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TV Review: Innocent (Series 1)

A strong cast make the first series of Innocent highly watchable, even if the storytelling never quite catches fire

“Do you still think he did it?”

Matthew Arlidge and Chris Lang’s Innocent passed me by when it premiered on ITV in 2018 but with the arrival of a second series and an unavoidable publicity push, I thought I’d go back and visit the first, not least because Lang’s stock has never been higher as the creator of Unforgotten. And before the review proper starts, a mildly silly note about names in dramas. I went to school with a David Collins so found it highly amusing but to name his brother Phil? And then never reference it…madness I tell you!

The show centres on the case of Collins who has spent seven years in prison, convicted of murdering his wife Tara. When a legal technicality sees him acquitted, he attempts the process of rebuilding his life. But with his sister-in-law now in custody of his two children and a high degree of suspicion still floating around the air as the police reopen the case to try and find out once and for all who killed Tara, that is much easier said than done. Continue reading “TV Review: Innocent (Series 1)”

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Casting news aplenty!

I round up some of the recent casting news, including Queen Margaret at the Royal Exchange, Wasted at the Southwark Playhouse, Measure for Measure at the Donmar and The Woods at the Royal Court.

Shakespeare wrote more lines for Queen Margaret than he did for King Lear yet we know very little of her. Jeanie O’Hare re-acquaints us with one of Shakespeare’s major but rarely performed characters in her new play Queen Margaret. In a production that draws on original language from Shakespeare, director Elizabeth Freestone and Jade Anouka as Margaret, retell an iconic moment in British History through the eyes of the extraordinary Margaret of Anjou. This captivating exploration of The Wars of the Roses seen through the eyes of this astonishing, dangerous and thrilling woman opens the Royal Exchange’s Autumn Winter 2018/19 Season.

Anouka is joined by Islam Bouakkaz (Prince Edward/Rutland), Lorraine Bruce (York), Samuel Edward-Cook (Suffolk/Clifford), Dexter Flanders (Edward IV), Helena Lymbery (Hume), Lucy Mangan (Joan of Arc), Roger Morlidge (Gloucester), Kwami Odoom (Somerset/Richard), Bridgitta Roy (Warwick) and Max Runham (Henry VI). Continue reading “Casting news aplenty!”

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Review: Persuasion, Royal Exchange

“We cannot all live in a fairytale”

 
I’ve been looking forward to Jeff James’ reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion ever since it was announced, James having worked with Ivo van Hove as an associate director and the evidence of his work that I’ve seen thus far (in La Musica) really impressing. The influence from the Belgian master is palpable but it is manifesting itself in fascinating ways, interrogating notions of adaptation and theatrical experience in ways that we too rarely see in the UK.

You see it in the ways that he uses the relatively inflexible space of the Royal Exchange (IMHO van Hove rarely gets the credit he deserves for the way in which he reinvents theatrical space) and the way he positions his actors, saying so much about relationships and their dynamics without a word. And Alex Lowde’s supremely contemporary design boldly situates this Regency drama in the here and now, shifting even within itself in showing us Anne Elliot’s world. Continue reading “Review: Persuasion, Royal Exchange”

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Casting news for Persuasion and Anatomy of a Suicide

 
I’ve already written of my excitement for the forthcoming Persuasion  and the announcement of the cast hasn’t lessened the thrill at all. Lara Rossi takes on the role of Austen’s heroine Anne alongside Samuel Edward-Cook as Captain Wentworth. The cast is completed by Geraldine Alexander, Antony Bunsee, Helen Cripps, Cassie Layton, Caroline Moroney, Dorian Simpson and Arthur Wilson. 

Directing them is Jeff James, “one of the UK’s most original young theatre makers”, who has adapted and is directing this bold retelling of Jane Austen’s final masterpiece at the Royal Exchange Theatre. Designed by Alex Lowde this contemporary production of Austen’s beautifully crafted novel discards the bonnets and trappings of formal life for a startlingly modern vision of Austen. Developed in collaboration with dramaturg James Yeatman and with sound design from the award-winning Ben and Max Ringham, Persuasion runs from 25 May to 24 June 2017.

