Venue: Tower Theatre. 16 Northwold Road, Stoke Newington, London N16 7HR

Credits: By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Tanika Gupta

A Doll’s House

4 stars

Susan Elkin | 10 Oct 2023 23:03pm

Photo: Jason Harris

Tanika Gupta’s reinterpretation of Ibsen’s (1879) play takes us to Colonial India in late 19th Century so it’s the same period. When I interviewed Gupta recently she told me that although she has lived in England all her life, most of her work is rooted in her Indian heritage. Her version of A Doll’s House dates from 2019 when it premiered at Lyric Hammersmith, directed by Rachel O’Riordan. Since then it has been set as a GCSE drama option along with three other “global majority” texts. It’s a compelling but accessible exploration of racial and sexual politics.

Niru is a young Bengali woman married to Tom, an English bureaucrat. Of course he idolises her but she’s not cut out to be his plaything although she pretends she is and there are, inevitably, factors in the background. It’s a very good fit for Ibsen’s story.

At the centre of Tower Theatre’s excellent production, adeptly directed by Olivia Chakraborty (Assisted by Krishmeela Rittoo), is an outstanding performance by Vaishnavi CG as Niru, Gupta’s take on Ibsen’s Nora. Apparently the Indian trophy wife, educated and sophisticated, she pouts, flirts, worries and pleads in a very convincing way until gradually we learn of the trouble she has got herself into as a way of saving her husband when things were difficult. Vaishnavi CG finds a lot of depth and nuance in the role until she finally breaks free. It’s as good a piece of acting as you’ll see anywhere.

As her husband, Micky Gibbons – his voice patrician and his manner lofty except when he’s overcome with tender passion for his “little Indian skylark” – matches her well. Tom’s racism is, of course, only just below the surface and the small school GCSE group sitting near me winced and muttered every time he said something patronising or belittling. As a couple they look striking on stage too because Gibbons is a tall man and Vaishnavi CG’s petite stature means that she barely reaches his armpit.

There’s high level support from Arthur Davies as Dr Rank, the family friend who is ill and in love with Niru. As the impoverished widowed schoolfriend Mrs Lahiri, Rachana Reddy is serious intense and a strong dramatic contrast to Niru. Janak Nirmal is powerful as the glitteringly sinister, but ultimately vulnerable, Das and Nina Ali delights as Niru’s servant who has looked after her all her life. She brings charismatic, fragile warmth to the character who, whatever Tom thinks, is a much more than a mere servant.

There are lots of scene changes in this play as we move from different rooms and the garden in Tom and Niru’s house. These are ingeniously managed by placing one or two characters downstage and moving props and furniture in the shadows behind them. Lighting designer Nick Insley and Chakraborty are very good and highlighting faces and using light to build character – and ambience. I also liked the blend of Indian and European classical music which covers the scene changes. It’s a neat way of stressing the two cultures and yes, of course, Vivaldi’s A minor violin concerto is exactly the sort of thing Tom and his friends would have listened to at soirees in Calcutta.

I’d read this version of the play – in connection with a piece I wrote when it was adopted as a GCSE set text – but I hitherto I hadn’t seen it. I’m glad I now have because Tower Theatre has done it proud.

Production photos: Jason Harris

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/a-dolls-house-3/

Show: Iolanthe

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: London Coliseum. St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4ES

Credits: Written by Gilbert & Sulivan

Iolanthe

2 stars

Susan Elkin | 06 Oct 2023 22:42pm

Photo: Craig Fuller

Every G&S buff knows about Captain Shaw. He was Chief of Metropolitan Fire Brigade from 1861 to 1892. On the opening night of Iolanthe at the Savoy in 1882, he was sitting in the stalls – so he got a whole chorus of the Fairy Queen’s lovely second act aria Oh Foolish Fay. The strange thing is that it stayed in for ever which means that for the last 141 years this bit of obscurity has had to be explained to anyone interested.

