The plot revolves around playwright Sidney Bruhl (Simon Russell Beale), a once-lauded thriller writer whose career is on the skids. Out of the blue Sidney receives a brilliant script from former student Clifford Anderson (Jonathan Groff aka ‘him off Glee‘). Entitled ‘Deathtrap’ it is a sure-fire smash, exactly the kind of thing to restore ‘Four Flops’ Bruhl’s reputation. So Sidney invites Clifford to his Westport home, ostensibly to see if he can somehow weasel himself a co-writing credit. When it emerges that young Clifford has brought the only existing copy of the script and that nobody knows where he is, it isn’t too long before we start wondering just how far the frustrated artist will go to recapture his former glory. Add to the mix Sidney’s wealthy wife Myra (Claire Skinner), their psychic neighbour (Jane Lambert), a nosey lawyer (Terry Beaver) and an impressive collection of weaponry dotted around the study and you’ve got a delicious recipe for twists, turns, suspense, humour and, naturally, murder.

Decency prevents me from giving away any more than that but suffice to say in a stage thriller about a stage thriller penned by Ira Levin (author Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, no less) there’s a lot of ingenious twists and turns, certainly enough to keep this audience member on his toes. And an honest-to-goodness I-did-not-see-that-coming shock towards the end of the first act is worth the price of admission alone.

Written in 1978, this revival revels in attention to period detail. The wood paneling, kaftans, typewriters, cut crystal glasses, etc. are so beautifully rendered that they almost detract from the onstage action. Fortunately, under Matthew Warchus’s direction, the cast – especially Russell Beal and Groff – pitch the piece perfectly between impossible realism and too-knowing camp.

Forget musicals: fun, funny, and frightening, ‘Deathtrap’ is theatrical escapism at its best.

Running until 22 January 2011.

And now I have this brilliant Young Vic production which brings to the fore the hopeless ambitions of its characters, proving the play to be an immense tragedy of unfulfilled dreams. Or maybe, as with the other two times, I’m just seeing my own life reflected back at me. (Cue violins).

Director Joel Hill-Gibbons takes up Williams’ instruction for the play to be viewed as memory (and therefore not realistic) and right from the outset expressionist theatrical magic captivates. Tom, the self-proclaimed poet who works in a factory, conducts the action for our entertainment, a fact neatly illustrated by the on-stage musicians who also await his cues. He invites us into his shabby and claustrophobic apartment where he lives with his mother Amanda, and his shy, crippled sister Laura. They are introduced to us by appearing out of nowhere, conjured by Tom from thin air.

Played with a manic intensity that veered wildly from sympathetic to repugnant, Leo Bill’s Tom spares no one in his rendering of the events leading up to his escape with the merchant marines. Amanda (Deborah Findlay), the fading Southern Belle, is cast as a calculating, interfering nuisance. Laura (Sinead Matthews) is shy and quiet but also shown to be a liar with an unusual, almost unhealthy fascination with glass figurines. Even Jim, the gentleman caller who Tom says is meant to represent “reality” struck me as an omen of unfulfilled promise, his optimism and big plans sounding like pipe dreams torn from the mouth of Willy Loman in ‘Death of a Salesman.’

Good writing, they say, is all about the stakes for the characters. This could explain why there are so many detective, medical and legal dramas on television: what could be higher stakes than losing your liberty or dying? For these kinds of dramas the stakes are in-built and therefore an easy task for the writer to convey why something occurring in the drama is vital i.e. “If we don’t get the generator to work in the next five minutes, these patients will die.” But with an overabundance of these particular stakes, we become bored of them. Which is why it’s so pleasurable to find yourself in the hands of a master dramatist, like Williams, who presents us here with the pettiest, most trivial of stakes but makes you feel like we’re dealing with life and death. The climatic scene between Laura and Jim, where it seems that a romance may be kindled, with its exquisite structure and droplets of information left scattered around like time bombs, is played to perfection here. It is all the more heartbreaking because the characters want so little but are denied it anyway.

