Emilia

Morgan Lloyd Malcolm

Directed by Pam Redrup

Questors Theatre Ealing

Star rating: 3.5

In 2017 I was at a press conference at Shakespeare’s Globe where Michelle Terry, new in post as artistic director announced that she had commissioned a new all-female play for 2018. This, she explained, was why she was not committing to quotas of male and female actors in casts. Thus was Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia born. I saw it at the original production at the Globe and enjoyed it again when it transferred into the West End. Since then I have seen it at least twice more elsewhere – including a memorable production at Mountview drama school in Peckham.And now this – in the very impressive Questors Theatre which I was visiting for the first time.

Emilia is loosely based on the sketchy story of Emilia Bassano, a ground breaking 17^th century published poet “known” to Shakespeare (and other chaps). It is possible that she was his “Dark Lady.”  Maybe, the play speculates, she was the inspiration for much of his work. Perhaps, given the quality of her poetry, she gave him ideas or maybe she said or wrote things which he purloined. Women, after all, were not supposed to have creative ideas or compete with men in any way.  It makes for a quirky, moving, timeless feminist statement as Lloyd Malcolm’s text dances cheerfully in an out of historic formal speech, witty modern English complete with asides, and quotations from Shakespeare.

Lloyd Malcom envisions Emila (did he really pinch her name for Desdemona’s companion in Othello?) as a richly multi-faceted character played by three characters, usually all on stage together, at different stages of her life. Shekinah Singh finds warmth, anger, passion and sheer determination to be recognised in Emilia 1. Yasimin Nankya’s measured performance of Emilia 2 gives us rueful but still passionate woman arguing for equality. And Sunita Dugal delights as the calm, reflective older Emilia narrating her life story. And Kerala McGrall’s casually charismatic Shakespeare ensures that we understand why Emilia is drawn to him, furious as she is at the way he treats her. “I am only seen when needed” she declares angrily, early in the play.

The ensemble, from which other characters emerge, does a pleasing job including much stylised shuffling on and off stage and creating shapes reminiscent of the swans in Swan Lake – movement director Sophie George. Among other cameos Stella Robinson is fun as the camper-than-camp Lord Larnier, who make a marriage of convenience with Emilia.

And all this is played out on one of the most stunning sets I’ve seen anywhere in quite a while. The Questors 300-seat theatre has a spacious thrust playing space on which Bron Blake has created a white and sepia environment made of books and writing. There are columns and a balustrade punctuated with piles of books and the downstage paving stones are covered in writing. It’s as dramatic as it is pertinent.

Emilia speaks to us all and this production articulates the message as clearly as I’ve seen it done anywhere. “As I grow I must also shrink”? Not any more.  Come on women, there’s a fucking house to burn down.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady

Adapted from EM Delafield by Ellie Ward who also directs

Bridge House Theatre, Penge

Star rating: 3.5

Disingenuous social commentary is almost always funny and works a treat if done with this production’s fast-paced panache. EM Delafield’s largely autobiographical and best known novel (1930) began as a series of articles for Time and Tide. Think Jane Austen (brought forward a century or so) crossed with Bridget Jones or Alison Pearson’s Kate Reddy. The things women have to deal with are ruefully, sometimes hilariously, timeless.

The titular lady reads dated extracts from her diary. Meanwhile two larger than life friends Lady Boxe (Rebecca Pickering) and Jasper Von Nimismeyer  (Michael Ansley) play all the people she’s describing, occasionally retreating to their “real” characters for a chat. Cue for a huge amount of nipping in an out of hats (cleverly popped onto the heads of front row audience members when they’re not required on stage) and accents. Given that sometimes the character speaks only a single line this is an impressive feat of unfaltering slickness especially since the parts are interchangeable. Pickering can do anything from an insolent gor-blimey cook to a coyly hammy French governess, devoid of tact, and a lot more. Ansley is a treat as the diarist’s mumbling husband and many other roles. It’s very funny.

At the performance I saw, the titular Provincial Lady was played by writer/ director Ellie Ward because Becky Lumb wasn’t well enough to appear. Ward stumbled once or twice over the text but generally gave a fine performance, communicating exasperation, delight, self-awareness and wit in spades. She speaks with her eyes and her audience asides are a joy.

I spent the whole of the first half (it runs just over two hours with a 15 minute interval)   thinking how unusual it is to see a play without earnest “issues”. But they arrive in the second act which is very slightly more serious. The Provincial Lady wants to work (in real life EM Delafield was an astonishingly prolific writer) and so, with reluctance, decides that her children must go to boarding school. It’s the old, very recognisable,  problem of a mother being pulled in all directions. And it never goes away.

