Women Beware Women

A revelation! Okay, Middleton is not Shakespeare but he's really pretty good. A fantastic play about a woman's lot from a clever male's point of view. After all, women are so endlessly fascinating and so fun to dominate and be dominated by. Many juicy plots and subplots, very erotic and overtly sexual, some great speeches and many quotable lines. Harriet Walter stole the show as Livia but the rest of the cast mostly held their own. I didn't see the necessity of the 1940s updating, nor the very mediocre nightclub jazz singer who nearly ruined the play for me. It did ruin the experience for my theatre pal who can be even more critical and intolerant than I am--bless her. She had just returned from Paris where she saw Irina Brook's La Tempete! at the Bouffes du Nord, and could suffer no mediocrity after that. She left at the interval but I stayed on and was glad of it.

Ruined

As someone who is called "too feminist" by various members of my extended family, I am actually adverse to seeing agenda driven plays, so despite the great reviews avoided seeing "Ruined," the play by Lynn Nottage set in a Congolese brothel while war rages just outside its doors. But when a friend offered me a ticket I went. By the interval I thought I might have made a mistake. The set-up was traditional and there was a strong sense of the usual placating voyeurism that often accompanies art made in the name of the oppressed--the whores were enticingly whorish, the soldiers convincingly threatening. The second half, however, proved to me that Nottage knew just what she was doing and I left the theatre having been in some way transformed. The acting throughout was suberb and the set one of the best and most thoughtful I have seen in a while.

Posh

If it hadn't been for the fact that there were a lot of attractive young men on stage for nearly three hours, most of whom have promising careers in acting ahead, I would have been terribly bored by this play after the first half hour. Actually, I couldn't wait for it to be over and sympathized with Rachel Johnson, journalist and London Mayor Boris Johnson's sister, who left at the interval, pleading fatigue and suggesting the playwright Laura Wade send her a draft next time so that she get some of the details right (apparently one does not refer to Oxbridge as "college"). Boris Johnson, along with new PM Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, were all members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford upon which this play is based. The point of the club is two-fold: to get blind-drunk, then destroy the dining room where you have eaten, afterwards offering the proprietor full compensation for the damage in cash, which he will take gratefully. Its second purpose is to maintain the old boy network in all its power and glory in perpetuity. Though the play is packed with sharply written repartee, it lacks any depth or subtlety, and frankly I got much more out of reading the Wikipedia entry on the Bullingdon Club then on watching "Posh." The title alone reveals the one-note that will be hit relentlessly for two hours and forty-five minutes. As a title, it's vague and all-encompassing, lacks any metaphor or detail. If this was supposed to be a social critique of entitled power, it failed, and almost drove one left-wing theatre critic for the Independent to vote Tory. (Aha! Perhaps the secret motiviation of this play was to drive the populous into the arms of the Tories--and lo and behold it worked! So I take it all back, the play is a roaring success!) The sport of rich people bashing is fun, but if rich people envy isn't part of the equipment, it becomes, well, rather like watching a game of cricket. That this play, and the like, are at a theatre called The Royal Court, now that's dramatic irony of some caliber.

I Went To The House But Did Not Enter

Against Tom Fordish designed sets, four middle-aged men in a barber-shop quartet of sorts sing/chant Gregorian style T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Maurice Blanchot's "The Madness of the Day," Franz Kafka's short story "Excursion into the Mountains", Samuel Beckett's "Worstward Ho." Mostly excruciating, though it had its moments. Silver lining, a reminder of how extraordinary the texts themselves are without any interference from the high-minded. At the Barbican, composed by Heiner Goebbels, and performed by the Hilliard Ensemble.

Antigone

Antigone by Sophocles at Riverside Studios by the Theatre Lab Company is superb. Creon and Chorus especially good. All the strum and drang somehow reasonable in this production. And Shakespeare's debt to Sophocles, especially Macbeth, Richard III and Romeo and Juliet very evident. A lot is owed to Robert Fagles very beautiful and current translation. Favorite lines: "Of all the evils afflicting humankind, the worst is lack of judgement" and "The greatest part of joy is wisdom."

The Real Thing

The Real Thing at the Old Vic directed by Anna Mackmin. The cricket bat speech still dazzles, the diaphragm quip still very funny, all else humdrum. Toby Stephens suave, Hattie Morahan shrill, but Fenella Woolgar's Charlotte had some energy and bite. Though I have admired Kevin Spacey's choices in productions--mostly revivals since our culture is basically brain dead--I haven't seen anything at the Old Vic during his tenure that I could call very good, much less brilliant.

Macbeth

Macbeth at the Barbican by Cheek by Jowl directed by Declan Donnellan. Not good at all. Will Keen's Macbeth and Anastasia Hille's Lady Macbeth way off into camp territory, where we embarrassingly are taken by the porter played by a pink-haired tart in a tartan distracted by her transistor radio. And if you're going to do this play without the witches, it can't be just because it's innovative. The whole production stank of unworthy innovation. Even the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech strained with trendiness. It will be some time before I see a Cheek by Jowl production again.