats in the circle, which wasn’t too bad (just avoid the high seats, you really don’t get a great view from those), but as the run is mostly sold out, the best way to get good seats at an affordable price is through the National Theatre’s Friday Rush: every Friday at 1pm they release a certain number of £20 tickets online for the following week’s performances, so get on it if you don’t want to miss the chance to see this beautifully striking play.

My Beautiful Black Dog (EdFringe ’15)

NB. I reviewed this show at the Edinburgh Fringe, August 2015 but it’s on in London 11th-13th March at the Southbank Centre as part of the Women of the World Festival so catch it if you can! And check out Brigitte Aphrodite‘s website for other live dates.

There are many shows about mental illness at this year’s Fringe. It seems to be a popular subject and we’re probably just getting better, both performers and audiences, at talking about it.

It wasn’t easy to choose one from the long list, but the word GLITTER staring back at me from this particular blurb made me choose My Beautiful Black Dog and boy was that the right choice. Glitter never disappoints.

Performer extraordinaire Brigitte Aphrodite and her real-life partner musician Quiet Boy create a show that is deep and meaningful but also incredibly entertaining and hilarious at times.

The black dog of the title is a reference to what Winston Churchill used to call his Depression, and this show is about Brigitte’s own dog/depression, somehow presented in the most joyous and life-affirming hour. Aphrodite is mesmerising to watch: her poetry/spoken word whatever you want to call it, is beautiful and sharp. The songs, written and performed with Quiet Boy, go from hilarious ( Pop This Party was a personal favourite) to moving ( Creshendorious, which you can and should buy on iTunes), and you can sense a huge amount of respect, support and love between the two of them, which made everything more powerful.

I laughed till my belly ached and cried, no, sobbed unstoppably. The promised glitter, given to us at the start to put on our face and hair went absolutely everywhere and stayed with me for the rest of the day, just like the show.

This is a sad story but Aphrodite and Quiet Boy have turned into an inspiring journey on the way to coping with depression and not letting it take hold of your life. There is music, glitter, heaps of love, and I just can’t wait to see it again soon.

My Beautiful Black Dog is on for just one more day, today Sunday 16th! Catch it at 1.55 at Underbelly Cowgate. 

Connect with Brigitte Aphrodite to find out where the show is going next:
Facebook: /Brigitte.Aphrodite
Twitter: @BBBRIGITTE & @QUIETBUOY

Spencer Jones Presents: The Herbert in Proper Job (EdFringe ’15)

NB: I reviewed this show at the Edinburgh Fringe, August 2015 but it’s now on in London at the Soho Theatre 8th-19th March, 7.30pm, so catch it there if you can!

Spencer Jones has created a brilliant character in The Herbert through a mixture of clowning and physical comedy that gets the whole room laughing hysterically. He barely says a word, but through his own unique language he delivers a hilarious and absurd show, aided by some very inventive use of what feels like a hundred props. They range from mop heads to kids toys and you’ll be amazed at what this man can do with a latex glove!

If you’re only into straight stand-up comedy I’d avoid it, but if you fancy something completely different I urge you to go and see Spencer Jones and his beautiful child-like imagination. It’s free too! But make sure you put something in the bucket at the end, the show more than deserves it and you might even get a free CD.

SpencerJones’ The Herbert in Proper Job is on every day (not 18th or 25th) at 9pm at Heroes @ The Hive just off the Royal mile. 

Gypsy – Savoy Theatre

⭐️2016 Winner of 4 Olivier Awards: Best Lighting (M.Henderson), Best Musical Revival, Best Supporting & Lead Actress in a Musical (L.Pulver & I.Staunton)⭐️

Now you don’t need me to tell you that Gypsy is the best thing in the West End right now; Jonathan Kent’s gorgeous production has been going for months now and has received rave reviews from all sides since it first opened in Chichester last year. I only saw it recently and I went in thinking it couldn’t possibly live up to the huge expectations in my head. Turns out, it really is as good as they say.

I’d only previously seen this Broadway classic on film, in the 1962 version starring Rosalind Russell as Momma Rose and Natalie Wood as Louise (the daughter who later turns into the Gypsy of the title), which I didn’t like. I remember thinking “what’s all the fuss about?! Why is everyone obsessed with this show?”. I don’t think the film does the material any justice at all, and having seen it on stage I am convinced that the theatre is the only medium for it. There is something about the songs… you really have to be there, in the same space as the actors and have that connection that only a live performance can provide.

