Author: irispearso

How do you turn a poem into a piece of theatre? Morag Fullarton’s answer, as she directs Liz Lochhead’s 2016 poem ‘Credo’ into a charming seven-minute short as part of the National Theatre Scotland’s Scenes for Survival, shares something with the impulse of a children’s book illustrator. Her creation, performed by Lochhead herself alongside Andy Clark, turns on simplicity and wit, and an impressive intimacy with the audience, even through the screen.

Lochhead sits off-centre in the stands of an empty open-air theatre. She faces an undecorated stage, where Clark paces, mimes, dances, agonises – contorts himself to satisfy her words. She is a director in rehearsal, a children’s story time reader, giving advice or instructions to a single listener in need of constant correction but also eager to please. She is a figure of wisdom delivering a mediation, or manifesto, or a mandate. Whether we are being consulted, advised, or commanded, all I know that is that we want to listen. The shots which zoom out to the rows and rows of unfilled seats around Lochhead should emphasise her smallness, but Fullarton’s use of colour, where Lochhead’s orange and red toned clothes stand out of the grey and green backdrop like a single ripe tomato in a harvested field, ensures that Lochhead steals the gaze and becomes, in these shots, unavoidably alluring.

Daryl Cockburn’s filming and editing conjures a certain magic throughout the piece. Simplicity and crispness characterise his style, with never a wasted shot nor meaningless angle. Lochhead’s facial expressions shine in the close-ups – cheeky, eyebrow-arching – which expose us to the full smart of her light-hearted mockery; we grovel an apology for any time we told folk what to think, or told the story out of order. Lochhead’s facial expressions revel in these close-ups. Wider shots reveal the small but lively details which give the production its character, like the stepladder which Clark has to climb to get onto the stage or the ‘Keep It Fresh’ box which stores his props. This sharp filming coincides with the colour-schemed symmetry of the setting to create a Wes Anderson-esque effect as Lochhead reads her lines.

This piece borrows from Wes Anderson, too, the feeling of two overlapping – different, if not explicitly conflicting – rhythms. Lochhead’s lilting vocals and subtle, wry facial expressions follow the rhythm of the teacher – rehearsed, experienced, controlled – whereas Clark’s movements are less continuous, more stop-start: the rhythm of the student who acts and then must correct, over and over again. Clark’s actions are immediate signifiers, operating within the audience’s first viewing and exerting their effect, humorous or illustrative, at once, whereas Lochhead’s vocals can only register after multiple viewings. That is, while I found that re-watching Clark’s movements only consolidated already-gathered humour, listening again to Lochhead’s words multiplied their meaning through details or expressions I had previously missed.

With Clark as the body and Lochhead as the voice of the duet, pulled together into a harmony of taste by Fullarton’s bold yet structured direction, ‘Credo’ offers a charmingly honest reworking of this 2016 poem, which demands to be watched over and over again.

Published by A Younger Theatre, September 2020: https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-scenes-for-survival-credo-national-theatre-of-scotland/

In one view, Sanjeev Kohli and Isobel McArthur’s ‘The Quiz’, a six-minute comic short written as part of the National Theatre Scotland’s Scenes for Survival, is an easy laugh which feeds off a shared quarantine experience of endless Zoom interactions. But perhaps it is also a highly experimental piece, exploring the dynamics of voice, listening and control in our contemporary virtual society.

The short begins with an exertion of control. Kohli, with his camera just a little too upwards and set against a decidedly un-curated wall, puts his ex-classmates on mute to begin hosting their reunion quiz. The tangle of voices makes way for his alone – but we soon realise that any control is merely an illusion, as Kohli is forced to interrupt his introductory speech to comment on whatever scene is playing out, apparently silently, in the little boxes in front of him. Kohli’s already desperate attempt to command his ex-classmates is first reinforced and then proved futile by the illusory nature of virtual silencing without actually claiming attention.

