Press ESC or click the X to close this window

King Lear (Susan Elkin reviews)

Rarely have I felt so elatedly moved and shell shocked at the end of a performance as I did when Jonathan Mumby’s modern dress King Lear finally reached its devastating conclusion. Reflecting on the play and the glitteringly good work in this top-notch production kept me fizzing and wide awake for the whole of the late, long drive home afterwards.

We’re in Britain (mentioned 32 times in the play) and it’s highlighted by flags, soldiers and a rather magnificent, patriotic song (by Ben and Max Ringham) for the state scene at the beginning backed by a massive Stalin-esque photograph of the King. This is a totalitarian Britain, after all and Mumby is keen to highlight topical resonances. They were there in early Jacobean Britain as it struggled to unite in a shaky post-reformation era and they’re there now as we wrestle with what Fergal Keane in his programme essay calls “raging hurricanes, the dysfunctional Trump presidency, and the nuclear stand-off in the Pacific.”

Ian McKellen’s Lear is ill from the moment he first appears with his uncertain, slightly tottery gait. He is in pain and his speech is spat out as if in recovery from a small stroke. It is impeccably observed. So is the capricious mood switching and anger often stressed by the shock and fear shown by everyone around him. And that makes the descent into the storm – a lot of water on the red carpeted circular playing space designed by Paul Wills – even more shocking. The water spreads like an ugly, ever changing amoeba-like map and soon McKellen and his bespectacled, banjo playing Fool (Phil Daniels – good) are ankle deep in it. The wet red floor then does a great job as a butchery with carcases hanging up where the blinding of Gloucester (Danny Webb – moving) is staged at the end of the long, emotionally exhausting first half ensuring that you really do need an interval drink.

The Minerva is a small space. This is McKellen’s fourth outing in the play and his second take on the title role. This, though, is a very different style of production from the large-scale one he did for the RSC in 2007 which toured worldwide often playing in very large venues. The intimacy of the Minerva enhances the horror of the family breakdown. Every word is clear, every line is coherent and the play often sounds as if it had been written last week. The wider family of the kingdom is breaking down too as, suddenly there is no leadership. And on an individual level McKellen gives one of the most insightful portrayals of dementia – “madness” – that I have ever seen, one minute incisive and the next dependent. You feel both pity and despair as you watch him self destructing. The “wheel of fire” reconciliation scene with Cordelia (Tamara Lawrance, fresh faced and full of righteous naivety and then mature and loving) takes place in a hospital where briefly he has some hope for the future. It stuns. So does his final scene with Cordelia’s body. Standing ovations are overdone and therefore devalued by theatre audiences these days in my view, but McKellen fully deserves one (and got it on Press Night) for this performance.

Amongst the strong supporting cast Sinead Cussack is splendid as Countess of Kent. She gets exactly the right perceptiveness for this worried, decent woman who then disguises herself as an Irishman in a beany during the long exile. Kirsty Bushell is fabulous as Regan, too. She teeters about giggling manically and is clearly sexually aroused at the blinding of Gloucester. It’s unforgettably nasty and a fine piece of acting. Genius touch, too, to present Lear’s “an hundred knights” as a sort of rowdy on-site Bullingdon club.

I’d like to say “Don’t miss it.” Although tickets were limited throughout the run to two per purchase it is now fully sold out – returns only. Bad luck, folks.

First published by Sardines – http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-King%20Lear&reviewsID=2986

The Kings Head Theatre,  2 October 2017

Puccini’s 1887 masterpiece was, of course, meant for the big stage, initially at Theatre de la Porte at St Martin in Paris but, 140 years later, it really does work in an intimate, almost televisual space too.

The Kings Head theatre, Islington, London’s first modern times pub theatre and open since 1970, accommodates this bijoux, two hour, four hander version very naturally. We – just over a hundred of us – are seated in the round and some of the action spills into the audience space. The rough brick walls and subterranean atmosphere (although actually the venue’s at street level) intensifies the drama. This production, which sets the action in Paris under the Nazis, is in very accessible, modern English by Becca Marriott who sings Tosca and Adam Spreadbury Maher who also directs.

There is top notch work from Michael Georgiou as Scarpia (role sharing with Przemyslaw Baranek at other performances). He is depicted as a plain clothes, senior Nazi. He is good looking, reasonable, plausible and ruthless – with a fine baritone voice – as he sends Cavaradain, also known as Marius, to torture and tries to trick Tosca into having sex with him.  In the act 2 scene in which she sings Vissi d’arte (with terrific passion and beautiful vocal control), translated here as “Love and music are all I live for”, he circles her, touching and tasting her. It’s rivetingly revolting and theatrically very effective. Georgiou is an actor who can communicate simply by twitching his lips.

