Review of 2014 - Best Play: Ballyturk, Enda Walsh

Ballyturk is like Waiting For Godot an acid. 

Performed superbly by a cast of three, Enda Walsh's Ballyturk was loud and physical, but there was an aching tenderness beneath the pulsing 80s score, the kind of sadness that only Mr Walsh can encapsulate.

When it opened at the National, the play received mixed reviews, with many critics feeling that it was too difficult to understand. But that was the problem: it wasn't until two, three weeks after I saw the show that I felt I had a remote grasp on what happened, and many of the reviews were just published too quickly. Like The Drowned Man, this is a play that demands concentration, everything is symbolic, and you get out only what you put in.

Unlike a sprawling, three hour theatrical marathon, Ballyturk is a sprint to the end, and while you may be exhausted by the curtain call, nothing can quite beat that feeling of crossing the finish line. 

Review of 2014 - Best Overall Theatre: The Almeida Theatre, Islington

When Rupert Goold took over as the artistic director of London's Almeida Theatre, he promised that the two words to describe his upcoming job would be risk and vision. 

It's fitting then, that in his first season there was a post-apocalyptic play about pop-culture, a "future-history" play about the reign of Charles III , a verbatim piece exploring the 2011 London Riots, a stripped down, metatheatrical retelling of a Thornton Wilder classic and to top it off a modern-dress Shakespeare production. 

The Almeida had always been popular to those who knew about it (for many productions, tickets are gold dust) , but Goold not only brought it to the 21st century, he did so with a sense of style and vitality that we will hopefully see more of over the coming years. Take his American Psycho - by casting Matt Smith in the title role, Goold exposed thousands of young audience members to the type of drama they just don't teach in schools.

We'd like to wish Rupert, the brilliant front of house team and what we're sure is a brilliant backstage crew the very best for what we're sure is going to be a very, very good year for the Almeida. 

Review: Almeida's Our Town

It's been said that since 1948, Thornton Wilder's seminal Our Town has been performed every single night, even on Sundays. In America, it's mega: amateur groups perform it because of the deliberately minimal staging, actors love it because of the naturalistic dialogue and directors worship it because of the bold metatheatrical devices, including having an on-stage 'Stage Manager' (played in this production by director David Cromer).

In the Almedia Theatre's new production, things have been stripped back even further: actors mime props, speak in thick regional English accents and David Cromer's stage manager oversees proceedings with a sense of casual ceremoniousness. When he enters, he describes the town of Grover's Corners. "The sky is beginning to show some sneaks of light" towards the back of the stalls and Main Street runs between rows A and B of the Almeida's new traverse auditorium.

And while this might sound like modernist mumbo-jumbo, it's actually good. Fantastic, even once it gets going. Cromer's simplistic staging ensures that the focus is always on the audience, and the theatrical revelation that comes in Act 3 filled the auditorium with gasps and even the odd teary eye. 

Marc Brenner

The cast, many of whom are making their professional stage debuts, give it their all, and special credit goes to Laura Elsworthy, David Cromer and Richard Lumsden as the everyman journalist Mr Webb. 

The lighting, while simple, is also standout. Performed mostly with the house-lights up, the gentle shifts to half-light and the sudden drop to black in third act did nothing but add to the startling intimacy and tenderness of this gripping production. 

With his production of Our Town, David Cromer has shone a light over the everyday. It is a play, and production, that asks us to not only look at the stage but also at each other; that young couple on the front row, the two pensioners at the back, me. While Wilder and Cromer share mayorship, it's still very much Our Town.

10/10

Carole King Musical to Hit West End in 2015

It has been announced that Carole King musical Beautiful will transfer from Broadway to London, opening at the Aldwych Theatre on 25 February 2015 with previews  from 10 February.

The show opened on Broadway in January to strong sales and critical reception. It tells the real-life story of King's childhood as a shy teenager, her rise to super stardom as part of a chart-topping songwriting duo with her husband Gerry Goffin, to her relationship with fellow writers and best friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, to becoming one of the most successful solo acts in pop.

The production will feature an entirely English cast.

Photo: Sara Krulwich

Speaking today King said: "This show is an honest portrayal of my early life with Gerry Goffin and our friendship with our competitors Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. It captures the essence of my emergence as a singer and my growth as a woman. I love that the next chapter of the Beautiful story is taking place in London's West End. I have so many good friends in London and warm memories of good times there. I can't wait to re-visit."

