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Your Lie in April (Susan Elkin reviews)

Your Lie in April

Based on Manga by Naoshi Arakawa

Music by Frank Wildhorn

Directed by Nick Winston

Harold Pinter Theatre

Star rating: 5

When I saw this show in a semi-staged concert version at Theatre Royal Drury Lane earlier this year, I predicted that – with work – it had a promising future. I was right. It’s now full of warmth, cohesiveness and stunning talent. Moreover it’s even tuneful. It’s rare for a new musical to be memorably melodious but I sang “One Hundred Thousand Million Stars” all the way home.

Your Lie in April began life as a serial in a Japanese magazine which evolved into a TV series before debuting as a stage show, with music in 2017. Then Covid-19 interrupted further development. The musical theatre version with Frank Wildhorn’s music premiered in Tokyo in 2022 and now here it is in London, with book in English by Rinne B Groff – the first West End show featuring a cast, all of whom have South Asian heritage.

The plot is terrific and very moving. We’re in a high school. Former piano prodigy Kosei (Zheng Xi Yong)  now refuses to play at all because he is traumatised and haunted by the bitter-sweet memory of his perfectionist, dying mother. Then Kaori (Mia Kobayashi), a promising, but frail, violinist arrives at the school because she wants Kosei to accompany her. Cue for much angst, yearning and many refusals although we all know, even as Kaori gets sicker, where this will end. The young woman sitting next to me (not my plus one) cried though most of the second half.

Zheng Xi Yong trained at Royal Academy of Music and has a piano diploma (although goodness why he doesn’t mention the latter in his programme biog). He therefore plays the piano throughout this show and it’s riveting show-stopping stuff especially when he gets to the Rachmaninov prelude. He’s also a fine actor, pretty decent singer and not bad as a dancer. You could call it the quadruple threat.  I’ve no idea whether he wears glasses in real life but he has a wonderful way with them as an expression of emotion.

Kobayashi, who graduates from Arts Ed this summer and is in her first professional job, is extraordinarily good. She has a terrific full belt, a lovely wistful mode and lights the stage every moment she’s on it. I predict a very successful future. She is not a violinist but that’s another coup de theatre. Akiko Ishikawa emerges from the upstage shadows with her violin and plays magnificently standing behind Kobayashi who mimes with a bow (getting all the up and down bows correct – they must have practised this very carefully). The grand piano is centre stage on a revolve and at one point it moves round as Zheng Xi Yong and Ishikawa play together behind Kobayshi. How on earth the two who are actually playing do this without music and without looking at each other is another marvel.

There’s a sparky ensemble, working in a challengingly small space (that piano takes up a lot of room). I loved the girls’ pastel dresses and the choreography with violin bows. Rachel Clare Chan and Dean John-Wilson excel as Kosei’s friends, supporting and urging him. Like everyone else in this cast, they work well together.

Above the stage, behind the gauzy semi-projected back screen, is a nine piece band doing a grand job under the baton of musical director, Chris Poon. There’s some eloquent cello work from Hsiao Ling Huang and, obviously, Akiko Ishikawa is part of the band when she’s not on stage.

In short everything delights in this touching, accomplished, happy show. Even the cherry blossom within Justin Williams’s set and around the proscenium adds to the charm.

 

Edgar

Giacomo Puccini

Directed by Ruth Knight

Conducted by Naomi Woo

Star rating: 2.5

No one, not even the writer of the Opera Holland Park programme note, is pretending that Puccni’s 1889 opera is any good. It flopped dismally after its Milan debut and did so again again in its re-written form in Buenos Aires in 1905. Puccini compared the latter with “warmed up soup” and admitted that he had made a “blunder” in agreeing to set Montana’s libretto. So all credit to Opera Holland Park’s whacky courage in producing it (alongside Tosca) even if it’s semi-staged and for just three performances to mark the centenary of Puccini’s death.