A great ensemble performance here and a powerful textural interpretation, realised with a beautiful set design. A must see for anyone who thinks they know this play.

What is there left to say about ‘Hamlet?’ Constantly staged by theatres both professional and amateur, endlessly studied in schools and universities, quoted to the point where one would be excused for thinking Shakespeare cobbled together the entire text from popular expressions (as opposed to inventing most of them)…how does a company make such a familiar play seem fresh and new?

One possibility, explored by National Theatre Artistic Director Nicholas Hytner in his current production, is to let the text do the work for you. The result is a clean, unfussy, and coherent ‘Hamlet’ that makes up for diminished passion and flair by allowing the Bard’s words to take centre stage.

Rory Kinnear plays the titular Danish prince and it is clear from the outset that his Hamlet is a cool and calculating realist. Perhaps channeling the spirit of disgruntled post-graduates unable to find work in recent years, Kinnear’s Hamlet is a bored intellectual whose tragedy stems from over-thinking his vengeance.  He may don the famous hoodie in one scene, but this Prince is no yobbish tearaway. Like the thousands of students in Trafalgar square on the day I saw the play, Hamlet here is frustrated and angry that the future promised him has been erased and replaced only with uncertainty.

Textual clarity sheds light on other elements of the play, too. I’ve seen some productions that draw visual attention to the sheer amount of spying going on in Elsinor (in particular a CCTV-strewn RSC one starring Sam West) but here the words do the work and it’s altogether more sinister. In fact, I thought the black-suited heavies resembling secret service agents with their wrist walkie-talkies were unnecessary. Between Polonius (David Calder), Claudius (Patrick Malahide), Hamlet, Rosencrantz (Ferdinand Kingsley), Guildenstern (Prasanna Puwanarajah), Ophelia (Ruth Negga) – hell, just about everyone in the play – you have enough explicit entreaties to spy on and deceive other characters to understand just how rotten the Danish state is.

Commitment to Shakespeare’s words has some unexpected drawbacks as well, most notably in what is, to my mind, a diminishing of the female roles (that is to say Gertrude and Ophelia, the only two significant female characters in the play…which probably tells you something right there). Forget any Oedipal interpretations of Hamlet’s relationship with his mother; there’s not even a bed in the famous scene in her chambers. Gertrude (Clare Higgins) is devoid of any passion and is instead featured here with a drink permanently in hand. From her ever-smiling, slightly wobbily demeanor you’d be excused for thinking she needed all those drinks to keep downing the mood stabilisers.

The set and costume design have a monochrome palate straight out of the All Saints winter collection and with The XX providing the soundtrack to one scene and a rather exciting sword fight between Kinnear and Alex Lanipekun’s Laertes in the final scene, there are some concessions to the student groups which will no doubt be obliged to see the production for their GCSE English course. Whether or not this will make up for the 3.5 hour running time is another question. Sure, the young people who were in attendance when I saw Hamlet were getting a faithful rendering of what is arguable Shakespeare’s most famous play. But without some more passion, more pizazz will they appreciate it if they’ve fallen asleep?

So, the verdict. Hytner and Kinnear’s Hamlet is a good (not great) production that brings the language to the fore and reminds us why our culture has a love/hate relationship with Shakespeare: words, words, words.

Thanks to Peter Andrew Kemp whose Facebook I stole this from.

In London we were untouched by the white stuff over the weekend but by Monday night it was predicted that snow was on the way. That’s when I noticed a tweet from the National Theatre saying that, owing to a cancellation by a group booking, there were now limited £10 tickets available for the Tuesday matinée of ‘Hamlet.’ A simple check of the NT website revealed this to be true and within seconds I had a £10 ticket.

Snow there was yesterday but living as I do in central London (and being Canadian and not particularly phased by light, unaccumulating snow) I made my way to the National for the 13:30 curtain of ‘Hamlet’ (review to follow). During the interval I switched my phone on and checked Twitter. That’s when I noticed a tweet from the Young Vic theatre saying that due to the snowy weather a limited number of £10 tickets had become available. I rang them up quickly and, again, within minutes had secured a £10 ticket to ‘The Glass Menagerie.’

