As the lights went down to signal the end of Peter Gill’s new 70-minute play, the man (fellow critic I’ve known for years) next to me murmured: “That was just too close and painful.”  I know what he meant. Something in the Air is beautiful at almost every level but, my goodness it’s poignant: almost unbearably so. And it’s the acuteness of the observation which does it, in both the writing and the high quality acting, immaculately directed by the playwright and Alice Hamilton.

Colin (Ian Gelder) and Alex (Christopher Goodwin) are in a care home. There may have been a bumpy gay relationship in the past with some joyous memories and some devastating ones – Alex, for example, has at one stage been married to a woman and fathered two sons. Or perhaps they’ve met in the care home and each is remembering other relationships. Now very frail, they sit quietly holding hands and reminiscing but Alex’s dementia is far advanced and they talk in disjointed monologues rather than talking to each other. They are lost in memory – as it were. Everyday life is, in contrast,  evoked by Clare (Claire Price) who is Colin’s niece and Andrew Woodall as Alex’s son, Andrew. They talk across the old men about travel arrangements, medical appointments, Andrew’s family and more – with a subtext that there might, just might, be flicker of interest between them.

It will be a long time before I forget Goodwin’s half closed eyes, fumbling fingers and vacant glances when he’s not talking about the distant past. Anyone who has ever dealt with dementia will recognise the ghastly truth of this fine performance. Gelder’s character is slightly more alert and, movingly, looks after Alex adjusting the rug on his knees and repeatedly asking him if he wants anything. It’s almost unbearably accurate.

Woodall’s performance as the son who finds his father’s sexuality repugnant and clearly comes to the care home, unsmiling but distantly dutiful, is impressively truthful too. So is Price’s over-bright kindness.

Meanwhile the pasts of Colin and Alex are mirrored by two different young men Nicholas (James Schofield) and Gareth (Sam Thorpe-Spinks) side stage. It connotes a sense of universality and timelessness in the shared experiences which often include anger, distress and disappointment. Both actors do a competent job, Schofield, for example, smiles in a glitteringly attractive, irresistibly attractive come-on way and it’s totally believable.  Their presence provides lots of opportunity for cross-current conversation linking past and present which highlights the confusion, especially, in Alex’s mind.

A new play by Peter Gill is always welcome. And we go to the theatre to feel emotion. This one certainly hits you between the eyes.

• 

  Photos: Steve Gregson

• 
• 
• 

There’s a great deal of rather attractive warm wistfulness in this new musical. It’s based on the 1982  Bill Forsyth film which I have never seen so, presumably unlike most of the audience, I took it at face value rather than making comparisons.

We’re in North West Scotland during the oil boom. An American company, represented by Mac (Gabriel Ebert) wants to buy the whole village in order to build a refinery. The well defined locals – very pleasing ensemble work – are divided between desperately wanting to become “filthy dirty rich” (good dance rhythm) and concern for the beautiful environment  which has been home to their families for hundreds of years. Line such as “Places change. It’s people you need to hold on to” and “You can’t eat scenery” pepper the dialogue. There’s also a subplot about searching for a comet in “the best skies in the world” and it is that which eventually saves the day – sort of.

So how do you depict all this in the theatre-in-the-round setting of the Minerva Theatre? Frankie Bradshaw’s outstanding set combined with Ash J Woodward’s video designs do a first rate, totally convincing job. The back wall is lined with a huge white concave screen arching towards the audience. On it we get Shetland’s glorious skies, the aurora borealis, stars and more. Meanwhile some of the rostra are removed, not far into the piece, to reveal a sandy beach at the front. It’s both ingenious and evocative. At other times, in contrast we see flown down strip lights and wheeled on desks with lots of phones for office scenes in America and a homely bar which is trundled on and off for pub scenes back in Scotland.

