Fortune's Pawn

Hay Fever, Noël Coward’s comedy of bad manners, swept into the Mainstage Theatre of the UWM Peck School of the Arts tonight, and brought riotous results.

It’s a summer’s day on an English country estate in the Berkshires, and each member of the Bliss household has decided to invite their secret paramour down from London for the weekend. Only thing is, none of them, mother Judith, former leading lady of the London Stage, nor father David, successful novelist, Simon, trouble making son nor Sorel, ever-romantic daughter, has let on to anyone else their plans.

To say more would give away the most peculiar entertainments of this decidedly outlandish family.

This production, cleverly directed by Rebecca Holderness, with classic Art Deco setting by Kurt Sharp, provides the perfect playpen for this raucous family and their sometimes witty, sometimes outrageous, pursuits. Pamela Rehberg’s costumes evoke the bygone era of the Roaring Twenties.

Holderness has done a brilliant job of interpreting this period classic for a modern audience. Without altering dialog, she worked with this fine cast (2/3rds of whom are graduating seniors), finding their way into characters from another time, understanding the sensibility behind the humor, and making the language speak clearly to us. Their first rehearsal of the script was at Ten Chimneys, the Genesee Depot estate of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, contemporaries and colleagues of Coward. In this setting, and through personal selections of inspiring totems from that era – photographs, music, etc. – the cast crafted their characters.

A feature of this production rarely seen by Milwaukee audiences is the inclusion of “Knee Plays.” These action filled intervals, interstitial skits, allow the full thrust stage to be redressed between each of the three acts by the performers themselves, always in character, and often providing us further insight into them and their motivations. Of particular note in this regard is Brittany Lee McDonald in the uncredited, walk-on role of Amy, the scullery maid nursing a toothache.  She brings a refreshing insouciance to these interstices.

Other stand-out performance nods to Toni Martin, whose sheer force of will powers the towering character of Judith Bliss, undoubtedly the star of this family, and on the flip side, Evan Koepnick, whose sweet and subtle reading of Sandy Tyrell, Judith’s romantic notion, is a delight for his meek ignorance in the face of daunting excess.

Tonight’s performance brought one wholly unexpected piece of theatrical gold which is unlikely to be repeated. Near the end of the second act, Lineve Thurman, as Jackie Coryton, plops down dejectedly onto the divan, which one can only assume had been rushed to the stage, as it audibly cracked. Rather than being thrown by this, Thurman took it for an extra laugh, and worked it into the rest of her scene. This is the sort of skill that no class can teach, and Thurman carried the night with it.

This post is late, but what the heck.  The subject is the Sunday matinée of The Creditors, the August Strindberg psychodrama at BAM’s Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn.  Directed by Alan Rickman, this Donmar Warehouse production has just come over from London, where it was warmly received.  Rickman, in a New York Times article referred to the show as “Three characters dragged through a hedge backwards in 90 minutes,” and that is indeed an apt description.

Set in a seaside resort in Norway, this tense drama focuses on one woman, Tekla, and two men, Adolph, her younger husband and Gustav, a mysterious stranger also staying at the resort.  At the open of this roughly 90 minute show (no intermission, although it feels like 3 acts) we find Adolph, a self absorbed man who fancies himself an artist.  He is in conversation with Gustav, a new acquaintance whom he has just met at the resort — the same resort where, some years past, he met the older, married Tekla, who threw over her first husband for the young and bright Adolph.  The Adolph we meet now seems neither bright nor to possess any self assurance.  He prevails upon the older, and quite self-assured Gustav for advice.

Gustav claims to have diagnosed in Adolph incipient epilepsy and prescribes abstinence as the only treatment.  Though at first protesting, Adolph accepts this once Gustav succeeds in making him question both the love of his wife and the solidity of his marriage.  Gustav is vicious and hateful in his views on women, and we can only imagine that he has had a bad time of it with the fairer sex, or, as Gustav would have it, “A fat boy with overdeveloped breasts, that’s what you see. Basically, a badly made youth. A child who’s somehow managed to shoot up to adult height without growing any muscle—a chronic anaemic who haemorrhages regularly thirteen times a year.”

Gustav seems quite certain that Tekla is flirting with younger men — on the ferry, in town, at the resort — he seems to know exactly what is going on even though he admits to not having left the resort where they all are staying.  It isn’t long before we in the audience start to suspect the true motivation behind Gustav’s actions, but I shan’t spill that here.

By the end of this first scene, Gustav has convinced Adolph that Tekla is playing him for the fool, and that he need only lay in wait for proof.  This Adolph does, as Tekla returns from her outing.  Soon she is engaged in a familiar pas da duex with Gustav, unaware that Adolph is right outside the door listening to it all.

