Review – The Aristocrats – Donmar Warehouse

It’s the mid-1970s. In a stately home in Ireland, the adult children of the home’s owner are gathered before the youngest’s wedding. One plays piano; one lies in her room recovering from a hangover; the single male member of the family makes food in the kitchen. One daughter deals with the apparently sickly father upstairs. This is The Aristocrats.

Over the course of the next two hours, bit by bit, the personalities of these people will be revealed. Two of them seem to be unhinged (the piano playing daughter – Aisling Loftus – and the solitary son – David Dawson); one of them (Elaine Cassidy) seems bent on self destruction (either by alcohol or abuse at the hands of her spouse); the last (Eileen Walsh) seems horribly practical but determined to ensure her life is a miserable despite her capabilities. The personalities are squeezed out mostly through their interactions with American researcher Tom Hoffnung (Paul Higgins), who is looking into how the Irish Catholic landed class has held up back in the home country.

While the various bits of tale telling and nonsense is going on, Uncle George (Ciaran McIntyre) is mostly sat at the back of the stage, peeling paint off of a wall. What an incredibly appropriate metaphor for my experience watching this play. While watching people lead crappy lives, lie to themselves and others, and basically flopping around failing to accomplish a damned thing might seem an appropriate topic for a painting, as a play it was just an unmitigated bore. The metaphor of rot in rich families was covered pretty definitively in Brideshead Revisited (complete with metaphor of rotting house for a rotten “house”); and while we did hit an Irish stereotypes bingo with the revelations of the final act, all and all I just felt: with The Ferryman showing us the richness of the Irish experience and the impact of the turmoil of the 70s on Irish people, just what in the world was this play adding to the mix? It was neither a new story, nor interesting. The characters were solid, but that’s just not enough to make an evening fly. At 1:15 before the interval I was shocked to discover I had not been there for the full two hours already.

Frequently the shame about Donmar shows is that they sell out so soon, and this is why I bought these tickets so far in advance. Fear not: word will get out and you, too, can go if you want, or perhaps you can join me at the back of the garden, peeling off some paint. It’ll save you the money and a precious two hours better spent doing nearly anything else.

(This review is for a preview performance that took place on August 7, 2018. It continues for quite some time.)

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Review – Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Donmar Warehouse

Take a great novel with rich characters, build it out with outstanding actresses, and then season it with glorious set and sound design – the use of bells both as scenery and as a source of music was just inspired, and I can’t say enough about the final look of the wall covered with flowers, reeking of funerals, hospitals, and the beautiful garden of the mind Miss Brodie (Lia Williams) created for herself and her students, in which she dies, alone. Aaaaahhhh beautiful artistic perfection. And let’s not forget her gowns and hair (Lizzie Clachan), so strongly capturing an era and embodying a personality. MMMMMMmmmmm. What praise can I not lavish on this superlative production?

The play is far easier to follow than the original novel, with its dreamlike, backward and forward (sometimes jarringly far forward) narrative; and while purists might find this a fault, I felt the solid framing device of “the person interviewing a writer” while the writer (Rona Morrison as Sandy Stranger) has flashbacks settled my brain better, giving me the visual cues I needed to keep back story and forward/present story clear. The five actresses playing a classroom of 10 year old girls had me reaching for the program, convinced they were not one over 18; Nicola Coughlan (as Joyce Emily) has a particular fragility I associate with girls around 13 and was both heartbreaking (in the junior school scenes) and fascinating (as a sulky teenager) – but completely believable overall. The rest of the “Brodie Set” slowly brought their personalities to the fore, but most of them aren’t meant to be key players, although they still are lively and make the stage glow.

The beaming sun, though, is Miss Brodie herself, whom Lia Williams inhabits with a vitality that transcends acting and settles firmly into the world of “being.” I, at fifty, felt the fragility behind the energy of Brodie; she is in her prime, she is made 85% of will and 15% of style but, my God, how clear it is that her prime is a position she cannot inhabit long. The men (Edward McLiam as Mr Lloyd and Angus Wright as Mr Lowther, both hugely frustrated throughout) swarm about her like bees, but it is she who will not make it past her summer, not the drones; and the casual spinning and unpicking of the wonderful life she has made with herself at the center comes apart in a way that seems both inevitable and still entirely heartbreaking, almost like a spider eaten by her children.

