Review A View From Islington North

A View From Islington North
Five Political Satires
The Mother by Mark Ravenhill
Tickets Are Now On Sale by Caryl  Churchill
The Accidental Leader by Alistair Beaton
Ayn Rand Takes A Stand by David Hare
How To Get Ahead In Politics by Stella Feehilly

The State We're In 
 https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/

A View From Islington North seemed a promising title. Maybe, we thought, containing some of the irony we detected in John Osborne's lawyer narrator in the other political play seen the same day.  But what emerged was a curiously neutered set of playlets with Caryl Churchill's Tickets Are Now On Sale a slick but dispiriting reflection for us of the show itself.

For those who go often to the theatre, all these writers' names are "brands" and certainly their styles in these playlets fo the most part are instantly recognizable. Something Churchill's brief play oddly, if maybe unintentionally, reflects on.

In front of a window, with a countryside scene straight out of a healthy yoghurt or cholesterol lowering margarine commercial, sits a tall, dark and handsome man (Steve John Shepherd). A frisky blonde (Sarah Alexander), modern (she wears shapely, tight fitting trousers!) comes into his space periodically to discuss their relationship in glossier and glossier business and advertising-speak, divided by airy chimes as if sections of their love talk were an advertising break.

It's simple, quick and effective, but in the words of German poet Hans Magnus Enzenberger, We know we know ...  And all that talk of brands, well it crossed our mind, that was exactly what was happening here. Rather than a dissection of attitudes across the smallest but arguably one of the most influential constituencies in the country, the evening felt sold on names and left behind by regular topical sketch shows such as long-running Newsrevue

Like Caryl Churchill's play, Mark Ravenhill's play The Mother had its premiere at The Royal Court theatre some years ago.

Two soldiers, one an older woman (Jane Wymark), the other a young man (Joseph Prowen), have arrived at the home of a soldier to break the worst possible news to his mother (Sarah Alexander).

Well, the mother turns out to be a dressing-gowned dysfunctional, a diagnosed depressive who uses a series of expletives and reverses her status from victim to aggressor before expressing, alone, her pain. It's a good idea but the stereotype "woman on a sink estate" makes for a less than convincing satire.

In fact, the far more intriguing female character is the 50 something childless female informant, a career soldier whose few words made us wonder about her life.  And what about the toll on the informants and the relationship between them as they go from door to door, if the same folks are used all the time? 

One of three new plays The Accidental Leader by Alistair Beaton  felt like well-worn territory, ground already covered by Yes Minister and The Thick Of It when parliament as sitcom still felt newish.  Albeit even with the latter we'd already had The New Statesman and (the British) quasi satirical House of Cards An MP (Bruce Alexander) is coordinating the troops to oust the Labour leader when the best-laid plans fall apart with the biggest blow when even youngster Ollie (Joseph Prowen) understands whose goose is well and truly cooked.

Ann Mitchell's big and blowsy Russian-accented Ayn Rand considerably livens up proceedings in David Hare's riff on the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Steve John Shepherd with perhaps deliberately some of the same mannerisms as Mr Perfect in Carly Churchill's earlier piece) and Theresa May (Jane Wymark) given lessons in novelistic free market politics and economics. But once we catch on to the premise, any wit seeps away to leave only the performance (albeit a memorable one).

The reverses of fortune in Stella Feehily's How To Get Ahead In  Politics  also have a familiar feel with Bruce Alexander as an MP again but this time a successful Chief Whip protecting at any cost the party's reputation,  covering up for habitual sexual harassment offences and chronic alcoholism.

We struggled to find any conclusions or questions posed about the view from Islington North. The plays ranged from the predictable to the slick and,, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, the staging was skilfully unobtrusive. Yet it felt more like a scattergun display of wares, ending with a chorus of Billy Bragg's No Buddy, No, than pieces, either individually or overall, with real bite.  If you go, determined to be entertained by star name writers, it may well work for you. But otherwise it only just about slips into an amber light.

Review All That Fall

All That Fall

By Samuel Beckett

The Path Of Life

https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/

Sitting in a blindfold  - both artistically correct and in accordance with the wishes of Samuel Beckett's estate -  during this production of All That Fall, an unoriginal  thought struck TLT and her conveyance of choice.

"That Sam Beckett can't half write!"

We don't mean the character of Quantum Leap fame, but the real Samuel Beckett, playwright, novelist and not a bad cricketer either (well, it gave him and Harold Pinter something to talk about - in between pauses;)).

All That Fall, an hour-long 1956 radio play set in rural Ireland, is such a beautifully structured, rhythmic piece of pure audio, technically brilliantly paced. 

And what is more, what  comes through joyously in this production transferred to the Arts Theatre from the more cavernous Wilton's Music Hall, is the total delight in it for director (Max Stafford-Clark), actors, the sound person (Dyfan Jones)  - and of course the listeners .

Not discounting naturally the silences,  for as the central character Mrs Maddy Rooney (Brid Brennan) says  at one point with simple eloquence: "Do not imagine, because I am silent, that I am not present and alive to all that is going on'

And there is such a lot going on. From the start we are immersed in the heightened noise of farmyard animals and footsteps. Driven by sound as much, if not more than, words, the play charts the Saturday journey to the railway station, there and back, on foot  of elderly arthritic Mrs  Rooney. 

She is out to surprise her blind husband Dan (Adrian Dunbar, currently Superintendent Ted Hastings in TV series Line Of Duty)  on his birthday, returning  from work.

And the "never tranquil" Mrs Rooney and her acquaintances move around us as we sit in darkness,  bringing with them their soundscape, the climbs and descents, the slowing downs and the quickenings, the advances and the retreats.

Along the way German lieder music on a gramophone drifts out of a house across the lane and Mrs Rooney meets familiar folk. The dung carrier (Frank Laverty), an elderly cyclist (Dunbar again, although you wouldn't know it!), an admirer from times gone by, the race course clerk (Ciaran McIntyre) with his own little cramped jalopy,  Mr Barrell, the stationmaster (Frank Laverty doubling up, but you wouldn't know it ..) and the pious Miss Fitt (Tara Flynn).

Meanwhile Mrs Rooney's mind drifts back to past family tragedy.  She finds Dan and they walk home, managing to laugh despite finding no place to rest, "There is no bench ... There is no bank". As Mrs and Mr Rooney make their way home  they also encounter two children Jerry (Tara Flynn) and Tommy (Killian Burke) as the June weather changes for the worse, But not before we are all drawn into a mysterious railway death of a child.

This seated auditory blind man's buff reaches its peak when we are surrounded by the crescendo huff, puff and hiss of steam as the train draws into the station. For all the world,  as if the flickering Lumière Brothers' famous film of a locomotive drawing into a station had come to life around us

It's a delicate piece teetering into tragedy by way of laughter and lunacy  with, like James Joyce's Ulysses,  a steely backbone of trade and business. The title is obviously a  quote from the psalms. Yet surely Joyce's final work Finnegans Wake also starts with The fall bababadalgharaghtakmminarronn...)? (third paragraph) 

But enough of literary criticism, real or imagined!  It's enough that this piece dramatically managed to evoke a characterful literary history while making us laugh, sometimes ruefully, and provided a completely different, but very three-dimensional theatrical radiophonic experience.A green light.