REVIEW: Ingredient X, Royal Court, 9 June 2010

Anatomy of addiction

There's something about this play that lacks some punch, some theatrical edge that stops it from being a truly good piece. But truth be told in the hands of a lesser dramatist Ingredient X would have turned out an insufferable turkey. The situation is not promising: Three friends (and the boyfriend of one of them) meet up for a fun night in watching the finale of that year's Factor X and of their conversation the general theme of the work comes to light: addiction and how it has left a mark on these women's lives. Katie (Indira Varma) and Rosanna (Lesley Sharp) have suffered from being involved with men addicted to drugs, and even Katie's new partner Frank (James Lance) is a recovering addict himself. The third friend Deanne (Lisa Palfrey) is an alcoholic who refuses to admit she has a problem.

There are some good things going for the play: the very theatrical restraint of it all happening in a night, the car-crash fascination of seeing Deanne control by her addiction, the four perfomances are excellent, and there's some clever dialogue. But there are few surprises, and few memorable moments itself. Indira Varma charms her way through th therapy-babble language of Katie admirably, and James Lance paints a surprisingly understated portrait of a man who is really trying to make his new life work - his last scene, alone, cleaning up after the party, is genuinely touching.

And one can only agree with the point Nick Grosso is trying to make: that alcohol is as much if not more of a curse to Britain as illegal drugs are. He writes flawed, sympathetic human beings and there's much value in that. There's also a lot of value in writing for women of this age - not long ago Lesley Sharp complained in her masterclass at the Haymarket how difficult it is to find lead characters and challenging roles for women of her generation. Grosso has a clever eye for dialogue and offers no easy solution for the characters. Like Frank, they all have to make it day by day, learning from their mistakes. Ingredient X is also a play about mistakes and appalling decisions and how people try to blame those on every one by themselves. It's a nice twist that the character of Indira Varma, who uses all that psycho jargon to explain how addiction is an illness, is also the most resolute of them all to prove that our decisions are always our own, and we have to take responsibility for our issues.

But unfortunately none of this is enough to make the play great. Maybe I'm just burnt out on realism like this: realism itself is not an artistic value and we take at face value that something is good because it's true to life. A play is good because it is good, not because it looks like real life. I can do without all the kitchen-sink, Mike Leigh, social realism stuff the British arts have always been so full of. Ingredient X left me with a big sense of "So what?"; while it wasn't a bad play, and the actors made it worth the money, I didn't feel challenged or illuminated in any way. Real theatre should never leave you untouched.

Review: Ghosts, Duchess Theatre, 20 March 2010

I think Ibsen is an acquired taste: I came upon this revelation during my trip to Sheffield to see An Enemy of the People at the gorgeous new Crucible. I mean, the first time I encountered Ibsen (at college) I didn't like it very much. And even when I saw new versions by authors I like (Lucy Kirkwood's Hedda) or excellent productions (the Donmar's A Doll's House) I remained lukewarm.

Then last year I attended a small rehearsed reading of Ghosts at the Young Vic, version via Frank McGuiness, directed by Ian Glenn and with Lesley Sharp and my favourite Tom Brooke as mother and son. It was a powerful piece of theatre, despite it being a reading (although many of my favourite theatrical experiences have come by the way of readings) and started turning my head around about Ibsen. I guess it will always remain my favourite work from him and even if the scandal that the mentioning of syphillis caused in Ibsen's era might sound alien to modern audience Ghosts is every bit as much a poignant, taxing and moving play as when it was written.

So why is it that the power of that rehearsed reading doesn't translate as well to a finished production? Even though I didn't dislike this play as much, I can understand the sense of bafflement from one of my favourite theatre bloggers about the piece. I still think the early notices are unfair but there is something severly lacking here. It's not the actors - Lesley Sharp is as fabulous and refreshing as ever, she gives an unhindered Mrs.Alving and that performance only is worth the money of the ticket. Glenn's Manders is as spineless in comparsion as he should be, on the verge of pathetic but sympathetic just for that. Harry Treadaway does a comendable job in a hard, vital role - but I'm afraid that I spent most of the play remembering Harry Lloyd's take on the character in the Arcola production last year. Lloyd's Oswald will be hard to forget in years to come, I'm afraid, but still Treadaway seems like a great hope for the future, we must remember his stage debut was only last year, and he did brilliantly, in Mark Ravenhill's Over There. I was also cheered by the presence of Jessica Raine as Regina: I feel as if I had seen this girl grow up, after her great performances in Harper Regan and Gethsemane at the National.

Maybe it was the elaborated set and costumes; although I appreciated the airy and well-lit stage, a change from the usual dark and somber productions. Maybe the play worked better in the reading because of its rawness, with minimal props and some light effects. Maybe it's that I believe this play should be performed without interval. Maybe it was the early notices affecting the whole mood. Whatever the case, I didn't find it as poignant. The audience, icy, might have contributed. I left the theatre (after spotting Dominic Cooke some seats behind me, by the way) oddly unsatisfied.