But it’s not that tragic. No, the tragedy is that Miss Brodie is a character that is not saintly but flawed, human, and navigating a peculiar world with rules we of this modern age are unbound by; we can divorce, we do not have to quit work when we marry, and we can walk home by ourselves at 11 without questions being asked. She feels she cannot. Added to this is her injected flaw of supporting fascism; I see this as Spark’s way of showing that Brodie “may be on the wrong side,” as the original novel was written long after the correct people to support in the case of World War Two had been well settled. It, I think, too consciously sets us (as the reader/audience) against her, though reading other literature written at the time it’s clear that there was a bit more debate about it going on than we have now.

But we can still dedicate ourselves selflessly, and perhaps senselessly, to people we care about, and Brodie’s desire to see her girls flourish is hard not to cheer even if her ways of seeing this through are not necessarily in the best interest in girls of 16, or even women of 22. We are caught in both wanting her stopped and wanting her to carry on, with teaching about art, and music, and life; so we too are ultimately complicit in her betrayal. And ooooohhhh how lusciously it all plays out. At nearly a three hour running time, I was convinced I’d only been in the theater for 2:15 at the most, despite knowing the interval was over at 9PM. And that, lads and lasses, is what I would call a successful night at the theater – emotionally satisfying and utterly involving.

(This review is for a performance that took place on June 6, 2018. It continues though July 28. New tickets are released on the Donmar’s website on Mondays at noon.)

Review – Saint Joan – Donmar Warehouse

These days it’s so hard to get a ticket for a show at the Donmar that I go for entire seasons without seeing a single thing. I was a bit sad, then, when I saw the promo posters for Saint Joan – a play I’d never heard of (and certainly not seen) by George Bernard Shaw, one of my favorite playwrights – and realized that unless the gods smiled very favorably upon me, there was little chance of me getting to go. And yet, there I was, the Friday before Christmas (well, close enough), rather stuffed full of panto, and there was …. not just a crummy standing seat … but a juicy front row center ticket that would be all mine if I’d just fork over the full price of forty quid. Well. That’s at the top end of what I’m willing to spend for everything, but you could hardly ask for anything better. In fact, I wound up feeling a bit like Santa had come by for an early visit. Religious fanaticism and being burned at the stake? Ho ho ho!

So … this is going to be slightly different review from my normal “I had no idea what was going to happen and this is what I experienced” write up … instead, I’m going to look at this play through the lens of someone who is a fan of Shaw, and who has seen both Shakespeare’s version of Joan of Arc as well as Theo Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. Briefly, though, the play is given a very modern setting, as the meetings that would normally have taken place at castles or abbeys are instead held around boardroom tables by men in suits (although Joan, oddly enough, appears in Gothic garb). It’s a very effective touch, because what these people are is, really, decision makers, and I found it easy to swallow the ridiculous (miracles and religion) when framed in such an every day context.

Joan as a character needs to carry a lot. Is she an evil witch? The Brits think so (and may have truly believed so in Shakespeare’s time), but Shaw is too much of a realist to go down this path. Is she inspirational? That’s the core of Shaw’s portrayal, and Gemma Arterton embraces that, like a one-woman life coach for the entire French army, seen here coaxing the Dauphin and Archbishop as well as military men with a combination of emotion, religion, touch, humanity, and vision. She seems a dream leader … but Shaw pulls us back to the ground. In a masterful scene – typically Shaw because he’s basically speechifying at us – the English contingent reminds us about the dangers of both nationalism and religious fanaticism. Or, rather, I think Shaw is trying to remind us of where things are going to go historically … but what I heard was a voice from the past warning us that the route to fascism and religious intolerance were often hidden beneath the guise of popularity and “being inspiring.” So here’s Joan … telling people to die in the name of God and encouraging divides based on national origin. Suddenly with that filter it all seems a little more creepy.

Playing a crazed teenager who’s able to rouse a nation to war is doubtlessly not easy. Arterton has the look of someone who can see God, but I felt her sense of betrayal at the end wasn’t as convincing as it should have been (despite the nicely conjured tears). The key role of the Dauphin was also just too weak and wiggly to be convincing. Still, the power players in the rest of the cast – the religious court that sits in judgment in the second act, and the French courtiers – seem strong enough to carry the rest of the play. Overall, it was a good night, and from my front row center seat my interest never flagged. (The gentleman next to me dozed off, however, so caveat emptor.)