Cal McCrystal’s version gives a uniformed Captain Shaw (Clive Mantle in a rather amazing helmet) providing a distinctly laboured prologue – a sort of warm up bit of stand-up” – to both halves. Goodness knows why anyone thought it would be a good idea to have him self-deprecatingly running down the show but, sadly, in places his remarks are spot on.

And that’s a pity because there is a lot to like about this show. The sets (Paul Brown) are magnificent from floral “Flower Fairy” type back-drops to the wall of the House of Lords and, best of all, the Lord Chamberlain’s flamboyant throne and the screen behind it. All the chorus singing (chorus director Martin Fitzpatrick) is splendid – every word clear and every note placed with precision. They are, moreover, beautifully directed (Cal McCrystal) to make imaginative use of the space. Most of the soloists are strong too, especially Catherine Wyn-Rogers as a grand, claret-voiced Fairy Queen making those bottom notes resonate like a vocal double bass to every corner of this huge venue. The entrance of the peers on a train is a theatrical tour do force too.

But – and I’m afraid there are plenty of “buts” – although the music is beautifully played by a full pit orchestra directed by Chris Hopkins, many of the tempi are too fast for solo numbers in a big space like the Coliseum. For example, although John Savourin (very seasoned at this) knows how to deliver the Chancellor’s Nightmare like almost no other, we lost some of the words as it accelerated. There were many people in the audience who were clearly new to G&S and were, perforce, laughing at the sur-titles rather than at what they could hear – the time delay is a giveaway.

I’m not keen on most of the additional material either – extra jokes and lines. WS Gilbert is very funny. If you deliver his lines (with a few cuts) as he wrote them, then they actually work. Some of the biggest laughs of the evening were, tellingly, at what Gilbert wrote rather than at anything added in. It’s matter of trusting your material.

Clearly no one in this production (revived from 2015) actually does trust the material. What on earth is the point of the pantomime cow? Or the flamingo? I realise that if you’ve paid for flight technology you want value for money but there’s far too much whizzing about overhead for the sake of it in this show.

And no director should ever upstage solo singers by putting gratuitous stage business behind them. I’ve seen this very basic error in amateur opera productions and winced. ENO really should know better than to have stage hands pushing a flock of sheep on stage, falling over them etc while Phyllis (Ellie Laugharne) and Strephon (Marcus Farnsworth) are singing their love duet. That’s just an example. There is a great deal of this sort of thing which adds nothing to the show.

In short this is a production which is simply trying too hard. Relax, chaps, let the show do the work. You don’t have to contrive silly gags as if we were in a pantomime and, by the way, if you include three encores in the traditional G&S way they have to build up and get funnier. It’s no use doing more or less the same thing three times as you turgidly do in “If you go in, you’re sure to win”.

All photos: Craig Fuller

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/iolanthe-3/

What a novel! First published in 1854, when Dickens was 42, it exudes anger about social injustice from the first page to the last.

I first read it as a set text on my English course at teacher training college, worked on it during my Open University degree and later taught it for GCSE but hadn’t, until now, revisited it for a while. And, of course, one of the great joys of rereading is that you notice different things at different stages in your life as well as responding to changing mores in your own time and culture.

For example, in chapter 3 Dickens makes it clear that Louisa is pubescent or even (in an age when girls developed later) pre-pubescent: “She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen: but at a not distant day would seem to become a woman all at once”. A few pages later, in chapter 4, we find the repulsive, tedious hectoring, boastful, self important Bounderby who is nearly 50, begging a kiss from her. In 2023 we’d call him a paedophile and I’d never noticed that before.

Another thing I wondered about a lot during this re-reading is Bounderby’s bedroom performance – or lack of it. Louisa is almost 20 when she marries this man whom she loathes. They are together for a while but there are no children. In Victorian novels children, or absence of them, usually convey a covert message about a couple’s sexual status. At the end of Jane Eyre, for example, Charlotte Bronte pointedly tells us that Mr Rochester eventually recovers enough eyesight to see his first born son. Perhaps Louisa could have had this distastrous marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation? Towards the end of the novel Dickens mentions, in another context, Bounderby’s “blustering sheepishness” which would make a good discussion classroom point in relation to several aspects of his character.

