Review Le Grand Mort

Le Grand Mort
by Stephen Clark

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/trafalgar-studios/

Like the comedy duo of the 1970s and 80s Little and Large, there are apparently two sizes of morts. La petite mort meaning - hide your eyes, dear reader, of delicate constitution - an orgasm. And then, rather ungrammatically, there is le grand mort.

A quick google reveals le grand mort here and here meaning the big exit, death, but it seems it needs la petite mort in this double act. One defines the other. Of course, we theatre afficianados aka blasé snobby intellectuals are well accustomed to the ambivalent Shakespearean meaning of dying!😉

After  that circumlocutory linguistic diversion, TLT and her little sidekick with the big  - um -  theatrical heart will now cut to the chase. What do your own theatregoing pair  think of Julian Clary's performance in this two hander (apologies to the other acting half James Nelson-Joyce for this shameless piece of celebrity lionisation)?

Considering this is a verbose, red herring of a play, Mr Clary acquits himself elegantly, remembering his lines and managing to cook an aromatic pasta  puttanesca in a frying pan all at the same time. 

Yet the play, by the late Stephen Clark better known for his musical theatre librettos and lyrics, is a distinct oddity which surely is a first draft rather than a polished play?

Played out in a gleaming stainless steel kitchen set designed by Justin Nardella, Clary's at first unnamed character is preparing for his prospective dinner guest and for our delectation. Yes, he chops and he slices and peels while regaling us - in verse - with his own circumlocutory diversion about voyeurism, fetishism and necrophilia.

TLT and her companion though almost let out a joyful toot when his dinner guest - James Nelson-Joyce - finally arrived and the play GOT ON WITH THE STORY (sort of). 

From then on, it was a case of guess who's coming to dinner because, by the end of the play, TLT & co was still trying to work out the who, whys and wherefores. 

Finally, we could only come to the conclusion that this was some kind of writer's or actor's exercise about lying, storytelling, sex, death and murder which should have remained in the rehearsal room.

All of which is a shame because Clary possesses considerable stage presence and his voice has a clear, versatile tone, all of which deserves a much better vehicle. 

His camp star quality is of course for many the main attraction. However his smooth, bespectacled, sometimes more subdued, demeanour gave a glimpse of an actor who could be cast against type.

Nelson-Joyce is fine, as far as it goes, as the foil, Tim, who apparently can hold his own in intellectual role-play. His Liverpuddlian accent at first caused your theatregoing pair to wonder whether this was a riff on Brian Epstein and a lover. Then, when the talk turned to murder, Jo Orton and Kenneth Halliwell.

In other words, and my oh my there were lots of words!, a whole gamut of popular, arty farty, cod history and literary referenccs strung together. Lucien Freud got a mention, Bacon got a mention, allthough luckily it eschewed a frying pan pun about freud bacon 😉.

Of course Freud, especially, was famous for his nudes and potential punters may want to be alerted that full frontal male nudity is briefly part of the action.

Director Christopher Renshaw imposes a clarity of structure on muddled proceedings aided by Jamie Platt's lighting and Ed Lewis's filmic soundscape.

It  might be a fun night to share a pasta puttanesca and glass of wine with friends and then go and see the show. So Le Grand Mort may still be a recipe for success!  However for TLT it remained a potential crime mystery play more "Strewth!" than "Sleuth" and it's a lower range amber light.

Review Beast

Peter Barker enjoys an ambitious and energetic production where the workplace becomes a battlefield.

Beast
by Mariko Primarolo

Work Is A Drug
http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/beast

Banners Corporation is marketing a new product, an emotion-manipulating drug  treating soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress, especially after service in wars overseas.

Yet, according to the marketing, it has wider applications, for the liquid appears to calm and to concentrate the mind wonderfully

Invevitably though, there are other less desirable side effects.

This is the intriguing premise of Southwark Playhouse Young Company's latest offering at the South London venue.

Playwright Mariko Primarolo combines this plot with another analysing the competitive nature of modern-day internships.

Banners recruits four interns but only promises to give one of them a permanent job. For many in the Millenials' generation now, this is certainly not an exaggeration but reality.

Beast is performed energetically, directed by Chelsea Walker in a vibrant but unfocussed production.

At its best, it is a wry, sharply-observed and trenchant look at corporate culture and marketing where there is often an inextricable link between the office and bullshit.

In truth, while the problem has become magnified for graduates and others in today's economy, there is an honourable tradition of plays in previous generations making the same kind of points as Primarolo about young people's employment.

For example John Biyrne's examination of apprentices, The Slab Boys, written in the 1970s but hearking back, even if it was an era of full employment, two decades before that.

Despite Beast's initial good, clear idea, the play and production need more crafting as the switching back and forth between individual story lines feels awkward and are hard to follow.

The writer's promise to "enable everyone in the company to showcase their talents", while an admirable intention, leads to a muddled overall dramatic arc. Director Walker could have done with pacing the play in a more nuanced way.

There's plenty of talent on show, particularly Olive Supple-Still as intern Max, and the cast as a whole works well together. There are highlights - notably when the disgruntled workforce mutinies against the management

while the production does sometimes lose its way, there's certainly value in seeing it before the last performance on July 29 and enough in it to make an amber light.