Review 1984 at Nottingham Playhouse.

Hitting the Nottingham Playhouse stage with both bare and bleeding feet running, Duncan Macmillan and Robert Icke's Olivier Award winning acclaimed adaptation of George Orwell's dark political drama 1984, is a sure fire choice in starting off the Playhouse's Conspiracy Season with a startling bang.

 

Fresh from two runs in London's West End where it has been playing to packed houses, this terrifying theatrical version of 1984 ( a co-production between Nottingham Playhouse, Headlong and Almeida Theatre) wows and frightens. The various design elements; lighting by Natasha Chivers; stage design by Chloe Lamford and sound and video design by Tom Gibbons and Tim Reid respectively prove a collective theatrical and shocking tour de force. The adaptation inspired by the appendix of 1984 and directed by McMillan and Icke is phenomenal and this is truly theatre that makes us think about language and the nature of freedom and questions the fickle  natures of memory and reality.

Although the real year 1984 is long past, Orwell's bleak world of Big Brother watching still rings scarily true today with surveillance cameras high above most city streets in the world and monitors protecting and probing our every move in the shops and public buildings. In this fictional world where keeping a diary is unlawful and thoughts are criminalised, being in love is actively forbidden and history erased, the audience is completely gripped throughout. You can almost hear the audience's collective hearts breaking over Winston and Julia's doomed love affair as their world is literally pulled apart and gasps of real shock over Winston's torture.

Often it is said that a theatrical venture is an ensemble piece. Perhaps this can be a lazy description but not so in this constantly changing play of 1984 where within a second's worth of blackout the cast re-appear in completely different places on the stage and verbal repetition and human erasure fight for attention. Mere ensemble, hardly does the art justice. It is easy to see why this production has universally been offered five stars by the critics. Abstractly quoting from the play, maybe the critics were unsure whether they were seeing five or four stars and, terrified out of their wits, opted for five. If six or seven stars were another option 1984 would still be most deserving.

Every single performance by the ensemble; Tim Dutton, Stephen Fewell, Janine Harouni (Julia), Christopher Patrick Nolan, Ben Porter, Matthew Spencer (Winston), Simon Coates, Mandi Symonds, and the young girl played by either Anna Jaques or Victoria Todd is exemplary.

1984 is one heck of a production and deserves to go on winning award after award as it continues at Nottingham Playhouse and goes on to Australia and the USA.

Runs until Saturday 26th September 2015 at Nottingham Playhouse

See Nottingham Playhouse ONLINE to book and see more details about the stunning Conspiracy Season ahead.

Review. Headlong's Spring Awakening at Derby Theatre on tour.

Frank Wedekind's controversial masterpiece (Spring Awakening) adapted into a new up to date version by Anya Reiss and currently on tour through a Headlong and West Yorkshire Playhouse and Nuffield co-production arrived on the Derby Theatre stage last night. As the audience settled themselves into their comfy seats the teens were already on the stage playground swinging on the swings, dragging a bed on stage and scuffling among themselves and appearing and re-appearing through a backdrop of strong see through rubberised curtains. The sort you may find in an abattoir.

An announcement should have been made. "Watch out audience, you are in for a very bumpy ride!" But no - just a sudden switch to a pitch black stage and a cultured male voice over extolling the virtues of a Venus figure in a painting. All starts well - the figure is described artistically then the details centre on the woman's chest area and the erect nipples and her full thighs and the pudendum and how wet her vagina appears to be und so weiter. A spotlight pierces the darkness to illuminate a boy enthusiastically masturbating on a toilet to the ever increasingly audio erotic description of the Venus figure. Bang! The play begins!

In an incredibly confidently handled piece the Headlong ensemble explore the themes of teenage suicide, a need for clarification on sexual matters from adults, rape, teenage pregnancy, gay love, love in general, and the desperate need to be accepted as a person as a teenager whilst getting little support from adults who seem ill equipped to offer advice that is practically or emotionally helpful. The young cast play not only the teenagers themselves but also adults who populate the piece as parents or teachers or advisors and each transition is handled superlatively well. The characters attempt to support each other with matters sexual through internet links to very violent porn extracts  and misleading information causing great emotional confusion and very sudden violent reactions between them. Many of the actions are accompanied by sound effects and energetic modern pop music.