Hard Times is, at heart, a satirical attack on ruthless, money-driven, exploitative industrialisation and the sort of education which is required to underpin it – if you take the principles to their logical, comical extent. The opening of Hard Times is famous for its depiction of a fact-driven classroom in which one boy is commended for his long, wordy definition of a horse while Sissy Jupe, who has grown up in a circus training horses, is ridiculed for her lack of knowledge. Every modern teacher knows this passage and “Grandgrindery” has passed into the language as code for teaching/learning which over- emphasises irrelevant theory.

Mr Gradgrind, who owns and funds the school, is not a bad man, however. He is initially misguided but eventually changes. He loves his children too. Characterisation in Hard Times is often beautifully nuanced. Other characters who are subtly drawn include Sissy who starts as a nervous child abruptly removed from her own environment and develops into a wise, kind, practical young woman and a worthy “sister” to Louisa especially when things go seriously wrong. Also a delight is Mr Sleary, the circus owner, who is kind, reasonable and warm although I wish Dickens had spared us the rather laboured phonetic representation of his lisp.

Both Gradgrind and Bounderby, who are good friends, have made their money – a lot of money – from the heavy industry of Coketown, the fictional northern town in which the novel is set. The subplot, which ensures sure that we really do see the divide between the rich and the poor, concerns Stephen Blackpool, an innocent and decent factory worker who loves Rachael but who is saddled with a drunken, vagrant wife who occasionally returns to distress him. (Disastrous marriage is thematic in Hard Times.) Then Mr Bounderby’s bank is robbed and suddenly, the finger of suspicion lands on Stephen but it’s clear to the reader who is actually responsible in a fairly tightly plotted novel.

Two other things struck me afresh. First: I love, and have always loved, Dicken’s frequent, comic use of anaphora. “No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject …” And so he dances on and on. in similar mood, he compares the pistons of Coketown’s heavy industrial plant with “the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness” in chapter 5 and then refers to the elephants whenever he mentions the factories for the rest of the novel. Young Tom Gradgrind is continually, and rather contemptuously dubbed “the whelp”. It’s a Dickens trademark. In Great Expectations he repeatedly compares Wemmick’s mouth with a post office and who could forget Mr Carker’s teeth in Dombey and Son?

Second: how brave it was of Dickens – writing over a century before we got to post-modernism – to give us a post-modernist ending. He describes possible long term outcomes for his characters and then invites us to choose. It’s almost John Fowles territory.

Yes, Hard Times is a very worthwhile reread. If, on the other hand, it’s new to you then believe me, you have a treat in store. And if you think Dickens’s novels are always dauntingly huge then be reassured that this one is less than 300 pages.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Heresy by SJ Parris

Show: Quiz

Society: Chichester Festival Theatre (professional)

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre. Oaklands Way, Chichester PO19 6AP

Credits: By James Graham

Quiz

3 stars

So James Graham’s 2017 play is back in its birthplace – except that it has grown and now fills the main house, Chichester Festval Theatre, having originally debuted in the smaller Minerva Theatre. Since then this story of the man who nearly tricked Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (or did he?) out of a million pounds in 2001 has enjoyed a West End run and been developed by James Graham into an ITV three-part drama. After Chichester it now embarks on a nationwide, ten-venue tour until the end of November.

It’s tightly, wittily written as you’d expect from Graham and the play is a mildly interesting exploration of the national obsession with quiz and game shows. Rory Bremmer is crowd-pleasingly plausible as quiz master Chris Tarrant and there are a number of cameo roles instantly recognised by the audience which trigger lots of laughter – thereby neatly reinforcing Graham’s point about the British love affair with such programmes. Nearly everyone in the room knows the format and remembers the long fraud trial at Southwark Crown Court.