Yet Kohli manages to control one party in this piece: the audience. We cannot see his ex-classmates packed into the screen like a sports-match crowd; we cannot read the rude comments they type: our only experience of the other callers is Kohli’s commentary on them. His dramatic monologue offers half a conversation where we hear the answer but not the question, and presents the rest of the action to the audience as already-interpreted. This is reliably hilarious, as we are left to imagine what quiz question could have required the consecutive answers ‘salt and vinegar’ and ‘stop and search’, but it also points to a more pressing failure of communication at the core of these virtual interactions. That is, the dramatic monologue reproduces and then multiplies the delayed and disoriented experience of virtual communication by placing the audience at a powerless distance from the conversation.

In the end, McArthur and Kohli’s piece is about listening – about our failure to listen. Kohli, by muting his ex-classmates, refuses to listen to them and sets off on his fourteen rounds of quiz without stopping to gauge his co-callers’ interest or reaction, just as his classmates continue to mock him for an old rumour without listening to his repeated denials. Later, talking just to Roxana, Kohli launches into a monologue about their possible relationship without listening to (or looking at) her warnings that he is on mute, and his words are wasted. I think, in fact, that this is one of McArthur’s best moments of writing: the monologue should be too theatrical and romanticised given the crass comedy of the rest of the piece, but its egocentricity and total blindness to the reaction of another fits it nicely into this play on speaking and listening. Perhaps even we, as the audience, can be accused of not listening: when James Alcock’s edits cut between different quiz rounds, it is as if we have zoned out for the rest of the questions and are only tuning in occasionally to listen.

If ‘The Quiz’ is merely a comedy, it is successful, if obvious. If it is an experiment in what it is listen and speak, and control who listens and speaks, however, then McArthur and Kohli have created something thoughtful, poignant, and even depressing – and perhaps, grimly, this makes it even funnier.

Published by A Younger Theatre, September 2020: https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-scenes-for-survival-the-quiz-national-theatre-of-scotland/

Jessica Swale’s ‘Blue Stockings’, first performed at the Globe in 2013, depicts a Cambridge that the students here today can hardly imagine. It shows a university buoyed up by masculine superiority: determined to keep women out. The female protagonists at Girton are patronised, derided and thrown out of lectures as they fight for the woman’s right to knowledge, and the female student’s right to graduate. Annika Hi, Florence Sharkey and Giulia Armiero’s production in Pembroke New Cellars has its moments of brilliance and hilarity, but it falls in a space between comedy and chilling realism which leaves the audience wondering exactly how to react.

The male students’ horror at seeing a woman riding a bicycle in Cambridge, or their sniggering nervousness when sitting opposite girls in the library can easily be portrayed as ridiculous and therefore comic. Edmund Wilson as Lloyd is particularly hilarious as he bumbles and attempts to belittle the female students, and the pointless drinking game which the five men play, where singing a sweet ballad is the punishment for losing, is a perfect example of ludicrous behaviour at which the audience cannot help but laugh. Yet there are other scenes in which the male reaction to female students is not comic but disturbing: Rohan Mitta’s performances, both in the opening sequence and as Maudsley, are driven by a contorted misogynist logic which is almost terrifying to watch; Mitta commands the stage both verbally and physically with such chilling power that the audience are captivated, but also shrinking in our seats. Each of these interpretations of the men’s reaction to women, represented by Wilson and Mitta respectively, would be valid approaches to this play, but the combination of both gives the play a lack of continuity. It feels confused, and a little undecided. I think this production could be tightened if the directors and actors agreed on a tone and a desired effect on the audience: and pursued it relentlessly through the whole play.

