Theatre

I, Daniel Blake

17/10/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s a propitious time for this play to appear, following, as it does, close on the heels of Ken Loach’s ‘final’ film, The Old Oak. 2016’s I, Daniel Blake was one of the veteran director’s most palpable successes, a compelling and often heartbreaking study of working-class life in broken Britain, set in the North East of England and featurIng stand up comedian Dave Johns in the title role.

It’s Johns who has adapted the film for stage and, for the most part, he’s stuck pretty closely to Paul Laverty’s screenplay – a little too closely perhaps, because surely the whole  point of a theatrical adaptation is to open up the original to fresh perspectives. Suffice to say that all the key scenes from the movie are present and correct, and it’s a hard heart indeed that can resist the subsequent pummelling.

Daniel (David Nellist) is a widower, a carpenter by trade, recently stricken by a debilitating heart attack. His doctor has advised him that he cannot risk doing anything strenuous but, in order to qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance, he has to be able to demonstrate that he is actively looking for employment. At the job centre he encounters Katie (Bryony Corrigan) and her daughter, Daisy (Jodie Wild), recently rehoused from London and struggling to survive in an unfamiliar location. But Katie is a few minutes late for her meeting and is brusquely told that she is being sanctioned and will have to wait four weeks to get any money.

Daniel befriends the pair and does what he can to help them settle into their new home, while he goes about the thankless task of jumping through the various hoops that the DHSS keep throwing in his path. It’s clear that sooner or later, the merde is going to hit the fan…

The performances are exemplary (particularly Corrigan, who has to handle most of the heavy lifting), and there are some credible attempts to bring the piece up to date with recordings of the voices of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, demonstrating their complete lack of empathy for anyone who is less privileged than them. Rhys Jarman’s design makes good use of video projection, highlighting a series of meaningless adverts supposed to inspire confidence in the government’s approach to unemployment, while Mark Calvert handles the direction with an assured touch.

But not everything from the film translates effectively to the stage. There are perhaps a couple of heartless interviews too many and a lengthy scene that follows the infamous graffiti incident – a homeless guy delivering an attempt at a rabble-rousing oration –  feels uncomfortably tacked on.

Still, this is a credible and compelling play and the fervent applause from a packed audience makes it clear, that if anything has changed for the unemployed since 2016, it’s certainly not for the better.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Meetings with the Monk

17/010/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Meetings With the Monk, this week’s offering from A Play, A Pie and A Pint, is a gentle affair, a study in both mental health and the limitations of live drama. Deceptively simple in tone, it explores these two issues in some depth – although the meta-theatricality arguably hogs the show.

Brian James O’Sullivan is our guide, the elision between writer, actor and character established right from the off, as he assumes the role of the front of house staff, pointing out the emergency exits and informing us about next week’s play. He’s chatty and friendly, explaining what’s going to happen, breaking down the performance into its component parts, ticking them off on a list as they occur. Introduction? Check. Exposition? Check. Rising action? Bring it on.

The story is almost incidental. The title sounds enticing (what do monks talk about?) but, actually, the meetings with the brothers are the least interesting things about this piece. It turns out that people who live cloistered lives don’t have all that much to say. Still, their soothing words have a profound effect on ‘Brian’, who’s struggling with depression, and thinks that taking a leaf out of his Granny’s book and going on a retreat might help. The Abbey is very different from his home in Glasgow and, in this quiet place, he finds the space to clear his head. 

O’Sullivan is a stand-up comedian and he uses that skill to his advantage. Although this piece isn’t a comedy by any means, his easy interaction with the audience means that we’re immediately on his side, and he knows just when to undercut a difficult topic with humour, so that it never feels too much, even when he’s talking about suicide. 

The set (by Gemma Patchett and Johnny Scott) is monkishly austere, while Ross Nurney’s lighting – appropriately – lightens the mood, a simple coloured spot indicating an abbey or the goodness that shines from Brother Felix.