(This review is for a performance that took place on Friday, December 16, 2016. It continues through February 18th.)

Review – Closer – Donmar Theater

I haven’t been to the Donmar much lately – it seems like I get shut out of most of the shows they do these days and have been ever since they raised the bar for being a “friend” and switched to the £10 Monday scheme. But somehow I managed to get a ticket to Closer – two, even – which I snatched up without even bothering to find out what the show was about.

So. There are two men and two women. They meet initially by chance – Dan takes Alice to a hospital where Larry works – but chemistry (and, seemingly, fate) conspire to see them dating. Dan initially seems wonderful – a thoughtful, kind man who doesn’t want to abandon the waif hit by a car – while Alice seems hard: manipulative, deceitful, a user who’s lived life hard and takes whatever she can stuff in her grabby hands, happy to use her looks to even out the poor deal life gave her. She makes a play for Dan – and suddenly he’s going from boring sub editor to Mr Throw Caution to the Wind. What? I found it hard to believe he’d risk losing his job for a shag, and even harder to believe he’d throw over his girlfriend for someone he’s just caught stealing from him. It just didn’t make sense.

We fast forward to a few years, and Dan is getting a photo taken for the novel he’s just written that fictionalizes Alice’s life. He’s been with her for a few years now, and yet suddenly he’s making a pass at the photographer Anna and telling her she’s the love of his life. At this point I gave up hope for this play. People aren’t constantly changing who they are based on random sexual impulses: if this were the case, you’d see people going Jekyll/Hyde/Jekyll/Hyde as they walk down the street. I feel the intrigues that developed between the characters – some due to the men’s inability to handle jealousy in any sort of mature fashion, others due to the women’s brutal pragmatism – generally held water, and there were some nice speeches about sexuality, relationships, and the workings of the human mind that might stand up over time. But this play felt entirely pasted together by someone who seemed to have ideas and situations that they wanted to make scenes out of rather than written by someone who actually understands people. For that, I’d say go see My Night With Reg, which said more with a few minutes of silence than this play did with all of its high energy dialogue. Really, Closer is entirely a waste of time and a talented cast, and I’m pretty sure it’ll die a death soon enough and join the piles of scripts that were forgotten by history as not worth the effort to produce again, once people get past their obsession with internet chat rooms and what happens when you go backstage at a strip club.

(This review is for a performance that took place on Thursday, March 5, 2015. It continues through April 4th.)

Mini-review – My Night with Reg – Donmar Warehouse

I’ve now seen three AIDS plays held up as classics: and of them, My Night with Reg is the only one that breaks my heart. As Is is full of rage but has a soap opera soul; Angels in America has lost all of its urgency as 9/11 made it a quaint recollection of a more innocent time. My Night with Reg, currently being revived at the Donmar, stays focused on what really matters in theater – human relationships – and slips in AIDS like a stiletto that slides between your ribs unfelt, taking your breath from you forever.

The plot, such as it is, is trivial; men gather together in a house and talk to each other about each other. Each scene is set in a nearly unchanging house; it’s difficult to tell that any time has past- in fact, the second scene seems like it may be “evening of the same day” after a dinner part, but as the conversations play out, it becomes clear that much time has passed, and while little seems to have changed, hearts are aging and memories are accumulating and the great, sad accretion of life (and death) is taking its toll on all present, no matter how handsome and witty they still seem, scene after scene.

The group of men around whom the play centers are all old college (uni in English parlance) friends, and when the get together – which happens rarely (and never with the invisible Reg) – you can see the exuberance and lust for life of the early twenties zinging out of them as they joke, dance, and sing with each other with the easy camaraderie (and hints of old lusts) that really only happen with friendships of a decade or more. You laugh a little at host Guy (Jonathan Broadbent), so pudgy and nerdy and supportive; admire sexy John (Julian Ovenden) while wondering if he actually has any heart under his perfectly sculpted exterior; and wish you could have Daniel (Geoffrey Streatfeild) over to your party because he really is just that funny and smart. Despite this being a reunion for the men, to me it had that timeless feeling of any friendships that resume right where the left off years ago, while also having an interesting touch of British reserve in the amount of emotional honesty the various characters allowed themselves. It still had the thick lashings of sexual honesty I see (enviously) in gay men’s relationships … but their hearts stayed hidden.