“Creditors” the title is explained a couple of times in a sort of massive transactional-analysis manner by both Gustav and Tekla in separate scenes.  We owe those we have wronged, and they may sometime collect from us.  This show takes this idea to the extreme as we see three players, or are they three pieces, push each other’s buttons and pull each other’s strings in fits and outbursts of painful jealousy and retribution.  The final scene, tho the most contrived of the script, is none-the-less believable, and most painful indeed.

The cast, Anna Chancellor as Tekla, Tom Burke as Adolph and Owen Teale as Gustav, are all as fine as one could wish for in this taught production.  Rickman’s direction is spot-on, the dialog utterly natural and unforced, no matter how banal or vicious it may be.  The set, by Ben Stones, is light and airy and feels just right for the action and setting.  I’ve seen Donmar in their London home, and can tell that this set was built for that thrust stage.  Plopped down here, in the Harvey’s deeper proscenium, it still works just fine.  Costumes by Fotini Dimou, lighting by Howard Harrison and music and sound by Adam Cork round out the technical credits.  And to their credit, in the finest tradition of current London standards, their pure naturalism and adherence to history serve to make them fall from view.  We see the characters and the story, not the trappings of theatre.

This was a great day at the theatre, and Rickman has succeeded in his goal of not just getting out of the way of his performers, but of getting them out of their own way.  This not only lets the script shine through, but more importantly lets it do so as compellingly believably as possible.

 

Last night took Pawn to the Vineyard Theatre for The Scottsboro Boys, the latest John Kander & Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Zorba) musical, a collaboration between that famous music & lyrics team with David Thompson’s (Steel Pier, Chicago) book and Susan Stroman’s (The Producers, Contact, Young Frankenstein) direction and choreography. This is a full blown Broadway musical in a 125 seat Off-Broadway house, so the dance numbers are a little smaller and tighter, the orchestra is more of a band and the set is more of a suggestion than a imperative. This is all good – it is very, very good.

Fred Ebb has passed away, but Scottsboro Boys is one of several projects he and Kander completed to some degree. With Thompson’s script this show has been brought successfully to the stage fully formed. This is no workshop piece, it is a proper show, and one fully expects that it will see it’s way to Broadway at some point, as many other Vineyard productions have done (such as [title of show], the last show Pawn saw here).

Scottsboro Boys is a show within a show. We start with a woman sitting at a bus stop, and then suddenly a squadron of singing, dancing minstrels enter through the audience, sweeping her up in their song and quickly arranging the sole set decoration – a dozen chairs – into various configurations. Then enters John Cullum (Northern Exposure, Mad Men) as Interlocutor. [In this age of gratuitous applause, he of course receives a raucous welcome from the audience. Pawn finds this new tendency of New York audiences to applaud the performers for simply showing up to be most annoying, and hopes it is short lived.] Cullum’s character is a Southern grandee, imagine Colonel Sanders, who leads this merry minstrel band. He introduces us to the Scottsboro Boys, a minstrel act, and as the show within the show starts, the performers ask if this time they can tell the truth in their performance. He agrees, and we’re off.

The Scottsboro Boys are 9 black men, ranging from 13 to mid-twenties in age, who are riding a freight train from Chattanooga, Tennessee through Alabama when it is stopped by rail inspectors. A pair of white hookers are working the train, and when caught they claim to have been Shanghaied and raped by these 9 men. Of course this being the deep south in the 1930s, the men are soon on death row for this fabricated offense. The musical tells their whole story, in all its regrettable twists and turns, with all the characters, other than Interlocutor, played by black men. The whores, for example, are played by two of the nine suspects, the various guards, attorneys and police are played by two other black men. This turns out to be an incredibly effective device.

I won’t go into all of the details of the show, except to say that Kander & Ebb, as is their wont, do not shy away in the least from the delicate subject matter. We witness the invasion of Northern meddlers, in the person of a carpetbag carrying Jewish attorney from New York, funded by the Communist Party, who is held up by the Alabama Attorney General as proof that these “boys” must be guilty and should be used as an example to those meddling Yids and Yanks to keep their (hooked) noses out of Southern business.

The production is fantastic, the songs are sharp and tight, and unmistakably Kander and Ebb. Fans of Chicago, for example, will hear strains of Mister Cellophane in this show’s Nothin’. The set, by Beowulf Boritt, with it’s ingenious interlocking chairs which form so many clever arrangements, is otherwise more of a suggestion of what might be realized once the show makes it to Broadway. Kevin Adams’ lighting thus ends up pulling more weight, which it does wonderfully. Toni-Leslie James’ costumes are absolutely stunning, and serve to punch-up a show which may otherwise strain under the constraints of the smaller venue.

