A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE – REVIEW OF 2019 SOULPEPPER PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Soulpepper delivers an outstanding production of A Streetcar Named Desire that is unfortunately marred by the annoying addition of a band and hokey set design. It has a superb cast that brings out the pathos, delicacy, brutality and fragility inherent in the lives of the characters with unfailing sharpness and sensitivity.

You cannot have a successful production of A Streetcar without a convincing Blanche Dubois and in Amy Rutherford Soulpepper has found one of the best. Blanch is a complex character. She is or would like to be a beautiful, cultured and sophisticated Southern belle, raised in a world of wealth and gentility on a large plantation.

 

Amy Rutherford and Mac Fyfe. Photo: Dahlia Katz

Rutherford as Blanch still retains some of her beauty but she is past her prime and her attractiveness is best seen in the dim light. She is broke and her furs and clothing that she so cherishes are pathetic imitations which confer no status but bespeak her pretentiousness in her dire straits. She is forced to put on airs and lie about herself. More sinisterly, she is a sexual predator with a weakness for young boys. All of this has resulted in total degradation to the extent that she has had to sell her body to survive. Rutherford has had to project all of these characteristics and she does so with conviction and total success. A marvelous performance.

Williams has provided Blanche’s opposite in her sister Stella played splendidly by Leah Doz. At first blush Stella appears like an abused, downtrodden wife living in a slum in New Orleans. We learn however that she is a woman of considerable strength who is deliciously in love with her husband Stanley and has found contentment in her situation. She sees through her sister and tries to support her emotionally and financially. Doz gives us a sympathetic, strong, attractive and decent Stella. Superb performance.

The man between the two sisters is Stella’s husband Stanly played by Mac Fyfe. With his card-playing friends, he is loud and obnoxious. Blanche has a whole array of adjectives to describe him which amount to him being an uncouth, crude, disgusting man. Indeed he is a Neanderthal. His redeeming feature is that he loves Stella and she loves him and their sexual attraction is a major factor in their relationship. This is the person that Fyfe needs to convey and he does with passion and conviction.           

Amy Rutherford, Sebastian Marziali, Lindsay Owen-Pierre, 

Leah Doz, and Mac Fyfe. Photo: Dahlia Katz.

The other major character is Mitch played by Gregory Prest. He is the soul of decency, still a bachelor and devoted to the care of his mother. Blanch sees her opportunity for a harbour in him and he sees a decent woman for himself. He finds out that he has been grossly misled by Blanche and runs away. A highly sympathetic portrayal by Prest.

I have nothing but praise for the rest of the cast but they are largely supporting characters for the main conflict among the four main people in the play.

The set by Lorenzo Savoini begins with aluminum siding covering the three sides of the stage. I am not sure what it is supposed to convey but it could easily be a warehouse. Stanly and Stella’s apartment with its small living room area where the men play cards, the curtain that separates it from the bedroom with its prominent bed is satisfactory.

Director Weyni Mengesha does a superlative job in directing the production but I am not sure about the addition of a band on stage. There is room for music in A Streetcar and the script provides for it but when a panel of the stage is removed and a band appears we have moved far from Williams’ play. No doubt there was some thinking behind the introduction of a band on stage but the rationale escaped me.

  

Forget the band and go see an extraordinary production of a great play.

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A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams continues until October 27, 2019 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 3C4. www.soulpepper.ca.

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press.

BLOOD WEDDING – REVIEW OF LORCA’S PLAY AT YOUNG VIC

James Karas

Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding is set in rural Spain and is about blood feuds, and cycles of murder and revenge that reach back to Greek mythology and the House of Atreus. It is also the story of a young man who is about to marry a woman who loves another man. The bride runs off with her lover after the wedding and the jilted groom pursues them.

Playwright Marina Carr has adapted the play for the Young Vic and with director Yael Farber they have given us their own version and interpretation. Lorca did indeed include echoes of Greek tragedy in his play and Carr and Farber increase those echoes. The most important echo if you will is the expansion of the role of the Moon. The Moon played by singer Thalissa Teixeira appears in the opening scene and sings several long songs during the performance. Some of the songs are in Spanish and the politest thing I will say is that they added nothing to the production. No doubt she is meant to reflect the Chorus of Ancient Greek tragedy but the attempt is a bust. 

Olwen Fouéré and fellow cast members in Blood Wedding.

Photo:MARC BRENNER

There are two Woodcutters who appear several times carrying axes on their shoulders and they looked as if they made the wrong turn somewhere and ended up on the stage. In the original they discuss the events of the play somewhat similar to the Chorus in Greek tragedy.