Once ‘Hamlet’ finished I had about 2.5 hours to kill, so I nipped into the National Theatre bookstore where I was surprised to find a Waterstones-like 3 for 2 deal on new play texts. Yes, that’s right: you pay for two plays and you get the third one free. And pretty much every new play that was published this year was there. I picked up DC Moore’s ‘The Empire’, Richard Bean’s ‘The Big Fellah’ and Lynne Nottage’s ‘Ruined’ – three of the plays I most regretted missing in 2010.

After a cheap but warming Cha Han at Wagamamas it was down to the Young Vic for a large glass of house red and ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (review to follow).

All in all I spent just over £50 yesterday for 6 hours of quality theatre, 3 play texts, 1 meal, and 1 glass of wine.

I realise not everyone is so flexible with their time or centrally located so as to take advantage of the deals like I did. But if you are it certainly won’t hurt you to check your Twitter when inclement weather threatens. Theatre’s will be happy to have a bum on a seat and your bum will be happy for having more money in its pocket.

But on Wednesday it was very much open for business and I couldn’t tell you the number of times I heard, “Let’s get some Mackie D’s, yea?” It’s hard to tell from this photo but let me tell you business was booming.

This was about two minutes away from where police officers were kettling students.

I suppose you could argue that these recent protests weren’t about globalisation so there’s no contradiction in grabbing a Big Mac after marching on Downing Street. But couldn’t you also argue that McDonald’s was and is still symbolic of the darker side of globalisation, the kind of globalisation whereby large, mutli-national organisations exploit their ability to move flexibly between states, allowing to them to flout national laws? And wasn’t it exactly this kind of globalisation that allowed multi-national financial institutions to behave in ways that led to  the current economic crises? And isn’t the current economic crises the reason why the UK government is justifying cuts to education funding – exactly the what the students are protesting?

The boys realising just how close they are to the horses.

Few things in this life are a certainty but I think it’s a fairly safe bet that teenage boys will laugh at just about anything involving poo. It certainly proved true yesterday as a group of five boys, still in their school uniforms, watched intently to see which unlucky passerby would tread in the pile of horse shit sitting in the middle of the Whitehall pavement. The exercise seemed so absorbing and amusing to them that I wondered if they’d completely forgotten where the offending poo had come from: namely, one of the large police horses not five meters away, keeping at bay a huge student protest (or, as some newspapers have today called it, a “riot”).

Yesterday’s demonstration was the second round of large-scale protests against the government’s proposed cuts to education funding (resulting in raised university tuition fees) although many yesterday were apparently also out to protest the scrapping of the educational maintenance allowance (EMA). Following the vandalism at Millbank during the previous student protest of 10 November (resulting in a broken window, a fire extinguisher hurled off a roof, and some terrified Tories locked in their offices) there were calls for yesterday’s protest to have a carnival atmosphere and to not allow the event to be hijacked by anarchists and vandals.

No luck. By 2pm BBC news was reporting on clashes between protesters and police at the bottom of Downing Street. I got down to Whitehall about an hour later and found the street eerily quiet and empty, the drone of four (count them) helicopters only adding to the bizarre sight of a traffic-less, pedestrian-less central London thoroughfare. It wasn’t until I got down to Downing Street that I figured out what was going on.

The plunger effect.

Like some gigantic cafetiere, the police were plunging coffee grinds of students, using a double line of officers on horses to slowly but surely compress the crowd into Parliament Square and away from Number 10.  I couldn’t get past the line into Parliament Square and those on the other side couldn’t get out. I’m not sure if this could technically be defined as “Kettling” but it sure looked like that to me.

The sit-in: you can see them on the road between the police.

It didn’t take long for the numbers on our side of the police line to grow. Younger students seemed to be arriving direct from school, as I suspected the five poo-fixated boys next to me had, and other onlookers like myself strolled up for a peek at the group of people sitting on the ground, peacefully protesting and stopping the police line from moving back further. Not much time could have passed before I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself right at the front of a large crowd, only one person back from the police line.

