Theatrist

Review: Mojo, Harold Pinter Theatre

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Rating: 4/6

This review was written for Londonist

Jez Butterworth’s been busy. Following last year’s The River at the Royal Court Theatre – his first offering since the multi-award-winning 2009 hit Jerusalem – he and director Ian Rickson have reunited once again for this revival of Butterworth’s debut, Mojo, which first thrilled audiences at the Royal Court back in 1995.

The Pinteresque black comedy is set in 1950s London, in a seedy Soho club. The morning after a deal gone wrong, the club’s manager, Ezra, is found sawn in half in two dustbins, and his pride and joy, the beautiful young rock ’n’ roll sensation Silver Johnny (newcomer Tom Rhys Harries), kidnapped by rival club owner and general bad man Mr Ross. Now, Ezra’s gang of pill-popping misfit speed freaks must stand their ground to keep hold of the club – and their lives.

Butterworth’s glowing reputation will ensure this production is a sell-out, as will its star-studded cast, which includes lovely Ben Whishaw, the excellent Daniel Mays, Merlin’s Colin MorganBrendan Coyle of Downton and Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame.

Bates – oh, sorry – Brendan Coyle plays the ruthlessly ambitious Mickey, who takes charge of the now-leaderless gang. Whishaw is Baby, the emotionally damaged and mentally unhinged son of the body currently residing in the bins. Merlin – sorry, Morgan – is Skinny, a sulking, whining kiss-arse who man-crushes on a contemptuous Baby, then cosies up to the boss man once Baby decides to torture his unwanted groupie. Mays brings a fantastic energy to the stage as the swaggering, twitchy Potts and, making his theatre debut, Grint gives a confident performance as his sidekick, Sweets. (Though hearing the words ‘minge’ and ‘pussy hair’ come out of Ron Weasley’s mouth is…well, something else.)

It’s a tense two and a half hours that grows increasingly unsettling as the group begins to fall apart while waiting for the knock from Mr Ross and his heavies. And Whishaw keeps the audience on their toes as the unpredictable Baby, prowling around the stage brandishing a cutlass one minute and a fistful of toffee apples the next, and generally terrifying everyone, like a psychotic toddler with a machine gun and a temper. The rocket-fast back-and-forth banter between the boys won the play an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy back in 1995 and makes this static show (which is set entirely in the club) gripping from start to finish. Perhaps not the epic triumph Jerusalem was (yeah, good luck ever topping that), but this dark story of betrayal proves quite a thrill.

Mojo is currently booking up until 25 January 2014. Tickets £10-£55. Go to www.mojotheplay.com. Harold Pinter Theatre, Panton Street, London SW1Y 4DN. Londonist saw this play on a complimentary review ticket. 

Photo credit: Simon Annand

Review: Chimerica, Harold Pinter Theatre

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Rating: 5/6

This review was written for Londonist

Did you miss Lucy Kirkwood’s highly lauded play first time round at the Almeida? Well, you’re in luck! Nope, not because it was overrated, but because it’s bloody good and has now transferred to the West End, so you can catch it at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 19 October. Score.

Chimerica imagines the story behind the unknown protester who famously faced down a row of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square after the massacre of civilian protesters in June 1989.

In Kirkwood’s play, American photojournalist Joe Schofield (played by Stephen Campbell Moore) took the most widely used shot of the incident. Two decades on, he makes it his mission to discover what happened to ‘Tank Man’. Who was this guy? What was his story? What became of him?

Obsession takes hold and Joe will stop at nothing to find him, jeopardising not only his relationship and his job, but also a US senator’s career, the livelihoods of two immigrant Chinese workers and the safety of his friend and Beijing contact Zhang Lin. Meanwhile, what he’s in search of has been staring him in the face the whole time.

Benedict Wong gives a beautifully pitched performance as the alternately gentle and wildly impassioned Zhang Lin, haunted by the loss of his wife (an effervescent Elizabeth Chan) in the Tiananmen Square protests. Claudie Blakley gets a lot of laughs as Tessa, consumer profiler and love interest of Joe, as does David K S Tse as Zhang Lin’s anxious, dutiful brother Zhang Wei.

