I see a lot of new plays. Rarely do I see one as captivating as this. John Straiton’s quick-fire dialogue interspersed with poetic moments of escapism and convincing characterisation is highly compelling – and often funny.

It’s also a joy to see two very different actors working together as well as this. Colin Hurley is a veteran, highly experienced actor at the top of his game. George Rowlands graduates from drama school this month. They spark off, and grate against each other, with gritty realism and warm sensitivity.

Hurley’s Euston is a drunkard and drop out who hangs around a bit of wasteland. He’s grizzled, gnarled and angry as well as vulnerable, lonely, anxious and sometimes kind. When A level student, Simon turns up, fresh faced and intense in his school shirt and tie collecting bees in a jar and watching a swarm through binoculars there is mutual suspicion. Gradually Euston stops baiting Simon and they strike up a proper conversation. As confidence grows we see them telling each other and acting out stories. Both, it transpires, are racked with guilt: Simon because he fears he didn’t pay his late father enough attention and Euston because he’s witnessed a fatal incident outside the local kebab shop but failed to tell the police what he saw.

There is a great deal of lyricism and beauty in this powerful, intelligently directed play –  both verbal and physical. The bees, of course, stand for nature, order and hope.  And the simple set supports that depth: a small climbable scaffold at the back. Dumped junk such as an old washing machine, a plastic crate and a supermarket shopping basket is used to form tables, chairs and so on as needed.  And the small playing space of The Hope Theatre is an ideal venue for this play because the proximity of  the  actors makes for lots of impact and immediacy.

This is the Hope’s first post-pandemic show and it’s good to see it open again. I hope first, to see lots more work of this quality there very soon and second, that this interesting play will get lots of revivals.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-boy-with-the-bee-jar/

Warmest congratulations to writer/director Richard Brown and the SATG company for coming up with an ingenious show which allows a cast of eleven  to distance, entertain a reduced audience while remaining true to everything the organisation stands for – and doing justice to the wonderful Jacobean courtyard which is The George’s big USP.

Reuben Milne – always a charismatic actor – is directing a show and we start with him and his stage manager, Maggie Redgrave (a good foil) quoting from plays and joshing each other. Disinfectant, wipes, distancing jokes and the occasional Brexit allusion are all part of the fun.

Then we get extracts from lots of plays with linking discussion between the director and stage manager and sometimes the actors. Asides aside (sorry) most of it is pure Shakespeare. It’s often funny, sometimes moving and nearly always well done – a rare opportunity for talented non professional actors to demonstrate real versatility.

I really liked, for example, James Barwise’s Henry V from egging his troops into Harfleur to wooing Princess Katherine (Rebecca Gilbert) in terrible French. And he does a fine St Crispin speech, understated and warm. I usually have to swallow the lump in my throat at this point and this account of a troubled king who expects to lose the battle was no exception. We also see Barwise as a suitably sardonic Berowne and a Benedick visibly coming to terms with his own reservations – among other roles

Ashton Cull is roundly convincing as lusty, pragmatic Falstaff and a seriously hedonistic Sir Toby Belch while Georgie Bickerdike (who dies several times in this show) gives us a lovely Juliet and a resolute Cordelia. Simon Maylor tackles with aplomb one of the most difficult scenes in Shakespeare Lear’s final speech over the dead body of Cordelia (“Howl, howl, howl, howl, howl”) and it’s a good moment. He is also, among other roles, a rather good Petruchio – wrestling with his Katherine (Charlotte Maylor) while they banter angrily towards the cunilingus passage, a bawdy reference missed by most of the audience. These two, incidentally, are the only two actors in this show allowed physical touch because they are wife and husband in real life.

Lynne Livingstone is strong in several roles but her Scots account of Malvolia picking up the gulling letter is as good as I’ve ever seen it. Similarly, in a show characterised by multi-roling I especially liked Jordan White’s soppy Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Ryan Coetsee’s take on Lear’s Fool

Spliced into this jolly melange is Sonnet 119, spoken rather well by Rebecca Gilbert, a couple of pretty songs (music by Ian Favell), a neat dance, a whole cast quick fire send up of As You Like It and a witty touch: every time Don John is mentioned, the whole cast choruses “The Bastard”. And the linking script – mostly Milne and Redgrave on either side of the stage –  is great fun and includes lines such as “Cupid doesn’t do sensible – quite the opposite” and a corny, but still funny, visual pun on beer and bier.

The courtyard is configured sideways for this production with free standing audience chairs in groups and the action on a simple pop up stage along one edge – not a million miles, I suspect, from how Shakespeare and co would have performed on tour when driven out of London by plague. Not much changes, really.

I doubt that Animal Farm has ever been more current. With politicians busy dictating to the populace about the minutiae of everyday life while disobeying their own rules, never has “Do as I say and not as I do” seemed more apt and it’s all there in George Orwell’s seminal 1947 novel. You don’t even need to labour it, as Emmanuel Akwafo and Jonathan Kaufman, co-directors of this quite sparky 90 minute adaptation, understand very well. Nonetheless the parallels still bring you up short.

A cast of six play all the roles, using elbow crutches to suggest each animal’s four legs. Hats with ears – and convincing animal movement by actors – are used for characterisation but I must say the doubling is sometimes confusing. Accomplished actors use different voices and accents for characters though and that helps.

Anton Rice gives us a formidable military Snowball in a badged cap and then Moses the Raven flapping about preaching and speaking in a Jamaican accent. Evelyn Craven is powerful as the revolting, transparent, terrifying Napoleon and Emma Reade-Davies works hard and well doubling Old Major, Mollie and Squealer in three different voices. Christopher Lucas’s solid, indefatigable (almost) Boxer is quite moving and I really liked Hjalmar Norden’s take on the common sensible, plain speaking realistic donkey, Benjamin who steadfastly refuses to accept the rewriting of history. Georgia Jackson, meanwhile, brings all the required decency and delicacy to Clover.

There are, however, some problems with this production. The playing space on Mayow Park’s old bowling green is quite “theatrical” with a balustraded walk way at its back but it is very spacious. This means that the actors are often a long way from each other and seem to have difficulty hearing each other at times. At one point, at the performance I saw, the whole thing ground to a halt because a cue had been missed. Of course these professional actors quickly pushed it back on track but it felt awkward. Moreover there are issues with radio mics. In some cases – most notably Hjalmar Norden – the mics seemed hardly to be working at all although for other actors they were fine. It meant that too much of what Norden said was lost while mics worn by some of the others faded in and out.

I’m also puzzled as to why Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony was chosen to highlight Old Major’s speech at the beginning and again at the end. Peer Gynt for the animals’ post revolution  euphoria is a bit odd too.

Michael Pennington is, as always, a joy to watch and listen to. One of at least three fine one man shows he has toured and revived many times, Anton Chekhov dates from 1984. It’s a glorious monologue in which he depicts the aging Chekhov, reflecting on his life.

Of course it’s autobiographical. We learn that Chekhov trained as a doctor but wrote as a sideline. Even when he’d made enough money to buy an estate in the Crimea he still practised medicine – the only doctor available for “his peasants”. He talks of his boyhood and his grandfather who was a serf. There’s a horrifying, chilling account of witnessing a flogging when he spent some time in a Siberian prison camp observing and writing a report. And he’s witty about people and life – and his own plays which he claims not to like much. He wrote 600 stories too.

What I really like about Pennington in this role is the mellifluous crispness of his voice and the accomplished way – dressed as a shambling old man – he manages mood changes including the occasional youthful grin at some memory. Often such flashes relate to women Chekhov has known – in every sense. It’s odd though that Pennington has a book in his hand which he uses as a prop as he leads us to imagine that Chekhov is reading his own work. In fact this is the play script which he is constantly referring to. It doesn’t matter too much but at times we could do with a bit more eye contact. I find it hard to believe that this fine actor has always done Anton Chekhov like this and wonder whether, now 78, he isn’t finding it quite as easy to remember lines as he once did. Not that it detracted from my enjoyment. It’s still a masterclass in measured, intelligent acting.

This production is part of the Footprints Festival with which Jermyn Street Theatre has feistily re-opened. Hats off to Tom Littler and Penny Horner for the way they manage their reduced socially distanced audience with cheerful, rueful good humour. The serving of interval drinks to seats is almost as entertaining as the show.