We tend to associate Alan Ayckbourn with comedy but, as every reader of Sardines knows, his work is much more nuanced than that. Woman in Mind, which he wrote in 1985, as a young playwright, is actually a searing tragedy whose many comic moments only highlight the plight of the central character.

Susan (Jenna Russell) is a middle class, middle-aged vicar’s wife losing her mind. Perhaps it’s the result of a knock on the head. Or it may be a severe menopause or early onset Alzheimer’s. The reason doesn’t matter much. What we’re watching is a mind being taken over by dementia.

Her delusions take the form of re-enactions of the life she, at some level, wishes she’d had: a grand country home, maybe even an estate, a loving daughter (Flora Higgins) a dishy very caring husband (Marc Elliott), a dashing younger brother (Orlando James) and a glittering career in her own right.

What she actually has – and Mark Henderson’s lighting and Simon Barker’s video design complete with flying birds make us acutely aware of the difference – is an overbearing, boorish, boring, bossy sexless husband (Nigel Lindsay in excellent form) and a small garden. Their son Rick (Will Attenborough) has attached himself to a silent sect in Hemel Hempstead but comes home and upsets his mother still further during the course of the play.

Russell finds a lot of eloquent silence as Susan gazing into the distance, clearly desperately unhappy and barking cynical remarks at those around her – between her delusional episodes. It’s a challenging but very meaty role and Russell is good at switching mood as suddenly she sees her other life or aspects of it. Her final scenes when, soaked to the skin by rain, she falls apart completely – and, in a bizarre muddled-mind sequence – conjures up entwined, distorted versions of both her lives are almost unbearably moving. Anyone who has lived with loss of mind at close quarters, as I have, will identify with the horror of watching someone disappear into a world of their own while onlookers, rooted in their own version of reality, have no idea what is going on.

Matthew Cottle turns in a fine performance as Bill, the kindly but slightly dotty local doctor who tries to help Susan but is out of his depth. And there’s lovely work from Stephanie Jacob as the lumpy sister-in-law galumphing round the stage and producing inedible food and undrinkable beverages.

Yes, this is a production which will make you laugh. A lot. It is also likely to make you cry.

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  All photos: Johan Persson

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Structured episodically like a sharply written TV sit com, Eric Henry Sanders’  four-hander is a witty exploration of 30-something first pregnancy.

Kate (Christie Meyer) wins a horse race bet which brings her to the realisation that she would like a baby with her somewhat reluctant husband of twelve years, Guy (Cory English). Quite soon a pregnancy starts and brings with it a great deal of pretty plausible worry, angst and agonising. Meanwhile their friends Hugh (Lance C Fuller) and Zoe (Maria Teresa Creasey), who also happens to be Kate’s boss, have a two year old child, Lola, who horrifies, intrigues and fascinates Kate and Guy. Horse racing runs thematically through the play but doesn’t add much.

There are some good scenes, mostly duologues, all of them funny as well as occasionally poignant. Kate and Zoe assembling a to-do/to-buy list for Kate is a pleasing example of two actors working responsively together. Meyer has a way of communicating real depth of feeling with just a look or a dip of her head. The scene in which all four of them queue for the cinema in bitter cold is convincing. And I liked the contrast between the intense, truthful Guy and the rather more relaxed self accepting Hugh, who is currently a stay-at-home father.

Maybe, Probably has done well in the USA and is staged here with an American cast so it feels very natural. Although it is set in New York the issues it ranges over are both timeless and universal so we identify with each character and they’re all pretty well defined.  It sits happily in the bijoux intimacy of the Old Red Lion, with audience on two sides too.

The play could, however, be more streamlined. As it is we get a brief semi- black out and scurrying about with props at the end of each short scene which  feels oddly old fashioned and underdeveloped.  And, bizarrely, on press night a small but enthusiastically supportive audience applauded after each little episode. Thus the piece feels fragmented.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/maybe-probably/

Well, if you want naturalism in a showcase for versatility this is probably the way to go. Based on eavesdroppings collected by the twelve cast members in public places this summer, Another Eavesdropping is verbatim theatre in its purest form – ranging in an hour and three quarters (including interval) from three young  men trying to get an Uber to the irritation of someone carelessly coughing over popcorn in a crowded cinema, an earnest discussion about cheese, and a lot more. Some of the conversation is so mundane that the humour lies in the banality. It’s very finely observed.