Part political thriller, part love story, this super-fast-paced play will hold you in its thrall for the duration. It’s been in the making for six years, and there’s so much going on here, it’s clear why. Kirkwood tackles loads of issues in this three-hour epic, from the power of images, freedom of the press, ethics of the media and the complicated relationship between the two world superpowers, China and the United States, to love, friendship, parenthood, bereavement, family responsibilities, moral duty. Ambitious? Certainement. Competently realised? Oui.

Chimerica runs until 19 October at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Panton Street, London, SW1Y 4DN. Tickets £10-£75. For more information see the Ambassador Theatre Group website. Londonist saw this production on a complimentary press ticket.

Photo credit: E S Devlin

Review: The Book Of Mormon, Prince Of Wales Theatre

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Rating: 6/6

This review was written for Londonist

A musical written by the creators of South Park, you say? AND the guy who did Avenue Q, you say? Hell freakin’ YES (we say).

Since it opened to acclaim across the pond two years ago, London has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the multi-award-winning Broadway sensation by funny men Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez. FINALLY, it arrived. And it was so worth the wait. London has welcomed the US hit to its bosom. Well, not so much the critics, who have been a bit po-faced and British about it, determined not to be impressed by something so hyped. Anyway, its audiences are loving it and, hey, that’s what matters, right?

So. The story. Two young Mormon missionaries, Elder Price (Gavin Creed) and Elder Cunningham (Jared Gertner), are posted to a remote village in northern Uganda to spread the word of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But when they’re robbed at gunpoint and confronted with cynical villagers more concerned with poverty, dysentery and AIDS than dealing with idealistic proselytisers, not to mention the threat of local warlord General Butt-Fucking-Naked (Chris Jarman), who’s bent on circumcising the female population and has a worryingly casual attitude towards shooting people in the face, the naive 19-year-olds realise this mission may be harder than they had anticipated.

Naturally, hilarity ensues and the two elders find themselves in all sorts of difficult situations. But good prevails and moral lessons are learnt. The whole thing is obscenely and joyously camp, complete with tap-dancing, pink sequinned waistcoats and plastic lunatic grins. The characters are infuriating yet lovable, the cast’s energy and precision are admirable and the songs are catchy and great fun – even when they’re about raping babies (or frogs). Trust the hype. You’ll be roaring and whooping and standing ovationing your tits clean off.

The Book Of Mormon runs until 14 December at Prince Of Wales Theatre, Coventry Street, W1D 6AS. For tickets, call 0844 482 5110 or book online. Londonist saw this show on a complimentary review ticket.

Photo by Johan Persson

Review: Dirty Great Love Story, Soho Theatre

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Rating: 6/6

This review was written for Londonist

Richard and Katie meet when the hen and stag dos they’re on end up at the same bar. Pushed together by their overbearing friends, they get hammered and end up in bed together. Come morning, Katie is mortified, Richard smitten. Katie escapes as soon as possible, but when their best friends – loud, brash working-class Westy and equally loud, equally brash, fabulously monied CC – become an item, the next two years are a series of awkward meetings and hurt feelings, punctuated by the occasional failed seduction.

Written and performed by Richard March and Katie Bonna, the show won a Fringe First at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, and it isn’t hard to see why. This laugh-a-minute lark cleverly combines prose and poetry, rhythm and rhyme, and the dialogue is very clever and very honest – sometimes achingly, but most times hilariously so. The words (we almost want to say lyrics) do all the work: the set is bare and the talented Bonna and Marsh play all five characters themselves. There’s sweet, geeky Richard, neurotic Katie, CC, Westy and – my favourite – Katie’s bumptious, Eton-educated, chutney-obsessed twerp of a banker boyfriend, Matt Priest. Yet they’re so wonderfully distinct, you look back and misremember a cast of five.

It’s only on until next Saturday, so get in there quick if you want to catch it. It’s worth it, I promise. You’ll come out with your heart warmed, beaming from ear to ear. Oh, as the title implies, it’s an, er, adult tale, so contact the box office (details below) if you want to bring anyone under the age of 16.

Dirty Great Love Story runs until 30 March at Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, W1D 2NE. For tickets, call the box office on 020 748 0100 or book online.  Londonist saw this show on a complimentary review ticket. Join Richard and Katie for their workshop Dirty Great Dramatic Poetry on 27 March, 2pm.

Photo by Richard Davenport

Love it!

Loved your review of Three Sisters, I think you really avoided being sucked in to that overly ‘artistic appreciation’ style of reviewing theatre. Keep it up…

J

Review: Three Sisters @ Young Vic

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Rating: 2/6

This review was written for Londonist.