This production is a neat, richly entertaining, way of bringing an epistolary novel to stage while never letting the audience forget that it’s a diary. The continual letters from the bank manager are fun as are the many imaginatively evoked conversations.. The recorded extracts of The Lady talking to her children, do not, however, add much.

Blood Wedding

Federico Garcia Lorca, in a version by Ted Hughes

Directed by Flavia Corina di Saverio

Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington

Star rating: 3

Of course Lorca is a 20^th century theatrical monolith. He is as revered in Spain as Shakespeare is in Britain and in both cases  the fame is global and rightly so – especially in view of  his untimely death at the hands of a Fascist death squad at the age of 38. At least Shakespeare died in his bed.

Nonetheless Blood Wedding, one of his three world-renowned achievements, was – and remains – a strange play. It begins as a reasonably conventional danger-charged domestic tale fraught with threats of feudal violence and illicit relationships in rural Spain in the 1920s. Then, in its final third, it races off into the woods, reinvents itself as a densely mysterious poetic piece complete with a talking moon, an allegory for death in the shape of a peasant woman (straight from the Brothers Grimm), incantations, both spoken and sung and escalating surrealism. Lorca was, after all, influenced by Salvador Dali and symbolism was their trademark.

Flavia Corina di Saverio and her generally strong cast make a fair attempt at making sense of all this. Michael Neckham’s Bridegroom is warmly in love and then suitably puzzled/angry/ distressed when his glitteringly attractive bride (Sabrina Robinson – convincing) runs away with her former beau (Romain Mereau – charismatic). And Sangita Modgil, whom I’ve seen several times before in Tower Theatre productions, delights as the anxious, busy servant.

It’s the video design (Max Maxwell) and projection mapping (Catherine Shaw) which makes this production really atmospheric. We get olive trees (leaves wafting in the wind), vineyards and courtyards moving on the back wall along, later, with mysterious storms. And it’s pretty immersive, Sound design by Rob Ellis and composition by Vahan Salorian are excellent too – lots of rising chromatic and minor scales heighten the tension. And I don’t know whose idea it was to preface the play with the menacing sound of a knife being sharpened but it’s arrestingly effective. And, given the rising rates of knife crime in London at present, also feels startlingly topical.

Othello

William Shakespeare

Directed by Tom Morris

Theatre Royal Haymarket

Star rating: 4

In terms of story telling this production of Shakespeare’s account of a marriage which goes wrong very quickly, is the strongest Othello I have ever seen. It rolls along with commendable clarity and, on press night, you could hear the audience listening – really listening – and chuckling, not at theatrical gimmicks but at what the playwright actually wrote. Full marks to director Tom Morris for that.

This is David Harewood’s second go at “The Moor of Venice”. I first saw him in this role at National Theatre in 1997. Now, at a youthful-looking nearly 60 he brings a warmly attractive gravitas to the early scenes and a totally believable love between him and his Desdemona (Caitlin Fitzgerald – good). It makes “Farewell the tranquil mind” even more poignant than usual and there is riveting tautness in the scene between him and Iago (Toby Jones)  which ends the first half.

Jones is electrifying as Iago, dripping poison and malice. Much scholarly ink has been spent debating Iago’s motivation. Here it’s straightforward professional jealousy, exacerbated by racism. “I hate the Moor” he spits out. Jones creates wry humour out of his outrageous audience asides which highlight his manipulative duplicity and contrast powerfully with his calculatedly and increasingly venomous conversations with Othello. It’s quite a performance from an actor we’ve grown used in recent years, to seeing mostly in “good guy” roles. I’ve seen many Iagos over the years, including Ian McKellen and Simon Russell Beale. Jones definitely has the edge for sheer self-interested nastiness.

There are some nice work in this production’s support roles too. Luke Treadaway’s dim, impressionable Cassio and Felix Hayes’s benign, wise Duke of Venice are both pleasing. And Vinette Robinson as Emila really comes into her own in the second half – screaming in fury at Othello.

Ti Green’s shape-shifting set starts in the rigid, architectural formality of Venice and gradually morphs into the chaos of war-torn Cyprus and eventually the devastating anguish of Othello’s mind as he finally flips and kills Desmona. Generally speaking Jon Nicholls’s sound track is rather bitty and you can’t always tell whether what you’re hearing is him or TFL rumblings nearby but there’s terrific moment in the strangling scene.

It’s always good to see Shakespeare back in the West End reaching new audiences as well as old hands. And this relatively succinct version (the RSC production at the Young Vic in 1989 ran until 11.45!) cuts to the chase with plenty of theatrical power.

Midsomer Murders: The Killings at Badger’s Drift

Caroline Graham, adapted and directed by Guy Unsworth

Richmond Theatre and touring.

