Their speed and rapport as they deal with Ben’s character’s sudden lurch into heterosexuality is truly breathtaking. And funny and touching at the same time.

Andrew’s neat and precise in speech and mopvement, Ben shaggier, though painfully pencil-thin, with his bushy mop of tangled hair.

That hair’s like a proud busby that’s been left out in the rain, and it’s on temporary loan to anyone called John: John in the Mike Bartlett play at the Court, John Keats in Jane Campion’s studiously beautiful film Bright Star.

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But in Bennett’s case, there’s nothing all that sudden about this: his gallery of past characters includes Kafka, Proust, King George III, Guy Burgess, Coral Browne and the lady in the van in his front garden.

The joke, of course, is that his characters don’t really resemble their own characters at all. When Richard Griffiths pulls on a prosthetic face mask in The Habit of Art he’s said to look more like Marlon Brando.

And when Bennett’s biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, launches into his Douglas Byng drag act, he’s less like the real Humphrey than a wonderful idea of how Bennett would like Humphrey to have been.  

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Both shows, in different ways, are 1950s classics, but there’s nothing remotely retro about Tim, who is like a modern beatnik, shabby and bright and long-haired and devoted to his wheelchair-bound partner Andrew who works for the Arts Council.

He’s turned the Riverside into a big expanse of green parkland where Varsity graduates, tramps, civil servants and policemen all cavort nuttily to the insidiously charming music of a magic piano, and he’s surrounded it (and them) with giant yellow drapes. 

It’s all a delight — I’ve loved the show ever since I choreographed my Oxford college production — but it felt a bit slow, though Tim told me at the Orange Tree (he’d just arrived from the Saturday matinee) that the pace has picked up prodigiously.
 

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Everyone has said the same, this production got us talking. Rupert Goold’s very modern re-inventing of Puccinni’s final opera includes Elvises, Marilyn Mansons, nuns, and I believe, a few members of the Village people! Set in a Chinese resturant a writer (Rupert Goold’s own addition to this opera), having eaten some strange chicken or possibly a magical mushroom, writes or sees, you’re not sure which, the story of an ice queen who can only be won by the man who answers all her riddles correctly. We come to understand that no man has ever managed and thus beaheadings are a frequent event in this Chinese restuarant. The hero of our tale however falls for Turandot and answers all three riddle correctly. Yet she will not love him and so he sets his own task, know my name by sunrise and you will be free, otherwise love me. (more…)

The founding father of the fringe in Britain, and the Traverse in Edinburgh, is seen mingling with his guests at one of his famous bohemian Paris soirees when, with hilarious incongruity, the little square sweets in brown paper bags are passed round.

It’s as though a royal banquet at Buckingham Palace had ended with a lucky dip of fruit lollies and mini Mars bars.

In Jim’s case, you really can say he’s doing these ads for the money.

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On one side, Millers’, the old Jewish grocery — where my brother and I were treated to broken biscuits from a big jar — is now an undertakers. On the other, Dempsey Street school is a block of luxury apartments with twenty-five penthouses. 
  
I was on my way to speak to a classroom of fifteen year-old Muslim girls in Mulberry School, a few blocks away on the Commercial Road, about What Fatima Did at Hampstead Theatre. What she did was wear a hijab. So did all the girls in Mulberry.

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What is odd about all this spurious suspense is that the outright winners have long been decided, even before the long list was announced, so manouevres are already under way to make sure the right people turn up at the Royal Opera House on the day.

While it is always the case that the right people often win awards for the wrong reasons, I’m pretty confident about what will make the cut and take the palm.

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So there’s no home base, and a policy of topographical inclusion and community based projects. Michael Sheen leading his home town’s Passion Play in Port Talbot sounds juicy but one rather shudders at the thought of John Osborne’s “lost” first play; unless it turns out to be half as good as Martin McDonagh’s belatedly produced first play, The Pillowman, of course.

And how ironic is it that the NTW’s artistic director is called John McGrath? The late, great playwright of the same name was in effect a founding father of the Scottish national theatre with his 7:84 touring company in the 1970s.

The previous bidders for running, or indeed forming, the NTW, Michael Bogdanov and Terry Hands, have taken to the hills and we don’t know whether either or both of them will take part.  

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In the Times, producer David Pugh declares that power corrupts — and that monopolies tend to dictate mean-minded deals to touring companies — while Benedict Nightingale feebly says that it’s hard to see the acquisition as anything but good news.

But judging by the upkeep in some of its West End theatres, ATG is struggling to maintain a decent service in the theatres it runs at the moment, let alone any future operations.

