This was the 140th performance of Mark Farrelly’s moving, hilarious sensitive 2013 play about that most flamboyant of gay men: Quentin Crisp.  I liked Farrelly’s two hander Howerd’s End last year and admired his acting, but this post-Pandemic revival of the earlier show is glitteringly good.

Crisp, of course, beneath the outrageous banter and the witty one liners was a deeply troubled man never allowed to be himself. And it’s that poignant  ambivalence which Farrelly nails exquisitely both as playwright and actor.

The play – modelled on the shows Crisp did in New York once he’d become famous – falls into two halves. At first Crisp acts out and tells the story of his own life, including his brief career as a rent boy, living in a squalid (“after four years the dust doesn’t get any worse”) bedsit and, always dressed like a bird of paradise, being the victim of frequent homophobic attacks. Farrelly has the young Crisp’s voice perfectly – measured, effeminate and rising to a sing song high note in almost every sentence. He also hops briefly in and out of other roles when he’s describing an incident.

Then the lights dim and Farrelly changes into more formal, louche but fairly conventional clothes and a grey wig. Now we’re in New York and the older Crisp is entertaining an audience and answering questions with, by how, well practised wicked punchlines. The voice has matured and is slightly more even now. The care with which Farrelly has observed these subtleties is awe inspiring.

Watching him is like being present at an acting masterclass not least because he has to work the audience sometimes with a moment of ad-libbing because at Crazy Coqs at Zedel Brasserie where I caught this show, the audience is seated very close at tables, cabaret style. There was also an audience incident at the performance I attended which Farrelly dealt with expertly before moving on.

Five stars indicates that this is an unmissable show of its type. Of course it’s very different from, say, South Pacific at Chichester or a full blooded Shakespeare interpretation by the RSC but, compared with the many one person, low budget shows I have seen, Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope is extraordinary.

This review was first published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/quentin-crisp-naked-hope/

Chichester Festival Theatre’s first co-production with Lyric Hammersmith is arresting. However many times you see Martin McDonagh’s 1996 play about a mother and daughter viciously fighting their corners at home against a background of Ireland still bleeding into Britain and America, it packs a huge dramatic punch. As a gut-tearing tragedy it’s up there with the top ten.

In this production director Rachel O’Riordan makes fine use of the Minerva’s square-ish playing space so that the action moves seamlessly from upstage to downstage with little sense of fourth wall – and the set by Good Teeth Theatre  connotes a shabby, lonely, small town, 1990s Irish home which is anything but cosy. Even a newcomer to the play will sense that the stove and poker aren’t being flagged up for nothing.

The emotions within that home are angry, violent, frustrated – and hopeless. We laugh at the truth of all that and at the blunt way the women speak to each other. The tragedy lies in the fact that – briefly – there is hope. Then it is snatched away.

There’s a great deal of silent communication in this production. Ingrid Craigie as Mag can tell us almost everything we need to know just by glaring or simpering. As an elderly, semi-invalid mother she should invite sympathy. Actually she is a cunning, manipulative, selfish liar. She doesn’t deserve her fate but it’s hard to feel too sorry for her and Craigie, hobbling about – and demonstrably able to do more for herself than she does because she’s lazy –  gets that whining ambivalence perfectly. And you can almost smell her oft-mentioned urine infection.

Orla Fitzgerald as Maureen, the long suffering furious carer/daughter, speaks volumes through her silences by banging cups of tea and bowls of lumpy Complan down for her mother. She ensures that we really do feel for her plight. These women may be mother and daughter but there is no love, affection or tenderness between them and that’s partly where the shock of this play comes from. It’s “unnatural” but oh so recognisable when two people are thrust into a situation like this and each of them has needs which the other can’t possibly meet.

There’s a lovely performance from Adam Best as the gentle, caring, not particularly confident Pete. The scene in which he listens to  Maureen poignantly explaining her feelings shows him really hearing her and it’s very moving. His letter writing soliloquy is deeply touching too. Kwaku Fortune, as Pete’s swaggering impatient, intolerant younger brother makes the best of his scenes with both the women and ensures that we see them from a different perspective. It’s a multifaceted play and this production stresses that.

Of course, the accents and dialectal syntax are strongly Irish which makes for occasional audibility problems partly because  the shape of the playing space actors are sometimes facing away from some of the audience. Occasionally it is difficult to tune into the pitch of the voices but that’s a minor gripe in what is, otherwise, a meaty interpretation of a powerful  play.

We’re very clearly in Italy – with espresso coffee cups, red wine street noise, a swimming pool and some very stylish clothes. And to signal that it’s the 1930s we start with soldiers marching under an Italian Fascist flag. But it’s not a gimmicky production. The textual cuts are just enough to keep it fast paced and almost every actor speaks the lines with clarity and conviction so that the story telling is as clear as I’ve ever seen it.

The Merchant of Venice is a widely misunderstood play which many people dismiss as racist. In fact it is a play about racism and therefore arrestingly topical. Moreover, it’s always a treat to come back to in my view because it’s one of the best structured of all Shakespeare’s plays.

There is a much to like in Tower Theatre Company’s take on it. Nisha Emich’s Portia is reminiscent of Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary in Downton abbey, darting from bitchiness to warmth and from total command in the trial scene to her return to Belmont and union with the man she fancies. It’s a very plausible performance.

Ian Recordon resists all temptation to present Shylock as a stereotypical villainous Jew. Instead we get a reasonable, be-suited old man trying to make a living in a city which loathes him and his kind. One feels faintly surprised at his sense of humour in coming up with the bond idea in the first place. It is only after the appalling desertion of scheming thieving Jessica (Cymbre Barnes – gently good) that the worm turns and he becomes vindictive  for which no reasonable person could blame him.

I liked Nick Hall’s take on Antonio too – a world weary Merchant and “tainted wether of the flock”. Yes, he’s probably a gay man in love with Bassanio but director David Taylor and his cast don’t stress that especially. We feel his pain strongly at the end as the three couples smooch-dance into the dawn and he is left alone.

Other noteworthy performances include Rahul Singh, a natural comedian I suspect, who coaxes every possible laugh out of Launcelot Gobbo. Dale Robertson – looking very much like Freddie Fox – brings an appropriately untrustworthy dimension to Bassanio and Alison du Cane and Fiona Costello are good value as Solania and Salania enjoying Shylock’s predicament and sharing their gossipy tabloidesque headlines with each other and the audience.

Peter Foster’s set is neat too: based on two rows of moveable boxes which look vaguely like weathered marble and can be pushed round the stage to suggest almost anything. And what a good idea to turn the caskets into a mechanical musical device so that they teeter forward each born by a black clad figure.

I enjoyed this show for 139 minutes categorising it in my mind as a very decent, watchable show of its type – and therefore three star. It was the final 15 seconds which won it the fourth star. I won’t spoil it here but it hit me right between the eyes and gave me something to reflect on all the way home.