Nimbly directed by Laila Noble, this is an enjoyable and thought-provoking play, although I do find myself wishing for a little more substance. I really enjoy the exploration of theatrical storytelling, but I’d also like a bit more plot or at least a bigger climax. Father Felix, who appears as a recorded voice – apparently, there are several different recordings, and O’Sullivan doesn’t know which will be played on the day – feels like a wasted opportunity. I keep waiting for him to say something memorable. 

Nonetheless, I applaud the experimental nature of Meetings With the Monk. It’s a quirky, original piece of writing, and one that invites much discussion afterwards..

3.6 stars

Susan Singfield

Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning

11/10/23

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of those novels, like Alice in Wonderland, that is more famous for its enduring imagery than for its story. Its iconic characters are part of the fabric of our culture, recognised instinctively, even by those who have never so much as picked up the book. Such tales are ripe for retelling, like ciphers waiting to be reshaped for our times.

Into that space steps Mina’s Reckoning, a reimagining of the world’s most famous vampire, written by Morna Pearson and directed by Sally Cookson. This all-female and non-binary production redresses the gender imbalances in the source material: here, the women are elevated from mere victims and damsels-in-distress and are actually afforded some agency.

Whitby is out and north-east Scotland is in, justified by the fact that Scots writer Emily Gerard provided much of the inspiration for Stoker’s novel: it was from her work that he learned about the Romanian superstitions that inform some of the most compelling ideas in his book. More specifically, we’re in Cruden Bay, in a women’s asylum, where some of the characters speak in the Doric dialect. The Scots angle works well, the rhythms of the language creating an earthy poetry. The play opens with Mina (Danielle Jam) banging on the asylum door, demanding to be let in. She has Jonathan’s journals and wants Dr Seward (a wonderfully comic Maggie Bain) to help her ward off the evil that’s on its way.

The long first act sticks pretty closely to Stoker’s tale, albeit with more jokes and some judicious pruning (the boring suitor sequences are gone, thank goodness, and so are the details of Jonathan’s interminable journey). The second, shorter, act is much better, precisely because this is where the creative reimagining takes place, allowing Mina to come into her own. It’s a shame that the piece skews this way: it feels unbalanced. I’d like a shorter set-up and a longer unravelling.

It’s a great idea to recast Dracula as a woman and Liz Kettle clearly relishes the role. She’s a bold presence, at once attractive and repellant, exactly as the Count should be. Here, the blood-sucker is more nuanced than her original incarnation, both supervillain and saviour. As Mina seals her Faustian deal, we recognise what Dracula is offering her, and understand exactly why she makes the choice she does.

Kenneth MacLeod’s set is both the production’s strength and its weakness. It’s clever and imposing, evoking the chillingly austere asylum as well as the grand gothic castle – all staircases and hidden corners – and I like the use of Lewis den Hertog’s video projections and Aideen Malone’s lights to stain the walls red with blood, turning them into journals, then night skies, then stormy seas. However, the set’s cage-like qualities – the bars and rails imprisoning the women – also create a sense of distance, so that it’s hard to feel close to the characters and to empathise with them. What’s more, it makes the whole play less scary because we’re not immersed in the ghoulish goings-on.

Benji Bower’s music is wonderfully eerie and evocative but the sound drowns out the dialogue at times, which is a shame, as it obscures some of the finer details of the plot. Likewise, the ensemble work is excellent, but comes at the expense of the individual characters, as the inmates of the asylum blend together.

Albeit a little uneven, there’s a lot to like about this NTS and Aberdeen Performing Arts production, in association with Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre. The powerful image of Kettle, striding the ramparts – grey hair flowing, coat tails billowing – is one that will stay with me for a long time.