Star rating: 4

This stage version of one of ITV’s all time favourites comes with as much sunny nostalgia as a really good cream tea. The only way to carry off something quite so daft is to play it with warm affection and humour which is what Guy Unsworth does. And it works a treat from the use of the familiar theme music to the best line in the piece which is Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby (Daniel Casey) declaring at the end: “I’ve worked in Midsomer county for thirty years and while I can’t pretend it boasts the lowest crime rates in England …”

It was a stroke of genius to cast Casey, once Sargeant Troy to John Nettles’s Barnaby, to play Barnaby now. He finds all the decency, intelligence and gentle wit that this most straightforward of men has and acts as quasi fixed point when nearly everyone else around him is eccentrically, maybe criminally, over the top. James Bradwell is strong as his Sergeant Troy too, often a foil for the humour.

So how does this production pack this complicated and most implausible of jolly, rural murder mysteries? The plot is so convoluted that I shall make no attempt to summarise it here. Suffice it to say that several people are killed in a tiny village community and the culprit or culprits must be found.  Five main cast members multi-role with panache and almost imperceptibly. Rupert Sadler’s slimy, camp undertaker is a caricature but it’s hilarious especially at home with his mother (John Dougall – also superb in two other roles) driving a show-stopping tea trolley.  Then Sadler reappears as grumpy artist, Michael Lacey who has an interesting sister – remember Richard, a “message” says. It’s a Wagnerian crossword clue, as it were. There’s another splendid performance from Julie Legrand who has enormous fun hamming up this feisty, querulous, bossy Miss Bellringer – as well as playing two other characters.

Although the show is a bit long and could probably shed 10 minutes, it  mostly hurtles along with slightly jokey, dramatic background music by Max Pappenheim. David Woodhead’s set is almost as witty as the script with rooms and furniture or little spaces flying in or sliding on from the side and there’s a sort of miniature village projected through a circular window on the back wall which is attractively in keeping with the whole ambience. Built into the mix is mime – oh that car with the wind down windows! – tableaux and a lot of fine timing. And what a good idea to dress the stage crew as police officers.

It’s not Hamlet but it’s highly entertaining and beautifully done:  great theatre if not Great Theatre and perfect for a winter evening. It deserves to do well on its forthcoming tour.

Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare

Tangle Theatre

Directed/Adapted by Anna Coombs

Omnibus Theatre, Chatham

Star rating 3

This visceral, succinct, African-inspired, five hander version of Julius Caesar plays on a richly dramatic set (designed by Colin Falconer). A pattern of huge concentric circles lit to change colour (lighting by Joe Hornsby) gleams from the back wall while a dark red circular dais sits in the centre of a stage which is framed by glittering glass walls.

It certainly sets the scene for a sinister story, dominated in this version by the soothsayer played by LAMDA-trained Ghanaian poet Yaw Osafo-Kantanka. Dressed like a tribal warrior with masses of paint on his skin he leaps, shouts, sings and talks through the traditional drum tucked under his left arm. He also plays the citizens – and yes, his muscular stage presence is quite sufficient to make us believe that he is more than one person. And the fact that he mostly uses an African language rather than Shakespeare’s English actually adds to the mystery and mystique.

The text is cut to bring the play down to well under two hours – there’s an interval and a deal of wordless stage business – which makes the story telling pretty clear. The inevitable multi-roling does not always come off, however, although Samya De Meo is terrific in all the small wifely roles and a brave, brawny, ultimately rueful female Cassius.

Remiel Farai’s Brutus convinces. He really is a man of conscience who agrees, reluctantly, to assassinate his power hunger boss/friend (Caesar, played by Roland Royal III) for the greater good of the republic. We see the thoughtfulness and, later, the self awareness in this character. The problem, though, of doing the play in this small-scale way is that we lose sight of the nature of the conspiracy: it is a group effort and that’s the point. Brutus and Cassius are not in this alone.

Although we were warned at the beginning of the performance I saw that, owing to unforeseen circumstances, Samater Ahmed would be playing Mark Antony, script in hand, he is very good indeed. He gets one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare (“Friends, Romans, Countrymen…”) which he addresses to the audience and makes it sound completely fresh and spontaneous. Then comes the carefully orchestrated rhetoric builds as he swings the crowd his way. Later when he is leading his army against Brutus towards the Battle of Philippi we see his inner ruthlessness, despite Ahmed’s distracting physical resemblance to the young Dalai Lama.

It’s an interesting, valid response to the play from a company which specialises in radical reinventions of classical theatre texts centred on African and Caribbean communities. Supported by Mayflower Studios in Southampton and resident at Prime Theatre, Swindon, Tangle Theatre is touring this production.