The Man in the Grand Circle

Night of the Living Dead review – Pleasance Theatre

The spirit of George A Romero’s 1968 cult horror film is alive in more ways than one in this splatterific stage version.

First off, there are no zombies. It’s “ghouls” or “the undead” – keeping things true to Romero’s original vision.

But what’s really impressive about this show is the astonishing monochrome set and costume design by Diego Pitarch.

It’s like you’re watching a black and white film. Inspired.

Most of the story takes place inside a dimly-lit abandoned farmhouse, complete with a rickety staircase, a boarded-up window (“Don’t stand in front of the window!”) and double doors which offer frequent glimpses of hungry cadavers outside

The show’s USP is to seat 20 members of the audience – in boiler suits and shower caps – in a “splatter zone” centre stage. It may be fun to be up there, but from the auditorium I found it a distraction. It often obscured what was going on.

There are jump-scares aplenty (big applause for the sound and light design), but don’t expect this to give you nightmares. As director Benji Sperring points out in his programme notes, this is a cultural rarity: a comedy horror.

The tongue is firmly in cheek. Or rather, poking through the cheek.

Sperring works his excellent six-strong cast hard to squeeze out as many laughs as possible.

I particularly liked Marc Pickering as Harry, with his comedic strut, and Jennifer Harding in the dual roles of Helen and Judy.

The second act’s insistence on exploring multiple alternative endings wears a bit thin, but the big musical finale – when the red stuff really starts to fly – more than makes up for it.

George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead LIVE! is at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington, until 8 June.

Three Sisters review – Almeida Theatre

When the world doesn’t seem be working out the way you expect, you can’t beat a bit of Chekhov to put things in perspective.

Anyone of a like mind should consider heading to north London for this delightful new version of Three Sisters by Cordelia Lynn.

The original story of the Prozorov siblings, stuck in a provincial Russian town dreaming of a life in Moscow, is very much intact, but the language – with added swearing and even a TS Eliot quote – sparkles and zings for a 21st century audience.

Director Rebecca Frecknall places her characters carefully around (and sometimes just off) the stage as if pieces in some magnificent chess game.

This play reunites Frecknall with Patsy Ferran, who recently won the best actress Olivier award for their previous project Summer and Smoke.

That play, which also won for best revival, ended up in the West End after starting out at the Almeida. I’d be surprised if Three Sisters didn’t follow the same trajectory.

Ferran is as magnetic as ever as Olga, the eldest of the sisters. It’s a shame she doesn’t get more stage time.

She’s joined by Pearl Chanda as the wonderfully moody Masha, while Ria Zmitrowicz is excellent as the youngest, Irina, who we see start out so full of youth and promise only to see it crushed out of her as the acts progress.

In one of the play’s best scenes, Chanda heartbreakingly portrays Masha’s despair at the departure of Vershinin (Peter McDonald), the married soldier she loves, while her foolish husband Kulygin (Elliott Levey) goofs about in complete denial.

The set is simple but effective. I like to think that the single piano on stage was one of the many that appeared in Summer and Smoke.

My first experience of Chekhov was seeing Three Sisters at the Barbican in the late 1980s with Harriet Walter as Masha. I fell in love then with the dramatist’s unhappy, frustrated world.

This version is every bit as good. It blew my Chekhovian socks off. Forget Moscow. We must go to Islington.

Three Sisters is at the Almeida Theatre until 1 June

Pah-La review – Royal Court

An odd thing about this play: it gave me nightmares. That’s never happened before in all my decades of going to the theatre.

I have a vague recollection of feeling trapped in a place under threat, which makes sense when you consider the events that take place in Abhishek Majumdar’s new play.

Based on real stories during the unrest in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 2008, the story focuses on two characters.

The first is a sparky young Buddhist nun called Deshar (Millicent Wong) who, when we first meet her, has just elbowed a Chinese soldier in the face and stolen his uniform, as well as one of his teeth.

The second is Chinese Commander Deng (Daniel York Loh), who has arrived to enforce a programme of “re-education”.

Events at the nunnery take a destructive turn, and Deshar carries out a shocking act of defiance.

*Spoiler alert*

Her self-immolation is superbly handled. The audience sat in stunned silence as the lights went up for the interval.

Pah-La – Tibetan for “father” – explores many themes: violence, non-violence, father-daughter relationships, and an individual’s relationship with the state.

In the stronger first act, director Debbie Hannan builds a strong sense of atmosphere, particularly in the nunnery scenes where a giant Buddha statue glows in candlelight.

The second act, however, starts to sag under the weight of too many ideological speeches. The interrogation scenes involving a horribly burned Deshar aren’t an easy watch. They may well have contributed to my nightmare.

But Pah-La explores unfamiliar places and ideas that make it feel a fresh and exciting piece of theatre.

Pah-La is at the Royal Court until 27 April

Mary’s Babies review – Jermyn Street Theatre

Mary’s Babies is inspired by the story of fertility treatment pioneers Mary Barton and her husband Bertold Wiesner. Between the 1930s and 1960s they used Bertold’s sperm to inseminate up to 1,000 women before destroying the records.