The blood feud and depth of the hatreds of these rural people seems boundless. The Mother (Olwen Fouéré) hates the Felix family with immeasurable ferocity and expresses it with total conviction. Her son, the Groom (David Walmsley) wants to marry the Bride (Aoife Duffin) but we are not sure about her conviction and we can see her boorish manners. The characters, by the way, have no names except for Leonardo (Gavin Drea).

Leonardo is married (played by Scarlett Brookes) and he holds a passion for the Bride that would compete with that of Heathcliff’s for Catherine. But he is married and his wife is pregnant with their second child. If that is not bad enough, Leonardo is a brute and a wife-abuser who should be arrested. Carr/Farber make him into a despicable character and Drea does some superbly convincing acting to make him look really loathsome. He may claim to love the Bride but we have nothing but contempt for him and I wonder if that is the right balance for the play.

When Leonardo approaches the Bride, she fights him off quite vehemently and he does nothing less than assault her. The Bride is unhappy about marrying the Groom and is seeking freedom and love that are simply not available or attainable.

 Olwen Fouéré, left, as Mother and cast. Photo: Marc Brenner

The Bride’s father (Steffan Rhodri) gives a powerful performance as a man who lives in a cave on top of mountain, who wants to control everything and has had a dreadful marriage.

Walmsley as the Groom is also powerful in a play that is full of extremes.

One of the enduring images of this poetic play is that of Leonardo riding to the Bride’s home on the mountain on a white steed and running away with her. The marvelous descriptions of this are captured by having Leonard run in circles around the playing area holding a guy wire that lifts him off the ground.

The same wire will lift the moon up for reasons that escaped me.

A powerful production set in Ireland that loses some of its impact by presenting Leonardo as a brute.

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Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca adapted by Marina Carr continues until November 2, 2019 at the Young Vic Theatre, 66 The Cut, Southwark, London. youngvic.org

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press.

‘MASTER HAROLD’…AND THE BOYS – REVIEW OF FUGARD’S PLAY AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE

James Karas

It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic, subtle and brilliant portrayal of South African racial relations than Athol Fugard’s ‘Master Harold’…and the boys. Master Harold is a white boy, barely in his teens. The “boys” are grown men who work in his mother’s tea room. The title alone tells a great deal. But there is much more in this delicate play that is getting a flawless production in the Lyttleton stage of the National Theatre, in London.

There are three characters in the play and the entire action takes place in the tea room over one hour and forty minutes. Aristotle’s unities of time, place and action are adhered to.

The importance and brilliance of the play lie in the fact that it is not about mistreatment of blacks by whites. It presents a portrait of two black servants, Sam (Lucian Msamati) and Willie (Hammed Animashaun), who have been friends, companions, educators and saviors of the young white boy Hally (Anson Boon). Fugard wants to show that racism not only exists (everyone knows that) but that it is so deeply rooted as to be almost ineradicable. 

 Lucian Msamati, Hammed Animashaun and Anson Moon. Photo: Helen Murray

Hally comes from an unhappy family. His mother is domineering and his father a weakling who is ill. He does not like his parents and has found solace and companionship with Sam and Willie. But his parents are also racist to the core and have taught their son, however subtly and perniciously, to be a racist as well.

Hally is a callow boy who does not do well in school. As a child in boarding school, he used to escape from his parents by hiding under Sam’s bed. Hally and Sam have prime memories of pleasant events including Sam’s construction of a kite for Hally that sent him flying higher than the kite itself. There is love and friendship between them.

But we see the cracks in the relationship. Hally cannot accept the fact that the two tearoom workers are involved in artistic activities - ballroom dancing. He looks down on them even though Sam is probably smarter than him

Sam has a very high quotient of decency and understanding and he tries to prevent the rift from developing between he son and his father. 

 Lucian Msamati, Hammed Animashaun and Anson Moon. Photo: Helen Murray

In spite of all that has happened between the friends, Hally’s racism come out full blown and he pulls rank. He is WHITE therefore superior and they are mere servants and ultimately inferior to him. Hally did not even notice that there were park benches marked for “whites only” when he flew his kite nor, when his father gets drunk and incontinent in a bar, Sam had to ask for permission to enter the bar to carry Hally’s father out.

The play moves from pleasant memories to talk about social reform until its riveting climax when Hally spits on Sam as if he were a dog. It is a startling and arresting theatrical moment that takes your breath away. It should, because that is the reality and the result of apartheid but nevertheless it still shocks.

I have spoken at length about the play and in effect have given the highest praise to the three actors and director Roy Alexander Weise who moved me and shocked me as if it were the first time I was seeing the play. It was not.