Other reviews:
The Telegraph.
musicOMH.
There Ought To Be Clowns.
The Londonist.
The Independent.

News, Interviews, Food for Thought

- Interview with Lesley Sharp at Whatsonstage. Apart from her current run in Jim Cartwright's Little Voice at the West End Sharp talks about her next project, a version of Ibsen's Ghosts directed by Ian Glen (I saw a rehearsed reading of this a while back at the Young Vic, with Sharp, Glen and my beloved Tom Brooke; and it blew my mind). Don't forget Little Voice opens officially tomorrow at the Vaudeville Theatre. It is really worth it, one of the most enjoyable plays of the season - you can get very cheap first row day seats if you swing by the theatre around 10 in the morning.

- Listen to a new adaptation of Berthold Bretch's and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera for Drama on 3. A collaboration between BBC Drama and the BBC Philharmonic. A quite splendid production of this masterpiece, thanks to the very special talents of Joseph Millson as Macheath and Zubin Varla as Peachum.

- Speaking of this blog's favourite actor, Joseph Millson; news are officially out that he will play Raoul in Love Never Dies, the sequel (or reimagining, or whatever Lloyd Webber said it was) of The Phantom of the Opera. To no one's surprise, since Millson was strongly rumoured for the role as he had already recorded the part in the concept album (you can order it at the official website). News about the cast announcement via Playbill, and the always useful Joseph Millson.com.

- "Sacred" opens tomorrow at Chelsea Theatre. A season of contemporany performance that promises to be something quite different to our usual theatre evenings. Looking forward to it.

- Also opening this week If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet at the Bush Theatre. The always wonderful Josie Rourke directs and the always interesting Rafe Spall is in the cast.

- Simon Anstell will be doing his stand-up routine, Do Nothing at the Royal Court in November. I saw two warm ups and it's a really enjoyable act, charming and well-observed. You won't regret spending money on this, I promise.

- Matt Trueman's article in the Guardian yesterday, "Is the live theatre experience dying?" left us a bit worried. Not because the live theatre experience might be dying (although all this business of Tennant's Hamlet DVDs and live transmisions from the National Theatre is quite annoying) but because some people's implication that the mix-media might by killing it. As the article says indeed the theatrical experience, its liveness, needs to be re-examined, but not from a position of deriding the new shape narrative and performance art takes. One of the examples used, Katie Mitchell's use of video on her productions, feels specially significant for me, because ...some trace of her remains one of the most original, touching and yes theatrical experiences I've had as an audience. So maybe all this genre-bending and media infiltration is not the death of live theatre but rather its evolution in order to survive.

- Also interesting, Michael Billington's little note about the use of the word "Brechtian" and how it tend to send audiences running out of the auditorium. I agree people have a natural reluctance to the adjetive. As for me, I am not Bretch's most fervent fan, far from it, but I was brought up to believe you can do worse than "Brechtian" in your plays.

Little Voice, Vaudeville Theatre, 9 October 2009

Photograph: PR

There's a line Jeanette Winterson says when referring to Virginia Woolf's Orlando and the enthusiastic reaction it got from readers: "They (people) did not understand it but it charmed them."

The same sentiment could be used to describe "Little Voice" and its singular misguiding nature.

It is a charming play and it's easily misconstructed by the audience as a feel-good, uplifting play. Its structure suggests a simpler play than it really is. Of course it helps that this is a West End revival and the girl playing LV comes from the world of X-factor.

But (like the equally misjudged "Speaking in Tongues" at the Duke of York's right now) this is not a West End play and though it has enough going for it to woo a West End audience I dare say few people sitting around me at one of the preview nights stopped and thought just how extraordinary a play this "Little Voice" is.

This is not your usual West End musical it is a piece of poetry. Jim Cartwright is a poet. His language is extraordinarily experimental but it comes wrapped up in what Marc Warren calls a "northern showbiz fairytale". There are songs and good feelings and a budding, cute romance amidst the tragedy and wasted chances of these characters' lives. The play paints quite a dark picture of these dead-end people, of brash, loud, selfish Mari (Lesley Sharp) and her shy, anti-social daughter (Diana Vickers), and the chancer, has-been disaster that is the charming Ray (Marc Warren).

It's a redeeming and familiar enough story: LV, shy and self-confined to her room and her late fatheer's records gets out in the world through her extraordinary gift, a voice that can mimick those of the great singers: Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Shirley Bassey. Exploited by her dissatisfied and uncaring mother and a manipulative manager LV ultimately escapes the clutches of her opressive family life and finds love and freedom.

It is at times Disney-like fable and at times grim, tough Jimmy McGovern-ish Northern social drama.

It's curious to see how this revival sells one point but then the actual production doesn't turn its back on the other. It shouldn't blend well but it does. I suspect there's a lot of irony in Cartwright's assumed happy ending but there's a lot of heart, too. It's a complicated ending, too. It offers hope but few answers.

