Review - A Doll's House, The Donmar Warehouse

A bit like the guests on Marcus Brigstock's radio and now TV show I've Never Seen Star Wars who confess to not having experienced something that would have assumed they had, I have to admit shamefacedly that I have never seen a production of A Doll's House. I know that I have seen clips on telly and I'm aware of productions that have happened but up until last night I have been faking it more than an MP's mortgage repayment.

I was led to believe however that Ibsen, in 1879, had, in telling the story of Nora Helmer and her husband Torvold, produced the first feminist play. A scandalous attack on conventional marriage norms whereby Nora's dutiful wife comes to realise that the love of her husband is conditional on her playing the innocent girl and rejecting this role she leaves him and her children to "find" herself.

However in Zinnie Harris' new translation as directed by Kfir Yefet it's actually about a lovely man with titian red hair who loves his wife very much for two hours and 10 minutes of a two hours and twenty minutes play, only quite rightly losing his temper with her for ten minutes because she, being blackmailed by a nasty northern oik, has compromised his reputation and she not realising when she's on to a good thing bleats on about equality and leaves him devastated and howling in pain.`

Why has this change in emphasis occurred? Because someone had the bright idea of casting Toby Stephens as husband Thomas. Toby Stephens...the only carrot-topped Bond baddie, Toby Stephens...a swoon-enducing Mr Rochester, Toby Stephens whose performance is the sexiest turn since Hugh Jackman strolled onto the National stage singing about the corn being as high as an elephant's eye! At one point Thomas compliments himself for having such an attractive wife and patronizingly crows about his "ownership" of her, the good folk of the Donmar audience harumph politically correctly while I swear that every woman is secretly screaming "own me, own me!"

In updating the text Zinnie Harris has transformed Torvold the bank manager to Thomas the newly elected cabinet minister, and statements about transparency and trust produced chuckles from the auditorium and along with Nora's blackmailing plot gave the whole thing a whiff of Wildean An Ideal Husband.

Gillian Anderson, beautiful, looking like a Singer Sargent portrait, does all she can by hand wringing and foot-stamping to make me care, but how could she leave him? It does not make sense!

Tara Fitzgerald plays her schoolfriend Christine and inexpicably holds a torch but a lack of seating for Christopher Eccleston's blackmailer, who really should lighten up. I'd love to see Eccleston do comedy, maybe some tap-dancing sometime, though it's a moot point whether you can shuffle, ball, change with a permanent sneer on your face. Archie Rice maybe?

Three great theatrical male howls ...Jonathan Pryce in the Almeida's production of The Goat or Who Is Sylvia when he is confronted with the body of his dead goat love, Ralph Fiennes in the recent Oedipus the National when he realises that Philip Larkin was right about your parents, and now Toby Stephens at the end of this production as he is left screaming on the floor when Nora leaves. Fabulous.

Review - Alphabetical Order, Hampstead Theatre

"There should be ashtrays everywhere". The Silver-Fox's first reaction on seeing the set for Chris Luscombe's revival of Michael Frayn's 1975 Alphabetical Order at Hampstead Theatre last night. "Everybody smoked all the time".

When my beloved was not silver just foxy he was a junior reporter on The Southern Evening Echo and it was with this in mind, plus the fact that men of a certain age (his) tremble at the memory of Imogen Stubbs as short-skirted, private investigator Anna Lee in the eponymous 90's TV show, that I had booked us into this trip down newspaper memory lane.

Set in the cuttings library of a provincial daily the play shows the effect of a new ultra-efficient assistant librarian Lesley/Chloe Newsome, on the chaotic work place and the lives of the librarian Lucy/Ms Stubbs and her journalistic colleagues. She tidies the filing system, steals Ms Stubb's boyfriend, John/Jonathan Guy Lewis, and eradicates the cosy bolt hole that comforts the quietly drunken features writer Arnold/Gawn Grainger and Wally/Michael Garner's terminally married leader writer. The cast is completed by Penelope Beaumont as Nora, an amazingly patronising features editor who carries with her a whiff of Celia Imrie's Dinnerladies-HR manager Phillipa, and Ian Talbot as Geoffrey an ageing boy scout of a messenger. They're all very good which makes it more of a mystery as to why they are appearing in this incredibly dated, immensely boring, play-in-aspic production.

