Review The Brink

The Brink

by Brad Birch

The History Boy

https://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk/

It's  a tough life as a teacher - one moment you're Superman for all the kids, but then starts the dark descent into the shallow grave of marking, academy politics and dreaming the top secret Second World War bomb under the playing fields explodes.

History teacher Nick (Ciarán Owens) can't sleep, having woken from his recurrent school nightmare but finds a handy cube to sit on.to eat his breakfast.

The glowing cube is one of four on an interesting set designed by Hyemi Shin introducing us to Planet Nick with s floor full of dark gray shards - almost as if a bomb had - well, never mind ...

The Brink by Brad Birch is a vigorous 80 minutes without a break, fleetly directed by Mel Hillyard, as Nick's life is put on reverse through the school system. 

Time slips away and we're not sure if we're being treated to an inside out skewed view of the world through Nick's mind, or if he, to use The Archers mot de jour, is being gaslighted.

Or if there really is a bomb under the playing fields.

And as her little motorised 'A' grade student companion remarked to TLT, aren't school playing fields being sold off to developers? But perhaps that's the point of why we've come to The Brink.

Yet the play struck us as a rather cold exercise with studied jokes, a bare bones' gallop through an educational breakdown with movie references. But again, perhaps that's part of the point. The exercise of theory in education?

TLT doesn't know whether she's been infected by the Francophone feel enveloping many of this season's plays but she did wonder whether  a French context might be more resonant with its  history of left wing (nay, communist) history teachers, militant university student surveillants, and pride in secularism.

At the same time, there are clever ideas, even if The Brink doesn't quite know whether it wants to invite sympathy or be a harshly modern Hogarthian storyboard satire. As it is, it's ticking off of the issues, plot points and jokes may be satisfying for some.

 Owens embodies an engaging mix of intellectual analysis, puppyish vulnerability and bouncing-off-the-wall paranoia. There's able support from Shvorne Marks doubling as Nick's partner Chloe and school pupil Jessica, Alice Haig as fellow teacher Jo and Vince Leigh as Chloe's hotshot boss Martin and shifty headmaster Mr Boyd. 

So it's not quite an A grade from TLT but it's definitely a not-fail amber light.

Review Cyprus Avenue

Cyprus Avenue

By David Ireland

The Orange And The Green

www.royalcourttheatre.com

There is a Buzzfeed meme making the rounds of the internet at the moment asking "What percentage Jeremy Corbyn are you?" Well, Eric Miller (Stephen Rea), the Protestant Loyalist protagonist of Cyprus Avenue would surely point indignantly at his grandchild as one hundred percent Gerry Adams.

Notwithstanding that she's a peach of a girl and barely five weeks' old and brought to the Miller's Cyprus Avenue household by daughter Julie (Amy Molloy).  

This tragicomedy, written by East Belfast playwright David Ireland and directed by Vicky Featherstone, tackles with black humour the entanglements of an older Belfast Protestant generation. 

Despite a dangerous, searing subject and the Gerry Adamification of the granddaughter, it almost falls into the category of a conventional psychiatric-consulting room based play, if it were not for two things. David Ireland's understanding of his home city and Stephen Rea's performance as he turns and considers the issues simmering in his mind before they boil over into violence.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, for before that there are the  flashbacks  and  the psychiatrist Bridget (Wunmi Mosaku) to talk to. See what we mean about a conventional play?  

The title mirrors that of a Van Morrison song,  but Cyprus Avenue, where Eric lives with wife Bernie (Julie Dearden), is apparently also a leafy upmarket road, almost a Bishop's Avenue of Belfast (see Page 27 of link).

This seems at odds with the confused but strangely logical deductions  of Eric, which rightly or wrongly one associates with the working class,  as he repeats to himself why he is British. Yet it's not at odds with the strangeness of this play.  

It also occurred to us the playwright, without knowing if he is Catholic or Protestant, thankful his surname is a geographical fact rather than a partisan nationality, may have rehearsed the British/Irish arguments in his own mind for many years before writing this play!

It's a dangerous, edgy piece which plays around with conventions of playwriting as well as sectarianism. 

For all that, weaker points sometimes peep through.  A pivotal encounter with a Loyalist gunman Slim (Chris Corrigan) exposes the political language hiding harsh reality seeping more and more into the play as it progresses but uses mundane stand-up jokes less successfully.

And the slightest of niggles is that this would perhaps work even better as a movie where the psychiatrist's explanations of identity in a world context at the beginning of the play would feel less expositional. 

But the effective theatre-in-the-round plain white carpeted design  by Lizzie Clachan  with its few pieces of furniture almost works as a green special effects (no pun intended!) screen. The Protestant/Catholic divide is definitely Belfast but the trip to London brings in foreign exchange and hints of other eras.

The ending is not for the fainthearted but it's a play that knows it can't put a step wrong even if the characters are in the wrong. A green light for a disturbingly funny but tragic play.

Review X

X

by Alistair McDowall

Space Oddity

www.royalcourt.co.uk

Gosh, if life in Pluto were a tax dodge, more off planet than off-shore, as Alistair McDowall imagines in his dystopian fantasy X directed by Vicky Featherstone, one has to wonder who's the accountant?!

In fact there are no accountants or lawyers or Panama hats in  this play seemingly set in space. But it did raise a sardonic collective laugh early on as one of the crew of workers stranded on Pluto, way past their contracted six months with tax-free earnings commented, "There are easier  ways to avoid tax".

