Review Hamlet

More about kin than kings, Peter Barker is pleasantly surprised by an odd, but intriguing,  fast-moving Hamlet

Hamlet
by William Shakespeare

Everything And The Kitchen Sink
https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/

Keep It In The Family could be a tongue-in-cheek alternative title for Hamlet, but the Brandreth family take it literally as the cue for their cut-down version of Shakespeare’s most celebrated play.

It's the tale of Hamlet, a self-examining Danish prince increasingly out of sync with his times after his father’s death and the sudden marriage of his mother to his uncle.

Updated to the modern age, directors Simon Evans and David Aula with script editor Imogen Bond have produced a 90-minute one-act play which has the speed of a TV drama  or movie.

We're in an affluent middle-class kitchen, an attractively detailed set from Polly Sullivan,  with oak cupboards, other pine furniture and a handy set of knives, just in case they're needed.

Benet Brandreth tackles the role of Hamlet, while his wife actress Kosha Engler and his Dad, Gyles, former MP and current media personality, split the rest of the roles.

By day (when he's not doing the matinées!) Benet is an intellectual property lawyer and an expert in rhetoric working with, among others, the RSC.

As might be expected, his delivery is very clear, but it's also a very different kind of interpretation - an unsympathetic, bad-tempered, entitled public schoolboy who, deliberately, often shouts his soliloquys at the audience.

Yet, he is relaxed and witty on first meeting an old university friend. Plus his rendition of "to be or not to be",  first read from a philosophy book and then turned into a debate with himself, worked for me. 

Gyles Brandeth captures Claudius's man-in-power hypocrisy and oily charm, as well as the complacent pomposity of Polonius, notably in the funny and realistic exchange with his son Laertes.

But here a minus kicks in. Having actors double up on the spot left me wondering if this was a dialogue between father and son or father and daughter - with both of Polonius's children acted by the otherwise excellent Kosha Engler.

Despite some entertaining programme notes by Gyles, I did wish I'd brought a Hamlet crib for my companion who came knowing nothing about the play.

We both pondered the script and directorial decisions which left Engler, for instance, doing a confusing immediate switch from garlanded Orphelia to her vengeful brother Laertes - also complete with garland. Similarly the switches between Claudius and Polonius were not always clear.

Nevertheless, there's a certain wit to the staging and a daring knife game which gives an adventurous twist to the fight scenes, sustaining the pace and tension.

Preconceptions about Brandeth senior dismissed, this proved to be an entertaining, if sometimes confusing, evening. The relatively short running time and swiftly moving action kept me hooked.

There's a certain panache to the performances of the trio and, dare I say it, Gyles Brandeth proves his acting chops and I wouldn't mind seeing more of him on the stage.  There are flaws but I still enjoyed this Hamlet enough to award an amber/green light.

Review Fool For Love

Fool For Love
by Sam Shepherd

Looking For Mr Right
http://found111.co.uk/

It's a final trip up the stairs to see a play at found 111i n the former Central St Martin's School School of Art. The theatre company is now bidding farewell to its grunge venue and seeking another site-specific space after its successful sojourn on Charing Cross Road.

In the meantime, it's back to familiar Sam Shepard territory, a motel room in California's Mojave Desert where May (Lydia Wilson) and Eddie (Adam Rothenberg) brawl and tear themselves apart.

Eddie has tracked down May, driving over a thousand miles, he says, to pluck her up and take her to a piece of land he has bought in Wyoming where he plans to raise horses, chickens and make a place for May.

But he finds May, who maintains she has now reinvented herself as a good citizen, gained a job and a beau, more than reluctant to drop everything and drive back with him in his horse truck.

All the while, a lanky, grizzled Marlboro Man spectre (Joe McGann) watches over the pair while into the secrets, lies and battles comes the unsuspecting gentle Martin (Luke Neal) who is wooing May. 

A two-level thrust stage designed by Ben Stones works on two levels, on low stilts at the back is the run-down motel room with its door smeared with grime.

Then in front a gravelly front yard reaches out to the audience in this initimate venue. Angular neon lights and fairy lights also flash and flicker within the physical and psychic space.

It's a curious self-conscious piece which mixes the hardscrabble life of near-trailer trash folks with the language of the movie business. As May, Wilson brings a taut, stubborn fragility, struggling to free herself from the emotional lassoo pulling her towards tequila-drinking Eddie, away from Martin.