The plot is laughable. And yes, there were some incredulous chuckles at the performance I saw. Edgar (Peter Auty)  is supposed to marry an insipid, wistful but persistent beauty named Fidelia (ha ha) sung by Anne Sophie Duprels.  But he’s actually drawn to Tigrana, (Gweneth Ann Rand)  a childhood friend who has grown up to be prostitute. He goes off to live with the latter, falls out of love with her, joins the army, fakes his own death and then tricks Tigrana into telling lies about him which triggers (not a metaphor) her revenge. Even by the standards of nineteenth century opera it’s melodramatically silly.

Yet, underneath all this shallow nonsense there is some pleasing music, well played by City of London Sinfonia and impeccably conducted and led by Naomi Woo who has to look in all directions. Opera Holland Park’s annular stage which puts the orchestra in the centre and brings some of the action  forward seems now to have become a fixed feature. In this instance it means that the chorus, which represents a judgmental church congregation dressed in black with white gloves, seems very remote although director Ruth Knight makes generally imaginative use of a huge space in which entries and exits have to be very carefully timed. She incorporates the auditorium aisles effectively too. Sadly in the performance I saw, Woo and the chorus parted company a couple of times in Act 1, possibly because of the distance. I was delighted, however to see the inclusion of the Children’s Chorus which comprises singers from the Pimlico Music Foundation and the Tiffin Choirs.

Puccini is good at “mood music” and although you can hear the occasional hint of what is to come later in his career, it’s often crudely obvious in this piece.  And the military marches are pretty corney. He was only 30 when he wrote it after all. There are, though, some beautiful melodies at, for example, the opening of Act 2 and I loved the woven in cello solo behind the voices in Act 3. All four principals (including Julien Van Mellaerts as the sanctimonious Frank) do a good job. Rand, whose character is far more sinned against than sinning, sings magnificently and is the only character with any depth and for whom one feels any sympathy.

The best one can say about this in sum is that it’s an interesting curiosity. I’m not sure Puccini would have welcomed the revival, though.

 

 

The Voice of the Turtle

John Van Druten

Directed by Philip Wilson

Jermyn Street Theatre

 

Star rating: 3

 

This play gently explores female desire and sexuality which may have been risqué in 1943 when it made its debut in New York but certainly isn’t now. It hasn’t been seen in London since 1951 and there’s a reason for that. It’s very sweet, life-affirming and positive but there simply isn’t enough grit to sustain 135 minutes (with interval) although the little satirical digs at theatre itself are fun.

Sally Middleton (Imogen Elliott)  is a young actor who has just moved into her own New York apartment. She’s recently finished a job. had an affair with the director and is now waiting for something to turn up. It’s Friday night and her pushy, passionate, possibly promiscuous friend Olive (Skye Hallam) visits and tells her that her current beau is due to meet her at Sally’s flat. When it turns out that she’s got a better offer and abandons him there, it is immediately obvious that Bill (Nathan Ives-Moiba) and Sally will develop feelings for each other although we’re only ten minutes into the piece. After a few hiccoughs, including some histrionics from Olive, by Sunday afternoon, Bill and Sally are a happy couple and that is the plot – such as it is.

The acting, however, is excellent. Elliot, in her first professional job, finds a huge range of emotions in Sally. She has sexual longings, professional ambition and lots of quiet practicality – bustling about with toast and glasses of milk. She watches and reacts impeccably when other characters are speaking. It’s an elegantly nuanced performance from a young actor of whom I hope we see a lot more very soon.

Ives-Moiba, whose character is an army sergeant about to go back to the war,  gives us a well mannered, gentle man with oodles of sexual charisma but without flirtatiousness. It’s both effective and affective. I’d defy any girl who has him in her flat for the weekend not to fall for him.

And Hallam provides a contrast to the others by being overblown, mildly hysterical and busy playing her lovers off against each other. Philip Wilson directs in such a way as to exploit the best in  all three actors and to make their dialogue plausibly convincing.

Ruari Murchison’s set is nice too. It’s raining outside (which is partly why Bill stays) and there are windows onto blurry New York streets along with an authentic looking 1940s kitchen. I wonder how long he had to spend combing E-bay to find that toaster?