Christopher Luscombe's last outing as director, Enjoy, is completing it's very successful West End run. It is a brilliantly dark piece in which Alan Bennett predicts the rise of the heritage industry, Northern terrace life becomes a living museum with human exhibits. In Alphabetical Order he has directed a play that could be on view in such a museum under the title "This is How We Did It Thirty Years Ago".
Mind you the Monday night audience seemed to love it... the gasp of surprise and delight as the lights came up on the second half and we saw the results of a good tidy up on the set was equal to any "reveal" moment on a prime time make-over programme. Similarly the giddy sense of naughtiness induced by the cast flinging folders of cuttings around the office had them nearly wetting themselves with delight., though, judging by their average age, inappropriate bladder leakage might be a not infrequent companion.

Random snippets from our post theatre discussion:
following up his critique of the ashtray situation (Ms Stubbs does light up, cigarette-wise, for one brief moment) the Silver-Fox reminised about compressed air tubes that were used to transport copy from one part of the newspaper empire to another and begged me to stop buying theatre tickets when there were still re-runs of Frasier he hasn't seen yet,
I commented that the bottle green corduroy jacket being worn by Gawn Grainger was the spit of one we picked up in a vintage shop in York,
my God she's 48!
and didn't Jonathon Guy Lewis' hair cut remind one of Robert Redford's floppy fringe in All The President's Men. Now that was a great piece of writing about a newspaper office.

Review - Nocturnal, The Gate

It was a beautiful, sunny day in old London town yesterday, and with the Silver-Fox working to top up that credit card which keeps the dream alive, I indulged in a little theatrical masochism by dropping by The Gate for the matinee of Nocturnal by Spanish ombre Juan Mayorga.


I was there mainly because of Jasper Carrott-look-a-like Amanda Lawrence
who has become a pet project of mine since finding her in Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree at The Soho Theatre and then loving her as scootering Beryl in Kneehigh's Brief Encounter, but the cast was also made up of Justin Salinger, who we saw in Bliss at The Royal Court, Paul Hunter (another Kneehigh regular) and Justine Mitchell (The Stone also at The Royal Court). Great company for 80 minutes, no interval. The audience wasn't without interest either as Sam West and his partner settled into the seats behind me, and I adjusted my posture to catch whatever critical pearls might come my way. So.....

Short Man, council employee/personality vacuum, meets Tall Man, book-loving/sensitive/care worker in old people's home, in a cafe revealing that not only are they neighbours but that he is aware of Tall Man's illegal status in the un-named country and that in order to guarantee his silence Tall Man must become Short Man's new best friend. Nothing sexual you understand, just chatting, playing with his model train, visiting the zoo where he loves to sit in the nocturnal animal enclosure.

Short Man's wife (you're going to love this...Short Woman)meanwhile, suffers from insommnia and has become addicted to a late night phone-in TV show in which a supposed doctor in a dodgy fez (Matthew Dunster) dispenses advice to the sleep deprived. Tall Woman, luckily married to Tall Man, translates pulp Westerns and wears a really nice pair of trousers, while being creeped out by neighbourly visits from Short Man and developing an extra-marital relationship with, unseen, Hat Man. Tall Man becomes increasingly dominated by Short Man, and Short Woman having discovered the real basis for the friendship between the two men shifts from victim to aggressor, demanding the last dance of him at her husband's birthday party, after rejecting Tall Woman's offer of joining her and Hat Man on the last stage-coach out of town.

It's about neediness and alienation and there are quite alot of hats in it. It's billed as a satire, but of what? Neighbours are hell, and Randy Newman got it right about short people? Ben Stiller's underrated 1996 film The Cable Guy has a much darker portrait of friendship and blackmail delivered chillingly by Jim Carrey, the best thing he's ever done.

On a wall there's a poster of a theatrical performance starring Karen Carpenter, which led to thoughts that reports of the death of the seventies superstar may have been greatly exaggerated.

Best moment of the piece, the blinking marmoset-type creatures in the zoo created by Matthew Walker's animation, and out of the corner of my eye the sight of Samuel West resting his head on his partner's shoulder seeming as close to sleep as Short Woman was as far.

The programme notes interestingly that Nocturnal was originally commissioned by The Royal Court, but didn't play there.

Review - Dimetos, The Donmar

"Two glasses of wine, please?"

