The Slaves of Solitude

I haven’t read any books by Patrick Hamilton, whose novel this is based on, though I have seen his plays Gaslight and Rope, plus some TV and film adaptations of his work. Nicholas Wright has adapted this late novel for the stage and I found it a bit of an odd concoction.

Set in a boarding house in Berkshire during the Second World War, the residents are mostly long-term, some forced to find alternative accomodation to their bombed London homes. It’s mostly retired folk, but thirty-something Miss Roach, who works for a publisher, is amongst them. She frequents the local pub, where she meets a black American GI, Lieutenant Pike, and a German doctor’s clerk, Vicki Kugelman. The latter ends up moving into the boarding house, which the Lieutenant visits to take dinner with Miss Roach.

There’s a lot of alcohol involved and the triangular relationship of Roach, Pike and Kugelmann becomes a bit of a roller-coaster. After a tragic incident, all three go their separate ways, leaving the boarding house, two ending up not too happily reunited in London. There are a lot of scenes, which I felt were detrimental to both characters development and flow, and some of the behaviour on display seemed incongruous. The biggest flaw for me was the ending, leaving you hanging in mid-air, though it is what the title says – they are slaves to solitude.

It’s hard to fault the production, though on the last day of previews there were still a few glitches to iron out. The scene changes are themselves excellent, transforming from boarding house to pub and back quickly and seamlessly, though the change to the one outdoor scene worked less well for those of us in the front stalls. There are some lovely performances, with the romantic trio, played by Fenella Woolgar, Daon Broni and Lucy Cohu, all excellent. Clive Francis’ cameo as the somewhat lecherous mysoginist racist Thwaites is a delight (!), and there are smaller but important contributions from Richard Tate and Tom Milligan.

I left the theatre not fully satisfied, concluding that it perhaps wasn’t really worth adapting. Mind you, it did come at the end of a week which included three crackers – Albion, Young Marx and Beginning.

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A Human Being Died That Night

This was my first (long overdue) visit to Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs space. As it happens the play didn’t actually start there, but in a ‘pop up’ university lecture room in the foyer where Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela recalls her visits to prison to interview Eugene de Kock after his appearances at the South African Truth & Reconciliation hearings. As she begins to describe her arrival in prison for the first time, we walk into it and take our places peering into the cell where they meet.

de Kock was known as ‘Prime Evil’ and Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist and member of the commission, is fascinated by him. During the hearings he asked to meet his victims families privately so that he could apologise. This initiative, and the expressions of forgiveness by the families, struck many and led to more meetings between perpetrators of crimes and victim’s families. It also led to Gobodo-Madikizela’s desire to understand de Kock and those like him. For the rest of the play we are with them, on two occasions six years apart, with just the occasional presence of a prison guard.

I’ve always been in awe of the concept and execution of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, convinced that I personally could never find the capacity to understand or forgive, but understanding both its power and importance. The play isn’t really about that though; it’s a peep into the mind of ‘Prime Evil’ in an attempt to understand the motivation and events behind horrific crimes.

It does prove to be a voyeuristic experience, thanks to the cell bars of Paul Wills’ design and intensity created by lights and sound, but it’s the intensity of the performances that allow you to examine and attempt to understand at an objective psychological level. Matthew Marsh (is he the most hard-working stage actor we have?) conveys a cold intelligence, seemingly devoid of any feeling or emotion with a spot-on Afrikaan accent that makes your flesh crawl recalling hearing accents like it in the past. Nomer Dumerzweni brilliantly conveys Gobodo-Madikizela’s forensic approach and suppressed horror.

Nicholas Wright has adapted Gobodo-Madikizela’s book and Jonathan Munby has staged it well to give us a very thought-provoking and insightful 80 minutes and a somehow appropriate companion piece to The Arrest of Ai WeiWei upstairs.

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Travelling Light

This is a work of fiction, and if you take it as that, its charming, amusing, clever and well crafted. Some seem to have taken exception to its hijacking of cinematic history which I’m not sure it’s trying to do.

We’re in an East European Jewish village at the turn of the 20th century when Motl returns from the city after the death of his father. Discovering his father’s photographic and early cinematic equipment, he becomes enthralled with the idea of moving pictures and is encouraged and funded by local businessman Jacob to make a film of people in the village. Despite the somewhat critical reception, the idea of a work of fiction is mooted and enthusiasm goes viral as they embark on its making.

