This Is London - May Holiday 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

16 ANGELS IN AMERICA Millennium Approaches and Perestroika Lyttelton Theatre The National Theatre has lavished its considerable resources on a majesterial revival of Tony Kushner’s masterworks, Millenium Approaches and Perestroika, collectively known as Angels in America, ‘a gay fantasia on national themes’. In his cosmic soap-opera of Wagnerian proportions, Kushner slips a thermometer under the tongue of a sick nation whose temperature hovers around the 105 degree mark. Both plays scatter surreal and metaphysical grace notes as they examine the personal lives of a group of emblematic but vividly characterised men coping with the burgeoning AIDS epidemic during the Reagan administration in the eighties. Angels was first presented by the National as a diptych at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1993 and now, befitting its ever-increasing status, has been elevated to the wider spaces of the Lyttelton where director Marianne (War Horse) Elliott directs a starry cast in a large-scale production that vividly emphasises the plays’ considerable strengths as well as their flaws. Though the soul of the work is its forensic examination of the conflicting and contradictory impulses of an America at odds with itself, at its heart is the deeply personal drama of Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), a flamboyant drag-queen afflicted with the AIDS virus, the grim reality of which his loquacious, selfabsorbed Jewish liberal boyfriend Louis (James McArdle) is unable to face and abandons him. Louis’ next conquest is Joe Pitt (Rusell Tovey) a Mormon lawyer, who, although married to Harper (Denise Gough) a deeply frustrated valium-guzzling wife, is taking a tentative peek out of the closet and reluctantly likes what he sees. James McArdle (Louis) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Belize). Helen Maybanks. Joe’s mentor is the real life powerbroking lawyer Roy Cohn (himself an erstwhile mentor of the young Donald Trump), the unequivocal villain of the piece. A septic carbuncle on the face of humanity and virulently corrupted by power, Cohn, brilliantly embodied by an astonishing performance from Broadway’s Nathan Lane, is the personification of evil. Himself a homosexual in denial, gay men, he claims, have ‘zero clout’. He, on the other hand, is ‘a heterosexual who just happens to sleep with men’. Turns out he’s also dying of AIDS – or ‘cancer’ – as he prefers to call it. Millenium Approaches ends with an angel (Amanda Lawrence) bursting into Prior’s bedroom, proclaiming him to be a prophet and to announce that ‘the great work begins’. Although Part Two, Perestroika, xqresonates with several memorable scenes, it also, on occasion, bogs down in lengthy political, ideological and metaphysical riffs. It begins with an elderly Bolshevik (Susan Brown) haranguing us on the perils of reform, and climaxes, some 4 hours later, in a portentous section in which a black-clad Prior finds himself climbing a ladder into an hallucinatory heaven whose angels are ineffectual, God having abandoned the human race on April 18th, 1906, the day of the San Francisco Earthquake. Things will only change, the play is saying, when we adopt a more serene outlook and introduce some calming ‘stasis’ into the next millennium (the play was begun in 1990). Much happens in-between, notably the death of Roy Cohn, witnessed by a phantom Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown) whose execution for spying Cohn was instrumental in bringing about. Cohn’s agonising demise is overseen by a black nurse called Belize (Nathan, Stewart-Jarrett) who alone manages to show some compassion for his noxious patient, granting him his dying wish – that Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead – be said over his bedside. Hannah, Joe’s Mormon mother (a busy Susan Brown) has moved from Salt Lake City to Brooklyn where she forms an unlikely friendship with Prior. Her son’s integrity, meanwhile, is compromised by a series of anti-gay law suits he’s been working on, and a bedroom punch-up between him and Louis over their different political agendas ends their relationship. Joe returns to Harper but she rejects him and goes to live in San Francisco. Louis returns to Prior but is also rejected. It’s Prior’s determination to move forward and somehow to hang onto life that has miraculously kept him alive. Though AIDS is no longer the automatic death-sentence it was 35 years ago, Angels in America is, in other respects, as relevant to contemporary t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g a z i n e • t h i s i s l o n d o n o n l i n e
