First staged at Chichester in 2014 with a transfer to the west End, Taken at Midnight tells the true story of a young German lawyer named Hans Litten. He is arrested because he has defiantly defended communist workers against fabricated charges of violence. In one such case, in 1931, he subpoenaed Hitler and ridiculed him in court and there is a strong sense of personal revenge being enacted. The story is told through the eyes of his mother, Irmgard Litten.

Robert O’Neill’s performance as Litten is excellent. Having just been arrested he is initially strained but determined. He becomes ever more distressed – both physically and mentally – as he is transferred from concentration camp to camp and relentlessly beaten and tortured.  It’s hard to watch. Then finally we get a powerful reprise of the court scene back in 1931 as, still in “striped pyjamas” we see his verbal brilliance, panache and courage.

Heather Wain as Irmgard never feels quite real although I saw this play on its opening night (no previews in non-pro theatre) so nerves were probably biting. She speaks, moves and gestures over carefully – you can almost see and hear Pauline Armour’s directorial notes. Of course her character is under huge strain but we also need to be convinced by her. She seems slightly more natural  and less wooden in the second half and there’s a powerful scene with her son towards the end when, finally, I believed in her.

Strong support roles include  Geoff Dillon as the cocky, intelligent Erich Muhsam, a communist imprisoned with Litten who has, eventually, more integrity than instinct for self preservation.  Michael Martin as Carl von Ossietsky, a newspaper editor and another fellow prisoner, finds intelligence and truth in his character and I liked Howie Ripley’s work as Gustav who helps Litten sort some library books – really nice rapport between the two actors in this scene. This is, incidentally, a good play for an amateur company because there are a number of smallish but meaty roles which can be rehearsed in discrete scenes.

Armour makes good use of Bromley Little Theatre’s small playing space which is more or less split into two (set design by Jan Greenhough) with the relatively comfortable outside world occupied by Irmgard and the people she talks to stage right, while stage left represents the squalid horror of a series of prisons.

The story telling is pretty clear although I was puzzled by Fritz Litten (Michael Martin – charismatic), father of Hans Litten. He comes and goes, apparently not living with Irmgard. Are they separated? Is he dead? He’s fully Jewish, although he has converted – which is why they declare Hans Litten Jewish despite his professed atheism. Why is Litten senior, a university professor, not arrested too?

It is an inspired, sobering idea to have archive footage of the real Irmgard, who escaped to Britain, talking to a British journalist in the foyer at the end of the play.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/taken-at-midnight-4/

Michael Morpurgo’s gut wrenching 2003 novella bears all the hall marks of the things he cares deeply about – injustice and the futility of war for example. There’s even a tiny subplot about a redundant, condemned foxhound – another of Morpurgo’s issues. I’ve seen Simon Reade’s masterly adaptation before but last time it was done by an ensemble of 16 who formed National Youth Theatre Rep company in 2014 and there have been other productions before and since. This new production uses a very busy, hardworking cast of just six.

And in the performance I saw – a schools matinee with lots of excited Year 7s – the cast were working even harder than usual because they’d had Covid-positive problems immediately before it. Assistant director Imogen Beech gamely read in for Emma Manton and Tom Kanji took on an additional role. John Dougall should have had an extra round of applause. Not only is he on and off stage continually in eleven different roles anyway but at this particular performance he had to take a twelfth one. His accent work and ability to change both clothes and manner in an instant are fortunately very accomplished.

The story – widely read in schools – is about a young volunteer in World War One who is shot for cowardice. We sit with him (although there’s a twist just before the end because there are two Private Peacefuls – brothers from Devon) all night as the minutes tick away before dawn. He remembers his childhood, the death of his father, his special needs brother  and his common sensible mother who keeps the family going even when they’re threatened with eviction. Then there’s Molly, the local girl who is a good friend to both Charlie and Tommo.

Lucy Sierra’s craggy set with slatey side walks either side of a versatile drop and an adaptable horizon at the back becomes a river where the young people meet in sunny Edwardian Devon and then morphs into the horrors of the trenches. Dan Balfour’s sound design really points up the contrast too –  the immersive sound of shells is very loud and pretty convincing.

Daniel Rainford finds all the right boyishness maturing into an agonised young adult, for Tommo and Daniel Boyd gives Charlie  plenty of strength and dignity, especially at the end.