"Would you like anything for the interval?" said our favourite barman at the Donmar, "Because I would recommend buying a bottle of wine now, beforehand, having a couple of glasses, leaving it with me and finishing it off later. It works out cheaper."

But we'd read the reviews.

"Do you think we will be here for the interval?" I said. There was a pause.

"Two glasses of wine, then. White or red?"

Michael Grandage has followed up the trauma of Madame de Sade, still dragging it's way through a sold-out run at The Wyndhams, with a 1975 Athol Fugard four hander about "guilt, desire, betrayal and vengence", come on Mike have a heart, give us tune! Actually that's beginning to be an accurate summing up of my relationship with the Silver-Fox re. our theatre trips, I'm feeling guilty, he's feeling betrayed. I have desire to find something we can both enjoy and he's going to wreck his vengence if he doesn't have a laugh this side of the Oliviers.

Anywho, Dimetos/Jonathan Pryce, a brilliant engineer, has retreated from society and lives in a remote beach hut (lovely ropework and wooden mezzanine flooring by Bunny Christie, seaside lighting by Ben Ormerod) with nubile teenage niece, Lydia/Holliday Grainger, and faithful family retainer Sophia/ Victoria Wood favourite Anne Reid. They all seem perfectly happy with the arrangement, though nobody mentions that Lydia, as pointed out by the S-F, squeaks like Blackadder's Queenie, until Danilo/Alex Lanipekun turns up from the city (by way of Wig Out at The Royal Court, never thought I could be bored by drag) to request the great man's help in solving a tricky plumbing problem back in the big smoke. His appearance reveals the true level of Dimetos' discontent, and his real and frankly not very avuncular feelings towards his niece. A drunken fumble between Danilo and Lydia, is spied on by Dimetos who chooses to watch rather than intevene. On learning this Lydia takes the only path possible and grabs a handy rope, ties one of those useful knots learned at her uncle's knee and hangs herself. Oh that it were that easy for the rest of us.

At the interval we headed straight for our friend behind the bar, "If you stay Jonathan Pryce will do great hand acting, and the second half's only 35 minutes long?" "Two more glasses then and let no one say we shirked a challenge!"

35 minutes later we got our laugh, as the polite applause died away and the cast had barely left the stage a helpful usher boomed out."The quickest way to leave the theatre is by the side exit, this way!"

In the second half we'd watched Sophia confess her unrequited love for her employer and then Jonathan Pryce doing some wonderful descending-into-madness acting, using useful household implements and assorted stones in an attempt to stop and reverse time, a goal not shared by the audience I'll be bound. He's a marvel that man, the voice, the sticky up hair, the juggling hands!Mesmeric. He also wore a very natty dark-blue, brushed-cotton ensemble which I think would bring out the green in the eyes of the S-F....a call will be made to wardrobe.

Was it about the artist's responsibilty to honour his gifts, the need to engage in the world politically and socially? The neccessity for young women to keep their clothes on in front of close family members? Or was it all about the director Douglas Hodges' need, after spending virtually a year of his life in sequins and high heels in La Cage Aux Folles, to produce an antedote to simple entertainment? Got me. What ever, to quote Jack Lemon in Some Like It Hot, "Nobody talks like that!"

Btw, horses as critics. Discuss.

This piece opened with the partially clad Lydia and her knot-obsessed uncle rescuing a horse that had fallen down a well, while Sam Shepherd's monologue Kicking A Dead Horse seen at The Almeida last year ended with the dead animal rolling into a hole on top of Stephen Rea and stopping his self indugent middle aged angst mid flow. They're brighter than we think.

Review - In The Loop, Screening Room, Hammersmith

To: acquisitions@bbc.co.uk
From: makingplans4nigel@blogspot.com
Subject: good f***king news




Dear Bunny,
Got a great idea to fill your empty slot, late night Beeb 2.

Saw a piece of film last night obviously pre-final edit as the running time is a ludicrous 106 mins, but with a little gentle pruning it just might work.

Main character is a government employee - a splenetic Scot with fine line in Anglo-Saxon word play, seems to be played by that nice young man who was in Local Hero and wore those marvellous wigs in The Devil's Whore. Spends alot of time screaming to very little effect at his department, and anyone else in his way "Kiss my sweaty bollocks". This is a blatantly fictitious character with no basis in reality.