Inevitably Mac finds things and people to love in the place he has come to destroy and eventually goes native until, regretfully, he has to leave because circumstances change. Ebert develops the character effectively – initially brash and determined and ultimately a lonely figure of loss. His scenes with Stella (Lillie Flynn – lovely work) are moving. Paul Higgins as the local hotelier, who also does legal advice and accountancy, finds all the appropriately conflicted pragmatism tempered with loyalty and uncertain love for Stella, is strong.

This show is, however, a musical not a straight play and the music is, for the most part, seamlessly grafted in rather than bolted on. The first rate seven piece band is seated on a raised stage right platform on which actors sometimes appear briefly too. Songs often start as speech – especially from Hilton Macrae, the wise beachcomber who gives a strong performance but evidently isn’t a singer. Occasionally we get vibrant ensemble numbers such as “That’d Do Me” and when Ebert gets going he has a fine light tenor voice. Several of the women, especially, Flynn sing with rich clarity too.

It’s a bit obvious to end Act 1 with an energetic ceilidh and then start Act 2 with a hangover scene but it’s a minor gripe.

• 

  Photos: Manuel Harlen

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Photos: Robert Piwko

Mosquitoes, which premiered at National Theatre in 2017, is a very busy play. In nearly three hours of relentless intensity we ricochet from parenting to sorority to bereavement to dementia, intimate teenage images shared online and complex physics among many other side issues. It’s all a bit indigestible and given the wealth and breadth of material might have been better as two or even three plays.

Nonetheless this potentially difficult piece is in competent hands  with director Anna Jones and her cast of nine. The central plot presents two sisters, Jenny (Emily Carmichael) and Alice (Rachel Bottomley) daughters of a retired high achieving scientist, Karen (Amanda Waggot – nice performance). Alice is a successful scientist working on the Hadron Collider in Geneva with a troubled teenaged son Luke (Andrew Mortimer). In contrast Jenny is a smoking, drinking low achiever desperate for a child. There is a powerful love/hate relationship between them, predicated on undercurrents of jealousy, admiration and shared background.

Jenny is a huge and meaty role and Emily Carmichael is a fine, intelligent actor who makes her character by turns mercurial, changeable, distraught and funny. She’s also more practical than her sister. Jenny may only be selling medical insurance for a living but she cares for their declining mother and understands her nephew’s problems better than his mother does. It’s a nuanced performance and I really like the way Carmichael listens and speaks with her eyes.

Rachel Bothamley gives us an engaging contrast as the patronising Alice, devoted to her work but struggling in her personal life. There are a lot of tears and angst and one feels really sorry for her ever-decent boyfriend Henri (James Johnston – good) who, in the end can’t cope with it.

There is a problem, though with staging in the round and I’ve not seen Tower Theatre configured in this way before. It works neatly enough in the space but, inevitably some of the dialogue is delivered facing away from most of the audience. And when the text is as wordy and visceral as this the tendency is to hit if fast and furious in order to be naturalistic. In this production that quite often creates an audibility problem, particularly with Mortimer – otherwise a strong and interesting actor. However convincingly you say the words if the audience can’t hear them clearly there’s a communication lapse.

I do understand that a non-professional company does not have access to the breadth of casting opportunities that a professional one does but it is a bit odd when it eventually becomes clear (sort of) that Luke’s friend Nathalie (Bella Hornby – good actor) is meant to be Indian. Suddenly, three quarters of the way through the play she mentions racism – yet another issue! – and you think “What?”.

The play is mostly set during the famous Higgs boson breakthrough and we get two long soliloquies from Luke Owen as “The Boson”. Leaving aside the thought that his science, speculation and observations may belong in a different play, Owen is very good indeed. He commands the stage with apparent insouciance, tempered with huge assertions about the end of the world, eyes darting and hands expressive. I’d be quite happy to see him do a 60 minute one man play, sometime.

• 

  All photos: Robert Piwko

• 
• 
• 

All photos: Lizzie Henshaw

Elayne Ogbeta’s warm, pleasing and thoughtful show for ages 4-9 manages to pack in more layers than a good strudel.