Frank Moon’s folksy songs highlight the muscular innocence of rural Devon and I liked the way director Elle While occasionally has her cast float into short physical theatre sequences with music because it adds to the idea that these are innocent young people – full of dreams for their future – who should never have been at war. And never let it be forgotten that, in real life, Earl Haig gave the order for over three hundred men to be shot for “cowardice”. Today we’d recognise their behaviour as extreme traumatic stress disorder. I’m glad all those 11 and 12 year olds I saw this with are learning about that atrocity though their reading and through drama.

It’s an unremarkable but decent account of the Scottish Play with its famous witchery, regicide, paranoia, somnambulism and, ultimate good-guy coup. And because it’s part of the long standing Playing Shakespeare With Deutsche Bank project which provides free tickets for state school groups from London and Birmingham it is neatly pared down to 90 minutes to accommodate the constraints of the school day and, perhaps, the concentration spans of young audience members.

Music, directed by Louise Anna Duggan (co-composed by her and Zands Duggan) and played four musicians in the gallery, adds a lot of traditional atmosphere to this Macbeth. It uses muscular percussion, brass and, evocatively, sheets of metal which are menacingly shaken or struck to produce some pretty sinister sounds. Music links scenes and provides effects such as underscoring tension or fear and providing required sounds such as bells. I often find the music gratuitous in  productions at Shakespeare’s. Here it is totally integrated and appropriate.

Sarah Frankcom’s direction ensures that the story telling is clear and the action makes imaginative use of the thrust extension and walkway built across the Globe’s yard (designer Rose Revitt).

The Witches, reminiscent of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, are dressed in brown robes, wear antlered helmets and carry twiggy staffs. Their incantations are gloriously catchily rhythmic.

The cast of nine use a range of accents including  very broad West Midlands for Duncan (Chris Nayak). In many cases I suspect actors have simply been directed to use their own native accents in the interests of inclusivity and conveying the message that Shakespeare’s words can be spoken by anyone from anywhere. It’s a worthy aim but it sometimes leads to lack of verbal clarity. Unfamiliar accents tend to be pitched so that some syllables are lost to some unattuned ears. It’s likely to be an unpopular thought but nothing is clearer nor more universally understood than RP.

Fiston Barek has a certain charisma as Macbeth. I had to wipe my eyes when he got to “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. I was also impressed with how, with intelligent timing,  he dealt with the unaccountable laugh the preceding line “ The Queen, my lord is dead” triggered from the young audience. Hannah Azuonye is an elegant Lady Macbeth although she failed to make me believe in her scheming passion. There’s some strong work from Beth Hinton-Lever as a witch doubling as Porter, Seyton and various takes on “Sirrah”. She scampers round the stage with urgent energy but at other times conveys real stillness.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/macbeth-20/

This show is an epic in the same way that Ben Hur or Doctor Zhivago are. It’s about huge numbers of people – whole races – and their movements during and after the war. I was impressed by Andrea Levy’s novel when it was first published in 2004 but it didn’t give me the sense of vastness that Helen Edmundson’s adaptation does with its cast of twenty-nine.

And that is partly down to director Rufus Norris’s use of the Olivier Theatre’s capacious playing space, the revolve and Jon Driscoll’s projections onto the arc-shaped back screen which provides, among many other things, archive footage, Jamaican jungle, docks, ocean and late 1940s cinema. It is all on a grandiloquent scale.

Hortense (Leonie Elliott) grows up in a comfortable if authoritarian family, not quite her own, in Jamaica and becomes a teacher. Eventually, in a bid to escape to what promises to be a better life, she marries Gilbert (Leemore Marrett Jnr). He leaves for England on MV Empire Windrush and she follows a few months later. Meanwhile, in England, Queenie (Mirren Mack) has got away from her parents’ Lincolnshire farm and butchery to London where she meets and marries Bernard Bly (Martin Hutson) who has a house in Notting Hill. It is to Queenie’s run down house that Gilbert takes Hortense to live in one squalid room. This is a very long show. It takes nearly two hours to get them to England. The second act explores the difficulties and racism faced in Austerity Britain alongside a pretty compelling plot with unexpected twists.