Then several things happened at once: the police tried to move those sitting on the ground; the crowd reacted with anger; there was a surge forward; something was thrown at the police line; horses startled and moved back; those sitting on the ground scrambled to avoid being trampled. On the Parliament Square side of things I saw burning debris hoisted up on a stick. Caught in the crowd surge, I couldn’t go anywhere but forward and I barely had time to marvel at how, in a matter of seconds, things had gotten nasty and dangerous.

The crowd lurches forward.

Fortunately, that was the extent of any drama on our side of the police line – except for when one of the sitting protesters asked me for something to clean up the bloody cuts on his mate’s swollen hand. “A horse stepped on it!” I was told. Otherwise, the young people around me, unable to get to where the real action was, starting to talk more about their hunger, being cold and needing a piss – although most were only too happy to join in the occasional chants. “No ifs / no buts / no education cuts!” seemed the classiest to me although one about making a bonfire out of politicians was clearly the favorite. A young lad behind me freestyling a rap that went “no education cuts/I stab ya in ya guts” was mildly disturbing…until I turned around and saw he was 15 if he was a day.

I wasn’t at the protest long and thankfully wasn’t kettled into Parliament Square (I had plans last night). But I was glad I got to see first hand some of what was happening. Although smaller than the previous protest, there was still an extraordinary number of extraordinarily young people out on the streets in Whitehall yesterday. Sure, many were preoccupied with juvenile and immature aspects of the situation and some were merely there waiting for things to “kick off.” But a lot of them seemed genuinely concerned about the cause…and each other. When that boy asked me for a tissue for the other boy’s hand – it was bleeding badly and looked swollen, probably broken – I unfortunately had to tell him I had nothing like that for his friend.  It was only when the injured boy told us both not to worry before waving goodbye and making his back to the front of the crowd that I realised the first boy didn’t know him at all. One young man had just wanted to help another out.

Yes, there’s violence and mischief at these protests. But there’s also concern and caring…and that shouldn’t be overlooked.

I was the start of all time
I am the reason and rhyme
To all the mortals I’m unknowable
They say I’m divine.

I raised their sun in the east
I helped them vanquish the beast
I am the name whispered with rev’rence
When they gather to feast.

I wave my hand and it rains
Clap them and thunder sustains
I place them gently on a body
Heal all the wounds and the pains.

I can give strong to the weak
I got some brave for the meek
I put the boldness in their bodies
So they stand up and speak.

They build me temples and shrines
I send them portents and signs
They seek my grace and fear my fury
‘Cause they know I’m divine.

Yes I’m a goddess…
And you?
You’re just a man.

I saw you struggle and fight
Against the wrong with your right
I saw them beat you nearly kill you
Cast you out in the night.

I do not have much concern
For mortals who never learn
But there was something in your eyes
And so I had to return.

I sent you shelter from storm
I sent you fire for warm
Still saw you lost still saw you helpless
So I took on this form.

I was your guide through the maze
I held your hand in the haze
You knew my power did not fear me
Did not recoil from my gaze.

You were not like any man
And as divine as I am
I had to have you have to love you
Any way that I can.

Yes I’m a goddess…
And you?
Not just a man…

So then my action was swift
I set the heavens adrift
And with my magic formed a heart
Of which I gave you as gift.

We were together as one
And though my power was gone
You know that thing I felt between us
Burnt as bright as the sun.

So tell me now what’s the deal?
With this, ‘Don’t know how I feel?’
You need some space? You need some time?
Well you can fuck off for real.

‘Cause in the home that we made?
Upon the bed that we laid?
You don’t think I know about her?
Is this how I’m repaid?

I cast my pearls before swine
I can’t believe you were mine
But I know I’m just above it
Because I’m still divine.

I’m still a goddess…
And you?
You’re just a man.

© Jason Hall

Let’s talk about sex.