Msamati’s Sam exudes intelligence, humanity, decency and deep understanding of people. Animashaun’s Willie is a dreamer, not that bright but also a wife beater. Fugard does not idealize anyone. Boon’s Hally is an unhappy youngster who may have grown into a decent human being had he not been injected with so much racist poison that it may never get out of his soul.

The set by Rajha Shakiry consists of the counter, chairs and tables of a tearoom that does the job splendidly.

A great night at the theatre.

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‘Master Harold’….and the boys by Athol Fugard continues until December 17, 2019 at the Lyttleton Stage, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press

HOW LOVE IS SPELT – REVIEW OF MOSS’S PLAY AT SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE

James Karas

How Love is Spelt is a beautiful play by Chloe Moss that receives a moving, lyrical, sympathetic and meticulous production by Brickdust and Project One at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

The play tells the story of Peta, a girl of twenty who has left her home in the north of the country and gone to live in London. She lives in a tiny apartment consisting of a convertible couch and a couple of other amenities. She meets four people in the play, and we follow her encounters with them with all its humour and pathos.

Larner Wallace-Taylor gives a sensitive and moving portrayal of Peta who is searching for something in a city where she is lost. She discloses information about herself sparingly and sometimes untruthfully. She is dreaming of a career in advertising or fashion design but we have no reason to take these ambitions as anything but wishful thinking. 

Larner Wallace-Taylor and Nigel Boyle. Photo: Ali Wright

Peta is sympathetic and empathetic with the people that she meets but no one is able to provide her with what she is searching for. Wallace-Taylor is an expressive actor but she also reacts and responds to the other actors attentively and movingly. Your attention may be drawn to the speaker but you should also watch her facial expressions and body movements to understand the situation. A wonderful performance by Wallace-Taylor.

The first person we see Peta with is Joe (Benjamin O’Mahony), a muscled stud whom she met at a bar and slept with. The muscles in his arms do not stretch to his head and he talks compulsively revealing that he is shallow and full of himself. His first illiterate concern is to get confirmation that his performance in bed was good. We learn some things about Peta especially in the end when he tries to force himself on her and leaves with excruciating pain in his testicles. Excellent performance by O’Mahony.

Peta’s second date is Steven, a pathetic teacher who also talks compulsively. He is a misfit who is unable to have a meaningful relationship. He talks about himself incessantly describing a pathetic human being - himself. Peta’s sympathy and empathy for him do not reach him and he skulks out of her apartment. Steven is played very well by Duncan Moore.

Peta meets Chantelle, a young, modern woman of the city who is out to have fun. When we meet her in Peta’s apartment she is vomiting her head off because she drank far too much and has the inevitable hangover. She is as much a misfit from a broken family as Peta. Kudos to Yana Penrose for fine acting.

 Larner Wallace-Taylor and Michelle Collins, Photo: Ali Wright

Peta returns from the bar drunk and she falls down the stairs. She is rescued by Marion (fine and sympathetic acting by Michelle Collins), a middle-aged woman who has the soul of a saint in her attempts to help Peta. She smokes and talks continuously about helping Peta and her pathetic life. She comes from a broken home and is another pitiful human being, another misfit that comes into Peta’s life.

  

Throughout the performance we see a black and white photograph of a man prominently deployed on Peta’s bedside table. She lies about him to her visitors but in the final scene he comes to her apartment. He is Colin (Nigel Boyle) the man she left behind when she ran off to London. He speaks haltingly as the two try to make emotional contact. It is not easy for them but their love comes through and if they can’t express themselves they at least know how to spell the word.

Kudos to director Charlotte Peters for sensitive directing and to Georgia de Gray for the effective set.

The play was first produced in September 2004 at the Bush Theatre in London and this is its first revival.

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How Love is Spelt by Chloe Moss played until September 28, 2019 at the Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press

TWO LADIES – REVIEW OF BRIDGE THEATRE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Who are the two ladies in Nancy Harris’s new play titled, well, Two Ladies? Well may you ask and if you know nothing about the play, it may take you several minutes to recognize them. One of them is attractive, brilliant, sophisticated, the wife of a president who is much, much younger than her and she is? Yes, she is Helen, played brilliantly by Zoe Wanamaker.

The other lady is a beautiful, slim, statuesque woman, a former model, referred to as the First Lady. Right again. She is Sophia played by the beautiful …. Zrinka Cvitesic. If your wandering mind led you to Madam Macron and Melania Trump as possible models for Helen and Sophia, control yourself. Accuracy is not everything. 