America as it was during Reagan’s second term. It remains, despite its longueurs, its excesses, its indulgences and selfconsciously Shavian rhetoric, one of the finest, most compelling and innovative American plays of the last quarter century. As specified by Kushner, the eight central actors are required not only to play many smaller roles, but also, on occasion, to change genders. Garfield is superb both in gesture and intonation as the outwardly camp but vulnerable Prior whose metamorphosis over the play’s five-year period is the glue that binds the work and provides it with its centre of gravity. Gough’s Harper is possibly more lowkey than usual but the pain, frustration and confusion in which her character is pickled is touchingly and convincingly conveyed; the ubiquitous Susan Brown is excellent too, while Russell Tovey, sporting a pitch-perfect American Accent, never falters as the conflicted Joe. The play’s one uncompromisingly likeable and genuinely humane character is swishy Belize, beautifully realised by Stewart Jarrett. Kushner has gone on record saying the work benefits from a paired-down set, and what he gets from Ian MacNeill are a series of movable acting areas framed in fluorecent strips that part to reveal the open spaces required for the hallucinatory Antarctica, Heaven, Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and Central Park sequences, none of it especially eye-catching. What is, though, is the enormous angel designed by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes, elaborately costumed by Nicky Gillibrand and manipulated by several stage-hands. But the magic isn’t in the way the show looks but in its content. Despite its many self-conscious flourishes and prolix passages, Kushner’s script, with its witty one-liners, unfailing sense of characterisation, foresight, anger and passion, remains one to relish. This stimulating revival, though not perfect, does it proud. CLIVE HIRSCHHORN THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI The foyer is decked with cauliflowers and designer Peter McKintosh has transformed the auditorium into a Chicago speakeasy, with wooden tables and high backed chairs (instead of the usual padded benches) on all sides of the auditorium for award-winning American playwright Bruce Norris’s lively new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 anti-fascist satirical allegory. The parallels between Nazi Germany and Brecht’s depiction of prohibition era hoodlums aren’t difficult to spot – in addition to the Fuhrer-like Ui, among others there’s hitman Giri (i.e. SS leader, Goring) sporting a succession of trophy hats culled from his victims (and played here by an androgynous, wickedly malevolent Lucy Ellinson) and Guy Rhys’ cold-bloodedly evil florist Givola (i.e. Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels). But Norris also tries to caste Trump in the same mould as the eponymous racketeer, with the unfurling of a large banner exhorting the browbeaten greengrocers to ‘Make This Country Great Again’ and pointed references to building a wall. Simon Evans’ production sometimes verges on the over emphatic, and the prospect of being part of the on-stage action won’t appeal to all. But there are some clever cross cut rhyming exchanges as well as beautifully rendered snatches of pop songs which punctuate the scenes and add to the atmosphere. Lenny Henry’s none too bright Ui convincingly transforms from intimidating small time gangster (who knows he needs a makeover) to a powerful leader who, in a moment, morphs from exuding fake bonhomie to chair-breaking rage when he doesn’t get his way. Michael Pennington’s compromised Dogsborough, the white-haired City Hall top dog, shows just how easy it can be to convince oneself that a bribe is anything but when it’s offered in tempting enough terms, and, as the bodies mount up offstage, it’s sadly hardly surprising that, faced with trigger-happy thugs with a fondness for arson, selfpreservation rules and resistance eventually seems futile. Donmar Theatre Louise Kingsley MATTHEW CROKE TO STAR IN ALADDIN Disney Theatrical Productions have announced that Matthew Croke will star in the title role of Aladdin as the new musical based on the classic Academy Award®winning animated film approaches its first birthday in the West End. Jade Ewen will continue in the role of Jasmine and Trevor Dion Nicholas, who made his London stage debut as Genie, remains in the role. It marks Matthew’s debut in a leading role in the West End. Disney’s hit West End musical Aladdin opened to critical acclaim on 15 June 2016. The show continues to play to sell-out houses, breaking attendance records at its London home, the Prince Edward Theatre. Aladdin features the timeless songs from the 1992 animated film as well as new music written by Tony®, Olivier© and eight-time Academy Award winner Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Little Shop Of Horrors). With lyrics from Olivier Award and two-time Oscar® winner Howard Ashman (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid), three-time Tony and Olivier Award, three-time Oscar winner Tim Rice (Evita, Aida), and four-time Tony Award nominee Chad Beguelin. For tickets, telephone the Prince Edward Theatre box office on 0844 482 5151. Photo © Disney. 17 t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g a z i n e • t h i s i s l o n d o n o n l i n e
Page 3 and 4: 3 CONTENTS Events 4 Shell’s Make
Page 6 and 7: 6 MOONLIGHT SYMPHONIC ORCHESTRA AT
Page 8: 8 Photos: Sim Canetty-Clarke ©BBC
Page 11 and 12: CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC AT CADOGA
Page 13 and 14: wembleystadium.com/tours 0800 169 9
Page 15: TOUCHING THE VOID: LIVE The Bafta A
Page 20 and 21: 20 Photo: Brinkhoff & Moegenburg. T
Page 22: 22 PETER JONES WEDGWOOD TEA CONSERV

This Is London - May Holiday 2017

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?