Becca Marriott has an intensely expressive face and brings real depth to the hapless Tosca. Roger Paterson (role sharing with Martin Lindau) finds plenty of range in the tenor Marius although I found his voice practical and accurate rather than attractive. Thomas Isherwood, on the other hand, as Jacob Cohen and as Scarpia’s side kick (the only role which is not shared) has a splendid bass voice which resonates with great power in this tiny space – especially when he’s in duet with Georgiou. He too is a strong actor, particularly as the terrified Cohen.

All in all it’s a well thought out, scaled down take on a familiar piece. And it’s fascinating to hear Pucinni’s big score successfully arranged for a three piece orchestra: piano, clarinet/bass clarinet and cello. Between them these three instruments catch every musical nuance.

This Tosca is part of an opera tradition at The Kings Head although, in a sense, it will be the last because Kings Head Theatre is moving out of the pub into nearby purpose built premises next year. Meanwhile its 2016 production of La Boheme is to be revived at Trafalgar Studios from 6 December 2017 to 6 January 2018.

First published by Lark Reviews http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Not so long ago, My Loved One and I – we are children of the cap-doffing 1950s after all – would leap to our feet to allow an elderly or infirm person to sit down. We’d help people in wheelchairs through doors and parents with buggies on and off trains. They were in need. We weren’t. Now the boot is firmly on the other foot and I’m increasingly conscious of “the kindness of strangers” as Tennessee Williams put it. It’s yet another position which Ms Bloody Alzheimer’s has forced  us into.

Take the big, brawny Brit who was immediately behind us as we all disembarked an EasyJet flight last week from the rear of the aircraft down steps onto the tarmac. I was juggling two quite cumbersome cabin bags and the man heard me say to MLO “I’ll go in front. Hang on that rail, now”. He stepped alongside and said with exquisite courtesy and kindness: “Would you like to hold my arm with your other hand, Sir? Thus MLO was assisted to ground level quite regally.

Almost daily,  people watch me levering him on to buses, trains and tubes with one hand. They then obligingly vacate the nearest seat so that I can pop, swing or push MLO into it. There isn’t supposed to be anything wrong with him physically but he has quickly become quite shaky on his feet and is certainly not safe trying to keep himself upright on a crowded rocking vehicle. I suppose that as brain cells become diseased or get knocked out it affects every part of the body and takes different Alzheimer’s patients in different ways.  Most people, when we’re out and about, can see the situation immediately so they do what they can to help.

When we went to see Dunkirk recently in a cinema we hadn’t been to before, MLO – as always – needed the loo halfway through the film. He took himself off and I thought nothing of it. I don’t (yet?) need to escort him to the lavatory. Or so I thought. Well,  I was absorbed in the film and didn’t actually notice how long he’d been gone until he arrived back at his seat next to me, led by another paying punter who’d happened to pop out at the same time. Of course, MLO had got lost in the highways and byways of an old cinema, converted to multiscreen with lots of samey stairs, doors and foyers. It’s a good job, come to think of it, that he remembered the name of the film we were watching. Otherwise he and Ms A could have ended up in Spiderman: Homecoming. I wonder if he’d have noticed the difference? Anyway it was another example of a nice chap spotting a problem and dealing with it without a fuss. He even waved cheerily to MLO at the end of the film.

I think, if I’m honest (and golly, how I try to be – euphemisms and dissembling just don’t help) that MLO must actually look much more frail and seem vaguer than he or I realise. Even close family and friends are used to it and we’re all too close to it to be able to monitor the downward progress accurately. Complete strangers, on the other hand, can instantly see a poor old codger who may need help.  That’s all they see too. They’re not superimposing it on a remembered image of how he used to be or any sort of presumption about how he is now. That’s why people are generally very patient with him in shops and cafes when it takes him ages to find and count out the right money. Sometimes he can’t explain what he means, realises he’s “lost”, smiles and hopes someone will bail him out – and usually somebody does. Thanks, folks.

We hear a great deal about terror, ruthlessness and violence in the world these days. I’m writing this just a couple of days after the Las Vegas shootings. Yes, all of that is mindblowingly dreadful. But it’s news because, thank goodness, it’s unusual even in today’s troubled, turbulent times. Closer to home the vast majority of people are astonishingly kind even to complete strangers – nothing unusual about it  at all.  And that’s something very positive:  well worth hanging on to.

It is vital, if you can, for the three of you to take lots of interesting holidays when you’re a couple plus Ms Alzheimer’s. She might bite less viciously, if her victim is exposed to lots of mind enhancing experiences. Or so they say.