As for Stroman, she has shown a deft hand with this difficult material. It is hard to guide this magnificent ensemble of actors through the roller coaster storyline, keeping their emotions at just the right level at all times while still keeping their motivation believable and the entire piece moving along. The cast is outstanding, with special kudos to Brandon Victor Dixon as Haywood Patterson and especially to Derrick Cobey as Andy Wright, whose emotional confrontation with a recalcitrant and manipulative Forrest McClendon as Atty. Samuel Leibowitz (one of many roles-within-a-role he takes on as Mr. Tambo) has the audience gripped and silent near the end of the show.

Scottsboro Boys closes tomorrow, but I am sure that we will see it reappear in a larger venue soon.

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This afternoon took Pawn and X to the final matinée of Love Is My Sin at Theatre For A New Audience at the Duke Theater. Theatre For A New Audience seems to have failed its name in this case, as this collection of 31 of Shakespeare’s sonnets are over 400 years old; the performers, Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington are well past 60 and the audience? Let’s just say the average age of the audience is recently deceased. It is worth noting that even though the company offers a $25 ticket for anyone 30 and younger, it would appear from today’s crowd that only one or two such tickets were used.

Love Is My Sin is a recital more than a performance, with Parry and Pennington taking turns (mostly) reading or reciting the sonnets. The collection, edited by Parry’s husband of 60 years, Peter Brook, is lovely. He has grouped it into 4 sections: Devouring Time, Separation, Jealousy and Time Defied. This is a great way to bring the sonnets to the attention of a wider audience and make them accessible. Truly, this could have been theatre for a new audience. Alas, it was not today.

My only negative notes on this able performance, with music by Frank Krawczyk, is that the sound sucked. That these able actors were miked at all is more a testament to the age of their audience (many wearing audio assist headphones) than any need to fill a cavernous space (the Duke is only a bit over 200 seats). Parry’s mike was distorting for the last half of the 50 minute show, and the whole system teetered on the edge of feedback, with a faint ringing around every sibilance. This put a fatiguing finish on an otherwise delightful time.

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Tonight, to cap of this trio of reviews, was Michael Moschen at NYU’s Skirball Center, a part of their Big Red Chair family series. Moschen (a MacArthur Genius grantee) is a juggler who has developed witty and beautiful extensions to the art, which find him sometimes simply playing with geometrical shapes in ways which make for great visuals, but are not strictly juggling. That’s fine with us! Coupled with careful and effective lighting the result is truly beautiful stage images, and not a little fun. Moschen talks to the audience at times, explaining how he does what he does, or why he does it one way or another. He shares some interesting observations with us. And then other times he is silent, and just gives us the stunning scenes, with his props and tools.

It was a fairly short show, weighing in at a little over an hour, and yet again, no intermission. In an interesting twist, not a single show I’ve seen on this trip has had one.

Tomorrow we will venture to Brooklyn Academy of Music for Alan Rickman’s production of Strindberg’s The Creditors. No intermission there either, in a piece Rickman described to the Times as “Three people being pulled backwards through a hedge for ninety minutes.” Yippie!

Tonight took Pawn and X to the Schoenfeld theater for A Behanding In Spokane, the latest from playwright Martin McDonagh, marking his return to the theatre following his foray into film with In Bruges. I insisted that we book this show before coming to town, since I love Christopher Walken, who leads, and Martin McDonagh, and figure this would be a great show. Alas, I was wrong, sorely wrong.

Where to start… The script is weak, it is based upon a premise so fragile and absurd that it hamstrings the entire production. The performances, starting with Mr. Walken and continuing on to the rest of the cast – Sam Rockwell, Anthony Mackie and Zoe Kazan – seem smug and often hammy. The set, the set by Scott Pask, is the star of the show.

Admittedly, I fell for one of the curses currently afflicting both the London and New York stages – star productions. As was commented in a piece in the Times recently:

Other writers shared similar frustrations about mounting productions in New York nowadays. Israel Horovitz (“Line,” “The Indian Wants the Bronx”) said that two Tony Award-winning Broadway producers recently attended the Florida Stage production of his new play, “Sins of the Mother,” and told him that the only way to move it to New York would be to cast stars.

“The play had great reviews, from The Wall Street Journal and others, but these producers said we needed stars so the play could be critic-proof,” said Mr. Horovitz, 71, who has had 50 plays produced in New York (two on Broadway) by his count.

Such thinking is prevalent on Broadway right now. In another recent piece, the Times noted:

The new Broadway musical “The Addams Family” opened Thursday to the sort of scathing reviews that would bury most shows in the graveyard next to the Addamses’ forbidding mansion.

