The Week in Review(s)
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 FEBRUARY 24
I headed to London yet again today — my fourth visit in five days — to catch a designated press preview of the transfer of Oklahoma! from the Young Vic to Wyndham’s, which has been radically reconfigured to accommodate it (you can see a picture in my column here https://shentonstage.com/shentonstage-daily-newsletter-for-monday-february-27/)
When I moved to West Sussex in the summer of 2021, it was part of my attempt to force myself to reduce my theatregoing, but this week I’ve failed! Having begun the week with two back-to-back first nights in London on Monday (for Trouble in Butetown at the Donmar) and Tuesday (for Romeo and Julie at the National), both of which I reviewed for Plays International here and here, I had Wednesday at home, but then I was back in town on Thursday to catch up with ENO’s The Rhinegold and Oklahoma! today (again, reviewing for Plays International; publication was embargoed till Tuesday 11.59pm, but you can now find my review here now.
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25
I stayed in London overnight last night as I have the weekly home meeting of my recovery fellowship meeting on a Saturday morning; and I scheduled a matinee at the new Brixton House that afternoon, to catch up with Tabby Lamb’s acclaimed Edinburgh hit HAPPY MEAL.
It was sad to see that its Edinburgh reputation didn’t follow it to London, with a sparsely attended matinee of less than 30 people floating around the vacant spaces of the main, steeply raked studio space. As ever, an Edinburgh hit doesn’t automatically translate into London audiences.
It was my first visit to Brixton House, a new cultural provision for the vibey south London district; but though there’s a lovely open bar at the front of the building, I was surprised at how little of an impression the theatre itself makes within it, an anonymous black box space that’s presumably designed for flexibility ut which has zero character.
The play, fortunately, has more, a sweet, sparky tale of two trans teenagers meeting on social media and finding some support in each other.
It’s a warm-hearted story of the sort of friendships we need to hear more about. It occurred to me that it is this sort of story that would be banned under Florida’s new laws banning the promotion of trans narratives, much as our own Tory government’s Clause 28 infamously prohibited local authorities from being able to “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”
We’ve fortunately moved forward from those days (though, as we’ve seen, the Tory party are still not beneath using culture wars to provoke their followers); but (parts of) America are still determined to turn the clock back. A friend of mine from New York who relocated to Florida a few years ago is about to come back home to Manhattan; he’s seen the direction of travel, and no longer feels safe there.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26
I binged today on the Broadway bulletin boards — now mainly Broadwayworld.com, since the previous market leader TalkinBroadway/AllThatChat has become increasingly depopulated — and found myself booking a flight to NYC for March 18-23. (Even though I’m already there for a more extended stay from April 12-24)
What prompted this sudden booking is that these earlier dates coincide with pre-opening press performances for the transfer of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s BAD CINDERELLA (opening officially on as March 23), as well as two of the shows I’m most eagerly anticipating this season: Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ (opening March 19) and SWEENEY TODD, with Josh Groban in the title role (opening March 26). So I’ll be able to see all of those, and some more.
The “more” includes the last performance of Disney’s latest film to stage adaptation — HERCULES at Paper Mill Playhouse: a transfer for the NT’s LOVE (to Park Avenue Armory), with its original cast including Nick Holder, a man I can literally say changed my life not once but twice, most recently by introducing me to my new personal fitness trainer; and the Broadway transfer of PARADE from last year’s season at City Center, which will have opened officially on March 16, before I get there, so I will catch again week later (I wrote about seeing it last November at CIty Center here).
MONDAY FEBRUARY 27
My husband and I have been binge-watching the entirety of THE WEST WING, Aaron Sorkin’s electrifying TV series that goes behind-the-scenes of a fictional White House Democratic party presidency, that ran from 1999 to 2006.
It began as a ‘lockdown’ project, but given that it runs to 154 episodes in all, we only just finally finished it tonight.
What a series it is, though. I’d say it’s probably the best TV series I’ve ever seen. Partly it’s the quality of the writing; but mainly the acting.
Allison Janney’s CJ Cregg — White House press secretary and later Chief of Staff — is one of the greatest TV performances I’ve ever seen: a character of complex depth, brilliant wit, and bracing intelligence, all exposed by an actor who has all those qualities in abundance.
When Janney starred in the original Broadway production of the musical 9 to 5 — yes, she sings, too! — I travelled to LA to catch its out-of-town try-out, in case the show didn’t make it to town. (It did, so I saw it — and her — again on Broadway).
I’ve enjoyed seeing many of her other regular co-stars onstage over the years — from Martin Sheen and Stockhard Channing (the President and First Lady) to staffers Rob Lowe, Richard Schiff and Kristin Chenoweth. Joshua Molina, who plays Will Bailey — initially a speechwriter, and then chief of staff to the Vice-President — is about to take over in Leopoldstadt on Broadway from March 14. I may have to see it again specially
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28
What shape will this year’s Edinburgh Festival take? In The Scotsman, arts correspondent Brian Ferguson has written today, “There is already plenty of intrigue – and a fair degree of uncertainty – as to how its cultural offer will shape up after three turbulent years. The only sure thing is that this summer will be a period of significant transition to a new future.”
The International Festival has a new director this year in Nicola Benedetti; the book festival director Nick Barley is stepping down after this year’s festival; and the film festival’s parent company collapsed last year, so it’s uncertain if and how it will proceed.
As for the Fringe, he writes: “The Fringe has been constantly in the headlines since last August – usually over concerns about the soaring cost of accommodation or the impact of new short-term letting laws.” But he is optimistic: “Warning noises about the Fringe shrinking by a third have been greeted with undiluted joy in some quarters. My own, perhaps rash, prediction is that demand to be in Edinburgh will see a bigger than ever Fringe programme this year.”