3.8 stars

Susan Singfield

Stay

10/010/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Stay, it turns out, is a musical, but lest that word should conjure images of hordes of costumed performers, leaping and gyrating across a stage, let me quickly point out that this is the latest in the Traverse Theatres’s A Play A Pie and A Pint season. It’s a two-hander. But its smallness of scale is more than made up for by its sweet, affecting nature and for the insights it offers into its difficult theme.

Rowan (Craig Hunter) and Kit (Daisy Ann Fletcher) meet up in their favourite corner of the local park. Rowan is carrying an urn containing somebody’s ashes: he’s finally prepared himself for the task of scattering them in the duck pond, but he needs back-up for this grim task and, of course, Kit is there, dressed in her hospital scrubs, ready to make jokes about every aspect of this solemn occasion.

The two of them were once lovers but four years ago something went badly wrong – and yet, somehow, Rowan doesn’t want his current girlfriend here today. For this challenge, Kit is the perfect choice…

Written by Jonathan O Neil and Isaac Savage and directed by Melanie Bell, Stay is a deceptively simple piece, its quirky plaintive songs recounting a poignant story about a relationship gone awry. Rowan is steady and dependable, Kit adorably scatty, forever taking the narrative off in unexpected directions, but together they have something special. Both leads deliver the plaintive, haunting songs with considerable skill and the piece is cunningly written, luring you in with its seemingly innocuous narrative, before heading off into darker territory and deftly delivering a climactic gut punch.

If I wanted to nitpick, I’d say there’s one song too many after that change of direction; nevertheless, Stay is a delightful piece of lunchtime theatre that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

A Little Life

08/10/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Beamed live from the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End, A Little Life has recently been the subject of some controversy – not least the fact that its star, James Norton, spends much of the three-hours-and forty-minute duration stark naked. As a gruelling depiction of sexual exploitation unfolds, Norton’s performance is extraordinary, a genuine tour de force.

But there are issues that override that performance.

Jude lives in New York’s trendy Tribeca district and we’re to believe he is a high-flying lawyer (although we are never shown anything of his professional life). He has a trio of equally high-flying friends (a movie star! an artist! an architect!) and is – weirdly, at the age of thirty – about to be adopted by Harold (Zubin Varla), a wealthy professor, who sees Jude as the son he’s never had.

If this sounds too good to be true, don’t be fooled – because most of what ensues is frankly too bad to be true. Jude, it turns out, has endured a childhood of unbelievable cruelty. Abandoned as a baby, he is put into the care of sadistic monk, Brother Luke (Elliott Cowan), who – in the finest Catholic tradition – farms him out as a child prostitute. And it doesn’t end there. He stumbles from one awful experience to the next, exploited at every turn by a string of monstrous abusers (all played by Cowan). Could anyone really be as unlucky as Jude?

But here in the present day, people are queuing up to worship him! Willem (Luke Thompson), the aforementioned movie star, is deeply in love with Jude and wants the two of them to become a couple. But, because of those childhood experiences, Jude cannot enjoy anything like a healthy relationship, preferring instead to spend his time slicing himself open with a razor (something we are repeatedly shown in sickening detail).

Adopted from her own novel by Hanya Hanigihara, with the assistance of Koen Tachelet and the play’s director, Ivo van Hove, A Little Life is, it has to be said, cleverly presented. All the characters are constantly onstage, slipping effortlessly between the various scenes while, on two walls, slow-motion tracking shots of New York offer a sense of place.

But the story feels increasingly like torture porn, a relentless slice of sheer misery. I’m sure the highbrow audiences watching this play would never lower themselves to watch a film like Saw, for instance, yet A Little Life displays the same kind of world view, a callous and prurient invitation to wallow in somebody else’s misery. It feels manipulative, a coldly contrived feel-bad experience, which ultimately adds up to not very much at all.