Perhaps what this production lacked was a little more polish, something I certainly felt at the end of scenes. The opening sequence was one of my favourites: the abstract, physical theatre-esque, Cabaret-stern-young-women juxtaposition worked brilliantly as the backdrop to Mitta’s speech against women in higher education; the movements were sharp but also flowing, assertive but silent (credit goes to Charis Taplin as Movement Director). I think it worked fantastically as an abstract introduction to the power dynamics between men and women in this institution. But the scene’s force was immediately undercut by a lengthy (and noisy) scene transition which unfortunately distracted the audience’s attention and interrupted the just-established momentum. I would have liked to see a sharper ending and slicker transition here, as at a number of points in the play, to carry through the emotion and momentum which these talented actors have built up during the scene; too many scenes ended on a down-beat, which was a shame to see after so much hard work.

Speaking of talented actors, praise is due to Maya McFarlane (Tess) and Emily Rose James (Celia) in particular for their performance of the scene in the orchard, where Tess is writing love poetry instead of revising for her exams. Their conversation is dynamic, virtuoso, negotiating pacier and more subdued exchanges; between them they manage pretty perfectly the tonal shifts and the rising conflict until Celia drops off into pleading: ‘Don’t throw this away, Tess. Not when it’s only just started.’ McFarlane, James and Lydia Makrides (Carolyn), alongside William Hu (as Radleigh) and Jasper Cresdee-Hyde (as Mr Peck) are wonderful in the examination scene, running through complex physics with an impressive fluency and endearing confidence and maintaining the scene’s pace so that the audience can hardly pause for breath before the emotional ending.

Swale’s ‘Blue Stockings’ tells a necessary story in the development of our university, and Hi, Sharkey and Armiero, armed with a talented group of actors, do a commendable job of bringing it to life in this Pembroke Cellars production. With a little more polish, and some firmer decisions about tone – chilling or comic? disturbing or ridiculous? – this promises to be an important piece of theatre about the fight for knowledge and the sacrifices that come with it.

Published in Varsity, March 2020: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18897

Samuel Adamson’s Wife, first performed at the Kiln Theatre in 2019, is an examination of the institution of marriage through the lens of Ibsen’s Nora, the rebellious protagonist of A Doll’s House. The play travels from 1959 to 2042, exploring as it goes the complexities of homosexual and heterosexual marriage, and the price that we all pay for being ourselves. Nora becomes a symbol for the play and its characters, her story performed over and over, interpreted and reinterpreted by the characters who find in her story an articulation of their own condition and an explanation of the way things work. Wife is constantly thinking and endlessly reworking, and Cara Dromgoole’s Cambridge production captures wonderfully this curiosity.

Dromgoole’s careful touch and keen eye for detail can be felt throughout this production. Her direction, supported by assistant directors Will Leckie and Jen White, makes the most of the slightly peculiar space of Pembroke New Cellars, choreographing with the diagonals and positioning the characters into corners of the stage to highlight their contests or coming togethers, the moments of conflict or cooperation. The transitions between scenes were pleasingly brisk: the dressing sequences as actors shifted from one part to the next were neatly executed and felt neither overworked nor gratuitous.

I was impressed by the neatness of this whole production. The costumes, designed and put together by Ellie Arden and Lydia Trail, are colour-coordinated and blushingly simple: they attract the eye but avoid being ridiculous. Props are used sparingly but cleverly; Jamie Atkinson’s set complements the performances but never drowns them out, framing the scene but never defining it. The six actors are organised and confident in their performances, negotiating the play’s complexities and the wordiness of its script with subtlety and a sense of complete control over their material.

Aine McNamara in particular is fantastic. A rising star in Cambridge Theatre, this was a part which played to the nuances of her acting talnet and her ability to deliver long, emotionally-weighted speeches without the rhythms becoming repetitive or the words mangled. McNamara’s Daisy is torn between her desire and her position as daughter, wife and mother-to-be, teetering on the edge of complete rebellion and yet recognising the powerlessness of the lesbian in 1950s London. McNamara’s talent is intelligent and perceptive; she never misses a beat.