Another crux of the show is the intercutting of the trial – just another form ot drama? – with re-enactments of “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” and scenes with Charles Ingram and his wife, the show’s producers and other characters. Flashing screens and the right music evoke the atmosphere although the badly synched close ups of contestant’s faces on screens don’t add anything useful. Moreover, at the performance I saw, a chunk of dialogue was repeated for no apparent reason so I presume it was someone’s momentary mistake with lines. Issuing the whole audience with fobs so that they can vote is quite fun, though.

So did Major Charles Ingram (Lewis Reeve), his wife Diana (Charley Webb) and his brother-in-law devise some scheme using coughs as a signal to ensure that he got the questions right? The play raises doubts although in real life, as in the play, he was found guilty but his sentence suspended. Reeve gives us a young, apparently naïve Ingram and Webb makes Diana determinedly cannier – a bit Macbethian without the knives. She knows the answers and coaches him because as a character in the play cynically observes these game shows have to focus on the popular culture that the middle classes know nothing about: soaps, pop music and sport.

Other characters are less convincing and the doubling is often confusing. Although Danielle Henry is strong as Sonia Woodley QC, Mark Benton’s Judge Rivlin who several times drops into Trial by Jury territory doesn’t work because it isn’t believable.

I liked the attention to detail, though. Co directors Daniel Evans and Sean Linnen give us, for example, cameramen lurking in the shadows and Robert Jones’s set includes upstage wooden seating for the trial scenes.

At the end, the $64,000 question (sorry) is did Ingram do what he was accused of or not? The audience vote at the performance I saw came out almost like Brexit – 47% guilty and 53% not guilty. We then see the figures for other recent shows and it’s always around 50/50.

I left the theatre wondering if the Ingrams have seen this show and what they think about and say as they drive home.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/quiz/

All photos: Johan Persson

Photograph credit: Camilla Greenwell

Nicola Benedetti plays Brahms

South Bank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Philharmonia

Conductor: Cristian Macelaru

Sunday 01 October

The concert opener – One Line, Two Shapes by Nico Muhly – stems from Pandemic isolation and must be a very challenging piece to bring off from cold because it starts with the softest possible chorale played by two celli and two double basses. It then builds gradually before being interrupted with staccato string chords – played with commendable dramatic incisiveness. I rather enjoyed the bowed xylophone and the acoustic effect of placing a small group of lower strings behind the brass.

Then it was off to the familiar, beloved sound world of Brahms’s violin concerto – except that Nicola Benedetti, tall and elegant in her long black dress, made it seem completely fresh. Visibly and physically feeling her way into the music during the opening orchestral section, she attacked the first movement (Allegro non troppo) with warmth, energy and passion interspersed with a lot of sweetness and imaginative, dynamic colour in the cadenza. The adagio felt like a cool oasis after the heat of the allegro. The oboe solo (Timothy Rundle) was almost painfully beautiful and nicely supported by the rest of the woodwind section especially the bassoons. And from the solo violin entry there was a strong sense of conversation and rapport between Benedetti and the string section principals. Finally Macleru, clearly very much at home with Benedetti, made sure that the Allegro giocoso danced to the end of the concerto with joyful exuberance. Benedetti’s slender fingers, incidentally, are fascinating to watch as she trills effortlessly on all four fingers – surely the envy of every amateur string player in the hall?

After the interval came Rachmaninov’s third symphony with its many sections and mood changes across the unusual three movement structure. And the performance was full of things to admire – the legato string playing over the wind cross rhythms in the first movement and impeccable solo work from leader Zsolt-Tihamer Visontay for example. In a work which changes direction so often, it’s important to find plenty of tension and Macelaru certainly did that especially in the adagio in which he stressed the detail from, for instance, harps and celeste before reaching the busier central section with its sudden, trumpet fanfares. It’s a big work (five percussionists plus timps) and here it purred along joyfully with players appearing to enjoy it as much as the rapturous audience did.

