A TASTE OF HONEY – REVIEW OF NATIONAL THEATRE PRODUCTION

Lesley Sharp as Helen and Kate O'Flynn as Josephine  Photo: Alastair Muir

Reviewed by James Karas

In the closing scene of A Taste of Honey, Helen, one of the main characters finds out that her teenage daughter Jo (Kate O’Flynn) is about to give birth to a black child. “You mean to say that…that sailor was a black man? ...Oh my God! Nothing else can happen to me now.” As her daughter is going into labour, Helen goes out for a drink.

This is the ultimate indicator of this woman’s character. She is a shallow, selfish, crude, promiscuous and pathetic “semi-whore” as her creator calls her, and a slice of life that one would just as soon not taste.

Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 play is now playing on the Lyttleton stage of the National Theatre, London. Helen (Lesley Sharp) and her daughter Josephine (Jo) live in a rundown part of Manchester. The play is classic kitchen-sink realism where there is economic poverty but more importantly poverty of mind and spirit. If the fate of the characters is intended to infuriate you, the play succeeds marvelously.

Jo shows some artistic talent but there is no opportunity to develop any ability that she may have in the squalid life dictated by her mother’s character. Helen brings Peter (Dean Lennox Kelly) to the apartment; a rich young man who seems to be as crude, dirty minded and heavy drinking as her.

The pathetic teenager meets Jimmie (Eric Kofi Abrefa), a black sailor who promises to marry her and leaves her pregnant. Jo then meets Geof (Harry Hepple) a tall and decent homosexual who is genuinely caring.    

A black man getting a teenager pregnant,  a mother making a living from sex, a decent gay man when homosexuality was still a crime – all of this was pushing the envelope very far in the 1950s. We are no longer shocked by the relationships but the way of life of the two women is no less depressing.

Sharp is so good in the role that she infuriated me to the point where I wanted to metaphorically strangle her. O’Flynn as Jo is equally convincing as the pathetic teenager caught up in her mother’s squalid life. Kelly, Abrefa and Hepple handle their roles well.

Designer Hildegard Bechtler has designed a stage showing the streetscape at first and then revolving to reveal the squalid apartment with the gas works in the background. Very effective.

For all its depressing and infuriating effectiveness, the production did seem to drag a bit during the first act. I think the issue was with the pacing imposed by director Bijan Sheibani. Some more energy could and should have been infused in the performances to move the action. An inordinate number of the audience heading out for the intermission displayed or suppressed yawns. 

Aside from that, it was a pleasure to see a play that made its mark when Delaney was only 18 years old and was able to paint such a realistic and depressing view of reality.

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A Taste of Honey  by Shelagh Delaney continues in repertory  until May 11, 2014 at the Lyttleton Stage, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England.  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE – REVIEW OF BEAUMONT PLAY AT WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE

Pauline McLynn and Phil Daniels in 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle'

Reviewed by James Karas

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a hilarious play by Francis Beaumont that is now playing at the new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London. It is possible that The Knight has been produced professionally somewhere in Southern Ontario in recent decades but it is highly unlikely. Too bad.

The play was first produced in 1607 when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were very much around and English renaissance drama was at its height.

We are in London and a play called The London Merchant is about to begin. A Citizen (Phil Daniels) and his Wife (Pauline McLynn) who are seated in the front row object vociferously to the subject of the play. Why are they not putting on a play about common people? The Citizen is a grocer and he wants to see his son Rafe (Matthew Needham) on stage.

So begin the mirth and hilarity. We meet the fired apprentice Jasper (Alex Waldmann) who is in love with the pretty Luce (Sarah MacRae) who happens to be his former employer Venturewell’s daughter (John Dougall) who dismissed him for the very reason. He has a better match for his daughter in Mr. Humphrey (Dickon Tyrrell). There you have the love interest of most comedies – the parents disapprove and the lovers triumph.

Rafe does go on stage as The Knight of the Burning Pestle, we meet Jasper’s family of misfits and a few other characters. There are hijinks and lowjinks as the plots develop with the Citizen and his Wife always ready to interject and interfere.

