Review Dr Angelus

Dr Angelus
by James Bridie

The Ladykiller
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Set in 1919, but written 28 years later, Dr Angelus is a comedy thriller about a Glasgow family doctor with murder in mind.

Originally conceived by James Bridie (the pen name for doctor turned playwright and screenwriter Osborne Henry Mavor) as a vehicle for character actor Alastair Sim and Sim's protégé George Cole, it was a big success and was even recorded the following year for the BBC.

Based on the real-life 19th century case of Dr Edward William Pritchard, but updated in the play, Dr Angelus (a suitably flamboyant and sinisterly humorous David Rintoul) has just taken on a new English junior partner, George Johnson (Alex Bhat in a nicely-judged performance).

While George is grateful for the partnership, there are niggles, shared by a seductive lady patient in a seemingly unhappy marriage, Mrs Corcoran (Lesley Harcourt) whose businessman husband has had dealings wih Dr Angelus over share dealing and insurance policies.

Nevertheless, George, eager to make a success in his first position as a general practitioner suppresses any disquiet he has about the plain weird behavour of the senior partner.

However he still finds himself embroiled in suspicious circumstances when Angelus's off-stage mother-in-law and then his wife (Vivien Heilbron) die in quick succession and, in a Dr Shipman-like twist, Dr Angelus asks the young medic to sign the death certificates.

A psychological thriller, Dr Angelus is as much about the mentality of a medical profession built in hierarchy and, in the case of general practitioners, where money was usually needed to buy into a practice

The consultant Sir Gregory Butt and the police inspector McIvor (Malcolm Rennie playing both roles) only serve to underline the oddity of a self-regulating profession and the curious calculations of a constabulary when it comes to medical malfeasance. 

We found it interesting that this beautifully-constructed play was written on the cusp of the introduction of the National Health Service in  the year a separate National Health Service (NHS) bill was passed for Scotland. Dr Angelus himself, we learn in passing, had refused to join the previous government National Health insurance scheme (covering mostly working men and excluding married women).

Set the year after the First World War's end, it's also reasonable to assume Johnson may have served in the armed forces. So the play seems deliberately positioned to echo the position of 1947 ex-soldier-doctors and welcome the National Health Service with the Secretary of State taking over ownership of medical records and giving a degree of supervision over GP practices.

At the same time, this is an enjoyable old (post) war horse - including a deliciously duplicitous serving maid cum lover (Rosalind McAndrew) - with some strange, fascinating twists and a kind of social conscience contrasting the explicitly explained help given to the young doctor and the implicit fate of the servant.

Despite the elements of Gaslight-style  melodrama, Dr Angelus seems ripe to be considered as a predecessor to some of the major Ealing Comedies. Not least for the overblown character of Dr Angelus himself and the identification with issues about the welfare state consensus. Jenny Ogilvie's production perhaps could do with a little more pep and confidence in the first act, but it's an amber/green light for a solid revival of an interesting play.     

Review Henry V

Henry V

by William Shakespeare 

Wild About Harry

http://openairtheatre.com/

This Henry V begins with a Mary-Beard-like veteran academic, an orange-scarfed Chorus (Charlotte Cornwell) urging us to exercise our minds on the history of Henry V and the war against France. 

After patiently explaining the male succession to the crown, it is this gray haired tutor who has the prerogative to annoint a King Henry from among the modern young people milling around on stage. She chooses, naturally, a woman (Michelle Terry), in a nifty Prince of Wales check three-piece short-trousered suit with red rosebud lipsticked mouth and something of Le Petit Prince about her.

During our lifetimes, TLT and her own peacenik horsepower sidekick never had occasion, until now, to view  Henry V as problematic. It had the infinite capacity to chime with both patriotism and pacificism and Britain was safely esconced in Europe geographically and politically in a way Shakespeare never envisaged.

But now it has to accommodate uncharted territory. The bureaucratic seismic shift of Brexit and a war, or rather in our times technically a conflict, with real flesh and blood maimed and lives lost, transformed into a report. These are uncertain times and this uncertainty, for better and for worse, pulses through director Robert Hastie's production of Shakespeare's history play.

The single-minded pursuing of conquest despite the uncertainty, on a metal grid stage designed by Anna Fleischle amidst the greenery of Regent's Park, proved more visceral for us than the gender bending casting. The delicate mash up costuming matches the mood -  crumpled red velvet surrounded by a gold crown sitting on the head of a diminutive but authoritative King Harry and a taller, darker decadent Dauphin (Alex Bhat) with an Amadeus laugh. 

For it's not the older heads, not even the scheming Church of England leader (David Sibley), who lights the touch paper, but the rivalry between the graduate of the French royal court, the louche French prince taunting his generational counterpart across the Channel. 

It's a strange but lucid rendering of Henry V. We cross the century from Edwardian check to modern army fatigues, blue for the French, khaki for the British but this fight ain't no fashion parade. 

Harry on the spot orders summary executions: a conspirator, Lord Scroop (Phil Cheadle), planning to dislodge him; a former drinking partner, Bardolph (Bobby Delaney), for looting a French church and he gives the nod to the cutting of French prisoners of war throats. 

The famous St Crispin's Day speech uttered on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt turns from the rousing of the crowd to the singling out of one recalcitrant to be persuaded to turn back to fight. Yes, it's a plea, yes it has a sense of urgency. 

But it also curiously chimes with the age of the blog and the astute piece of internet propaganda which feels as if it's tailored to the individual. King Henry V has for many always been a play with a double voice, patriotic and heroic yet cynical and angry about the expediency, brutality and waste of life by war. Now Hastie's production has added the finely honed psychology of the web age. 

