Culture

Lay Me Down Softly (Tricycle Theatre, until 6 August) is set in Delaney’s Travelling Roadshow, sometime in the 1960s, in the middle of the Irish countryside — even the characters don’t know where. A string of exciting crimes of passion is being committed at the rifle range, in Paddy Hickey’s Mercedes and by the bumper cars. But we only hear about these. Our view is dominated by the boxing ring, which Theo Delaney (Gary Lydon, above) himself admits is a sideshow. We don’t even see the fights, as these take place in the blackouts between scenes in which Roadshow staff pick up chip papers, swap unsparkling banter and talk over each other about the remote past. Life, it seems, is elsewhere.

After all the splendiferous photographs of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, how about something more subversive? That is what Kew Palace delivers in its exhibition of George III caricatures from the collection of Lord Baker. This is royalty filtered not through the flattering lenses of the modern photographer, but through the sharp nibs of 18th-century cartoonists such as James Gillray. The results are vicious. Delightfully so. The fashion among Gillray and his co-conspirators was to lampoon the King for his interest in agriculture. ‘Farmer George’ is shown as more mouldy peasant than monarch, with billowing lips and the shoulder-heavy gait of an ox. But this is nothing compared with the satirical treatment of his wife, Queen Charlotte.

Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to the West End. Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to the West End. I couldn’t make the opening night and Sir T (x 2) had restricted press seats to that performance only so I had to make my own arrangements. What a bunch of highwaymen those ticket agencies are! (I’ll get to the play in a second.) You have to pay for the privilege of paying for the privilege. The fee amounted to 20 per cent of the entire outlay.

I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me. I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me. In similar vein, London has been enjoying a spate of classic revivals on stage. At the Donmar a production of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) has been barmily retitled Luise Miller. This promotes a minor character to the protagonist’s role. It incorrectly suggests the atmosphere of Romford roundabouts and roaring hen parties.

Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked. Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked. You won’t be seen again until you’ve visited every corner of the dream kingdom encased within its magical walls. Didn’t happen to me, though. I sat through the first six minutes of The Wire in total bafflement.

A miracle at the Barbican. I reached the venue after a mere half an hour blundering around following directions from helpful staff. The main stage, which is so vast it feels like an open-air theatre, is the result of an alluring misconception of scale. You build a venue the size of the cosmos and you get universal art. But art finds its own measure. If the habitat suits the substance all should be well. The latest delight here is an update of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal directed by Deborah Warner with a very classy cast and an absolute ton of money. Warner, a recent arrival at Obvious Island, wants us to know that today’s fashion-obsessed culture is just like the beau monde of the 18th century. Wow. Not much gets past you, eh, Debs? Everything is a mishmash.

Edward Albee doesn’t like the word ‘revival’. His plays aren’t dead, he says, just lurking. His 1966 drama A Delicate Balance has been coaxed back into the limelight by James Macdonald in a sumptuous new version starring Penelope Wilton and Imelda Staunton. Edward Albee doesn’t like the word ‘revival’. His plays aren’t dead, he says, just lurking. His 1966 drama A Delicate Balance has been coaxed back into the limelight by James Macdonald in a sumptuous new version starring Penelope Wilton and Imelda Staunton. We’re in a New England mansion whose unshowy opulence is brilliantly suggested by designer Laura Hopkins. The chairs are elegant, costly and fading. The shelves are neatly crammed with dilapidated classics.

The RSC isn’t limited to Shakespeare. The RSC isn’t limited to Shakespeare. It’s also one of the richest and most prolific fringe operations in the country. ‘We have between 30 and 40 writers working on plays for us at any one time.’ Golly. Some Stratford bigwig wants to tell the tale of the Russian space programme so a Casualty writer, Rona Munro, has been hired to knock out a script. The programme note is an act of contrition. ‘I have had to take some glaring liberties with time and space and imagined events,’ Munro confesses. A strange approach to scientific history. ‘I ask forgiveness of the dead,’ she goes on, ‘and the indulgence of the living, some of whom have been fictionalised.’ OK, love.