The Trafalgar Studios is the most uncomfortable auditorium in London, the Duke of York’s is badly run down, the Comedy seriously unwelcoming. And there’s a scandalous one-size-fits-all glass of wine policy at £6.40 a gulp.

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I suppose coming from someone who thought that Trevor Nunn deserved a good kicking — such witty intemperateness! — or whose heart sinks at the very mention of the name of Katie Mitchell we should not be surprised.

And I’m half in sympathy with his dislike of the suggestion that critics are either part of the theatre commmunity, or should even sign up to a manifesto pledging support to the art form.

But, really, have you ever heard of a football writer who was not totally dedicated to his subject, or a political writer who was not interested in new ideas of political theory, or a gardening correspondent who closed his eyes to the advances in new rose breeding techniques or the untold possibilites of ericaceous compost?”

It’s not a critic’s job to be nice,” harrumphs Spencer in his Telegraph column today, and no-one’s going to disagree with him there, however brave and independent-minded he thinks he sounds. (more…)

An actor’s nightmare is to find himself “off” or, even worse, forgetful of his lines, though audiences never really mind about this too much: the reality of the contrived situation of theatre, and their part in it, is reinvigorated by such mishaps.

But the New York Times today reports something a little more serious: customers at previews for the actor Matthew Broderick’s new off-Broadway play by Kenneth Lonergan have been joined in the front row each night by a prompter feeding lines throughout the performance.
 
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A play in three acts, Comedians asks big questions about what it is to be funny, what is at the heart of the comedian’s art and how to push the boundaries of that art. Matthew Kelly plays Eddie Waters the retired comic training the six aspiring comedians while David Dawson does justice to the role of Gethin Price the one comic most willing to question the established norms. Reese Shearsmith, Mark Benton, Simon Kunz, Billy Carter and Michael Dylan as the other aspiring comics are all funny and touching by turns and play their specifc characters with striking honesty. Keith Allen as the formidable talent scout plays the cynic with style and is a fantastic counter to Matthew Kelly’s  ideas of comedy as truth. (more…)

The subject is poignant enough: the very last performance, in Milan in 1979, of Jerzy Grotowski’s Apocalypsis cum figuris, one of the most famous productions, in its day, of Grotowski’s “poor theatre” that continued the great 19th century tradition of Polish theatre and literature into the age of the late 1960s international avant garde.

If you already knew what he looked like, you can detect the great Christ-like Ryszard Cieslak — the hero in Grotowski’s even more (once) celebrated production of The Constant Prince, an adaptation of Calderon played in circumstances of monastic simplicity to an audience of no more than a hundred people.

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And it’s a spirited rebuff, too, to all the lazy commentators who’ve dismissed it down the years. Williams’s fawning, deadly dull official biographer, Lyle Leverich, doesn’t tell you anything about the play at all.

And when Donald Spoto confidently declares that the play is awash in obvious melodramatic sentiment and devoid of any original touch you just wonder whether he even bothered to read it.

Williams had obviously been smitten by T S Eliot and first called the play “April is the Cruellest Month” but he wisely changed that to Spring Storm.

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This is a classic love story, the great hurdle to overcome being Annie Oakley’s abilty to shoot better than the man she loves, Frank Butler. It may not be the most politically correct story (Annie cannot win at shooting if she wants to win Frank) but the fantastic music and lyrics and the very heart of the piece allow you to enjoy this show for what it is, a wonderful piece of very entertaining theatre! Julian Ovenden plays Frank Butler with real panache and with his beautiful voice and fantastic costumeshe has us all the ladies wishing that they were Annie! Jane Horrocks plays a marvelous Annie Oakley. Her vocal range is astounding and her Annie is honest and engaging throughout.

This is a massively stripped down prodution with only four pianos and a fantastic ensemble cast who play a variety of roles showing amazing skill. The set design is impressive and a simple stage is by turns an inn, a train and a boat. After this enchanting show we were treated to a really entertaining Q&A attended by the Young Vic artisitc director David Lan, Julian Ovenden, Jane Horrocks and many of the other members of the cast as well which was a real treat! Edited highlights from this Q&A will appear on the news section of the site shortly so please check those out!

Please do feel free to email your comments and thoughts about the play, as well as any photos you have of the event and the evening through to  feedback@whatsonstage.com, we love to hear from you.

Thanks for joining us for this event, and do check the homepage to keep up to date on all of our upcoming Outings.

Laura Norman

Club Manager

The excuse for the shindig was Brel’s eightieth birthday (he died, aged 49 in 1978) and a Francophone season at the Barbican that was launched by Nick Kenyon and Graham Sheffield at a pleasant reception beforehand.

One of the guests was Peter Straker, someone who really can sing Brel, and I tried to drum up a petition in the interval for him to take over the second half of the show.