Zoë Wanamaker in Two Ladies. Photograph: Helen Maybanks

The two ladies are attending an important summit conference in France where their husbands along with other leaders are deciding whether to retaliate against a country that has killed Americans and attacked American cities. The bellicose president wants to retaliate. Will Helen’s husband support him?

Let’s get back to the ladies in the hotel room where they are basically sequestered. Some protester has thrown red blood, a lot of red blood on Sophia’s gorgeous Chanel suit. Everyone is mortified and there is a scramble to do something about the attire of the First lady.

The two will engage is some very interesting banter that will be politically interesting, but much more fascinating in the details we find about the women and their husbands. The French president has a mistress? Big deal, you say, has there been a French president who did not have a mistress? But wait. This mistress is in the cabinet and she is pregnant and she may be at the conference in some back room with the president and Helen can’t get to him. The pregnancy is not the issue. They are French and civilized and a press release is ready admitting the whole affair.

Sex of various varieties is mentioned for our amusement but we are sure of the most important world issue at hand: Helen’s husband will not budge from his principle of no war and he will not support for the war-mongering American leader.

Georges (Yoli Fuller), the French press secretary and Sandy (Lorna Brown), the American press secretary rush in and out and they are informative and funny. 

Zrinka Cvitešić in Two Ladies. Photograph: Helen Maybanks

The play is highly entertaining. There are good plot twists, interesting revelations and varied pace. Sophia is very good to look at (we have established that) but she is also very astute and knows more than she lets on. We know that Helen is brilliant but her certainty, indeed conviction, that her husband will sail through the fact of his mistress’s pregnancy and will NOT support the American president may be on shakier grounds than she can possibly conceive.

One more fact. Sophia carries a bottle of Chanel No. 5 in her dainty purse which is in fact a powerful poison – the perfume, not her purse. One drop of it in the event of necessity and you are dead, dead, dead. The ladies feel betrayed, ignored and abused and they think that one way of wreaking vengeance on their husbands is by taking a swig of Sophia’s Chanel 5.

That is a toughie and how this enjoyable if somewhat creaky play about politics, women’s rights and current events will end cannot be disclosed.

Nicholas Hytner directs with the touch of a master and a well-appointed production designed Anna Fleischle.

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Two Ladies by Nancy Harris continues until October 26, 2019 at the Bridge Theatre, 3 Potters Fields Park, London, SE1 2SG, https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/two-ladies/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press

A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON – REVIEW OF OLD VIC PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector to the United Kingdom, became violently ill as a result of ingesting a highly toxic element known as Polonium-2010. He had met with two Russian agents, Dimitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, and later investigation revealed that the poison was given to Litvinenko by these two gentlemen.

Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006 and British authorities showed little interest in investigating the murder of a British citizen which he had become.

His wife Marina pressed the issue including taking the government to court and an inquiry was eventually held and a report issued in January 2016. The conclusion was that Litvinenko was killed by Lugovoi and Kovtun and that it was highly probable that the crime was committed with the approval of Vladimir Putin. 

 Tom Brooke, centre, as Alexander Litvinenko with cast. 

Photograph: Marc Brenner

This summary does not contain too many laughs and one would seriously doubt that there is enough material there for a play that has singing, comedy, satire and attempts to be light entertainment. That is what Lucy Prebble does in her adaptation of Luke Harding’s book about the murder of Litvinenko that is now playing at London’s Old Vic Theatre.

Tom Brooke as Litvinenko looked like a rather sallow and ordinary man who loves his wife and son and is escaping from a dictatorial regime. This is the man who dared criticize Putin and made a daring escape from Russia?  MyAnna Buring is very convincing as his dedicated wife Marina who pursues the matter long after his death.

The British doctors, scientists and detectives who get involved in the case play it straight and the way one would expect them to act. Lugovoi (Michael Shaeffer) and Kovtun (Lloyd Hutchinson) are played like clowns. One of them climbs down the ladder on one side of the stage and they are generally good for a laugh.

Russian oligarch and probably archcriminal Boris Bereszovsky (Peter Polycarpou) is just a riot and he even breaks into song. There is a sort of host who can be seen in various places of the theatre. He wonders that we came back after the intermission and quips that the theatre programme at four pounds is very expensive. We are even treated to a segment of the Russian puppet satire show called Kukli. Just the sort of the thing the murder of Litvinenko needs. 

MyAnna Buring as Marina. Photo: Marc Brenner

We do get many facts about the murder and especially the subsequent investigation.  We learn that the then Home Secretary Theresa May, refused to open an investigation because it may disturb the United Kingdom’s delicate relations with Russia and cost a lot of money.