The result: The show sold $851,000 in tickets last weekend on top of a $15 million sales advance, huge figures for a new Broadway run, and all but guaranteeing that it will be hard to snag a pair of good orchestra seats until fall. After five months of well-publicized creative difficulties for the show, this seeming paradox amounts to a theater world version of the golden fleece: the critic-proof smash.

(emphasis mine)

What these articles attest to is the, some would say cynical, tendency of Broadway producers these days (and the West End, to a similar degree) to load the cast with popular stars from film and T.V. to help offset the weaknesses in their scripts, concepts or direction.

A sure sign of the impact of such cynicism was evident from the first at last night’s show. Upon the curtain, a tattered affair running right to left on an exposed traveler, whipping off stage to reveal Mr. Walken sitting on a disheveled bed in an even more disheveled hotel room, the audience roared with applause, as if they had just witnessed a show stopping performance on American Idol. I knew right then that I was going to have problems with this audience, if not the show.

Almost immediately, Walken was playing to the house, not his fellow actors. At times patently mugging, his hammy performance set the pace for the rest of the cast, especially Mr. Rockwell, whose cartoon-ish take on the hotel night auditor sets the low water mark for this piece. Making this all worse was Walken’s peripatetic accent which seemed to wander around the country the way his focus wandered around the theater.

I won’t spend too much time on the rest of this train wreck but to say that McDonagh should lose the awkward and outright distracting middle interval, in which the drape is closed and Rockwell performs a vaudevillian stand-up bit about his personal desire to have a monkey companion, and trim some of the other abundant fat in this 90 minute one-act, and he might end up with a 50 minute bon-mot to serve up on television. He could add a laugh track and judiciously placed commercials, and then no one would need to pay their good money to see four actors amuse themselves.

[X weighs in]

I pretty much agree with Nic’s overly generous review, but I think the thin broth of a ‘plot’ could be further reduced to a typical Walken skit on SNL or a scene or two in another dark comedy like “In Bruges”. I was really shocked by the audience. Several nearly inaudible ushers had stalked up and down the aisles before the show reciting a list of demands: power down cell phones, if you leave your seat you won’t get the same on back upon return, don’t jump to a better, empty seat, etc. I was perplexed by this, but when a phone rang minutes into the show I started to see some wisdom in it. Our friends, C and R, seated farther back had the back-of-the-seat kickers [justifiable homicide to me]; texters, talkers and general fidgeters around them. The tattered set was fantastic – the footlights were a rummage sale hodge podge of rusty gooseneck lamps, bathroom fixtures and other odd little lamps.

[X over and out]

Lest the reader think this night was a disaster, fear not. We started the evening with a lovely dinner with X’s old friends at Joe Allen’s on West 46^th. Following the show, a simple navigational error on the way to the subway turned into a fortuitous turn when, wandering past the International Center of Photography, I spied the trademarked large, sepia, dogeared photography of Miroslav Tichy, a Czech photographer with a solo show inside. I love his work, and will certainly venture back this way before this visit is over.

Last night found Pawn and escort at the premier performance of Youngblood Theatre‘s inaugural season: David’s Redhaired Death. The script, by Sherry Kramer, is a train wreck. It is full of forward references, flashbacks, speeches to the audience, and other atypical theatrical conceits. The story has barely any narrative to it, but rather we in the audience are given stuttering glimpses into another train wreck; the love affair between two redheads, Jean (Tess Cinpinski) and Marilyn(Jazmin Vollmar).

Action begins at an open mic night. Jean takes the stage and begins the first of many speeches to the audience.   Next comes a rather twee bit about the sisterhood of read haired women and their supposedly extraordinary qualities.  This provides a thread which weaves in and out of a budding relationship between Jean and Marilyn, her paramour. David’s Redhaired Death is a production starved for silences, nowhere more than in this first third of the one-act.  Jean and Marilyn hurtle forward (and sometimes back) propelled by the fever pitch of their dialog and monologues.   You may find yourself dazzled by the rapid fire dialog, Pawn found himself numbed.

The best parts of a drama are often found in those spaces between and around the words.  We are given no such room here, neither are the actors.   They seem at times to strain against the sheer volume of text through which they must chew in any given scene.  But just as the audience is given little or no time to reflect upon the text, the characters at times seem to lack reflection as sentence after sentence spring forth from them and fall, unconsidered, onto the stage floor.

The final third of the show does bring us a moment or two of pause, as well as one truly moving scene between Jean and Marilyn.  Cinpinski and Vollmar shine in this part of the show, and the spare setting melts away from our vision as the intensity of the acting increases.  Jean’s exit speech in the penultimate scene was quite nearly profound.  Had she been allowed to slump down into one of the empty seats, taken a moment and found her motivation for continuing after the psychic body-blows she has just taken (and dealt out) this whole scene could have gone a long way towards reclaiming an otherwise problematic effort.