The contrast between the colourful luxuriance and drama of Jamaica (splendid hurricane) and the dull greyness of London with its ration books, gas meters and grubbiness is neatly pointed up not least by the outrage Elliott finds in Hortense. She can communicate horror, distaste and disappointment merely by turning her head a millimetre and raising her chin and she has a very elegant way of holding herself as she struggles to rise above her many problems. She can be funny too. There’s an enjoyable scene with Mack towards the end: high drama with a happy outcome. She can also be warm and poised. It’s an outstanding performance in a massive role – she’s rarely off stage in three and a quarter hours.

Marrett Jr does an impressive job too. He starts as a bit of a jokey good time lad but his character gradually develops and matures in England – dealing with the abuse (every foul word you can think of is thrown at him) and trying to be realistic. The dignified speech he makes when, at last, he  stands up to ghastly Bernard is as fine as Shakespeare’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” and you can see why Hortense finally falls in love with him. I would have done too.

This show, with its big cast, is very much an ensemble piece with lots of walking in shadows upstage to evoke a sense of big crowds. Dozens of minor roles emerge from this. Rachel Lumberg, for instance, does an lovely Miss Todd – the middle class neighbour who is appalled by Queenie’s having “coloured” lodgers and  David Fielder is a convincing shell shocked Arthur, Bernard’s father.

In the early scenes two children (three are cast for each role) play little Hortense and little Michael,  Hortense’s cousin. The two at the performance I saw were, unfortunately not very clear or audible.

This show is moving anyway but two things add to its poignancy. First Andrea Levy based Hortense and Gilbert partly on the experiences of her own parents. Second, it is sad that Andrea Levy, although she was fully involved almost to the end, died of cancer a few months before Small Island was first staged in 2019.

Small Island is the sort of show that – even when you see as much theatre as I do – gets under your skin and leaves you in reflective mood.

All photos: Ellie Kurttz Photography

Co-produced by Little Angel Theatre and Royal and Derngate, Northampton in association wit Watershed Productions.

Based on Julia Donaldson’s book, illustrated by Lydia Monks, this rhyming story gives us a mermaid who is captured by a self interested Circus Master (Gilbert Taylor) and made to perform in his circus. The Singing Mermaid –  beautiful puppets designed by Lyndie Wright who founded Little Angel Theatre with her late husband, John Wright – is set mostly there, in said circus.

The best sequence is the opening one in which we see the mermaid in her natural environment amongst her fellow sea creatures. The three puppeteer/actors –  Ruth Calkin and Heidi Goldsmith with Taylor  at the performance I saw – bring the cockles and mussels, fish, cetaceans and so on evocatively to life  The salty, dancing crabs are my favourite and the jelly fish are rather fun.

Then we get a whole series of circus acts – nicely puppeted and thoughtfully directed. Eventually we see the poor mermaid, so miserable, that she can’t sing properly for her circus audience.

Barb Jungr’s attractive music turns it into gentle un-micd musical theatre: songs with dialogue. Her melodies are spare, often based on simple triads and a limited range of notes but every bar adds to the story. The  three performers sing together well especially when they’re in harmony although the money song owes rather too much to  Les Mis’s Master of the House – even the rhythm is almost the same.

Most of the young children who saw it alongside me were fully engaged although there was a bit of restiveness towards the end. Arguably, with an hour’s run time, the piece is ten minutes too long.

Charm, theatrical delight and entrancing work for young children is Little Angel Theatre’s trade mark and almost every show I’ve seen there over many years has been enjoyable although sometimes it can feel a bit samey. Good to see a show in the main house, incidentally. The nearby Studios are, I know, very practical but they’re much less atmospheric.

Judi Dench is on record as saying that she loathes The Merchant of Venice because none of its characters is likeable. I thought a lot about that as I watched Abigail Graham’s take on it because it’s clearly her point of view too.

It’s a modern setting with mobile phones and briefcases. Carnival in this version of Venice means sinister masks and a great deal of boozy hooliganism. And in amongst all this we have Adrian Schiller’s Shylock quietly trying, against a background of hideously aggressive anti-semitism, to make an honest living. It’s a nuanced performance which presents a man who is calm, dignified and reasonable – until he is pushed right over the edge by his daughter’s perfidy and the hatred of everyone he speaks to.

Against that Sophie Melville gives us the nastiest Portia, ever. She refuses to shake Daniel Bowerwank’s hand as Lorenzo because he is black. She belittles Jessica. She is furious with Nerissa  (Tripti Tripuraneni) for hooking up with Gratiano. She exploits her sexuality and she sadistically enjoys every moment of humiliating Shylock in court. She is so viciously rude, racist and self-interestedly loathsome that her sudden simpering passion for Michael Marcus’s overtly gay, money-grubbing Bassanio doesn’t ring true at all.

