THEATREWORLD

Judging by this production of a play that was originally seen in Germany and the Netherlands, Simon Stephens started off with a good idea but has never managed to develop it into a full-scale play.

The Ubu plays written by Alfred Jarry have attained a practically mythical status. That is because they portray the kind of Everyman tyrant who seems to reappear around the world with terrifying regularity.

In this latest incarnation, Stephens mixes the original story with ghosts of other characters and tales drawn from various media and eras.

The lengthy opening scene is a strange mixture of Ubu, Macbeth and Punch and Judy. Pa and Ma Ubu knock seven bells out of each other but soon enough their ambitions grow and they see the opportunity to kill jolly King Wenceslas and steal his crown.

Once enthroned, our antihero goes for gold, literally by killing in quick succession the landed gentry, the judges and the bankers. The irony of this last group will probably not be lost on a typical, affluent Hampstead audience.

After the knockabout humour, Katie Mitchell's vision changes gear and get close to reverse as we spend long periods watching and listening to a pair of simultaneous translators played by Nikki Amuka-Bird and Kate Duchene.

They are reporting a trial that could easily have been that of say Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin or Slobodan Milosevic but is in fact the indictment of Pa Ubu. As such, the court scenes have the texture of verbatim dramas of the type regularly seen down the road at the Tricycle but reported like Greek tragedies rather than seen.

Long stretches of testimony dragging out over in excess of 12 months are related with the breaks shown in cleverly devised fast forward mode, one of those stage tricks at which Katie Mitchell excels.

A couple of times the stage, which otherwise looks like a wall of death with a small window, opens out into a triptych with stage right and advocates' resting room and stage left the former King's cell.

The story is given an air of fantasy by the fact that when the trial takes place in 2009, 98 years after the crime was committed, the defendant is 130, while one of his accusers has reached the grand old age of 183.

Once you have picked up the idea, not a great deal happens making this performance feel rather longer than its running time, which is only 75 minutes.

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

TRICYCLE THEATRE

Kilburn High Road (nearest underground - Kilburn)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7328 1000

www.tricycle.co.uk

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

MENIER CHOCOLATE FACTORY

53 Southwark Street SE1 1TE

Box Office: 020 7378 1713

www.menierchocolatefactory.com

Menier Chocolate Factory

Presents

PIPPIN

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Book by Roger O. Hirson

Now playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 25^th February

Wow! Just wow! I have never before seen anything like this stunning production of PIPPIN. It’s a visual treat that must not be missed.

The name Pippin sounds a bit childish, cosy and Hobbit like but nothing could be further from the truth. Pippin was the son of the fearsome 9^th century emperor, Charlemagne, who led a rebellion against his father and was subsequently banished.

Stephen Schwartz, of WICKED fame, uses the story of Pippin as a vehicle for this seventies musical which explores the themes of disenfranchised youth, the feeling of not belonging, depression and the search for fulfilment.

While much of the music does have an unmistakable feel of the seventies about it, the staging couldn’t be more contemporary. Upon entering the theatre you walk through a narrow corridor, a modern art installation if you will, the walls are covered with Tron and computer games posters. At the end of the corridor sits a youth slouched over his desk, entranced by the computer game he is playing. Then you enter the theatre which has been transformed into the inside of a computer game, the lighting is low, there are moving lines of acid green light, the suggestion of dry ice, the low hum reminiscent of the Star Ship Enterprise and the sound of yourself being “zapped” by a laser gun as you cross the threshold.

The “game” begins. The youth finds himself pulled into the story and, guided by the leading player (Matt Rawle), he is very soon playing the lead part of Pippin (Harry Hepple) in this intriguing high stakes “game” where his father is a powerful Emperor (think a northern Phil Mitchell), his stepmother (Frances Ruffelle) is a young Barbara Windsor and his half brother Lewis (David Page) is a murderous reject from Studio 54. Mention must also go to his wonderful grandmother, Berthe (Louise Gold), think Nora Batty with added twigs and pinecones.

This musical really does have it all; some of the original Bob Fosse dance routines from when it was a Broadway smash in the seventies, top notch singing, comedy and darkness, ballet and even a bit of pantomime courtesy of Berthe. But what really sets it apart from any other musical playing at the moment in London (and most probably the world) is the extraordinary, coruscating; high-tech set design by lighting wizard and Olivier award winner, Timothy Bird.

I was also profoundly moved by the genius ending which cuts to the heart of contemporary issues such as internet bullying, suicide and the grooming involved in producing a suicide bomber. I truly was blown away by the creativity, imagination and attention to detail that went into this production.

An unforgettable and unmissable experience.