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The nominations for the Olivier Awards are announced today — the full list is here — on the same day that the deadline for voting in this year’s Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, that I used to chair, are due in. (My own votes for best new play have gone to A Little Life, which I saw in a Dutch-language version at the Edinburgh International Festival last summer but is now due in the West End later this month in English, and for best musical to Oklahoma!)
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There’s some highly welcome — and unexpected — Olivier recognition for the Palladium panto (for best entertainment or comedy play and for Mark Walters set design) and for Rob Madge’s My Son’s A Queer (also for best entertainment or comedy play); and more expected recognition of My Neighbour Totoro (which has nine nominations in all, the most of any single production), Standing at the Sky’s Edge, and the Young Vic’s Oklahoma! (ahead of its official West End transfer to Wyndham’s tonight), though from the latter the extraordinary Patrick Vaill (who plays Judy Fry) is unaccountably not nominated.
The National boasts 16 nominations for six productions and commercial producer Sonia Friedman has 17 nominations, including seven for Oklahoma! and six for To Kill a Mockingbird. 27 actors are first-time Olivier nominees.
The Awards will be presented at the Royal Albert Hall on April 2.
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The Guardian today has a wonderful obituary by Michael Coveney for the great Irving Wardle, who died, aged 93, on February 23. He was theatre critic of The Times for over a quarter of a century (1963-1989) and subsequently, less happily, for the Independent on Sunday (1990-1995, where he lost his job in a round of cost cutting that saw him replaced by a freelancer).
All through my University days I would head to the JCR every day to grab The Times to read him ahead of anyone; and then Jack Tinker on the Daily Mail and Michael Billington on The Guardian. Along with Robert Cushman on Sundays in The Observer, followed by Michael Ratcliffe, they were my go-to critics. I miss them all (though it’s always lovely to see Billington still out and about regularly).
Alas I never got to know Jack or Robert, but I got to know the quiet, unassuming and dignified Irving well. I was sorry, though, to have missed sitting alongside him at first nights.
But Coveney — who did — described his presence beautifully: “The force field of theatre collided with the nervous energy emanating from the always alert and concentrating Irv, whose oeuvre in the stalls was accompanied, oblivious to the first night cheeriness and back-slapping around him, by stony silence, a rummage in his tool bag for his unfilled pipe and its vigorously applied cleaner. As the inevitable delay to curtain-up continued, and the first night din increased, he would start cracking his knuckles – a terrible sound – which translated as “get me out of here” disapproval. On occasion, when this did not work, he would shout at the immobile curtain: “Shop!” Then, at last, the show, the dash to the office and, mirabile dictu, 900 beautifully crafted, sober-sided analytical words for late editions the next morning.”
WEDNESDAY MARCH 1
I finally caught up with Phaedra at the National this afternoon, having been away in New York when it first opened.
It’s interesting coming to a show late, especially one that has divided the critics so much — from two stars in The Guardian (albeit from the unreliable Arifa Akbar) and the i (Fiona Mountford) to five stars from The Observer (Susannah Clapp). I know whom amongst these critics I usually believe,
Simon Stone re-runs some of his effects from his blazing 2016 Yerma at the Young Vic, repurposing a classic play as a heightened modern day dilemma, in this case an MP and member of the shadow cabinet whose family life unravels when the now adult son of a former lover comes to visit (and she falls for him, as does her married daughter), and playing it out in an enclosed glass box onstage, from which all the speech is amplified over speakers.
As with Yerma, which featured an award-winning Billie Piper in one of the rawest performances I’ve ever seen onstage, PHAEDRA has a thrilling star turn at its centre, the magnetic and magnificent Janet McTeer in an exhibition of unfettered narcissism.
The production is like a female re-write of JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN — it even ends on a snowbound mountain too — as she faces a final reckoning. But McTeer is also surrounded by absolutely extraordinary work around her: that tremendous character actor Paul Chahidi plays her husband with a devoted patience that finally snaps, while Call My Agent star Assaad Bouab is the handsome son of her late lover.
As Susannah Clapp announced in her review: “Simon Stone’s Phaedra is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It is one way forward for the theatre. Amazing velocity of delivery; action reaching into all corners of the stage; an arc that goes, in under three hours, from hilarity to horror – inevitably.”
THURSDAY MARCH 2
Last night saw the West End opening night of a new production of Willy Russell’s 1986 play SHIRLEY VALENTINE, starring Sheridan Smith as Shirleiy Bradshaw, nee Valentine — an absolutely perfect match of star actor and role.
Willy Russell’s tender, funny play is about a 42-year-old woman, stuck in a rut with only her kitchen walls for company (whom she engages in conversation with, there being no other characters to speak to, until she breaks the fourth wall and speaks to us, as well), as she prepares her husband Joe’s tea for his arrival home. Except that today she’s fed the mince he usually expects on a Thursday night to the vegetarian-raised dog of the house she cleans, so he’s getting chips and eggs instead.
A crisis ensues — and the realisation that, at 42, she needs to liberate herself from her “unused” life. So she heads off to Greece for a two-week holiday, without telling him she’s going.
There, she discovers anew how to live her life to its fullest potential — and Smith gives her exactly that. There are few stars more immediately relatable to an audience; she’s lived her own life’s ups and downs very publicly, particularly in the pages of the tabloids, but is much beloved.
Now a mother herself, she brought her young son onstage to share her curtain call applause (and even wave at the audience) last night. A new chapter has opened in her life, and I really hope this is a turning point, just as Shirley Valentine reboots her life, too.
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-february-27/
See you here on Monday
I will be back on Thursday. 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)