Culture

Jim Hacker is back in the West End. I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, written by Jonathan Lynn (who co-wrote the original TV series), brings us the former PM in semi-retirement as the Master of Hacker College, Oxford. Jim, now Lord Hacker, is facing a revolt by the students and the senior fellows who claim to have been offended by his high-table banter. He was overheard making positive comments about the British Raj and suggesting that the word ‘negro’ should not be expurgated from the work of James Baldwin. Both opinions are blasphemous according to the killjoy theocrats who govern our political discourse. Jim is ordered to quit his post but he refuses and the college authorities offer him a chilling compromise.

The Old Vic’s production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard has a vital component missing. The house. Stoppard’s brilliant historical comedy is set in a country manor owned by the Coverly family and the script examines, among other things, the evolution of decorative taste during the 18th and 19th centuries. But no architecture is present on stage. The audience has to imagine what the show fails to supply because the Old Vic’s interior has been redesigned ‘in the round’ with a central playing area encircled by pews as seats. This leaves no room for a large-scale set. Arranging the venue like a boxing ring ensures that parts of the action are invisible to parts of the audience.

Cable Street is a musical that premièred last year at the Southwark Playhouse and has now migrated to the Marylebone Theatre. Fans of beautiful staging will be instantly smitten by the amazing achievement of the designer, Yoav Segal. The script by Tim Gilvin and Adam Kanefsky tells the story of a violent stand-off in October 1936 between cockney activists and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. The authors treat the East End during the depression as a panto or a moral fairy tale. It’s good vs evil. The socialists are hard-working, golden-hearted heroes who rise up against the wicked landlords and their cruel rent hikes. The fascists are angry, misshapen losers led by a waddling baldie in a stick-on moustache. The socioeconomic background is hard to decipher.

Safe Haven is a history play by Chris Bowers who worked for the Foreign Office and later for the UN as a human-rights activist. The two careers seem to be interchangeable. His drama follows an idealistic and oversensitive Oxford graduate, Catherine, who joins the diplomatic service during the first Gulf War in 1991. Catherine believes that the Foreign Office exists to throw money at basket-case countries that lack the maturity to govern themselves. The entire department acts as a sort of puppy rescue service for dysfunctional nations overseas. All her colleagues accept the wisdom of this approach even though it has the same effect as casting diamonds into quicksand. Catherine responds to historic events like a homeowner assessing a new lamp for the guest bedroom.

Woman in Mind is a dyspeptic sitcom set in 1986 starring Sheridan Smith as Susan, a moaning Home Counties housewife who slips into a Yorkshire accent when she gets cross. Susan sunbathes in her leafy garden sipping coffee and carping about everyone close to her. She loathes her scowling sister-in-law, Muriel. She can’t bear her husband Gerald, a cerebral vicar, and she refuses to revive their moribund sex life. She constantly badmouths their grown-up son, Ricky, who lives with a community of mute hermits in Hemel Hempstead. How did this scout-hut show reach the West End? In Act One we learn that the rules of Ricky’s community forbid him from speaking to his parents. But in Act Two the story changes.

High Noon, directed by Thea Sharrock, is a perfectly decent version of a trusty western which celebrates its 74th birthday this year. An elderly sheriff, Will Kane, marries a priggish beauty, Amy, on the day of his retirement but his marital plans are overturned by news that a dangerous convict, Frank Miller, has been released from jail and hopes to shoot Will dead. Amy is a devout Quaker and she grumbles bitterly as Will cancels their honeymoon and heads back to town to deal with the evil Frank. But Frank is not the brightest criminal in New Mexico. News of his plans have spread and everyone knows that he’ll show up at midday aboard the express train.

The Playboy of the Western World is like the state opening of parliament. Worth seeing once. Director Caitriona McLaughlin delivers a faithful production of John Millington Synge’s grand satire about dim-witted Oirish peasants and, perhaps unwisely, she spreads the show across the entire length of the vast Lyttelton stage. It looks as if it’s being performed on a railway platform. The drama consists of several broad, daring and improbable steps. A handsome farmer’s boy, Christy, rolls up in a sleepy village in Co. Mayo and claims to have murdered his father. The lustful local girls treat him as a hero rather than an outlaw and compete for his hand in marriage. When Christy wins a prestigious donkey race he sets the seal on his pluck and manliness. Then, disaster.

