Declan returns as the Old Vic wobbles
My neighbours Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod of Cheek by Jowl are back from a holiday in South Africa looking tanned and prosperous. Declan hailed me on the edge of Hampstead Heath yesterday, vastly amused by my warm-down exercise and stretching routine after a short jog. I had no idea I appeared so hilarious to the public at large.
He wanted to know what was up. I told him about Oliver! “Good to see the West End musical theatre striding confidently into the future,” he quipped, still visibly smarting over his Martin Guerre experience with Cameron Mackintosh many moons ago.
He ands Nick are taking a sabbatical but planning a new Macbeth later in the year. He’d lost touch with recent developments at the Old Vic with Kevin Spacey. But he recalled my review of his first Cheek by Jowl Macbeth twenty-five years ago: “Horrid zips!”
Whatever the problems afflicting Spacey’s new production of a play called Complicit (very confusing when you see it advertised on tube escalators next to posters for Complicite), where the Press night has been postponed by nine days, Spacey can at least breathe a sigh of relief over today’s New York Times review of The Cherry Orchard in New York.
The chances of Sam Mendes screwing up Chekhov were admittedly remote, with a new translation by Tom Stoppard, Sinead Cusack (something of a Stoppard muse these days) as Ranevskaya, Simon Russell Beale as Lophakin and Rebecca Hall — who is absolutely ravishing in the new Woody Allen film — as Varya.
Critic Ben Brantley has a few reservations about Ethan Hawke’s “goofy, aggressive naturalism” as Trofimov and dislikes a couple of flashy set-pieces, but otherwise this production, due here in June, should settle any wobbles after the Complicit problems.
Of course Complicit, which stars David Suchet and Richard Dreyfuss, may turn out to be fine, too. But these postponements never bode well, and Dreyfuss has a history of misfortune on the London stage, gaining mixed reviews for his performance in Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue ten years ago and having been dropped from The Producers here just days before it opened in 2004.
But he is a fine comic actor, no question, and it will be fascinating to see him in harness with Suchet. Eventually.
There’s so much acting to look forward to this year and there will be an awful lot of it in Waiting For Godot at the Haymarket, where Simon Callow has just been announced as Pozzo alongside Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. If Callow’s obvious casting, then Ronald Pickup as Lucky sounds inspirational.
Already I’ve seen one performance this year that should figure in the next round of awards but probably won’t. Trudi Jackson is a revelation as Cecilia in Sam Shepard’s dense and challenging play Simpatico at the Old Red Lion.
I must remember to tell Declan about her when he next busts a gut laughing at my fitness regime. Jackson’s completely unknown to me but she gives the best performance of anyone I’ve seen in this role, and that includes Janet McTeer in the Royal Court premiere and Sharon Stone in Matthew Warchus’s underrated and largely forgotten film version.
She’s funny, cute, sexy, all at the same time, and very sharp and quick on Shepard’s wonderful dialogue. This is the real surprise and pleasure of constant theatre-going. You just never know what you’re going to find round the next corner.
We sort of know now what to expect from the Mendes Cherry Orchard. And we can also mark our cards for another performance I fully expect to send critics scuttling about for superlatives: Greg Hicks as Leontes at the RSC in early April. I wonder who Declan and Nick will be casting? Those zips, incidentally, were a fashion error on the tartan kilts.