Continue reading “Casting news for Persuasion and Anatomy of a Suicide”

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TV Review: Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands

Despite no lack of ambition (and a reputed £17 million budget), Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands proves a sore disappointment

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come”

Looking back at my review of Episode 1 of Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, there really was a naive hope on my part that this would be something of a success, as ITV lunged for a slice of the epic fantasy TV market. But lawksamercy it hasn’t been good.

Cleaving so closely to the Game of Thrones template (seriously, those opening credits…) does the show no favours at all, as they can’t hope to compete with the meticulousness of the years of George RR Martin’s world-building or the heft of HBO’s cinematic-sized budget. Continue reading “TV Review: Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands”

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Review: Antigone, Barbican

“I heard a voice, like the sound of sorrow

After the huge success of A View From The Bridge (now successfully transferred into the West End), there’s no doubting that Belgian director Ivo van Hove has been sucked into the mainstream consciousness of British theatregoers, hence this sold out run of Antigone at the Barbican. The presence of Oscar winner Juliette Binoche probably helped in that regard but there’s clearly no dimming in the sense of ambition here as this pan-European work, produced by…(deep breath)…the Barbican and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, in association with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, and co-produced by Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and Edinburgh International Festival, launches an eight month tour across Europe and the USA.

So it’s now the turn of Greek tragedy to get the van Hove treatment, Sophokles’ play has received a new translation here by Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson which instantly elevates the work into a realm of heightened theatricality as the coils of its language wind elegantly around the ongoing troubles of this royal family. In the aftermath of a civil war in which the sons of Oidipous, Eteokles and Polyneikes, have killed each other fighting over the right to rule Thebes, it is Kreon – the brother of his wife (and mother) Jocasta – who takes the throne. Grieving for the loss of his own son, Kreon institutes a newly authoritarian rule, one which declares Polyneikes a traitor and thus unable to receive burial rites and this incenses Oidipous’ daughter Antigone and the pursuit of honouring her brother puts them in direct conflict. Continue reading “Review: Antigone, Barbican”

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Looking ahead to 2015

I realise I’m just adding (belatedly) to the plethora of 2015 features already published but so many of them trod the boringly familiar ground of forthcoming West End shows (and in the Evening Standard’s case, managed to recommend booking for three shows already sold out from their list of six). So I’ve cast my net a little wider and chosen a few random categories for just some of the shows I’m recommending and looking forward to in 2015.

Continue reading “Looking ahead to 2015”

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Short Film Review #53

 


A nightmare audition is nothing new but Jonathan Kydd’s 15 minute Shakespeare’s Wart is an inspired take on the hoary old trope. Kydd plays the auditionee in front of Peter Wight and Bill Fellows as a bad cop bad cop pair of auditioners who send him on a ridiculous journey of improv work, daft accents and crocodile chasing as he bids for a part in Henry IV Part II. It’s a little slow to get started but in its latter half, becomes genuinely hilarious as the demands become ever more extreme whilst Wight and Fellows remain as deadpan as ever in the face of such silliness. 


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Review: Pitcairn, Shakespeare’s Globe

“It is as if we find ourselves at the beginning of time…”

It may be Shakespeare’s Globe but it is Richard Bean’s when it comes to new writing at this venue and he returns once again with a Globe, Out of Joint and Chichester Festival Theatre co-production about the island colony of Pitcairn which was set up by Fletcher Christian in the wake of the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. Playing with the ideas of revolutionary freedom that were burning so fiercely on the other side of the globe, Christian dreamed of creating an Utopian ideal out of the sailors who left with him and a group of Polynesian men and women but perhaps unsurprisingly, little that was ideal came out of it.

Little that is ideal comes out of this play either. Bean throws in a number of interesting ideas into his Pitcairn – the power struggles between comrades, the jealousies that come out of the supposed liberation of sexual freedom, the culture clash that arises out of the enduring adherence to the Tahitian tradition of utmost respect for hierarchy. But it all adds up to very little and Bean has also incorporated some dodgier elements especially when it comes to the cringe-worthy expression of that sexual freedom, the constant reliance of embarrassingly dated notions of the ‘natives’ (let’s dance!) and audience participation that doesn’t really fly. Continue reading “Review: Pitcairn, Shakespeare’s Globe”