Theo Tompkins also deserves rapturous applause. Wife allows Tompkins to show off the full range of his talent, playing first a booming patriarch but slipping seamlessly into a bawdy homosexual in a 1980s London pub, and then transforming himself once again into the naïve husband twisting himself into knots about gender and sexuality and the languages that accompany these conversations. Tompkins manages tonal shift in a way that simultaneously guides the audience through and whips the rug from under our feet; he delivers his lines with impeccable timing and the confidence of a professional.

Dromgoole’s production of this brilliant piece of new theatre is neat but eccentric, subtle but confident, hilarious but moving – and teeming with questions. Wife doesn’t pretend to offer any answers, and Dromgoole, Leckie, White and their talented cast harness this questioning to create a compelling piece of theatre which leaves its audience impressed and inspired. ‘The world is always behind our Noras,’ the 1988 Norwegian actress tell us: watching Wife, it feels both dizzyingly impossible and incredibly important that we try to keep up.

Published in Varsity, February 2020: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18648

Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice is a study of what it means to listen or be listened to. Georgina Deri’s production at the ADC showcases vocal and directorial talent, but it needs more volume and more focus on tone.

Jonathan Powell and Charli Foreman’s double-layer set divides the eye, but it also plays games with the ear in this play. Little Voice (referred to as “LV” by the other characters and played by Lydia Clay-White) sings from “upstairs”, unaware that the characters bustling down below can hear her; their wonder is twisted with disbelief at the disembodied sound which could come straight from the record player. They cannot see her moving lips; the audience experiences LV’s complete performance much before the other characters; heard but not seen.

It is a shame, however, that some of the most powerful scenes take place far away from the audience, on this upper section of the set. Billy (Charlie Morrell-Brown) leans in through the window to talk to LV in what I think is the play’s most inventive directorial moment, but some of the intimacy of the exchange is lost by the distance between audience and actors and the huge space of stage which lies between us and them. Perhaps a side-by-side set would have worked better, giving the scenes in LV’s bedroom greater weight and centrality – but then again, perhaps the fact that she is hidden away, pushed to a small space at the top of the set, is symbolic.

Clay-White’s voice is breath-taking. I want to watch a whole show of her singing. I was mesmerised, lost in her voice, but then I was jolted back again by her next impression; I was, and still am, open-mouthed at her talent. The directorial decision to have her perform her first show in the dark is particularly effective, tantalising the audience, cruelly withholding from us the glory of her full performance. LV’s frenzied medley at the end of the play as she pushes back against Ray trembles with the instability of talent pushed too far, but presents, too, the power of music more generally in this play. Music is the background to these characters’ lives, even emerging in the ring of the telephone and a knock on the door. Music liberates, music celebrates (see the Jackson 5 dance, this one’s a treat), and music rebels against oppositional forces. Through music, LV rises, falls, and then finally triumphs.

Clay-White’s voice carries the end of the play. The final scene between LV and Billy thrills with emotion and new hope, of a performance organically-created between two young people who are on the cusp of finding their own voices. There is a tenderness between the two characters which is not overplayed but subtly present, and Morrell-Brown looks on from the side of the stage with a perfect mixture of pride, excitement and adoration. I want to watch more of this scene; I want to hear Clay-White sing again.

Where this production falls short, for me, is its negotiation of tone. While Harriet Wilton as Mari is compellingly multi-layered, revealing underneath her bawdy jokes a sensitive widow and mother worrying about how to get by, I think her vulgarity needs to be louder. Wilton needs to play it up, overdo it, until the audience are roaring. It’s no easy task, but I also don’t think there is such thing as overacting this part. If Mari’s scenes in the kitchen are louder, then the stunned silence which falls when LV starts to sing will be more pronounced. Similarly, I think there is a problem of tone in the final scene. Connor Rowlett delivers Ray’s outburst with a spitting vitriol which is perfect for that moment of breakdown, but there needs to be more build-up to this outburst; Wilton and Rowlett should show us more over the course of this scene that something is going wrong: that love, if it was ever love, is turning to hatred, and mutual feeling has slipped to one side. As it was last night, I was shocked by Ray’s outburst, but I was shocked by the language in isolation, rather than experiencing the words as part of a toxic trajectory.