Show: Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical

Society: London (professional shows)

Venue: Menier Chocolate Factory. 53 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU

Credits: Written & directed by Ben Elton

Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical

2 stars

There’s something oddly inconsequential about this show. It tells the story of Twiggy’s unlikely life and leaves us admiring her not inconsiderable achievements and versatility but beyond that one emerges thinking “So what?” because there’s no real plot to drive the narrative. Moreover the projected printed info and the real life clips make it feel too much like a hagiographic documentary. “In 1967 Twggy was the most famous woman in the world” we’re told firmly. Really? The Queen and Jackie Kennedy were pretty well known at the time. So were Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn.

Ben Elton has worked hard to factor in some then-and-now social commentary to make this story of the skinny girl from Neasden who became DBE in 2019 seem relevant. But it feels contrived.

All this is a pity because there’s talent in the cast. Elena Skye has nailed a direct voice for Twiggy and her singing and dancing are very charismatic. Hannah-Jane Fox is outstanding as Twiggy’s mum, beset with mental health problems but with warm wit, although it’s a shame that the narrative sails so quickly and lightly over the electro-convulsive therapy she was subjected to – an opportunity missed. Steven Serlin, who sings well, has a splendid gift for impersonation (David Frost, Melvyn Bragg and co) and brings loads of Lancastrian warmth to Twiggy’s dad.

The energetic ensemble, from which lots of quite appealing cameo roles emerge is slick and Jacob Fearey’s spikey choreography fits the mood – and the small space.

Stuart Morley is in charge of the music and a seven piece band sits, often visibly, on a side platform above stage right. There’s a lot of nostalgia in the music – songs which connote the era from Gracie Fields and Dinah Shore to Petula Clark and Bernard Cribbins and a lot more. It isn’t quite a juke box musical but occasionally one wonders if the choice of song is driving the narrative rather than the other way round. Either way Morley and his orchestra make a fine sound.

Close-Up is entertaining enough in its way. Twiggy is quite an interesting character, after all. It’s just that it lacks depth. I’d be interested to know how the real-life Twiggy (“Oh and she saved Marks and Spencers” as her mother comments at the end) feels about it. Justin de Villeneuve, to whom this show is not kind, will loathe it.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/close-up-the-twiggy-musical/

Show: Macbeth

Society: New International Encounter Theatre

Venue: Gayhurst Community School, London E8 3EN

Credits: By William Shakespeare

Macbeth

3 stars

It’s always a pleasure to share a first (probably) experience of live Shakespeare with an exuberantly enthusiastic group of 10 and 11 year olds – in Hackney on this occasion.

And there is a lot to like about NEI‘s three hander, mildly modernised, 55-minute version of the Scottish Play. It’s an inspired idea to create the characters and introduce them from a suitcase at the beginning and then to “find” the witches with a gauzy shared shawl and a bit of wafting stage smoke (designer: Rachana Jadhav). I really liked Greg Hall’s music. He’s an accomplished cellist and his phone calls in modern “local” English to the professional assassin are a nice touch. Segueing straight from the sleepwalking to “Out brief candle” by handing over a literal lighted candle works well too.

In short, using a text which neatly retains most of the famous original text lines but splices them together with current English and devices such as using phones for Macbeth’s letter home – another good idea – makes the story telling as clear as it could possibly be.

Abayomi Oniyde is a suitably troubled Macbeth, especially in the soliloquy scene before the murder of Duncan which is delivered as a partly adlib debate with the audience while he sits chummily amongst them on a suitcase. Valentina Creschi is manic as Lady Macbeth, confidently powerful as Macduff and gently thoughful as Banquo – she makes the distinctions very strongly. Greg Hall plays and produces sound effects almost continuously as well as morphing facially into one of the most sinister witches I’ve seen in a while.

