Review: Richard III

Schaubühne Berlin's double bill of Richard III and Beware of Pity (with Complicite) have been taking the Barbican by storm this month. I was fortunate enough to catch Richard III in person, and will be following up with the recording of Beware of Pity.
Of Richard III, the Barbican's website informs us that:

Resplendent in evening dress, showered in glitter, the victorious Yorks celebrate. Damaged and disfigured, Richard finds no peace among this elite to whom he has never fully belonged. Murdering his way to the throne, exposing conflict and mistrust in his wake, the outsider makes us complicit, addressing us directly to reveal his manipulative plans.

Of course, as ever, the blurb does not come within a mile of describing what occurs on stage. And in Schaubühne Berlin's version of Shakespeare's historic tragedy, 'what occurs on stage' encompasses quite a number of things.

The stage and lighting design, courtesy of Jan Pappelbaum and Erich Schneider, are edgy and stripped down. With the single set virtually unchanged throughout the play, a lot of the setting is done through the lighting design, which encompasses projection and a live camera feed, to great effect.
Similarly, Nils Ostendorf's music is striking, and the presence of a live drummer creates a raucous
sound scape that reflects the events of the play spiralling out of control. All of the details add up to a scenario that gains such momentum it cannot help but end in a crash.


Directed by Thomas Ostermeier, this version of the Shakespeare classic is riotous, unapologetic, and a bit mad. Lars Eidinger as the titular anti-hero is an immense presence, and he doesn't so much as perform the role as totally own it. Eidinger is by turns carnivalesque, then sinister, then outraged that anyone would accuse him of all of the things he's actually guilty of: he is a Richard who pursues villainy, rather than creeps to it.
Some have argued that Ostermeier, in giving free reign to Eidinger's colossal personality, has made Richard III a character study, tearing away the play's inherent politics. I would disagree. We live in a world where successful politicians are colossal personalities, and we offer deference to the leaders who shout the loudest. As a result, Eidinger's grotesque rendering of the role maps onto the hinterland between celebrity and political cultures.

Schaubühne Berlin have provided us with a Richard III for our age: political power wielded for personal profit, a divided country, at war with herself. It never ceases to amaze me how well Shakespeare's stories have lasted, and how, in the re-telling, they still hold warnings for us now.

5/5: Brilliant, vital madness
The Barbican
Ended 19th February

Review: Sex with Strangers

I'll be honest with you right from the off, I didn't like Sex with Strangers. However, I am going to have a go at reviewing it as objectively as I can, because it did have some redeeming features.

The Hampstead Theatre inform us that,

Olivia, an attractive and talented but underappreciated mid-career writer, is unexpectedly trapped overnight in a secluded, snowed-in B&B with Ethan, an equally attractive and wildly successful young blogger. 
Her latest novel is an unsung masterpiece; his blog is being made into a movie. She prefers books; he prefers eBooks. She is anonymous; he has half a million Twitter followers. But opposites soon attract – passionately – as each realise they want more of what the other has. But the closer they get, the more they must confront the murky side of ambition, success and Wi-Fi…

Now, as the description points out, the attractive novelist and the attractive blogger are indeed trapped in a B&B. They become involved and, over the course of the play, become less attractive personalities with every passing second.

Peter Dubois does a reasonable job of directing Laura Eason's work, but there are moments where things seem forced and awkward, for example as the couple are about to have sex, the gauze lowers in front of them, and there's a cut to blackout, every time. Every. Time. After a while this is clunky, and the momentum is lost. It feels like Eason was writing the kind of character development that is deployed on screen rather than stage - something that can be shown through a montage of time passing. It doesn't work in a play.
The characters are also remarkably unsympathetic, as we see the pull of performative identities and the lure of money cause them both to sacrifice what they hold dear. By the end I just didn't care what happened to them. On saying this, though, there were some subtleties in the character development that were well executed from the writing, I just disliked the characters so much that I was too busy being annoyed to appreciate them.

There are other positives, however. Emilia Fox and Theo James put in strong performances; despite the fact that James seems to have been cast because he looks good with his shirt off, he is particularly convincing as one of a certain breed of social media star. Also, at some points, the dialogue between the two characters is punchy and naturalistic, but not enough to win me over. Oh, and the set design is lovely.

Some people seem to have enjoyed the play. I'm not one of them. Go and see it if you will, but you might find yourself, head in hands, laughing at the number of times Theo James' character has undressed, or irritated by the fact you are stuck watching two characters you don't really care for

3/5 (begrudgingly): Pretty but disappointing
Hampstead Theatre
Until 4th March

Review: Woolf Works

This month saw a revival of Wayne McGregor's critically acclaimed Woolf Works at the Royal Opera House. McGregor's choreography is widely praised by some, but is also heavily criticised by traditionalists. So, what is the fuss about?

Wayne McGregor’s ballet triptych Woolf Works, [is] inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf ... Each of the three acts springs from one of Woolf’s landmark novels: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves – but these inspirations are also enmeshed with elements from her letters, essays and diaries. Woolf Works expresses the heart of an artistic life driven to discover a freer, uniquely modern realism, and brings to life Woolf’s world of ‘granite and rainbow’, where human beings are at once both physical body and uncontained essence. Woolf Works was McGregor’s first full-length work for The Royal Ballet, and saw him reunited with regular collaborator Max Richter, who provides a commissioned score incorporating electronic and orchestral music.