Michael Gould’s Antonio is utterly foul too. Apart from the physical affection he shows Bassanio he is relentlessly hostile in a distinctly National Front sort of way, growling abuse even as he begs a favour from Shylock. At the trial scene when he’s stripped to the waist awaiting the knife I felt no sympathy for him at all as he continues, even then, to goad Shylock by repeatedly muttering menacingly under his breath “come on, kill a Christian” as Shylock hesitates, knife shaking in his hand.

Every director makes cuts in Shakespeare partly to heighten some chosen emphasis and partly to keep the show to a manageable length. Graham has gone much far further than most. This show which runs just over two hours opens with the defection of Launcelot Gobbo (Aaron Vodovoz) to Bassanio’s employ from Shylock’s – that, for the record, is Act 2, scene 2. Eventually it doubles back to a very irascible Antonio lamenting his sadness but it doesn’t make narrative sense played in this order. Moreover, Graham cuts the whole of Act 5 – the usual return to Belmont and the business with mistaken identity and rings has gone completely.

Instead the play closes at the end of the Trial scene which works reasonably well with Lorenzo and Jessica present (despite their having been instructed to keep the home fires burning at Belmont but we’ll let that pass) so that she can have a surreally staged moment of repentant reconciliation with her father. It’s an interesting idea but a bit abrupt – nothing in her previous behaviour has hinted at this.

It’s a production full of pros and cons, It has its moments but it also  paddles in the tempting shallows of gimmickry. The four piece jazz band plays well enough but why is it there? Setting up the casket lottery as showy TV game show is a shallow for-laughs travesty. So is the silly wedding dance. And is the perpetual booziness of Venice’s young men supposed to excuse or explain their appalling behaviour? Why is Antonio coughing in a wheelchair at the trial scene? Every directorial decision should add something to the play. If it doesn’t then don’t do it.

I had similar reservations about the recent Measure for Measure and Hamlet in this venue.  It’s almost as if Shakespeare’s Globe no longer trusts its eponymous playwright to work effectively unless his work is cheapened and dumbed down for a 21^st century audience. Yes, of course there are many ways of staging these plays and stressing the topicality but if you go too far you’re hoist with your own petard, as the Big Man said himself, because what’s left is not the play he wrote.

First published by Sardines.

All photos: Pamela Raith Photography

Don’t go to this show for light entertainment or  – heaven forfend – many laughs. David Mamet’s rather laboured 1977 play is seriously, very seriously, intense.

Nick’s family have a holiday home in remote, rural Michigan. He has invited his girlfriend, Ruth, to spend some time there with him. But all is not as well as it initially seems. He is searching for lasting meaning in life in a country whose icons tend to be shortlived. She is intrigued by the romance of the vast countryside and questions everything.  In different ways both are searching for a narrative anchor. The sexual chemistry between them is powerful but brittle. Ninety minutes (no interval) later each is broken, in every sense, but may – just possibly – now be able to continue their respective stories together.

Francesca Carpanini and Sam Frenchum both turn out good performances. Carpanini endows Ruth with cheerful, intelligent innocence seasoned with strength and Frenchum’s Nick has plenty of troubled, sometimes appalled, decency.

Director Russell Bolam has made imaginative use of the square, in-the-round, playing space so that sometimes the actors are within arm’s length of the audience and it all feels very immediate as we ricochet, sometimes exhaustingly, from passion to anger to insouciance to speculativeness.

Andrew Lamble’s simple set gives us a spacious upstage back porch with an outdoor sofa and suggests that the rest of the space is the land beyond the house. Bethany Gupwell’s lighting subtly suggests changing times of day and a rather good storm with lightning, which rakes up the tension.

A shout out too to Haruka Kuroda, fight and intimacy coordinator. There’s some pretty graphic sex in this play which is quite hard to do convincingly when your audience is so close. Kuroda has done a fine job with these two actors who really do seem to be doing a lot of invasive touching – it’s interesting acting. And the scenes in which they actually attack each other manage to horrify, even as another part of your brain is wondering how long they had to rehearse it for.

So yes, it’s a decent piece of theatre with plenty to commend it but the exhausting, insular navel-gazing grates in 2022 and I wasn’t sorry when it was over.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-woods/