It’s never going to be a great night at the theatre when you’re sat beside a drunk who keeps hiccoughing foul odours from the rotting chasm of his gut into the air next to your face. But even without having to endure a vile, stench-emitting ogre in your breathing space, this would have been a wearing evening. The main problem is one of scale. The Young Vic is quite an intimate theatre. Yet the actors perform as though we were 100 feet from the stage, rather than 10. It is not necessary to roar. Neither is it necessary to continually ring a massive bell so deafeningly that half the audience cover their ears in actual pain. But let’s put those irritants aside. 

Aussie director Benedict Andrews’ unconventional rendering of Chekhov’s tragicomic tale of three educated sisters stuck in a provincial town, searching for meaning in their dreary privileged existence, definitely emphasises the tragic over the comic. Unless your idea of hilarity is a deaf old man everyone keeps shouting their lines at, you’re in for a pretty bleak time. (To be fair, this DID seem to do it for some of the audience so, y’know, each to their own.) 

The sisters – duteous schoolteacher, Olga (Mariah Gale), listless Masha (Vanessa Kirby) and young, idealistic Irina (Gala Gordon) – are too earnest to be very interesting, with one or all of them bursting into sobs every five minutes; though moments when Ab Fab’s Patsy shines through Kirby’s Masha do offer some levity. Emily Barclay too brings some comedy to the proceedings as their brother’s gauche New Zealander wife. As for the all-too-often bellowing men, they seem to blend into one in their army fatigues. But Danny Kirrane as Andrey, a slobbish washout of a young man once full of potential, invests the play with a welcome bit of farce. More of this please.

Johannes Schütz’s set is brutally minimalistic. Overhung by a light box, the stage is made up of grey tables nestled together and, as the characters’ lives and dreams begin to disintegrate, it is dismantled from underneath their feet. It’s a clever device but – honestly? – boys carrying tables in and out the auditorium is quite distracting, really. And to spread it over the entire second half could be seen as a little indulgent.

Andrews has an eye for composition and arranges his cast in intriguing tableaus, but this rather Brechtian production seems uncohesive and episodic. Much is superficial: emotion fails to penetrate the surface, both crying fits and parties erupt out of nowhere, their raucousness, lacking reason and depth, never quite credible. A group rendition of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit is fun, but it doesn’t sit convincingly with the action either side of it. The whole thing is like a dream, a surreal montage of disjointed scenes – we don’t get a sense of a world or of real characters, making this a largely incoherent, alienating, one-dimensional affair.

Three Sisters is on until 3 November at the Young Vic, 66 The Cut, London SE1 8LZ. For tickets, call 020 7922 2922 or book online.

Photo by Simon Annand 

Review: Hedda Gabler @ Old Vic

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Rating: 6/6

This review was written for Londonist

Don’t you just love Ibsen? Give us a middle-class household, a spoilt bitch balancing a shitload of frustration with a phobia of scandal and a fat helping of melodrama any day. Ooh, and a loaded pistol, don’t forget the loaded pistol. Else how will there be a violent, bloody suicide? Er… belated spoiler alert. Oh come on, it’s Ibsen, what did you expect?

In this new version of his 1890 play by Brian Friel, a dangerously bored Hedda Gabler and her adoring husband George return from their honeymoon to the opulent ‘dream home’ he bought on the expectation of an all-but-promised professorship. But when his academic rival and Hedda’s old flame, Eilert Loevborg, arrives back in town with an impressive new book – and a new squeeze, Thea Elvsted – things are shaken up.

Olivier Award-winning actress Sheridan Smith stars as the eponymous heroine – and how! Her Hedda is an artful, perfectly manicured, two-faced ice queen. Never has poison been spat so melodiously and with so sweet a smile. Yet, despite her steely self-control, the deep resentment she tries to contain is ever present, boiling over into venomous outbursts, and her powerlessness and ultimate vulnerability wins our pity.

Adrian Scarborough, currently appearing in ITV’s Mrs Biggs alongside Smith, as her father (bit weird? It’s fine, just go with it), is perfect as Hedda’s lovely but slightly ridiculous scholar husband George. His reaction to the news of her pregnancy at the crux of the play is a joy, his puppylike enthusiasm mounting into outright hysteria in the space of a few lines, oblivious to his wife’s despair as he canters round the room like a labrador with mental problems.