The play is on an open stage that allows the audience to see the actors entering from the wings and also allows for major props such as a bunk bed on which an horrific rape scene takes place to be pushed on and secured in place. A permanent feature is a set of two swings that allow the actors to use them to a variety of theatrical advantages. The whole of Spring Awakening is a moving macabre hymn to teenagers seeking out sexual information from a variety of sources and being condemned for it by their elders.

There is fantastic usage of projection and this is particularly alarming with a girl talking to a young man via a laptop about being pissed and 'totally out of it' for three days and having had no real idea where she has been expect that her friend has a good mate who is a great photographer and wants to take pictures of her. The potential danger of her position is alarming and the video images projected on to the rubberised curtain are of an exhausted and desperate young woman who is excited at her teenage freedoms and also terrified by them. Those comfy theatre seats become less and less so throughout the story telling of this play. Then the character Moritz Stiefel hangs himself and all hell breaks loose. Questions of life versus death filtrate and antagonise the text.  In this show there is no interval to hide in and it is all the better for it.

This all sounds very bleak and yet there are some very funny moments in the play as Wedekind originally intended and which he defended his script in 1911. Against his overtly political readings he insisted that he'd intended the play to be a 'sunny image of life' in which all but one of the scenes he'd tried to  exploit a 'freewheeling humour' for all the laughs that he could get and this is quite shocking considering how amoral the play's action is. We have Wendla Bergmann and Moritz Stiefel pre-occupied with death and the sadness lies in how lovable both these characters are that decide to take their own lives, The humour is very dark but still funny nether-the-less and the multi-media effects are breath-taking as is the quality of the acting. Ekow Quartey in his dual role as Hans and the teacher Mr Sonnenstisch is especially impressive for the maturity of his interpretation of the teacher role.

Director Benn Kidd has done a fantastic job of bringing the play to the modern stage through this version by Anya Reiss and the ensemble of eight young actors (Aoife Duffin, Claudia Grant, Bradley Hall, Oliver Johnstone, Ekow Quartey, Ruby Thomas,Adam Welsh and Daisy Whalley)  deserve all the accolades possible for their performances and bravery overall in such a thrilling yet hard hitting play. Another fine example too of how video and modern media can be used for brilliantly dramatic effect in combination with the acting and take a super play to the realms of being utterly compelling and a challenging but ultimately rewarding theatrical journey.

Spring Awakening is at Derby Theatre until Saturday 31st May. (touring)

Review of The Seagull. Derby Theatre.

Review of The Seagull.

 

11th June 2013

Derby Theatre

Anton Chekhov's 'The Seagull' is deemed to be one of the great modern classics and Headlong Theatre and The Nuffield Southampton co-production with Derby Theatre excel in bringing a bold freshness and modern approach to the work through John Donnelly's stunning up to date version directed by Blanche McIntyre. The original ideals of ground breaking theatre written by Chekhov were that the language be direct and have immediate meaning for the audience. Instead of stilted overly theatrical language Chekhov's dialogue and theatrical prose were seen to be startlingly fresh and understood by the audience as 'the language we speak ' or the actions and flow of story 'the way we live now'. These were challenging and exciting concepts that changed the future of theatrical art and how a story is presented on the stage.

Theatre and art are discussed at length through various forms and clever staging in this piece and quite intensely at some points, brilliantly turning a tirade into a sexual turn on for one character. A bold and amusing approach to interpretation. Boris and Nina fiercely argue the pros and cons of artistic success and the naïve Nina succumbs to the magnetism of the successful but unhappy Trigorin both balanced on a rocking sea saw of wild emotions.

The piece could be called a 'movable artistic feast' with the ultra modern symbolic set that isn't traditional in any sense only depicting a change in place through new positioning; a fresh off kilter imbalance of levels and the introduction of hastily drawn suitcases or indecipherable writings on the backdrop. The production was certainly atmospheric and the score electrifying at times and the quality lighting palate that sometimes illuminates the audience as well as the players created tensions as well as the scene. As a piece of theatrical live art it worked well and the acting was top class, on the whole, thrillingly mixing seasoned actors with raw new talent fresh from drama school.

Phil Lowe