There is no shortage of talent in this production. Clay-White’s voice alone could hold the stage, and she is supported by a group of accomplished actors. I think that more attention to tonal dynamics and to the possibilities of staging would open this show up to its full potential and embrace the emotive intensity of Cartwright’s story of a star first pushed, then stepping, into the spotlight.

Published in Varsity,  January 2020: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18611

Downing’s Heong Gallery isn’t the obvious place to stage a play. There isn’t much scope for lighting, the actors have to weave in and out of the Barbara Hepworth sculptures, and there’s an echoing acoustic which threatens fast-paced dialogue. But Alfred Leigh’s Pills is made for this space. If you’re looking for brand-new experimental theatre in an excitingly different venue – this is the show to see.

The script is incredibly clever. This is a play which distorts memory, disorients its characters and its audience, offers multiple versions of reality which don’t quite work and which definitely don’t fit together, loops back on itself, ties itself in knots, repeats until we no longer know where we started. Leigh’s writing is subtle, never overdone, and manages confusion with a control that makes this feel like a professional piece. As the audience, we are left at the mercy of his creation. Just as we think we begin to understand what is going on, our feet are swept from under us again – and it never feels gratuitous. The confidence of Leigh’s writing makes us sure that it always makes sense in some higher logic – that there is an answer somewhere.

Leigh’s direction is intelligent and careful. He has his actors navigate their way through the sculptures so that they seem comfortably part of the show; the length of the space makes the perfect set-up for eerie confrontation, and characters are forced into corners to increase aggressive intensity. The fact that the audience can view this show from any range of angles – chairs are dotted around the space and we can move around during the show to see things more closely – demands a dynamism from the performance which Leigh’s direction achieves – yet it never loses a sense of tight control and perfect coordination. This is a performance that has been thoughtfully and ruthlessly rehearsed; every movement is deliberate.

But none of this is just down to Leigh. The actors in Pills have an impressive control of their voices and bodies, and a confidence which crucially holds the piece together. Anna McDonald fills the play’s opening with a vivid panic: she is not afraid to make noise (and make the most of the echoes) in this space. She acts each repetition as if this really is the first time she has spoken these lines, and the progression between scenes is impressive: she uses her whole body to capture the stage-by-stage deterioration with each pill initiates.

Hashim Quraishi is eerily terrifying with his direct stare and robotically compassionate voice. Not for one moment does he relax the tight control of each step and each word, and his outbursts are captivating. Bathsheba Lockwood Brook is frighteningly unpredictable; her tone rises to a violent shout and falls to a quiet caress within the same sentence, and the audience waits with tense breath to see what she will do next. Emma-Rose Bouffler is calm yet direct, subtle yet confident: the shift in power dynamic in her scene with Lockwood Brook is unnerving in its suddenness, and her facial expressions are simple yet powerful. Hannah Arnaud enters as if to dispel the confusion of the whole play but only makes things worse, and her controlled speech lingers between kindness and manipulation.

How are we supposed to interpret Pills? Are we supposed to interpret it at all? Leigh’s new play is wonderfully unsettling and disorienting, and the experience of watching it is different for each person in the audience. The script is thrilling, the actors are confident and well-drilled. This is a clever and intriguing creation which immerses us in the complexities of memory and the difficulties of “reality”.

Published in Varsity, November 2019: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18349

A life depends on decisions: big ones and small ones; some that we would change if we could and some whose effect we don’t even realise now. Cadence Ware’s new play Parisienne sets out to explore these pivotal moments, and what would happen if things had been different. Her play is framed by a series of photographs on a dressing-room table, and a narrator figure looking back at her past through these photographed scenes.

It’s a promising premise. It could make a subtle piece of theatre about alternative endings and learning to live with just one. On occasion the aim is off – a cliché or a one-liner at moments when perhaps a more nuanced, gentle exploration would have been closer to the mark.