Reviews by Sarah Monaghan for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

ALMEIDA THEATRE

Almeida Street, London N1 1TA

BOX OFFICE: (020) 7359 4404

www.almeida.co.uk

THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA

by Federico García Lorca, in a new version by Emily Mann

Now playing at the Almeida Theatre until 10 March

The House of Bernarda Alba is a symbolic play at the best of times. In Bijan Sheibani's eyes, this becomes even more apparent.

The director might have left the location in Spain but this Bernarda is the devout, recently-widowed matriarch of a Muslim family rather than a Catholic one.

The gloomy equivalent to a wake sets the scene for a low-key production with detailed attention paid to its setting and the director's belief that this work speaks volumes about life in certain Islamic countries right up to the present day.

You would hardly know it but the crumbling, Moorish pile that houses Bernarda, her five daughters and a couple of wilful servants is visualised in the very recent past. However, apart from Emily Mann's modern idioms with Arabic infusions, the only real indications that this is not some-time early in the last century are a modern vacuum cleaner and a sewing machine.

Even if the cons are mod, the attitudes are not. Bernarda expects the mourning season for her late husband's to be devoid of all semblance of pleasure with the girls dressed in black for a respectful period that seems to them eternal.

This is tough on a group that has little chance of future happiness. Lack of money means that only the oldest half-sister Asieh, played by Pandora Colin as a humourless mouse with the good fortune to have been left well-off, is a good catch. As a result, she is promised to the town's best-looking man, Parveez Romani.

The path of untrue love runs far from smoothly, as the sisters between them run the full spectrum of emotions in response to their sibling's good fortune.

The most extreme reactions come from the youngest, Adela (pronounced odderlay) and hump-backed Elmira.

In the former role, Hara Yannas proves an enthusiastically fresh-faced performer who conveys Adela's sexual desperation with conviction. By contrast, Amanda Hale as Elmira is the epitome of sororal jealousy.

However the catalyst for events prefigured by the family's wild white stallion and mad white grandmother is the eponymous Bernarda.

American-based Iranian actress, Shohreh Aghdashloo perhaps best known for her award-winning performance in House of Sand and Fog takes the leading role. She gives the terrifying widow a charming, smoky voice and limp supported by a walking cane that hide a toughness worthy of a street fighter rather than a woman for whom snobbish class distinction and reputation are all.

She receives good support from Jane Bertish in the role of Darya, a servant who understands the family far better than Bernarda Alba ever will.

This unusual reading takes time to stoke up its fires but, having done so, becomes a moving experience that makes us see the repression in some contemporary countries as a parallel to that in Franco's Spain during Lorca's sadly curtailed life.

Reviews by Philip Fisher for Theatreworld Internet Magazine

THE GATE THEATRE

11 Pembridge Road

Notting Hill Gate

London W11 3HQ

BOX OFFICE: 020 7 229 0706

www.gatetheatre.co.uk

THE KREUTZER SONATA

By Leo Tolstoy

Adapted by Nancy Harris

Directed by Natalie Abrahami

Now playing at the Gate Theatre until 18^th February 2012

Nancy Harris’s wonderful adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novella, THE KREUTZER SONATA, is given a welcome revival at the Gate.

Pozdynyshev, a smartly dressed, middle-aged man sits alone in a train carriage. “I am not a music lover” he tells us before likening an evening of music to visiting a brothel: “you pay your money, you perspire – there is a vague sense of release”. The reason he hates music, we discover, is because of his conviction that his wife, an accomplished pianist, was having an affair with his childhood friend, Trukhachevski, a professional violinist.

When Trukhachevski calls on his old friend he is evidently taken with his wife: Pozdynyshev recalls their first meeting with venom: “Had they been beasts in a forest there is nothing surer than they would have been rutting right there.” They share a love of music and begin rehearsing together, with Pozdynyshev’s encouragement, for a private concert. But Pozdynyshev’s suspicions of infidelity quickly become an obsession and we learn that he is recently released from prison after being acquitted of murder.

Hilton McRae gives a convincing portrait of a cold, calculating man who hides his rabid jealousy behind a veneer of solicitous courtesy. He is, by turn, repelled and erotically fixated by his wife. His monologue reveals a deep rooted distrust and hatred of women – before he married he led a life of dissolution – “women understand money” he opines. Later, he describes them as “playthings for men’s pleasure…slaves who think their shackles are bracelets.”

As Pozdynyshev recounts his story, and the events that led him to his violent crime of passion, we are given glimpses of his wife (Sophie Scott) and Trukhachevski (Tobias Beer) behind a transparent screen, playing Beethoven’s sonata. This is interspersed with film by Dan Stafford Clark.

Sensitively directed by Natalie Abrahami, beautifully designed by Chloe Lamford - an elegant 19^th century train carriage partially shattered - with atmospheric lighting by Mark Howland, sound by Carolyn Downing and musical direction by Tom Mills this gem of a piece assails all the senses.