14 posts tagged “donmar warehouse”

Just over a week ago I wrote about a week in prospect that would take in two plays and two eagerly anticipated films. Did it live up to its cultural and entertainment potential?
I've already written about Bright Star which was certainly the highlight but there was much else to be enjoyed.

First there was Dominic West making his debut before the Rev Stan in Spanish play Life is a Dream at the Donmar.
The play's writer Pedro Calderon de la Barca was sort of a Spanish Shakespeare and was writing at a time when Spain's golden age of discovery and the wealth and culture it brought with it had be frittered away.
Life is a Dream captures that feeling of having had something so good it was like a dream. It tells the story of Prince Seigusmundo (West) who is secretly imprisoned at birth by his father after hearing a prophesy that he'll be a tyrant. Grown up, his father releases him as a test of his character but having had a closeted life he behaves badly and is taken back to prison having been convinced his time of freedom was in fact a dream.
His existence now known of by the people of his father's kingdom he is broken out of prison and embarks on getting what is rightfully his but this time in constant fear that he is living a dream and is therefore determined to behave better.
It is both comedic and philosophical something some of my fellow theatre-goers had problems but I think the two are inextricably linked.
West put in a stirling performance and I've now ordered first series of The Wire by way of a contrast.
It was an enjoyable play, easy to follow with the language updated in its translation and entertaining enough that the two and half hours flew by.
Next up was The Habit of Art a new Alan Bennett play at the National Theatre. And what a contrast.
It is a play about a play about a fictitious meeting between poet W H Auden and composer Benjamin Britten. On one level it is about two talented men reflecting on their careers at a time when their creativity is dwindling.
On another it is a behind the scenes expose of theatre life: the ego's, the tantrums and again the creative process.
It was very funny with some typically brilliant Bennett one-liners, none of which I can remember. Richard Griffiths as the dial-a-rent-boy loving Auden commands the stage and sparks off the wonderful Frances de la Tour who plays the production manager.
A highly amusing evening all round.
And then stage comedy to film comedy: The Men Who Stare at Goats rounded off the week's viewing pleasure. At the beginning you are told 'More of this is true than you would imagine' and I really hope it is because it is laugh out loud funny.
It you try and explain it, it sounds ridiculous: Psychic spies.
The cast is formidable with Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey all doing wonderful turns at comedy something which is refreshing to see.
I know it's had mixed reviews but I think it worked really well and perfect Sunday afternoon silliness.
Oh and you get to see McGregor and Clooney walking away from the camera with their bums hanging out of hospital gowns. Perfect.

The entertainment stars are in alignment this week and boy I'm looking forward to it.
Two bits of theatre and two films are in prospect starting tomorrow with Life is a Dream at the Donmar with an actor called Dominic West that everyone seems to be excited about. I'm on the waiting list to borrow Dan's copy of The Wire so am quite please my first experience of seeing him will be on the stage.
Then on Thursday, I'm at the National to see the new Alan Bennett play The Habit of Art. Seeing Michael Gambon (would take my Harry Potter actors stage tally up to six) was part of the draw but sadly he's had to withdraw due to ill health and Richard Griffiths is stepping into his shoes. I've already seen Griffiths in Equus and I'm hoping for a good, more varied performance to what I've already seen him do.
The third treat, and first film, regular readers will already know about as it is Bright Star which I've already written about to death. (The excitement just grows and grows, I feel like a kid in the run up to Christmas).
And finally there is what at the very least will be a good eye-candy movie but what I'm hoping will be a quirky gem: The Men Who Stare at Goats (trailer below). George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey - a potentially magic combination.
Shame I have to work in between really.

Been to see some great theatre and interesting theatre in recent weeks but have been a bit lax in actually writing about it. So here is a bit of a catch up of the highlights hopefully short and sweet:

Mother Courage and all her Children - National Theatre

Loved the first Brecht I saw at the Young Vic a couple of years ago so was excited about this NT production.
Set during the 30 years war in Europe it tells the story of Mother Courage (Fiona Shaw) who profits from the war going from battle site to battle site selling her wares, changing allegiances when profitable and trying to protect her two sons and mute daughter along the way.
There has been much written online about the delay to press night and the various hiccups in the production and even though I saw it during preview, I didn't noticed anything going particularly wrong. Shaw put in an amazingly energetic performance, there was live music and and an Irish singer Duke Special who had the most beautiful voice. Brecht challenged sympathies and perceptions once again and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh and I didn't find out until I got home that another Harry Potter actor was also in the play - Harry Melling who plays Dudley. In this he was once again playing Fiona Shaw's son.

