HIGH SOCIETY - Shaftesbury
By ILLTYD HARRINGTON
COLE Porter’s musical adaptation of the Philadelphia Story
is Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s first transfer to
the West End.
Ian Talbot, the Open Air director, has achieved the move with style
and humour. The location here is the grounds of the Lord family
mansion in Oyster Bay, Long Island.
It remains the country of the rich before the Wall Street Crash.
Champagne flows and in the hands of Cole Porter, sophistication
and sex are the nectar of life. Tracy Lord (Catherine Kingsley)
is on the eve of her second marriage to George Kitteridge (Brian
Torseh).
But her first husband Dexter Haver (Graham Bickley) is a recovering
alcoholic and owner of a nearby moored yacht True Love.
Enter Mike Connor (Paul Robinson) and Liz Imbrie (Ria Jones) a left
wing writer and photographer from a scandal magazine called Spy,
who are on the trail of Catherine’s father Seth who has a lurid
love life.
Jerry Hall is Mother Lord doing what she does best; looking elegant
and, mercifully, as a woman of few words. Paul Farmsworth is the
designer who provides a simple but accurate background for this
over-privileged family with their army of servants under an aloof
butler awaiting 700 wedding guests.
One Arthur Kopit updated the book and wisely has worked on some
additional Porter numbers.
Naturally Porter never fails. And among others there is Who Wants
to be a Millionaire, I Loved Paris in the Spring Time and True Love
– it all spices up the evening.
Catherine Kingsley brings enormous energy, humour and eventually
pathos. This society may have been high on something but she is
a spirited performer and relative newcomer, as is Ria Jones, who
knows how to belt out a number and crack a one-liner.
Royston Kean as Uncle Willy is the old letch, boozer and bankroller.
He is rather like a chimpanzee on roller-skates – a ripe performance.
If you’re looking for deep social meaning, turn to Scott Fitzgerald.
This is a feel good show and you’ll be able to hum all the
tunes on the way home after this untaxing evening.
Until March 2006
020 7379 5399
Norway’s odyssey
PEER GYNT - New End
by MARTINA ANZINGER
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NOW we know what spooked Munch’s screamer.
Ibsen’s play is a haunting tale, but his sprawling exploration
of individualism, originally conceived in dramatic verse, does
not easily translate as a three-hour plus stage extravaganza.
Reading the work, Munch felt compelled to draw illustrations,
with himself cast as Peer.
Whether his trademark painting was screaming for it to stop, we
can only guess.
Ibsen wrote his epic poem in 1867 after fleeing Norway for Italy
to find freedom of the mind, and it was so well received that
he adapted it for the stage. The trouble is he didn’t bother
editing much for the sake of dramatic pace.
The eponymous hero is the author’s doppelganger – a
young, impoverished peasant, who pursues his every whim and exploits
everyone, including his long-suffering mother and every nubile
female. Searching for fame and fortune, he leaves home and seizes
every major chance, including slave trading.
But the traveller’s progress is constantly haunted by the
eternal question: how can one be true to oneself? And, at last,
it’s pay-back time. The metaphorical devil is threatening
to cut him down to size of a button. Inspired by Norwegian folklore,
Ibsen’s morality tale is a fantastic melange of comedy, tragedy
and lyrical meditation, complete with trolls, shipwreck and adventures
in the African desert.
This potent mix is imaginatively captured in Dale Teater Kompany’s
production directed by Terje Tveit.
Despite a minimalist set, he carries off the jump-cuts of bleakness
and boisterousness to great effect. Spirited dances of the six
veils are counterpointed with eerie lighting effects to underline
the mystical element of Ibsen’s concoction. This premiere
of a new translation by Tveit also boasts a strong cast and James
Bentley, as Peer, who repeatedly flashes his six-pack and buttocks
to great effect.
The three-hour production goes nowhere. The poetic narrative supposedly
ends with redemption in the arms of the woman he abandoned for
decades. But somehow Solvejg gets lost in the denouement.
If you prefer it concise and romantic, you’ll have to go
for Grieg’s suite.
