London Week Four

My final full week in London rolled up very quickly, and having seen most of my ‘must-sees’ I got to check out some other shows around town that piqued my interest and I’m really glad I did. 

Then, Now & Next (Southwark Playhouse) ★★1/2

Written by Christopher J Orton & Jon Robyns. Southwark Playhouse Borough. 23 Jun – 29 Jul, 2023.

A new, small musical starring the wonderful Alice Fearn felt like a fun way to start the week, and a way to break up all the big musical revivals I’d been seeing. This one sees a woman dealing with grief/depression and learning to move on. Set in the modern day, where the strong, decisive Alex Shaw (Fearn) has a stable, geeky partner Peter (Peter Hannah) and young son; and flashing back to her youth with her near-perfect boyfriend Stephen (Joaquin Pedro Valdes).

As a work-in-progress it has a lot going for it, but it definitely needs extra time to grow. It’s tricky having a lead character suffering from depression for the basic reason they’re not at their most engaging. Orton & Robyns have tried to fix this with a non-linear structure, plenty of flashbacks to happier times, which struggle to land (though director Julie Atherton has definitely given it some flair to sell the concept). Fringe budgetary restraints handcuff the ways this show can demonstrate these time jumps. We never really get to see the ways Alex has been changed by life events. 

Tori Allen-Martin really shines through playing multiple female roles, it looks like she’s having a ball and so is the audience. The rest is sadly a bit muddled but hopefully, now that the show has gotten on its feet before live audiences, the creators can retool and refine it (I saw director Julie Atherton in the corner watching the crowd intently).

Romeo & Juliet (Almeida) ★★★★

Written by William Shakespeare. Almeida Theatre. 6 Jun – 28 Jul, 2023.

Rebecca Frecknall is in that upper echelon of “it” directors right now, having built her reputation up on revelatory productions of overlooked Tennesse Williams plays, the West End revival of Cabaret that’s still running and the smash hit Streetcar Named Desire with Paul Mescal & Patsy Ferran. She is as much an “above the title” name as any of her stars, and her new production of Romeo & Juliet is the talk of the town. 

Starring Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso) and Isis Hainsworth this Romeo & Juliet wastes no time – cutting the text down to the appropriate “two hours traffic of our stage” it is frenetic and punchy. Minimal staging , scene changes are mainly signalled with a dramatic change of lighting or music breaks. Brawls are dances, and in the small confines of the Almeida they feel rough and dangerous (it helps that the box office exchanged my cheap, restricted view seat for one in the front row at the last minute).

Jimoh and Hainsworth feel suitably young and idealistic. Jack Riddiford’s Mercutio has an almost Joker-esque unpredictability about him and Jo McInnes’ Nurse comes close to stealing the show, with her sly wit and fierce will.

For all the hype though, it’s starting to feel like Frecknall and the Almeida have a “brand” they’re keeping up – that bare brick wall at the Almeida is getting a bit over-familiar IMO, especially when they replicate it in the West End with every production (like Patriots on the West End right now). I’ve not seen Cabaret yet (next week), but I’m already associating Frecknall’s work with candles, the colour brown and wooden sets with dramatic lighting. This isn’t a bad thing, many directors have signature looks (you can always spot an Ivo Van Hove or Jamie Lloyd production) but I can’t wait to see her refresh her palate a bit.

The Motive and the Cue (National Theatre) ★★★★★

Written by Jack Thorne. National Theatre. Until 15 Jul, 2023.

Here we have a new play, directed by Sam Mendes, about the creation of Richard Burton’s record breaking production of Hamlet on Broadway. This show clearly ambition and the scope to be massive, this is theatre aimed at taking on Broadway!

Sir John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss, in possibly a career best performance) has been commissioned to direct a new production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) but this clash of styles and cultures threatens to push the whole thing off the rails. Will this be the failure that ends both careers?

The Broadway transfer feels almost inevitable. The story is the perfect trans-Atlantic blend – a play that is all about the love of theatre, featuring American icons in the newly wed Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (a pitch-perfect Tuppence Middleton) and a British legend in Gielgud. Staged in a traditional proscenium arch makes it an easily replicated production (the iris-like safety curtain of the National’s Lyttleton theatre gives it a cinematic feel as well). The whole thing is slick, funny and poignant. Ryan Murphy will make it into a Netflix series eventually.

While I felt Thorne’s When Winston Went to War with the Wireless was lacking in heart, The Motive & the Cue has no such problem, it is brimming with emotion. The air of insecurity reeks from Burton’s desperation to succeed (the motivation of which drives the story), and Gielgud’s resignation to his career winding down – these are two men struggling with their inner lives as well as their outer persona’s. 

A play about plays and celebrity and art – this could not be more my “thing” if it tried.

Witness for the Prosecution (County Hall) ★★★

Written by Agatha Christie. London County Hall. Currently booking till Feb 2024.

To be honest I went to this mainly to see inside County Hall, a beautiful building on London’s Southbank, and a play seemed like a good excuse to get inside the glorious space. The play is what you expect – a legal drama centred on the murder of a rich woman, but is the young work-class man accused guilty or innocent? And what role does his double-dealing wife, the witness for the prosecution, play in all of this?

There are typical Christie twists and turns, many of which you’ll sniff well in advance, and this production has no time for subtlety. The cavernous space requires a lot of amplification which makes the whole thing feel forced (pre-recorded gasps from the “audience” don’t help). But with all of these caveats I still quite enjoyed the site specific nature of the play. If you liked The Mousetrap, you’ll definitely enjoy this.

Operation Mincemeat (Fortune Theatre) ★★★★★

Book, Music & Lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson & Zoë Roberts. Fortune Theatre. Booking till Nov 2023 (but I bet it keeps going).

Everyone I know has been telling me “you have to see Operation Mincemeat, it’s amazing” but the thought of spending West End prices on a show at the Fortune Theatre (a pokey little theatre that housed The Woman in Black for over 20 years) felt ridiculous, but I bit the bullet after discovering that some not-theatre-obsessed friends had already seen it multiple times and raved. 

And my god – this is the kind of show we need more of in Australia! Funny, heartfelt, scrappy, this is the little show that could… and the last time I thought that about a musical it was an Edinburgh fringe hit about the six wives of Henry VII! Operation Mincemeat is the real deal, a comedy musical about the infamous WWII operation when the British used a corpse to get false invasion plans to the Germans as a misdirection. 

What Operation Mincemeat does really well is hit you high with laughs while hitting you low with big emotions. It doesn’t gloss over the sexism, elitism and nepotism of the age, or the fact that a man’s corpse was used in a callous fashion. It feels like The Play That Goes Wrong meets The Producers, and I loved every second of it.