Although I think Lez Brotherston's girating set was a bit distracting at times I appreciated that Mari's house was every bit as ordinary and bleak as her life, and that they didn't prettied-up or clean the set for a more conventional audience than the one Jim Cartwright usually writes to (not for, I don't think he writes for anyone but himself). The production - despite the glittery posters and heavy pr campaign - doesn't shy from the darker themes of the story and, for example, the heartstopping last fight between Mari and LV is a perfect example, wonderfully pathetic and raw.

And the asset of this production is its cast, so that the GORGEOUS prose of Cartwright's get to shine as it deserves:

Mari: "You've always been a little voice and you've never liked much, to speak and such, but this thing you've developed could make us Ray reckons. Don't know where the hell it's come from, such a quiet lonely thing you've always been. I could almost fit you in my two hands as a babe. I don't know if it's the drink but I keep seeing you tonight as our little LV there, little pale chil' in me arms, or in the old pram there, that lemon coloured crocheted blanket around you, tiny good-as-gold face in the wool. I'm sorry for the way I am love at times, it seems to be the way I am. It seems to be something..."

Of course most people turned up at the theatre wondering if X-factor contestant Diana Vickers was up to the challenge. Well, yes and no. I have never seen X-factor so I had no previous reference, and I wasn't particularly concerned where she was coming from, as long as she was able to do a decent job. She is not a very good actress but she is not a very bad one, either. She fits the part of LV in a way that makes her believable. At least I believed her. She is sympathetic and the scenes with LV's love interest (played by the playwright's son, James Cartwright) carry the perfect balance of cuteness and embarrasment. But Vickers is not a great singer so when the times comes for LV to shine the moment is just a little underwhelming. But all in all she doesn't hurt the production irrevocably.

It was interesting to see two of my favourite actors acting together for the first time; although both Marc Warren and Lesley Sharp were pretty much in their comfort zones with this one. That doesn't diminish their merit, of course, but I always enjoy my favourites when they are doing something new (like Warren did with "The Pillowman"). Sharp is a veteran Cartwright-ist, having been in the first production of his seminal (& people use this adjective far too often but here I mean it) play, "Road" and her skills for both lyrical and down-to-earth moments makes her the perfect Mari, as if the role had been written for her. And Warren is used to play charmers so he is at home with Ray, but he also shows his capacity for pathos in the wonderful scene where Ray breaks down at the club.

It is always wonderful to see such gifted actors doing their thing.

"Little Voice" is a rare thing; it's a show that I utterly love but also I show I would recommend to everyone for very different reasons to those why I love it. Whether you are looking for a bit of West End escapism or for a searching, lyrical piece of art, you will leave the theatre satisfied. Cheered up even.

Read Marc Warren's diary of the production.

Reviews:
The Stage.
The Guardian.
The Telegraph.
musicOMH.

CARYL CHURCHILL READINGS: Three More Sleepless Nights, The Royal Court, 19 Sep 2008

It's funny how a couple of months ago, when I had not open a Caryl Churchill script, I still wondered what all the fuss about her was about, and if she was really worth the hype. And now, the more I read and the more I see of her work, the more I come to understand why she's been so pivotal to British theatre in the last decades.

I wish I had seen the reading of Top Girls as well, one of her best known plays, but money is scarce and I had to choose between that one and this almost-short piece. In case of doubt I'll always pick the one with Lesley Sharp in it. Not only is she my favourite actress but I sincerely believe she is the best British actress nowadays so I knew I was in for a treat. Also, having been absolutely mesmerized by Tom Brooke in Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, I wanted to see more of him.

Three More Sleepless Nights follows three scenes between four characters that make up three different couples. The theme of communication, or in this case lack of it, is at the heart of the play. Which was written years before incommunication became the main subject of about 90% of modern theatre plays. But I am beginning to comprehend to what extent Caryl Churchill was and still is ahead of her time.

Churchill wrote Three More Sleepless Nights in 1980 but it is astounding how modern it sounds nowadays. The sound of it. What Churchill does with words very few authors can achieve. There's a very peculiar poetry to it. The first scene, between Sharp and Ron Cook, with overlapping dialogue which had to be timed to the fraction-of-a-second (and it was, despite this being a rehearsed reading), leaves the audience with the mouth open. But it's not just technical trick of it, it's the observation, the details, how well-drawn the characters are in just a few lines.

The reading was directed by debbie tucker green, which is another treat in itself, she is a great writer.

The cast was flawless. It's always an excercise in amazement, watching Lesley Sharp work. She is just one of those actors who are just a pleasure to watch, whatever she is doing, because she is so skillful and at the same time she makes it looks effortless. Ron Cook admirably stood his ground against her, he was pretty incredible too. And no, my first impression of Tom Brooke wasn't an illusion. This is one to look for. I loved the quietness and quirkiness he embedded into the character, and the very peculiar delivery he has, that voice. I am completely converted. He is the theatre discovery of the year so far.

As an aside note I should say I was very happy to take home with me Lesley Sharp's script of the play. She kindly gave it to this faithful fan. Aw. She also introduce me to Dominic Cooke and I shooke hands with the man I dream of working for someday. Amazing theatre experience.