Public booking for the show opens today, 5 September 2014, and the production is currently booking to 13 June 2015.

Review: National Theatre's Savage Medea

It would be easy going into the National Theatre's stunning new production of Euripides' Medea expecting a small budget affair. Remember their Mother Courage, with its minimalist, white-wall set, or Edward II, with the focus more on multimedia than sheer spectacle? Well, it's shocking how a £3 increase can so drastically affect a production, because Medea is big. Really big. Tom Scutt's two-storey design places the action in a dilapidated mansion, with peeling wallpaper and gaudy carpet. Visually, it's stunning, with the action taking place across both levels, often simultaneously. Upstairs, we can see a function room full of white chairs and a wedding cake from which the Chorus appear like ghosts. Downstairs, a window looks out into a forest of gnarled trees.

The floor, initially littered with the toys of Medea's two young sons, provides an ample arena for the fierce emotional intensity of the actors. The Olivier hasn't been this heated since last year's Othello. There's strong support from Martin Turner as a sadly underused and slimy Creon, and Michaela Cola is crushingly aware of the inevitable as the Nurse. Cole also manages to brilliantly navigate her way through both the opening and concluding monologues, even making Ben Power's sometimes flat dialogue seem natural and unforced. Cole has a bright future ahead of her. Also in the cast is Danny Sapani, who as Jason is both a smooth politician and loving father, devastatingly (and awkwardly) posing for a picture with his two small sons.

And then there's Helen McCrory who is a vicious and barbaric Medea. Dragging the bloody corpses of her two sons in sleeping bags, she appears more as a savage lioness than a mother descended from the Sun Gods. Her performance is richly nuanced, and despite her small stature she towers above the rest of the cast with wild-eyed power and control.

Helen McCrory in the title role
© Richard Hubert Smith

Even the music is stunning. In a brilliant design choice, Carrie Cracknell chooses to have the Chorus appear as bridesmaids, carrying boxes of flowers and dresses. They dance erratically to Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory's sinister, carnivalistic score, becoming more and more bloodied and messy as the show continues.

With hundreds of £15 now on sale, you have no choice. You have to see Medea. Despite some occasionally dull dialogue, this powerhouse production will go down in history as one of the best Medea's to ever grace the stage. The cast fire on all cylinders, performing on a stunning stage under the genius, focused direction of Carrie Cracknell.

9/10

Review: Almeida Theatre's Mr Burns: A Post Electric Play

Ten minutes in the sighing started. Like nuclear fallout, it slowly crept forward, invisible, deadly, from the back of the circle down to the front of the stalls, until it was time for the first interval and like irradiated hyenas we scrambled out of the theatre.

It's no wonder people are escaping at the first interval. The first act of Anne Washburn's bizarre new play - Mr Burns - sees a group of people who I didn't care about enough to even remember their names huddling around a campfire, in the middle of the night in the middle of a nuclear apocalypse, tediously recounting the famous The Simpsons episode Cape Feare. Line by line, scene by scene, they work forward, dully recounting lines of dialogue in bad impressions of Homer, Lisa, Bart and Marge. In a bold move, director Robert Icke has chosen to stage the first act in almost complete darkness, but it's too dark on stage to see the actor's faces clearly, so act one is more like listening to a radio play in a dark room.

One scene sees the stereotyped cardboard cutouts - the geek, the mysterious, shotgun wielding drifter who seldom speaks, the paranoid woman - monotonously read names of lost relatives out of blank notebooks. Would it really have been so hard to just write some names down on a page?

The only redeeming features are the subtle references to what caused the nuclear apocalypse, life after it (one character describes a town devoid of all life, another describes the stink of irradiated corpses) and the genuinely sinister arrival of a giggling madwoman, played by Jenna Russell.

The second act, thankfully, skips ahead seven years. How do we know about the time difference? Each act opens with an obviously unhappy Almeida steward holding up a cardboard sign denoting the name of the play (as if we didn't know) the playwright (whose work I wouldn't be too keen on seeing anytime soon), and the time period. It's all very Brecht.

In the second act, the group of travelers from the first act have now formed a theatre troupe and, using scripts purchased off the black market, stage and perform television shows and the commercials. A rival group, the Primetime Players have a huge cast, while one group dedicates itself to performing episodes of the West Wing. 

Unlike the first act, subtlety isn't key here. One sections sees the cast perform a montage of classic songs a capella, from Britney Spears' Toxic to Daft Punk's Get Lucky. It's a brilliantly choreographed, exciting sequence, and the cast give it their all. 