Unusual. After the press night of Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard, no one leapt up and cheered. The crowd applauded politely at the amusing dialogue and the marvellous acting in Jonathan Kent’s handsome three-hour production but there was no standing ovation. The script feels like a literary novel overstuffed with detail. Flora Crewe is a ravishingly beautiful but utterly sexless poet who floats around India in the 1930s provoking the adoration of lustful men. But she doesn’t evolve or change during the action. And she’s maddeningly indifferent to the romantic attention she excites. A maharajah tries to impress her with his fleet of Rolls-Royces. A dashing English captain proposes marriage and she laughs in his face.

Who doesn’t love Paddington? The winsome marmalade junkie has arrived at the Savoy Theatre in a musical version of the 2014 movie. First of all, the show is sensational. Absolute box-office gold, full of joy, mirth and spectacle. It’s also quite pricey but never mind. Sceptics who feel indifferent to children’s fiction will be relieved to learn that the dyspraxic Peruvian asylum seeker doesn’t feature much in the story. Paddington’s main attribute is his physical clumsiness and once he succeeds in destroying the crockery and furniture at the Browns’ family home, he runs out of narrative possibilities. His fur is invitingly combustible. Could someone set him on fire? Not quite.

All My Sons, set in an American suburb in the summer of 1947, examines the downfall of Joe Keller, a wealthy and patriotic arms manufacturer. During the war he was falsely accused of selling wonky parts to the US military which caused the deaths of 21 airmen. He blamed his partner for the blunder but when the truth emerges he also finds out why his eldest son, Larry, went missing in action. The plot is one of the greatest inventions in world drama and it deserves to be presented with candour, simplicity and naturalism. Director Ivo van Hove dislikes Miller’s decision to set the play on Joe’s front lawn where the neighbours mingle, chat and exchange secrets. In his version, the vacated stage is overlooked by a huge blank wall decorated to resemble a doormat.

End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate. Both are 59. Alfie is a retired DJ who made a fortune touring the world at the height of the ecstasy craze and Julie earns a living from crime fiction. But she’s bored with detective stories and wants to publish her memoirs and to write a state-of-the-nation novel set during the 2012 Olympics. Despite their amazing careers, both characters are moaning dimwits who swear constantly and have nothing of value to say about their lives, their professions, or anything else. Listen to them discussing an unseen character named Boring Tone.

The Hunger Games is based on a 2008 novel  about a despotic regime where brainwashed citizens are entertained with televised duels between teenagers. Not a bad idea. We go behind the scenes and watch Katniss (Mia Carragher) being selected to fight Peeta (Euan Garrett) who secretly adores her. As soon as the plot starts, it seizes up. Instead of a gripping tragedy about two lovers forced to kill each other on TV, we’re given a masterclass in the show’s elaborate format. The duellists take part in interviews, coaching sessions, target practice, public parades and a popularity contest which permits them to attract ‘sponsors’ whose role is opaque. At the same time, we get a civics lesson.

Othello directed by Tom Morris opens with a stately display of scarlet costumes and gilded doorways arranged against a backdrop of black nothingness. This is Venice at night with no hint of sea or sunshine. Crimson-robed senators gather to discuss Othello’s alleged abduction of Brabantio’s daughter. And here he comes, David Harewood as the Moor, wearing a gauche two-tone suit like a tasteless guest at a wedding. The scene is stiff, arid and over-ornate but the show opens up when the location shifts to Cyprus. Warmth and light fill the stage and the costumes improve. Othello and his men wear creamy white battle fatigues that look stylishly and subtly masculine.

Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty has been turned into a stage show directed by Michael Grandage. We’re in the early 1980s and Nick has just left Oxford with a literature degree. He lodges with his wealthy friend, Toby Fedden, in their family home and he offers to keep an eye on Toby’s troubled sister, Cat, who suffers from depression. Despite her disorder, Cat is a rebellious type who quizzes Nick about the intimate details of his casual flings with men. Her father, Gerald, wins a safe Tory seat and persuades Mrs Thatcher to attend a ball at their mansion in the country. The prime minister’s arrival throws the Feddens into a panic but Nick saves the day by smoothly asking Mrs Thatcher for a dance. ‘Do you know,’ she says, ‘I would like that very much.

The Assembled Parties, by Richard Greenberg, is a rich, warm family comedy that received three Tony nominations in 2013 following its New York première. Hampstead has taken a slight risk with this revival. The cryptic title doesn’t suggest an easygoing drama full of excellent jokes. The Yiddish slang may be unfamiliar to English ears, and the social pedigree of the family needs explanation. These are wealthy New York Jews living in a 14-room apartment which they rent but don’t own, so their fortune is insecurely anchored. And the action starts in 1980 and fast-forwards to 2000 so it feels like a period piece aimed at the over-sixties. Those drawbacks aside, the show is a sensation.

Da Vinci’s Laundry is based on an art world rumour. In 2017, Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold at Christie’s for $450 million but some experts claimed that the attribution was inaccurate. Could the world’s costliest artwork be a fake? Writer, Keelan Kember, considers the provenance of a fictional Leonardo owned by a thuggish oligarch, Boris, who claims to have bought the masterpiece at a flea market. He invites two posh British experts, Christopher and Milly, to authenticate the painting and when Christopher questions its origins he earns Boris’s instant displeasure. Boris threatens to toss Christopher from the roof of his luxury mansion. Enter a brash American, named Tony, who wants to buy the Leonardo on behalf of a rich Saudi clan.

Tracy Letts’s Mary Page Marlowe is a biographical portrait of an emotionally damaged mother struggling with romantic and family problems. Susan Sarandon shares the lead with four other actresses which makes the show a little hard to follow. And the timeline is jumbled up so that the audience has to find its bearings at the start of each new episode. Why? Perhaps to give the material a complexity it doesn’t deserve. We first meet our heroine, aged 40 (played by Andrea Riseborough), as she tells her kids that they’re moving to Kentucky without their dad. This unpromising scene is hilarious because the word ‘Kentucky’ is repeated so often that it becomes a profanity. Pinter loved verbal games like this.

I have my routine down to a science. At 6.59, I’m sitting in the stairwell, typing on my laptop or scribbling in a book. At 7.01, I’m speeding down the hall to Dressing Room 18, where the rest of the girls are semi-apparelled, laughing, blasting out Tyla; or some days, silent, headphones in, munching pre-show snacks and staring blankly into space. From 7.01 to 7.05, I’m putting on my costume as the ambient noise of my cast mates getting dismantled by the demogorgon plays over the intercom. At 7.07, I’m sprinting down the dozens of stairs between Dressing Room 18 and the ground floor. And at 7.09, I’m stepping out on stage, wearing an orange tartan two-piece set and a pair of horn-rim glasses, where 2,024 eyes are watching me.

Clarkston is an American-backed production featuring a Netflix star, Joe Locke. He plays a young graduate with a terminal illness, Jake, who works at a Costco warehouse in a failing midwest town. Jake is a brainbox with an IQ of 140 who takes a scholarly interest in early American history. On his first day at work, he befriends a bookish intellectual, Chris, who loves literature and wants to dazzle the world with his fiction. The entry requirements for this branch of Costco seem to be tougherthan Harvard’s. The romance between the two boys is impeded by Jake’s clingy mum, Trisha, who feeds her meth habit by stealing his money and forbids him to leave town. Chris would have escaped from his mother ages ago but the playwright, Samuel D.

What a coincidence. Two plays running in London have the same storyline: an obsessed lover bursts into a family gathering to reclaim the woman who spurned him.The Lady from the Sea, written and directed by Simon Stone, is based on a late drama by Ibsen. Alicia Vikander stars as the neurotic Ellida, who feels repelled by her charming, erudite, handsome and successful husband, Edward. Ellida can’t shake off the memory of a fat, bearded eco-warrior, Finn, who raped her when she was 15. And when Finn shows up at her beautiful home in Cumbria, she has to choose between Edward (Andrew Lincoln) and her rapist (Brendan Cowell). It’s Paul Newman vs Shrek. Naturally Ellida chooses Shrek. After all, this is Ibsen. Poor Edward has other problems.

