Don't bother, they're here
I’m loving this deep dive that the Guardian is doing into Tristram Kenton’s archive, this time taking a turn into the many Open Air Theatre productions he has been witness to. Highly recommended:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2020/aug/19/great-outdoors-the-magic-of-regents-park-open-air-theatre-in-pictures
“How strange that we should be having a ball when we are on the brink of war”
Who knows what hold Julian Fellowes has over the British cultural industries as once again, another major commission comes through for this painfully lazy of writers. I should have resisted Belgravia but with a cast that includes Harriet Walter, Tara Fitzgerald and Saskia Reeves, not to mention Penny Layden and Adam James, curiosity got the better of me and by the crin, I wish it hadn’t. Lucy Mangan puts it scathingly well in her review for the Guardian and I couldn’t have put it any better. Avoid like the, well, plague.
| Winner | Runner-up | Other nominees | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best Actress in a Play | Hattie Morahan/ Kate O'Flynn/ Adelle Leonce, Anatomy of a Suicide | Victoria Hamilton, Albion | Shirley Henderson, Girl From the North Country Cherry Jones, The Glass Menagerie Justine Mitchell, Beginning Mimi Ndiweni, The Convert Connie Walker, Trestle |
| Best Actor in a Play | Ken Nwosu, An Octoroon | Andrew Scott, Hamlet | Andrew Garfield, Angels in America Gary Lilburn, Trestle Ian McKellen, King Lear Cyril Nri, Barber Shop Chronicles Sam Troughton, Beginning |
| Best Supporting Actress in a Play | Bríd Brennan, The Ferryman | Kate Kennedy, Twelfth Night (Royal Exchange) | Sheila Atim, Girl From the North Country Laura Carmichael, Apologia Romola Garai, Queen Anne Lashana Lynch, a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun) Kate O'Flynn, The Glass Menagerie |
| Best Supporting Actor in a Play | Fisayo Akinade, Barber Shop Chronicles | Brian J Smith, The Glass Menagerie | Philip Arditti, Oslo Gershwn Eustache Jnr, a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun) Fra Fee, The Ferryman Patrice Naiambana, Barber Shop Chronicles Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Angels in America |
| Best Actress in a Musical | Janie Dee, Follies AND Josefina Gabrielle, A Little Night Music AND Josie Walker, Everybody's Talking About Jamie | Amie Giselle-Ward, Little Women | Sharon D Clarke, Caroline or Change Kelly Price, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ T'Shan Williams, The Life |
| Best Actor in a Musical | Giles Terera, Hamilton | Scott Hunter/Andy Coxon, Yank! A WWII Love Story | John McCrea, Everybody's Talking About Jamie Philip Quast, Follies Michael Rouse, Superhero Jamael Westman, Hamilton |
| Best Supporting Actress in a Musical | Tracie Bennett, Follies | Rachel John, Hamilton | Christine Allado, Hamilton Julie Atherton, The Grinning Man Sharon D Clarke, The Life Joanna Riding, Romantics Anonymous Lucie Shorthouse, Everybody's Talking About Jamie |
| Best Supporting Actor in a Musical | Jason Pennycooke, Hamilton | Mark Anderson, The Grinning Man | Fred Haig, Follies Cornell S John, The Life Chris Kiely, Yank! A WWII Love Story Gareth Snook, Romantics Anonymous Obioma Ugoala, Hamilton |
Best Actor in a Play
Ken Nwosu, An Octoroon
It is great news indeed that this Orange Tree production will be gaining further life in 2018 with a transfer to the National Theatre in the summer. I really hope that as much of the original cast comes with it, especially Nwosu who anchored the complex ideas of the show with confidence and clear-sighted integrity.
Honourable mention: Andrew Scott, Hamlet
In the parlance de nos jours, Scott managed that most difficult of things to really make this most-well-known of roles his own, his collaboration with Rob Icke breathing a conversationally, contemporary life into the part that was utterly mesmerising.
Andrew Garfield, Angels in America
Gary Lilburn, Trestle
Ian McKellen, King Lear
Cyril Nri, Barber Shop Chronicles
Sam Troughton, Beginning
8-10
Bryan Cranston, Network; Conleth Hill, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf; James McArdle, Angels in America
Best Actor in a Musical
In the midst of all the hype and expectation that was the first preview, and in a production that had no right to be that polished and on-point, there was no doubt in my mind about who the star of the evening was. Terera’s Burr feels very much his own creation and delivers a well-deserved push into the limelight for this most charismatic of performers – I suspect this won’t be his first award.
Honourable mention: Scott Hunter/Andy Coxon, Yank! A WWII Love Story
Hitting the right time and place, I first saw Yank! in the afternoon of London Pride and a happier, gayer Clowns I could not have been. And at its heart is the epic, tragic romance of Stu and Mitch, brought to beautiful life by Scott Hunter and Andy Coxon respectively.
John McCrea, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Philip Quast, Follies
Michael Rouse, Superhero
Jamael Westman, Hamilton
8-10
Alastair Brookshaw, A Little Night Music; Robert Fairchild, An American in Paris; Dominic Marsh, Romantics Anonymous
“We’re not here forever. You’ve got to take a chance from time to time. Sometimes you’ve got to see something you like and grab hold. Don’t let it go.”