Lanky Princess Katherine (Ben Wiggins) is more noticeably at first in drag but her learning of English has real comic verve, with surely a leaf taken, in reverse, from Betty Comden and Adolph Green's French Lesson . And her final appearance is suitably regal, spikey crown on her head as she towers over the rest of the cast with an echo of an American icon.

This is a production with a mix of strong performances from Terry, Cornwell, Bhat, Catrin Aaron as Captain Fluellen and Philip Arditti as Pistol,  full of striking images and precision within self-contained scenes. But it sometimes does feel rather like a curate's egg, more resonant in its parts than as a whole. 

Maybe poet Rupert Brooke, often dismissed as a misguided jingoist, was craftier than is sometimes acknowledged when he chose the cadences of Henry V in his idealized view of England and soldiery in his war poetry. The point between what the soldier king would be and what he is isn't always found in this production but it's an amber/green light for cold metal amidst the lush park greenery.  

Review French Without Tears

French Without Tears

By Terence Rattigan

Entente Non Cordiale

https://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/french-without-tears

A group of young gentlemen gather in Villa Miramar in France to learn French for the diplomatic corps entry exams. Coming from a line of toffs himself with a diplomat father and once earmarked for the same career, playwright Terence Rattigan was obviously writing, to cite an old adage "what he knew" in 1936.

And that year was a rum old twelve months for diplomacy.  George V died to be succeeded by Edward VIII who within a few months had abdicated in favour of his brother. Stalinist purges swept the Soviet Union.  France elected a left-wing government.  The Spanish army of Africa rose up against the left wing Spanish Republican government,  Syria gained partial independence from France,  the Italian army marched into Ethiopa,  Japan and Germany signed an anti-communist pact  and  National Socialist Germany reoccupied the Rhineland. 

Still Billy Butlin started his first holiday camp.

And aged 25, Rattigan scored his first theatre success, inspired by his own experiences at a German crammer, after honing an economic  writing technique penning dialogue for quota quickies at Teddington Studios. Luckily for us, this  Hi-De-Hi boarding house school for toffs, distracted by the fairer sex, channels the more frivolous side of this era in a delicious production directed by Paul Miller at the Orange Tree Theatre.

And my God, doe-eyed Diana (Genevieve Gaunt) , an English rose cum Hollywood femme fatale, does cause havoc at the crammer college of M. Maingot (David Whitworth).  As she exercises her own seductive divide-and-rule ruses,  the men tumble for her like diplomats unable to resist the most powerful she-nation.  

Ambassador's son Hon Alan Howard (Alex Bhat), already fluent in French, destined by family for the diplomatic service but a novelist and pacifist by inclination, becomes increasingly embittered. Stoked by Diana, his relations with the more sentimental Kit Neilan (Joe Eyre) and bluff Royal Navy man Commander Bill Rogers (William Belchambers) also become more than strained, eventually coming to blows.

Meanwhile the demure tutor, Jacqueline (Sarah Winter), daughter of the proprietor,  and Kenneth (Patrick MacNamee), Diana's cadet brother, are also victims of unrequited affections. Indeed, apart from M. Maingot and the maid Marianne (perfectly French Laila Alj), only hearty Englishman Brian Curtis (Tom Hanson), with sterling qualities and sex not love on the brain, keeps his head when all about him are losing theirs.  

Like all the best farces, this has more serious undercurrents. Claws lurk beneath the cut glass accents, cod French (anyone else remember Punch's Let's Parler Franglais?), irregular verbs and present definitely tense as Bastille Day arrives with carnival celebrations at the local casino.

Genevieve Gaunt's timing (and claws) as predatory Diana are spot on, raising the temperature and laughs backed by - what else but - French windows.  The sparsely-furnished yet expressive set, from Simon Daw, suits the performance space topped by blackboards fronting the balcony chalked with French exercises.  

The costumes  are satisfyingly recognizable types while the transitions are pleasingly lit by Mark Doubleday to pass time on the in-the-round stage with music by David Shrubsole.   

The male characters all make their mark and throw out their own point of view: Alex Bhat as Alan, seemingly in control but with demagogic tendancies and increasingly frantic behind his copy of Le Monde while Joe Eyre's Kit has an underlying vulnerability; Tom Hanson makes barrel-chested Brian,  for whom it is almost always business as usual, stride through the wreckage; William Belchambers convincingly turns from love struck suitor to bodyguard, while Patrick McNamee embodies nervy Kenneth.

David Whitworth cuts an appropriately professorial figure, donning his Carnival fancy dress with aplomb. Delicate Sarah Winter is  sweetly besotted as daughter "Jack" (from Jacqueline rather than Frère Jacques) who by the end shows her own claws in a Oscar-Wilde-like scene with Diana. Even with sometimes slightly dodgy French accents, there is a charm as the farce unravels.  

Ah yes, and TLT had no idea until her trip to the West Coast of France via the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond that Mr Rattigan had already bagged the red, amber and green light idea as his own in French Without Tears. Listen out for it in the second act! :)

While this may seem like a frothy piece of almost-juvenilia, Rattigan himself was at pains to point out it dealt with matters close to the heart of the young idealistic 1930s' playwright. This production has a pleasing clarity working on many levels with at least two young children in the audience enjoying the farce element of the show as much as the adults. A green light from TLT and her bagnole, but not quite as Rattigan meant it in his play!