Wednesday 7 June 2017

Common at the National, or, Perhaps They Could Try Playing It For Laughs?

Note: This is a review of the performance on Monday 5th June 2017. The press night took place last night (Tues 6th June 2017).

On paper this new commission had promise. I loved D C Moore's The Swan, staged a few years back in the Paintframe, and Anne-Marie Duff is a very fine actress. Sadly, that promise is not fulfilled.

The principle problem with this show is Moore's text. It is both elaborately over-written and plagued by mangling of word order – one spends a fair bit of time trying to work out what people are actually saying. It rarely achieves naturalness in delivery, despite some of the acting talent involved. Quite often it comes across as just plain silly (did nobody query the name Eggy Tom during the production process?). In itself, the text, much of the time, simply fails to work as dramatic language.

Sunday 4 June 2017

Angels in America at the National, or, Hopefully Not Elliott's Farewell

After a run of uneven to poor shows it's a pleasure to be able to report that finally the National has a hit with this outstanding revival of Tony Kushner's epic.

Kushner's play is an often heartbreaking exploration primarily of the experience of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s America but also of the rich complexity of the gay community. It's also a terrible reminder of a world in which it was often far harder than it now is to be open about one's sexual identity. The play begins as a comparatively realist saga of a number of protagonists – the closeted Republican lawyer Roy M Cohn (Nathan Lane), the Pitts – a Mormon couple (Denise Gough and Russell Tovey), and a gay couple – Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) and Louis Ironson (James McArdle). But there are already blurred lines between the imagined and the real. These increase in the second part when Prior receives a visitation from Amanda Lawrence's Angel that eventually leads us to a despairing, death-longing Heaven. Part Two could occasionally have done with a little judicious trimming, but ultimately I forgave the occasional flabbiness because the play is able to laugh at itself, strikes at prejudice with an undiminished power, and, often, brought tears to my eyes. One can't of course really know what it must have been like to see this when it was originally performed, especially if you had direct experience of that world and the epidemic, but watching this revival does offer powerful glimpses.

La Traviata at Glyndebourne, or, Making the Familiar Fresh

Note: This is a review of the performance on Sunday 28th May 2017.

Doing a rough calculation after this performance I reckon that I must have seen at least six different productions of this work in my opera going life. As the first opera I remember really connecting with it's close to my heart. But the last production I saw was the dismal ENO red curtain effort and, had it been solely up to me, I doubt I would have gone to this Glyndebourne run. Fortunately, a regular fixture in my summer calendar now is a trip with my partner and old friends now in East Sussex to Glyndebourne. This year our friends proposed seeing La Traviata. Thank goodness that they did. For this is a show that, for me, wiped the slate clean. I felt I was seeing this familiar work with a powerful freshness. On several occasions, it brought tears to my eyes.

Tom Cairns directs both thoughtfully and subtly. The sets are spare – a curved wall to the left, a smaller wall partially enclosing a bedroom space to the right, the bed itself and occasional other furnishings. There's just enough hint of gardens, open skies in Act 2 Scene 1, and otherwise we are in enclosed, often oppressive spaces. Cairns adds pointed dumbshow during the preludes – Violetta emerging into a circle of predatory men at the very start, preparing wearily to leave for Flora's party, lying asleep at the beginning of Act 3 while Annina (Eliza Safjan) weeps. On each occasion these scenes added intensity to the drama.