One hopes Youngblood continue their work, but that they consider more carefully which shows to produce and how frantically they stage them.  This production  disappoints; a defter hand could have tamed this unruly script and presented us the heart hammering story buried within it, without hammering our heads in the process.  This kind of herky-jerky forwards/backwards, repetitious, staccato, reflexive script can be rendered into a moving theatrical experience, as Pawn found with Simple 8‘s production of Monsters at Arcola Theatre back in May, but not like this.

In retrospect, given some more time to consider both the script and the performance, I have tamed some of my earlier comments.  I do look forward to seeing the rest of Youngblood’s season.  If nothing else I am impressed by the sheer audacity of their repertory effort.  Also, the more I think about it, and despite its complexity, I really did like the script for DRD.  The problems in the production made that hard to appreciate at first blush.

Nothing like a little light theatre to cap off an exceptional day of art in London.  Well, light theatre is not what the Old Vic had in store for L and I last night.  The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is currently in repertory with The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare as part of The Bridge Project put together by Sam Mendes, director, and Kevin Spacey, Artistic Director of The Old Vic, along with Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions.

The large international cast includes people Americans would find familiar, such as Ethan Hawke and Rebecca Hall, as well as those familiar to Brits, such as Simon Russell Beale and Sinéad Cusack.

The script, in a new version by Tom Stoppard, is accessible and fluid.  The acting is superb and top notch.  The costumes, by Catherine Zuber were an absolute delight.  Paul Pyant’s lighting lovely.  Anthony Ward’s set, however, left me cold.  The house at The Cherry Orchard, where all of the action takes place, is as much a character in the play as anyone on stage, and yet in Ward’s set it is cold and distant.  Why, I find myself wondering, are these people so in love with this house?  I would be glad to be done with it.  Oh well, write it off to the constraints of repertory, I suppose.

It was a brilliant night at the theatre, in any event, and well worth the price of admission.  We had tenth row seats, which were a great vantage point.

I must mention the creative use of an “Aluminium Harp” by the musical team.  This instrument is basically a selection of aluminium rods of varied length and is played by the harpist sliding their resined finger tips up and down along the lengh of the rods.  This produces a ghostly continuous tone, used to great effect within the soundscape of the production.

Homeward after the show, stopped for a quick pint at the Lord John Russell before last call.

Okay, this is The hot ticket right now, Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon and Patrick Stewart as Vladimir in the Samuel Becket classic, Waiting For Godot.

I managed to capture a returned ticket to the Sunday matinée performance, and dutifully trudged across from Covent Garden station to the Haymarket in ample time for 3:00 curtain.  I even purchased a programme, which I only rarely do.

It didn’t help.

Not much.

My review?  WTF!?

It was a brilliant performance, but I would be lying if I claimed I understood it all.  This was not a uviversal reaction.  My seatmate was in rapture throughout the piece, and explained that having read the script several times, and seeing other performances and a film version, with this staging it finally all made sense to her.

Lucky duck.

The staging was beautiful; set, lights, soundscape, all spot on.  The individual performances were all top notch.  Simon Callow brings a special brilliance to Pozzo and Ronald Pickup tackles the most difficult role of Lucky with applaum.  I must say that McKellen & Stewart’s chemistry was a special delight.

I will have to think more about this show before it all really sinks in.

Home again to a mindless night of telly.  “Britain’s Got Talent” indeed.

Ta!

No, I am not referring to the new Joss Whedon show. I am referring to the Donmar Warehouse production of Henkrick Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, starring, amongst others, Gillian Anderson and Christopher Eccelston. She, of the X-Files and he of Dr. Who. It is all too easy to condemn these star studded productions as just gold digging by the theatres, but that is also quite often not the case at all. In this instance, we were quite well served by Ms Anderson, as Nora and Mr. Eccelston as Neil Kelman, as well as their cast-mates: Tara Fitzgerald, as Christine Lyle; Anton Lesser as Dr. Rank and Toby Stevens as Thomas.

First a word about the venue, Donmar Warehouse. In the heart of the West End, just off the 7 Dials, this is a small full thrust house, which means there is no “backstage” and the stage is surrounded on three sides by seating. I was stage right, second row, near the corner with the main bank of seats. There is a balcony, steeply raked, but this is a very intimate house. I was no more than four or five feet from the major entrances and exits of all of the major characters, and love that closeness.

It reminded me, in this way, of a performance of Another Time, produced by the American Jewish Theatre and starring Malcolm McDowell, which I saw with X in New York many years ago. It was wonderful to be so close to such a star that you could realise that they are no different than any other actor; they are only as good or as bad as their performance. An intimate theatre like this takes the air out of the “They’re only cast for drawing power” argument – if they suck the show will suck, and there is no getting away from it.