There are some very pleasing performances. Daniel Quigley, Saul Barrett and Oscar Ings as Chris, Ollie and Jack respectively act with a light touch. Quigley is hilariously direct and his timing is effortlessly spot-on, while Barrett captures confidently the all-too-familiar youngest brother living at home long after the others. Ings’s lingering looks during the party scene are carefully timed and wistfully honest.

Both Ashleys also deserve praise. Katie Chambers as ‘Ashley II’ injects energy into the production and her movements seem natural and never contrived (her Shakespeare is pretty good, too). Zoe Belcher as Ashley plays a difficult narrator figure with impressive vocal control, manipulating the pace and volume of her lines, speeding up in frenzy and slowing down again to enunciate each consonant. Perhaps Belcher would have been even better used by being allowed to move away from the dressing table to make greater use of the stage, and interact with the photographed scenes. A static narrator can have some challenge keeping the audience’s attention – animating the role can help.

Perhaps the directors could have been more adventurous in all aspects of the piece. The play may have benefited from a stronger interpretation of character – when the director is a writer with such a clear view of her characters it can perhaps stifle the actor’s interpretation, or at least trammel it. That is where the importance of assistant directors Emily Moss and Lakshana Gunathilagan comes in. When working with a writer-director, an assistant director can be critical to the transformation from page to staging.

The themes and set-up of this play have a lot of potential. This could have been a metatheatrical piece, disorienting its audience and making them pause to think about the way their lives are shaped by tiny moments that cannot be captured by a static photograph. There were some wonderful individual performances, but there were gaps between lines and moments of disjointed movement that could have been smoothed.

There is potential in Parisienne. It perhaps needs an injection of new energy, amplification of its more stylised theatrical moments, and attention to its occasionally too-obvious moments. With a bolder interpretation, more nuance and more confident direction, I think it could be transformed into an intriguing piece.

Published in Varsity, November 2019: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18260

If you’re going to go for realism in theatre, you have to do it really well. I’m not talking about the individual actor plumbing the depths of their character and nailing emotional nuance; realism is a group effort. It needs a total atmosphere which makes us believe the emotions and interactions unfolding in front of us. This is where the production of ‘Jane Eyre’ at Robinson Auditorium falls short.

The story of Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester and Bertha Mason is one with which most of us, I would hazard a guess, are at least vaguely familiar. We remember the novel’s interest in the Jane-Mr Rochester dynamics: painfully complex and tensely sexual; moving from proud self-defence to unbounded emotional expression. We remember the suspended passion of their first meeting when Mr Rochester has fallen off his horse.

But this feeling of something dawning, of speech (and love) on the cusp, sadly doesn’t carry through into this production. The event occurs too randomly, with not enough atmospheric build-up, and the lines seem to rush to their conclusion. I didn’t believe that there was any potential feeling between the two characters. I understand the problem (that 18^th-century novels have just so many individual “scenes”) but directors Georgina Deri and Jenny Lazarus would have done well to extend each scene a little, cutting less important ones and focusing instead on creating atmosphere to make the audience believe in the emotional experience.

The play was not without compelling moments; however, these tended to be those that leaned towards stylisation, especially in the final depiction of the fire at Thornfield, or Jane’s dream on her wedding night, when Bertha (Imani Thompson) and Jane (Kay Benson) flirt with her veil, or the re-enactment of Mr Rochester and Bertha first falling in love as they dance. The screen hanging down to cover a raised part at the back of the stage creates a wonderful sense of the opacity of secrets and becomes, at least as I interpreted it, a visualisation of the way in which those in power hide the women who embarrass or threaten their way of life. These more stylised moments made me think back to Maddy Trepanier’s glorious production ‘Northanger Abbey’ in 2018: dramatizations of long and complexly-plotted novels need symbolism, style and creativity to refresh and reinvigorate them. Deri and Lazarus’s version of ‘Jane Eyre’ gestures at these – but I wanted more.