Despite my initial reservations about Jude Law playing Hamlet, I was actually quite excited by the time Tuesday arrived. So I settled in my front row seat (benefits of booking 18 months in advance) with Jen to one side and Spike's empty seat to the other* and it was show time.
And Law didn't disappoint. He played his Hamlet with an anger that had veins pulsating in his neck, sweat pouring down his brow and spit flying from his mouth (the one disadvantage of being on the front row when he is delivering a soliloquy at the front of the stage).

His manic hand gesturing was a little too much at times but you can't fault him on clarity of delivery which is an achievement when some speeches can easily become incomprehensible rants. It was a moving performance especially when on a couple of occasions our eye-line matched and it was as if he talking just to me (I'm sure the actors see very little of the audience once the stage is lit up but it still feels good.)
And the rest of the production? Well Penelope Wilton nailed Getrude, Ron Cook as Polonius didn't milk the comedy in his part enough (although that may be partly down to cuts in his speeches) something the RSC did very well and Ophelia, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw was the weakest link. Just didn't connect with the character at all. She was too sensible and straight in the first half to make her descent into madness in the second half believable. She has a beautiful sweet singing voice but I don't think that really suited someone who's properly lost their marbles.
There weren't as many theatricals in the production as the RSC's (cracking mirrors, playing king being hoisted up ghost like into the ceiling etc), the set of towering stone castle walls with huge sliding doors gave the stage a suitably cold and bleak feel and there was a shower of snow in one scene so convincing it made me shiver.
Michael Grandage, who directed, has trimmed the script back to make it shorter which I don't object to as I think Hamlet can be a little long.
But what is my verdict, Tennant/RSC or Law/Donmar? Sorry Law you were much, much better than I expected and very enjoyable to watch but I didn't come out of the theatre thinking I'd just seen something historic like Tennants.

And what did the pro's think?

Daily Telegraph: "Law...joins the modern pantheon of spellbinding sweet princes with a performance of rare vulnerability and emotional openness."
Guardian: "Law doesn't have the sardonic wit of David Tennant, or the philosophical fluency of Jamie Ballard in Jonathan Miller's recent Tobacco Factory production, but he makes a Hamlet who truly discovers himself."
West End Whingers: "The Whingers also found themselves getting very sad about their inability carry off a cardigan which Jude Law can do depressingly well." 

*Spike got stuck up in York where he'd been for work and because he had his ticket with him the box office couldn't resell it, which was frustrating not because of the money lost but because there was a long queue of people desperate for returns and it was such a good seat to waste. Fortunately a chap who'd been sitting somewhere up in the gods spotted the empty seat during the first half and snuck down during the interval and asked if he could take it. Jen and I were glad to oblige.:"

The Donmar Warehouse's Wyndham's season wraps up with Hamlet starring Jude Law which opened a couple of days ago.
I am desperately avoiding any reviews until I see it in July as I want to form my own opinion. At the moment Mr Law and the Donmar team has a lot of work to do to impress coming barely 6 months after the RSC's Stewart/Tennant production finished its London run.
So what's it up against?

Jude Law vs David Tennant
Jude Law is still a bit of a posh soap actor in my eyes, while his body of work looks quite varied he's just not one of those actors who stands out for me. He's also too old to play Hamlet. Arguably David Tennant was too but he compensated by bringing a youthful energy to the role. David Tennant, aside from his age, was a fantastic Hamlet as I wrote on this very blog after seeing it last year and I feel sorry for Law having to follow it because comparisons are inevitable.

Patrick Stewart vs Penelope Wilton
Well it's the entire company really but those are probably the two most familiar names. The RSC company was entirely marvellous, stand out performances from Mariah Gale as Ophelia (redeeming herself after Miranda in The Tempest from the year before) Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius too was exceptional bringing to the fore the comedy of the character and Stewart quiet and calculating...I could go on. Wilton I just can't visualise as a Queen at the moment but Ron Cook is potentially a superb Polonius as I think he has the skill to work the comedy in his speeches. The rest of the cast I'm not familiar enough with to judge.

Shiny mirrors vs A traditional set?
The RSC production was simple but nonetheless impressive using mirrors as a back drop and the stage itself. Torches were used to clever effect and stage furniture was sparse which gave the production a modern feel - aimed I'm sure at the younger audience attracted by the presence of Dr Who. The Donmar's season at the Wyndham's so far has been impressive (although I missed Madame De Sade because I was poorly). I predict the Donmar will go for something a little less minimalist and maybe a bit more traditional, which worked very well for both Twelfth Night and Ivanov.

