theatre - showing at a stage near you
Rafta, Rafta...
Nicholas Hytner's production is a riot of bhangra dancing, family squabbles, late night whisky drinking and an arm-wrestling contest in which Dad humiliates his newly wedded but still virginal son. Impotency and sexual ambivalence rear their heads in Ayub Khan-Din's beautiful Asian re-working of Bill Naughton's 1963 Bolton comedy, All in Good Time, with added cultural piquancy in the different aspirations of Dad, who works in a factory, and Atul, who works in the local cinema. Even if only ironically, Bollywood beckons for the young couple whose first few weeks together are a comedy nightmare. Lovely stuff.
National Theatre, South Bank, SE1, 020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk
Fallujah
The latest verbatim docudrama recreates the horrors of the 2004 siege of Fallujah in Iraq in an echoing, rather chilly, white warehouse. An exercise aimed at quelling the insurgency and capturing an aide of Saddam ended in the destruction of a city and the catastrophic spread of the uprising. Harriet Walter plays a persistent Canadian journalist, Imogen Stubbs an outraged English medical volunteer and Chipo Chung an uncannily accurate Condeleeza Rice. Director Jonathan Holmes has done a good job, with terrific music by Nitin Sawhney and an eerie installation of body bags and military uniforms by Lucy and Jorge Orta.
Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, E1, 0870 1620295, tricycle.co.uk
The Letter
Even though Jenny Seagrove plays the adulterous Leslie Crosbie on a single note of panic-struck pain, Alan Strachan's handsome revival of Somerset Maugham's 1927 melodrama is a welcome reminder of Maugham's virtues as story-teller and playwright. Six shots in the dark herald an enquiry into the death of a popular ex-pat on a rubber plantation on the Malay Peninsula. The noose tightens round Leslie's neck as an incriminating letter is discovered, only for Anthony Andrews's smooth-as-silk lawyer to enter murky waters himself by suborning a Chinese witness. A warped colonial morality ensures that justice cannot be done.
Wyndham's Theatre, Charing Cross Road, WC2, 0870 950 0925,
delfontmackintosh.co.uk
Nan
Not a play about a sweet old granny, but the first revival in many moons of John Masefield's The Tragedy of Nan (1908), an everyday tale of country folk in a Herefordshire village in the early nineteenth century. The heroine's dad was hanged for stealing a sheep. This makes her a bit mean, even murderous, when the lads come calling after a barn dance. Masefield wrote poetry and The Box of Delights, but he was also a playwright admired by Yeats and Shaw. This lovely revival - John Clare with a dash of Lorca - shows why. Kate McGuinness is a luminous Nan.
Orange Tree, Clarence Street, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 2SA, 020 8940, 3633, orangetreetheatre.co.uk
On the Town
The English National Opera's 2005 revival of On the Town - a benchmark Broadway musical that, in 1944, heralded four major new talents in composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and choreographer Jerome Robbins - returns with a few cast changes and an appalling sound system. Even that can't dampen one's high spirits as three jolly sailors kick up their heels on shore leave in a city that never sleeps. June Whitfield is an increasingly sozzled music teacher and Caroline O'Connor a knock out as the man-eating lady cab driver. Gorgeous songs, great costumes and dancing.
Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, WC2, 0870 145 0200, eno.org
The 39 Steps
This nifty, comically bare-bones fringe adaptation of John Buchan's famous novel, best known as Hitchcock's 1935 movie thriller, slipped quietly into the West End and frankly looks a little over-stretched. But with four actors playing about 150 roles in Maria Aitken's production, the pleasures of quick-change artistry and po-faced defiance in the face of impossible odds are considerable. Charles Edwards is Richard Hannay, the innocent 'murderer' on the run, and you really have to be there to believe you are seeing the escape on the Forth Rail Bridge (with a couple of chairs) and a magical death-defying finale in the Palladium.
Criterion Theatre, Picadilly Circus, SW1, 0870 060 2313, criterion-theatre.co.uk
Absolute Beginners
The Notting Hill race riots of 1958 formed the climactic background to Colin MacInnes's splenetic and energetic novel, in which the first British teenagers cut a swathe through coffee bars and jazz clubs, with the attendant first signs of an institutionalised youth culture and celebrity mania. Roy Williams's adaptation is a classy but anodyne affair on a set of primary coloured building blocks with a cool jazz soundtrack by Soweto Kinch. The story's not much - it's not in the novel, either - but the flavour of inter-racial raciness, and then racism, has been filtered out of Liam Steel's over-stylised production.