  

A Very Expensive Poison has a lot of ground to cover and the idea of constructing a play around it seems quixotic. Fifteen actors play fifty-seven characters “plus other roles” if I counted them correctly. There are numerous scene changes to accommodate the events that unrolled after Litvinenko’s poisoning and the investigation. That alone is a discouraging factor for anyone who wants to turn a lengthy and complex set of events into a couple of hours of theatre.

In any event, there it is.

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A Very Expensive Poison by Lucy Prebble based on the book by Luke Harding continues until October 5, 2019 at the Old Vic Theatre, The Cut, London, England. http://www.oldvictheatre.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of the Greek Press

GLASS, KILL, BLUEBEARD’S FRIENDS AND IMP – REVIEW OF CARYL CHURCHILL PLAYLETS AT ROYAL COURT

Reviewed by James Karas

Glass, Kill, Bluebeard’s Friends and Imp are four playlets by Caryl Churchill now playing at the Royal Court Theatre in London. They are poetry in prose fashioned in dialogue suitable for the stage. They are interesting, intriguing and opaque which means they are creations in the world of Caryl Churchill.

Glass is a short playlet that has nine characters including “Schoolgirls” played by four actors. The actors are sitting or standing on a small platform that appears suspended in midair above the stage floor. All we see is one narrow side of the platform on a black background. 

The cast of Glass. Photo: Johan Persson

The central character is A Girl Made of Glass who first appears with her Brother, His Friend and Her Friend. Another character, Mother, appears as well as a Clock, a Red Plastic Dog, a Vase and Schoolgirls. Her Friend discloses a secret to the Girl Made of Glass that sounds awful, but we are not told what it is. The Girl goes to her Friend’s house and the relationship seems to be broken. Eventually, the Girl jumps out a window and is shattered to pieces.

The actors who play all the parts are Kwabena Ansah, Louisa Harland, Patrick McNamee and Rebekah Murrell.

Kill has two actors, Tom Mothersdale representing the gods and a youngster (Caelan Eddie or Leo Rait) representing the people. Mothersdale sits on a cloud and the boy is playing with puzzles on the floor. The god is one or several of the Olympians and he tells us that he does not exist but is something that people made up. He proceeds to relate a detailed account of the myths of the House of Atreus, the Royal House of Thebes and several other branches. Killing and cooking children to be eaten by their father are prominent features of the myths of the two dynasties of Greek mythology and we end up with a good account of them and a lot more.

In Bluebeard’s Friends, four people played by Deborah Findlay, Toby James, Sarah Niles and Sule Rimi talk about the murderous Bluebeard. The speakers are not identified but they tell us that Bluebeard is their friend and that they are horrified that he is dead. Or was he just stabbed numerous times and is still alive?

One of them got the dresses, the bloody dresses, that some of Bluebeard’s victims wore. We see them raised in the background. The foursome continues the conversation. Some of the women deserved what they got. Some were peasants. But he was a charming psychopath and he liked us. What he did was terrible, but he loved beautiful things.

There crosscurrents among the four speakers. The non-sequiturs and the conversation continue for a few minutes and one of them puts on a blue beard and a woman puts on one of the dresses. They are Bluebeard’s friend even if he was terrible. Who are these people? Go figure.

Imp is longer than the other three playlets put together. It has four characters and the action is divided into about a dozen scenes. Dot (Deborah Findlay) and Jimmy (Toby Jones) are a childless couple who are medically unfit. They are misfits who don’t get along or maybe they do. Dot is a nurse who was dismissed for beating up a patient and served some time in jail. 

Toby Jones, Louisa Harland and Tom Mothersdale in Imp. 

Photo: Johan Persson 

We glean information about them as they interact with Niamh (Louisa Harland) a distant Irish relative. They have befriended Rob (Tom Mothersdale) a homeless person who has a brilliant son but is also a liar.  Niamh has a relationship with him and ends up being pregnant. There is plenty of humour but you know you are walking on quicksand. and are never sure of your footing or of what is going on. You are left with the intriguing and opaque situation.

You should not be fooled with any apparent simplicity in any of the pieces. The real story is in the subtext. The god or gods in Kill, for example, are not retelling us Greek myths. The violence, the admitted untruthfulness of the existence of the deities and the blending of disparate mythologies is the real story.

The same applies to Glass, Imp and Bluebeard’s Friends. They are pieces that a first look at them simply begins the process of trying to understand them and Churchill’s complex world.

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Glass, Kill, Bluebeard’s Friends and Imp by Caryl Churchill continues  until October 12, 2019 at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London, SW1W 8AS.  Box Office 020 7565 5000. www.royalcourttheatre.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press