Supporting roles include; an ineffectual and extremely short Northamptonshire MP, luckily played by the shortest actor in Equity the lovely Tom Hollander, might want to rethink the inclusion of shark porn but idea of watching the Discovery Channel for fear of an X-rated channel appearing on an itemised bill is frighteningly relevant.

The Head of Communications is a lovely woman, a little on the pale side, who is really only included so that the frightening Scot can shout at another gender and employ a lot of anti-female bile.

Her new assistant, Tobes, gets the only sexual action in the piece, and that's with his female counterpoint on the American side - a welcome return to Anna Chlumsky who was last seen kissing Macaulay Culkin, in My Girl.


As to the rest of the Americans, they are made up of; an enormous slab of beef called James Gandolfini, playing an anti-war General, Mimi Kennedy as somebody with bad teeth( not sure if that is a crack at the bad English teeth thing) in diplomacy, the previously mentioned young aide, and a slimy Senator who really, really wants a war. Apparently Gandolfini is really big in TV stateside, sorry I'm not that up to date with my American imports, and has obviously been included as a kind of testosterone Andie MacDowell ( see Four Weddings and a Funeral),and must have cost a fortune! But don't worry about that, 'cos here's what we do...

We ditch the whole American angle, too expensive and the whole idea of backing into a war feels dated. Keep the action at home, with more of a Yes Minister feel about it ( marvellous stuff).

Love the Scot, but too much of a good thing can be wearing and as he is a one dimensional character he won't suffer if we chop the piece into half hour eps. with possibly an hour special if it takes off.

Lose the "completely embarrassing chap in the woolly hat" story line, a mate of the directors, maybe, in need of a few quid, and we can't afford to offend Northampton in the current climate. (try and keep the MP's line re. his constituents."I'm like Simon Cowell, without the power to say:"Fuck off. You're all mental" though).

At the moment it feels like the writers, Iannucci, Armstrong and Blackwell had a fine time coming up with pages and pages of fabulous insults and then had to keep the plot going in order to get them all in, btw we won't lose any of the cinematic quality beacause there isn't any. Lets keep all those lovely words and get six eps. out of them. Title, I'll leave up to you. Fuck Off Minister?

Hope this floats your boat and see you on Sunday for brunch.

xxxxx

(A Really Bad) Review - The Fever, The Royal Court Theatre

Is it me?
Last night at The Royal Court one woman gave a bravura performance of a depth and nuance rarely seen in SW1. Eyes flashing and with a hint of a smile touching the corners of her expressive mouth she laughed, sighed, nodded with sympathy. For 90 heightened minutes she delivered her solo, carrying the audience with her to a climax of resounding applause. And why did she chose to display her skill thus? Because she was sitting in Row E seat 13 and Wallace Shawn the author of The Fever was sitting directly behind her in Row F seat 14.
Wallace Shawn, the voice of Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story, the Masked Avenger in Woody Allen's Radio Days,
the (inconceivable!) Count Vizzini in The Princess Bride,

Vanya in his own production of Vanya on 42nd Street, himself in My Dinner with Andre,

and more than all that Jeremiah ...... Diane Keaton/Mary's ex-husband in Manhattan. "He was just this oversexed, brilliant kind of animal."
As the applause died away I turned round, interrupting his conversation with Dominic Cooke's very attractive partner, and congratulated Mr Shawn whom I'm sure had found me a very impressive audience member. He shook my hand and sounded just as he should.

Silver-Fox favourite Claire Higgins also gave a performance last night that I'm afraid passed me by somewhat. She was wearing a white shirt that wasn't particularly flattering, a pair of pale blue "I'm a middle-aged American woman and I don't care what you say about my hips you won't get me a pair of boot-cut" jeans and flattened hair. She spoke directly at the audience, mostly standing centre stage pausing only briefly to take sips of water from a plastic cup filled from a water cooler. (The Royal Court has adopted the completely "bare, stripped down to the brick wall look" that worked so well for last year's The Ugly One... so well I contemplated asking an usher if they had been burgled overnight.)

She seemed really upset about something, upset about having too much money, being too priviliged, being part of the problem that keep the poor poor. Then I started to get upset, 'cos isn't that me ? and why should I be made to feel her middle class guilt when all I did was by a ticket to the theatre, but I suppose that is Mr. Shawn's point.