Lyric Hammersmith, King Street, W6, 08700 500 511,
lyric.co.uk
The Entertainer
Fifty years after Laurence Olivier's Archie Rice stormed the Royal Court in John Osborne's mock-patriotic pageant of post-War decline, the Old Vic has restored the reputation of a great play. Indeed, Olivier's widow, Lady Plowright (who also appeared in the play first time round), hailed Robert Lindsay's brilliant performance as Archie from a box on opening night. Sean Holmes's rich production buffs up the theatrical elements as well as the domestic scenes, where Pam Ferris' magnificent, gin-swilling Phoebe suffers the indignities of Archie's nasty music hall turn for the worse. Emma Cunniffe, too, is impressive as Archie's quietly resilient daughter. Closes May 27.
Old Vic, The Cut, SE1, 0870 060 6628, oldvictheatre.com
The London Plays
Two extraordinary short plays - one picaresque, one apocalyptic - form a double bill by Ed Hime, smartly directed by Kelly Wilkinson. In the first, perhaps inspired by Mike Leigh's great London movie Naked, an unspecified young 'bloke' meets a listless questionnaire girl, a computer date in a pub, a gay advertising exec in a posh Docklands flat, a female footballer and, finally, his distraught girlfriend. In the second, two tube travellers interweave their stories during a disaster worthy of the new sci-fi horror flick 28 Weeks Later. Closes May 19.
Old Red Lion, St John Street, EC1, 020 7837 7816, oldredliontheatre.co.uk
The Thing About Men
Sometimes an old-fashioned revue-style cabaret of witty, well-crafted new songs is just the job, especially at this cosy pub address - albeit with uncomfortable seats. Fringe theatre used to challenge your preconceptions; now it challenges your buttock-pressing pain levels. A philandering advertising executive tracks down his wife's new lover and becomes the rascal's new best friend. Love songs and fairly funny farce situations pepper the show by New York duo Joe Di Pietro and Jimmy Roberts. Anthony Drewe's production on a pop art set by Philip Whitcomb boasts capable performances from Hal Fowler, Tim Rogers and Nicola Dawn.
King's Head, Upper Street, N1, 020 7226 1916,
kingsheadtheatre.org
Three Sisters
The only London performances of Declan Donnellan's acclaimed Chekhov production are next week at the Barbican (May 15-19). Due to his great successes in Moscow, Donnellan's Cheek By Jowl company has a Russian off-shoot, and this allegedly exceptional cast includes Nelly Uvarova (Ugly Betty on Russian television) as Irina. The production is performed in Russian with English surtitles. Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod have also produced a Cymbeline with their British 'Cheekies', and it follows Three Sisters at the Barbican on May 24, playing for a whole month. David Collings and Jodie McNee are Cymbeline and Imogen.
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2, 0845 120 7550, barbican.org.uk
All Mouth
And, presumably, no trousers. A new comedy from married writing team Jonathan Lewis and Miranda Foster - they're actors, too - promises a wry eavesdrop on the unseen world of voice-over actors in Soho studios and the advertising agencies that employ them. A strong cast headed by Christopher Benjamin, Simon Chandler and Caroline Harker suggests that the hot streak at the Menier will continue (though it cooled just a little with the recent Total Eclipse), and it is good to see them putting on something brand new for a change. The once reliable dinner menu needs an overhaul, though.
Menier Chocolate Factory, Southwark Street, SE1, 020 7907 7060, menierchocolate
factory.com
Silver Birch House
Deep in darkest Dalston, abutting both Hackney and Stoke Newington, the Arcola, once a textiles factory, has quietly become one of the most exciting new theatres in London. Founding director Mehmet Ergen is now offering the first ever season of Turkish plays in the capital.
The opener is a debut play by the Arcola's own executive producer, Leyla Nazli, and is informed by her family's experience of the short-lived communist uprising in eastern Turkey in the late 1970s. Ergen directs an English-speaking cast including Turks, non-Turks - and Irish actress Brid Brennan.
Arcola Theatre, Arcola Street, E8, 020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com
Reviews by Michael Coveney
FIRST POSTED MAY 10, 2007