© Manuel Harlan

I was genuinely unhappy when the second act finished. It really was great. It was a wonderful piece of post-apocalyptic black comedy, with a brilliant premise, great performances and a shocking and unexpected ending. 

Act three really gets weird. And when I say "really weird" I actually mean "really really really weird". Because it was. Set seventy-five years after act two, The Simpsons is now mythic. Opening with a yellow-robe wearing Greek chorus singing Ricky Martin's Livin La Vida Loca in an operatic style, the cast reperform Cape Feare, now fit to bursting with references to Christ and the Nativity and Ancient Greek Legend. Bart (Jenna Russell) wears a leather breastplate, crown and wields a sword. Lisa wears a headdress not too different from the Statue of Liberty's. And Mr Burns - confusingly replacing Sideshow Bob as antagonist - has  the thuggish Itchy and Scratchy as machete wielding minions.

This act, with beautiful music by Michael Henry and Fiona Digney with opera sung by Adey Grummet, is flat out confusing. I personally find it pretty unbelievable that it would only take seventy-five years for the show to receive mythic status and through Biblical imagery, Washburn may be attempting to show how ritualistic and revered religiously the show is, but this falls flat due to a complete lack of characterisation. It would have been far more effective to show, say, a family worshiping and discussing the show five hundred years into the future than only showing the ritual itself.

The Chorus Enters
© Manuel Harlan

There are genuinely some strong ideas inside Mr Burns. It's interesting and exciting with a beautiful score and evocative lighting by Philip Gladwell. However, it's hindered by a flat, turgid first act and unlikable characters. In contrast, act two is bold, funny and sad. And while act three provides no satisfying conclusion, it's complex and full of interesting metaphors and imagery. 

It asks some tough questions and leaves us to answer them, and ultimately asks what will happen if the world as we know it really does end. Will humanity focus on the essential or finding comfort in the trivial?

Mr Burns is the latter. But could have been the former.

6/10

The Drowned Man #2, 29th June 5pm

*THIS RECAP CONTAINS SPOILERS*

I have an agenda. 

This agenda is flawless. It is perfect down to the tiniest detail. Nothing can stop me from achieving my plan. This is a guaranteed fast-track to the perfect Temple Studios experience.

And as soon as I step out of the lift into the trailer park it’s scattered from my brain like dust into the wind.

Great.

- Sarah Sweeney’s Romola was fantastic. The perfect mixture of caution and childishness (the scene where she prepares her office was so sweet and sad at the same time.) From her office, she walks out into the corridor but stops dead in her tracks when she hears Oliver Sawyer as the Doctor behind her. “That’s a nice dress you got there.” He starts to walk towards her, and she runs away, but he catches up to her easily. They speak by the shrine, but I can’t hear.

- Romola leaving, I follow her with a small gaggle of white masks - who are all really small - one of whom is clutching an iPhone in her hands. I try my best to avoid her, sticking to the back. Here, my height truly is an advantage. From down the stairs we her maniacal laughter. “I’m Frankie Gardner! Remember my name!” Slowing down and visibly nervous, Romola peers around the handrail. Seeing Conor Doyle’s Frankie, she goes to leave but he’s already seen her. “Hey, get over here!” Romola steps down. “You, you tell Mr Stanford my name. Frankie. Frankie Gardner. Tell ‘im to remember Frankie Gardner!” And then, giggling at a joke only he knows, he saunters off.

- Romola, confused and nervous, continues her voyage, attempting to open locked doors. Soon, she turns into a plush, crimson room where Sam Booth’s Stanford is kneeling, deep in prayer. “Uh, Mr Stanford? I got a package for you.” He is silent, but his hands stretch out, beckoning Romola to place the package in his hands. Suddenly, he stands up and looks at her. They talk to each other, her confused yet excited, him ever omniscient. They begin to dance, getting closer and closer. He stops her and twirls her around viciously. It’s a tender scene, but becomes more and more strange as it continues, and Stanford knows something that she doesn’t. He lays a hand on her cheek: “Put them to shame, Romola. You put all humanity to shame.” 

- Stanford departed, Romola leaves and heads up to the Domestic Set, where she is attended to by Chihiro Kawasaki as a young, quiet Seamstress. Leaving Miss Martin, I follow the Seamstress where she has a white mask apply bruising and blood to a diagram of a face. She then heads back into the set.