Predicated partly on Black History Month it presents Grandad (Marcus Hercules) and his primary school age granddaughter, Abi (Jazmine Wilkinson) in his garden. Like everything else in this show, the garden designed by Sorcha Corcoran, is beautiful with lots of colour, light and plants that Grandad knows by name and talks to. One of the many layers in this show is botanical with words like “perennial” casually thrown in.

Story telling, and its extraordinary power, is at the centre of the piece because Grandad and Abi,  who really love each other, are bonded by the Anansi stories which they share and act out, improvising with items lying about in the garden – with lots of humour and pleasure. Another theme is migration because Grandad has come, originally, from Jamaica and hankers for its sound, sunshine, smells and colour. He is planning to return but struggles to tell Abi this so the play is also about loss, change and letting go.

Hercules brings a certain venerability to Grandad although he’s also lithe and lively especially when Abi is teaching him to dance. This is a good actor playing decades above his actual age but none of the children in the rapt school groups I saw it with will have noticed. And his colourful costume (designed by Zoey Barnes) is a delight.

Wilkinson’s performance is strong and convincing too. She has all the gestures, mannerisms and body language of a 9 year old but also segues effortlessly into Jamaican Patois for the telling of the Anansi stories which are verse so they flow along. There is also music by Tayo Akinbode and parts of the stories are sung.

And as for the title, the conceit is that Grandad is himself just like the clever, mischievous part-man, part-spider Anansi. He’s certainly charismatic in Hercules’s hands and of course Abi and her mum will be able to visit him in his new home. “It’s only a plane ride away” as he tells her.

This show is touring nationwide until 30 October

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/grandad-anansi/

• 

  Photos: Lizzie Henshaw

• 
• 
• 

Photo: Nick Haeffner

Tennessee Williams’ 1963 play about a difficult, wealthy, dying woman and a poet who makes a habit of visiting such women and “overseeing” their end, doesn’t get many outings. So this revival is an interesting project.

There are, however, problems. While there’s some faultless acting, of which more shortly, it’s a very wordy play and the pace is slow. Moreover, Director Robert Chevara and his team have elected to set this sixty-year-old play “in the present” so we get lots of mobile phones, and mentions of credit cards. On the other hand there are distracting inconsistencies such as much stage business with cigarettes and references to Truman Capote and Gore Vidal as though they were still alive. It feels like a play which can’t quite work out where it is.

We’re on the Amalfi Coast where insufferable Flora Goforth (Linda Marlowe), an American married four times,  is writing her memoirs with the help of her long suffering but assertive secretary, Blackie (Lucie Shorthouse – excellent). After a slightly nervous start on press night  Marlowe plays this huge role with plenty of flair packing in imperiousness, vulnerability, sexual longing, self delusion,  self importance and many rapid mood changes.

As Chris Flanders, the poet who turns up, is attacked by her dogs and her body guard (Joe Ferrera) but eventually is invited to stay, Sanee Raval is convincing. It’s a nuanced interpretation of a complex character. He isn’t just looking for dying people to exploit. At some level he genuinely wants to help although he’s also an opportunist. Raval makes him charismatic enough to be credible.

Sara Kestelan, clad in floaty scarlet with a wonderful turban, is a show stealer as Mrs Goforth’s “friend”. Actually she’s a very bitchy manipululor.  Kestelman, who has a good way with  sneers and put-downs, makes her very funny – in a chilling sort of way.

There’s also some nice work from young actor, Matteo Johnson as Rudy – a sort of man-of-all-work in Mrs Goforth’s household, protesting in Italian while trying to keep on the right side of everyone.

The play is said to have been partly a response to the death of Williams’s long term lover, Frank Merlo. It certainly raises and discusses questions about death and acceptance or denial of its inevitability but there are some strange strands which don’t add much – such as the emphasis on the isolation of Mrs Goforth’s house up a mountain and the guarding of it by dogs. There are also subplots crying out to be developed. I’d dearly like to know more about Blackie’s back story, for instance.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-milk-train-doesnt-stop-here-anymore/