The cast directed by Adele Thomas create so much energy and laughter one wants to believe that they have captured the rollicking fun of the early seventeenth century free-wheeling theatre. The actors jump into the audience; the Citizen passes grapes to people close to him and serves them beer; there is a chase that goes around the theatre and the laughter keeps rolling in. They sing and dance as well.

Daniels and McLynn have the audience in the palm of their hands. We just wait for them to object to what is happening on stage so we can laugh. Needham as Rafe, looks and acts like a dolt to hilarious effect. The usually drunk Merrythought of Paul Rider, the foolish Humphrey, the blustering Venturewell are all stock characters from comedy but they were done well and fulfilled their mission: leave them laughing.    

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is a small indoor theatre attached to Shakespeare’s Globe. The small stage and proximity to the audience probably make it easier to involve people in the action and evoke laughter. I need hardly add that seasoned actors and fine directing are the essential ingredients.

I had not seen The Knight or any other play by Beaumont or Beaumont and Fletcher as the two playwrights are usually referred to. Our Stratford Festival has dropped Shakespeare from its name and shows great reluctance in approaching Elizabethan and Jacobean plays because they may not fill the theatres. The Shakespeare Festival should lead us to the whole range of drama and create an audience for it rather than following our limited tastes. Shakespeare’s Globe is doing exactly that by introducing plays that have been largely ignored for centuries.

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The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont opened on February 20 and will play until March 30, 2014 at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 21 New Globe Walk, London. www.shakespearesglobe.com

TURANDOT – REVIEW OF ROH COVENT GARDEN PRODUCTION

 Alfred Kim, Irene Theorin © ROH / TRISTRAM KENTON

Reviewed by James Karas

Andrei Serban’s production of Turandot for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is approaching its fortieth anniversary. After fifteen revivals it is still holding the stage and quite rightly so. It is opera on a grand scale with chorus and dancers the size of a small army and an array of huge, colourful  props and  powerful orchestral playing.

The title role is sung by Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin. She has sung Wagner and Strauss roles widely and Turandot, the icy Chinese princess may seem a bit off her beaten track. But with demanding arias like “In questa reggia” that require powerful expression, she is well in her vocal demesne. She does a good job and her princess displays the soprano’s strength but I am not convinced by her sudden conversion from iceberg to lover.

South Korean tenor Alfred Kim sings the difficult role of Calaf, the Unknown Prince. He has some major pieces where he has to surpass orchestra and chorus and Kim has a big enough voice to be heard. He does well in the lyrical passages but near the end he has to sing “Nessun dorma,” one of the most popular arias in the repertoire. Every tenor who got near a recording machine has put his voice on CD, vinyl or tape and can be compared to everyone else.

Kim does get the high notes but his voice is simply not sufficiently polished in the aria. You expect a perfectly clear, lyrical rendition and Kim’s performance falls just short of the wonder one expects. He was good but not great.

The finest performance is without hesitation credited to American soprano Ailyn Pérez as the slave Liu. She has a lovely voice, sweet, moving, polished and when she sings “Signore, ascolta!” our hearts melt.

British bass Matthew Rose sings the role of the old, deposed King Timur who is forced to beg with Liu. Rose sang the role with moving resonance but, despite his attempts to totter on his stick, his voice betrayed a young man with marvelous vocal chords. At the end of the opera, the frail old man drags a cortege with Liu’s dead body on it. The singing must have rejuvenated him.

As for spectacle, original director Serban and Revival Director Andrew Sinclair pull out all the stops. Huge dragons, scaffolds on wheels, a massive sword sharpening stone (there are lots of people to decapitate) a huge throne to lower Emperor Altoum (Alasdair Elliott) from the rafters, not to mention the huge crowds. There are dancers, guards, executioner’s men, wise men, phantoms, heralds, soldiers and ordinary people. We need two balconies to house the Royal Opera Chorus alone. The production can compete with the Roman Forum and the effect is stupendous.          

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Nicola Luisotti gave an assured powerful account of the score in a production that has stood the test of time.

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Turandot by Giacomo Puccini was performed seven times between February 17 and March 10, 2014 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, England.

