Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily, in which I look back on the last seven days of theatre news and reviews (including my own).
FRIDAY MAY 5
Tonight I saw ABBA Voyage — and wrote about it in my column here already: https://shentonstage.com/shentonstage-daily-for-tuesday-may-9/
I’m already making plans to see it again. It is truly difficult to believe it isn’t for real! The show is making history in front of our astonished eyes.
SATURDAY MAY 6
After shepherding an expansive portrait of the founders of the Lehman Bank family to the stage of the National Theatre in THE LEHMAN TRILOGY in 2018 (now about to play its final week in its second West End run at the Gillian Lynne, where it closes tomorrow week, May 20), director Sam Mendes now hones in on another true-life moment in history, with a much more theatrical subject.
THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE, again at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre (where it runs to July 15, and where I saw it today), is a gorgeous backstage peek into the rehearsal rooms of a celebrated 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet that was directed by John Gielgud and starred Richard Burton in the title role. Jack Thorne’s play is as much about process as personalities — and rivets on both counts.
It is led by a stupendous Mark Gatiss (above left), to the manner(isms) born but also deeply affecting — particularly in a scene of real emotional intimacy with a New York sex worker that is both frank and also shatteringly honest. Johnny Flynn is a complex and complicated Richard Burton (pictured below right, with Gatiss).
In his regular BREAKING BAZ column on Deadline this week, Baz Bamigboye points out that the Gielgud Theatre in the West End — which would be a perfect fit for the play, for obvious reasons — is unavailable, being booked back-to-back with the transfer of the National’s THE CRUCIBLE, to be immediately followed by Cameron Mackintosh’s Sondheim revue, OLD FRIENDS. So Bamigboye reveals that the production is being lined up for the Noel Coward, where the Almeida’s PATRIOTS is soon to have its belated transfer.
SUNDAY MAY 7
My review of BLUE NOW, a live version of Derek Jarman’s last film that is presented as part of the Brighton Festival at the Theatre Royal, is here: https://playsinternational.org.uk/blue-now-at-theatre-royal-brighton-brighton-festival-mark-shenton/
The event is reprised at Margate’s Tate Contemporary tomorrow (May 13), then at Manchester’s HOME on May 21 and London’s Tate Modern on May 27. All performances are currently sold out. However, a digital offering can be viewed here, including films of the creative team speaking about Jarman.
MONDAY MAY 8
The New York Drama Critics’ Circle, like the drama section of the UK’s Critics Circle (but with far fewer members casting votes, and fewer categories), annually announces its awards of the season just gone. This year’s winners, announced today, saw one major loser: no musical was deemed worthy enough to receive its Best Musical award (though a special citation was made for the revival of PARADE). (The full balloting process is available on the circle’s website here).
Bruce Norris’s 2018 play DOWNSTATE — originally premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf in 2018 and subsequently seen at the National’s Dorfman in 2019, was named best play for its New York premiere at Playwrights’ Horizons (pictured above). , with Tom Stoppard’s LEOPOLDSTADT named Best Foreign Play.
A lifetime achievement award was given to Adrienne Kennedy, whose 1991 play OHIO STATE MURDERS saw her finally making her Broadway debut, aged 91, last year. Next month, Chichester Festival Theatre will offer the UK premiere of her play MOM, HOW DID YOU MEET THE BEATLES? in the Minerva Theatre.
TUESDAY MAY 9
Slow and steady wins the theatrical race — especially when it’s one of the most nimble musicals in town. OPERATION MINCEMEAT began its life at the New Diorama, who commissioned, produced and premiered it from SpitLip in 2019 (the same theatre that was the birthplace for Ryan Calais Cameron’s FOR COLORED BOYS… that ended a sell-out run at the West End’s Apollo last weekend).
It then went on via several runs at Southwark Playhouse and then at Riverside Studios, between 2020 and 2022, to hone itself, and gain more fans, until now — with more production values added by its West End producers Avalon, who also wisely added director Rob Hastie and choreographer Jenny Arnold — it opened triumphantly at the West End’s Fortune Theatre tonight.
On that long journey from the fringe to the West End. it has been much enhanced but not lost any of its scrappy wit and inventiveness now that it comes with much added glitz. This phenomenally inventive and entirely surprising show is a palpable hit!
WEDNESDAY MAY 10
Tonight saw the opening of Amy Herzog’s 2011 tender and surprising play 4000 MILES in a new production at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre, directed by veteran Richard Eyre, at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre, with Eileen Atkins starring.
Previously produced in the UK at Bath Theatre Royal in 2013, when Sara Kestelman appeared in James Dacre’s production, Atkins was originally due to have done the play at the Old Vic in 2020, with Matthew Warchus directing her, alongside Timothée Chalamet as her grandson — but that production (which had sold out on the strength of the casting of Chalamet) was initially postponed by the pandemic, then entirely cancelled.
So it’s a pleasure that we finally get to see Atkins in a role that, at 88, has her just three years younger than the stated age of the character she is now playing. Waiting to play a role for over three years when you’re already in the second half of your eighties ups the ante considerably; but Atkins is in full command of the stage and script, playing a woman who is now repeatedly frustrated by her own grappling for the right words.
Atkins, long one of our most distinguished theatrical dames, is simply unassailable when it comes to finding the dignity and pathos in the everyday indignities of growing older; and Herzog’s infinitely touching play, based on her own grandmother’s life, perfectly showcases Atkins’s individuality and poise, and her timeless theatrical rigour and vigour.
Instead of the boffo box office appeal of Chalamet, she is newly joined by Sebastian Croft (pictured above left with Atkins), an English actor with real theatrical pedigree, and utter charm.
The pandemic saw many shows and performances lost — I’m still saddened by the closure, during previews, of the 2014 Donmar production of City of Angels that was transferring to the Garrick with two of its original stars Hadley Fraser and Rosalie Craig newly joined by Vanessa Williams, and has never resurfaced since. But this chance to see Atkins at last in a role she was announced for is to be seized. And it is a particular joy to see it at such close quarters in the studio Minerva instead of the much larger Old Vic.
THURSDAY MAY 11
Last night the closing notice finally went up for the long-faltering Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s BAD CINDERELLA; it will close on June 4, after having played 33 previews and 85 performances.
I’m surprised it took them so long to bow to the inevitable; last week, after the indignity of receiving no acknowledgement at all in the nominations announced for this year’s Tony Awards, it took just $326K — the lowest of any musical on Broadway, and second lowest only to The Thanksgiving Play.
With running costs for a major musical of this size at around $800-$900K, it would have been hemorrhaging money and adding to its losses every week.
But its closure will also mark a decisive end of an era for Lloyd Webber on Broadway, who for the first time in 43 years, won’t have a show (or two, three or four) playing there. In 2017, he matched Rodgers and Hammerstein’s record of having four shows playing simultaneously, when a revival of SUNSET BOULEVARD joined THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, SCHOOL OF ROCK and a revival of CATS there.
SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY
My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on
Broadway is here: https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-may-8-2023/
New entries added this week include a new West End production of LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT that will star Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson as James and Mary Tyrone respectively; and Richard Jones directing Sophie Treadwell’s MACHINAL at Bath’s Ustinov studio.
See you here on Monday
I will be back here on Monday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)