Review: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Nottingham Playhouse

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is Nottingham Playhouse’s latest offering and both contrasts and compliments nicely with their last in-house show, Forever Young. Peter Nichols’ play, about two parents and how they deal with living with their severely disabled daughter – the Joe of the title, deals with a serious and contemporary subject but with a lot of humour.

Bri and Sheila are two parents raising their 11 year old daughter Jo, whom is restricted to a wheelchair and unable to communicate due to severe cerebal palsy. Bri, a school teacher, finds making jokes and creating personalities and identities for Jo helps him cope whilst for Sheila this becomes constricting and she leaves for her amateur dramatics rehearsal with Bri in charge of Jo. The first half sets this context and then tells the story of Jo’s early life through speeches and multi-roled flashbacks with Bri of them taking on the other characters. The second half sees Sheila return from rehearsal and the arrival of Bri’s mother. Shiela is accompanied by Freddie, an old school contemporary of Bri’s, and his wife, Pam. They appear embody the petty bourgeois with Freddie extolling socialist virtue whilst Pam talks about her dislike of ‘weirdies’, what she terms Jo. Bri brings Jo down to meet Pam and Freddie then she takes a turn for the worse which begins a succession of events with Pam having to go to the chemists to get Jo’s medicine, Freddie calling for an ambulance at the pay phone and finally Bri leaving Jo in the back of his freezing car in an act of euthanasia. We then skip to the next morning and Bri is leaving Sheila before she and Jo get back from the hospital, he says he can’t cope with the constriction of Jo, suddenly Jo and Sheila get back. However, when she goes into the kitchen to fix them some breakfast he leaves.

Matt Aston’s direction picks out the inherent comedy in the piece and the show is still a period piece with the creative team retaining the late 1960s setting and thus, possibly, being able to use the language with a bit more freedom. Mark Benton’s Bri is a natural comedian but his performance was rushed and he hurried through moments that would have raised the pathos. Tim Dantay and Sarah White as Freddie and Pam give good turns but the real star of the show is Amy Robbins who, as Bri’s long suffering and acused wife Sheila, gives a performance full of emotion and experience. The design of Bri and Sheila’s home was beautiful with the ceiling resembling the inner cortex of the eye echoing the metaphor of sight which runs through the second half. However the light-up, musical style stairs which protrude into the audience from the proscenium did not convince neither did the actress playing Jo coming skipping on to announce the interval. This was a preview and the show did have some great moments with others which could sparkle further into the run but Mark Benton’s rushed performance, especially considering the amount Bri reveals to the audience in his long speeches, didn’t make the show feel as assured as it otherwise would have been.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg: ***
Image courtesy of Robert Day.

Review: A Number, Lace Market Theatre Studio

The intimate surrounds of the bar of Nottingham’s Lace Market Theatre saw an excellent revival of Caryl Churchill’s searching two hander A Number last week. Graeme Jennings’ production, although amateur, this not a put-down, was well acted and considered.

The action revolves around men visiting Salter who has had his son, Bernard 1, cloned when he was four and then gave him away so as to have another chance to raise him properly. However, Salter discovers that he has been cloned twenty times with all the clones living different lives all over the country. Bernard 2 becomes worried by this and the revelation of his existence as a clone. When Bernard 1 returns to Salter’s he seems maladjusted and his menace made Paul Johnson’s, who played all the clones, performance really sparkle; his progression from clone to clone making his acting seem like a haunting palimpsest. Bernard 2 then talks with Salter about his fear of being followed by one of the others and leaves spooked. This action all revolves around Salter letting more and more slip about the death of the Bernards’ mother who it seems committed suicide although Salter’s delivery of this was loaded with ambiguity. Next we see Salter talking with Michael, another of the clones, and it is revealed that Bernard 1 has killed Bernard 2 and then killed himself. This scene acting as an almost Brechtian comic juxtaposition with Michael being played as a bumbling northern maths teacher and making the Bernards’ deaths more eerie in their difference and sameness. By the end of the play Salter has lost both sons and his breakdown seems complete even though he actually has 19 sons remaining, none have the vitality of the Bernards.

This post-modern parable had echoes of Schiller’s The Robbers and A Number ends in a similar way. Both Marcus Wakeley (Salter) and Paul Johnson (the clones) gave fine performances and there were moments of real pathos in the direction. The scene ending blackouts became a little tiresome as a convention but these were aided with snatches of childlike piano music, played disjointedly by Piotr Wisniewski. A compelling night at the theatre and a brave piece to attempt, A Number was a thought provoking and considered production and should make an audience anticipate more eagerly their versions of classics Blithe Spirit and Three Sisters.

A Number: ****
Image courtesy of Lace Market Theatre.

6016theatre.co.uk now live!

