National | Civilian Theatre

Billie Piper bikini pics: Click-baiting and the other skills you need to be a 21st century journalist

Great Britain – Lyttelton Theatre @ National Theatre, until 23 August (transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket from 10 September)

Leaving aside any judgement on the qualities of Richard Bean’s Great Britain, we must first applaud those involved for what the play attempts – an immediate response to the biggest domestic news story since cash for questions – and how – in the world of social media – they managed to keep it under wraps to pretty much everyone.

There is a certain irony in a play entirely focused on leaks, hacking and exposure being kept secret right up into previews – and that it was achieved by the country’s biggest theatre company, with a lead who has been forced to grow-up under the bright glare of the tabloids’ flashbulbs is a remarkable achievement.

Richard Bean proved with his artfully balanced adaptation of Goldoni’s One Man, Two Guvnors that he is capable of broad comedy that captures the public imagination. The play operated as traditional British farce whilst simultaneously deconstructing the genre by breaking through the fourth wall and toying with the audience’s expectations. That it was a success was probably to be expected – with James Cordon reconfirming his exceptional comic talents after a series of mediocre moves in TV and film – but the fact it has become a global mega-smash was not predicted and must have placed an awful lot of pressure on Bean for what he would come up with next.

That his response was to attempt something as ambitious as Great Britain demonstrates he is a man clearly up for a challenge, and it is pleasing to see how admirably he has risen to it. With Great Britain he tries another form of alchemy in attempting to blend the mechanics that drive farce with an attempt to explain a highly complex and incredibly serious series of events that do not deserve to be treated lightly. It is as if Bean was attempting to create the lovechild of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and Democracy.

Bean doesn’t succeed in what may have always been an impossible proposition but it is undeniably great fun to see him try. There are an awful of laughs in the show and they come from all angles; from the wonderful faked headlines of the papers – right up to the Guardian’s tagline of ‘we think so you don’t have to’ – to the ribald language of the tabloid’s newsroom, which masks an amazing felicity of expression among the journalists.

The play takes a number of sacred cows and turns them into hamburgers, and as a result the air is thick with gasps followed by laughter. Taking these jokes right to the edge of acceptability is absolutely necessary for the play and it should create an interesting, and uncomfortable, tension for the middle-class, liberal audience members busy reading the Independent on their smartphones, whilst pretending that they are not keeping one eye on the Daily Mail’s sidebar of shame.

<<Continue to full review>>

Where are your god’s now?

Medea – Olivier @ National Theatre, until 04 September (Tickets)

One of the most shocking things about this production of Euripides’ Medea is the discovery that it’s the first time that the National Theatre has staged it in its 50 year history; a startling omission, and all the more appalling when you consider the legion of fine female actors that have graced the stage in that time.

When you consider the paucity of roles for women in pre-20^th century playwriting then to ignore one of the great tragedies is astonishing. Medea, more than many of the surviving plays of ancient Greece, has retained its relevance to the modern era as it can rely as much on an understanding of human psychology as it does on the intervention of the Gods.

That it was never picked by the National to ‘inspire debate’, if for no other reason, during the height of the fight for gender equality; it seems an obvious candidate, although a firm hand is needed to steer Medea away from a conspicuously Congreve-inspired ‘…hell a fury like a woman scorned’ and closer to Shakespeare Lear who saw himself as ‘...More sinn’d against than sinning’.

It is a crucial distinction; it is difficult to separate Medea’s anger at Jason’s actions from her anger at her own impotence, but it is essential to make this seperation if Medea is going to be humanised as a tragic figure in her own right. It is like Lear in the storm; we may not fully believe in his argument or in his call for the gods to execute justice on his behalf but we have to believe that his raging is at least partially justified.