At the time of writing we are just coming to the end of a week in an up-market holiday camp in Greece – a huge five star hotel, a marble temple to tourism hacked out of a beautiful hillside on the east coast of Corfu. It’s the sort of place hundreds of people come to in search of skin cancer as they fry themselves all day every day on sun loungers like rashers of bacon on a grill. And the piped music consists of Frank Sinatra, Pavarotti, the Beatles and Mozart pops which tells you something about the, mostly British, clientele.

Anyway although it’s not quite our usual style I thought it would be a good place for a rest and in many ways it has been. We don’t do the sun worship thing but I like being able to get a decent daily swim, we’ve each read several books and eaten lots of nice food which I didn’t have to cook. I miss the car though because it would have made sense to explore more of the island. But I’m not comfortable driving a left hand drive car on the “wrong” side of the road and Ms A has stopped My Loved One driving altogether. Day trips by coach? Well they start before 8.00am and don’t get back until 7.00pm and there’s no way MLO and Ms A have the stamina to cope with that so that wasn’t an option either. So we confined ourselves to a just a couple of very pleasant outings by taxi.

I was curious to know how they – MLO and his partner-in-illness – would manage the flight. They were, thank goodness, fine probably because it was only three hours. They’ve had problems with the hotel though. Because we’re on a steep hillside there are steps everywhere. “When I look down, it’s as if the steps are coming up to meet me and I’m terrified” he says, clutching the rail, taking one step at time, moving at the speed of a slow loris and looking about 97.

Then there’s stepping manfully up to the bar to order hot drinks or beers, as chaps do. And then being totally unable to remember our room number – about 20 times in the course of the week. The bar staff quickly sussed the situation and would say tactfully; “You go and sit with your wife over there, Sir, and I’ll bring your drinks over to you”. That meant, bless them, they could check the room number with me without making a fuss about it. Leaving our room was usually a bit of an adventure too as I led the way to breakfast or dinner. “Where are we going?” he’d ask mildly.

In general, though, the pundits and medics do seem to be right. MLO has been relatively bright this week. The change of scenery plus getting my undivided attention 24/7 has allowed him to relax and he reports that his brain feels “less foggy”. Holidays probably really are good for the three of us.

Next time I must pack for MLO, though, or at least oversee his suitcase. Ms Alzheimer’s, silly bitch, managed to get him to Greece without a toothbrush or razor and with too few shirts for the week. All remediable but daft. And avoidable.

Next time? Well yes of course we shall holiday again. But it’s quite tricky to decide what would work best. We both loathe the idea of cruising, English speaking tour guides or anything which reminds me of a school trip. We’ve always done our own thing in our own way and taken some pride in that. It’s much less straightforward now.

We love city breaks especially in the US. That needs stamina. though, because you tend to be out and about on your feet all day. We once spent a whole week walking the streets of Manhattan and I guarantee we’ve seen bits of it that not one other tourist in a hundred has.

“Can’t we go back to the States?” he asked quite incisively this week. “Well, if we did where would you like to go?” I responded cautiously, well aware that there’s a lot of carpe diem in this. “Washington. And we could stay in that nice place I loved so much” he said immediately. He meant Georgetown although he couldn’t remember its name. OK. If he’s reasonably chirpy though Christmas and new year I’ll book it for the spring and hope Ms A, curtailed by pills, copes with the jet lag better than the last time we went long haul. Only seven hours … not like flying to the Pacific coast, after all.

We’ve always liked self-catering in cottages in Britain too. Perhaps we should do more of that. At least I can take the car so that we’re independent and MLO can take his hateful companion for a lie down when he needs to – without having to negotiate with chamber maids and hotel routines.

Note that in all this it’s me making every decision and arrangement. Not so long ago I had a husband who could and did book a holiday after discussion about where we were going. He’d sort flights, accommodation, car hire, insurance, currency, visas and all the rest of it – an administrator though and though. All I had to do was organise my professional work around the chosen dates and pack a suitcase on the right day. Sod you, Ms Alzheimer’s.

Marbella Hotel. Corfu

Last week I attended an event at Royal Opera House. In effect it was a press briefing to introduce the new season and raise awareness of the range of ROH’s other work. So I was mildly amused that there was a lounge suit dress code. I think it was a first. I have attended many press briefings in my time but never before have I been told what to wear. And I don’t own a lounge suit anyway.