These are characters, apart from Martin, who are all physically and mentally in their own self-contained space yet affecting each other's lives. This double perspective doesn't always catch fire in Simon Evans' production, even if the individual performances remain strong with a strain of dark humour.

A quick passing one-act drama, the laconic play shoots its arrow and lands in just over an hour. The clanging, slamming door soundscape (sound design by Edward Lewis) takes us inside the characters as much as their words and actions.

A final stunning image with lighting by Elliot Griggs merges the movies and the itinerant world of these abandoned souls. With its lingering thin, whip sharp quality, this Fool For Love ultimately finds an elemental power. It's an amber/green light from your own bareback theatre reviewing TLT and her trusty steed.

Review A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

Method And Madness

http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

OK, we at TLT Towers, one reviewer plus a puckish sidekick (no wings, but hey, TLT's jalopy is no Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!), are game for all sorts of productions. And this one is a curious one. 

Yet another A Midsummer's Night's Dream (AMND), this time stripped down like the wood flooring traverse stage it's played on. With just seven actors. And directed by Simon Evans whose Bug we enjoyed.

Well, there's a bug in this version of AMND - or maybe a couple of separate bugs since both get slapped down separately by actors entering the magic forest. And this is a very actorly Dream with quite a few rewrites, rejigs and reorderings but it also treads a dangerous path through the woods - in danger of becoming the thing it is parodying.

Yet in the midst of it, there are some very good young actors on display here. Yes, I should say this is a production filled with young actors. We're not sure if the cast will be infuriated  or will laugh at we mortal bloggers' foolish ways if we say the team of actors led by Freddie Fox but it seems to be his Ovidian transformation on the cover of the programme (see my associated Tweet - like it, retweet it, send me a tweet to plight your troth or whatever you like). 

However he may be harking back to the method of another English actor who, according to Sir Peter Hall here, did not seek to be loved by his audience.  

For we see a group of actors meeting in a rehearsal room for a performance of AMND with Freddie who plays Demetrius and Bottom definitely cock of the walk.  That's Freddie Fox again, of course (dahling!), not Freddie Hutchins who plays Lysander and mechanical Flute - the dilemma of what to do with two Freddies is, in fact the subject of a good, telling actorly joke which gets rather lost in the fray.

But somehow the introduction then of elements and costuming from children's tales felt more like incestuous theatrical references than an opening up of the text. But maybe the hierarchy of acting is the point, just as "dwarf" Hermia, despite being equal in height, has to make herself small beside "maypole" Helena (Lucy Eaton) to fit the part.

There's also a touch of the Play Gone Wrong in this production and it was as if we'd been lured into an experimental part of another project rather than a stand alone AMND. 

There are some witty ideas but also an overstepping of the tightrope into - yes what we said before - becoming that which it was trying to parody.

The verse speaking and other lines (it's a fast and loose AMND) ranges from the acoustically muffled to the crystal clear and entrancing with some occasional skilful interpretation. Theseus (Ludovic Hughes who also doubles as Oberon) takes on an intriguing inciting role while ex Eastender Maddy Hill goes from supple Titania to stage manager Peter Quince complete with red rasta cap, French onion man come mime artiste outfit with (badly drawn) moustache.

But we have to ask, while wishing to remain playful rather than utilitarian, who or what is it for? For example, is it a parody of or primer for exam multiple choice when we're told that the Dream is about the weather?

Was someone reading our mind when it struck us that all it needed was for a famous Hollywood alumnus of the actors' studio to appear and then lo and behold mini skirted (Julie Christie lookalike|) Susie Preece did a louche impersonation of the said same star?

Yes, it was one of those performance that you have to resign yourself to picking out the sweetest flowers, while wishing you could take the whole bunch in hand and let them do the beautifully-spoken straightforward version which you glimpse through the chink in the wall.

Talking of which, it's allocated seating, so if you're in the front row and not keen on being picked for audience participation, you may want to do a swift changeling swapping of seats. Everyone's so busy (there's a lot of running around and shouting), we don't think they'll notice.

At the same time, the competition between the two Freddies culminates in a truly visceral Pyramus and Thisbe scene with an interesting and, while couched in the cotton wool of hilarity and still suitable for children's consumption, truly painful echo of current affairs.

It could prove to be a show that should have been sponsored by Marmite. If you live up to type, you may have the reaction you've walked into a particularly chaotic theatre-in-education performance. Or like the photogenic young redhead boy in the audience on the night we attended, you may join in with gusto and collapse in fits of giggles and joy.