Many of the pioneers of early Hollywood were Jews from this part of the world and indeed we do skip forward to 1936 when Motl has changed his name to Maurice and become a successful director, but I don’t think the play is making any claims to present the true origin of cinema as we know it. It does include the genesis of the business model for public exhibition of films and shows technical discoveries like editing, lighting reflectors, the camera dolly and special effects, but it does so with its tongue in its cheek. We have stereotypes like the interfering producer, corner-cutting production accountant, highly strung director and upstaging actors. There are comments from a preview audience (the beginnings of the focus group) and it even hints at the casting couch!

Bob Crowley’s monochrome design cleverly merges live action with film footage, though it only opens up once to reveal the village exteriors (as a film set in 1936) which seems a bit of a shame. It’s a little slow in the first half, but does pick up pace and draws you in. The performances are a bit stereotypical (Fiddler on the Roof – with a fiddler included!) though I really liked Damien Molony as Motl and Lauren O’Neil as the love interest. The other ladies all engage well – Sue Kelvin as Motl’s aunt, Abigail McKern as Jacob’s wife and Alexis Zegerman as his daughter. This isn’t Anthony Sher’s greatest moment, but his somewhat caricatured Jacob does make you smile and laugh.

If you don’t set your sights too high, it’s an enjoyable couple of hours. The Nicholas’s Wright (playwright) and Hytner (director) have done better work, but this is an enjoyable evening nontheless and I’m glad I went.

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The Last of the Duchess

It’s surprising how much you learn about Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, from a play in which she’s a character who remains offstage. Nicholas Wright cleverly tells the story through her two biographers – Caroline Blackwood and Diana Mosley – and her lawyer & assistant.

The play takes place in the Duchess’  Paris home late in her life when she is a recluse guarded by the somewhat imposing lawyer / advisor / friend Maitre Suzanne Blum. Lady Caroline Blackwood is trying to get an interview with the Duchess for a Sunday supplement, dangling the carrot of a Snowden photo shoot. In the end, she opts for an interview with the secretive but fascinating Blum herself. The play happens before she writes her biography of the Duchess; indeed the events the play focuses on may have inspired her to write it. 

The characters and the play speculate on the relationship. Is she just a gatekeeper? Is she ripping off the Duchess by selling her possessions? Is she just an up-market groupie? Is she in love with her? The rip off theory seems to be dismissed by Lady Diana’s investigations and interrogations (she’s already written her biography) but the rest is left ambiguous.

I’ve seen some stunning performances in the last two weeks – Mark Rylance in Jerusalem, Douglas Hodge in Inadmissable Evidence and Tasmin Greig in Jumpy – and Sheila Hancock here as Maitre Blum is another one. With a very authentic sounding French accent, her performance is very nuanced and subtle. Anna Chancellor had less than two weeks between coming off the Minerva Chichester stage (well, floor actually) and her first performance here. I loved her in the first act, but felt she pushed it too far in the second. John Heffernan’s transition from mere assistant to protector was well played and Angela Thorne’s cameo as Lady Diana Mosley was terrific (though she did have some great lines, including some lovely references to her Nazi sympathies). Lord Snowden is another character who remains offstage.

Anthony Ward’s opulent Parisian drawing-room is perfect for both period and station and Richard Eyre’s direction as sensitive as always. I’m not sure its a great play – I suspect I won’t remember it as long as Wright’s best play, Vincent in Brixton – but it’s well worth seeing, for Sheila Hancock’s performance if nothing else.

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Rattigan in Chichester – The Deep Blue Sea & Rattigan’s Nijinsky

Chichester Festival Theatre will certainly get first prize when it comes to celebrating this Rattigan centenary. There are two revivals, a new play written as a ‘response’ to one of them, a play created from an unproduced screenplay and six rehearsed readings. Well, that puts our national companies to shame!

The Deep Blue Sea

Many consider this his finest play, though after recent revivals of After the Dance and Flare Path, I would question that. The first production I saw at the Almeida with Penelope Wilton was wonderful, but the second, by Edward Hall with Greta Scacchi, was a fusty mannered museum piece.