Until 30 October
020 7704 6665
Funny funeral
DANNY'S WAKE - New End Theatre
by REBECCA OMONIRA-OYEKANMI
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ON its Edinburgh debut in 1999, Danny’s
Wake won a Fringe First.
When their common friend Danny dies, Patrick and Billy find themselves
in Billy’s front room with a bottle of vodka, Danny’s
dead body and a very mixed bag of memories.
Jim Sweeney’s script plays with the nostalgia, regret and
despair experienced by the characters and turns them into hilarious
anecdotes on real life.
The chemistry between Alan Drake and Oliver Fishman is essential
to retaining the incongruous combination of grief and humour.
Fishman portrays Billy with the right amount of ambivalence, letting
the wounds of the character unravel with the play. Drake’s
performance as Patrick captured all the amusing insecurities of
a seemingly secure man.
The pair remember the friendship that never was, their schoolboy
jokes, the figures of authority they hated but have now become.
Connected by a disappointed longing for memories that never were,
Patrick and Billy find a temporary sense of comfort in the present.
Danny’s Wake is original but familiar, an entertaining blend
of sad reality and ridiculous humour.
Until October 22
0870 033 2733
A rebellious Tudor
THE RAPE OF LUCRECE - St Bartholomew’s
By TOM FOOT
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THE Red Bull Playhouse was built in 1605 off
St John’s Street, Clerkenwell. Its actors represented a parallel
company to Shakespeare’s King’s Men. They staged radical
and immensely popular plays including Thomas Heywood’s Rape
of Lucrece.
The story starts in Rome, 509 BC. Sextus, son to Tarquin, the
king of Rome, rapes Lucrece, the wife of an aristocrat friend
of the king. Lucrece, disgraced in her mind, commits suicide.
Her body was paraded in the Roman Forum by the king’s nephew,
Brutus.
This incited a revolt against the Tarquins and resulted in the
banishment of the royal family and founding of the Roman Republic.
Shakespeare’s contemporaries tend to be passed off as copy
cats or lesser-known mortals. On the face of it, Thomas Heywood’s
play confirms the stereotype. It has the same name, subject and
all the markings of a Shakespearean tragedy – even fans of
the play, written 13 years after Shakespeare’s narrative
poem, chuckle at Heywood’s nerve.
But while Shakespeare focused solely on the rape, Heywood’s
play was much more ambitious, combining politics, sexual crime
and madness with the wider context of a corrupt monarchy and a
republican revolt. No mean subject in the English kingdom.
The Lion’s Part, a group of professional actors, performed
Heywood’s play in St Bartholomew’s Church, which some
may remember from Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare
in Love.
The church was cold and the benches hard, but the acoustics were
unique and the actors revelled in revealing a lesser-known script
with an ever lesser-known history.
Run complete
Just a minute, it’s
a real gem
HOW PLEASANT TO KNOW MR LEAR with Nicholas Parsons - New
End
By PASCHALE STRAITON
WHEN I was a child my dad would read me The Jumblies by Edward
Lear as a treat. Such associations are perhaps common and Nicholas
Parsons’ one-man show about Lear seemed all the more touching
for the fact that his family were sitting in the front row.
Parsons made his appearance through an unfeasibly tiny door
at the back of the stage. It was not the kind of entrance you’d
expect from the Sale of the Century icon, but quite suitable in
a nonsensical kind of way: a bit reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.
The evening was a blend of lively recitations of many of Lear’s
best loved verses, contextualised with intriguing biographical
information.
Lear was by his own reckoning a peculiar “old cove”
who despite having many friends, comes across as a solitary man
who seemed not to be able to settle in one place. Parsons suggests
that like the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo who crosses the sea pining for
the Lady Jingly and the Dong With A Luminous Nose who wanders
the land crying for his Jumbly Girl, his was perhaps a life of
unrequited love.
Parsons succeeds in bringing the drama of the poems to the fore,
while obviously enjoying the fun of all the ridiculous word-play
for which Lear is famous – triumphant tongue-tying that has
a perfect kind of sense, even when he makes up the words. The
show was very enjoyable – The Owl And The Pussycat had many
people joining along.
Until October 21
0870 033 2733
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