Set in 2007, Maud Dromgoole’s play imagines a set of encounters between some of those grown-up children as they discover that they have hundreds of half-siblings.

Dromgoole doesn’t make things easy for the audience. Over 90 minutes we are presented with 39 characters played by two actors. Some scenes are so short they are over before you’ve worked out who’s speaking. It helps to have their names lit up in picture frames on the wall.

Emma Fielding and Katy Stephens brilliantly bring these diverse personalities to life.

I particularly liked Kieran, the nervous but big-hearted “little dweeb” who spearheads the efforts to get “Barton’s Brood” together. Stephens plays him so well that his presence acts as a helpful anchor amid the multifarious encounters.

Another standout is Fielding’s straight-talking Registrar who shares a laugh-out-loud scene about birth certificates with Bret, a character who wouldn’t be out of place in EastEnders.

Mary’s Babies - Maud Dromgoole - Jermyn Street Theatre - 20th March 2019Director - Tatty Hennessy Designer - Anna Reid Lighting Designer - Jai Morjaria Cast - Emma Fielding and Katy Stephens — Katy Stephens as Bret (photo: Robert Workman)

Not all of it works. I was baffled by a somewhat surreal scene with a ventriloquist in a hospital car park.

But the writing is whip-smart. It brims with poetry, wordplay and passages that prompt tears.

This is my second Maud Dromgoole play in a month. Here’s my review of 3 Billion Seconds.

I look forward to seeing what she conceives next.

Mary’s Babies is at Jermyn Street Theatre in London until 13 April.

Gaslight review – The Mill at Sonning

The term “gaslighting” – a form of psychological abuse that makes the victim question their own sanity – has been much written about and discussed in recent years.

It gets its name from this 1938 stage play by Patrick Hamilton. Set in 1880, the story takes place in the London home of the apparently respectable Mr Jack Manningham (Damien Matthews) and his wife Bella (Charlotte Brimble).

Manningham’s manipulative behaviour – and his flirtatious relationship with Nancy the maid (Rhiannon Handy, excellent) – are evident in the first few minutes, setting the audience immediately on edge.

Gaslight-IMG_7459 — Photo: Andreas Lambis

Matthews and Brimble are both superb in their roles as the domineering husband and terrified wife, as is David Acton as Rough – a former detective who turns up out of the blue investigating a cold murder case. Under Robin Herford’s tight direction, the cast really succeed in turning up the tension.

The Mill at Sonning’s intimate stage is a perfect fit for this Victorian-set thriller. Its themes around power within relationships and mental health resonate strongly today. I found myself thoroughly sucked in.

Gaslight is at The Mill at Sonning until 13 April

All About Eve, or All About Screens

This isn’t a review as such, but some thoughts on All About Eve, starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James, at the Noel Coward Theatre.

It took me a while to see this, having been confined to my sick bed when it opened.

While Anderson well deserves her Olivier Awards nomination for best actress, I’m not surprised that Ivo van Hove’s production doesn’t appear in the best new play or director categories.

I came away from this disappointed in what seemed to me to be the overuse of video screens.

Yes, Gillian Anderson has a face you could look at all day – so it’s not hard to see why van Hove is keen to show her projected large from the POV of her dressing room mirror.

But is it really such a bold artistic move to screen large chunks of the action as they take place in cramped spaces out of view?

I saw this from the Grand Circle (where else?) and my lasting memory is of watching several minutes of this play via two fairly standard TV screens suspended high above the stage.

Some of it – including a brilliant sequence where Anderson’s Margo Channing visibly ages in her mirror – is pre-recorded.

If I wanted to stay at home and watch TV… yadda yadda yadda.

A brilliant story, irritatingly told.

The Lady Vanishes review – Richmond Theatre

“I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know how it ends,” said the man behind me as the lights went down after the interval for this stage version of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1938 film.

In truth it doesn’t matter whether you’ve seen the Hitchcock version or not. This adaptation, directed by Roy Marsden, is largely faithful to the original except it dumps the early hotel scenes and instead introduces the characters on the impressive railway station set that opens the play.

The story revolves around the disappearance of a tweed-wearing governess Miss Froy (Juliet Mills) during an eventful train journey from Austria to Switzerland just before WW2.

A young woman Iris (Lorna Fitzgerald) joins forces with Max (Matt Barber) to solve the mystery of why none of their fellow passengers remember seeing Miss Froy. Along the way they meet Nazis, a brain surgeon, a magician, a couple having an extra-marital affair and a pair of cricket-obsessed Englishmen.

Basically, it’s got all the ingredients of a great farce – and that’s partly the problem. This stage version often feels like a comedy, not an edge-of-the-seat thriller.

It begins with creaky old jokes about foreign accents which would be more at home in ‘Allo ‘Allo – while later on people are getting shot dead right in front of our eyes.

The cast is great. Juliet Mills is a pleasure to watch, and the cricket-loving Charters (Robert Duncan) and Caldicott (Ben Nealon) make the most of having all the best lines.