It’s effectively a series of vignettes of various lengths with, usually, one of the actors morphing into another character for the next scene so that there’s a casting overlap. Meanwhile the rest of the company sit – in their plain coloured teeshirts and jeans – absolutely still and neutral at the sides.  It is not a play as such. Rather it hops from one situation to another, randomly. Such structure feels reminiscent of a student showcase but that is certainly not a criticism of the standard of acting which is pleasingly high.

Ricky Zalman, for instance, is splendid as a sick, angry, man in a pharmacy ranting at great length about the way his prescription has been prepared. And Georgia Dawson plays against him perfectly as the patient, long suffering pharmacist. Both shine in other roles too – Dawson, for example, cries in a cubicle in the gents while Taylor Pope (excellent at all times) kindly tries to coax her out. Like every single scene in this show, it’s pretty convincing.

I liked Gordana Kostic’s preshow performance as a street busker, soprano soon casually moved on by a bossy official and she is strong as the doctor/social worker ruthlessly trying to manage a mental health patient. Ben Armitage’s opening scene in which he meets a girl he knows and camply talks at her for what feels to us, and to her, for a very long time is nicely done too.

There is a lot of talent in this show and most of it is entertaining but inevitably it feels bitty and that makes it hard work to watch because you have to keep readjusting.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/another-eavesdropping/

All photos: The Other Richard

Alan Bennett is past master of insouciant incongruity – and trademark eloquent silences which are often hilarious and sometimes poignant. It’s slightly odd to see a Bennett story adapted by a different writer but I can confirm that Adrian Scarborough has more than nailed it. My only slight gripe is that Bennett’s novella of the same name dates from 1997. Scarborough has made some attempt to update it with references to Mary Berry, not being in the EU, digital TV and the like but it isn’t always consistent bcause we also get polaroid photographs and Kiri te Kanawa (now 78 and retired)  in live performance. Thus the play doesn’t always feel historically quite secure but it doesn’t matter much.

Maurice Ransome (Adrian Scarbrough) and his wife Rosemary (Sophie Thompson) have been to Covent Garden. Cue for several glorious Cos fan tutte sound bites. When they get home to their flat they discover that, in their absence it has been burgled: emptied, stripped bare so that they are left with just the titular clothes on their backs. Even the lavatory roll has gone which allows Bennett the opportunity for a few of his characterstic bodily funtions jokes. He has been accused, with some justification, of an obsession with excrement.

The unlikely plot which follows gives us – with Bennett’s unique blend of wistfulness and laughter – the chance to explore the Ransomes’ marriage, the significance of possessions, what friendship really means and a great deal more.

Scarborough and Thompson are magnificent together. He is, of course, insufferable with his bossy, pedantic, humourless, bigotry,  and self-absorption. Most of us would have put arsenic in his tea long ago. But his wife is loyal, dutiful and long suffering so she doesn’t do that. Thompson does a good line in brittle dappiness, deep underneath which is an independent woman who’d really quite like a life. She has a way of communicating – and getting laughs – by just looking. And everyone in the audience knows exactly what she’s thinking.

Also outstanding in this production are the three support actors: Ned Costello, Charlie de Melo and Natasha Magigi. Between them they play a whole raft of meaty cameo roles with oodles of versatility and impressive voice work. Magigi, for instance, delights as the overbearing, hands-on (literally) counsellor. De Melo’s Mr Anwar, local shopkeeper is warm and caring in stark contrast to Scarborough’s character. And Costello, who graduated from LAMDA, only last year is definitely one to watch. He pops up in so many convincing roles you keep blinking and checking that it’s the same actor.

A word of praise too for Robert Jones’s ingenious set which, using advancing and receding hydraulics, gives us the Ransomes’ sitting room in three different guises along with several smaller roll-on, roll-off scene evokers.