A section of the audience is seated onstage, behind the action, presumably so that we can see our own reactions reflected in theirs. However, while many are holding handkerchieves to their faces, I feel curiously unmoved because it all feels too callous for comfort. Norton is terrific, but the vehicle he’s starring in really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

And… And… And…

07/10/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Though still at high school, Cassie (Caroline McKeown) is already a committed eco-warrior, working tirelessly to organise regular beach clean-ups in her locality. She takes every opportunity to lobby big corporations to plead on behalf of environmental causes and lately has even taken to making her own clothes from natural fibres. But as the climate change disasters inexorably mount, she finds herself increasingly obsessed with the subject. And it’s an obsession that threatens to overpower everything else in her life.

Meanwhile, Cassie’s best friend, Claire (Tiana Milne-Wilson), has her own pressing issues to contend with. Her mother is steadily succumbing to a deadly lung disease after years of smoking cigarettes and is no longer able to work. The final demands for rent and electricity are coming in on an almost daily basis and Claire desperately needs to find a paying job. The only possibility she’s discovered is the chance to apply for an apprenticeship at a locally-based multi-national plastics manufacturer, a company that she knows Cassie openly despises.

Isla Cowan’s And… And… And… is a topical story from Strange Town Theatre, one that isn’t afraid to address the horrifying scale of its central premise and to openly accept the impossibility of finding an easy solution – indeed, there’s a strangely satisfying meta-twist in this tale that comments on its own artificiality, the very idea of finding an ‘answer’ within the confines of a fifty-minute play.

The two leads give compelling and nuanced performances and the duo’s friendship feels utterly palpable. This is a youthful and exuberant approach to the subject, created for and by the generation who have been handed the poisoned chalice of a devastated planet. The frustration they feel is written large. Katie Innes’s simple but effective stage design is created mostly from heaps of detritus, an approach that serves as a constant reminder of the play’s theme, while Steve Small handles the direction with aplomb.

The play’s conclusion – that everyone needs to do whatever they can to reduce their personal carbon footprints and work together towards a more optimistic future – may not be exactly earth-shattering, but nevertheless, it comes through loud and clear.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape

05/10/23

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Patriarch Rennie (John Michie) has invited a disparate group of people to his retirement party. He’s had to keep the guest list secret from his wife, Edie (Deirdre Davis), because – with the exception of her old pal, film star Jimmy Moon (Benny Young) – there’s no way she’d agree to hosting the people he has in mind. En route to the couple’s country house in the Scottish Highlands is their daughter Emma’s ex-husband, for example – even though their wedding ended acrimoniously and Charlie (Matthew Trevannion) is renowned for wreaking havoc wherever he goes. Of course, he maximises the antagonism by bringing along his latest girlfriend, Jitka (Nalini Chetty), and why wouldn’t Rennie ask the newly-betrothed Frank (Keith Macpherson) and Kath (Patricia Panther) to join the party? It’s not as if Frank’s always been in love with Emma (Sally Reid) or anything, is it? Oops. There’s an uninvited presence too: the ghost of Rennie and Edie’s son, Will (Robbie Scott), who watches over the day’s proceedings with increasing horror…

Playwright Peter Arnott says he set out to to write a ‘Scottish Chekhov’ and to some extent he has succeeded. At first it seems as though, unlike Chekhov, Arnott is looking back at the political moment that nominally serves as the play’s pivot; he has the advantage of hindsight to create dramatic irony. After all, we know the outcome of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the divisive topic inflaming the characters. But we soon learn that this is just a distraction: as Charlie says, it’s mere tinkering around the edges while ignoring the real revolution that is on its way, and which only the rich and ruthless will be able to survive.

If Arnott’s script is retro, then David Greig’s direction is decidedly contemporary, a deliberate jarring of styles that helps to illuminate the sense that something is changing, mirroring the mismatch between parochial politics and apocalyptic predictions, Chekhovian naturalism and magical realism. I like the dissonance.

Jessica Worrall’s set also leans into the contrast, a hyper-realistic backdrop juxtaposed with a more figurative interior: a glorious photograph of a Highland glen and a sketched-in kitchen-diner, symbolised by oversized shelving units, enormous tables and vast floral curtains.