Got an email yesterday with a cheap ticket offer for this play at the Young Vic which has one more week to run. So on the spur of the moment I organised and bought tickets for myself and my neighbours to go last night. It was only £12.50 each - a bargain for what turned out to be a briliant piece of theatre.
It's a monologue by teenager Adam, delivered expertly by William Ash, as he goes through his formative years into adulthood. It is funny, poignant, sad and above all else I dare anyone to see it without recognising some of their own teenage years.
Interesting that the two most memorable and enjoyable/interesting plays I've seen in recent weeks have been small productions. It quite puts to shame the Donmar Warehouse's last two outings both of which had great casts but were thoroughly disappointing.
Here is a clip of the opening few minutes

For some reason I referred to this play as Dee-men-tos prior to going to see it at the Donmar Warehouse only realising my mistake when the call came to take our seats and it was pronounced 'dimmy-toss' over the tannoy but in hindsight perhaps it was a subliminal premonition because I nearly went demented trying to fathom it out.

On the surface the ideas seem very simple and the character conflicts are given away all too easily but then there are these looong monologues that hint at something more but left me wanting to shout, 'a clue, just one, a hint, anything...'
Written by South African playwright Athol Fugard it is about a former engineer who leaves the city for a remote village with his housekeeper and niece. A former colleague visits to try and persuade him to return.
You never really find out why he left other than he didn't care about the people he worked with any more but I found this argument a bit wanting and in lieu of any further explanation a little lacking in substance.
The visitor stays for five days, hidden feelings are revealed with tragic consequences - one of two really good moments in the play (but I won't spoil it if you are going) and that's the first half leaving you wondering what the second half was going to be about other than feelings of remorse.
Well there is plenty of that and more monologues and throwing around of stuff but little else I could fathom.
The only other excitement of the evening was spotting Christian Cooke who co-starred with Holliday Grainger in ITV's Demons (yes I'm the sap that watched it). The later playing the part of Lydia in the play. At the rather lacklustre curtain call (from the audiences part I felt) Ms Grainger got a special little applause from Mr Cooke when she turned towards his seat up in the circle.
Other reviews:
West End Whingers

Remember back in January when I bought tickets for all four plays in the Donmar's season at the West End? Well I saw the first play this week, Ivanov with Kenneth Branagh in the lead.

And wow, what a way to start. Not just Branagh but the entire cast may with the slight exception of Andrea Riseborough who played Sasha were startlingly good, in fact I haven't seen acting of that calibre in a long time.
The play, by Russian Anton Chekhov, tells of the decline and fall of Ivanov (pronounced I-van-ov, not Iv-an-ov as I had being doing for the last six months). He is a man that had joie de vivre, charm, goodness, a beautiful wife and land. But the start of the play finds him heavily in debt and out of love with his dying wife.
He has fallen instead for the daughter of his creditor, who reciprocates his love and is determined to restore his former lustre.
It would be easy to play Ivanov with melodrama and lose the audience's sympathy. But while you feel at turns frustrated by his decaying personality you can't help being moved.
In an interview Branagh one of his loves of the play is the fact that there are so many good characters and he isn't wrong. Tom Stoppard who did the adaptation has brought out each and laced the play with humour which if you read Chekhov's musing's at the time of writing was as he wished. He didn't want anyone to be a hero or villain and in this production that is certainly achieved.
The reflection is very much of real life and there are thoughts and emotions displayed in the character of Ivanov that are inherantly human - if we dare to admit it.
My only reservation about Riseborough - a rising star of stage and screen - was born out of her tendancy to be a little to over animated.
For complete quality, sheer entertainment and the level of spit Shakespeare would be proud to see, I'd hurry along and get a ticket.

Have been meaning to write up my thoughts on Polly Stenham's That Face which I saw a couple of weeks back but I've been lazy. And I'm glad I was, because it means I can kill two birds with one stone and comment on last nights The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold too.
Both are about families and it is interesting to see certain parallels even though there is more than 50 years between their creation.

Stenham is the West End's hot new talented playwright. She penned That Face aged only 19 and after a successful debut at the Royal Court Theatre  it transferred to the West End.
She's got more writing talent in her little finger than I'll ever have producing such a rounded, well structured and well observed piece at such a tender age but if she is half as talented as this implies then I'm more excited about what is to come.
That Face is the story of a posh middle-class family, fractured by divorce and going into free fall. The mother is a drunken, vallium-popping recluse played with just the right amount of stagger and neurosis by Lindsey Duncan. Her son is trying desperately to straighten her out having dropped out of university to keep an eye on her but has in his immaturity becomes dependent on her neediness.
And the teenage daughter played by Skin's Hannah Murray has just gone a bit wild without the steadying parental influence and at the start of the play is in the process of getting kicked out of her posh school by drugging and torturing a younger pupil as part of a initiation ceremony.
It skips along at a merry pace exposing some foibles and failings in modern western society as kids try to clean up the mother before Dad arrives to cart her off to a clinic. Duncan's is not the only sterling performance in fact the only weakness was Murray who had a tone of voice that  just grated after a while and played the neglected spoilt teenager in the stiff-armed gesturing way that seems to have come straight out of drama school.
The ending came all to quick which was a sign of how enjoyable the whole thing was and the same can be said for the Chalk Garden at the Donmar.
It's the third play I've seen at the tiny theatre and interesting to see the stage fully dressed as the interior of a well-to-do country house from the 1950's. (The last play I saw there survived on four chairs and a newspaper.)
Bagnold, who is probably most famous for writing National Velvet, based the idea on her own experience. Once again a dysfunctional family is the central theme this time an eccentric Grandmother who, disapproving of her daughters remarriage has taken her teenage granddaughter in. It is a posh household with an aging, bedridden butler living unseen upstairs but always at the end of the phone voicing opinions, a paranoid man servant who was imprisoned as a consciencious objector during the war and the new Governess who is just quietly strange compared to everyone else.
Naturally the granddaughter is intelligent but completely wild and over indulged. In the story, the Governess has a secret to hide but her presence does more than make the family want to unravel her mystery, it also unearths a few painful truths about their own relationships.
It was refreshing to see a play that had a predominantly maturer cast led by the wickedly funny Margaret Tyzack who plays the Grandmother and Penelope Wilton who plays the Governess. I feel I'm doing a great disservice to Wilton when the one role she's had which I always remember is Sean's mum in Sean of the Dead. She is certainly an actress of far more depth and scope than that performance betrays.
Felicity Jones at 24 plays the 16 daughter and is one of those actresses who'll be pulling off characters 10-15 years her junior for much of her career. I was impressed by her in ITV's Northanger Abbey and had to google her when I got home just to check she really is in her 20's. Having those extra years of experience certainly helped in her performance compared with Murray in That Face but there was still a bit of the stiff-armed, precociousness going on.
The Chalk Garden is clever and brilliantly funny with some great one-liners. Several audience members felt moved enough to utter a very British middle class 'bravo' during the final applause and if I wasn't an oik and under 50, I'd have said 'bravo' too.

Well two plays. The first at the Donmar was a disappointment which is why I haven't written about it before. And when I say a disappointment I mean specifically that I just didn't find the story engaging. It was called Small Change by Peter Gill and had a good and able cast led by Lindsay Coulson of Eastenders fame and the legend (in my eyes) that is Sue Johnson. It was set in 1950's industrial south Wales and about two mothers and their sons.
There were flashbacks to stuff that had happened when the sons were kids and here is where I falter because my mind kept wandering, when I should have been concentrating on what was being said. I came out not really sure what the whole thing was about.
I know, I know I should pay attention in class but I just didn't connect with it, unlike The Good Soul of Szechuan at the Young Vic. It is the first Brecht play I've ever seen and like Small Change I knew nothing of the playwright or the play prior to bum hitting seat.

The Young Vic, in an attempt to open up theatre to the masses, gives out some free tickets to local residents of which I am one. Having successfully applied for tickets with my neighbours Andrew and Francesca, my thinking was 'well if it's crap I won't feel the need to get my monies-worth and stay for the second half'.
The whole theatre was done up to look like the interior of a warehouse with bright lighting, cheap industrial wooden paneling, conveyor belts, piles of sacks, basic metal filing cabinets and the regular seating had be removed and replaced with more basic school assembly type plastic chairs.
Set in poverty stricken China it tells the story of how three Gods searching for good people are given shelter by a poor prostitute. They reward her with some money and implore her to stay good. She buys a tobacco shop and quickly gets swamped with people who want her 'help' including an out of work pilot with whom she falls in love.
Her cousin arrives to help her and quickly sets about dismissing those who are taking advantage.
Rattling along at an energetic pace, the central theme questions whether you can be a good person in such a bad place. And it is ones of those plays you could discuss for hours afterwards.
Jane Horrocks was wonderful as Shen Te the prostitute and her cousin Shui Ta, deftly juggling what is essentially two sides of the same person.
The staging was imaginative, with the filing cabinets doubling up as front doors to characters houses and having an effect similar to a vanishing cabinet as some of the characters appeared and disappeared through the narrow doors.
I've since been reading a copy of the play bought on the night as I'm sure there is much I missed while trying to take it in visually.
I've also been reading some theatre blogs which seem to be divided into two camps, those that like Brecht and those that don't. A lot seem to get hung up on his politics - he was a communist - and in some ways I think watching a play for the first time in blissful ignorance is the best way because you can enjoy it or otherwise at face value, as a piece of entertainment.
I'd definitely see another of his plays.