ROTTERDAM – REVIEW OF BRITTAIN’S PLAY AT ARTS THEATRE

James Karas

Rotterdam is a play based on a simple premise and as you watch it you wonder how the author will be able to sustain our interest for more than two hours. Jon Brittain does more than that in this funny, moving, witty and intelligent piece of work.

Alice (Alice McCarthy) and Fiona (Anna Martine Freeman) are gay, living in Rotterdam and deeply in love. Alice has not told her parents yet that she is gay but that is not the real problem. Fiona tells Alice that she is transgender – she is a man in a woman’s body and she wants to change that. Fiona eloquently explains to Alice that she does not want to become a man. She wants to stop pretending that she is a woman.

 

 Alice McCarthy and Anna Martine Freeman in Rotterdam/. Photo by Hunter Canning

Josh (Ed Eales-White) is Fiona’s brother who had a relationship with Alice until she realized that she is gay and dropped him for Fiona. Alice works with a spirited Dutch girl, Lelami (Ellie Morris) who is gay and smokes pot. These are the four people who will deal with the serious issues of the play and make us laugh.

McCarthy does a superb job as Alice, the shy, apologetic girl who realized at an early age that she preferred women to men. The only relationships she has had in her life were the failed one with Josh and the successful one with Fiona. She still cannot bring herself to telling her parents and how to deal with the desire of Fiona to stop pretending she is a woman. These themes will dominate the play. The issue is simple: Alice prefers women. Fiona insists that she is a man.

Freeman’s Fiona is smart, sympathetic, tolerant and loving towards Alice but she fails to foresee the consequences of the physical changes she must make to assert he manhood. A moving portrayal of conflict and despair.

Josh is the sympathetic brother with a sense of humour and some common sense. He is true foil and sounding board for the other characters. Morris has to affect what I take to be a Ditch accent. Lelani is a bit goofy, dresses outlandishly and is very expressive and uses her hands and the rest of her body when she speaks. Well done.

 Ed Eales-White and Alice McCarthy. Photo Hunter Canning

The set by Ellan Parry consists of a room indifferently decorated that serves as an apartment, a bar, a waiting room etc. The scene changes are done by moving pieces of furniture around. Too much is made of this and I think it could be effected more simply and without so much fuss.  And we don’t need that many lighting changes. A simple poster can indicate a change of locale, but so be it.

The real issue with the scene changes is the loud and really irritating rock music that is played. We hear a ton of it when we enter the theatre before the performance starts and we are exposed to it a few thousand times during the performance. Turn the damn noise off.

The simple play with a big issue and young people experiencing highly stressful situations is not easy to direct and maintain the pace and the emotional wavelength. Director Donnacadh O’Brian does excellent work.

An intriguing, stimulating and superb night at the theatre.

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Rotterdam by Jon Brittain continues until July 15, 2017 at the Arts Theatre, 6-7 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JB, www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk

TRISTAN AND YSEULT – REVIEW OF SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE PRODUCTION

James Karas

If you don’t know the story of Tristan and Yseult (aka Isolde) then you should. Tristan is sent by King Mark of Cornwall to fetch the Irish princess Yseult. He kills her brother and she nurses him to health using a special potion. On the way to Cornwall, Yseult’s servant Brangian gives them a potion and they fall in love. Tristan betrays his King. Mark is not too happy about this but in the end Tristan and Yseult die and find happiness elsewhere.

Let’s go to Shakespeare’s Globe theatre where Kneehigh, a theatre company based in Cornwall is putting on Tristan & Yseult, a play adapted and directed by Emma Rice, and written by Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy. Kneehigh, we are told in the programme, is based in breath-taking barns on the south coast of England and tells stories on an epic and tiny scale.

 

The cast of Tristan and Yseult. Photo: Steve Tanner

Their telling of the Tristan story can be described as a takeoff, a farce, a travesty, a comedy sketch, a cabaret concert or a circus performance. You will find elements of all of these because the sole aim of Kneehigh is to entertain. There is dancing, singing, some acrobatics and a lot of shenanigans on stage.

