Tag Archives: Paapa Essiedu

Review – All My Sons, Wyndham’s Theatre, London, 30th December 2025

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The American Dream: a vision that not only shaped a country and its citizens, but also its theatre. From Oklahoma! to A Chorus Line, from The Iceman Cometh to Glengarry Glen Ross, its inescapable influence and driving force steer characterisations and storylines to dramatic conclusions, both triumphant and disastrous. An arch-critic of the American Dream, Arthur Miller turned his writing career around with the success of All My Sons, first performed in 1947. Apparently, he had decided that if the audiences didn’t appreciate his new play, he would ditch playwrighting and find more lucrative employment. It’s to everyone’s benefit that it ran for 328 performances, picked up various awards, and was adapted into two films.

After the doldrums of the recession, Joe Keller has done well in the aeronautical industry, although his business partner Steve Deever was jailed for shipping defective parts during the war which caused the death of 21 pilots. Joe was also accused but exonerated. Now living in a grand house with his wife Kate and son Chris, all that’s missing is their other son, Larry, who never returned from the war. Kate is convinced Larry is still alive which is why she won’t agree to Chris marrying Ann Deever, who was Larry’s girlfriend. Ann’s brother George also can’t support their union as it would mean marrying into the family that caused the destruction of their own family. Will Larry return? Will Chris and Ann marry? Is Joe innocent? If you don’t know the answers, firstly, where have you been since 1947?! Secondly, I’m not going to tell you. It’s not for me to ruin Miller’s masterful plot revelations.

This is only the second time I’ve seen an Ivo van Hove production, the first being the thrillingly avant garde Hedda Gabler produced by the National Theatre. That production was also designed by Jan Versweyveld, as is the case with All My Sons – van Hove and Versweyveld go together like a horse and carriage, as the old song goes. All My Sons starts with a visceral shock to the system – Kate Keller caught in a violent storm in her garden, battling against the howling winds to save the tree that was planted when Larry was born, 27 years earlier. Her efforts are in vain as the tree cracks mercilessly and falls to the ground, dominating the stage. You won’t find that short scene in Miller’s original text, but it truly sets the pace for a rollercoaster of a production.

Versweyveld’s design places the tree at the absolute heart of the play, representing the lingering presence of Larry in the family dynamic. Family members walk around it and sit on its branches, like designer garden furniture. This becomes visually even more brutal in the second Act, where Chris starts sawing branches off with his chainsaw, literally eradicating Larry from the family. The grand house is relegated to somewhere in the background, captured in a circle of light, resembling a rifle sight, from where characters can look down on the action.

Elsewhere, van Hove’s direction is crisp, clear and emotional, driven by the beautifully unfolding plot and opposing characterisations, identifying the reality as a contrast to the artificiality of the design. My only quibble is that the production has chosen to remove any intervals – unnecessarily in my view, as this is a truly intense play and production which would lose nothing by having a few minutes to regain your breath and pay an urgent visit to the loo. The scene changes within the play necessitate the curtain coming down anyway, so it’s not as though it’s portrayed as one long unbroken event. I reckon something with the power of All My Sons can sustain a comfort break.

The extraordinary cast deliver some of the best performances currently on stage. Hayley Squires gives a clear, powerful performance as Ann, the epitome of reason, conveying that difficult balancing act between being as accommodating as possible with her potential in-laws and asserting her right to live her own life and marry who she wishes. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is outstanding as Kate, portraying those maternal qualities that have always served her – and the wider community – well, but also create her own psychological damage. The interactions between Ms Squires and Ms Jean-Baptiste emphasise how Arthur Miller stands out as one of the few 20th Century male dramatists who can get to the essence of what a woman thinks and feels.

Paapa Essiedu, who was one of the most intriguing Hamlets you’ll ever see, beautifully underplays the role of Chris as the typical second son and people-pleasing underachiever. He is a master of the quietly delivered, throwaway line that conveys so much of the character whilst never demanding attention. This makes his moments of true assertiveness even more effective. Leading the cast, Bryan Cranston gives a tremendous, finely judged performance as Joe; a mixture of happy bluster and family man, teetering on the edge of taking responsibility and slowly coming to terms with the enormity of his secret. The confrontations between Joe and Chris spark with theatrical electricity and you cannot take your eyes off them.

