Review Richard III

Richard III
by William Shakespeare

Living The Dream
http://www.arcolatheatre.com/

Near the end of the Arcola Theatre's Richard III we gained a glimpse of what this production could have been.

Richard (Greg Hicks) has just been visited in his sleep by those he has wronged and murdered. Suddenly the pangs of conscience cripple him. Hicks's Richard in a nuanced soliloquy envelops us with the cold sweat of the villain as both his past and future merge and he turns his frightened gaze round the audience.

It's a highlight of an otherwise mostly over-emphatic production directed by Mehmet Ergen which nevertheless has other instances of clarity and ingenuity.

Mark Jax's suddenly repentent murderer is both comic and affecting. There's a modern chime to Jim Bywater's Mayor of London, puzzled but then expediently adapting to all the twists and turns, as well as when we hear from Peter Guinness's savvy Buckingham the reaction of the London crowd and the city wives.

Annie Firbank's fine Duchess of York, Richard's mother, conveys a clear-sighted doughty aristocrat, becoming a spokeswoman for the grieving Royal widows dislodged by the son she abhors.   

However, at other times we found the inconsistency of the mash up strange and distracting.

The start of the play places us in Italian café society with Richard in black leather  - part mafiosi, part Stasi - sipping on wine and spinning a tiny top. When he stands up to the cawing of crows, we see the chain extending from flexed foot to his hands to help him walk. Bespectacled Matthew Sim as Catesby extends the sense of a Communist apparatchik or Fascist henchman carrying out Richard's instructions.     

At another time we wondered whether we were in the midst of artisans who decided a change was needed from usual mystery plays, deciding instead to put on the arch-Machiavel's story. Yet the concept seemed tried  - and then left behind.

The overpowering television-style sound effects also struck us as intrusive, sometimes unnecessarily disturbing the rhythm and tension of the play.

We've nothing against a production paced television thriller style. But we were far too aware of the sound effects rather than the sound being seamlessly part of the background. In one instance, a very loud cock crow was followed by the information that - er - a cock had crowed.

Anthony Lamble's two tier design is fine as far as the lower space goes, surrounded by the audience on three sides. However, sitting in the seats stage left, we had major sightline problems for the upper tier. The raised walkway running above our seats blocked our view of the second tier at the back of the space and the actors above mainly had their backs towards us. This felt like a thoughtless piece of staging.

Hicks certainly has the potential to be a great crow-like Richard III but we felt he was hampered by more than his chains in an uneven production which needed more variety in its pacing. Individually there were some fine performances and good moments but overall it's an amber light.

Review The Kreutzer Sonata

The Kreutzer Sonata
by Leo Tolstoy
Adapted by Nancy Harris

Legal Fictions
http://www.arcolatheatre.com/

Sometimes it helps, when writing our little critiques, to sum up a play in an imaginary news headline. In this case, "Councillor stabbed wife after finding her with piano tutor" Or maybe not ... For like most news stories confined to a headline and a few paragraphs there's something more to this case.

That passenger, opposite you in the train, turns out to be the released local government official. Why has he been released so early? And his defence, the provocation of his wife seems a little rich. .

Pozdnyshev (Greg Hicks), part of the landed gentry and trained in law,  buttonholes you in the carriage chugging across the Russian countryside.  At first he's intent on emptying his pockets - the Swiss fob watch, the silk handkerchief, the expired first class train ticket.

It's a virtuoso piece for an actor - a monologue play driven by music and with much in common, we thought, with Robert Browning's My Last Duchess where the power of art spills  into real life - but through an unexpected byway - with tragic results for the woman.

When the novella, which writer Nancy Harris adapted in 2009 for this monologue,  was first published in 1889, Tolstoy, the father of 13 children borne by his long suffering wife Sofiya, found himself at the centre of a storm. Indeed there seemed to be almost a tug of war between admirers such as the Tzar himself and the condemnation of  Russian and American censors.

And just as the Russian ruler and societies based on an institution of marriage, which Tolstoy viewed as destructive, were at odds over a piece of art, Pozdnyshev is split. Over his not unusual first sexual encounters in whore houses before meeting an innocent wife in an arranged marriage whom he first views as a timid gazelle trained to entrap and then, as the years progress, as a coarser creature.

We have to admit it took a while for us to feel caught up in this monologue - it had the feel at times of a radio piece. It took the combination of Beethoven's radical sonata with its violent duelling and sexual undertow and a surge of words turned into actions to turn it all around into a thrilling crescendo.

Backed by pianist Alice Pinto and violinist Phillip Granell, the mania of  Pozdnyshev, clearly driven insane by jealousy yet ironically in his acquittal protected by the law, does indeed  tear down  marriage as a financial and dynastic institution, even if it takes the ripping of a frail female body to do it.