Supporting, Daniel Lapaine is tense and volatile as the wild-eyed Eilert, while quiet ambition and determination underlie the nervous flappiness of Fenella Woolgar’s Thea, and Darrell D’Silva makes a fun, raunchy old Judge Brack.

Lez Brotherston’s gorgeous set deserves a mention too: a lavish mansion of marble and glass, beautifully lit by Mark Henderson, full of flowers and rich furnishings, Hedda’s prison is exquisite, but a prison no less. Not sure the piano and strings that kicked in at emotional moments were entirely necessary, but heigh-ho, each to their own. Little could take away from the fantastic acting on display here, tightly drawn together by director Anna Mackmin into a sumptuous production that powers on through at a neat two hours thirty. Think we can safely promise you won’t check your watch once.

Hedda Gabler runs until 10 November at The Old Vic, The Cut, London SE1 8NB. For tickets, call 0844 871 7628 or book online.

Photo by Johan Persson

Review: A Doll’s House, Young Vic

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Rating: 6/6

This review was written for Londonist

Carrie Cracknell directs this whirling drama, a new version of Ibsen’s 1878 classic written by Simon Stephens, which sees one woman’s reality fall to pieces – and, under the dexterous handling of this talented pair, as well as a first-rate cast, this modern, intense and utterly gripping production is one of the best we’ve seen all year. Hattie Morahan plays Nora Helmer, the doll of the house herself, a capricious, flighty young woman, who, maintaining a constant affectation of shamelessly flirtatious faux naif, masks her troubles well. And troubles aplenty lurk beneath this light, playful exterior. Victim to a manipulative loan shark, Nora must repay the money she owes and deal with the blackmail that follows, while keeping the sordid affair secret from her stuffy, self-righteous banker husband/pseudo-father, Torvald (Dominic Rowan). It’s only when the deception inevitably comes to light that she sees her husband and her marriage for what they really are.

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Review: Birthday, Royal Court

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Rating: 5/6

This review was written for Londonist.

After the traumatic birth of Lisa and Ed’s son, Ed, desperate for a daughter, decides to take the matter of completing their family into his own hands – or, more precisely, into his own artificial womb. Yup, by harvesting ovaries and transplanting embryos, men can now choose to gestate. Hallelujah.

Roger Michell directs this new play by Joe Penhall. It opens in a hospital room, where Ed (Green Wing’s glorious Stephen Mangan) lies swollen, emotionally volatile and ‘pumped full of hormones from arsehole to beak’.

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Review: Utopia, Soho Theatre

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Rating: 2/6

This review was written for Londonist

This new collaboration from Soho Theatre and Newcastle’s Live Theatre brings together scenes on the subject of utopia, penned by a motley crew of playwrights, such as Simon Stephens and Janice Okoh, and contributors from other fields, from comedian Dylan Moran and Labour MP Chi Onwurah to, um, Hitler. Directed by Steve Marmion and Max Roberts, these ‘visions of a perfect world’ are cobbled together into a whole, performed by six actors as ‘wise fools’ in clown makeup, who examine and eventually discard the blueprint of each flawed utopian ideal, while chucking in a bit of faux-reluctant singing and lacklustre dancing.

The piece is supposed to question what utopia is and what brings out the best in people – whether it’s being kidnapped by aliens, an 80-year-old woman having a breakdown in a Zumba class or simply the sensory joy of biting into a fat, ripe, juicy peach. The idea is a good one: a series of inspiring and heartwarming visions, a shot of kindness and humanity – an antidote to the decidedly dreary world we’re living in. And with topical lyrics by Marmion  – set to jaunty music by Arthur Darvill – about the Leveson enquiry, ‘big society’ and Northern Rock, it’s clear the play is designed as a reaction against our own bleak time of austerity. But, although individually, the scenes are often funny and touching, the piece appears hastily constructed and lacks cohesion. It has its bright moments – like Alistair McDowall’s witty reimagining of the Kony 2012 phenomenon – but, overall, it could do with being shorter, certainly snappier, as the sketches tend to drag on and, as they’re cut into short scenes and interspersed with others, it becomes a rather repetitive ordeal.

Utopia runs until 14 July at Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE. For tickets, call 020 7478 0100 or book online.

Photo: Rufus Hound in Utopia