Despite its innate blandness, this show is well enough done but it isn’t one that will make many waves. The title, by the way, dervives from the Song of Solomon and refers to the yearning of turtle doves –  you’re welcome.

 

My knowledge and understanding of Sri Lankan history and its long, devastating civil war is very sketchy. In fact it’s informed by only two things. First, back in 2001, I remember being astonished, horrified and gripped by Karen Roberts’s novel July which told the story of  two neighbouring families “both alike in dignity” except that  one is Tamil and the other Sinhalese. So they are ripped apart by the civil war and, of course, there’s a cross-divide couple in love at the heart of it.

Second, I have become friends with my Sri Lankan neighbour whose parents moved to London when she was 10 in 1963. She chats to me a lot about Sri Lanka, then and now because she visits cousins there regularly. Of course, some branches of her family were seriously affected by the war. One of her uncles had to watch while the army shot the Tamil workers on his farm. A family home. in Columbo was commandeered by the army. And those are just examples.

Then along came Brotherless Night which has, I gather, taken VV Ganeshananthan – who now, like her narrator, lives in America – 18 years to write. It won the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction which was why I noticed it.

Sashi,who narrates, is a young Tamil living comfortably in 1980s Columbo where education is top of the agenda. She has four brothers, and like most of them, her sights are firmly set on medical school and a career as a doctor. There’s also a friend called K with whom she and one of her brothers walk to school and there’s chemistry between him and Sashi.

This exposition is brief because very soon, horrors set in. It’s a political power struggle between Tamils who want independence in Jaffna, a peninsula in the North close to the Palk Strait and India, and the army. Of course the government wants to suppress the Tamils. There are resistance groups, of which the most extreme is the famous Tamil Tigers. Gradually Sashi’s brothers, apart from the youngest, disappear, one way or another,  along with K – hence the title of this arresting novel. Sashi and her mother escape to Jaffna.  Later the Indian army turns up to “relieve” Jaffna but of course it’s not exactly benign. None of it is straightforward. My oversimplified summary is exactly that. There are factions within factions and Ganeshananthan is very good indeed at exploring divided loyalties.

Spoilers would not be appropriate here but let me cite just a couple of things which now haunt me. One of the characters undergoes a very public hunger strike and the tension is heart-in-mouth stuff. And I was pretty horrified by the open kidnapping of Sashi’s youngest brother, aged 14, by the army – my neighbour told me quite casually over the fence yesterday about a family she knows where exactly this happened. All this, therefore, suddenly feels very immediate.

She is now reading Brotherless Night. So should you be if you want to come anywhere near understanding the plight of ordinary families when a nation is seized by political and racial bigotry and violence. People talk rather oddly of “war crimes”. Isn’t all war a crime?

 

 

Into the Woods

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by James Lapine

Royal Academy Musical Theatre Company

Directed by Bruce Guthrie

 Star rating 4

I admire Stephen Sondheim’s work without necessarily enjoying it personally. Into the Woods, however, is an exception. It’s a show I like very much, and more so each time I see it.  The concept is brilliant – familiar fairy tale characters interacting in the woods, where all sorts of strange events and collisions  can, and do, happen. In that sense it owes something to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The lyrics are very witty. It’s also tuneful which is always a bonus and it’s a terrific company piece because there are lots of meaty character roles for a big cast.

In the hands of the Royal Academy Musical Theatre Company, in RAM’s splendid Susie Sainsbury Theatre  Into the Woods zips along impressively.

Of course there are no weak links in this accomplished cast but there are several performers who stand out. Anna Eckhard commands the stage as the Witch – her singing voice beautifully controlled and her appearance menacing. Zach Burns delights as The Baker, insouciant, cheerful or bereaved. And what a singer he is – he can do lyrical and patter apparently effortlessly. And like every other cast member his diction is impeccable so each word is clearly audible. And I enjoyed Kristian Thorkildsen’s absurdly camp, hammy Prince. Sebastian Diaquoi does well as the deceptively casual narrator/wolf too.

There are seventeen people in the cast with some role swapping across the four performances which, presumably, helps to widen the experience of these young actors in training.