Both Simon Wilkinson’s lighting and Pippa Murphy’s sound are integral to the production: the former spotlighting the snippets of conversation that combine to drive the plot, the latter signalling the shifts to the ghost’s point of view, as the sound distorts and fragmented memories play through Will’s Walkman. This supernatural presence is one of my favourite things about the play: Scott physicalises the spirit’s pain and confusion with a beautiful awkwardness.

The first act is very strong, an interesting set-up that promises something the second doesn’t quite deliver. Although the characters are all cleverly depicted, the piece feels somehow unfinished, as if the story arc has been cut short. Rennie’s revelation, when it comes, is anticlimactic, and I don’t quite buy it as a reason for inviting these particular people to his home (why would anyone ever invite Charlie anywhere?). But, even if it’s a little opaque and doesn’t offer any real answers to the issues it grapples with, Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape is an intelligent and ambitious play, leaving us with a lot to think – and talk – about.

3.8 stars

Susan Singfield

Sister Act

04/10/23

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

There are some films that make the transition to stage musical against all the odds – and there are others that are clearly destined to be that very thing from the word go. 1992’s Sister Act, a comedy vehicle for the then rising star Whoopi Goldberg, definitely belongs in the latter category. Funny, irreverent and already packed with rousing gospel tunes, this feels like a natural progression.

Philadelphia, 1977. Deloris Van Cartier (Landi Oshinowo) is trying to make headway as a singer on the Philly soul scene and, when we first meet her, she’s auditioning at a nightclub owned by her shady boyfriend, Curtis (Ian Gareth-Jones). Curtis (who naturally is married) assures Deloris that she’s not quite ready for stardom and offers her one of his wife’s cast off fur coats as compensation. Deloris already has doubts about the wisdom of the relationship and this is compounded when she witnesses Curtis murdering one of his henchmen, whom he suspects is a police informant.

Deloris seeks help at the local police station, where she encounters former school chum and crush, ‘Steady’ Eddie Souther (Alphie Parker). Eddie wants Deloris to lie low until she can speak about the murder in court and he thinks he has the perfect hideout for her. It’s a convent, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, an ancient establishment that has fallen on hard times and is struggling to survive. It’s presided over by the acerbic Mother Superior (Lesley Joseph), who struggles to cope with Deloris’s potty mouth and, in an act of desperation, assigns her the task of coaching the convent’s resident choir, which is frankly terrible.

But Deloris has her own methods of coaxing the best performances out of the sisters and the results are startling to say the least.

What ensues is a slick, funny, exhilarating and sometimes uproarious sequence of events that never loses momentum. There’s so much here to relish. The vocal performances of Oshinowo – and of Lizzy Bea who plays the young noviciate, Sister Mary Robert – are simply thrilling to witness, their voices soaring over the sound of a live band. The resident nuns all have their own individual characters and I’m particularly impressed by Isabel Canning’s Sister Mary Patrick, whose enthusiastic twirls and gestures demonstrate the sheer exuberance of a woman discovering the joy of her own inner creativity.

The set and costume designs by Morgan Large are gorgeous, a wonderful mash up of stained glass and 70s kitsch, the many complex scene changes happening as if by magic. Alistair David’s choreography makes everything look effortless and Joseph demonstrates the kind of comic chops that have kept her treading the boards for so many years. And yes, maybe there is a big dollop of schmaltz thrown in for good measure, but hey, that’s no hardship.

