Review: The Red Barn

The Red Barn is a new work by David Hare, based on the novel, La Main, by Georges Simenon. Staged at the National, directed by the inimitable Robert Icke, and boasting a cast including Mark Strong and Elizabeth Debicki (of Night Manager fame), it is hard to see where it could go wrong.

The piece's initial reviews had been positive. However, I've been wary of glowing reviews since going to see Lazarus (widely loved) and hating it, so I wondered how good Hare's new work was actually going to be.

Thankfully, The Red Barn lived up to expectations, and them some.

The central performances by Strong, Debicki, and Hope Davis (God of Carnage) are beautifully understated, and the gradual development of Donald Dodd (Strong), as he becomes aware of his lack of agency in the world is a fascinating thing to watch unfold. Strong's communication of Dodd's simmering jealousy underpins the whole piece, and the performance gives coherence to the fragments of the unfolding story.

The stand-out feature of this production, however, is the staging. It is a prime example of the National pushing what it is possible to achieve on the stage, which they have the clout to do. The cinematic nature of the rapid scene changes is stunning to behold, and the audience's dialogue on the way out of the theatre revolved around how some of the set changes were actually possible. It is a triumph of form.

This success of execution makes The Red Barn a must-watch. To see scenes on a stage transition between a blizzard and an interior is a marvel of stage craft, and utterly unlike anything else around at the moment. With this in mind, I would suggest you get yourself down to the Lyttelton before The Red Barn closes, because it truly lives up to the hype.

4/5 - Innovative stage craft and slow-burn performances: see it... don't get left out in the cold!
The Lyttelton, National Theatre until 17th January

Review: No's Knife

When Matthew Warchus revealed his initial season for the Old Vic, he made it clear that he wanted the theatre to offer 'something for everyone.' Programming the likes of Ralph Fiennes in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, a musical adaptation of Groundhog Day, and Timothy Spall in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker against a monologue adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s short prose collection ‘Texts for Nothing’ certainly fits that bill.

Beckett's writing is recognised for pared back, experimental form - he is held up as one of the last modernist writers - and his dramatic works are challenging. No’s Knife, presented by Lisa Dwan, an actress known and respected for her revivals of Beckett's work, at no point backs away from that challenge.

The pieces that make up 'No's Knife' are adapted by Dwan from the original prose and she, with her co-director Joe Murphy, produces a fractured monologue, which exhibits her supreme command of voice. Her solo performance captivates, expressing, as the Old Vic put it 'A voice searching in the dark for who it is and why it speaks.' Even through the difficult nature of the plays form, Dwan draws you in to follow her through the twists and turns of the voice's journey.

Designer Christopher Oram has created a setting that is part bog, part battlefield, and all bleak. The dull, fractured landscape provides the perfect backdrop for Dwan's voice(s), as it clatters against itself in a search for direction and identity. The hugeness of the space contrasts with her apparent frailty, which then clashes up against her power as an actor.

No's Knife is, overall, an amazing bit of theatre. It is not easy to concentrate on 70 minutes of monologue, but if we expect theatre to be always easy, then we are letting a vital element of it atrophy. Dwan's work forces you to examine what it is to be lost, and what it is to be conflicted: it is an important reminder of what theatre can be and do. It makes you think on a deep, real level, about identity, and the discomfort you feel watching a lone woman struggle through a broken landscape is part of that. Theatre can unsettle, and as an audience we should embrace rather than avoid the difficulty. After all, struggle is a function of being alive.

4/5 - Desolate and challenging: remind yourself there's more to theatre than a night at a musical.
The Old Vic

Faustus - Not Hell (nor I wouldn't want to be out of it)

Search for the RSC's current Doctor Faustus (now playing at the Barbican) and you'll find the following description:

Two actors enter. Each lights a match and watches it burn. Whoever’s goes out first ‘loses’ and must play the fated doctor, while the other plays the demon Mephistophilis, in this notorious tale of vanity, greed and damnation.