GHOSTS – REVIEW OF RICHARD EYRE VERSION OF IBSEN

Adam Kotz, Jack Lowden and Lesley Manville. Photo: Alastair Muir

Reviewed by James Karas

Henrik Ibsen was one of the greatest and most revolutionary playwrights of the 19^th century but he is now treated more like Miss Havisham’s house in Great Expectations, full of cobwebs and dust, a relic from the past that has seen better days.

Richard Eyre does not share that view and he prepared and directed a version of Ghosts for the Almeida Theatre last year. That production has now transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in London and it makes Ghosts as fresh and dramatic as it must have appeared to the shocked audiences of the nineteenth century. True we are not likely to be as traumatized as they were or pretended to be but the basic revolutionary ideas about hypocrisy, intolerance and bigotry are as forceful today as then.

Lesley Manville gives an outstanding and defining performance as Helene Alving, an attractive, intelligent, rational, wronged and sexually repressed woman. She is the wife of the late Captain Alving and a woman who was born in the wrong century. Her whole life is a fraud that she commits against herself in an attempt to comply with the rules of her close-minded, oppressive and repressive society.

Her husband was a pillar of the community in appearance but a drunken philanderer who impregnated their servant, in reality. She went to Manders (Adam Kotz) then a divinity student and later a pastor, for advice and fell in love with him. He rejected her and told her to return to her husband and put up with him.

Manders has come to the Alving home in order to bless an orphanage built in honour of Captain Alving. Helene approaches him and puts his hand on her breast. The emotionally dead pastor rejects her again. 

Adam Kotz plays Manders as a fire-and-brimstone man of the cloth who is close-minded hypocritical and the worst that any society can offer. This pastor thinks that an orphanage needs no insurance because it is under the special watchful eye of God. Insuring it may cause tongues to wag. A frightful and disgusting character is brought to life by Kotz.

The other victim of Helene’s acquiescence to the repressive society and her husband’s gross sexual misconduct is her son Oswald (Jack Lowden) who is born with congenital syphilis. The servant Regina (Charlene McKenna) is in fact his half-sister. The Honorable Captain Alving impregnated another servant, paid her off and passed her to Jacob (Brian McCardie) who accepted the money and the fiction that he was the father of Regina.

Lowden gives an outstanding performance as the young artist who was sent away as a boy to escape the situation at home and then returns in the final stages of his illness. The part requires immense emotional depth and Lowden never falters.

McCardie limps his way around the stage as he displays his contempt for everyone and uses them for his benefit. He is so disgusting that he wants his “daughter” to work in his philanthropic retreat for sailors, a poorly disguised brothel.

Eyre gives a taut, dramatic and riveting production of the play that will leave you emotionally drained.

This Ibsen has no cobwebs or dust and if Miss Havisham had seen it she would have left her house and lived a happy life, glad that she had escaped Helene Alving’s fate.

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Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen in a version by Richard Eyre opened on December 17 and continues at Trafalgar Studio 1, 14 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY

KING LEAR – REVIEW OF SAM MENDES PRODUCTION AT NATIONAL THEATRE

Anna Maxwell Martin (Regan) and Simon Russell Beale (King Lear). Photo: Mark Douet

Reviewed by James Karas
 

When you hear that Sam Mendes is directing King Lear at the National Theatre with Simon Russell Beale in the lead, you are well advised to check for flights to London. If you make it, you will see Shakespeare done on a grand scale with some definitive performances for the modern theatre.

Mendes sees Lear as a modern dictator. In the opening scene when Lear demands to hear extravagant expressions of love and devotion from his daughters, there is a large contingent of soldiers in black berets and uniforms in a semi-circle on the large Olivier stage. The division of the kingdom is a public event and Lear explodes into a violent rage, knocking tables over, when he is not satisfied with Cordelia’s answers. We will see soldiers a number of times. Dictators and civil wars need them.

Russell Beale, stocky, stooped, with short-cropped white hair, struts around the stage seething with violence like a beast that wants and gets nothing but obedience. He has a booming voice and is the epitome of dictatorial brutality. He is quickly disabused of his power after giving his kingdom to his daughters. When he curses Goneril and accuses her of filial ingratitude, she stands her ground and slaps him roundly across the face. The game has changed and the king is on his way to humiliation and degradation.