The production is certainly clean and visually tight; the woodenness of the stage effectively focuses the audience, and I particularly appreciated the smoothness with which set – mainly washing, bedsheets and dresses – was unfolded, unfurled and then folded again, packed away and stored in boxes on the stage itself. It is clear that costume designer Margaret Horner has thought hard about aesthetic coherence and has cut no corners in her quest for “authentic” simplicity. I admire the coherence of Georgia Rawlins’s musical compositions, performed by musicians onstage (Daniel Quigley, Esme Cavendish and Sophie Iddles) who complement the drama without intruding into it.

Kay as Jane elegantly commands every moment she is onstage, displaying impressive vocal subtlety and emotional nuance; her Jane is a young woman caught between the necessity and desire to speak her mind and the certainty that if she does so she will be transgressing her allotted social position.

I also want to heap praise on Charlotte Horner (Helen/Adele/Mary), particularly for her role as Adele, where she captured both the subtle and overblown mannerisms of a little girl easily bored by work and easily charmed by the gift of a new dress. The scenes between Adele and Jane flow confidently and smoothly, generating through their conflict or cooperation the crucial atmosphere which is lacking at other points of the play.

Putting on a retelling of an 18^th-century novel, especially a novel as (in)famous as Jane Eyre, is no easy task. The realistic and the stylised compete for a place onstage, and the lines in the script can sometimes seem so obvious that it is hard to act them with subtlety. I think this company could have done better. There is definitely potential in this cast and crew – there were moments of directional brilliance and a number of impressive acting performances – but they didn’t quite convince me that Bronte’s novel works as a piece of theatre. Dedicate more energy to mood-creation in each of the scenes, play up the stylised moments – and I might soon be convinced.

Published in Varsity, November 2019: https://www.varsity.co.uk/theatre/18210

From beginning to end, The Watsons pays homage to Jane Austen. Laura Wade’s experimentally metatheatrical play engages Austen’s wit, showcases the wonderful vibrance of her characters, and presents a heroine determined to hold her own. But Wade also adds her own touch, merging the ridiculous and the comically euphemistic with the intellectual and the philosophical. Her play stretches the boundaries of our thinking about actors, characters and reality, and it makes us laugh – only I’m not sure it does either of these things with enough clarity or precision.

At the beginning we find ourselves laughing at Elizabeth’s (Paksie Vernon) cynicism, Margaret’s (Rhianna McGreevey) blatant desperation for a husband and Mr Howard’s (Tim Delap) clerical severity. This is only partly Austen’s humour. We’re laughing from our modern perspective at the folly of the concerns of this 18^th-century society. I felt constantly uncertain: should we be laughing at this, or should we be immersing ourselves in the reality of the social lives of these characters? Should we go along with their problems and their happiness, even if they seem unfounded, petty and ridiculous to us?

Then comes the Big Twist. Wade takes over from Austen, and the humour reaches fever-pitch. Jane Booker as Lady Osborne is roaringly funny as she flattens Laura with question after question: her comic timing is exquisite. Laurence Ubong Williams as Tom Musgrave also deserves a mention: his glee at playing the rascal is evident; his flirtatious energy is wincingly funny. But the comedy doesn’t flow quite perfectly. There are peaks and troughs – and too many lines which jar the rhythm or flatten the comedy. Watching this play is like being in a car with a learner driver – stalling, suddenly accelerating, in an unpredictable pattern which is more disjointed than it is exciting.

If these comic parts at times fail nail humour, some of the serious emotional power of the later sections also falls short. The declared love affair between Lady Osborne and Nanny (Sally Bankes) is beautiful both in concept and execution, and the subtlety of their acting really makes the audience think about the stifled love lives of Austen’s society. Laura’s (Louise Ford) emotional outburst is much less convincing. Ford plays the writer’s character with an earnestness which is at first wonderfully incongruous, standing out from these polished 19^th-century characters, but which quickly reveals its lack of layers. There is potential in her part and in her acting, but she needs to smooth over the shifts in tone and mood; she needs to act more, rather than acting as the writer who is not acting. Even if this is a comment on the behind-the-scenes of constructing a play and characters, it is on a stage and we are a present audience.

