Theatre Reviews 2008

Current time constraints look unlikely to ease for a while, so I shall try a new format for the review pages, allowing me to note the plays we have seen, and adding full reviews as and when time becomes available. The most exciting news for me is that Kingston Theatre has finally opened its doors for proper work, and we have seen two plays so far, Uncle Vanya and Visiting Mr Green. On my birthday we managed to get to see a very early performance of Never so Good, the new Howard Brenton play about the life of Harold McMillan, which was excellent if you have any interest in 20th century politics. Shortly after we made it to the Haymarket for The Sea, an Edward Bond revival featuring an award winning performance by Eileen Atkins, and a stunning production by Jonathon Kent.  the sea effects (surprise, surprise!) really were outstanding.  A hugely enjoyable evening, but I had to look up the play in one of Amanda's birthday presents to find out what it was about!

 Major Barbara was out next visit to the National, and we are again in hyperbole territory.  I am so pleased that GBS is back in fashion.  This production features a restrained Simon Russell Beale and a rather too lightweight Major, but the dialogue and argument are toe-curling and deeply relevant.  And for £10 a ticket, there is no excuse not to go! Major Barbara proved a tenuous excuse for Mark Thomas to do a 'Platform' performance about the Arms Trade, an hour of political discourse which was rather more subtle than I expected.  Thomas knows his stuff and puts it across with huge humour and considerable understanding. And so to The Roundhouse, and we just about managed to pick up one of the current run of Shakespear's Historys being performed by  the RSC.  They have built a superb set in the old railway shed, filled it with 34 wonderful actors and reinvented Richard III as a pulsating political satire on tyranny and corruption.  Pretty much everything about this mammoth show was almost perfect, in particular the direction, lighting, music and costume.  If it perhaps lacked the genius of Gambon's Henry IV, the overall ensemble was brilliant and Jonathon's Slinger's manic, unravelling Richard in particular.

It being summer.... well, almost summer, time to head down to Sussex and the Festival Theatre in Chichester, and our second dose of Chekhov this year, to see The Cherry Orchard, starring Diana Rigg. Then back to Kingston and the Rose for a version of Tartuffe, produced by the Liverpool everyman Theatre in a new translation by Roger McGough. I had a feeling this would be good, and I was not mistaken.  This delightful Moliere farce about the conman cleric, who completely hoodwinks the naive Orgon with his false piety is the father of all farces. McGough has translated the whole thing in verse, and if some of the rhymes are cheesy, then the cast invite the audience's complicity in the joke.  In fact, the cast is without a weakness in this romp of delightful foolery and sexual innuendo, with particular praise due to Annabelle Dowler, the cheeky Servant, Rebecca Lacey, the provocative Elmire and John Ramm, the seedily disgusting Tartuffe himself.  it is on tour, so if you spot it near you, it is well worth the trip.

Just a few days later, and we were back another hundred years or so for the National's new version of Thomas Middleton's The Ravenger's Tragedy. A contemporary setting of this lustful bloodbath of revenge, a satire on the lack of morality of the emerging Jacobean court.

One of the great moments of theatre going in the past ten years was the National's version of Candide, a wonderful, silly romp of sheer pleasure.  I couldn't therefore turn down the chance to see how it fared as a full opera - well, full operetta - at the ENO. A couple of weeks later, we couldn't visit the home of the bard and not visit the (temporary) RSC for Merchant of Venice. A week later, and a sudden outbreak of sun, and it was a whole mob of us at the Barbican for the much acclaimed, if harrowing Black Watch. When we were at the ENO for Candide we saw an advert for a 50th anniversary production of West Side Story at Sadlers Wells.

The Kingston Rose seems to be settling down, and as expected, Peter Hall is putting his Theatre Royal Bath productions into Kingston. I missed their version of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, but no-way was I going to miss Ibsen's Dolls House. If that production was entirely traditional, long frocks and formal drawing rooms, Hedda at The Gate was anything but. We managed to get tickets for the penultimate day of the run, but this was a fabulous modern, very much Notting Hill version of Ibsen's classic, and featured a wonderful depiction of Hedda by Cara Horgan, surely someone we will hear more of.

And so to the moment I have certainly been waiting for, The Rose's first home-grown production - Love's Labour's Lost. A great success, in my opinion, and this is not a play I know at all. Verbally superb, and a really genuinely good production.

Probably our final play of the year was Oedipus, which we were lucky to catch in its sell-out run. I fear the sales stem from Ralph Fiennes who seems to hold the youngsters in thrall - we were surrounded by teenage girls. Fiennes is a good actor, but I am not convinced he is great. As the great Oedipus unravels, as bad news is poured on disaster, just when you think it couldn't get worse, it does, he is splendid; but as the great war hero and leader of Thebes I was less convinced. The chorus, however, were fabulous. Every grey suited man was different, involved, concerned moving the play along. Good ensemble acting, and I suppose it is great to see so many youngsters at a Greek tragedy, whatever their motivation!

In honesty, it has not been a vintage year. Highlights for me the two RSC productions, The witty McGough translation of Tartuffe, Candide and the two Ibsens, the delightful Gate production of Hedda and Peter Hall's Dolls House. Only one absolute masterpiece, the stunning Black Watch.

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