Poets and the Great War

The Almeida production of The Dark Earth and The Light Sky is a rarity.  Nick Dear's play traces the last seven years of the poet Edward Thomas. We see his troubled marriage, compulsive walking and friendship with Robert Frost, who turns him to poetry. We are shown Eleanor Farjeon's adoration of him and the two rich years of productivity before his death in World War I from a shell blast at Arras in 1917.  By all rights it shouldn't be particularly dramatic, especially in the way it's written.  It combines monologues that directly address the audience with vignettes of the poet's life which seems almost entirely comprised of depression and long walks in the country.  But the quality of the writing, acting, and directorial image take real characters - now long dead - and introduce them to the audience anew, making the production fresh and utterly absorbing.

The story is undoubtedly tragic.  Bob Crowley's design evokes both the barren wasteland of the trenches of WWI and the rich soil of England's countryside.  It easily transitions to so many different locations.  In one scene, Helen Thomas actually digs potatoes out of it.  In another, a bomb explodes casting dirt in every direction.  Peter Mumford's lights are simply beautiful.  The rich ambers and purples create beautiful days and sharp spots delineate the reflective monologues, separating them from the narrative in a way that makes you feel like you're sitting alone in a room with the figures portrayed. The country sky is brought to life in all it's varieties with little pins of light creating stars and clouds actually seeming to move across the backdrop.  John Leonard sound design evokes equally and perfectly birdsong and the sounds of war.

The casting here is perfect.  The characters are utterly and painfully believable.  They capture the little dramas of an unhappy marriage and the loss of a friend so dear they seem to have been fated to know you.  Richard Eyre's directorial image fosters this approach to the story and supports the drama of the relationships of a set of average people who happened to be famous as well.  The portrayals are really beautiful.

Ayckbourn's Amateur Hour

Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval is, I think. inherently funny.  Ayckbourn is a funny man and he wrote a play about an amateur operatic society, which is inherently funny.  But comedy demands to be well played or else the jokes die.  Trevor Nunn's erratically cast and oddly awkward production at the Harold Pinter Theater lacks the timing, sense of company, and ability to project that would constitute a well played production.

Nunn's production takes a somewhat condescending tone toward the endeavors of amateur theater, which is perhaps the choice guiltiest of robbing the play of its comedy.  The play demands to be linked to The Beggar's Opera (the show within the show) and it seems completely disconected not only as a result of lighting design choices that create completely different environments for the overlapping moments but also as a result of the fact that the lyrics are often inaudible.  Guy, the protagonist, is played as an inaudible nonentity, which immediately drains the energy of the script and he's actually one of the best actors.  Dafydd (yes, the character is welsh) is distinctly overplayed and comes across as a little bipolar.  The cast seems totally random (at least Twelfth Night had a sense of cohesion even if it did seem like a bunch of old guys getting together to put on a show) so the relationships seem somewhat forced.  The set also looks somewhat fake; this might work for the scenes in which the cast inhabit The Beggar's Opera but it creates a stagey feel for the scenes that are supposed to take place in the real world.  The walls of pubs don't swing.  There is one somewhat wonderful moment when Dafydd is trying to get through a tech rehearsal with a  lighting designer who is afraid of heights and a plot that's been patched in the most non-linear manner possible, but on the whole the play lacks a sense of cohesiveness and believability.  

Men Playing Women Playing Men

Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.  You'd think it would come from a history play.  It's from Twelfth Night.  Similarly, some men are born to play women; some men achieve the ability to play women; and some men have women's roles thrust upon them.  It comes across as really sad when it's the third one.

Reprising the quadricentennial production ten years later, Mark Rylance and the boys are back in an all male production of Twelfth Night.  Ten years later, a lot of the men are too old to be playing women.  Mark Rylance is a great actor and Olivia can be a very funny character, but Mark Rylance playing Olivia just seems pathetic.  Quite frankly, he's too old.  His mannerisms would be comical on a younger Orsino but come across as desperate when Rylance plays them.  It's impossible to believe that Liam Brennan, who plays a fantastic Orsino, would be attracted to her, especially in her almost kabuki style makeup and incredibly severe wig.  The production suffers from the hair and makeup design; Viola and Sebastian are made to look more alike through makeup and wigs, but they end up looking like ghosts wearing hair pieces made of yarn.  It also suffers a little as a result of casting.  The actors playing Viola and Sebastian should be switched.  The actor playing Sebastian, Samuel Barnett, looks much more feminine and is honestly a better actor.  Johnny Flynn, Viola, looks uncomfortable on stage (he takes some strange beats and conspicuously watches his feet during the dancing) and disconcertingly mannish.  Then again, some men are born to play women.  Or achieve that ability later in life.  Either way, Paul Chahidi, who turns Maria into a plumply roguish figure forever eyeing Sir Toby with lascivious enthusiasm, does yield a very funny performance.  Stephen Fry is almost too good as Malvolio; it's hard to believe that Olivia would spurn his advances.

The costume and set design are positively wonderful.  Even though Mark Rylance's costume reads a little like the old version of Elizabeth I as portrayed in many movies, the outfits are fantastic.  Jenny Tiramani's set – a decorated oak screen, with some of the audience seated in on-stage galleries – suits Twelfth Night wonderfully (it's being performed in rep with Richard III), and recreates the collegiate atmosphere the play must have had when seen at the Inns of Court in 1602.  

It comes together into an alright production.  Perhaps I'm ultimately questioning the directorial image of Tim Carroll.  He chooses to play up the more sombre aspects of Twelfth Night, the longing for an unrequited love and class warfare, as opposed to the funnier aspects, namely mistaken identities and class warfare.  

Experimental, Cinematic, Animated Theater

On the edge of a major metropolis lies the Bayou: a sprawling tenement block of which people say "If you're born in the Bayou, you die in the Bayou."  I drag my parents to some weird productions.

After catching a plane five hours ahead of schedule to beat a weather front so severe the BBC felt it newsworthy, the Eames family touched down in London.  First up: 1927's The Animals and Children Took to the Streets.  It somehow ended up billed as a children's show.  It's not.  It's a really wacked out combination of projected animations, musical theater, and meta story telling.  It's kind of like Adventure Time;  it may be billed for children, but it is not for children.  

The show is somehow performed by three women and a host of animated characters including various rival gangs of children.  Children really are a menace in this show.  The plot has a gang of child-pirates go on  the rampage, take over a middle-class park and even kidnap the mayor's cat before being whisked off in black ice-cream vans and effectively sedated by gumdrops infused with a drugstore's worth of sedatives.  At the beginning Agnes Eaves and her daughter arrive in the hopes of reforming the children through arts and crafts (specifically pasta collage), only to leave when the going gets tough.    It mixes together in something that feels like part silent movie, part social commentary, part Cabaret.  

It is seamlessly synchronized and well worth it.  It's just not really for the kids.  I don't know who got that idea...