We have Tristan (Dominic Marsh) who is French and brave and sports a wound on his stomach that was healed and bandaged by Yseult (Hannah Vassallo). Her lady Brangian (Niall Ashdown in drag) will provide potions but more importantly Ashdown will prove that he is a natural comic actor and provide a lot of laughter.

Mike Shepherd as King Mark is more serious but he too manages some laughs whereas his busy-body underling Frocin (Kyle Lima) will be more entertaining. We also have Whitehands (Kirsty Woodward), white gloves, white purse and 1950’s going-to-church hat and dress, as our guide and commentator.

That is the least of what they do. The dozen performers on stage are Love Spotters, dancers, musicians, singers and quick-change artists.

There is also a band that plays a number of songs and we do hear Tristan’s chord and a bit of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Stu Barker provides additional music.

The company whooping it up. Photo: Steve Tanner

So far so good but are all those parts enough for a production at Shakespeare’s Globe? There were people in the audience, especially the very young, who loved the show. When one of the performers did some break dancing, they burst into wild applause. They loved the music (minus Wagner). Almost all the action was directed towards the audience with relatively little interaction among the actors. The audience loved it and they reacted favorably or enthusiastically to singing along or to blowing up balloons.  

Although I admired some of the comic business I found it a bit too light and too little for an evening at the theatre. Is Emma Rice trying to attract teenagers to Shakespeare’s Globe? Some people, especially teenagers, may find that a laudable goal but I am far removed from that age group. They can have their fun but I can’t get excited over a couple of break dancing contortions.

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Tristan and Yseult by Emma Rice (adaptor and director) and Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy (writers) was performed from June 13 to 24, 2017 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 21 New Globe Walk, London. www.shakespearesglobe.comThe Norman Conquests (2013)
Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

SALOME – REVIEW OF 2017 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

The Royal Shakespeare Company has staged Oscar Wilde’s poetic one-act play at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. This is a good example of adventurous programming even if the result is not entirely successful.

Wilde retells the story of Salome, the stepdaughter of King Herod of Judea who lusts after her. And of her lust for John the Baptist who is imprisoned in a cistern in Herod’s palace. Salome is disgusted by Herod and John (called Iokanaan in the play), to whom she is fatally attracted, rejects her. The play then is a classic example of lust and unfulfilled desire that lead to tragic results.

Matthew Pidgeon and Matthew Tennyson in Salome. Photo: Isaac James. ©RSC

Gregory Doran, the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company has decided to emphasize the homosexual aspects of the play, real or imagined, with some reason. Wilde was famously and tragically homosexual as is Doran, but happily in a different world. From 1533, we learn in the programme, when King Henry VIII passed The Buggery Act to 1861 sodomy was punishable by death in England. The programme gives us the frightful facts that between 1806 and 1861 a total of 8921 men were prosecuted for that act and 404 were executed. Homosexual acts were decriminalized in England and Wales only 50 years ago. The production of Salome takes cognizance of that anniversary.

Historical importance aside, the production provides little cause for celebration. It opens with Ilan Evans dressed like a gay hooker singing a song by Perfume Genius. Disclosure: I have not heard of either of them. We hear Genius’s music throughout and Evans appears in drag during the production. The dance of the seven veils becomes the dance of the table cloth with handkerchief-sized pieces of taffeta dropping from above on the audience during what seemed to me to be a teenage disco dance.

Salome is played by Matthew Tennyson, a slender young man dressed in a silk, diaphanous slip and wearing red high heels at times. He is referred to as “she” throughout but he does strip naked at one point so there is no doubt that he is a “he.”

Matthew Pidgeon (seated centre) and Company. Photo: James Isaac ©RSC

Matthew Pidgeon plays the corrupt, dictatorial and lecherous Herod while Suzanne Burden supplements the pairing of the two as his imperious wife Herodias. She was married to Herod’s brother but Salome proves to be no Hamlet.

A muscular Gavin Fowler plays the passionate moralist and stentorian critic of the royal couple. The Nazarenes, Jews, Soldiers and other relatively minor characters do not make much of an impression.

The set by Bretta Gerecke emphasizes the idea of ladders made of scaffolding. Salome climbs up a ladder as a symbol of her rising passion of Iokanaan or an escape from the lechery of Herod, I am not sure.