You can always rely, obviously, on RAM to assemble a good orchestra. The fifteen players in the pit, under MD, Isaac Adni, play magnificently. It’s a far from easy score yet the music here is rich and very well balanced both within the band and with the action on stage. The Susie Sainsbury acoustics allow you to hear and enjoy every instrumental solo and from the dress circle you can see into the pit too.

And Loren Elstein who designed this show has come up trumps with, for example, an exotically multi coloured robe resembling a huge rag rug for the witch. Her main set device is neat too: a wheeled high platform to which is attached two staircases and lots of leafy bits. Moved and rotated, it can become almost anything.

An Intervention

By Mike Bartlett

Directed and produced by Vernon Thompson

Technical mananger Miran Barry

Hen and Chickens Theatre

 

Star rating: 3

 

Mike Bartlett’s 2014 two-hander is an exploration of friendship with two pretty volatile people in the equation. They disagree about an overseas war in which Britain is intervening and the conflict becomes, in a sense, a metaphor for the relationship between these two unnamed people. In the text Bartlett calls them A and B.

In Vernon Thompson’s production A is a woman in her late twenties.  B is a man about the same age and both are white. She is a teacher and he’s a university lecturer. In fact their background is irrelevant. It could just as easily be two men, two women or A male and B female and they could be of any ethnicity or age.

A (Jessica Olim) has a drink problem, is vivacious and furious with her “bestie” – they’re been close for three years –  first, for approving of the war and later for taking up with a patronising (maybe) woman called Hannah with whom he eventually has a child. Olim sustains all this with plenty of passion and forthrightness although her character is often desperately and implausibly unreasonable. This piece is meant to be a comedy but it certainly isn’t a bundle of laughs.

Andy Dixon, who took over from indisposed Jamie Woolf five hours before the opening performance earlier this week, is to be warmly congratulated.  He has the book in his hand but barely looks at it because he’s almost completely on top of the play. He gives us tolerance, kindness, anger and despair in a nicely nuanced way. And considering they’re been working together for only four days, he and Olim bounce off each other with impressive ease.

The play itself is a strange beast though. 75 minutes is a long time to sustain intense duologue even with blackout breaks of a few seconds to indicate time moving forward. It feels cumbersome in places as if Bartlett is wondering where to go next and how to contrive it. Not actually one of his best.

Prince/David

Written and directed by Yasir Senna

Razor Sharp Productions

Golden Goose Theatre

 

Star rating: 4

 

I agreed to see/review this show  because I’m a good egg who strives to support theatre in all its forms, and because I quite like the Golden Goose. I had no idea what to expect. What I got was, therefore, a delightful surprise.

Prince/David (the title is unfortunate and doesn’t do it justice) is an excellent crime drama which packs a strong message about police inadequacy, both historically and now, especially when dealing with rape, assault and murder of women. Complacency and victim shaming have too often got in the way of justice. Moreover, I read a lot of crime fiction, which is currently enjoying a huge boom, as part of my eclectic reading diet. Thus there is usually a crime story ticking away in one corner of my brain quite separate from the section which is digesting the latest show I’ve seen. Prince/David felt like a happy merger between two bits of my world.

David Nicholls, who also goes by other names, is a revoltingly smooth con man who likes to rape and murder women. At the performance I saw he was played by playwright and director, Yasir Senna, filling in for indisposed Simon Ryerson. And he did it beautifully. In the opening scene we see him in a restaurant, slimily plausible, convincing a gullible young department store assistant (Helena Heaven – good) that he can get her a modelling contract in return for a few “favours.” The contract is in his car which rings alarm bells for everyone in the audience but not for the hapless Amber Da Costa.

The play shifts across 25 years from 1999 when Amber disappears to 2024 – relevant projected images give us the dates clearly. In 2024, a very young PC Stecklen (Helen Matthews) tries to persuade her senior officer that there is evidence he should look at but is dismissed with the chilling, shocking “Get us a cup of tea, love”. Over 20 years later, now a Detective Sergeant, she gets the opportunity to revisit the case with a team. Matthews strides about and finds  passion and anger in this clear thinking woman. It’s an outstanding performance. And does she succeed? No spoilers.