Russell Beale gives an outstanding performance as the pathetic and abused king. His strut becomes a shuffle and in his madness, he rails against the wind and bludgeons the Fool to death. His recovery and realization are extraordinarily moving and his entire performance is one of the finest Lears one is likely to see.

Stephen Boxer’s Duke of Gloucester is a decent man in a smart suit who is as unperceptive as Lear where his children are concerned. The self-assured Duke is humiliated and is subjected to a modern torture technique. He is hooded and alcohol is poured over his face. His eyes are then gouged out using a corkscrew. Boxer gives a wrenching performance during that scene and his trip to Dover where he wants to commit suicide.

Kate Fleetwood is a sharp-nosed Goneril who carries her deeply-rooted evil lightly and smartly and she quickly establishes dominance over her father with a quick slap. Anna Maxwell Martin as Regan is equally evil and she embraces the gouging of Gloucester’s eyes with relish. She is also coquettish and sexy which makes her even more frightful.  

Aside from Lear’s and Gloucester’s Promethean suffering and display of emotional extremes, Mendes understates the evil in the heart of most characters. The treacherous and malevolent Edmund (Sam Troughton), Gloucester’s bastard son, is almost business-like in his despicable behavior.

The Fool (Adrian Scarborough) wears a distinctive hat but other that he is in a suit and his clowning is understated. In the opening scene, we see him seated downstage and away from the action. When Cordelia is thrown out, he embraces her. Lear will pay him back for that by killing him. A brilliant move by Mendes.

Stanley Townsend as the faithful Duke of Kent starts as a self-assured and vocal officer and then converts to a more sedate, undercover supporter of King Lear. Again, well-done characterization and detailed reading of the play by the director.

The overall effect of the production is that of a modern nation in a state of war. The stage is dark and threatening clouds are frequently visible. The murky sky is projected by video on the backstage and we hear thunderclaps and airplanes whirring by.

Mendes has done some judicious editing of the text that makes the play move more smoothly.

And if you can’t find a flight or get tickets to the production, all is not lost. King Lear will be shown in movie houses in Canada on May 1, 2014.

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King Lear by William Shakespeare opened on January 23 and continues until May 28, 2014 at the Olivier Theatre in the National Theatre, South Bank, London, England.  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/

VERSAILLES – REVIEW OF PETER GILL PLAY AT DONMAR

 Gwilym Lee and Tamla Kari in Versailles

Reviewed by James Karas

There is a small genre of plays about significant current events or historical happenings that are important today. Plays about Richard Nixon, Enron, the banking crisis, the war in Afghanistan and the American invasion of Iraq come to mind. The playwright uses actual persons, fictitious or semi-fictitious characters, invents subplots and comments on the events or crisis at hand.

Peter Gill’s Versailles, now playing at the Donmar  Warehouse in London, is very much in that category of drama. This year is the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I but rather than dealing with the summer of 1914, Gill has chosen to dramatize the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

He has created two upper crust families in Kent for the first and third acts and takes us to Paris for the second act. Mrs. Rawlinson (Francesca Annis) and her children Mabel (Tamila Kari) and Leonard (Gwilym Lee) live in a fine house in the country with servants and all the amenities of class and culture. Their friends Arthur (Christopher Godwin) and Marjorie Chater (Barbara Flynn) belong to the same world but they suffered the tragedy of losing a son in the war.

The Rawlinsons have several visitors such as Constance (Helen Bradbury), Hugh (Josh O’Connor) and Geoffrey (Adrian Lukis) who are necessary for the development of the plot. The play has thirteen characters, all of them gentry except for the servant Ethel (Eleanor Yates).

The play moves on two levels: the interpersonal relations of the characters and the commentary on the peace negotiations in Paris. The tragedy of the Chaters, the homosexual relations of Leonard and Hugh, the romantic attraction of Geoffrey to Constance and Mabel’s lack of interest in romance and matrimony are among the personal entanglements that are intermingled with the political arguments.