Unfortunately, I was in the Donmar the night before this, so seeing an intimate play in the vast Chichester main house space it was very hard to get involved, even from the ninth row. I really missed the proximity which the Minerva would have given it; I wasn’t moved.

Hester has left her knighted husband to live with the laddish Freddie. The play starts when she is discovered in front of the gas fire with the evidence of too much asprin at her side. Not knowing the whereabouts of Freddie, a neighbour contacts her ex. who rushes to her aid. Freddie returns and discovers her suicide note and thus begins the breakdown of their relationship. The ex. makes a bid for reunion, but this fails, so Hester is left alone.

It’s well designed and staged and the acting is uniformly good; Amanda Root is a fine Hester, Anthony Calf is very good as the ex. I particularly liked John Hopkin’s passionate Freddie and there is a lovely cameo from Susan Tracy as the landlady. In this space, though, I just couldn’t get involved as much as you need to be moved by this fine play that was way ahead of its time and, somewhat ironically, as radical in its way as the ‘angry young men’ that took Rattigan’s place at the heart of post-war British drama.

Rattigan’s Nijinsky

This late career screenplay about the life of dancer Nijinsky was never produced by the BBC, apparently because of objections from his wife. Unstageable in its written form, Nicholas Wright has created a play both about it and from it.

We’re in Rattigan’s Claridges suite shortly after his arrival from his Bermuda home, here to finalise the production of his screenplay. He gets visits from the man at the BBC and Nijinsky’s wife Romola, but the play is mostly imagined scenes from the screenplay / life of Nijinsky played out in front of us. It was a fascinating life, so it’s a fascinating story. The idea of the structure is better than the result, though, and it felt a bit clumsy – ‘now lets show the audition of Nijinsky as child’, ‘lets move to where he begins hid relationship with Diaghilev’, ‘OK, time for the journey to Buenos Aires’. Interesting story, but a play that ultimately doesn’t work.

Again, the design by Mike Britton and Philip Franks’ staging are fine and it suits the big space better than The Deep Blue Sea. Malcolm Sinclair as Rattigan and Jonathan Hyde as Diaghilev are very good and there’s good support from a large cast, most playing two or three roles. Again, Susan Tracy gives fine cameos as Romola Nijinsky and Rattigan’s mother.

Overall, this pair didn’t live up to expectations, but that doesn’t take away Chichester’s crown as Rattigan’s champion in this centenary year.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Like I did with that other Covent Garden rarity – a new opera (Anna Nicole) – I’m making an exception by blogging an even rarer thing – a new full length ballet. I gather it’s c.15 years since the last one and c.20 years since one with a new score. I’m not a fan of mixed bills and I exhausted the repertoire of full evening works some time ago, so a potential treat was in store.

This is more in the Northern Ballet Theatre dance drama mould than classical ballet, which might be the reason why I enjoyed it so much – the latter can be very fusty and fussy. They’ve engaged playwright Nicholas Wright to provide a scenario, which is maybe why the dramatic flow is so good, and Joby Talbot’s score is hugely impressive. Designer Bob Crowley’s imagination has run wild and produced some stunning witty sets and even more stunning costumes. Jon Driscoll (fresh from creating the extraordinary tornado in Kansas which is one of the highlights of The Wizard of Oz) and Gemma Carrington provide brilliant projections. The production values are second to none and only Covent Garden has the resources to stage something this spectacular (If he’s sees this, NBT’s David Nixon will turn green permanently).

Zenaida Yanowsky takes your breath away as the Queen of Hearts. Eric Underwood is astonishingly agile as the Caterpillar, Steven McRae makes a wonderful Mad Hatter and all three leads – Edward Watson’s White Rabbit, Sergei Polunin as the Knave and Lauren Cuthbertson as Alice – dance brilliantly. Then there’s the Duchess…….why they cast an actor rather than a dancer I don’t know, but if you’re going to have an actor for a Panto Dame-like comic part, you won’t get better than Simon Russell Beale. Watching him take ballet bows at the end, he looked completely at home – like a dancer who has moved on to those ‘character’ parts like they do as they age.

With Anna Nicole, The Wizard of Oz and this within a fortnight, I’m in danger of overdosing on colourful spectacle, but I wouldn’t have missed this for the world and there’s so much detail, I’m just going to have to go again when it returns.

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