The train carriage scenes are superbly realised, with almost all the action taking place between private compartments, the dining car and the luggage wagon. (Great work by designer Morgan Large.)

Like a trip on a steam train, this is an old-fashioned and entertaining theatrical ride.

The Lady Vanishes is at Richmond Theatre until 16 March and then touring.

3 Billion Seconds – The Vaults

The next stop for this theatre blog takes me underground to a cavernous theatre space beneath Waterloo Station.

The 3 Billion Seconds in the title of Maud Dromgoole’s wonderfully dark but funny play refer to the estimated lifespan of a baby born in the present day.

“We are a plague on Earth!” population activists Daisy (Rhiannon Neads) and Michael (Tayla Kovacevic Ebong) inform us in the opening line, as trains rumble ominously overhead.

Over the next hour we become intimately acquainted with this likeable (and occasionally irritating) couple who spout copious stats about how humans are wrecking the planet and go into great detail about growing their own veg.

What they don’t want is a baby to make things worse for the world. So you can guess what happens when Daisy gets pregnant.

Actually, you can’t. Because what’s brilliant about Dromgoole’s play is how cleverly she moves the story in a direction you least expect. No spoilers – but it involves a pie chart.

Neads and Ebong are impressive as the oddball pair in this two-hander, which also requires them to slip in and out of other characters and convey a wide range of emotions.

Oh, there’s also an excellent vasectomy joke.

I’ll be seeing Dromgoole’s Mary’s Babies at Jermyn Street Theatre later this month. Can’t wait.

3 Billion Seconds is on at the Vault Festival until 10 March.

Alys, Always – Bridge Theatre

“You’re not famous. I looked you up – you don’t exist.”

Based on the 2012 novel by Harriet Lane, Alys, Always is the story of a young woman’s journey from “dogsbody” to somebody.

Joanne Froggatt is Frances, an office junior on the books section of a Sunday newspaper, whose life changes when she comes across a road accident involving the wife – the titular Alys – of famous writer Laurence Kyte (Robert Glenister).

Invited to meet the Kyte family, Frances finds herself drawn into in a world of money and status – one which she’s unwilling to leave.

Lucinda Coxon’s stage adaptation expertly weaves plenty of laughs into the play’s tense fabric. Under Nicholas Hytner’s direction, there’s never a dull scene. The car crash at the start is cleverly realised through narration, back projection and superb sound design.

Froggatt is perfectly cast as the sweet-faced but scheming journalist. She conveys volumes with just the tiniest expressions. It’s fascinating to watch how her friendship with Alys’s grown-up daughter Polly (Leah Gayer) turns into something more psychologically complex. (It’s Polly who says to Frances the line quoted at the start of this review.)

High-brow theatre it’s not (despite the live cellist), but anyone who enjoys their thrillers read by the pool or watched on prime-time TV should consider giving this a go.

Alys, Always is at the Bridge Theatre until 30 March

Tartuffe – National Theatre (Lyttelton)

In one corner of the opulent set for this new version of Tartuffe stands a giant golden replica of Michelangelo’s David draped in a pink boa. At one point the statue is turned 180 degrees so that David’s magnificent gilded backside faces the audience in what I suspect is the theatrical equivalent of a cheeky wink.

This is just one of the many comic delights scattered throughout John Donnelly’s modern reworking of Moliere’s 17th century French farce.

Subtitled “The Imposter”, the story takes place in a mansion in contemporary Highgate where Orgon (Kevin Doyle) is having a personal crisis over his wealthy lifestyle and has invited into his home the charismatic outsider Tartuffe (Denis O’Hare). “It’s not an obsession, it’s an awakening,” Orgon tells his concerned family, who brand the strangely-dressed interloper “a zealot”.

This being a farce, it seems appropriate that when he does appear on stage – almost an hour into the play – Tartuffe isn’t wearing any trousers, just some spotty pants and a t-shirt. It’s a great pay-off after a long build up. O’Hare’s slippery character has beads and a top-knot and speaks with a European accent that’s hard to pin down. It’s a magnetic performance, which begins even before the play starts with O’Hare flinging daffodils to audience members while they are still silencing their phones.

The whole cast is uniformly excellent. As Orgon, Doyle at times seems to be channelling Basil Fawlty. Olivia Williams, as his wife Elmire, is superb in the slapstick seduction scene where she attempts to expose Tartuffe’s lechery, as is Geoffrey Lumb as the ridiculous street poet Valere (“You know I don’t do ones that rhyme!”)

I also enjoyed Enyi Okoronkwo and Kitty Archer as Orgon’s privileged offspring Damis and Mariane, while Kathy Kiera Clarke has some of the best lines as housekeeper Dorine. “Killing yourself is no laughing matter,” she deadpans. “There are downsides.”

Under Blanche McIntyre’s direction, this modern take on Moliere’s classic moves at a great pace and is the funniest play I’ve seen in a long time, all of which goes to make the serious message that Tartuffe delivers in his closing address to the audience all the more powerful.

Tartuffe is at the National Theatre in London until 30 April