By the finale, which features more sequins than seems humanly possible, I’m clapping along with the rest of the packed audience, loving every minute. The term ‘feel-good theatre’ is sometimes overused but I can’t think of a more appropriate description for Sister Act. This is a ton of fun.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The Sheriff of Kalamaki

03/09/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

In this unusual two-hander by Douglas Maxwell, Paul McCole plays the eponymous law-keeper. It’s not an official role but alcoholic Dion is proud of the title, even if he did choose it himself. He swaggers (and staggers) his way through the bars and clubs of Zakynthos, seemingly unaware that he’s being used as a lookout by the local drug dealer. He’s a loveable character, his cheery bluster doing little to hide just how damaged and vulnerable he really is. His existence is precarious but he seems to be coping – until his apparently straight-laced brother, Ally (Stephen McCole), comes looking for him, after almost thirty long years…

Maxwell eschews a duologue in favour of two almost completely separate monologues, a structural device that mirrors the brothers’ estrangement. Dion, when we first meet him, is alone – as he has been since 1994. When Ally shows up, the ensuing conflict shows us how this situation began, and then it’s Ally’s turn to find himself bereft and isolated in Kalamaki, a solitary figure standing on a cliff, facing his demons, while in the town below him, everyone else is having fun. The script’s construction makes for an oddly unsettling experience, but I think it serves the story well.

Gemma Patchett and Jonny Scott’s set design is suitably stark: a raised platform, overshadowed by a huge, curved sheet that represents the sea and sky. This works well on a figurative level too, the brothers dwarfed by the natural world, the quarrel that once seemed so all-consuming now rendered petty and insignificant. After all, the planet’s burning: Ally’s plane is half-empty; tourists have turned their backs on the island’s unbearable heat and unpredictable wildfires.

Jemima Levick’s direction is lively and pacy, highlighting the superficial contrasts between the two men, while the real-life McCole siblings are both formidable performers, creating a convincingly acrimonious relationship. Their differences are slowly peeled away, revealing their essential similarities and exposing the myths we tell ourselves about what ‘a good life’ really is.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

2:22 A Ghost Story

27/09/23

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Written by Danny Robins and directed by Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr, 2:22 A Ghost Story is remarkable, not least because it manages to feel like a traditional gothic tale at the same time as subverting many of the tropes. Screams in the night? Check – but that’s just the foxes in the garden, isn’t it? Flickering lights? Check – although the security sensors give us an instant explanation. Old creepy house? Well, kind of… except that this one has been renovated, so it’s light and bright – with a kitchen island and a window wall. But still, Jenny (Louisa Lytton) knows that something is wrong…

Jenny has been home alone with baby Phoebe, while her astronomer husband, Sam (Nathaniel Curtis), has been in Sark, studying its famous dark skies. He’s returned home just in time for a dinner party with Laura (Charlene Boyd), his best friend from university, and her new boyfriend, Ben (Joe Absolom). There is a lot of tension in the air: the antipathy between Sam (middle-class and pompous) and Ben (working-class and contemptuous) is open, while Jenny and Laura are polite on the surface, but clearly wary of one another. Jenny’s angry with Sam too: she keeps hearing spooky footsteps at the same time every night, but he isn’t taking her concerns seriously. And then Jenny suggests they all stay up until 2:22am, just to see…

As much a comedy of manners as it is a ghost story, 2:22 uses jump scares effectively and sparingly. Indeed, we find ourselves so caught up in the relationship dynamics that we almost forget about the supernatural element so that, when something spooky happens, it is genuinely shocking. An intimate four-hander, it’s to Dunster and Marr’s credit that it succeeds as a ‘big’ show, with no real sense of distancing, even from the back of the stalls in this two-thousand seater theatre. The set (by Anna Fleischle) helps: it’s got real depth, stretching back almost to the rear wall, so that the stage size seems to balance out the auditorium, as well as showcasing the understated opulence of Sam and Jenny’s abode. Of course, the size of the theatre means that the performances are a little heightened, but all four actors manage to make this work, never straying too far into the shouty or declamatory.

I do work out the much-touted twist before it’s revealed – but only because I know there is one and so spend a lot of time looking for it. It’s cleverly done, with lots of slippery diversions and sleights of hand.

A sprightly updating of one of my favourite genres, 2:22 A Ghost Story is a creepy delight.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield