It's Man vs. Monster, and the Monster Always Wins...

I feel like this is become a theme of my theater going experience.  In any case, I have touched down in London for another bout of theater going madness and have hit the ground running.  My family used to kind of live in London, so nowadays we try to come over every few months to catch up with friends, see some museum exhibits that we know won't come to New York, and - more importantly - see theater.  Today, we saw two of the hottest tickets in London: The Madness of King George III and Collaborators.  It seems only fitting to start with the matinee...

The Madness of King George III is a revival of an Alan Bennett play that I should think needs no reviving.  Suffice it to say that I think the playwright is doing something wrong when you care nothing for the characters on stage.  This is now the second play I've seen by Mr. Bennett, and I think I might be done with him.  My family managed to get tickets to The Habit of Art a few years ago, another inexplicably hot ticket in London, and not even the impeccable staging and acting of Alex Jennings could save it from Mr. Bennett.  But setting all that aside (which seems like a ermarkable feat) the acting of David Haig (King George Himself) and Nicholas Rowe (who does an excellent job playing the part of Prime Minister Pitt) as well as Janet Bird's design save the show from being completely unwatchable.  The script may be tedious, self-important, and awkward, but the actors bring it to a watchable level of mediocrity.  In this play, the man is King George, the monster is porphyria, and all seem to be fighting against the script.  It is ultimately unclear who or what has won.

The exact opposite is true of Collaborators, a new play by John Hodge now on at the Cottesloe at the National Theater.  This play mirrors in form and content the spirited insanity that is the work of the central character: Mikhail Bulgakov.  I am a huge fan of this author.  If you haven't read The Master and Margarita, you should move it to the top of your to read list.  The plot kind of defies description, but it is an awesome story.  Seriously, read it.  But for the play,  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about it.  From the set to the lighting to the script to the cast, nothing is amiss.  I also kind of love the National Theater.  The light board op, upon hearing that I do lighting, actually allowed me into the booth to look at their set up.  Serious nerd out moment.  The play itself takes a look at an immagined meeting between Bulgakov and Stalin as Bulgakov writes a play that, for him, is impossible to write.  It is a celebration of Stalin's youth to be performed for his 60th birthday.  It is as hilarious as it is dark, and man o man does it get dark in the second half.  As far as I could tell, it was pretty darn historically accurate, which was welcome after some of the glaring historical inacuracies of The Madness of King George III.  Alex Jennings was amazing as Bulgakov as was Simon Russell Beale as Stalin.  As for the script, in the first act, it succedes in humanizing Stalin, a psychopathic, dictatorial mass murderer.  Alan Bennet, take notes; this is how you make people care about your characters.  The set created an environment perfectly suited for this mad spin through Moscow, the last months of Bulgakov's life, and Stalinist Russia as a whole.  This a show truly deserving of the hype.