As the title suggests, www.6016theatre.co.uk is now online! This will be the official home of 6016 Theatre Company, the parent organisation of the Weasel Blog, which is run by your review master-general Mr Gareth Morgan who was recently described as a 'Pioneering dramaturg, and self made man'. Take a look here if you don't believe me. Off to see A Number tonight and A Long Road in Leicester later this week followed by the eagerly awaited Joe Egg at Nottingham Playhouse. Reviews of all 3 to follow.

Review: Enemy of the People, Sheffield Crucible

After its 15.3 million pound revamp, Sheffield’s Crucible theatre reopens with another actor-director at the helm, following in the illustrious footsteps of Michael Grandage and Sam West. Daniel Evans, the new AD, boasts an impressive CV but this is a step up and he makes it admirably, aided by the award winning theatrical superstar that is Antony Sher.

The play chosen to inaugurate this new regime is Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People with Sher playing the Ibsen-esque protagonist Dr Thomas Stockmann even down to the Norwegian’s distinctive sideburns. Ibsen is enjoying something of a revival with Ghosts being staged at the Duchess in London. Enemy of the People, in a fine version by Christopher Hampton, as indeed with Frank McGuinness’ new Ghosts, does not steer away from the themes which landed Ibsen in such trouble in the 1880s and caused him to move from his native Norway to Italy and Germany, returning only twice – this flight something considered by Stockmann in the final scene.

Stockmann is a doctor and scientist in a small town in Norway. He and his brother Peter, the town’s mayor, are overseeing the completion of Thomas’ grand design, the opening of health spa which will boost the town’s economy. However, trouble looms when Stockmann discovers that the water supply contains harmful bacteria. Aided by the local press and the Property Owners’ Association, Stockmann believes he has his ‘solid majority’ by which to take on Peter and reveal that the baths pose a serious health risk. Getting wind of this, Peter picks off Stockmann’s allies by revealing the huge civic cost of the rectifying of the problem, this convinces Aslaksen, Chairman of the Property Owners’ Association, whilst the slimy, petty journalist Hovstad, played by the excellent Trystan Gravelle, his dissuaded from supporting Stockmann by being spurned by the Doctor’s daughter Petra. Stockmann, fuming from his loss of support, vows that truth will vanquish the lies of bureaucracy, a common theme in Ibsen’s early work, and opens Act II with a public meeting in which he performs the anti-Marc Antony and alienates his crowd by comparing them to dogs and declaring himself superior because of his devotion to truth. The crowd turns mob and declares Stockmann an ‘enemy of the people’; he is hounded through town and his house attacked. Stockmann’s world now falls apart, he loses his job, as does Petra, he is evicted, his sons sent home from school and, after his father-in-law buys up the cheap shares in the baths with his wife’s inheritance, their value slashed by fears of Stockmann publicising his report about the bacteria, as an incentive for him to save the reputation of the spa and himself, Aslaksen and Hovstad pay the doctor a visit accusing him of being a conman and using the whole affair as a money making opportunity. Stockmann closes the play surrounded by his family and his one remaining ally, Captain Horster, declaring that “the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone” whilst perched above the open attic hatch; an ending as ambiguous as any in this genre of late Victorian modernism.

Enemy of the People was an accomplished show with a beautifully designed set and the Crucible, after its refit, has lost none of its immediacy and closeness that the venue became famous and loved for. Evans directs well and Sher, who was disappointing in the first act, comes into his own in the second with his bombastic and rousing antithesis of good political oration. As mentioned above the performance of the local newspaper editor Hovstad was excellent from Trystan Gravelle, his scene with Phillip Joseph’s Aslaksen trying to hide the Stockmann brothers from each other at the print shop was performed with great energy and comic timing. John Shrapnel and Lucy Cohu as the controlling, overbearing town mayor and Stockmann’s long suffering wife respectively also gave a fine turns. Hovstad’s sub-editor Billing however grated and his wild enthusing became more of an annoyance than crucial to the vision. One of the great triumphs of the production however was the use of a community ensemble as those gathered at the meeting and it reminded the audience of the community spirit the old Crucible used to exude.

This play, a moral tale of one man’s struggle to reveal an ugly truth, is telling in the era of the Chilcot Inquiry and senior officials being threatened with criminal proceedings. A fine start for Evans at Sheffield and a reminder of the power of the Norwegian master that is Henrik Ibsen.

Enemy of the People: ****
Image courtesy of Tristam Kenton.

Review: Dancing at Lughnasa, College Street Studio Theatre

Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa is a brave choice for Nottingham Youth Theatre's 14-19s group and this tale of approaching middle-age and upheaval in 1930s County Donegal was told with aplomb.