It’s well worth a trip to Nottingham.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-clothes-they-stood-up-in/

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  All photos: The Other Richard

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Enter Anthony McCarten’s intelligent, neatly crafted play based on his 2019 book The Pope. First staged at Royal and Derngate, Northampton in 2019, this is its first London run.

Anton Lesser as Benedict is sardonic, authoritative and oozing white robed charisma. That’s why the informal scene when, more or less in mufti, he visits his friend Sister Brigitta (Lynsey Beauchamp)  for supper and TV drama works so well – the incongruous contrast  means that we meet a wholly rounded character. And she is the first person to whom he confides his thoughts about possible resignation.

Nicholas Woodeson gives us a powerful contrast in Bergoglio: “I’m an Argentinian. Tango and football are compulsory.” At 75, he too wants to retire and travels to Rome to discuss it with the Pope – thus allowing McCarten to make long scenes between the two men the backbone of his play. They disagree about almost everything: gay rights, abortion, birth control and, most serious of all, the condoning of abuse by Catholic priests. Equally, as two old men who worship the same god they have much in common too. And both are from backgrounds they would have done well to distance themselves from much earlier: the Pope from Nazi Germany and Bergoglio from the Junta in Argentina.

Dramatically, none of this is heavy or static and there are a surprising number of laughs in the play which manages to be moving, funny and thoughtful all at the same time.  McCarten’s dialogue is as sharp as a razor blade and Lesser and Woodeson – both actors at the top of their game – know exactly how to spin off each other to spellbinding effect.  And I liked Duncan McLean’s video projections which use images on a huge proscenium frame atmospherically to evoke various rooms in the Vatican – and at one point, noisy colourful Argentina.

There’s a nice performance from Leaphia Darko as the sister who assists Bergoglio and questions him in Argentina but Malcolm James and Angela Jones, billed as “ensemble” are oddly underused

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  All photos: Manuel Harlan

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Antigone, written nearly two and a half millennia ago, is a political play about power. It’s also about family issues, tensions and conflicts of loyalty. You’d be hard put to find anything more searingly, timelessly topical especially in the hands of playwright/poet Inua Ellams. It took a few minutes to find its feet on press night but thereafter was pretty riveting.

Antigone (Zainab Hasan) is part of a 21 Century British Pakistani Muslim family whose uncle, Creon (Tony Jayawardena) becomes Prime Minister early in the play. A shootout leads to the death of Antigone’s police officer brother, Eteocles (Abe Jarman), a state of emergency declared and the body of the executed Polyneices (Nadeem Islam) detained indefinitely – a dreadful fate for a Muslim for whom burial rituals are crucial. Creon meanwhile, every inch a right wing Tory politician immaculately observed by Jayawardena, insists repeatedly that the law (which he has changed, of course) must come first. That means that no imam will bury Polyneices or be seen to sympathise with an extremist, however much Antigone pleads with her uncle. Of course neither Sophocles nor Ellams gives us a happy ending. As some wag behind me remarked at the end in rich Estuary “It’s Greek drama innit?”

Ellams’s language is richly poetic although most of the dialogue is in prose. I really liked Antigone’s opening speech – full of passionate rhetoric –  when she’s trying to prevent the closure of the youth centre she’s been helping to run and the moving poem Ellams gives her at the opening of Act 2 when she’s in prison. Hasan is splendid in this role. Her everyday London accent is very natural and she is totally convincing as a feisty young woman with passions, determination, love for her cousin, Haemon (Oliver Johnstone – good) and a powerful sense of right and wrong.

But the real star of this show is the chorus. What do you do with a Greek Chorus in a 21 Century play? Ellams repeatedly reworks them as young people in the youth centre, a posse of paparazzi, feminist groups, street demonstrators and much more. They rhythmically spit out angry, thoughtful or apposite words (often in iambic pentameter) and are spikily choreographed by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille to Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante’s arrestingly dramatic music. It provides slick and very engrossing backbone to this interesting, gripping version of the play.

Welcome too is the casting of Islam as Polyneices. He is deaf and signs as he speaks as do some other cast members while he’s on stage. It’s a pleasing performance and adds yet another dimension to the drama – as well as making a fine production more accessible.