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It’s a fascinating and very well acted movie, directed by Richard Linklater, which tells the story of a young high school student, played by Zac Efron, who gets caught up in Welles’s famous 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar and falls in love with one of the secretarial staff, played by Claire Danes, who is plotting her next career move.

The performance of Welles himself (the boy genius was twenty-two at the time) by Christian Mackay is quite astounding — gravid and authoritative, sensual and mercurial — but above all, this is a great film about the theatre.

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And it wasn’t made by X Factor finalist Diana Vickers, good though she was in the Jane Horrocks role. No, the real star turn is that of Lesley Sharp as her mum, Mari Hoff, the blowzy, boozy mother from hell, or at least somewhere like Rochdale or Burnley.  

There are certain actors who, whenever you see them, you think, well, there is simply no one else better than this.

The thought crosses my mind whenever I see Miranda Richardson (too rarely) on the stage. Or Mark Rylance. Or Lesley Sharp.

And amazingly, despite a list of impressive credits at the National (where her performance in Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan won nominations in both the Whatsonstage.com and Evening Standard awards), the Royal Court and on television, she’s never been in the West End before. 

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Which means that important shows opening in the next few weeks — the Alan Bennett play at the National, new plays by Mike Bartlett and Michael Wynne at the Royal Court, the RSC Twelfth Night — won’t be considered.

And what about the brilliant new Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic, which opened only a few hours after the deliberations were concluded?

It’s the only possible rival to Spring Awakening in the best musical category, unless there’s a rush of blood for Sister Act or Priscilla.

Why are these awards decided so early? They never used to be. But when the Oliviers were brought forward to gazump the Standard gongs, the Standard promptly moved even earlier. This was pretty silly and showed instant loss of dignity.

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The first night at the Nottingham Playhouse in February 1975 was an electrifying occasion, and not just because of the career-defining performance of Jonathan Pryce alongside Stephen Rea, Tom Wilkinson and Jimmy Jewel.
 
The premiere occurred slap bang in the first eighteen months of Richard Eyre’s artistic directorship, a period in which he premiered David Hare and Howard Brenton’s Brassneck, Adrian Mitchell’s Yorkshire version of The Government Inspector, Brenton’s The Churchill Play and Ken Campbell’s Bendigo.

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Andrew Bovell’s play asks a lot of the audience but if you are willing to give it you are sure to be rewarded. Telling the seperate but extraordinarily linked lives of four couples we are taken through a plethora of emotions and asked questions of love, truth, fidelity, dreams and the very way we live our lives. With only four actors playing nine parts, they work hard to deliver the very complex and emotional pieces but all four actors, John Simms, Ian Hart, Kerry Fox and Lucy Cohu are more than up to the challenge. The set is minimal but effective and use of filmic elements adds a haunting quality to this thought provoking piece. Under Toby Frow’s direction not a movement is wasted and every step has weight. (more…)

Sedgwick curled up into a crispy foetal ball, somehow reducing the length of his body into that of a well fried rasher.

We also relished the sight of Nina Conti proceeding to the back of the Olivier stalls with a fifty foot length of knicker elastic that she was stretching from the mouth of her “husband” in order to pang him out of his dangerous invasion of his own posterior.

Hubby gripped the lethal device in  his teeth. Was he ready? Yes. Knicker elastic rebounded at top speed in the wrong direction…

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Indeed, everyone who met him — fan, or fellow professional — sort of fell in love with him; as many people have said in the past twenty-four hours, his death makes no sense at all.

When Boyzone had their big hit with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Jim Steinman’s “No Matter What” from Whistle Down the Wind, Stephen became a regular at ALW’s Sydmonton Festival and was soon building a new career in the musical theatre in the revival of Joseph and as take-over casting as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium.

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Alongside the two leads, Summer Strallen is expected to be announced as Mme Giry, so I hope her agent is taking advantage of  lax accountancy at the Really Useful and pushing for a maximum wage with City-style bonuses.

The composer finished the score six weeks ago, and the two people he most wanted to hear it, Cameron Mackintosh and Sarah Brightman, have expressed their pleasure, Cameron writing him the most touching letter he can remember receiving.

And how will he measure the success of the show alongside his other big hits?

“I’m happy with it as a piece,” said a mellow ALW, looking spruce and fit in a grey suit and mauve shirt, “and that’s enough for me.”

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But two pieces of shocking news filtered through the heat haze: the death, supposedly by suicide, of Matt Lucas’s former civic partner Kevin McGee, and the adoption of free sheet status by the Evening Standard starting next Monday.

In comparison, the announcement that Michael Gambon has withdrawn, after minor illness, from the new Alan Bennett play at the National, though regrettable, seems footling.

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