It was an extraordinary event, held in extraordinary premises (whose current building programme will make it even more extraordinary) featuring people with extraordinary talent, flair and initiative. The learning and participation programme is extraordinary too as is the forthcoming new opera by the extraordinary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Mary Bevan, the eminent soprano, who showcased an extract is similarly extraordinary. Then there was some extraordinary dance for us all to watch, accompanied by pianists with extraordinary talent … and so it went on.  You could say it was an occasion fuelled by repetitive gush and after 50 minutes I was becoming so irritated I wanted to shout: “I’ll buy you a thesaurus for Christmas”.

And that’s a pity because, of course, The Royal Opera House really is a one off in that’s it’s been producing high quality opera in London for three centuries. And it’s doing a great deal of excellent work, gradually breaking down its elitist image and including many people from diverse backgrounds. The event began, for example, with half the ROH Youth Company – singing and dancing a number from Hansel and Gretel. It wasn’t extraordinary. I’ve seen plenty of youth groups doing well over the years but some of these children are clearly pretty talented, the group had been well trained and it was a joy to see participants of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds achieving together.

ROH’s Learning and Participation reaches all over the country. It collaborates with dozens of music hubs. And its digital platform  supports teachers in schools wanting their children to encounter opera – getting them singing in character and creating their own responses to opera among other things.

1,750 primary school children had raised the roof in their enthusiasm for The Magic Flute at that very afternoon’s schools matinee of which ROH runs six per year. We heard too about big recent events at Curve in Leicester and at Hull as part of  Hull UK City of Culture 2017.

And ROH has been at the Production Park in Thurrock for  10 years. Arts Council England funds education projects based there for the Thurrock community and for schools in North Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire.

Over 29,800 people took part in ROH’s Learning and Participation projects in 2016/17 which is not extraordinary but it’s pretty creditable.

And as for the notoriously high cost of simply going to see opera – the provision of which is ROH’s core business after all – according, to a mini-brochure given to each attender at last week’s event it is “Always Accessible”. By that they mean that 30% of main stage tickets are available for £35 or less and 60% for £60 or less. Make up your own mind how extraordinarily accessible that makes it.

Photograph by Peter Suranyi

When dementia first starts to nibble, it’s tiny things such as slight slowness of speech when you’re tired or suddenly deciding that perhaps you do like cooked cheese after a lifetime of insisting that you don’t. Then as suspicions that the many-tentacled Ms Alzheimer’s may really be lurking in the wings, everyone tells you that you must get a diagnosis. “Then you’ll have access to HELP” runs the received wisdom. We heard that many times from many people.

So that’s what you do. You see your GP who refers you to the local hospital’s “memory service” – a hilariously inapt euphemism . It should, of course, be called the “Dementia Department”. I suppose they have their reasons for this coy refusal to call a spade a spade.

The process is tortuous. There’s a home visit from an assessor who asks the “client” (yes, really) who the prime minister is and tests spatial and cognitive skills with funny little drawings. They’re  rather like the ones My Loved One and I both remember from the LCC Eleven Plus intelligence test – for the record we both passed when we were 10. I very much doubt that MLO would now.

Then she talks to the consultant who orders a brain scan at Kings College. A couple of false starts precede the appointment with the consultant who finally delivers the dreaded, scan-based diagnosis. Four months after that – almost a year after we initially saw the GP – comes another appointment at which symptom-lessening (maybe) pills are prescribed.

Our – or rather MLO’s – diagnosis appointment was 29 April. “Nothing changes” said the consultant valiantly denying the self-evident truth that everything does. Instantly. One minute you’re a chap who can’t always lay hand on his car keys and the next you’re an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s a death sentence – although the time scale prognosis is very vague. There’s no chemotherapy or anything with any hope in it for Alzheimer’s patients. It is penetratingly clear that the three of us, MLO, Miss Alzheimer’s and I, are heading downhill  towards “second childishness and mere oblivion/ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”. Good old Shakespeare. He’d seen it all.

I can’t help thinking about all this “help” and “support” which is cracked up to be so indispensable. The trouble is – that if you’ve always been capable, competent and independent – allowing these professionals into your life feels very intrusive and alien.  “Monstrous regiment of women” mutters MLO under his breath more than once. The line between “supportive” and “bloody patronising and interfering” is a potentially narrow one.

When the occupational therapist came to our house she wanted to check the staircase and see what MLO can and can’t do. Well at the moment he can do most things except work the locks on the external doors. And he’s a bit shaky on our stairs which are steeper than the ones in the house we moved out of last year. She proposed an additional hand-grab at the top of the stairs – which has turned out to be useful. Our youngest granddaughter, aged 2, (known to my Twitter followers as GD4) hangs on to it carefully as she ascends the stairs too. She, of course, will get better at stairs unlike her Grandpa who won’t.

