Month: March 2024

Twelve shows in London February 2024

/ Monica Prendergast / Leave a comment

Danny Sapani as King Lear

1. Here is my ranked list of the 12 shows I saw last month in London. First, by a long shot, was the Almeida Theatre production of King Lear with Danny Sapani offering a towering Lear, directed by Yaël Farber and well-supported by a majority Black cast (white actors played some roles, including Edmund and Edgar, as well as Kent). Clarke Peters, from The Wire, played the Fool and was also excellent, diverting from tradition to appear in the final scene of the play. I have been disappointed with a couple of recent Lears, including Paul Gross at Stratford last year, who I felt lacked the gravitas required of the role, and Anthony Sher’s Lear which I saw at BAM a few years ago. This one wiped the slate clean. I hear that Kenneth Branagh is playing Lear in New York this December, and you know I’ll be seeing that one! Read more about the show here: https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/king-lear/

Cast of Guys and Dolls

2. This was a glorious production of this great musical, directed by Nicholas Hytner at the Bridge Theatre. There was so much to love about this show, the acting, the dancing, the singing, it had it all! Still on, if you’re going to London, don’t miss seeing it! Read more here: https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/guys-and-dolls/

Ken Nwosu as Othello and Ira Mandela Siobhan as Subconscious Othello

3. Third on my list was an excellent production of Othello in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre. I love this space, lit by candles only, plus a skylight over the stage. An accurate recreation of a 17th Century indoor playhouse, with beautiful hand-painted ceilings, it’s a lovely space to see a show. This was quite an untraditional production of Othello, especially the unorthodox decision by director Ola Ince to have two Othellos, one of whom portrays Othello’s subconscious mind tormenting him throughout the play. This was an inspired choice which I thought worked extremely well. I didn’t even mind the fact that in this version, both Othello and Iago survive to face justice. Read more about the show here: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/othello-2023/

Cast of The Motive and the Cue

4. Next was this wonderful National Theatre production (I saw five in all!) written by Jack Thorne and directed by Sam Mendes. Based on a true story when Sir John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a play in London in 1964, the play featured terrific performances from Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Burton, with Tuppence Middleton as a suitably gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor. Smart, funny and an all around really good time! Read more here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/the-motive-and-the-cue/

Cast of Standing at the Sky’s Edge

5. Another National Theatre show! This was the musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which is now playing in the West End. It tells the story of three working class families in Sheffield across decades from the 1980s to the present. Featuring some outstanding performances, great music and overall very moving, this was another winner! Read more about the show here: https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/standing-at-the-skys-edge-2/

Left to Right; Lindsay Duncan as Dora, Billy Howle as Nicholas, Bessie Carter as Fenny and Malcolm Sinclair as Charles

6. Yes, it’s a National Theatre show! Dear Octopus is an intergenerational family drama set just before World War II about the Randolph family, headed by mother Dora and father Charles. Originally written in 1938 by Dodie Smith, this remount features an excellent performance by Lindsay Duncan as matriarch Dora, and centres around a golden wedding anniversary that gets complicated with dynamics within the family. We hear snippets of the looming war to come on the radio, which heightens what this family will soon be facing. I found this one very moving. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-octopus/

The Webb sisters in their younger performing days

7. The Hills of California is a new play by Jez Butterworth, also directed by Sam Mendes. I was pulled into this play right away, as it features a family of four daughters, like my own. The mother is upstairs dying, which brings her daughters home for a final visit. We see in flashbacks that she was a stage mother who pushed her girls to perform as an all-girl act decades earlier. The daughters carry heavy emotions related to this over time, and everything spills out over the course of a weekend reunion in Blackpool in 1976 during an unprecedented heatwave. Jez Butterworth is an excellent playwright (I wish I’d seen his lauded production Jerusalem which premiered at the Royal Court in 2009 with Mark Rylance in the leading role) and Sam Mendes directs this large cast with his usual confidence. Read more about the show here: http://hillsofcaliforniaplay.com

Cast of Nye with Michael Sheen, centre, playing Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan 

8. The National Theatre again, this new play by Tim Price, directed by Rufus Norris, was quite wonderful. As I said in my Facebook post after seeing the show, I never thought I’d be moved to tears by a play about the founding of the National Health Service. Nye Bevan was an MP under Winston Churchill, and other Prime Ministers, and his legacy was his struggle to establish the NHS. “Confronted with death, Nye’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill in an epic Welsh fantasia.” There were some surreal elements to this production, all of which worked well, and left me wanting to know more about this remarkable man. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/nye/