A Doll’s House is a taught show by any measure. Ibsen despised the gender roles of his era, and wrote unsympathetically of them here and in Hedda Gabler, the masterpiece for which he is most remembered. He was a wordy writer, and he wrote in his vernacular, the Victorian era vernacular of Norway. Translations of his work have often suffered the same fate as the King James Bible, in that the political and social sensibilities of the translator, or the translator’s patron, can often interfere with the intent of the work. In this new version, Zinnie Harris brings us an unforgiving Ibsen, in an accessible but still period vernacular. The rendition is marvellous for these times (and resonates particularly well given the current political climate).

On, then, to the performances. Ms Anderson is highly passionate in her role as the dutiful wife of a politician. While it may be tempting to dismiss this passion as mere cover for a poorly realised portrayal, it is, in Ms Anderson’s able reading, intrinsic to that character. We see, over the span of three acts, her channel this passion first one way and then another as she tries to find a way to defuse the central conflict of the drama.

That conflict is this: Nora, years ago, borrowed money from an unscrupulous source when her husband, Thomas, then a budding politician and now an MP and Cabinet Minister, had a nervous breakdown and she needed to take him abroad to shelter him from the public and press. Her husband knows nothing of this loan, would not have approved, and practically denies that this episode in his life ever happened. The lender, the now discredited former MP Neil Kelman, whose brief Thomas now holds, has decided that in order to save his own hide he must blackmail Nora over the loan he made to her under questionable circumstances. Add to this mix Christine Lyle, a schoolmate of Nora, who has fallen on hard times and prevails upon Nora to help get her a job, and serves as Nora’s confidant. Also Dr. Rank, an old family friend of means who has always held a flame for Nora.

What differentiates an Ibsen drama is that the core conflict in his dramas is always going to revolve around sexual politics. In this case Thomas doesn’t believe that his wife is anything more than a silly, and pretty, mouse. She is happy to let him live with this delusion, rather than let him know that they are both suited in dead people’s clothes from the charity shops.

Eccelston is a manic force in this piece, and I say that having seen most of his part with his back turned squarely to me (one risk of thrust staging). I did have the benefit of seeing his highest and best moment on the stage, his denouement and his salvation wrapped into one, with him and Ms Fitzgerald seated just arm’s reach away. It was gut wrenching and affirming at once. His breakdown in front of the audience was a sincere moment, and the tenderness and unyielding manner of Ms Fitzgerald’s Christine was masterful as well. The two of them nearly stole the show, Ms Fitzgerald’s performance as deliberate as Ms Anderson’s is passionate. They represent the two diametric extreme in Ibsen’s lexicon of the female soul.

In the final scene, between Nora and Thomas, the husband berates his wife; he declaims her, derides her, nearly disowns her. Ms Anderson’s Nora shakes and cowers under this onslaught and Thomas nearly froths at the mouth, his temples throbbing as he raises himself to his full, considerable, height. It is easy, at this moment, to wonder where is Ibsen’s strong woman? We do not see her here. But then, in a moment, there comes a flash and the tables are turned:

Thomas: First and foremost you are a wife and a mother.

Nora: No, first and foremost I am myself, I am Nora!

Anderson rises to her full height and nearly sweeps Stevens off the stage as she launches into her condemnation of him. You can watch the air go out of him, and her find her full power and true centre in this captivating and miraculous three minutes of stage time. To say a chill wind blows through Donmar Warehouse in this scene would be an understatement.

The performances in tonight’s show were all top notch. This show, with five key roles and three supporting, leaves little room for weakness. There is none here. As for Eccelston and Anderson, tonight they were not stars, they were great actors in the company of great actors, and they all shone.

Ibsen is often referred to, in the theatre world, as the father of modern theatre, for his productions were the first to demand, and receive, realistic staging and lighting. Before Ibsen, staging relied mostly on drops and lighting consisted mainly of “limelight” spots and footlights. But Ibsen’s shows had real three dimensional sets and the most modern of lighting. This emphasis on realism allowed the audience to see in the prosaic lives on stage a reflection of their own.

The British theatre, and especially the legitimate, or dramatic, stage, also has a rich tradition of realism, as I have commented before. This tradition shone here with the modest, but dominating design of Anthony Ward and the naturalistic and well motivated lighting of Hugh Vanstone. All of this under the skilled direction of Kfir Yefet.

I thought that Duet for One, after topping Madame de Sade, would stand as the best show I would see on this trip. No more, A Doll’s House has soundly taken that seat. Tomorrow brings a matinée performance of Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot starring Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewert. They have a mighty high threshold to overcome.