The woman who has done her duty and given numerous heirs finally, it seems for a brief moment, could settle down to enjoy music for its own sake tutored by Pozdnyshev's childhood friend. A woman who seems wilfully determined not to live out the stereotypes of literary adulteresses but ends up a corpse with her posthumous public image shaped by her lawyer and local politician husband.

For all that, it seems an odd choice for adaptation even if it makes a change to be faced with a mad husband rather than a mad wife - in terms, that is, of playwriting tropes.

It did feel to us somewhat overlong, even though every word had its place in the build up to as guesome and visceral layer by layer description of a murder as ever we've heard in any play. But it also meant we pondered inordinately as well on matters such as, did they really have boiled broccoli in nineteenth century Russia? It's not meant to be facetious, just our honest experience of the piece.

Nevertheless in the end the clenched jaw and hurt, savage eyes of a character who could be termed a legal murderer under the direction of John Terry just about swung it dramatically for us and it's an amber light for the train - eventually - reaching the platform.

Review Clarion

Clarion
by Mark Jagasia

Drop The Dead Newspaper
http://www.arcolatheatre.com/

Over eighty years ago Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur, both seasoned hacks, wrote “The Front Page”  With several classy movie adaptations, and despite the plethora of satiric plays and films since then on the press, they remain a tough act to follow. 

They are of  course American and we in Britain now have had the phone hacking scandal. With the print newspaper industry on the ropes, journalistic practices have themselves  become the news story and subject of plays such as the National Theatre farce Great Britain by Richard Bean.

So does Mark Jagasia, first-time playwright, formerly of the Daily Express and Evening Standard,  bring anything new to the newspaper office genre? 

The play follows one day in the life of The Clarion trumpeting out its Little England headlines. Morris Honeyspoon (Greg Hicks in fine full-throttle, bulldozer mode) is the bigoted, rampantly imperialist editor pandering to the lowest common denominator in an “issue-led” paper.

His sparring partner is Verity Stokes (a magnificently despotic Clare Higgins), veteran foreign correspondent churning out columns in a permanently whiskey-sodden haze at The Clarion offices, allowed (rather out-datedly?)  a long leash for her expenses. 

On a lower rung are "immigration correspondent" Joshua Moon (Ryan Wichert) and news editor Albert Duffy (Jim Bywater) with evangelical executive Clive Pumfrey. (a nicely-judged performance from Peter Bourke) heading the London office. 

At the top of the pyramid is never-seen bottom-line proprietor Benny Panagakos, newspaper, topless hamburger chain and care home mogul.  

Last, but not least, lawyer’s daughter, fresh out of a degree course, Pritti Singh (Laura Smithers), the ambitious work experience trainee determined not to be sidelined.

TLT’s automotive companion surprisingly confessed to always having dreamed of being an intrepid reporter stepping into the shoes of an elegant foreign correspondent like the late James Cameron or, even in this often tawdry new media world,  a strictly ethical investigative journalist as in Lou Grant. 

And not even slight disillusionment when TLT informed the prospective press corps' member that Lou Grant does not exist, and no true hack should mix up fact and fiction, has dimmed the petite limousine’s idealism.

So our theatregoing buggy was especially keen to see what this new piece would bring to the journalism-themed table!

In our opinion, the script, especially in the first act, often had the feel of a well-worn sitcom. At the same time, although the characters are ones we may recognise, the actors up the entertainment value, clearly relishing meaty roles and providing the laughs. 

They launch themselves into a striking, updated Hogarthian or Gillray cartoon, with the visual taking precedence – the image of Morris strutting around in full Roman helmet regalia, the louche Verity, complete with gilt handled walking stick to prop her up, the bluff but craven news editor Albert, the ditzy but pushy would-be young showbiz reporter Pritti, all tight skirt and tottering high heels.

The emphasis on the visual perhaps explains a filmic feel to the script and short scenes, proficiently directed by Mehmet Ergen. Despite later more theatrical darker plot twists, this felt like movie or TV to TLT and sidekick rather than a play.  

The take-over of showbusiness and celebrity (an impressive performance by Laura Smithers which, ultimately,  made us wonder if the play might once have meant to be A Work Experience Girl’s Progress!), the change from trade to graduate career, the selective reporting, political incitement, the deracinated nature of journalism as its former purpose disappears into the internet ether – no one would doubt these are all issues on the boil in the pot of journalism, even if they are well-known.

But TLT and her bonneted companion (who wouldn’t mind an old-style pork pie press hat ;) ) are in two minds about this play  – reflecting its own split personality.  Maybe the writer’s own experience of journalism has given way a little too much to conventional playwriting tropes and self-conscious literary antecedants. Or maybe the lurches from sitcom to drama would work better on screen. 

Yet in our opinion the market for satire on the media and the tour-de-force opportunity for the actors playing the main protagonists will probably be enough to give it a life beyond this run. An amber light for a characterful piece.