I am even less sure about the sexual crossfires. If Doran had changed Salome to a man and he developed an attraction for Iokanaan, there would be no issue. And we will get a revelation of Herod’s latent homosexuality which could add to the complexity of the drama. As presented, the production confused the situation without adding much more than confusion.
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Salome by Oscar Wilde continues in repertory until September 6, 2017 at the Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.  Box Office: 0844 800 1110.  www.rsc.org.uk

MITRIDATE, RE DI PONTO - REVIEW OF ROYAL OPERA HOUSE 2017 REVIVAL

James Karas

Mitridate, re di Ponto is an early opera seria by Mozart that is beautifully sung, marvelously directed and superbly played at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. These succinct praises are not frequently or obviously associated with this opera, but more about that later.

Opera seria, of course, means arias to express emotions and recitatives to advance the plot. There is no chorus and almost no ensemble singing except for a couple of duets. For example, when Sirafe and Aspasia sing the duet “Se viver non degg’io” (If I cannot live), they face the audience, walk around the stage and never really relate to each other.

 Bejun Mehta and Albina Shagimuratova in Mitridate; re di Ponto at Royal Opera House, London

The genre was dumped in the latter part of the 18^th century but there is no reason to put our nose up because style and substance changed. Mitridate is enjoyable on its own regardless of any shortcomings or prospective changes in style.  In other words, look upon the donut and not upon the hole.

A smidgeon of plot. King Mitridate has two sons who don’t get along; to wit Farnace wants the king’s job and his fiancée Aspasia and Sirafe who also wants Aspasia. Meanwhile Mitridate who is supposed to be dead but is not, imports Princess Ismene as a wife for Farnace. Aspasia loves Sirafe, Farnace does not want Ismene and, well, you get the idea. Love, honour and treachery in opera seria are analogous to riding a bicycle: once you learn it you never forget it but you can change as many bicycles as you want.

The performances are vocally outstanding. American tenor Michael Spyres takes on the name role with aplomb. He has a light tenor voice that is flexible and reaches the high notes with ease. Many of the arias are done at a brisk pace but there some very moving moments. Mitridate has some nasty characteristics but near the end he becomes noble and forgiving and Spyres rises to the occasion with beautiful emotional cadences. This is a five-star Mitridate.

Soprano Albina Shagimuratova with her sumptuous voice gives us an Aspasia of vocal splendour. When she sings the recitative “Ah ben ne fui presage” (Ah my foreboding was justified) and the cavatina “Pallid' ombre" (Pale shadows) she reaches an expressive and lyrical majesty that clearly presages “Dove sono.” 

Soprano Lucy Crowe sang the Princess Ismene. She is given to Mitridate as a slave and she tended to tilt her head to the side and I thought it was an indication of humility and servitude. Her singing and portrayal is highly accomplished.

Georgian Soprano Salome Jicia and American countertenor Bejun Mehta sang the sons Sirafe and Farnace, respectively. The boys go through love and hate, treachery and reconciliation without hesitation. That’s their operatic problem as characters but Jicia and Mehta display only vocal flexibility and finesse in their performances.

This production first surfaced in 1991 which was also the first time Mitridate was seen at the Royal Opera House. It is an imaginative and remarkable staging directed by Graham Vick. It never feels static and you are engaged in the plot however convoluted it may appear.

Michael Spyres as Mitridate and Albina Shagimuratova as Aspasia in Mitridate, re di Ponto 

Photo ROH© Bill Cooper

Designer Paul Brown uses stark red panels that can be moved around and a red floor. It is an arresting image that works well. The costumes are another story. They are colourful, conspicuous and eye-catching. But, some of those costumes looked like portable scaffolding for drying clothes. After you see them a couple of times and you giggle, you just ignore them.

The orchestra of the Royal Opera House was conducted by Christophe Rousset and played with finesse.

When Mozart composed Mitridate, he already had four operas under his belt and eighty-two other compositions. You can hardly call him the new kid on the block until you realize that he was fourteen years old at the time. The opera premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan in 1770 conducted by Mozart. After that it was ignored for a couple of centuries. It was discovered late in the 20^th century and has received a good number of productions and recordings. Now we can sit back and feel superior to…whatever. Or just enjoy a fine opera in a superb production.