Other characters are invited – Fleance, Malcolm and so on – from the audience as are the guests at the banquet and the English army. The actors are, though, on a learning curve with regard to young audience management which is not easy when you also need to stay in role. Given the level of excitement in the hall, the performance I saw came close several times to running out of control not least because of noise and continual incursions from nearby classrooms. This show is, however, at the beginning of its tour and this will improve. I’m sure director Michael Judge gave some useful notes afterwards.

No stage blood was used during this particular performance because there has recently been a violent death in the Gayhurst Community School community. This was carefully explained to me and apologised for. Actually convincing acting ensured that the lack of it barely noticed.

The question and answer session at the end was interesting. One perceptive girl shot straight to the crux of the play by asking: “Who really made Macbeth mad? Was it the witches or his wife?” Well we’ve all written discursive exam answers to that question – O Level, GCSE, A Level, University etc – and of course, it’s definitively unanswerable which is the joy of Shakespeare and quite a discovery when you’re only ten. Michael Judge wisely turned the question back to the questioner.

First published by https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/macbeth-21/

Whenever I’m in touch – and that’s quite often – with my dear old college friend who lives in Brisbane, we always swap a few book titles, just as we did almost daily when we were students together. And, as a bonus, she often mentions titles by Australian authors which have slipped beneath my radar in the UK. Our tastes are quite similar so I usually buy her suggestions and am rarely disappointed and I certainly wasn’t with this powerful, poignant, intelligent novel.

Limberlost was published last year and is newly available in paperback. I read it on Kindle. Arnott, wrote it during his year as writer-in-residence at University of Tasmania and the island state provides the setting for his novel. I have been to Tasmania and, even today after decades of global industrialisation, it remains a remote place with more “wilderness”, as the Australians call it, than anywhere I’ve ever been. Conservation is now carefully managed and in Tasmania I saw more wildlife, casually in the wild than I’ve seen anywhere else – an echidna feeding on the roadside grass verge, a wombat near our cabin door and pandemelons cavorting in the snow for example.

And that sense of nature thrums through Limberlost which is set in the 1940s – when Tasmanian devils were still present in high numbers and you could hear them at night. Today they are affected by a rare form of cancer, unusual in that’s it’s contagious, and the only ones I saw were in a sanctuary. Ned is growing up in northern Tasmania in the 1940s, the youngest of four. His mother died when he was a baby. His father is a strange, unpredictable, distant man, His two older brothers have gone to war and his sister is the only female figure in his life apart from his best friend’s sister in the next valley. The main industry is farming – specifically orchard fruits but it’s vey hard to make a living.

Haunted by the memory of seeing, in infancy, something mysterious from a boat, Ned hankers for a boat of his own. He yearns for, and reflects on, things he can’t understand and the boat dream represents that. Eventually he acquires one but not before he has accidentally injured a quoll and secretly nursed it back to life. The animal becomes a symbol for the inner turmoil the boy often feels and but can’t fathom. At one level he is desperately worried about his conscripted brothers but there’s much more to it than that.

It’s a double narrative. In parallel with the account of his teenage years we also see Ned married with a family and making a reasonable success of his life and there’s a hint towards the end that we are seeing the whole of his life from a present day point of view.

Arnott is good at lyrical prose without it ever feeling self-conscious. He really does evoke the sounds, smells, sights and feel of what Tasmania must once have been like and of Ned slowly experiencing the changes. When he visits his daughters at the university, for instance, one of them turns on him quite viciously and berates him about the theft of all the land in Tasmania from the indigenous people – and suddenly I’m back in The English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2000). Yes, there’s plenty to think about here.

Limberlost is a succinct novel by 2023 standards – less than 200 pages so it can be soaked up in a day or two. Warmly recommended.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Hard Times by Charles Dickens

A Doll’s House

4 stars

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Iolanthe

2 stars

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Quiz

3 stars

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Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical

2 stars

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Macbeth

3 stars

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