Cast of Till the Stars Come Down

9. Another National Theatre show! This one is a new play by Beth Steel and directed by Bijan Sheibani. It’s a 24 hour play about a family wedding where everything goes horribly wrong. Long-held grievances are aired, fights break out, the family patriarch declares his love for his sister-in-law, like that. I enjoyed this play, although I did feel that it veered a bit too much into written for TV land. However, the climax of the play did not disappoint, and left me feeling sorry for the poor bride and her Polish husband, as they will have to deal with the emotional fallout of the day for years to come. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/till-the-stars-come-down/

10. This was an odd one, and a bit of a hit and miss for me. “In a totalitarian state where the Ministry of Culture must approve all new works of art, a rebel group is staging an illegal play under the guise of a wedding. In this darkly funny political thriller, everything is not as it seems…A Mirror is an explosively entertaining story of the search for love and truth in a society that values neither.” This is an accurate description of the play, but the play also has some audience participation, and has some unexpected twists and turns. I liked it, but it sits where it does on my list. Read about it here: https://trafalgartheatre.com/shows/a-mirror/

Cast of The Time Traveler’s Wife

11. I enjoyed this musical more than I expected to, as I enjoyed the show on Crave based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Sadly the show did not do well in the West End, and closed on February 24th. I managed to catch one of the final performances. I thought it quite magical, with some terrific stage magic (How did they DO THAT?) and charming moments, featuring two strong leads who can really sing. The book by playwright Lauren Gunderson reflects the novel well, but the music by Joss Stone and Dave Stewart (of the Eurthymics) did not leave any memorable tunes in my mind. A pleasurable show, but perhaps not one for the ages. Read about it here: https://theapollotheatre.co.uk/tickets/the-time-travellers-wife/

12. Unfortunately, this production of Ibsen’s great play was my biggest disappointment of the trip. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier, and with Matt Smith as Dr. Stockmann, I found this production to be a bit of a mess. Ostermeier is a revered German director, but this one didn’t work for me at all, descending into literal paint being thrown onto actors. It could have worked, but for me, this was a miss. Read about it here: https://www.thedukeofyorks.com/an-enemy-of-the-people

That’s it from me! I hope you enjoyed this list. Let’s do it again next year!

Sisters at Theatre Inconnu

/ Monica Prendergast / 1 Comment

From left to Right: Jane Rees, Sophia Radford, Jeremy Sinclair, Zoe Salvin, Jennifer Bayne, Ryan Kniel

I saw Theatre Inconnu’s very good production of Wendy Lill’s 1991 play Sisters, which looks at the difficult topic of residential schools and the nuns who taught in them. We learn about the life of Sister Mary, who has become a nun after experiencing a calling, and leaves behind a boy who would have married her. She begins working at a residential school where we see and hear about the lives of the Indigenous children who attended these schools. Some try to run away, but are chased down by dogs. Some make a successful escape, never to return. We hear that the students are subjected to caning, common at the time, as the play is set in the late 60s/early 70s.

Sister Mary is played by two actors, Sophia Redford plays Young Mary and Jennifer Bayne the mature Mary. Both do lovely work in their respective roles, although Bayne has the heavier lifting, and effectively portrays Mary’s search for both God and meaning in the work she has undertaken for over 25 years. We see her meeting with a Jewish lawyer who has moved to Canada to avoid the draft into the Vietnam War. Why is she talking to a lawyer? Well, I won’t spoil the plot for those who may plan to see the show, but she has taken a drastic action that will have serious consequences.

As we travel through the play, we find out more about Mary’s backstory, her struggles with her faith and her guilty conscience about her work at the residential school. We also learn about the other nuns who work at the school. There is Sister Gabriel, who is a bundle of nerves, and Mother Agnes, who dominates the nuns under her control. Gabriel is well-played by Zoe Salvin and Mother Agnes by Jane Rees, who finds multiple levels in her characterization. Ryan Kniel plays the Jewish lawyer Stein with good authority, letting us see glimpses of his struggles with his parents and his girlfriend, and Jeremy Sinclair plays Louis, a farmer who loves Young Mary with simple clarity.

The play is directed well by Kevin McKendrick, who pulls strong performances out of his cast and keeps things moving at a good pace throughout this nearly 2 hour play. Artistic Director Clayton Jevne provided the lighting design, while actor Kniel does sound, offering familiar songs from the 60s to underscore the period. Madeleine Mills designed the costumes, which work well. Overall, this is a very good production of a play worth seeing. Lill went on to become an NDP MP and has written a number of other plays, including The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which I was fortunate enough to perform in at the Phoenix Theatre in 1999. She has always had a strong sense of social justice, so I can see how well this play sits in her work, focussed as it is on the injustice and cruelty of residential schools, even by the most well-meaning of those who worked in them. Recommended. Runs until March 9th with tickets available at https://www.theatreinconnu.com/sisters/