That’s not just the title of a Salt’n'Pepa hit from 1991, but also the apparent thrust (if you will) of Nick Payne’s new play ‘Wanderlust’, currently playing upstairs at the Royal Court. In it, a middle-class middle-England family (with a mid-adolescent son and middle-aged parents going through a mid-life crisis) find themselves addressing, in their own ways, sex and sexuality head on.

Alan and Joy, married for 25 years, are feeling the strains of so much monogamy, leading them to contemplate other options. For Alan (Stuart McQuarrie), a teacher, the strong come-on from co-worker Clare  (Sian Brooke) is too much to resist. And for GP Joy (Pippa Haywood) temptation takes the form of Stephen (Charles Edwards doing his best Bill Nighy), an old flame who is also having marital problems – leading him to her surgery with an unpleasant condition, setting up a very funny reunion scene.  Meanwhile Tim (a wide-eyed James Musgrove), their 15-year old son, is getting some very hands-on sexual tutelage from schoolmate Michelle (Isabella Laughland), oblivious to her feelings for him.

It’s clear from the opening moments of the play that Payne is already skilled at his craft despite his young age. His characters are well-drawn and distinctive, the scenes clip along nicely, the plot progresses with some interesting twists and turns, and the dialogue is utterly believable. He can even pen a good gag (the bastard). All in all, it’s a very enjoyable evening; my companion said it was very ‘consumable.’

Which is great. Kinda.

The problem for me, I suppose, is that I was hoping in a play about sex, one that is marketed as ‘frank’, one that warns us about containing nudity and scenes of a sexual nature, I was hoping for more…well…balls, literally and figuratively. Maybe this is the fault of Royal Court marketing, who probably rightly assumed that ‘A gently funny, sensitively written look at the normal sexual problems of a very normal family with a few moments of exposed bums’ isn’t going to sell many tickets, no matter how true it is. So, perhaps there’s a disjunction here between marketing and reality…or maybe I just had unfair expectations, especially considering the Royal Court has given us ‘The Rocky Horror Show’, ‘Cloud Nine’ and ‘Shopping and Fucking’ over the years, leading me to expect some more onstage flesh and/or thematic meat.

That said, everything about the production is competent. Robert Innes-Hopkins’ set – functional and multi-purpose enough to suit the multiplicity of scenes – works. Simon Godwin’s staging – clear, precise, uncomplicated – works. And the acting, with uniformly strong performances from a great ensemble cast, works just fine too. I’m not trying to damn with faint praise here but rather pointing out that everything fit together well for a great evening, with no element stronger or weaker than another.

So, I enjoyed myself. For what it’s worth, though, I feel ‘Wanderlust’ was just a little bit too R-rated for me when, dirty bugger that I am, I was hoping for something a bit more X. But, hey, whatever turns you on…

Runs until 9 October 2010.

Baker’s play is about outsiders and losers, those who maybe smoked too much pot to have an American dream and are experiencing something more like an American drift. While the title of the play refers to one of the many band names dreamed up by our antiheroes Jasper (Mackenzie Crook) and KJ (Ralph Little), two 30-something college dropouts, it also gives us a clue to their relationship with the world. Loitering in the back ‘staff area’ of a Vermont coffee shop (I can just imagine the lattes vying for table space with the ipads) these two are about as alien to those inside as a Wookie is to a Triffid.  In their space – marginal, out of the way, yet still mildly transgressive as they’re not technically supposed to be there – they shoot the shit and pass the time. Jasper explains the latest development in his Bukowski-inspired novel while KJ tries to find another way to injest shrooms.

Then along comes Evan (Olly Alexander), a 17-year-old summer hire. After his initial attempts to eject the two slackers fail abysmally, he tentatively accepts their presence, develops a fascination with them, and in time a strange bond between the three is formed. For Evan, these two men represent a kind of adulthood heretofore unknown to him: Evan, after all, has a set dinner time and is a Counsellor in Training at a Jewish Music Camp, so we can imagine order, stability and career goals feature strongly in his parents’ house. For Jasper and KJ, Evan is an initiate into their weird world and through him they can articulate who they are, what they’ve done, what’s important. But in him, at the cusp of adulthood, they can also see what they’ve missed, squandered, or been denied.