I’ve listened to various recordings too and I’m more convinced than ever that this is the case: yes you can here the impressive voices of Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters on the album, but you are missing out on the live, physical energy that emanates from the force of nature that is Momma Rose.Here in London, we have Imelda Staunton starring as the ultimate ‘stage mother’, and she can most definitely sing the part. But the brilliance of her performance goes beyond the singing, and I think that is a testament not only to her as an actor, but also to the book of the show, the work of Arthur Laurents.Momma Rose is determined to turn her daughters into vaudeville stars: she first tries with the talented Baby June (a scarily skilful and hilarious enfent prodige played by Scarlet Roche on this particular night), and when that daughter leaves to make a life of her own, Rose turns to the quiet elder one, Louise, considered perfectly useless until that moment.

Staunton’s interpretation of Rose is often very funny, but the most impressive thing is watching how she becomes frantically obsessed; for such a tiny and lovely woman she really turns ugly and terrifying the more things don’t go her way. She is menacing but somehow still heartbreaking in the poignant moments when she realises her daughters don’t need her anymore.

Her incredible performance culminates in “Rose’s Turn”, the last song in the show, where I swear we see Staunton go through every human emotion. This is what I mean about the physical effect of a performance, I was sat all the way up in the Gods and I was shaking by the end of the number, so strong and affecting was her energy.

But enough about Rose. The central performance is so overwhelming that it can easily cast a shadow over everything and everyone else in the show, but this is a formidable cast all round. Dan Burton in particular impresses in his big number “All I Need is The Girl” where he gets to show off his strong voice and some seriously smooth dancing. Then there’s Gypsy Rose Lee: there must be a reason why the show is called Gypsy and not Rose, right? Lara Pulver is fantastic in her quiet transformation from gawky tomboy Louise into the breathtaking diva she becomes once she embraces a career as a stripper under the name Gypsy Rose Lee.

This is a universally acknowledged success of a show and a definite Theatre Truffle for me.

Gypsy is on until late November 2015 at the Savoy Theatre on the Strand. You can book tickets at the venue or online through ATG.

TIP: I booked the £32.50 tickets up in the Grand Circle, it’s not exactly cheap, but it is compared to the top price of £90! And it is completely worth it: we won’t get another Gypsy in years and Imelda Staunton is unmatchable.

Luckily this is a big show so it still looked and felt amazing even from up there. Plus, on a week night when the theatre wasn’t completely full, I ended up moving to the 2nd row of the Grand Circle after the interval, which was just perfect! NB. Avoid row A and F up there: there is a rail straight in front of you that will really get in the way.

To Kill A Mockingbird – Barbican Centre

Stage adaptations of well-loved novels are always tricky, but Christopher Sergel‘s ingenious turn on Harper Lee’s classic To Kill A Mockingbird is a most successful one. From the very beginning the show feels like a love letter to the book: it’s respectful of the material and manages to maintain the familiar first-person narration alongside the acting. The latter is provided by a strong ensemble cast who successfully create the world of the Deep South and its inhabitants with just a few props and costumes. They move around Jon Bausor‘s essential but evocative set in what feels like a fluid choreography.

At the centre of the action there are three young performers who were so, so good that I had to keep reminding myself they were only kids. On the performance I saw, Scout was played brilliantly by Rosie Boore who nailed the tomboy charm of the character. She had great chemistry with both Billy Price as Scout’s brother Jem and Milo Panni as adorable mini-gentleman Dill. A lot of the show rides on these characters and the way they react to the events in the story, and these young actors more than rose to the challenge.

We are introduced to the name of Atticus Finch early on by the children, but we are made to wait a while before Robert Sean Leonard appears on the scene. And boy is it worth the wait! He brings us a tired and stern man to begin with, but he lets us see more and more of Atticus’ kindness and strength, with a crescendo that culminates in the court scene. The house lights go up and we, the audience, are addressed by him as the jurors in Tim Robinson’s trial. This moment sent chills down my spine: it was passionate and heartbreaking at the same time, the appeal of a man who knows there is no chance in hell things are going to change, but that doesn’t mean he’s not  going to give it his all.

The trial scene is uncomfortable to watch, as it should be, and, like the kids, we can’t quite believe how Robinson (played by Eke Chukwu on the night, who movingly embodied the injustice of the situation) could be condemned. The attacks on him and on negroes in general are pretty hard to swallow for a modern audience, but director Timothy Sheader does a brilliant job of this and other difficult passages.

This production (originally created for Regents Park’s Open Air Theatre in 2013) is a true tribute to the novel and it struck me as the best possible way to tell this particular story. I went in expecting a good show with competent performances, I left having been blown away by the brilliance of it. A definite Theatre Truffle.

To Kill A Mockingbird ends its UK tour next Saturday 25th July at the Barbican Centre. The remaining performances are mostly sold out, but do try for Returns on the day, this is an adaptation worth seeing.