Review – The Motive and the Cue, National Theatre at the Lyttelton, London, 24th May 2023

Posted on May 26, 2023 by therealchrisparkle

One of my earliest memories as a student was seeing a photo of Richard Burton holding court in front of a room full of earnest and eager undergraduates, in the very same room where I was being grilled by my tutor, the late Francis Warner. He and Burton were buddies and I remember regretting that I wasn’t a couple of years older, in which case I would have been one of those keen undergrads hanging on to his every word, whilst Francis sat back basking in the reflected glow. So near, and yet so far.

I was reminded of that photo during the one of the last scenes in Jack Thorne’s new play The Motive and The Cue, where Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are holding a party for the cast of Hamlet, which he’s just about to open on Broadway, directed by Sir John Gielgud. Johnny Flynn’s Burton sits back in a big old armchair, crosses his legs and quietly manipulates all the conversation and merriment that he sees before him. If Mr Flynn hasn’t seen that photo of Burton giving a class at Oxford, then the similarity is not only uncanny, it’s miraculous.

But I’m getting ahead of myself as usual. Gielgud took on the task of directing Burton as Shakespeare’s Great Dane, and Thorne’s play takes us through the entire creative process from the Day 1 reading to Day 25 final rehearsal and first preview. We see the admiration given to the two, very different, creative geniuses; the relationships between the older, more experienced actors and the younger newbies, the differences of approach and style, the powerplays, the arguments, and the cunning ways of reaching a solution. The conflicts that develop between the mellifluously spoken, reserved authority of Gielgud versus the strident, belligerent, emotional Burton make for a fine battle of wits. I wasn’t aware until I saw the play that Burton’s Hamlet became the most successful production of the play ever to appear on Broadway. So whatever they did, they did it right.

The Motive and The Cue; not perhaps the snappiest of titles, but they are Hamlet’s own words. As Gielgud explains: “the motive is the spine of a role – the intellect and the reason – the cue is the passion – the inner switch which ignites the heart.” And at its heart, this play follows the search for that magical, intangible element that makes a role come to life – the search for one’s own Hamlet. Everyone’s is different, because we’re all different.

Jack Thorne has created a totally beautiful piece of work. Superbly structured, delicately written, with fascinating characters and the excitement for the audience of seeing the developing readiness in preparation for opening night. It’s littered with marvellous comedy that plays upon the preconceptions of the characters that we already have; we’d guessed, for example, that Gielgud would have faux-modesty about his achievements, that Burton would be brash and drunk, and that Taylor would be sex-on-legs. This carries on even into the supporting cast of recognisable names – for instance, there’s a lot of mickey-taking about Hume Cronyn (Polonius) for always appearing with his wife Jessica Tandy; indeed, I remember seeing them both at the Lyric Theatre in 1979 in The Gin Game.

The play is set in New York of course, and thus Gielgud and Burton are two fish out of water; Brits at work abroad, with all their colleagues being American. Burton, of course, can afford a swanky apartment; Gielgud retreats to a modest little hotel room. They represent two ends of the social scale; old well-bred family versus nouveau riche – a class war, if you like, without class ever being mentioned. You can easily see the upper-crust Gielgud, with all his splendid enunciation, set against the working-class miner’s son Burton, treating the rehearsal space like a bar room brawl. There are some beautiful comic moments that reflect this; Gielgud’s observation that Burton’s Hamlet would have murdered Claudius within a few minutes of meeting the Ghost, and Burton’s hilarious entry to Gertrude’s bedchamber, bellowing Mother, mother, mother! – followed by Gertrude’s distasteful Withdraw, I hear him coming. There are also some telling observations about fame and anonymity, experience versus innocence; one’s career peaking too soon, not to mention the thinly veiled rivalry between Johnny and Larry.

But what this charmingly likeable play also manages to do is to celebrate excellence all the way through. There’s only one source of negative energy in the show – Burton, when things are going wrong. His aggressive and destructive behaviour wins him no friends or support from the rest of the cast – in fact, there’s a splendid moment when Eileen Herlie who plays Gertrude gives him a terrific slap around the chops that the entire audience admires. But there’s a positive outcome after Liz Taylor gives Gielgud some insight into Burton’s background which he can use to make Burton properly find his own Hamlet. And, with a successful run on Broadway, it’s one of those rare things – a straight play with a happy ending!