Miller populates the play with a number of minor roles, including an entertaining performance by Zach Wyatt as the astrology-mad Frank, Aliyah Odoffin as his upbeat, positive wife Lydia, Cath Whitefield’s down-to-earth and fearless Sue, Richard Hansell as her frustrated husband Jim, and Tom Glynn-Carney as the seethingly resentful George. At our performance, 8-year-old Bert was played by Sammy Jones who was crackingly confident opposite such esteemed actors.

Issues of responsibility, deceit, the handling of grief; the need to move forward versus the desire to look back, and how emotional selfishness and instability can affect all those around you, All My Sons piles on the themes to create a blistering piece of theatre that will remain with you long after curtain down – as will the memory of those remarkable performances. The show runs at Wyndham’s until 7th March; a surprising number of tickets remain available but watch out for that dynamic pricing.

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Pinter One, Pinter at the Pinter Season, The New World Order, Mountain Language, One For The Road, Ashes To Ashes, plus five other short pieces, Harold Pinter Theatre, 20th October 2018

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Back at the Harold Pinter Theatre for another session of Pinteresque shorts, and an outstanding programme, beautifully sequenced, of nine fascinating pieces – ok, maybe there was one I wasn’t that keen on, but I just don’t think I had the time to pay attention to it. Eight short pieces were crammed into the first half, plus another one-act play after the interval, and a fantastic night of dramatic tension it truly was. I’ve rarely had such a varied and challenging experience in the theatre, on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Jonjo O’Neill opened the proceedings with Press Conference, a piece Pinter wrote for the 2002 National Theatre show Sketches, and a role which he himself originally performed. To an explosion of confetti that lingers, ironically, in your clothes and on the seats and floor for the rest of the evening, the Minister for Culture is received rapturously in some kind of totalitarian state, and then answers questions about the state attitude to children and women, which includes killing them and raping them (“it was part of an educational process”). It’s so outrageous that you’re completely shocked, but the juxtaposition of upbeat jollity and Mr O’Neill’s excellent performance, means it’s hard not to laugh, even though you hate yourself for doing so. You reassure yourself with the thought “it couldn’t happen here…” but then you look around you at the world today, and wonder…. A perfect introduction to a disturbing evening’s entertainment.

Precisely, a 1983 sketch originally performed by Martin Jarvis and Barry Foster, featured Maggie Steed and Kate O’Flynn, suited up like two overfed and over-indulged politicians, discussing how to carve up the country for some unknown plan that’s clearly just for their own benefit and no one else’s. Maggie Steed in particular reminded me of the way they used to represent Mrs Thatcher in Spitting Image – with Churchill’s suit and cigar – gritty, cynical, powerful. As is nearly always the case with Pinter, the non-specific nature of the threat made it all the more unsettling. Terrifically acted, brief to perform but hard to forget.

The New World Order, first performed in 1991, shows Des (Jonjo O’Neill) and Lionel (the brilliant Paapa Essiedu) tormenting a naked, silent, blindfolded prisoner (Jonathan Glew), and reminded me so much of the mental torturers Goldberg and McCann in The Birthday Party only forty years on. Whilst the majority of their vitriol is hurled against the prisoner, the more experienced Des sometimes challenges the more youthful Lionel about his approach, criticising his use of language: (“You called him a c*** last time. Now you call him a prick. How many times do I have to tell you? You’ve got to learn to define your terms and stick to them.”) Like Press Conference, at times it’s incredibly funny, but the overwhelming atmosphere is one of terror.

Next, Mountain Language, a 1988 play that Pinter wrote following a visit to Turkey, although he always insisted that it was not based on the political situation between Turks and Kurds. In some miserable military camp, prisoners are apparently taken captive for the crime of speaking the “mountain language”. They are mountain people, the language is their own language, but it has been outlawed. The deprivation and penalties for transgressing this law are severe. Even though the threat in this play is a little more obvious, it’s no less sinister; and, as in The New World Order,there is an element of comedy in the interplay between the captors and interrogators, as well as some nonsensical rules that cannot be followed – such as when the old woman has been bitten by a Dobermann Pinscher but the authorities won’t do anything about it unless they can tell them the name of the dog. Jamie Lloyd’s direction brings out the starkness of the situation and I loved the decision to give the role of the Guard to the disembodied voice of Michael Gambon – a very effective way of increasing the “otherworldly” aspect of the play. Riveting, disturbing, unforgettable.