Just got home from another night at the theatre, this time War Horse at the New London Theatre. This is a popular ticket, partly due to being appropriate fare for families, but especially because of the spectacular use of sophisticated puppetry in many aspects of the production. If you haven’t done so already, check out this video to get an impression of what I mean:

The story line is simple enough; a young Englishman raises a horse but it gets pressed into service in World War I. He ends up going to the continent to find his horse, and both the lad and his horse have trials and tribulations on the Western Front.

The problem facing this company was how to cast a show with horses as major characters? Their solution, puppets, was brilliant. Made more so by their choice of puppeteers, Handspring Puppets (Adrian Kohler, lead designer), a South African group. Here is another video showing more details:

The effect of these horses is amazing, you simultaneously grow to accept them as simply horses, and to marvel at the quality of the puppetry. Job well done, all round.

The horses are not the only puppets; there is a barnyard goose which is full of character, as well as crows who show up at the worst of times. For that matter, right from the very first you know this is no normal production, as a pair of puppeteers come sweeping onto the stage wielding twenty foot wands with articulated birds at the ends, their wings flapping with grace, swooping around the stage.

The story is both a raw war tale and one of family struggles and clashes. Based on the best selling novel by Michael Morpurgo, this show is popular with families and adult audiences. To be honest, take away the fine puppetry and this show most likely would not make it, but such speculation misses the point – the show is what it is, and that is what makes it a success.

The other technical aspects of the show are marvelous, the set, especially, integrating animation, projections and atmospheric effects with a fine lighting hang and some other special effects. This all integrates quite well with the soundscaping and the score. A special treat is the period songs, often played and sung by a strolling minstrel with his accordion.

I give it four stars.

One note, the New London Theatre is a fairly modern space, and has a spacious feel to it common of theatres built in the 1980s, with a thrust stage, wrap-around steeply raked seating, and, most grievous, no centre aisle. The centre section in stalls is 38 seats wide, and God forbid you have a seat in the middle and need to get in our out! I was third seat from the aisle, and simply gave up on sitting until the row was filled.

Ta!

There are a lot of little things that I keep meaning to mention, so today I will try to catch up.

First off, however, I need to comment on Havana Rakatan, the dance programme presented by Sadler’s Wells tonight at the Peacock Theatre. Ooh La La!

I have learnt that Sadler’s Wells do not disappoint, and tonight was no exception. Last year I saw Insane in the Brain and Tango Por Dos, and both were exceptional. Now, when I see an advert for a Sadler’s Wells production I just add it to my list and don’t worry myself about whether it will be a worthy investment.

So, tonight’s performance, ending Saturday, features the top Cuban Son band Turquino, and a crew of about 20 dancers representing the cream of the crop in Cuban dance. Every style of Cuban dance is represented in this show: Salsa, Mambo, Rumba, Flamenco, classic folkloric, Bolero, Cha-Cha-Cha, etc.

A crowd favourite was when, following a bracing ensemble number, just the men are left on stage wearing an assortment of tops and tie-up trousers. They all face the audience and strip off their tops. The women in the audience went nuts and we all cheered. Then they started to loosen the ties on their trousers, the whole audience gasped, and many started a deafening cheer.

Just then a female Flamenco dancer started in from stage right, all taught angles, quivering curves, a costume as red as if a vat of lip gloss had been dumped on her (and as figure hugging, too) and a severe glint in her eye. As she moved across the stage in that staccato fashion unique to Flamenco, the men preened, then shrugged and then, resigned, simply picked up their kit and slunk off the stage.

The moment was precious, and the audience was but putty in their hands after that.

The show nearly broke my heart when the band started into Guantanamera, that most Cuban of all songs. I cannot help myself, whenever I hear this song I am transported to a little Mexican restaurant I visited many, many years ago with X and her mum N. N loved Cuba, and when the mariachi’s band came by X asked if they could play it. They launched into a serviceable rendition, an N started to cry for her love of Cuba. It was a touching, and to me eternally precious, moment, and now whenever I hear that song I start to tear up at my love for N and for her love of Cuba. Oh what a tangled web…

The show ended with the entire audience brought to their feet and trying to dance along with the crew on stage. My seat mate, Carolina, (a Polish immigrant, by way of Australia) a salsa dancer, put me to shame as I just did the white-guy-shuffle and tried to keep in time.

So, the other news… I have already reported twice on the little constitutional crisis brewing over here. Well, it would be one if the Brits really had a constitution like the US does. At the root of the current mess are two separate scandals, which are coming to fruition simultaneously. The first is the peerage “laws for pay” scandal. This actually dates back to my last visit here, in early spring of 2008. In this one, members of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of parliament (think Senate) were found to be dispensing favours for money – aka taking bribes. Two peers have been found guilty, finally, and have had their privileges suspended pending further action. This is remarkable in that it hasn’t happened in over 300 years, dating back to the era of Britain’s civil war (yes, they had one too).