That was intriguing enough to get me to buy a ticket, and I'm really glad I did.

From the moment the actors walk, unannounced, onto the stage, to the inevitable tragic ending, Maria Aberg’s brilliantly updated Marlowe charts the highs and the lows of the erring Doctor's life with slickness and style. Naomi Dawson's design for the show is striking, especially the summoning of Mephistophilis, and the sound design, courtesy of Orlando Gough and Claire Windsor, equally so. It is also clear that Doctor Faustus does not suffer from being trimmed to a one act play, either.

And then we consider the opening conceit - that Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan don't know who will be Faustus and who Mephistophilis before they are on stage. This is achieved so subtly that the tension built from it is incredible - as if whole audience has leant in, holding their breath.
Grierson (as Mephistophilis on the night I attended) and Ryan produce beautifully subtle and deeply unsettling performances that seem completely timeless in quality.

If you can get yourself to the Barbican before the show's close, do so. You are in for a magical night.

4/5 - A Devilish delight: summon up a ticket
The Barbican
Until 1st October

Review: Burning Doors

'Burning Doors' is the latest work of the Belarus Free Theatre. Political exiles, the BFT specialise in performances that reflect on rebellion, politics, and injustice, and Burning Doors is no exception. With the début acting performance of Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot, Burning Doors tells the stories of Russian artist Petyr Pavlensky, Ukrainian film-maker Oleg Sentsov, currently serving a 20 year prison sentence, and Alyokhina herself.
The play is a brutal exploration of the consequences and limitations of freedom of expression. The physicality of the BFT ensemble is unforgiving, and the actors push themselves, and consequently the audience, way beyond their comfort zone, in order to represent the brutality of state versus body in the battle for order and control. There are points of the piece that are very difficult to watch, and not in a bloody, Titus-Andronicus-at-The-Globe kind of way. The raw, visceral nature of the performance is mapped onto conditions in Russian prisons, so there is nowhere for the audience to escape the feeling that the performed violence is real.
The discomfort of watching the show is a signal of its success - it would not be effective if it were safe. The only detraction from the piece is that at times it feels as if the performers are trying too hard to hammer a point home, and things descend too far into caricature. On saying this however, Burning Doors is a powerful piece of theatre, and its creators are not afraid to make their voices heard. The freedom to create and to hold opinions is, after all what this play is about, and part of the drive behind the piece is to raise awareness of Sentsov's situation, and to try and secure his release. The severity of his captivity is made very clear to the audience, and it is hard to leave the show without a sense of the injustice faced by artists who come into conflict with repressive state politics.

In short: Heavy-handedness balanced with moments of painful beauty. More importantly, a clear, unflinching, relevant politics. Go and see it for a wake up call and a shock to the system.

Note: For further information on BFT's part in the campaign to free Oleg Sentsov, see here.

Rating: 4/5

Disclaimer: I was invited to the press night for Burning Doors after supporting the development of the production on Kickstarter.

Our Country's Good

I’m writing this in the interval of the National Theatre’s production of ‘Our Country's Good’, and remembering.

The play, I studied a long time ago as a sixth form Performing Arts student in Bury. I remember the experience fondly, despite possessing no talent as an actor. I remember the delicious naughtiness of swearing and hearing teachers swear. I remember trying to make sense of the context, the message. Whatever appealed at the time, the play stuck with me. And now, seeing it on stage for the first time, I actually get it.

I don't think my response to the production is pure nostalgia. When I saw ‘A Taste of Honey’, also at the NT, a few years ago, I hated it, and that was a play I love, have taught, and have studied in depth. I didn't feel those characters live and breathe, despite knowing them like old friends.

A teacher myself now, however, I see my students in Wertenbaker’s unruly mob of convicts trying to get to grips with their lines and a totally alien society. I see Liz Morden accused of a crime and refusing to speak, ‘because it will do no good’ and I feel it, I know it.