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Mitridate, re di Ponto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (music) and Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi (libretto) opened June 27 and will play until July 7, 2017 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, England. www.roh.org.uk

VICE VERSA – REVIEW OF 2017 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

The Greeks had it right. After a trilogy of tragic plays in Ancient Athens, people needed a freewheeling comedy, a burlesque, something really light. The Royal Shakespeare Company has done something  similar  this year in Stratford-upon-Avon. Beside the head chopping, murders, mutilations, assassinations and stabbing in plays like Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, they provide something strictly for laughs. And it is based on Roman comedy which, as the whole world knows, was based on Greek comedy!

 

 Centre: Felix Hayes as General Braggadocio and company. Photo: Pete Le May © RSC

The play is Vice Versa by Phil Porter and it is a wild comedy based on (make that pilfered shamelessly) from the plays of Plautus. You may not have seen too many of his plays on stage which is understandable because they are almost never produced. But you have some idea if you have seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Let’s start with the full title: Vice Versa (or The Decline and Fall of General Braggadocio at the Hands of his Canny Servant Dexter & Terence the Monkey). Is that clear?

General Braggadocio is of course the braggart soldier, a stock character in comedy, who is in love with himself and thinks the whole world shares his feelings. In Vice Versa we have Felix Hayes, oily hair slicked down and ready to brag. Along with the jokes, bad puns, singing, anachronistic references and riotous tomfoolery we need a plot.

But first the characters, and pay attention to the names: Braggadocio has three servants. Dexter (the irrepressible Sophia Momvete),  Feclus (Steven Kynman) and Omnivorous (Byron Mondahl). We also have Terence the monkey (Jon Trenchard). We need lovers and have Valentin (Geoffrey Lumb) and the delectable Voluptia (Ellie Beaven).We have a neighbour in Philoproximus (Nicholas Day) whose servant is Impetus (Laura Kirman) and frequent Climax (Kim Hartman) and guess her profession.

This is a hyperkinetic group that has a single aim and that is to make us laugh. They do.

Geoffrey Lamb, Sophia Nomvete and Nicholas Day.  Photo: Pete Le May © RSC

Oh, yes, the plot. The General has abducted Voluptia who loves Valentin, who lives next door, who sees Voluptia via the attic skylight, whom Dexter will rescue from the General so that love will triumph because that’s what happens in Roman (that is Greek) comedy, so there. That’s the plot which is to say that Trump is a nice, honest chap, who does not grope, or cheat or lie but will build a wall and make America great again. And the last line is in the play.

The play uses earthy language which is code to some deliciously raunchy profanities, enchanting references to bodily functions, delectable insults and an atmosphere of riotous irreverence, energy and song.

Janice Honeyman directs the comic extravagance and if you happened to see something like Salome or a Shakespearean heavy-duty tragedy you will understand and appreciate why the Greeks finished the day with a comedy that mocked and laughed at everything and booze, sex and phallic objects were favorite features and fixtures.

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Vice Versa  by Philip Porter continues until September 9, 2017 at the Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.  Box Office: 0844 800 1110.  www.rsc.org.uk

THE ISLAND – REVIEW OF SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The number of crimes against humanity in the twentieth century alone is grotesquely long. The holocausts committed by the Turks, the Russians, the Chinese and the Nazis are only a part of the list. What the whites did to the blacks in South Africa with the policy of apartheid, I suggest ranks as a major crime against humanity.

Playwrights Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona dramatized the plight of blacks during apartheid and their 1973 play The Island is a brilliant evocation of the era. Two men are in jail and their crime is best described as being black.The island of the title is not named but there is no doubt that it is Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for twenty-seven years.

The production under review was played in the tiny Southwark Playhouse, in the London suburb of Southwark. The playhouse is a theatre-in-the-round and probably holds fewer than 150 people.

The performance opens with two cellmates miming the loading of wheelbarrows in a quarry. They are working as hard as humanly possible as they fill and then empty their wheelbarrows. Under the hot lights of the Playhouse, they begin to perspire and show signs of real fatigue. The mime lasts for some fifteen minutes by which time perspiration drips profusely from their faces and they appear exhausted. In the end, they are shackled to each other on their wrists and ankles and hobble to their cell in excruciating pain.