Anyway my mind started to wander, even though Ms Higgins is fabulous and a lot more engaging than the solo performance of Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking, which by the way is the reason I was seeing this piece on my own as the Silver-Fox now has an aversion to celebrated English actresses speaking in American accents with nothing to support them other than bad tailoring and some nice lighting effects. The Royal Court should also take some responsibility for my lack of concentration as it was selling some extremely quaffable wine at a knock down price in the bar and I felt impelled to help them out. However they helpfully have printed the whole script in the programme, so it was possible to re-visit my self flagelation all the way home on the number 19.

The Silver-Fox and I will be returning to the Court for Mr Shawn's new play Grasses of a Thousand Colours ( look, English spelling) in which he will be appearing with Miranda Richardson and another Woody Allen player Jennifer Tilly. Maybe he won't be so hard on us and I'll let the Fox share my bottle of wine.

Review - Madame De Sade, The Donmar at the Wyndham's Theatre

Whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away!


Last week, grumpy sex symbol, Gordon Brown lookalike Ken Stott stopped mid-flow in a performance of A View From The Bridge and refused to continue giving his much praised Eddie Carbone until some annoying school kids were removed from the audience. It took 15 minutes of wrangling with the accompanying teacher and the "Out, Out, Out"encouragement from some other members of the audience before the young people left and the play recommenced.
Last night at the Wyndham's as the porcelain perfect Rosamund Pike launched herself bravely into another over-written, ludicrously pretentious defence of her wifely devotion to the Marquis de Sade, the Silver-Fox had to physically restrain me from leaping to my feet and in an homage to Ken demanding the ejection from the theatre of the
six women on the stage who were ruining my evening.

And this was the sainted Dame Judi, and the afore mentioned Ms Pike, and Frances Barber, doing a wonderful Margaret Lockwood,

Deborah Findlay, who the Silver-Fox triumphantly recognised as a Cranford graduate, Jenny Galloway, a dreamy look in her eye as she recalled the good old days of Mamma Mia!, and, a new-comer to me, Fiona Button who had drawn the short straw in the wig department and seemed to be wearing a couple of Douglas Hodge's old Richard Mawbey's from La Cage Aux Folles. I know!

The play, by wacky Japanese funster Yukio Mishima, revolves around the wife and mother-in-law of the Marquis de Sade with miss whiplash, naughty little sister and disaproving prude standing around then sometimes, and this is the most action you will see on stage in the 105 tortuous minutes of the piece, sitting.. as they give great long, lurid speeches about how they feel about the Marquis' little quirks. ...over an 18 year period.


Frances Barber as the Comtesse de Saint-Fond, sporting a wig of Marge Simpson proportions, seems to reach a higher plane of sexual and spiritual fulfilment when she allows her naked body to be used as an altar/table, but she just talks about it. Rosamund Pike as the Marquis' wife spends a lovely Christmas at home nakedly suspended from a chandelier watching her "worker bee of pleasure" husband sodomise the help, but once again we are denied the pleasure of any action and she just talks about it.

I had a vision of the real story happening off-stage and all being directed with flaming brands and whips and dwarves, by Ken Russell, and wha'd you know at that point Deborah Findlay re-entered dressed as a nun! Was I the only one laughing?

Dame Judi appears with the help of a cane, though one that never caresses a bare buttock, a consequence of her spraining an ankle last week. One can only presume she was making a break for sanity and was injured when being wrestled to the ground by stage management.

Scouring the programme for a reason why the Dame lent her reputation to this painful experience, the Silver-Fox came upon this..
"Before I look at any play, I like to hear a vision for the piece. I need to be excited by other people's enthusiasm and so I start by listening to what the director has to say. When I finally read Madame de Sade, I realised I hadn't come across anything like it before."
I think we know what she's saying.

When the Marquis was finally announced to be at the door I was thinking, let it be Russell Brand! but the old bugger showed the greatest of taste in not appearing in this most unsexy piece about sex.

As the applause, and there was alot of it, died down a chap in front of us turned to his wife/companion and with a deathly finality said, "Well that's that then", and you just knew that she'd blown her chance of seeing the inside of a theatre for the rest of the year. Leaving, a woman behind us tapped me on the shoulder and said: "I noticed you were fidgeting a bit, what did you think of it?" I gave her my frank opinion, it didn't take long, she turned to her friend saying: "See it's not just me!"
Maybe there is a whole audience of people clapping like crazy each night all thinking that they were the only one to see that the Emperor had no clothes.