- Adam Burton’s Conrad stands, exhausted. “Conrad, please come to Studio 8.” Oh, shit.

- I’m not sure why, but the lighting is perfect. Everything just looks so cinematic and wonderful. The image of Conrad, shielding his eyes from the blinding golden light, treading his way towards the dilapidated shack is permanently etched into my brain. Taking the hand of another mask, he shines a torch across the dusty window, and taking a deep breath and a last look at the outside world, opens the door and vanishes.

- Jesse Kovarsky’s young, eager Grocer. I pick him up at the end of his loop and follow him to the birthday tent from there. 

- The birthday tent is my new favourite scene. Is it the music, or the setting, or the characters and the harsh undercurrent to it? The party over and Marshall alone, Pascale Burgess’ Alice slithers into the tent. Her manipulation of Eugene is horrible. He’s like putty in her hands, and is delighted when he gives him the script. He runs back, and puts on his apron and bow, and leads a mask into a 1:1.

- We’re into the second loop by now, so I head to the bar and catch the tail-end of Conrad and Andrea’s (Lily Ockwell) magic act. Sonya Cullingford is my favourite Exec, so it was nice to see her Telephone Man one last time. Then, she vanished backstage, leaving Studio 3 strangely Execless. I buy a Diet Coke, because hey, why now, it’s my last show and financially I’m now in the position to not only spend £48 on a ticket, but also £1.50 on a can of Coke. It was damn good. 

- Carl Harrison’s Tuttle. He’s quiet and reserved, but there’s an intelligence behind his eyes. Filling in the outline of a crescent moon with crimson paint, he looks up. “Store’s closing. Everyone out.” He picks a white mask for a 1:1 and I wait outside. The store looks so sinister in the dark. Slowly, the lights come on and around the corner comes Tuttle, but he’s stopped in his tracks by Simon Palmer’s Vaudevillian Harry. “Gee, what’s that on your hand?” Tuttle looks around nervously. “Uh, paint. I was…painting.” “Ah! Well, it sure was nice seein’ ya!” Harry strides off, and Tuttle watches on. Back in the shop, we hear Stanford’s announcement regarding Romola’s death. Tuttle takes out his notebook and next to Romola’s name writes “COULDN’T SAVE”.

- He looks up again. “Store’s closing.” Again, I wait. Because a) Carl Harrison’s great and b) I’m persistent. I was rejected again until the third time, when he announced the store’s closure and, as I stood outside, clutched my wrist tightly.

- The 1:1 was intense and terrifying and mysterious and tender and caring. At the end, when he pushed me out into the bar, he said: “Now you be safe, you’ll do that, won’tcha?” I nod. “Good.” The door slowly shuts, Tuttle smiling at me. 

- In the bar Miranda Mac Letten’s Faye sings the Shangri-Las. It’s sad and desperate and it seems as if in those two minutes she can see her whole life and dreams crumbling in front of her.

- Dazed and emotionally shocked, I stumble upstairs to the desert, where I manage to find a room in which moonshine was being brewed illegally and later the Dust Witch presiding over a strange ceremony to an audience of scarecrows. 

- Luke Murphy’s Dwayne arrives and does a desperate dance full of hatred and self-loathing. As I watch, I turn to my left. The Dust Witch is inches from my face, staring at me. 

- I follow her and Dwayne down the the church. She’s so desperate to calm Dwayne down that she holds his head underwater until he’s screaming for breath. And then, he falls, flipping himself back and causing a tsunami to flood the cramped room, soaking me and most of the other masks. They leave, we follow.

- I know that my time is nearly over. And I slowly walk towards the stairs, taking one last look at my favourite floor in the show. I walk down, slowly walking through the snow room, past the dressing tables, and down into the noise of the finale. The Gatekeeper dances on the stairs, looking like Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction.

- I love the finale. It’s so surreal. There’s this upbeat party set against  backdrop of deceit, murder and hatred. 

- When the lights cut to black, the applause is vicious. It was one performers last show, and from one corner of the set comes the laddish chanting of a name. It was brilliant. 

- As the Masquerade Is Over plays, it hits me that the masquerade really is over. I can never come back to Temple Studios again, and that fills me with a sadness that just makes my happiness all the more happy and poignant. 

- The Drowned Man was wonderful. It was dark and sad and twisted and ruthless, but it was also happy and hopeful and funny and rude and lively. It was exciting and fun and interesting, just like any good theatre piece should be. But The Drowned Man was so much more than that, wasn’t it?