Let’s think about it. How did Harold Pinter write his masterpieces? And why are they praised so much more lavishly than the scribbles of his contemporaries? Let’s think about it. How did Harold Pinter write his masterpieces? And why are they praised so much more lavishly than the scribbles of his contemporaries? Moonlight, his 1993 play, has been slickly revived at the Donmar and it opens with a dying pensioner sprawling luxuriously in a double-bed and ranting at his wife. Across stage his sons engage in madcap vaudevillian banter. Other characters wander in and speak fluent nonsense. A girl, who is also a ghost, articulates charming drivel about moonshine and memory. The characters fail to communicate and the dramatist fails to communicate why they fail to communicate.

Throughout his career Clifford Odets was overshadowed by Arthur Miller. Nowadays, his plays tend to be classified on a topsy-turvy scale beginning with the least completely forgotten. One of the lesser forgotten, A Rocket to the Moon, is a flawed, steamy, bourgeois melodrama. At first it seems crammed with gestures that don’t quite gel. The setting, a New York dental practice, seems to symbolise the American dream with the handbrake on. The characters’ names hint at their function. Belle is a flouncing beauty, Mr Prince is jolly rich, Willy Wax is a slippery, priapic seducer. There’s an earnest deadbeat dentist, Ben Stark, whose name vividly evokes the lead in his boots.

Incredibly boring. That’s how a cracking courtroom drama seems at first. Case closed. We know whodunnit already. Alma Rattenbury, a luscious middle-aged nympho, has bashed in the skull of her deaf old husband with the help of a teenage builder, George, who shares her bed. Incredibly boring. That’s how a cracking courtroom drama seems at first. Case closed. We know whodunnit already. Alma Rattenbury, a luscious middle-aged nympho, has bashed in the skull of her deaf old husband with the help of a teenage builder, George, who shares her bed. Newspapers carry lurid reports of a drunken Alma dancing in her husband’s blood and trying to seduce the policemen who came to arrest her.

Lloyd Evans meets Niamh Cusack, who ‘absolutely wasn’t going to be an actress’ She doesn’t usually do it this way. When Niamh Cusack heard that the Old Vic was planning to stage Terence Rattigan’s final play, Cause Célèbre, she read a synopsis, found a part that excited her, and asked her agent to get her an audition. ‘I’ve never approached a production like that,’ she tells me. ‘But it’s a cracking play, really, well written — a rollicking courtroom drama with great characters and fascinating relationships.’ We meet in a dressing-room at the Old Vic and make ourselves comfortable amid the higgledy-piggledy apparatus of a Feydeau farce whose run is drawing to a close.

Like a lot of classics, Blithe Spirit doesn’t quite deserve its exalted reputation. Like a lot of classics, Blithe Spirit doesn’t quite deserve its exalted reputation. Every time I see it I discover a little bit less. Catty, slight, charming, clever and a touch too pleased with itself, the play shapes up as nothing more than an ingeniously plotted sitcom. It’s no surprise to learn that it was written in six days. The Blitz and the threat of sudden death had fostered a mood of defiant merriment in the British people which the play, dashed off in 1941, captures very skilfully. Thea Sharrock’s production is competent, slick and faintly heartless. Robert Bathurst brings a nice blend of suavity and huffiness to the role of Charles.

The pantomime, we’re often told, exists in no culture but Britain’s. Maybe we should look a bit harder. The Wizard of Oz is a children’s fantasy, epic in form, comic in idiom, populated by folksy stereotypes, which uses the metaphor of a journey to present a mythical clash between good and evil. It ends with order restored and virtue triumphant, and with the characters discovering that self-knowledge and wisdom are more valuable than the illusory contentments of wealth or power. All that’s missing is some bad acting and a few painfully ribald puns. The pantomime, we’re often told, exists in no culture but Britain’s. Maybe we should look a bit harder.

Richard Bean is a creative nomad, a pix-and-mix sort of playwright who lights on subjects seemingly at random. He’s written about Brussels, racism, agriculture, social mobility and trawlermen. Now he’s taken on climate change and he’s hit the mark with delicious accuracy. This is his best play so far. The Heretic is set in a university earth-sciences faculty where Diane, a paleogeophysicist, has found incontestable proof that sea levels aren’t rising. A decade ago she planted a betel nut tree on a beach in the allegedly drowning Maldives. But instead of sinking, the tree is thriving. Her departmental head, Kevin, tells her that her findings may damage the faculty’s ‘business model’ and endanger a juicy contract with a top firm of eco-insurers.