 The first part of the triptych, weaving in elements from Woolf's stream of conscious novel Mrs Dalloway with references to her real life, was subtle, painful and heartfelt. From what I know of McGregor's work, I was surprised at how stripped-back everything was. The second Act, meanwhile, was my least favourite of the three. It was, in theory, based on Orlando, but it was difficult to trace a sense of story through the lasers and dry ice. Richter's score was the strongest part of this section. Finally, part three intertwined moments Woolf's life with the tale of The Waves, and it was utterly lovely. The music, soundscape, and choreography were perfectly married up into something both sorrowful and hopeful. It was a gorgeous thing to behold.

The triptych is, for the most part, fantastic. Max Richter's score is a brilliant counterpoint to Mcgregor's choreography and direction. Woolf Works is a very strong contemporary work, and a good point of access for people unfamiliar with ballet - it has all of the beauty and none of the pretention. It had a brief season, already passed, so I can't instruct you to go and see it, but when it appears again, you really should fight for your ticket: Woolf Works is a stripped down, poignant piece, and a thing of real beauty.

4/5: Moments of breathtaking beauty
The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden 

Review: La Ronde

La Ronde was originally written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and looked at the romantic entanglements of ten characters in fin de siecle Vienna, to great controversy. This new reworking by Max Gill, showing at the Bunker Theatre, strips the play down to four actors playing the ten roles, with who playing what left broadly to chance.

The result is rather marvellous.

The Bunker Theatre describe it thus:

London, 2017. The disparate lives of the city’s inhabitants are thrown together by the caprice of desire and fate.  How does your desire define you?

With four actors to play the cast of ten and roles selected with a roulette, our LA RONDE embraces life’s game of chance and the blindness of desire and fortune.

This portrait of the human need for another boldly reimagines the infamous original to interrogate modern attitudes to gender, sexuality, and social status. With over three thousand different versions of the show, which story will you see? 

This rather vague description gives you a location and a concept, but not much else to work with. As a result, and not knowing the original play, I went into La Ronde blind. It was my first visit to the Bunker Theatre as well, so what to expect from my afternoon out was a complete mystery...

Well, the Bunker itself is a really interesting space, and it's very easy to walk past the ramp down to it without realising that anything is there. This would be your loss. It's a quirky little venue, and I look forward to returning to it.

Now for La Ronde.

Given the nature of the play, it is difficult to talk about the cast - Leemore Marrett Jr., Lauren Samuels, Alexander Vlahos, Amanda Wilkin - in terms of how they develop one specific role. Instead, you just have to nod to four individuals accomplishing something of serious technical difficultly, and doing so in a way that is both entertaining and, ultimately, painfully human. The fact that each role becomes gender neutral through this process is also very pleasing, and the writing made it possible for this shift to pass by, almost under the radar, something which seems to tie in with the current trend - across London's theatre scene at least - for a more diverse representation of gender alignments and sexual orientations.

I found myself marvelling at the technicality of the show as a whole. The execution of a chance-based concept is elegantly managed, and the actors rise to the challenge of not knowing exactly which play they are going to perform.  La Ronde manages to be both tremendously clever and accessible to a wide audience through its natural humour, and I hope it is indicative of great things to come for both Max Gill and the Bunker Theatre.

4/5: Cleverly structured and wonderfully executed: a must-see.
The Bunker Theatre
Until 11th March

Review: The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band - currently enjoying a limited-term revival at the Vaudeville Theatre - is an exploration of the lives and relationships of a group of gay men in the New York of the late 1960s.
It's described on the Vaudeville's website like so:

Mark Gatiss stars in this strictly limited West End transfer of the first major revival of this iconic play in two decades. Razor sharp and packed with wit, The Boys in the Band is fresh, startling and brilliantly entertaining. There’s a party tonight. It’s 1968 and nine men gather in a New York apartment for a birthday celebration. Harold (Mark Gatiss) receives a surprise gift from his friend, Emory (James Holmes), in the form of a beautiful male hustler. Meanwhile, party host Michael (Ian Hallard) gets an unwanted surprise of his own. As the booze is drunk and the dope smoked, the mood swings from hilarity to heartbreak.

Written by Mart Crowley in 1968, the play pre-dates the Stonewall riots, but only just, which suggests a mismatch between the frivolous, enclosed space of the party, and the outside world. When party host Michael's (Ian Hallard) square, straight (?) college friend appears, we get a glimpse of the socio-political tensions that simmer beneath the overt bitchiness.
At the play's best, we see a group of characters wrangling with their identities and the role society assigns them. Homophobia and self-loathing are articulated with finesse, and the contrast between the sharp-edged humour and the characters' moments of darker introspection feels both painful and modern.
However, the pacing and occasional dip into caricature mean that the cast really are fighting against a script of variable quality. It felt, to me, as if the play could have been cut down to relieve the awkwardness, and then be run as a 90 minute/one act piece.

Overall, it is not a bad piece of theatre, it is just frustrating to watch because it has the potential to be so much better.

3/5: A great cast carrying an average play.
Vaudeville Theatre
404 Strand
Until 18th February