Then we had Kate O’Flynn performing Pinter’s poem American Football. I think I was still so overwhelmed by the themes and imagery of Mountain Language that I scarcely noticed this short piece. It was written in 1991 as a reaction to the Gulf War, and satirises the action of the American military at war as if they were just playing a game of football. It didn’t, for me, have the stand-out nature of the other pieces; maybe if it had been repositioned in the running order it might have worked better? Genuinely not sure.

Then an unexpected moment of lightness. The Pres and the Officer is a short piece only discovered by his widow Lady Antonia Fraser last year in a notepad; she remarked that his handwriting was quite frail so presumably he wrote it sometime in his final years – he died in 2008. Lady Antonia said she has often been asked what Pinter would have made of Trump – so now we know! This presages the American president so accurately that it takes your breath away. The simple premise: the President gives the order to nuke London. He says they had it coming to them. After a short conversation with his officer, he realises he made a mistake and it should have been Paris. So many questions, so little time. With a guest star playing the unnamed President (I think it was Jon Culshaw) this little sketch is horrifyingly hilarious.

Another poem next; Death, from 1997, given a sombre but effective reading by Maggie Steed. It takes the form of a clinical set of questions about a dead body that have a strange way of making you think about death and the dead in an unemotional way. A simple, but fascinating poem, which I enjoyed very much, despite its dour subject matter.

That led us into the final piece before the interval, One For The Road, and the first time I’d seen Antony Sher on stage since Peter Barnes’ Red Noses for the RSC in 1985. His performance as the creepy, faux-avuncular Nicolas, doing a one-man nice cop nasty cop routine as part of an interrogation procedure, was outstanding and worth the ticket price alone.Dominating both Paapa Essiedu’s Victor and Kate O’Flynn’s Gila into nervous wrecks, the most chilling scene was his interrogation of seven-year-old Nicky, their son, played with fantastic confidence by young Quentin Deborne. It was when Nicolas was fingering the neckline of Nicky’s T-shirt you could really feel your sweat forming and your gorge rising. A riveting play with an immaculate performance, and, despite its awfulness, I loved it.

All that, and it was only just time for the interval! After the ice-cream and Chardonnay break, it was back for Ashes to Ashes, directed by Lia Williams. Kate O’Flynn and Paapa Essiedu starred in this moving and disturbing one-act play from 1996; partly a stream of consciousness between a couple in a relationship, partly a sequence of reminiscences and imaginings, partly a conversation with a counsellor in therapy.Because Pinter keeps all the references as obscure as possible, this play can mean all things to all people, but there is definitely a suggestion of families being torn apart on the way to a Concentration Camp at the end of the play. Superb performances – and an exceptional lighting design by Jon Clark that added enormously to the mood and the terror.

After the relative frothiness of the afternoon’s Pinter Two programme, this was an emotional sucker punch that left us sitting in our seats for minutes after it had ended, trying to make sense of all that had gone before. Brilliant performances throughout, but it’s Kate O’Flynn and Paapa Essiedu who had the majority of the work to do, and they carried it off amazingly. And, to cap it all, Antony Sher’s nauseatingly superb interrogator Nicolas ran off with the Best Characterisation of the Night award. Congratulations to the whole cast for an awe-inspiring production.

Review – Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company on tour at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 3rd March 2018

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This was a close call! The snow meant the Royal and Derngate cancelled all performances on Friday 2nd March, including the comedy night with Adam Hess and Glenn Moore, for which we had tickets and about which I was expecting to be writing today! Big shame. Fortunately, all shows for Saturday went ahead – and I would estimate about 70% of the almost fully booked audience managed to struggle in to see the play. If they had cancelled Hamlet on the Saturday we would have had no chance of seeing it… which would have been very regrettable as this is one of those rare shows that has 5 stars written all over it within five minutes of the start. But let me not get ahead of myself…