Until, well, scenes two and three. Death rises, sex becomes less a sport than a grief control mechanism, and the happiest songs in the world become paeans to the dreams we’ve all had to give up on and the banal realities that have been left behind. It all became a bit like the Japanese love of cherry blossoms – beauty is so much easier to appreciate in the face of its ephemerality. And when we’re living life, we so often don’t realize that a goodbye really is an ending, that the people you see every day will suddenly just never be there again. And for a brief period of time, those lovely, loving, lovable fonts of life were being mowed down one after another and it seemed like it was never going to stop. In the face of that, all you get is a dance and maybe a singalonga and maybe somebody to keep you warm at night, but mostly what you get is the realization that we all end up alone. Even though I had to remind myself I was just watching actors go through a script, that message was still entirely real, and beautifully conveyed. It was an excellent evening and well worth the many, many time I sat there hitting F5 and hoping someone would change their minds at the last moment and decide not to go: and even at top price it was absolutely worth every pound I paid and every minute of my time.

(This review is for a performance that took place Saturday afternoon, August 30th, 2014. I spent the rest of the week wishing I had time to write it up just in case someone else who’d appreciate this play didn’t know how good it was. It closes September 27th.)

Mini-review – The Same Deep Water as Me – Donmar Warehouse

I’m not one much for following an actor from show to show, but I do enjoy seeing everything a playwright has to offer. This often leads to me being first in line to book tickets for some overlooked “classic” from Tennessee Williams or Henrik Ibsen; but occasionally non-dead playwrights also get the star billing in my theater world. Nick Payne is on that list, and when his new work (The Same Deep Water as Me) was slated to debut at the Donmar, I knew I wanted in.

I’m pleased to report that The Same Deep Water as Me displays the same flair for dialogue and characterization that his previous works (that I’ve seen, Constellations and When We Were Young). The plot is markedly different: the shyster school friend (Marc Wootton) of a young attorney (solicitor? – Daniel Mays) comes to see him at work to pursue an accident claim, and, well, things don’t go as planned. The four main characters – Andrew (the young attorney), his boss, Kevin (the friend) and his wife – are all very well drawn. Kevin is especially interesting because his attitude and speech are that of a much different type of person than normally appears on stage, with his gold chain, questionable morals, and get-rich-quick visions. It’s hard to see what his wife (Niky Wardley) sees in him – but then, it’s hard to see how Andrew could ever have been in love with her, or feel so snobby about her working at Marks & Spencer. Still, the wealth of details made all of the characters seem very solid.

This, of course, leaves the story. I felt it was … well, kind of unfinished, still. Things seemed to be building up plot-wise that didn’t happen; the really interesting character conflicts that started to surface never really came to a boil (other than in one brief flash at the end, which seemed to come from out of the blue). Did some important scene get left out? It felt to me more like it was never written, especially given the snappy two hour running time. I was expecting this play to really go somewhere, and instead it spent rather a lot of a time being boring in a courtroom. Well, who knows, maybe it’ll get rewritten later and something more interesting will come out of it. It was fine as a ten quid night out (love the Donmar’s pricing!), but, despite the title, this play never got deep.

(This review is for a performance that took place on August 7th, 2013. It continues through September 28th.)

Review – The Night Alive – Donmar Warehouse

I do two basic sorts of reviews on this blog. One is a production focused review, for plays I’ve seen before or dance/orchestral performances; the other is a text-focused review. The second is for new plays, or plays I’ve never seen before. I very much like going into a play knowing as little about it as possible (other than “it’s good”). Since I didn’t study theater after high school this isn’t too hard (even for some things Shakespeare wrote), but I also actively avoid reading scripts of plays I haven’t seen. Sure, I want to see everything Pinter and Ibsen (and, I think, Strindberg) have written; but I want to SEE them, live, on stage, not try to imagine them as I turn pages. Ditto watching them on the small or large screen: I want to watch theater IN the theater.

And I want to see new plays – lots of new plays. So I was thrilled when I managed to score 10 quid front row tickets to the Donmar’s sold-out production of The Night Alive, Conor McPherson’s latest show. I’ve had mixed experiences at his plays; The Veil had me out the door at the interval, whereas The Weir had me hanging on every word and gaping at the brilliant character creation. Kinda hard to believe it was the same guy, huh? But I hoped that the genius of the earlier work would prove the rule, and the flop of the historical ghost story would be the “exception.”

