Theatre Round-Up:

Lots of new things happening for the New Year, I can’t wait to start the theatre-going season again. Firstly the Almeida start with a new production of ‘The Tempest’ -with Prospero being played by Ian McDiarmid (who I always knew as the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, and never knew he actually ran a successful theatre company). Other classics in town are ‘As You Like It’ and ‘Richard II’ at the Pit; Goldoni’s ‘A Servant of Two Masters’ directed by that master of ensemble productions, Tim Supple, at the New Ambassadors and ‘The Rivals’ and ‘The Comedy Of Errors’ at the Barbican. All productions are from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Tricycle Theatre hosts The Oxford Touring Company’s ‘The Wexford Trilogy’ until February 11th while the Bush presents ‘Messiah’ by Not The National Theatre.

I would strongly recommend ‘Hamlet’ at the National Theatre, with Simon Russell Beale in the starring role. Also at the National are ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, ‘Noises Off’’, ‘Life x 3’ by Yasmina Reza, ‘Remembrance Of Times Past’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.

Reviews

Four Play In Soho
Presented by the Lightning Ensemble
At:The Soho Theatre Studio
‘A Brilliant Fast’ by Erin Courtney; ‘She’ by Imogen Smith; ‘Heads’ by Glen Supple and ‘Given Away’ by Aileen Gonsalves.
The Lightning Ensemble celebrate their 5 years of performing new writing within the company in a one hour programme of four short plays. Written and directed by members of the company, these plays show off the range of theatre styles that they have been exploring in the past few months.

Starting with Erin Courtney’s ‘A Brilliant Fast’ Satara Lester plays a mother who we see is trying to brick up a section of her living room from the rest of her house. Her grown-up children, played by Sarah Craig and Glen Supple, are confused but play along with it. It turns out that this family has brought up their children in an ultra-liberal fashion, with a ‘no homework rule’ and trying to build them an underwater tepee. In reality, the Mother can’t stand the idea that these children, who are still living with their parents, are stuck in a routine of coming home after work and going straight to the fridge and expecting their food on the table. Being separated from the rest of the house means being separated from the fridge, which became the symbol for her feeling trapped.

‘She’ on the other hand is two people, Tracy Bargate and Ian Warwick, trying to arrange their house for a visitor. This visitor, Angie Wallis, the ‘she’ in question, as it happens has a history with the two of them. In a funny sequence of obsessive behaviour (every time the man and woman went through either door at either end of their flat, they would say, “I open the door, I close the door”, behaviour which rather confuses ‘She’). In a clever and beguiling sequence of U-turns of history, subjects are skirted around and alluded to, never mentioned, we only get a sense of their past from what their problem actually is, and why this ‘She’ means so much to either of them.

Mario Vernazza and Marie McCarthy are joined together in the same body in ‘Heads’. What started out as a joining of two people in marriage, their bodies actually becomes joined together quite literally. We see them after a month of this happening, talking to a marriage guidance counsellor who in turn is distracted by his glamorous assistant, played by Stefan Marling and Giuliana Lonigro. We follow the discussion between the joined couple and their counsellor as what first seemed an ideal and natural progression from love turns out to be a soured relationship. Soured, that is until they feel that they feel that their listener’s attention isn’t wholly given to them, and divided between them and his assistant.

The first three in the programme of plays followed a more absurdist tradition of playwrighting, where ideas were more important than actual reality and naturalism in that way they were the braver. In ‘Given A Way’ however, we see what is a more personal and touching scene at a wedding. A father, Barry Lee Thomas, gives away his daughter in a speech during the wedding feast. The married daughter, Claire Lichie, introduces her friend, Leila Lloyd-Evelyn to her younger sister, Aileen Gonsalves (who incidentally wrote the piece). It is revealed that the two girls are lesbians and in a funny scene played under the table, a bud of a relationship is established. Unfortunately, the father, who always regarded the younger daughter as the apple of his eye, overhears some of this. The most poignant section is when the first dance is announced and he asks her to dance. Watching father and daughter, knowing that the gulf of their lives is being pulled further and further apart was the most heart-rending I have ever seen this year.

I would advise that the Soho Theatre take on the further projects from The Lightning Ensemble as they have proven to be a formidable writing team that aren’t afraid of going against the current trends of New Writing in London today.

 © 2001 Jamie Zubairi ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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