A new play by Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran, the writers of Birds of a Feather, feels like a major event. This is a period drama that examines an imaginary association between Hitler and Freud and develops into an enquiry about the nature of evil. As Hitler grows into adulthood he gravitates towards the Freud family, muscling in on their summer holidays The play opens with a scene from Hitler’s childhood, as his father, Alois, thrashes the young boy while his mother watches and weeps helplessly. This tableau is oddly hilarious because it explains in simple domestic terms the unimaginable horrors of the 20th century. As a teenager, Hitler meets Freud by accident and shares his dream of becoming a painter and an opera composer. ‘A Renaissance man,’ chuckles Freud.

Born With Teeth is a camp two-hander starring a pair of TV luminaries, Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, as Marlowe and Shakespeare. The year is 1591 and the great dramatists are holed up in a tavern working on an early draft of Henry VI (Part 3). Not much writing gets done. It’s all rhetoric and bombast. Marlowe is a bullying egomaniac who boasts of his ‘throbbing quill’ and parades a peacock’s feather which he strokes lasciviously. Both playwrights are gay, of course, and they live in a world that views heterosexual couplings as a mystifying aberration. Marlowe prances about on the table and re-enacts his conquests of grateful gay aristocrats. He peels off his undershirt and flings himself at Shakespeare who responds with fake reluctance.

Interview is a blind-date play. Only it’s not a blind date but a showbiz interview for a journal called the New York Chronicle. The characters (played by Robert Sean Leonard and Paten Hughes) bicker, flirt and get emotionally involved during a 90-minute conversation. Naturally it all starts badly. The interviewer, Pierre, arrives at Katya’s Brooklyn apartment and tells her straight off that he’s never seen her perform on TV or in a movie. He hates covering the lives of brattish starlets because he used to be the Courier’s ace political reporter but his career has been terminated. At least his journalistic skills are still intact and he makes her admit that she can’t name her mother’s birthplace in Georgia. She’s fibbing. So the games begin.

The theatre impresario Michael White rang me one day in 1964, and said he was presenting a play at the Lyric Hammersmith, where there was a small role he thought might suit me. The play was an adaptation of the novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, where the eponymous hero spends most of his life in bed, unable to see the point of engaging with the world outside. It was being put on as a vehicle for Spike Milligan, who was said to be jealous of the success of his longtime partner in The Goon Show, Peter Sellers. Sellers had recently made a seamless transition from the world of anarchic comedy to film, where he proved himself to be an accomplished ‘straight’ actor.

Good Night, Oscar is a biographical play about Oscar Levant, a famous pianist who was also a noted wit and raconteur. The script starts as a dead-safe comedy and it develops into a gripping battle between the forces of anarchy, represented by Oscar, and the controllers of NBC who want to censor his crazy humour. The backstory is complicated. Oscar has been secretly committed to a mental asylum and his wife gets him released for a few hours so he can do an interview on Jack Paar’s TV show. It takes two long scenes to explain this improbable set-up but it’s worth it because Oscar (Sean Hayes) is such a lovable character. He’s a total wreck, addicted to drugs, suffering from OCD, and afflicted by aural and visual hallucinations that leave him curled up on the floor like a baby.

Edinburgh seems underpopulated this year. The whisky bars are half full and the throngs of tourists who usually crowd the roadways haven’t materialised. There’s a sharp chill in the air too. Anoraks and hats are worn all day, and anyone eating outdoors in the evening is dressed for base camp. Perhaps tourists don’t want to travel because they’re too depressed. That’s the specialism of Dr Benji Waterhouse, an NHS shrink, who writes and performs comedy about his patients. Dr Benji is an attractive presence on stage with his crumpled Oxfam clothes and his dreamy, half-shaven look. He could be the guy who tunes up U2’s guitars. His act is very funny and it contains some amazing revelations.