This is the first time (or the first time for ages, not entirely sure) that the Royal Shakespeare Company have taken one of their touring productions to Northampton, and I for one welcome them with open arms; with any luck this will be the start of a very fruitful co-operation between the two theatres. I also realised this is only the fourth time I’ve seen Hamlet on stage – pretty poor showing for what I always consider to be my Favourite Play Of All Time. The first time was at the National Theatre in 1976 for a four hour, uncut performance with Albert Finney as the Great Dane, Denis Quilley as Claudius, Simon Ward as Laertes and Barbara Jefford as Gertrude. I remember it mesmerised me. Then I saw an Oxford University production at the Oxford Playhouse in 1979, where, low down among the castlist, a young Tim McInnerney was a fabulously foppish Osric – definitely a forerunner to his Lord Percy in Blackadder II. In 2008 we saw the RSC production starring David Tennant – but we had tickets for when he was off sick, so we saw Edward Bennett instead and he was superb.

And now this! This production was first seen in Stratford in 2016 and is now settled in its brief tour of the UK and USA. It’s a production that takes everything you would expect from a standard production of Hamlet and throws it out of the nearest window, whilst remaining delightfully true to the original characterisations and the powerful story. The only addition to the original text that I could make out was the short opening scene where we see Hamlet awarded his degree from the University of Wittenburg – so appropriate on the Derngate stage, which is where the University of Northampton graduation ceremonies take place.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – we know this, as Marcellus tells us so. Shakespeare’s text confirms that there are invasions from Norway, and that England and France are within relatively easy reach. But where are we really? The pounding drums that permeate the production suggest Africa, as do the appearance and accents of many of the cast – all but a few of the actors are black. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father appears in grand traditional West African robes, and Gertrude is bedecked in the splendid colourful dresses one might associate with Nigeria. However, the gravediggers sing a calypso, which suggests (to me) the West Indies; and Guildenstern, with her (yes, her) pale skin and fair hair could be taken for pure Danish through and through. So what’s all that about? No need for alarm. All we really need to know is that this is a different universe for Hamlet; the story has been taken up and replaced in a new geographical and racial setting, helping its accessibility to a whole new young, vibrant audience. However, rest assured that its age-old themes are as relevant and dynamic as ever.

I don’t think I’m a purist (whatever that means) when it comes to Shakespeare, because he’s big and clever enough to survive any re-imagination of his plays, no matter what a gifted director might throw at him. But he’s also incredibly versatile at lending himself to a variety of new interpretations and, if done well, each one illuminates his plays in a different way. Simon Godwin’s extraordinary production reveals so much more about Hamlet the man than most other productions. The sight of Hamlet in his first scene, his face runny with crying and nasal mucus (sorry if you’re having lunch) said so much more about his very real and solitary grief for his late father than any smart words or sarcastic glances. His interaction with the characters who are his friends is one of true joy; you can tell he and Horatio have that kind of friendship where they could tell each other anything with the absolute trust; Horatio’s grief at his friend’s death in the final scene (oops, spoilers) was truly moving. Hamlet has a roister-doister type of friendship with the guard Marcellus; a slightly more ambivalent friendship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who prove themselves to be lousy liars when admitting that they were “sent for”. Everyone else he either distrusts or keeps up a wary distance from; seen beautifully in his brief hello to the guard Barnardo.

One of those unanswerable questions that always crops up with Hamlet is – is he mad or not? There’s no question in my mind that this particular Hamlet is 100% sane all the way through. His explanation that he will only be mad north-north-west is very definite and convincing, and every scene clearly shows his manipulations and detailed planning, to bring about the downfall of Claudius and thus take revenge on the death of his father, as his father’s Ghost so clearly insisted. Paapa Essiedu, as Hamlet, is simply stunning. His ability to get to the heart of the character is so rewarding and fulfilling to the audience. His clarity of speech, the way he juxtaposes nobility with wretchedness, his lightness of humour, his depth of tragedy… it’s a blistering performance. He’s one of those actors you just can’t take your eyes off. The clarity with which Mr Essiedu takes on all those intricate soliloquies, the deliberate way in which his Hamlet picks a fight with Ophelia, the precision of his dealings with the Players, even his paint-spattered appearance in his studio, all convinced me this was a portrayal of an intelligent and witty brain, knowing exactly what he was trying to achieve, by an equally intelligent and witty actor. Hamlet’s fore-runner, Kyd’s Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy may well be mad againe but I’m pretty sure Hamlet isn’t.