The performance continues on the raised stage. The men are Winston (Edward Dede) and John (Mark Springer) who decide to stage Sophocles’ Antigone for the other prisoners. The staging of the Greek tragedy is apparently based on a real incident in which Nelson Mandela took part and ironically played the role of the dictatorial Creon.

John wants Winston to play Antigone but when he sees the straw that will be his wig and the balls on a string that will represent her breasts, he balks. They go through a few lines of Sophocles’ play and then find out that John’s sentence has been reduced from ten years to three months. This creates some tension but the two men are reconciled to their fate and are able to perform their version of Antigone.

Winston as Antigone pleads guilty to the charge of disobeying the law against giving burial rites to her brother because the same law considers him a traitor. He/she argues that there is a higher law than the man-made one and she had an obligation to honour her brother. Creon as a dictator argues that laws are made to be obeyed and must be obeyed without any reference to external considerations such as higher laws. The defendants at the Nuremberg trials had pretty much the same argument – they were just obeying the law.

Dede and Springer give outstanding performances that were emotionally and physically taxing. The lights above the stage produced so much heat, you felt you were in the quarry with the prisoners on a scorching hot day. The heat was so intense that several people left and one woman fainted and was carried out of the theatre.

Director John Terry and the two actors deserve a five-star rating and a standing ovation.

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The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona  in a Production by The Theatre Chipping Norton and The Dukes Lancaster Theatre Present played until June 24, 2017 at the Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD. http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

COMMON – REVIEW OF NATIONAL THEATRE PRODUCTION

James Karas

Common, DC Moore’s new play, is the type of work that the Olivier stage of the National Theatre is made to handle. The play is about the enclosure of fields by aristocrats at the beginning of the nineteenth century, condemning villagers to dire poverty and worse. One expects to see a dramatization of a significant issue in English history told through the lives of “real” people.

When the lights go on we see the huge Olivier stage covered with dirt representing the English countryside. A number of villagers appear, their heads covered and carrying farm implements. These are the people who will be affected by enclosure and will fight against the barbarism of the landed nobility.

Anne-Marie Duff as Mary and Ian-Lloyd Anderson as Connor in Common. Photograph: Johan Persson

Mary (Anne-Marie Duff), a well-dressed and clearly upper class lady appears and addresses the audience. Mary is returning to the countryside in search of her lover Laura (Cush Jumbo). Laura’s brother King (John Dagleish) drove Mary away many years ago because of her relationship with his sister. Drove away is a euphemism. He beat her close to death and left her for dead after throwing her in a river. King’s relationship with his sister is incestuous.

We meet some Irish workers and the Lord of the Manor (Tim McMullan) who wants to fence off his lands. Then things start to get murky. We saw the beginning but where is the middle that will lead us to the end and the telling of an epic story of personal and historical dimensions? In other words, what the hell is going on?

Actually a number of things are going on. We have a talking crow, the slaughter of animals, someone’s guts are torn out, and another person’s heart is ripped out of his chest. Mary is very interesting as a former prostitute, soothsayer, manipulator and quite a lady. She has the staying power of a Rasputin when it comes to attempts to snuff her. Give full marks to Duff.

The plot trudges along as our interest and attention span wane. The stage has many trap doors that are put to good use but the historic vista and the compelling personal stories are lost or buried.

Anne-Marie Duff and Cush Jumbo in Common at the National Theatre. Photograph: Johan Persson

Moore’s language helps greatly in engendering incomprehension and somnolence. He is enamored of inverted phrases, bizarre sentence construction and liberal use of hyphenated words. He may be striving for poetic prose or some other effect but all I got as I strained to follow what the hell was going on was pretentious drivel.

Moore and director Jeremy Herrin had all the facilities and budget of the National. There were some forty people on the stage including musicians. In addition to the usual behind-the-scenes artists, there were people responsible for movement, dance, puppetry and fights. Rather than descend to the profane language that Moore serves so liberally, I will settle for an overused aphorism based on the slaughtered pig of the opening scene: you can’t make a silk play out of a swine’s ear.

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Common by DC Moore opened on June 6, 2017 and continues in repertory at the Olivier Stage, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.