The OT’s suggestion that we leave the outer door open was a non-starter though. It runs totally against the Metropolitan Police’s security advice. Before she came I was terrified she’d upset MLO with crass, tactless suggestions about karaoke and bingo at a day centre but, to her credit, she got the measure of us very quickly. She soon worked out that he’d be more comfortable at a Mahler concert at Royal Festival Hall than in an old people’s club – although she can’t, obviously, organise the former. On the other hand some of the information leaflets she left me were aimed at the lowest level of ignorance. Yes, I know how to present information simply and in bite-sized chunks. I was a teacher for 36 years, for goodness sake. Dealing with an Alzheimer’s victim is very much like working with an autistic or severely dyslexic child.

Other Alzheimer’s professionals are a different story. One, in particular, is probably trying very hard to be clear and inclusive but her manner comes across as gluily patronising. And, I am a working professional with a diary and a lot of commitments. I cannot cancel a working day in the Midlands, arranged for months and involving a lot of other people, just because she decides that’s the day she wants MLO and me to meet the consultant. It’s called the memory service because they are, one presumes, giving us some sort of service not issuing us with orders.

The consultant herself is refreshingly different. She is quite prepared to talk to me as a fellow professional in a different line of work – and at the last appointment she told me all about the (excellent)  app  http://appstow.com/app/1266711995/oxleas-dementia-oxl she has devised for Alzheimer’s patients and their carers and I told her about these blogs. She is also, once you come face to face with her, prepared to make appointments by negotiation at mutually convenient times. We all sat in her consulting room and got our diaries out. Very grown up.

So this whole notion of help and support is a mixed blessing. Yes, it’s good to know that you’re not alone – but then we never were. We have a terrific family and many warmly generous friends. There is very little (apart from the pills) that we need at present which we can’t generate from our own networks. And I could certainly do without being told bossily “This really is very important, Mrs Elkin. It concerns your husband’s health. Surely you could rearrange your work and attend this appointment?”

It’s a real pleasure to see a tight, intelligent, grown-up straight play. And when you do, you realise how unusual it has become. Howard Brenton’s The Blinding Light is a low-budget four-hander about the period in which August Strindberg disappeared from public view.

It is set in a squalid room at the Hotel Orfila in Paris in 1896 where Stringberg (Jasper Britton) is practising alchemy and is visited by three women. The general historical consensus is that he was deep in some sort of psychotic episode during his “inferno” years. The plays he wrote after it were quite different from the ones which preceded it. Perhaps, in a sense, the alchemy worked. Brenton, always a fine storyteller, explores that idea.

Long haired and filthy, Britton gives an outstanding performance in this reflection on madness sexual relationships and fitting into the world. He roars with anger, darts about, speaks (in his beautifully modulated actorly RP) to himself and his visitors, sometimes calm, sometimes frightened, often anguished and always impassioned. He literally talks to the walls too, which “answer” him in a higher pitched voice – and of course Britton is adept at switching from one mode to the other.

There’s terrific work too from Laura Morgan as the knowing, presumptuous, perceptive, manipulative chambermaid. She and Britton have a noticeable knack of listening – really listening – to each other so that the acting disappears and they become totally convincing. Susannah Harker glitters as Siri, his first wife, a former actress who is coldly and rationally worrying about money, trying to get her ex husband certified and denied access to their three children. Gala Gordon is appealing as the younger, more glamorous, sexier second wife although neither of them every get their dialogue quite as naturalistic as Morgan does.

Full marks to Cherry Truluck for a simple set with brightly coloured (think Impressionist daubs gone wrong) screens. And Emily Stuart’s costumes are lovely for the women (Where can I buy a coat like the one Gala Gordon wears?) and imaginative – white pyjama style overalls for Britten streaked with dirt, paint and chemicals.

Tom Littler, who directs this cracking drama, recently took over the artistic directorship of Jermyn Street Theatre. We are promised much more home produced work in the future, rather than its being mostly a receiving house as the venue did previously. If The Blinding Light represents the quality we can expect then I, for one, am pretty excited.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?reviewsID=2971

 

Launched four years ago, Michael Grandage’s MGCfutures charity is committed to giving tomorrow’s creative talent a leg-up in the theatre industry, through its mentoring, bursaries and network of support. Beneficiaries including a playwright, a director and a hat maker tell Susan Elkin how the scheme opened doors for them

Former dancer Dean Hescott-Burke, aged 31, decided in 2014 to retrain as a theatrical milliner. This year he has worked for the Royal Opera House, Garsington Opera and feature films including Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Peterloo, among other projects. He attributes his career success to MGCfutures, which awarded him a bursary to buy hat blocks in its first batch of recipients last year …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2017/michael-grandage-supporting-tomorrows-theatremakers/