The action centres around Michael telling the story of the summer of 1936 when he was 7 and living with his mother and aunts in Ballybeg, rural County Donegal. This all told in a mixture of flashback with an actor reading the imagined child's lines and in direct address with Michael talking as a grown man. In 1936 his uncle, Father Jack who had been a missionary in Africa, has now returned to the family home for the first time in 25 years after contracting Malaria. There is also a visit from his stay-away father, Gerry, a traveling gramophone salesman intent on joining the International Brigade and sailing away to fight Franco.

However, these seem incidental as the real drama of the piece is the interplay between Michael's mother and 4 aunts and their relationship with the other important arrival of the summer of 1936, Marconi - their first wireless set. The sisters complemented each other nicely and were well considered in their characterisation: Kate as the prim local school teacher, Agnes and Rose who knit woolen gloves for a measly income, Maggie who flits and floats whilst attempting to make soda bread and Chris, Michael's mother, who is prone to depression after the fleeting visits of Gerry. By the end of the play we learn that within a year from moments we spend with the Mundys that Father Jack will be dead, Agnes and Rose will be gone after the opening of a knitting factory makes them jobless, Chris will be working at the factory that causes her sisters' departure, Kate will have lost her job as a teacher and Gerry's visits will be more and more infrequent. The play's great quality comes from the way an audience can appreciate the innocent pleasures of the summer of 1936 whilst knowing what the impending years will bring, both personally and on global scale.

This, as said before, was a brave piece both for its breadth of reference and subject as well as the Donegal accents but the young actors managed it well. Plaudits must go to Director Helen Barton for her work with them and her neat staging of the play. A fine turn is given by Hannah Lane as the uptight Kate whilst there are great moments in which Mistee Ingham's Rose returns from a tryst in the back hills or when Martha Myers-Lowe's Maggie flirts with a receptive Gerry in front of her indignant sister. More could have been made of Gerry's role and interactions with the sisters, especially that with Agnes whom he takes a special interest in but the key relationship of Gerry and Chris was well pitched. An honorable mention in dispatches must also go to Jake McCullough who's Father Jack's fragile state was well observed and although most laughs came from the cloud of hair whitening talc when ever he removed his hat, his performance contained many recounted anecdotes of his time in Africa which caused laughter in the audience and riled huffs from Kate. Whilst the performance, their first, did feel like an opening night and with nerves settled this will prove a treat for those keen on this kind of realist drama and congratulations must go to a director and cast who have made this difficult text accessible and entertaining.

Dancing at Lughnasa: ***
Image courtesy of Nottingham Youth Theatre.

Review: Equus, Durham Assembly Rooms

THIS Theatre Company’s Equus, freed from the shackles of tabloid fascination with certain wizard’s appendage, returned Shaffer’s play to its dark heart and told the story of the young man who has his certainties questioned by a sterile society.

When psychiatrist Martin Dysart is referred Alan Strang, a troubled adolescent who has blinded five horses at the stable where he worked as a Saturday boy, little could he imagine that his own world view would be questioned and foundations and ethics upon which he works and ‘cures’ are shaken to their core. As Alan recounts the development of his obsession with horses, Dysart encounters the void in his own life where Strang has placed Equus as a god to whom he pays homage and who sees all. With other revelations from Strang’s parents Dysart finds his way into Alan’s mind and the events of the night in question culminating in vivid final scene where Dysart’s Porfiry elicits a confession out of his young Raskolnikov. Yet even this does not allow Dysart rest as he continues to see the emptiness of his, and now the ‘cured’ Alan’s, life without the vitality of higher connection.

The play was helped by a strong cast who on the whole gave excellent performances. The leads, Dysart and Strang, were convincing and showed great stamina in characterisation with their being on stage for two hours before their energetic climax. By way of criticism, Kate Hunter’s magistrate Hester Salomon, who brings Dysart the case, felt one dimensional and more possibly could have been made of the hinted at sexual tension between the two. However, it was a show packed with pathos filled moments: Dysart’s speech in which talks of his sacrificial dream was well pitched and had echoes of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis whilst Simon Radford, excelling as Strang’s Bolshevik father, gave the piece some fine comedy in the scene when Alan is found in the local cinema watching snuff films.

Plaudits must go to Beth Campbell-Wright’s design team who’s horse heads, evoking memories of Tom Morris’ War Horse, were both stunningly simple and beautiful and to some clever choreography with the movement of imagined horse seeming to change with Alan’s developing relationship with them. Dan Jefferies’ sound design also added to the overall aesthetic with its interesting fusing of horse sounds and strings whilst a good lighting design made up for the over enthusiastic use of the smoke machine.

THIS’s Equus, ably directed by Bobbi Nicholson and Gregory Carter, showed the play without the hype and pitched perfectly the relationship between their two leads. Yet the play felt that the other relationships were a little under done and could have done with more investiture in these supporting roles. This said Equus was a polished and provoking evening’s entertainment and it will be interesting to see how Dundee Rep approach this troublesome text in the coming weeks.

Equus: ****
Image courtesy of Chantelle Clough.