The Watsons has a lot of energy, and an exciting desire to do and be something new. Sometimes the intention is more than the lines can hold, however, and despite some wonderful performances, the emotions too often feel strained, confused, and all out of order. It can be entertaining (the smoothness of scene transitions, Stones’s cleverly-designed, spatially-efficient set which incorporates hidden doors and raised platforms, and the white aesthetic which is waiting for the author and characters to colour it are all enjoyably satisfying to watch at work) but its wit and inventiveness tend to get a little lost in uncertain humour and unfocused emotion.

Published by A Younger Theatre, October 2019: https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-the-watsons-menier-chocolate-factory/

‘Marina is a lightning conductor for pulling the visceral charge of language right through words and back into the earth where that force belongs.’ This is how director Yaël Farber describes Marina Carr, the mind responsible for translating and adapting Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre into this masterpiece of rewriting: Blood Wedding. Carr pulls the charge of language back into the earth, through the floor of the theatre and into the audience’s feet: the theatre thrills and throbs with the energy of her translation.

This adaptation of Lorca is set in ‘Andalusia County Offaly’. The relocation is seamless. The accents are Irish, the idiom is Irish, but the context is not laboured. The play feels so firmly set in its new location that there is no need to emphasise a particular time, or the intricacies of Irish landscapes. Thalissa Teixeira (Moon) sings in Spanish, or she speaks the words or Lorca’s Romancero Gitano her voice echoing around the stage with such passion and fettered power that the audience are fixated on her every breath; there is an admission here, I think, that some of the magic of this play, some of its atmospheric awe and terrible depth of feeling, can only be conveyed in Spanish. Sometimes, Carr seems to have decided, it is braver to accept the power of the original, rather than fighting and failing to translate.

Every actor in this performance holds their own. Olwen Fouéré plays a mother propelled by bitterness, her frankness chuckingly (and sometimes roaringly) funny; she manages innuendo with poise and subtlety. Gavin Drea’s (Leonardo) uncontrollable passion is terrifying, but wonderful to watch; as he stalks the stage topless he manages to achieve a captivating balance between vulnerable nakedness and hyper-masculine muscle. Scarlett Brookes plays Leonardo’s Wife with a crescendo of emotion that strikes right to the audience’s heart. Aoife Duffin as the Bride is wonderful from her very first appearance on stage, hips slanting and face disgruntled; her interactions with Leonardo embody with such nuance the conflicted passions of a woman who doesn’t want this, but doesn’t want the alternative either. She is caught, trapped, without escape: and I really believed that Duffin was being strangled by her wedding dress.

Farber’s direction in this play is pretty much perfect. Each movement leads naturally on from the next, and even the less realistic moments with harnesses and wires which make the characters fly above the stage (a genius way of representing a flight on horseback) make sense in the context of the story we see unfolding. There are no jolts.

Susan Hilferty’s set design also deserves the highest praise: it has three different formations based around a collapsing wall at the back of the stage, but you hardly notice the pieces moving. This set thrives off simple shapes and slickly folding pieces which create a feeling of complexity managed with grace and skill. The string of orange lights – representing branches of orange trees – which are lowered in the corners for the wedding scene are just one example of Hilferty’s flawless understanding of space and colour: the orange against the black is ominously cheerful, and just so compelling.

This whole production is effortless. Carr’s lines come so naturally to the actors that they don’t seem like scripted words; every movement is deliberate. The neatness of the colour scheme, the smoothness of the flying, and the slickness of the set transitions make you forget that this is the first week of performance. In this collaboration of Lorca and Ireland, Carr and Farber, everything makes sense.

Published by A Younger Theatre, October 2019: https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-blood-wedding-young-vic/