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LONDON THEATER REPORT 2002 Send This Review to a Friend
Having seen Noel Coward's "Private Lives" performed so many times, I wasn't enthusiastic about yet another staging, but with both Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan in the cast and Howard Davies the director, I decided to check out the new London version. The production at the Albery Theatre turns out to be terrific, a much deeper interpretation than we usually get, and the good news is that it is due on Broadway with the same stars in the Spring of 2002.
Generally the staging of "Private Lives," set in the 1930s, is mainly aglitter with the sophistication of Coward's humor, and while that's fun in itself, this time we get much more feeling for the characters and their affection for one another. Rickman conveys a deep sense of Elyot's unhappiness and restlessness, which makes him much more human as he tosses off the snappy lines in his reawakened relationship with his former wife Amanda when they meet at a French resort hotel, each on a honeymoon with a new partner. The glowing Lindsay Duncan, in an equally probing performance, does something similarly perceptive as Amanda. Both become very real, inescapably attracted lovers who are explosive with one another yet irrevocably bound by deep underlying chemistry that can't be denied. They involve us in their lives and emotions as they dump their new spouses and run off together for another try.
Adam Godley as Victor, now married to Amanda, and Emma Fielding as Sibyl, Elyot's new bride, give further strength to the lively, well-rounded production that Davies has mounted with a blend of the required sophistication and explorations of character and emotions. Yet he sacrifices none of the comedy. To the contrary, it is heightened because the characters become so vital.
Much of the effectiveness can also be attributed to Tim Hatley's inventive set. Usually what we see are the adjacent balconies of the hotel rooms in which the newlyweds are respectively booked. Hatley does it better. In addition to these balconies, designed with sweeping exaggeration, we see several balconies above them in a hotel set that rises, narrows and slopes back. The impression is stunning. Then in the second act in Amanda's Paris flat the adjustable set-up is inverted, and we see a wide, high ceiling apartment that slopes downward toward the rear. This convertible set construction is very, very clever and it gives the play the physical range it deserves.
I was eager to see "The Royal Family" in London because this is a play one doesn't find performed often. Even more importantly, Judi Dench is cast as Fanny Cavendish, the grande dame of the elite theater family meant to resemble the Barrymores in the play written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber and presented originally in New York in 1927. The London staging at the Theatre Royal Haymarket under Peter Hall's suave direction captures the elan of the very funny, observant satirical comedy.
The set lavishly conveys the luxury of a Manhattan duplex at the time, and almost needless to say, Dench does not disappoint. She is imperiously entertaining as the haughty Fanny, who presides over her theatrical family with all of the royalty the title suggests and disdain for those she sees as lesser lights. Yet she communicates Fanny's very vulnerable side as a fading star whose aging and illness will not permit the kind of national tour she wants to make. Dench has achieved such international stature, very well deserved, that seeing her on stage in virtually anything is a treat.
Harriet Walter gives an outstanding interpretation of Julie Cavendish, who is torn between love of the theater and the need for a personal life, and it is largely through her that the authors perpetuate the aura of the theater that so captivates those committed to it. Toby Stephens is over-the-top, perhaps too much so, as Anthony Cavendish, who has achieved movie stardom and is thoroughly irresponsible, leaving a string of debts and broken hearts. But Stephens is very funny in the role, and perhaps these outer limits are what the play needs to keep it from becoming a museum piece.
Other standouts in the admirable cast include Julia McKenzie, Emily Blunt and Joy Richardson. The overall effect is a classy staging of a smartly-written work. It may mean more to American audiences than to audiences in Britain, and therefore it would be delightful to see the production cross the ocean to Broadway.
David Mamet's "Boston Marriage," a Donmar Warehouse production subsequently moved to the New Ambassadors Theatre, leaves me with mixed feelings and puzzlement. On the one hand it is very funny, with Zoe Wanamaker as Anna and Anna Chancellor as Claire pulling out the stops as lovers coping with convention and mores in late 19th century New England, when dependent women generally counted on the wealth of men to give them comfortable positions in society. Director Phyllida Lloyd stages the play as very broad farce.