Unforgivably late, I made it along to Trestle for its final matinee – too late to be able to recommend it to all and sundry but delighted to find it sold out and packed to the rafters in the Southwark Playhouse’s Little space. Written by Stewart Pringle, this two-hander is the 2017 Papatango New Writing Prize winner and tacks rather hard away from both Papatango’s tendency towards the bleakly dystopian and Pringle’s previous output as a writer.
For Trestle is beautifully tender and warm, the kind of play you imagine Victoria Wood heartily approving of as it tracks the burgeoning relationship between Harry and Denise, two retirees struggling to find their place in the world. Their paths cross as their regular bookings at the village hall border onto each other – as his council meetings finish up, her Zumba classes are about to begin and in the moments inbetween, as they share the putting away of tables and chairs, they slowly get to know each other.
Continue reading “Review: Trestle, Southwark Playhouse”
“The world’s gone all strange”
For better or for worse, the aspect of Fiona Doyle’s new play Deluge that lingers most in the mind is Moi Tran’s design. Continuing a trend of adventurous transformations of the downstairs space at the Hampstead, she has flooded the stage calf-deep – appropriately so for a drama so preoccupied with adverse weather conditions – with platforms at either end and a table and chairs perched on a box placed in the middle of the water. A striking choice but not one without its trials as soon became clear once the audience had taken their place in the traverse seating.
For there’s a fair amount of stomping about from one end to the other, especially in the earlier stages of the play, and consequently splashing galore, given how intimate this theatre is. A little advance warning might have been appreciated – given a couple of the disgruntled faces I suspect a stern letter of complaint or two might well be on the way! – but more significant than any amount of damp patches on your handbag is how distracting the noisy reality of wading through the water proves to be throughout the play. Continue reading “Review: Deluge, Hampstead Downstairs”
“If you’re going to talk about sheep deformities, hand me the bottle”
Third up for the Michael Grandage Company is ‘the Daniel Radcliffe one’, the first major revival of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. But though it is being sold on the strength of its star, it is much more of an ensemble piece than first impressions would allow, as a picture of 1930s rural Irish life in all its brusque humour, unstinting relentlessness and occasional vicious kicks is built up. A break from the old routine is offered when a Hollywood film crew arrives on the neighbouring island of Inishmore and no-one is more excited about the opportunity than Cripple Billy, a young orphan lad blighted by physical disability from birth and who spots an opportunity to escape the blunt cruelty of the daily taunts.
Still in previews, Grandage’s production doesn’t quite seem to have decided how it wants to straddle the line between stereotypical olde Oirish sentimentality and McDonagh’s more brutal sensibilities which might be familiar to those that have seen The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Part of the problem lies in a vein of comedy that feels somewhat uninspired so it does, relying on the repeated utterances, without malice mind, of words and phrases that ought to jar in our more politically correct times. But this is essentially one gag extended throughout much of the show and it soon wears thin – the over-emphasis on how kookily different things were back then and over there just isn’t enough to hang a play on, especially when Grandage is playing it as safe as this. Continue reading “Review: The Cripple of Inishmaan, Noël Coward”
“Dat’s de stuff! Let her have it! All togedder now! Sling it into her! Let her ride! Shoot de piece now! Call de toin on her! Drive her into it! Feel her move! Watch her smoke!”
I loved Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie at the Donmar last year and thought his Long Day’s Journey Into Night was truly exceptional when I caught it earlier this year, so the prospect of one of his lesser known works – The Hairy Ape – at the ever-inventive Southwark Playhouse was one that intrigued and so I let myself be talked into catching it just before it closed. It is definitely closer to the former of the above-mentioned plays in its primal expressionism, tales of the sea and the search for belonging.
In the engine room of a transatlantic liner, Yank is the king of his world, leading his team of workers as they shovel away. His certainties are stripped away when a young upper class lady makes her way below-deck, leaving shocked and horrified at what she sees but opening Yank’s eyes to life beyond what he knows. His reaction is to try to find out what disgusts her but he soon discovers that she represents a whole world that doesn’t or won’t accept him. Continue reading “Review: The Hairy Ape, Southwark Playhouse”
“I was court
-martialed in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence”
After having one of the hottest tickets in London in January with The Rivals, the Southwark Playhouse had quite an act to follow and it has done so by reviving Brendan Behan’s play The Hostage, the first new production in the UK for 16 years. Opening with a song and dance routine as The Rivals did not really help to stop comparisons instantly being made, we soon moved onto to both a naked man appearing and characters addressing the audience, both of which have been in incredibly plentiful supply this year already.
Behan’s play is incredibly hard to define: it’s set in a brothel in 1960s Dublin where a young British soldier is being kept hostage by the IRA in reprisal for the planned execution of a young IRA member in a Belfast jail. The hostage is forced to share the space with the resident prostitutes both male and female, their customers, and a random selection of crazy individuals, but finds a connection despite everything with a young innocent housekeeper. It’s comic but tragic, it’s farcical but political: as I said, hard to define! Continue reading “Review: The Hostage, Southwark Playhouse”