The second is the continuing Exes scandal, in which members of the House of Commons (MPs) have been exposed as having exploited rules which allow them to recoup various expenses associated with maintaining multiple households so as to attend parliament. This has now claimed several members of all the major parties, including senior aides and ministers, and has lead to calls for wholesale reform of the entire electoral system. Yesterday it took its biggest toll, the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Though widely expected, and called for, this act, again for the first time in more than 300 years, has set the entire government, majority and opposition alike, on their arse and made them think about just how quickly they are racing towards the abyss of writing themselves out of governance and into history.

There is a lot of talking about cooler heads prevailing and the like, but coming down the tracks like a dual locomotive are the 4 June county and EU elections. The electorate are fuming and they are ready to elect anyone who is not currently in power. This could potentially send a bunch of fascistic “England for the English” folk, like the British National Party (we’ll pay you to just move back home and leave us alone) into Whitehall. No one bargained for this.

Meanwhile the Germans and French, in the person of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, have already issued warnings that if the Conservatives (Tories) or isolationists are elected they may need to restrict England from having a say on EU policy going forward.

This is, as my dad used to say, a right bloody mess.

On a lighter note. I noticed something in Mayfair the other day. You know those ridiculously gorgeous models in the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues? If you go to the Mayfair outlet of A&F those very same models are there in person, wearing virtually nothing, and ready to greet you at the door and hand you a shopping basket. I kid you not.

Marks and Spenser, known affectionately around here as either M&S or Marks & Sparks, celebrate their 125^th anniversary this year, and so for three days, starting today, put 30 items on sale for a penny a piece, in recognition of their start as a penny shop (“Don’t ask the price, its a pence” was an early slogan). People started to line up at the flagship Oxford Street, Marble Arch location at 5 this morning and M&S handed out tea and coffee to those in line, along with cards listing the available products and little pencils so they could check up to five that they wanted.

Twiggy was there as Mistress of Ceremonies and has been all over the telly promoting it for the past week or so. At least we get to see a lot of Twiggy, whom fate and time have treated quite well indeed.

Bank Holiday, again! When Pawn first got here, nearly three weeks ago, England launched into a three day weekend, triggered by a bank holiday. In the US such a term evokes memories of the Great Depression, when “Bank Holiday” was a euphemism for a bank failure, wherein the government would shutter a bank for a few days while they sorted the books and then reopened the bank under national control. We have seen this happen with alarming regularity in the past year or so, but the FDIC, who handle such things, have gotten quite good at doing the whole thing over a weekend, so no one’s any the wiser.

Anyway, Bank Holiday weekends mean a few things. First off, sales, lots of sales. Two, everyone tries to leave London for the hinterlands, beaches of Brighton, etc. Third, half the underground goes under repair at once, and you cannot get anywhere you want. Fourth, the weather sucks. The forecasts are always rosy, but the actual weather always seems to suck. We’ll see if this time is any different.

The next item on today’s gazette, STRIKE! The RMT union have struck the Victoria line for a 24 hour stoppage from tonight at 9:00 pm. This is due to a little incident a couple of months ago wherein a train operator mistakenly opened the doors on the wrong side of the coaches of a Victoria Line train. The union pointed out that this line lacks the safety devices which prevent such a mistake on the other lines, but Transport for London (TfL) sacked the driver nonetheless. Thus the strike.

For me this means I may not get to see Cirxus up at Arcola Theatre’s new experimental Studio K space. Arcola are up in Dalston, in Hackney, and the only good way to get there from here is via the Victoria. I meant to go there tonight, but couldn’t risk being stranded with no way home. Thus my choice to attend Sadler’s Wells show. Tomorrow may work, but if the strike does continue for the full 24 hours it will be a no-go to get to Hackney. Bank Holiday means massive trains works, so that means the whole weekend is bullocks. >Sigh<

In other news of the day, I treked east to Bethnel Green again today, hoping to check out some more galleries there. Oops! Must learn to check the fine print more carefully. Most of these galleries are only open by appointment or on Friday and Saturday. Okay, add that to the list for the weekend.

Tomorrow L shows up from Wisconsin to visit her brother. We’ll hang out some, too. So look forward to more reports of someone getting annoyed at me for walking fast or refusing to hail cabs or other such indignities. I am hard to cope with, which just adds to your reading delight.

Two final notes: I pinched an office chair from a rubbish skip the other day, an office block across the street is under rehab and they had a half dozen chairs out to the curb.

My favourite Gay-Bollywood-After-School-Special, Nina’s Heavenly Delights is on BBC One right now. Ah, joy!

Ta!