The play is beautifully presented as a treat for the eyes and ears. Es Devlin’s rehearsal room set is stark and spacious, clearly lit, with a few comfortable touches around the edges but primarily designed to create an acting space with no hiding place. The theatrically artificial setting is enhanced by the curtains creating a boxy, proscenium space as they change from scene to scene; with lovely touches like the wilting flowers in the Burton/Taylor apartment, lit in a lurid red light. Scenes blend by rehearsing sections of Hamlet at the front of the curtain which then merge into the rest of the stage. It’s a very fluid, seamless transition from scene to scene. Each scene is introduced by an onstage projection telling us which day of the rehearsal process we’re at, with an appropriate Hamlet quote for good measure. Both acts start with a pithy piece of music from Sir Noel Coward – nothing particularly to do with the story, but delightfully appropriate, especially after the interval, with Why must the show go on?

Gielgud and Burton dominate proceedings, as you would expect, but the entire cast work perfectly together. Tuppence Middleton is superb as Elizabeth Taylor; dressed glamorously, immaculate in appearance, a dangerous concoction of sexually provocative and motherly protector. Janie Dee makes the most of her appearances as Eileen Herlie, brooking no nonsense from Burton, whilst being a good team player; plenty of opportunities for terrific comic timing and withering looks. Allan Corduner is excellent as the blustery, rather pompous Hume Cronyn, and Luke Norris also stands out as the rather miscast William Redfield, too experienced to play Guildenstern but keen to work with the big names.

Laurence Ubong Williams delivers a standout cameo as Hugh McHaffie, the gentleman caller that Gielgud has hired for a night of passion that turns into a much needed therapy session; Phoebe Horn portrays the young Linda Marsh (Ophelia) with a terrific feel for the nervousness of the lowest in the pecking order; and David Tarkenter absolutely looks the part of Alfred Drake (Claudius), perhaps a surprisingly insignificant role considering how important Claudius is to Hamlet and what a star Alfred Drake was of musical theatre at the time.

Johnny Flynn is brilliant as Burton; the character adopts so many attitudes and moods over the course of the play, and he gets them all spot-on. A louche braggart, a vindictive drunk, a humble searcher for the truth. His vocal timbre is superbly suggestive of Burton without being an impersonation, but his physical presence and body language completely bring to mind the original. It’s a fantastic performance. So too is Mark Gatiss as Gielgud; again not an impersonation but there’s something about the blend of his physicality and voice that makes you think you are seeing Sir John on the stage again. The flowing tones, the waspish wit, the impatience that lurks under the surface always hidden by a veneer of politeness – it’s all there. He really takes your breath away.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such an easy, instant standing ovation at the National Theatre for a play, not a musical, in a matinee, not an evening. You could tell from the expressions of the actors at curtain call that they know they are trustees of a fantastic play. Surely this will have a life after Lyttelton.

Production photos by Mark Douet

Five Alive let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Blues for an Alabama Sky, Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London, 26th October 2022

Posted on October 28, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

The second stage (literally) of our three-part Blitz on the National Theatre was to see Wednesday’s matinee of Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Lyttelton Theatre – Lynette Linton’s acclaimed production of Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play. Set in Harlem in 1930, Angel is a club singer who shares an apartment with her friend Guy, a clothes designer whose dream is to create extravagant outfits for his heroine, Josephine Baker, in Paris. Fired from her job and dumped by her gangster boyfriend, Guy carries her home drunk with the assistance of a handsome passing stranger. Supported by Guy, and their friends Delia (from the adjacent apartment) and Sam, a local doctor, Angel sets about picking up the pieces of her life. But then the passing stranger passes by again, this time deliberately, to see if Angel has recovered, and he doesn’t seem likely to take no for an answer…

Plays are peculiar things. A bunch of words on paper, they come to life when transferred to a stage – especially if the creative team behind the production gets it right. This is one such occasion; a superb production that – dare I say it – elevates the words on the page to a level way further than you might expect. Lynette Linton’s direction, Frankie Bradshaw’s set and especially costumes, Oliver Fenwick’s lighting, Benjamin Kwasi Burrell’s music, and so on, all contribute to presenting us with the most elegant of productions. It shrieks class, although it’s far too elegant to shriek.

There’s also something about the production – and I can’t quite put my finger on why – that lures the audience into complete involvement with it. So when a character makes a really telling statement, or a very dramatic event occurs, there are audible gasps, even cries, from the audience. To create that link between us and what happens on stage is a rare gift.