I found myself a bit baffled as to the “where and when” of this play – the setting was a shabby bed sit, with papers and trash strewn everywhere and two single beds in the room – the bathroom a clapped together room tucked in the back with more crap on top of it. Based on the presence of energy drink cans and bottled water, I figured it could have been set at any time from the early 2000s to the present (although I was told that the coin operated electricity meter had been completely phased out, so perhaps this was some ten years back – I was short on cash so no program or cast list to illuminate me).

As it stands, the play reconfirmed for me McPherson’s mastery of natural speech patterns as well as his ability to create fully realized people out of text on a page. (Doubtlessly the actors have to take some credit for this too, but it’s the author who can make me believe that the person speaking on stage existed as a child.) But the plot was … elliptical (and I think the reason why the two women behind me in the ladies’ loo queue said they hated the play). It was very much “moving forward in time,” but in some ways it seems that nothing happened or was resolved … none of the characters changed much (other than falling in love).

But … I loved it. Life doesn’t always make sense of have a plot, but this play was more than just “a few scenes from the life of a tightfisted Irish scalawag” – it gave me the same elated feeling at the end as the brilliant Constellations did, and for the same reason: its message was, “In this short life that we live, all we can hope for is to make a human connection. This is rare and precious: treasure it.” I walked out feeling like Ciarán Hinds (as the scalawag) and Caoilfhionn Dunne (as Amy) had given us a tremendous gift. What a lovely, lovely play it was.

(This review is for a performance that took place on Thursday, July 4th, 2013. It continues through July 27th. Warning: contains graphic violence that I found quite disturbing.)

Mini-review – Julius Caesar – Donmar Warehouse

This has been the year for Shakespearean double vision. Not content to see Henry V, Winter’s Tale, and Julius Caesar once this year, I’ve been forced by outstanding casting, adventurous producing companies, or unusual interpretations (a musical?) to see them all twice. But none of these rewind shows has excited me as much as the all-female Caesar presented by the Donmar this winter. Though I love Propeller Theater and the Globe’s Twelfth Night pleased, I was mesmerized by the idea of women driving this most masculine of Shakespearean dramas. And what a counterbalance to all of the “traditional” all-male shows. Phyllida Lloyd, bring it!

In practice, the show delivered. The setting, a prison, prepared us with a sentiment of why the show was happening as performed; but quickly the novelty of women kissing and being brutal to each other disappeared into the solidity of the text, with only the occasional clumping of the guards overhead to remind us of where we really were: a place ruled by honor, violence, and power. Caesar convinced with both arrogance and superstition; Marc Antony was righteously wrong and a deliciously duplicitous self-claimed non-orator; Brutus was noble, heartbreaking and heart broken.

Small, apt touches punctuated the fiercesome tide of the text: the sad, weak seer, with her babydoll and pig tails; the inmates gathering to watch TV; the single snare drum pop with which Caesar, her ghost miraculously appearing amidst a percussion kit, marks the death of Brutus. And then towering above it all, the amazing battle scene as loud rock breaks out and the band is wheeled across the field (er, the floor of the prison), all pain and noise and flickering light and chaos, like War Pigs in the theater. It’s not glory, boys, it’s death and destruction, and it may just be we chose the wrong side.

And then it’s time to go back in our cells, and the night’s over, and I thought, “Fuck yeah, Shakespeare meets Black Sabbath,” and, “Why aren’t there some better plays out there about what life is really like in prison,” and, finally, “Yep, it rocked.” And I realized that I totally forgot who was playing what a long time ago. That, to me, is a sign of some damned good theater.

(This review is for the performance that took place the night of December 6th, 2012. It continues through February 9th.)

Mini-review – The Physicists – Donmar Warehouse

The Physicists is a bizarre little play, a hybrid between a farce (“Noises Off”) and any sort of, shall we say, Shavian drama (the kind where the message making becomes dull at the end and you want to kick the soap box out from under the lead character’s feet). Ooh, a bunch of physicists in an insane asylum during the Cold War, HOW DROLL! Let’s make them wear fright wigs and prance around pretending to be Sir Isaac Newton and Einstein! And they can kill some people and it will have a bit of a murder mystery air about it and it will all be SO FUN!

Or so went the first act. Yes, I could see the ending coming from a mile off, and while watching the Hans and Franz children of Dr Moebius play a recorder duet was really about the height of insanity, I was just kind of wanting it all to be over long before the musical instruments were removed from their cases. I found the first act hateful and not at all funny. Why the hell had the Donmar chosen to remount this disaster?