The writing is subtle, nuanced and moves at a meandering pace. Nothing is driven home or explained. Instead, in Peter Gill’s excellent production, the audience is invited to spend time with these three characters, get to know them, start to like them, and thus experience the emotional climax of the play with them. It’s very affecting.

The performances were all so strong it was difficult to know where to look when all three actors were on stage. Crook gives alpha-loser Jasper just enough intelligence and depth that we believe he could possibly be a brilliant author; Little, affable and mysterious as KJ, hints at how past mental illness and trauma can bubble up in even the most chilled space case; and newcomer Alexander, who is so adorably cute one girl in the audience involuntarily let out an ‘Aww’ during his first scene, takes Evan on a breathtakingly believable journey from twitchy awkwardness to cigarette-wielding confidence, via friendship, love and loss. For those who love fine, precise, naturalistic character work, there is an embarrassment of riches here.

So: thank you to the Bush for introducing the UK to Baker’s work and for doing so with such beautiful production. Cannot recommend highly enough.

Runs until 16 October 2010.

The trio of characters at the centre of the piece are Gilda, Otto, and Leo – an interior designer, artist and playwright, respectively, who were close friends in their salad years. But that dynamic has long since changed and by the time the play begins, in a shabby Parisian loft, Gilda and Otto are together as a couple, struggling to make a name for themselves while Leo’s career has taken off. When Gilda and Leo reconnect, however, it is Otto who finds himself as the third wheel. Until, at least, the second act when Gilda is visited in her and Leo’s fancy London flat by the now acclaimed Otto – who eventually ends up between her sheets. Which is all a bit too much for Gilda who decides she can’t deal with either of them and runs off to New York with an elder family friend, boring art dealer Ernest. This sets up the third act and final coupling permutation when, inevitably, a hand-holding Otto and Leo pay a little visit to Gilda in her glamorous Manhattan penthouse, crash her stuffy drinks soiree and sweep her away to join them once again in happy triangular union.

If that synopsis makes the play seem complicated, I apologise; it’s actually anything but. There’s much surface here but little substance. Being Coward, the surface is extremely enjoyable with clever jokes, verbal acrobatics, and more wit than anyone knows what to do with. And one feels there definitely should be something interesting to say here about art and success, distance and friendship, wealth and happiness. But if there were any serious points, they were lost on me. The playwright’s priorities seemed to be: contrive a structure that allows for three different combinations of coupling for the central characters (tick); write sparkling dialogue (tick); make some point about selling out bohemian ideals and, er, stuff (could do better).

No matter; there is much else here to enjoy, not least of which the central performances by Tom Burke as Otto, Lisa Dillon as Gilda and Andrew Scott in typically scene-stealing form as Leo (I’ll be very surprised if there’s no Olivier nomination for him). The set design by Les Brotherston is a worth a mention too for providing us with the kind of full-stage, sumptuous naturalism we don’t find too often in modern pieces, but seems to work perfectly with a Coward revival. In fact, when the curtain rose for the third act the set itself got a round of applause. It should have taken a bow at the end.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the running time. At the beginning of this review I noted that in this play things come in threes. You may have noticed I didn’t say good things. That’s because, at three hours, the running time can hardly be considered a good thing, especially if you’re in those knee-crunching seats up in the gods like I was. I suspect some judicious work with a red pen in the disproportionately overlong second act would transform this production from good to great.

Then again, it may be that for most theatre-goers good is good enough. If you’d rather see the word ‘pleasant’ in a theatre review than ‘challenging’ then this is the show for you. So if you’re after something you can take your gran to but also feel a slight frisson of excitement at some onstage bisexuality with the slightest hint of group sex, then I suspect you’ll have a perfectly pleasant night at ‘Design for Living.’

Runs until 27 November 2010.