However, and it’s quite a big however, I must confess that I didn’t really like the play itself that much. It feels long – I’m sure it could have shaved at least twenty minutes off without losing any of its content. It was, occasionally, a little bit boring. There are a couple of major plot events that are telegraphed a mile off. I don’t believe it’s in Delia’s character to do what she does at the end of the play (no spoilers). And the suggestion in the final scene that Angel is about to embark on some kind of Groundhog Day re-enactment of what has gone before means that nothing has changed, which is a miserable conclusion, no matter how stylishly it’s conveyed. The direction also triggered one of my pet hates, when imaginary walls that divide rooms or buildings are unnecessarily breached by an actor walking through them. No!! What are you doing!! You’ve just picked that chair up and moved it through a brick wall!

Having said that, the play is genuinely fascinating with the development of a character who is absolutely committed to the cause of a woman’s accessibility to both contraception and abortion rights, particularly as it is progressed through promoting it through the church. It also nicely examines the bigotry of the Christian right through the character of Leland, slow to recognise homosexuality in his surroundings simply because he cannot believe it exists in any environment where he might find himself.

The performances are fantastic throughout and fully justify your decision to buy a ticket! Samira Wiley, in her UK stage debut, is incredible as Angel. She is the kind of performer you simply cannot take your eyes off. No movement, no gesture is wasted; she inhabits the role so fully that you are completely convinced she is Angel. Her singing voice is superb, her emotions get you in the guts, and she’s a dab hand at the comic timing and business too. A remarkable performance. Giles Terera impresses as Guy, with an entertaining range of camp mannerisms and vocal tics that delightfully bring out the humour of the character, but also complement his kindness and his realistic ability to the cut the crap and get to the truth. Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo is brilliant as Delia, combining her earnestness with her innocence; she brings the whole audience with her on her gentle journey of love with the supportive Sam, another excellent performance from Sule Rimi. And Osy Ikhile is great as the handsome stranger Leland, the epitome of dignity and romance until the brutality of life stretches his patience too far.

The superb atmosphere that the production creates never lets up throughout the whole play, even if the play itself does occasionally leave something to be desired. But there’s a delicate mix of comedy and tragedy, fascinating character development, and an incredible connection with the audience which means the good definitely outweighs the not so good.

Production photos by Marc BrennerFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – The Corn is Green, National Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre, London, 27th May 2022

Posted on May 31, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

Emlyn Williams wrote the first play I ever saw at the theatre – I was six, on my own, in the front row for the local amateur dramatics group’ production of A Murder Has Been Arranged at the Wendover Memorial Hall. I was entranced, and a lifelong love of theatre was born. Imagine a six-year-old being out on their own to see a play nowadays – you’d call in Social Services at once! Things were different in the old days. Thirty years or so later I became friends with a chap who had acted with Emlyn Williams when he was a callow youth, and Williams was a big star. He was very proud of his albeit slight association with Williams, and, remembering that he had written the first play I ever saw, I also felt a strange sort of connection.

Since then, I have seen a production of Williams’ most famous play, Night Must Fall, but never The Corn is Green; and it was never on my radar as a play I should catch up with, until I saw that the National Theatre were mounting a production with Nicola Walker in the lead role. Being a huge admirer of Ms Walker’s TV career, I jumped at the chance. That was sometime in early 2020, and – well, you know the rest. Now that the worst of the pandemic is passed (fingers crossed at least) I was thrilled to secure myself some tickets for its delayed performance. They say that good things are worth waiting for; this certainly proves that rule.

The premise of the play is pretty simple. Miss Moffat arrives at a remote Welsh village with the intention of setting up a school, so that all the local lads have an alternative to a life down the coal pits. She wants them to be able to appreciate books, to extend their minds; to give them a fuller, more rounded understanding of what life has to offer. Despite opposition, she succeeds; and her first promising pupil is young Morgan Evans, whom she encourages, and develops to such an extent that she arranges for him to sit for a scholarship to Oxford. But can a boy who’s been bred to work down the mines leave behind the dismal future that he has always been expected to follow and break out into a middle-class world of learning and self-expression?

It’s a semi-autobiographical play, and in the original production Williams played Evans; the character of Miss Moffat was based on his own teacher, Miss Cooke. And in a fascinating new twist to the play, director Dominic Cooke (no relation I presume!) has made Williams a key player on the stage. Not only does this production provide us with a performance of The Corn is Green, it also shows Williams going through the creative process, sometimes steering the production, sometimes discovering that it steers him. It’s a masterstroke of an idea and works incredibly well.