Then act two came around and while the tone changed to Much More Serious Now We Talk About Ethics and Make a Big Point I just didn’t care anymore. Ooh ethics. Ooh cold war. OOH I AM SO OVER ALL OF THIS PLEASE JUST MAKE IT BE DONE. I sat there coldly watching the actors emote through their lines in fine I Got Taught To Do This In London style and just hated it all. YAY A TINY BIT OF SOMETHING REAL oh wait no not really we’re back to the farce. Amazing how even a short show can seem so long under the wrong circumstances …

I’m sorry. There must have been something redeeming in this night. But after seeing Noises Off so recently, I thought this play just deserved the dustbin. And I blew it and got the expensive seats for once. Argh! To think I could have been off seeing the Print Room’s Uncle Vanya instead! At least my friend liked it …

(This review is for a performance that took place on June 28th, 2012. It continues through July 21st. It was not my cup of tea.)

Review – Making Noise Quietly – Donmar Warehouse

This year marked a big change at the Donmar, as long-time director Michael Grandage departed to make room for Josie Rourke. This kind of change wouldn’t normally be something I noticed or cared about, only since I moved to London The Donmar has become the theater to attend, both for outstanding productions and great prices. Tickets became hard to get as the Donmar did more and more celebrity casting – Ewan Macgregor one year, Rachel Weisz another – not to mention a whole season at Wyndham’s with big-name movie actors that, more and more, made getting affordable tickets – or any tickets at all – near impossible. Yippee hooray for all of the Oliviers Grandage pulled … but as time wore on I found myself drifting away from the Donmar. What was the point of getting excited about something you could never see? It all seemed to be getting rather formulaic, anyway, gloomy realism with sets that seemed to be getting a lot of reuse (for the shows I did manage to get into), you know, sour grapes mutter mutter.

So now Rourke has taken over and I’ve come back, finding it easier to get tickets and wondering where The Donmar will go. The Recruiting Officer seemed right out of the Grandage hat (if more cheery than usual), but Making Noise Quietly was quite different: a series of short plays, something I hadn’t seen in the last 5 years (though I could have missed it if it did happen). I arrived with my usual lack of preconceptions, and this is what I saw.

First, there is “Being Friends,” a play about two young men, strangers, meeting in the English countryside during World War II. One (Matthew Tennyson) is gay and physically broken; the other (Jordan Dawes) is a conscientious objector (Quaker) and physically quite fine. They talk about their lives while sharing a picnic; at the end, they strip off and sunbathe. The straight boy is flirted at terribly; in return he flirts tentatively with the other young man. In essence, what happens is the wonderful nothingness of them both accepting each other; even the bomb that exploded didn’t really create as much tension as waiting to see if either would make a pass at the other. Ultimately: it’s all a damp squib.

Second is “Lost,” a mini-play about a Naval officer coming to a woman’s house during the Falkland Islands War to tell her of her son’s death (and a few other secrets). There’s a question as to why the dead man was so estranged from his parents that I felt was never really answered (although my companion said if you were familiar with English style social climbing it was all right there in front of you): but I found it a complete mystery and not really emotionally affecting. Two people conspire together to not feel anything. It’s not my idea of a satisfying play.

And, well, there we were at the interval. I was actively bored. Nothing had really happened; no one had had any kind of self-revelation. Should I leave? I was tempted, but we were promised sweet release at 9:30, so I soldiered back on in to get through the last playlet of the night. And I’m glad I did, because the eponymous final play was very fine: a tale of a soldier (Ben Batt) trying to deal with his autistic son (actor unknown) with the help of an elderly German woman (Sara Kestelman). Here we had three strong performances that caused me to lose the distance between myself and the stage: I was no longer watching actors go through a scene, but people struggling with a problem, and each other. Watching Frau Ensslin struggle to get the young boy to respond to her was completely compelling; seeing her struggle with the boy’s violent father was nearly so. I really cared about her success with both of them by the end of the night, and that’s quite an accomplishment given where I was before the interval.

So: a weak night overall, with the best show last. I got my ten quid worth, to be sure, but I can’t really recommend this as a good way to spend two hours. We’ll see how the next show goes; but this, based on the number of tickets still available for it, does not seem to be as well received as its predecessors.

(This review is for a performance that took place on April 26th, 2012. It continues through May 26th.)