There’s good work from everyone in this cast of nine among which  Natasha Vassell is strong first as a timid young constable and later as an authoritative, well dressed Commissioner. And I liked Christopher Poke’s work as two different older male officers trying to confound Stecklen’s single minded focus at different stages in the narrative.

If you like Unforgotten, you’ll enjoy this although, totally drawn in by the plot,  I was slightly frustrated by the hint at Stecklen’s personal past, the details of which are never developed. It’s a small gripe, though, about a fast paced, gripping 135 minutes of theatre.

 

 

 

 

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare at the George, Huntingdon

Directed by Lynne Livingstone

 Star rating: 3.5

For a community company to take Shakespeare’s longest, and arguably best, tragedy to an outdoor audience (boy racers revving up just beyond the wall) takes a certain amount of courage. Fortunately Shakespeare at the George is not short of that.  And this year we saw the company’s sheer gutsiness even more strongly because they have lost their iconic venue. After 65 years in the historic courtyard at The George in Huntingdon, next year’s show will have to be staged elsewhere because Greene King, the company which owns the pub, has ended the partnership.

One of the bonuses of the courtyard is that it comes with its own balcony and side stairs which makes an excellent space for the ghost’s first appearance, for eavesdroppers to lurk, and for off stage action to take place. I liked very much, for instance, the way director Lynne Livinsgtone sets up a visually overt relationship between Hamlet (Sam Buckenham) and Ophelia (Georgie Bickerdike) at the beginning of the play. It’s usually just something which is referred so fleetingly that it’s hardly believable that it ever happened. Before so much happens to sour it, these are definitely two young people who fancy each other and between whom marriage would be eminently suitable, despite what Ophelia’s father – actually mother in this production – tells her.

Buckenham is both credible and creditable as Hamlet (the largest role in the canon). He can do anger, cunning, despair and irresolution very well. The closet scene is as painful as it should be. It’s agonising for this young man to be torturing himself, and her, with details of his mother’s sex life. And his big soliloquies sound like naturalistic thought rather than the set pieces then can so easily become

Bickerdike’s Ophelia is a delight, one of the best I’ve seen for a long time. The wistful horror of her mad scene scene, accompanied by her sweet but manic singing,  will remain with me for a long time. And she’s very good earlier in the play too, twinkling at Hamlet, then puzzled by his change in attitude and torn by the instructions issued by her mother.

Alex Priestly as Polonia isn’t quite right though. Shakespeare’s Polonius is a bossy, tiresome, manipulative old man who loves to show off.  A woman in the role is bound to be softer. The relationship between a mother and daughter, moreover, is different from a father and daughter and we see this Polonia being maternally caring and protective which goes against the grain of the text.  I was not remotely convinced that this character would lurk behind the arras in Gertrude’s bedroom either. Caroline Molony’s, always tense, Gertrude looks fabulous (gorgeous late Elizabethan costumes by Helen Arnett and her team in this show) but somehow lacks the warmth. She has probably been having an affair with Claudius (Geoffrey Kirkness – competent), whom she has now married, for some time. So where’s the sparkle?

Horatio – Hamlet’s decent friend who loves him to the end – is not an easy role because he has to do so much observing from the sidelines but James Barwise gets it spot on. His Horatio is caring, concerned and supportive without ever stealing anyone else’s thunder.

A round of applause, too, for Reuben Milne as one of the most entertaining grave diggers I’ve ever seen. There aren’t many laughs in this play – and this production chooses not to stress the few that there are such as the pun in “country matters” – so Milne, ventriloquising the skull hilariously, is a well-judged contrast.

A cast of nineteen (oh the joy of community theatre!) and they’re all reasonable at what they do, means that you can have a full complement of “actors” to support the Player King and Fortinbras has an entourage and that all works well.

Well done, all of you. It’s a very decent and enjoyable show of its type. I look forward to applauding you in your new venue next year.