Carrie Cracknell clearly believes it would have relevance in the past having seemingly set the play in the 1970s; the period was a boom-time for psychoanalysis and self-discovery, and Helen McCrory’s Medea approach and understanding to her problems is often as someone who has spent time assessing themselves on the couch. The era is reinforced by Tom Scutt’s beautiful design and immediately recognisable period furniture. The plate glass window and minimal lines could come as easily from a Mediterranean villa as they could from a southern Californian hillside.

Dominic Rowan as Aegus Over 2014 Cracknell has directed three plays and, along with the A Doll’s House at the Young Vic in 2012, there are clearly thematic links between them. She seems fascinated in the fragility of the individual and particularly those who deliberately set themselves against the grain. A Doll’s House, Birdland and Medea all contain protagonists who must bear the weight of societal pressure to conform; these people are not, in themselves, naturally heroic but find that they cannot bring themselves to act in any other way.

The third play – her collaborative effort with Nick Payne – was Blurred Lines highlighted another theme central to her work; an interest in women and the position they are held in by wider society. Blurred Lines was a painfully powerful expression of real lives, a melange of stories, thoughts and opinions that traversed the spectrum from bleak and melancholy to humorous and life-affirming. A Doll’s House is an established genre-defining work and Medea, well for Medea to work it needs to show the internal complexity that can push a woman to commit what continues to be one of society’s most horrifying taboos.

Helen McCrory is an actress more than capable of producing the subtleties necessary for the role. At 5’4 and with a face that has a pixyish quality McCroy is perhaps not the Medea of the imagination – all strident, astringent anger and physically domineering as the fury whips up around her – and against Danny Sapani’s burly Jason it is apparent that she is never going to go toe-to-toe with him.

<<Continue to full review>>

Watch the trailer

And at Number 06…

Othello not reviewed 😦

Writer vs Director vs Actor in Edward’s epic battle

Much of the critical reaction to the National’s production of Marlow’s Edward II has been withering, and for generally mild-mannered reviewers, bordering on the vitriolic. Leading the charge is, inevitably, Quentin Letts in The Daily Mail who suggests the ‘the only thing murdered in Joe Hill-Gibbins’s puerile, inept production is the play itself’ (ouch) and is followed, perhaps rather too stridently, by Tim Walker in The Telegraph who found ‘In almost 10 years of reviewing theatre, I doubt I have been confronted with a bigger load of indigestible old tosh’ and couldn’t help but the boot into the subsidised sector while he was at it; ‘the kind of production that simply could not happen in the commercial West End.’

Many people would doubtless agree with Mr Walker’s final sentence but the despair being aimed less at the National and more with eyes turned pointedly north of the river at the risk-averse nature of the private sector behemoths; happy to suck up the most profitable of the tried and tested subsidised productions before reverting back to a steady rotation between Noel Coward, Alan Ayckbourn and A.N Musical complete with X-Factor star.

If the overt agenda setting of Mr Walker’s column can be ignored– and the reference to‘comrades’ at the National rather says it all – it makes an important point in reminding us that the licence to put on a production this lavish ultimately comes from the public purse.

Joe Hill-Gibbin’s is a talented director who had great success at the Young Vic but his career trajectory is taking a worrying turn towards the excessive. A bright start led to a stint at the Young Vic where he created a stunning yet simple revival of Martin McDonagh’s brilliant Beauty Queen of Leenane and directed the only Tennessee Williams production I have ever managed to enjoy (The Glass Menagerie).

He scored an unexpectedly huge hit with the fun but rather too hyper-kinetic The Changeling, which showed a suffusion of talent but equally there were times where a restraining hand might have been called for. It is troubling that on the grandest stage of all Hill-Gibbin’s has not only failed to adjust his style but that the flaws, rather than being flattened in the vast space of Olivier, have only been magnified.

Whilst we must allow artistic companies the freedom to make mistakes, watching Hill-Gibbin’s exuberant production reminded me of the wisdom of Bob Balaban’s protective mother in A Mighty Wind justifying the use of a Shetland pony to play polo on the grounds that ‘if he has to fall, he shouldn’t fall from so very high’.