And what a nightmare of unpaid uncontracted overtime it is, where zero hours takes on a whole new meaning as time itself slips and disintegrates with flashbacks and doubling back like a disturbing form of neurofeedback.

At the centre of this inside-out universe designed as a gray-green vaulting cube by Merle Hensel  is Gilda (Jessica Raine), a geologist and second in command to veteran astronaut Ray (Darrell D'Silva).

The latter has a dangerous nostalgia for pre-internet twentieth century life when a tweet meant birdsong. Belligerent technician Clark (James Harkness), maths' nerd Cole (Rudi Dharmalingham)  and  Mattie (Ria Zmitrowicz) who maintains "the ladies", the oxygen and water systems, complete the team.   And could it be that the spaceship is haunted by a prepubescent spectre  (Grace Doherty)?

Ostensibly this is a sci fi thriller with supernatural and ecological tentacles, just shy of two and half hours in length. Yes, it's overlong and feels stretched, especially in the second act when it starts to explain itself and irritatingly exposes a medical equivalent of "it was all a dream".structure by the end.

And yet it also has moments of resonance, when the concept is more open-ended,  spanning a life crossing from the twentieth into the twenty first century, possibly the life of a woman whose name is only mentioned  once.

The film and TV references are legion and most obvious - the deserted spaceship, the labyrinthine upper space out of sight in this play up a ladder with a woman taking command  recalls Alien. The uniforms  modelled after those on Space Trek, although more monochrome. The female protagonist bearing the name of a 1940s' movie. But also glimpses of childhood reading -  Treasure Island, Wuthering Heights - and workers' values of another time.

If this had been cut to one act with the opportunity to ratchet up the suspense in a tighter structure, the plot might have felt more fulsome and absorbing. As it is, it feels as put together as the panels in the walls in order to fill the allotted time rather than organically grown. But X just about flickers into an amber light, even if doesn't quite manage to mark the spot.

Review How The Other Half Loves

How The Other Half Loves

By Alan Ayckbourn

How Clean Is Your House?

http://www.trh.co.uk/

TLT has a confession to make - she and her joined-at-the-chassis companion have now seen the latest production of How The Other Half Loves, an early 1969 Ayckbourn once, nay twice ... Rather appropriate for a play with twin scenery mash-up (of which more later) focussing on two households on the same stage.

For it seemed only fair and rather apt to have  a re-view rather than just a review of a preview (are you keeping up?) as, on top of the usual farcical choreography, the split between households make it fiendishly difficult fto stage. And according to this Terri Paddock podcast the play has only had three weeks' rehearsal with veteran Ayckbourn director Alan Strachan.

It's the late sixties and Frank Foster (a magnificently dangerously bumbling Nicholas Le Prevost) and Bob Phillips (watchful wide-boy Jason Merrells ) work in the same - never-named - firm. In fact they live only a short bus ride away, but they might as well be living on different planets except for one thing ...

While Bob's wife Terry (Tamzin Outhwaithe in dayglo mini dresses and shiny pink plastic boots!), short for Theresa, neglects the housework, penning feminist letters to the Editor of The Guardian in between baby feeds and nappy changes, Bob occupies himself with Frank's cut-glass beauty wife Fiona (Jenny Seagrove).

The regime of bickering accusations and underhand dealings in the Phillips' household and imperial old-school-tie combined with expert  hostess with the mostest, whose dress sense ranges from chic-Barbara-Castle to French couture, in the Foster's seems set to continue for ever ... Ah, except for one thing ...

Both Fiona and Bob invent an alibi for a Wednesday evening tryst involving accountant William (tyro-husband and obsequious employee Matthew Cottle)  and his mousey put-upon wife Mary.

Lives and dirty dealings unravel in a royally messy twin-time scale debacle with dinner parties on consecutive nights but played at the same time. And  the unwitting Featherstones swivel on their chairs through time and space, going from the Fosters' colonial cuisine to the Phillips' far-from-electrifying 1960s' supermarket convenience foods.

Was it worth seeing the show twice? Very definitely yes. Nicholas Le Prevost is an  experienced hand whose performances are finely judged down to the position of his napkin,  keeping the production pivoting around him. Ditto for Jenny Seagrove, utterly convincing when switching tactics with an (almost) unflappable glacial ease as the diplomatic adulterous wife.

But it's the Phillips and the Featherstones who profit most from the three days' interlude between TLT's visits. The moves tightened and quickened up on the large Haymarket stage with the relationships and subtext  deepened.

The accountant and his wife react  to the dual dinner party as if operated by an electric switch to swap between dining rooms and houses with design by Julie Godfrey. Upper class Surrey imperiousness  flashes to  upwardly mobile conflicted welfare state semi-detached and back again.

There's also something very instinctively spot-on about  the brutal sadism lurking  beneath Philips' and  Featherstone  husbands' treatment of their wives, both of whom, in their different ways, begin to assert themselves while having to put up with their men's limitations.

Tamzin Outhwaithe puts in a punchy performance as Terry with flowing golden locks,  presiding  over a dysfunctional Last Supper as the crossed wires untangle themselves.  Equally Gillian Wright's  Mary gained greatly from a second viewing, finally achieving a mix of strength, pathos and  her own diplomatic expediency as she embarks on her personal march to wifely freedom.

To be honest,  the deep Haymarket stage is a tough call for a farce originally developed for theatre-in-the-round  and there's still the potential for more speed and tightening up. But, judging from the change from preview to press night, TLT feels this will come. A classy production of a multilayered play with all characters pulling their weight (and  wine corks!). So  it's a psychedelic 1960s' green/amber light from TLT.

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.