So TLT and her little sapling felt like two little lost boys without their own gang in the midst of this forest of frenzy without a Puck in dungarees (Melanie Fullbrook) or a Theseus to sort things out even with a closing magical moment which made them recall Metro Goldwyn Mayer's famous slogan. .

Hell, we think, why didn't they go hell for leather and create a new play about actors taking on A Midsummer Night's Dream? As it stands, we'll repeat for the third time, despite some clever touches, it felt as if it became what it was parodying, so it's a slippery elm amber light.

Review Bug

Bug
By Tracy Letts

Swatting It
 http://found111.co.uk/ 

Strange and horrible things happen in  fictional motels:  Stabbings in showers in Psycho, paedophilia in Lolita, Thelma and Louise running from  the law before a final cliff-hanger,  a helpless female saved from mobsters by a Brit secret service agent in the novel The Spy Who Loved Me, drugs and murder in Touch of Evil. 

To this litany of weirdness and characters, playwright Tracy Letts added Agnes and Peter in Bug. Pothead Agnes (Kate Fleetwood)  is holed up in an Oaklahoma motel room with only a crack pipe for company, avoiding her ex-con ex-husband Jerry (Alec Newman). 

That's save for  the occasional visit of lesbian friend RC (Daisy Lewis). RC brings along gentle giant (shades of Steinbeck another motel afficianado) Peter (James Norton), seemingly a Gulf War veteran who introduces himself fetchingly saying, "I'm not an axe murderer", only that he "makes people nervous" because he "picks up on things".

He's certainly no Jack Torrance in The Shining , but gradually Peter starts to drop the odd line drawing Agnes, already susceptible to National Enquirer type stories,  into a world view veering from the comically conspiratorial to the fatally self-destructive. 

And those things he picks up on? They turn out to have a corporeal manifestation - a supposed insect infestation where the remedy proves worse than living with those pesky microscopic critters.

Bug, mixing Hitchcock with Kafka with Hollywood and comic book scifi horror, a hefty dollop of the X-Files and even a nightmare possibly from an Ian McEwan novel,  premiered in London in 1996.

But this was also post Watergate and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and very real health fears for Gulf War veterans. And the year of a real Asian beetle infestation in New York plus journalists revealing  the CIA promotion of crack cocaine importation to fund right-wing rebel groups in Nicaragua.

Yet in the end, the power of Bug the play lies not in state conspiracy, but how far over the edge the isolated and disappointed - and drug-addled - can be pushed and nudged into pushing themselves.

Still, lines thrown in at times - "Women aren't my bag" and "I'm playing devil's advocate" throw into question the delusion and self-knowledge of the couple. If - in a play written before mass internet usage - the media, literature, film, the news, even the psychology of acting and the creation of "character" are the instigators or results of tragedy.

With the audience as voyeurs on every side and looming plaster beams - there's a Psycho bathroom in one corner, the seedy motel room door and window at the other - it's an evening of proximities.

The changing light (lighting designer Richard Howell) outside is just discernible through the cheap curtains as Agnes crosses to the mini bar in the third corner wedged between members of the audience. Indeed viewed from above the bedroom set may even resemble a bug's compound eye.;)

There are subtle sound effects from Edward Lewis from the first chirping cricket (it's not a spoiler to say that this jiminy cricket gets the chop)  to the real or imaginary helicopters circling overhead near the end.

The Charing Cross Road venue proves perfect for this visceral grunge production directed by Simon Evans (oh, did we mention James Norton was in it?:)), both as a former art school and as the dilapidated grafitti-strewn home of Found 111. Whether the play would have the same impact on a formal proscenium stage is debatable.

Kate Fleetwood's Agnes and James Norton's Peter crash and burn, gnawing into themselves, within touching distance and it's the physical nearness which resonates, Daisy Lewis's RC and Alec Newman's Jerry frame the action of the junkie couple with strong performances. While Carl Prekopp's role of Dr Sweet  seems not so much underwritten as deliberately jarring.

With a nightmarish comic book quality, TLT and her own little bug(gy) laughed,  cringed and gasped spontaneously in the right places. Be prepared for blood, gore, dentistry beyond Marathon Man, alongside extreme population pest control and you'll have an enjoyable shlock horror rollercoaster evening. A green light.