The play begins, for example, not with the house that Miss Moffat has inherited and will make into the school, but with a society ball, maybe in London, maybe in Oxford, where smart young things dance to the latest craze until the young Emlyn Williams bursts out of the proceedings, a sweaty, anxious mess, and decides to sit down at a typewriter and put his initial thoughts onto paper. As the play develops, Williams takes on the dual role of writer/director, deciding, for example, whether a character would speak in English or Welsh, whether they would enter the stage now or later, or whether the plot would twist this way or that. At one point Williams stops the show and makes the characters retrace their steps and do it differently – it reminded me of Laura Wade’s excellent The Watsons, where a character takes charge and shakes the rest of the cast into performing a different play. This extra dimension to the production allows Dominic Cooke to bring in a chorus of miners, all grubby faces and golden voices, that serve as a constant reminder of the world outside the schoolroom, never allowing Evans to forget his roots. There is also all the fun of the radio studio, with squeaking door sound effects, and actors never actually leaving the stage, just turning their back on the action. There’s a lot of façade going on, but it works a treat.

The presence of Williams also serves as a bridge between the Welsh backwaters and the smart young society things, capturing both the grit and the glamour. The humour of the story is beautifully observed, with a harsh lack of sentimentality between the characters, a dismissive reaction to parental obligations, and a delightful obsequiousness towards The Squire, the local authority figure with whom everyone wants to ingratiate themselves – and he certainly expects it. As an outsider, Miss Moffat wants none of that; but the scene where she deliberately fawns to him and flatters him, setting herself up as a mere woman who needs the strength and guidance of a capable man, is comedy gold.

I had high expectations of Nicola Walker as Miss Moffat and they were achieved in abundance. She has the most remarkably expressive face; no need for speech, but within a space of ten seconds she can show a sequence of emotions that follow naturally on from each other, going from, say, surprise to disappointment, then knowing she shouldn’t have been surprised, to seeing the funny side and then the tragic side. Basically, she can do anything! Her Miss Moffat is wonderfully no-nonsense and ruthlessly determined. At one stage she is so fixated on Evans’ Oxford career, she reminded me of that terrifying moment in Gypsy where Imelda Staunton broke into Everything’s Coming Up Roses not for the achievement of her prodigy but for her own overweening success. But Miss Moffat is also supremely altruistic – the sacrifice she is prepared to make at the end of the play is something quite extraordinary.

Gareth David-Lloyd is excellent as the ever-present Emlyn Williams, a class apart from everyone else, attempting to take charge of his characters and plot, even when his characters have other ideas. I loved Alice Orr-Ewing as the shallow Miss Ronberry, fluttering for the attention of the Squire, repelled by the baser actions of the boys. Iwan Davies is also excellent as Evans, at first cheeky and one-of-the-lads, later a serious student who wants to do well; but he wants it to be on his own terms. Saffron Coomber is superb as Bessie Watty, desperate for a glamorous life away from the humdrum of rural Wales, and there’s great support from Richard Lynch as the lugubrious, saved, Jones. Jo McInnes as the hard-working and totally unmotherly Mrs Watty, and the marvellous pomposity of Rufus Wright’s Squire.

I wasn’t sure about the final image of the scene; I understand that Williams was bisexual and had a number of liaisons with men during his marriage and after his wife died, but I still didn’t really see the relevance of his ending the show with a romantic dance with Evans. A small quibble though. This is a very clever and revealing production that breathes new life into a well-known, traditional play; and Nicola Walker is absolutely fabulous. It continues at the Lyttelton just until 11^th June, so you’d better get your skates on.

Production photos by Johan Persson

Five Alive, let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Absolute Hell, National Theatre at the Lyttelton, 28th April 2018

Posted on May 1, 2018 by therealchrisparkle

Rodney Ackland isn’t performed much anymore. The only other time I’ve seen one of his plays was the commercially quite successful Before The Party, revived in 1980 at the Apollo, directed by Tom Conti. But the story of how Absolute Hell came into being is one that intrigued me, so I decided it was one I had to see.

You may know, gentle reader, that I am very interested in the history of theatre censorship – indeed, in this 50th anniversary year since the abolition of stage censorship, I’ll be writing some blog posts in recognition of this significant event later this summer. Ackland wrote the original play, The Pink Room, in 1952, at a time when the Lord Chamberlain’s control over what was presented on stage was in its hey-day. It’s set in a seedy nightclub in Soho just as the Second World War was ending in Europe, and he wanted to portray all the human life and spirit that six years of war had brought out of people; and now that war was over, the people needed to find a new vent and expression to reflect that freedom.