This production is also much funnier than any production of Hamlet has any right to be, but without taking liberties; it’s all legitimate humour, stemming from the text. Hamlet dragging out the dead Polonius with all the mundanity of helping with the shopping is hilarious. Talking of whom, this production actually made all those bumbling pomposities of Polonius genuinely funny; Laertes’ constant attempts to take his leave, but returning because his father hasn’t quite finished yet, surprised the audience with its modern irreverence. The Yorick scene is light, creative and almost bubbly in its freshness. By contrast, when this production gets dark, it gets really dark. Ophelia’s madness is performed with such deep sadness, with the observing characters visibly shrinking with embarrassment and confusion, that it really disconcerts the audience that you feel horrified – in a simple way of looking at it – that this lovely girl has come to this.

Paul Wills’ magnificent design is arresting from the start. The panelled halls of Elsinore, the King and Queen’s thrones (I loved how cheekily they were redesignated as the Ladies and Gents toilets for the play within a play scene), the artistic designs of Hamlet’s hanging tapestries, are all lively and ingenious. By comparison, I loved the simplicity of depicting the offstage Ghost as simply a bright light in the distance. The costumes are superb: Gertrude’s fine large-print gowns, the Ghost’s dignified formal dress, Hamlet’s colourful painter’s suit, the military garb of the soldiers, the sharp business suits of the envoys, the fancy dress of the Players, even Rosencrantz’s office geeky look (was he meant to look like the guy from the IT Crowd?) all stand out and just make the visual presentation of the play so much more enjoyable.

Clarence Smith, as Claudius, gives an excellent performance as someone who can’t quite believe his luck that his evil plan to become King was so successful, so easily. He has just the right amount of smugness for someone who’s got the power, got the girl and now wants to enjoy the fruits of his achievements. But his fright at the false fire of the murder scene performed by the Players felt genuinely horrific and from then he cuts a suitably weak figure. Hamlet almost kills him whilst praying – but such a fate is too good for him, so worthless is he. Even when presiding over the fight between Hamlet and Laertes, no one listens to him any more.

Lorna Brown is a very regal queen Gertrude, full of her high office and revelling in the stimulation of a fresh husband, until Hamlet devastates her with the truth of what she has done, when her remorse is genuine. Ewart James Walters has a strong presence as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, cutting a truly noble and furious figure; and he’s also a wily and humorous gravedigger, riposting Hamlet’s questions with his unlearned wit. I enjoyed Patrick Elue’s hearty Marcellus and his statesmanlike Fortinbras; I liked how Kevin N Golding underplayed the Player King and didn’t make him out to be a pantomime character, although his portrayal of the King in the play within the play was delightfully cruel. Buom Tihngang gives an entertaining performance as Laertes, telling Ophelia how to behave whilst not anticipating doing the same himself (hence the condoms in his case) and returning as a noble, avenging foe.

The play benefits from a magnificent ensemble who don’t put a foot wrong, but there are also three simply superb performances in supporting roles that I must mention. James Cooney is brilliant as Horatio; honest, supportive, constructive, Hamlet’s right-hand man always there to help, moving me (almost) to tears as he mourns at the end. Mimi Ndiweni is wonderful as Ophelia; full of schoolgirl cheek, hope, kindness as well as duty when we first encounter her; destroyed though grief later in the play when her mad transformation is truly painful to watch. But maybe best of all Joseph Mydell, a dignified Egeon in the National Theatre’s Comedy of Errors six years ago, who creates a real character our of Polonius’ nonsensical ditherings, genuinely funny as the well-meaning bighead. Mrs Chrisparkle announced at the end of the show that she “finally got Polonius” as a character. But, when all’s said and done, it’s Mr Essiedu whom you can’t get out of your mind for days.

This production has almost finished its tour, with a month at the Hackney Empire coming up and then a week at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in May. I don’t do star ratings; but in this instance I’ll make an exception. This is as five star a production as you can get. Scintillating, riveting, yet so true to the classic original. Can’t recommend it too strongly.