‘Our Country's Good’ lives and breaths. It feels like a relevant, current comment on social justice and reform. Of course, the striking and beautiful sound and set design make it stand out, but the quality of the writing, the humour the actors bring to the stage, and the power of the message are what make for a brilliant, vibrant experience.

Go and see it.

And think about the power of reform, of social mobility, of education.

Then look to the state of modern Britain, and think some more.

Book Review: 'NW' by Zadie Smith

This week’s blog post is brought to you in association with the marvellous people of the Penguin UK Proof Group.

Set in North West London, (postcode NW, naturally) Smith's new novel explores the lives of four thirty-somethings emerging from the estate where they were born.

Given Zadie Smith’s writerly pedigree - for those not familiar with her, she is a critically acclaimed author and recipient of several awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award for 'On Beauty' in 2006 - it is not surprising to see that NW has been receiving a great deal of critical attention. And opinion seems strongly divided over whether Smith's experimentation with form in NW has produced a mess or a masterpiece.

I personally suspect that the novel's detractors have never experienced the environment the author brings so vividly to life, or have never struggled with their identities whilst trying to escape the social limitations of their upbringing. My initial reaction the NW's opening pages was one of recognition.

My second response to NW, after a Summer of light-weight holiday reading (and some of the not-so-light-weight ‘A Song of Ice and Fire books'), was that I had suddenly arrived back at university on my English Literature degree.

The abrupt, fractured prose style of the opening pages, representing a character, Leah's, stream of consciousness, brought me back to my undergraduate time spent reading Joyce’s Ulysses and Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. It struck me how effective a formal tool this style of writing is for communicating the realities of life in a busy urban environment.

Smith's experimentation with form, however, is far from flawless, and NW lacks some of the impact of her earlier novels. This fact is not enough to eclipse the novel's strengths though, for instance the attention she pays to Felix, a character we are introduced to all too briefly, which gives us something truly worth reading for.

An ear for dialogue means that Smith, when she is on top form, creates deep, intriguing characters who communicate in a way that sounds real to the mind's ear. Felix is one such character.

Leah and Nathalie, a third character, with whom Leah shares the majority of the word count, read less fluidly, but, to me, come to represent life in London in our contemporary moment. Brief encounters with an endless sea of strangers, and the need to make connections and make sense of the constant stream of information modern technology bombards us with makes for a disjointed experience. NW, whether intentionally or not, seems to reflect this fractured mode of living.

The conclusion I came to about Smith's latest novel is that, though it is not her greatest work, it is very timely. I'd recommend you give it a try, bearing in mind that you may find the experience as jarring as a tube journey in the rush hour. Stick with it. The moments where NW shines are points of clarity, like pausing in the bustling crowd to take a deep breath.

NW is a flawed but very worthwhile read.

The Weekend and Food

It’s Thursday, so that means last weekend seems an age ago and the weekend to come is nowhere near close enough.

I look forward to weekends.

As a child the weekend was family time, time for dance lessons, and time for meeting friends.

Now, it’s the precious time I get to spend with my partner and catch up after the busy week.

It’s the time for food.

I bake for my other half and his friends (usually cookies), I bake banana bread for lunchtime snacks during the week.

 We make something large that can be portioned off for meal reheats, there’s a roast of some description for Sunday lunch, and there’s the Saturday evening meal; usually something a bit more extravagant. Of course, breakfasts also get a bit more involved (ahem, bacon).

The weekend is about having free time and all of the potential things you can fill that free time with. Being able to take time over making food is a luxury I constantly crave: it’s the absolute opposite of how things are during the working week.

... And of course, weekend baking means there are cookies to get us through Mondays.

Terrible creature of habit that I am, I love my little food rituals. Things can be kept simple and comforting in the weekend kitchen, and since we made the move to London I've found that calm, quiet time cooking has become more and more important.

Do you have any weekend food rituals?

All the best,

Alison

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