Ackland wrote a play that he knew would get a licence – but by all accounts, it wasn’t the play he wanted to write. He wanted his characters people to use liberated, foul language. He wanted them to portray all the sexual freedom they wanted to enjoy, gay and straight, inside and outside relationships, legal and illegal. He wanted to show people getting drunk, not just gently tipsy for comedy purposes but rip-roaring, destructive drunk. You sense there was probably no physical boundaries that Ackland’s characters wouldn’t have breached.

But it was a flop – produced by his friend Terence Rattigan, who never spoke to him again. Disheartened by the experience, Ackland hardly wrote another thing; but after stage censorship was abolished, he revised the play so that it would reflect more what he had originally intended. And when he was an old man, and down on his uppers, the play was rediscovered by the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond and finally became a success. A perfect example of a play written at the wrong time, you could say.

The main problem with the play – and by the sound of it, it’s always been the case, right since 1952 – is that it is just too long. The original word from the National Theatre was to expect a three hour, forty minutes production, and, with the best will in the world, you can’t even concentrate on Hamlet for that long. Forty minutes have been shed between the early previews and opening night, which makes you a) feel extremely grateful and b) wonder what in the way of narrative has been left out; because the other downside to this play is that not a lot happens. That isn’t a strength, like in Beckett, where it would have been so disappointing for Godot to turn up and take everyone down the pub; in Absolute Hell you always feel like it’s going to break into a strong storyline, but it never ends up going down that path.

Spoiler alert in this paragraph! Four scenes – the opening and closing times at La Vie en Rose club over a period of five weeks – show manageress Christine slowly losing her hold over the club, from an opening position of running a place that everyone loved but didn’t make much money, to a final scene with a structurally unsafe building that has to be closed down. As La Vie en Rose slowly disintegrates, the fortunes of the Labour Party offices over the road thrive – in what might be seen as some rather heavy-handed symbolism; even their constant typing (which of course in real life they wouldn’t have been able to hear) provides an interruption and irritation to the activities of the club – and, indeed, to the audience. Over those five weeks, the hopes and dreams of La Vie en Rosers are shattered. Writer Hugh Marriner’s last ditch attempt to make a movie gets nowhere. His agent Maurice is exposed as a sham. His boyfriend Nigel leaves him for a woman. His mother finds out he’s not as successful as he pretended. His friend Elizabeth discovers a dear friend has died in the Holocaust. And of course, Christine loses her business and the building becomes derelict.

As a slice of life snapshot of the summer of 1945, it makes fascinating viewing – you really get a feel for that post-war energy and optimism, but only outside of the club. Inside the club, life is claustrophobic and going nowhere. There are black market etiquettes to observe, and self-important people to be pandered to. You sense that any fun they have on the inside is purely ephemeral. The future is on the outside.

There’s no denying it – this is an unpleasant play. Binkie Beaumont described it as “a libel on the British people” and I see his point. There are few positive characters in it, vastly outweighed by a variety of self-obsessed, cruel, pig-headed people whom you would run a mile to avoid. But who are we to say how any of us would be if we’d lived through the Second World War like these people? An experience like that would take a massive toll on society, and that, I think, is the prime aim of the play – to show fairly desperate lives and without any real judgment against them.

Unpleasant it may be, but there is a big upside; this is an extraordinarily good production, primarily because of several really superb performances that keep you hanging on to find out what happens to the characters. Charles Edwards inhabits the character of Hugh Marriner down to his tobacco-stained fingertips. The slight stoop he adopts, the rambling, wheedling manner of speech, the petulance, his general impotence and all his other characteristics are all perfectly captured as he wastes his way through life. It’s an incredible performance. Kate Fleetwood is also brilliant as Christine who manages the club, with a perpetual twinkle in her eye at the sight of any remotely desirable man; she has all the attributes of a tough businesswoman apart from the important one of keeping an eye on the till. Welcoming and indeed almost grovelling to those in influence, whilst dismissing anyone who doesn’t fit her own opinion of a good customer, this is another excellent performance.

Jonathan Slinger gives a superb performance as the arrogant agent Maurice, steeped in his own self-esteem to the belittling of anyone who gets in his way; Joanne David is delightfully charming as the easily duped and surprisingly refined Mrs Marriner; Martins Imhangbe conveys Sam’s desire to learn and expand his horizons in a terrifically enthusiastic performance; Jenny Galloway invests the critic R B Monody with a wonderfully huffy self-importance; and John Sackville gives a tremendous performance of sheer stiff upper lip as Douglas Eden. But it’s a marvellous ensemble cast of thirty-plus who throw everything they have at making these characters come alive. If it hadn’t been so superbly performed, it would have felt like a much, much longer show. An interesting period piece; but, seen once, you’d never want to see it again.