As I listened to Mamet's lines they often cried out for a more subtle, brittle interpretations. This is particularly true in light of Mamet's other works and the way he generally writes. Yet I assume that Mamet must have had input into approving this production. In any event, as staged in this instance it is impossible to feel anything for the women. One just laughs at the slashing lines. Wanamaker is more sophisticated in her interpretation, but Chancellor totally exaggerates.
Lyndsey Marshal is a real find as the maid Catherine in a rib-tickling performance that often steals the show. Indeed, her lines do feed into the production's farcical aspects, but her character also works as an earthy counterpart to the airs put on by the leading ladies, who speak to each other as if they were actresses appearing in a play rather than characters who are part of one. "Boston Marriage" was originally produced in America by the American Repertory Theatre of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it is certainly a Mamet work that merits a New York production.
The real surprise in this London theater sampling turned out to be "The Play What I Wrote," a knockabout comedy written by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley, known as comedy team The Right Size, and by Eddie Braben. The show is a tribute to British comedians Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, once an institution in Britain and known for their hilarious television shows. Kenneth Branagh, best known for his classical work, has directed with an unexpected affinity for this sort of broad music hall comedy. He seems thoroughly at home with the corny jokes, the very funny physical humor and the kind of vaudeville ambience one must appreciate to enjoy this romp. It is obvious that many still do, for the "The Play What I Wrote" has become a much-talked-about London hit. Whether it would work for American audiences is another story, but if attuned to this type of comedy, one can laugh until crying.
The plot, such as it is, involves an attempt of McColl to stage his play about the French revolution called "A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple." But the very funny Toby Jones pops up in the audience and demands that we see a play about Morecambe and Wise. The rest is mayhem. All three men are devastatingly funny. Foley moves as if he has been made out of rubber. On the surface he might be taken for the straight man, but there is little that is straight about him. The show is graced with a plethora of corny lines and outrageous situations.
There's a gimmick to the production. Each week there is a new celebrity guest. At the performance I saw it was actress Minnie Driver, who was integrated into the skits. After a big buildup announcing her, coming out on stage instead was Jones dressed as a minicab driver. But eventually the real Minnie entered. She isn't exactly a brilliant straight-woman--picture a celebrity like Lynn Redgrave handling the part, for example. But Driver was very game, a good sport, as it were, and she did add to the fun. The show at the Wyndham's turned out to be so exceptionally enjoyable that I could readily go back.
"Privates on Parade," first presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977, is an artifact of a period that catered to contemporary Post-Vietnam disillusionment with war by looking back, musical revue style, to 1948 when post-World War II upheavals were erupting in Singapore and Malaya. Written by Peter Nichols, it has also been performed in the United States and it was turned into a film. With music by Peter Nichols, "Privates on Parade" is devastatingly satirical even while telegraphing an element of menace as it twits the vestiges of colonialism and recognizes the sometimes deadly process of change.
The work needs exceptional performing, which it gets in quantity in the revival at the Donmar Warehouse. Some of its numbers are hilarious, and the show-stealer is Roger Allam, camping it up as Acting Captain Terri Dennis, who is the star of the entertainment unit stationed in Southeast Asia. Apart from some delightfully funny lines, he has a laugh-getting number in drag as Marlene Dietrich, chair and all, as well as another even funnier one cutting up as Carmen Miranda. The costumes alone are a hoot. There is plenty of gay humor, and we see the vulnerable side of Dennis as well as his knowing, barbed attitude.
The rest of the cast also rises to the occasion under the direction of Michael Grandage, who stages the production simply but keeps it moving at a good pace except when an excess of time is needed for plot exposition. Parts of the play with music remind me of Jean Renoir's prison camp in his film "Grand Illusion," in which the war prisoners put on a show, with some of the men in drag. The soldiers in "Privates on Parade" are also depicted as lonely for home as they try to make the best out of a basically useless situation that is spoofed in Denis King's musical numbers. This is a spirited, first-rate revival of a work that hardly looks dated given the state of the world today.
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