The problem with the personal stories is that Gill allows an emotional range that goes all the way from A to B as someone once said. These are Victorian English men and women and we expect reserve but in this play they are practically dead. Mabel does shriek at her mother and Arthur Chater does display momentary emotion at his son’s death but the scene is closed with lightning speed. When the gay men confront each other they are practically standing at attention. There is almost no physical contact.

Perhaps the real point of the play is a critique of the peace negotiations especially the onerous terms imposed on Germany. The protagonist here is Leonard who attends the peace conference and tries desperately to find a compromise position where Germany is allowed to survive economically instead of being plunged into economic crises by the reparations it may be forced to pay.

Gill had to steer between meaningless generalities and hard facts as to the terms imposed on the Germans. Leonard gives us hard facts about the effects of reducing Germany’s coal producing capabilities and foresees social upheaval in the offing. Hard facts require hard numbers and statistics and parts of the play look like a debate among opposing views of the war and its aftermath.

Gill takes some easy shots at the British class system with its sense of entitlement, blindness, snobbery and even stupidity. They learned nothing from the war and all they want is to go back to the good old days as if the devastation did not occur.

Gill directs the play and the cast seems to have no difficulty in handling the roles. Lee as  Leonard is eloquent and fervent in his criticism of the peace terms. Lukis is convincing as a cultured businessman who with some of the others, represents prewar attitudes. Annis and Flynn are good as women who wear long gowns, expect servants to do the work and find discussions of class just boring.

Kari and Bradbury as Mabel and Constance are attractive, educated and independent, more or less, and represent the new woman.

Gill does present some cogent arguments in relation to the Treaty of Versailles and Leonard is prescient in his comments but it is easy to be prophetic one hundred years after the fact.

 

The Paris Peace Conference was an utterly fascinating gathering of hundreds of politicians, diplomats and experts. Perhaps no play can do justice to the almost six months of complex negotiations. But a first-rate historian can. Pick up a copy of Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919 and you will read about fascinating people, extraordinary situations and learn a great deal about the subject.

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Versailles by Peter Gill opened on February 27, 2014 and continues until April 5, 2014 at the Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, London, England. http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/

,     ,  n Conquests (2013)
Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

THE WEIR – REVIEW OF McPHERSON PLAY AT WYNDHAM’S

Peter McDonald as Brendan, Brian Cox as Jack, Ardal O'Hanlon as Jim, Risteard Cooper as Finbar and Dervla Kirwan as Valerie ©Alastair Muir

 

Reviewed by James Karas

The Weir is a lyrical play by Conor McPherson that consists almost entirely of memories recalled by five people in a bar in a remote village of Ireland. There is almost no plot and the catalyst for the confessional is the arrival at the bar of a young woman named Valerie (Dervla Kirwan).

Brendan (Peter McDonald) operates the bar where people gather to drink and talk. One of the most talkative ones is Jack (Brian Cox), a mechanic who spends a lot of his time drinking with his friend Jim (Ardal O’Hanlon), a rather dim labourer.

They are joined by the rich and arrogant Finbar (Ristéard Cooper) who comes accompanied by Valerie. She just purchased a house from the flamboyant Finbar who seems to own much of the village.

Valerie is the catalyst for the conversations that follow as each one of the characters delves into memories real or imagined.

Director Josie Rourke steers the cast through memories and ghost stories with us joining the company but not the drinking.

The cast is first-rate in presenting a highly sympathetic rendering of McPherson’s lost souls who tell their stories as confessions or perhaps emotional bridges among them.

McPherson’s lyrical prose, delivered to perfection by the cast has such musicality that you are drawn to the worlds of the characters. The short play strikes me more like a poem than a theatrical piece. This is the third time I have seen the play and I recall the ambience, the music of the words and the characters without remembering much of the soulful tales told by them.

This revival of McPherson’s 1997 play was originally produced at Donmar Warehouse in 2013 and has now transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre.

Worth seeing.

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The Weir by Conor McPherson opened on January 21 and will play until April 19, 2014 at Wyndham’s Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DA