Art for heart’s sake… HE(ART), Theatre N16

Shane Noone and Flora Dawson. Photo: Jesse Night

You know, you can keep your West End and all that cramped comfort and over-priced ice-cream, if you want to be really moved by theatre make your way to places like Theatre N16 in Balham’s iconic Bedford Arms where you can find yourself genuinely affected – heart-warmed and shaken, not just stirred – by committed performers in close quarters. 

This is a funny play about passionately-imperfect relationships that ultimately leaves you holding your breath and hoping, really hoping, for that “one moment” that can change a character’s life. We all know those moments and we won’t begrudge the opportunity to somebody else.

Director Niall Phillips was drawn to Andrew Maddock’s play by its inclusion of a character, Sam, with Emotional Behaviour Difficulties and in addition to wanting to broaden awareness of the condition, the run includes “relaxed” performances so that young adults with EBD and other anxiety-related conditions can experience the story.

Which just goes to show how many ways there are of telling a story and whilst it would be very interesting to compare that version with tonight’s more explosive dénouement, there’s a warmth at the heart (see what I did…) of this play that moves in gentle and persuasive ways.

Rhys and Alice consider their wall hanging options. Photo: Jesse Night

There are two relationships, art dealer Alice (Alex Reynolds) and her window-cleaning boyfriend Rhys (Jack Gogarty) who must eventually collide with troubled siblings Kev (Shane Noone) and his sister Sam (a hugely-impressive Flora Dawson) who has EBD.

The first thing to note is that the play is exceptionally well presented with the N16’s walls adorned with art and the ceiling over the stage filled with items hanging from string: a Burger King take-away, an iPod, some disinfectant, two guns… all will play their part as the scenes unfold.

As we took our seats the actors were already in character, with Alice and Kev considering the items as if in an art gallery. As the strains of the Isley Brothers’ This Old Heart of Mine trail off we find the couple at opposite ends of art appreciation: Kev not knowing about art or even what he likes and Alice, five years of a Masters in Art behind her, perfectly articulating the finer points.

Alex Reynolds Photo: Jesse Night

It’s like an Antonioni film with male and female incapable of communicating on the same level except through humour – jokes about Roy Lichtenstein and Banksy (“not an artist” for Alice!) – before Kev tries to move into his partner’s court by offering to buy the painting she likes but he really doesn’t get.

Alice is smart and knows her man and suggests leaving the decision for a week to make sure they’re sure… In spite of their class difference these two are a believable couple: well written and well performed. Alice is concerned not just for her lover’s art but also his heart as he has a weak ticker after heart disease as a child and is liable to contract bacterial endocarditis if he is not careful.

Johnny Cash’s Rose of My Heart introduces Sam and Rhys an altogether edgier pairing with an agenda that is only gradually revealed… Rhys is the elder brother who has a robbery planned and has sent Sam to get them some guns. Rhys knows how to play his sister, lauding her as a Wembley Warrior as a way of misdirecting her anxiety at screwing up the deal for the guns. There’s some history with their parents, a lot unsaid and for all Sam’s emotional charge, Kev is the looser cannon.

Flora Dawson and Shane Noone. Photo: Jesse Night

But we learn more about both couples in tightly scripted episodes. Rhys asks Alice for her earliest memory – watching Dumbo (and sure enough there’s a VHS copy hanging from the ceiling!) – whilst is his waiting for a doctor’s appointment. He’s lived his life with his ailment and just wants to get on with things whilst Alice, like his mother before her, is new to this care…

Sam and Kev talk about taking their mother to Colorado but there have been some dark dealings in the past that make it impossible for Kevin to consider meeting her. So many things left unsaid and so much anger: no wonder Kev like Johnny Cash a man forever in search of atonement and that “one moment” of redemption.

Alex Reynolds and Jack Gogarty Photo: Jesse Night

All becomes clear as the couples converge for an epic final scene that I couldn’t possible detail: the whole room held its breath as events hung on a knife edge…

This was transformative theatre – I left Balham far more energised than when I arrived – wellness programmes need to include this art: one of our most ancient.

Alex Reynolds was suitably immaculate as Alice whilst Jack Gogarty’s Rhys matched her so well they just felt like a couple – especially the running gags about porn (you had to be there for the tale of Lolly Badcock) and their willingness to always compromise.

Shane Noone’s Kev was that most difficult of characters a wrong ‘un who you understand as things progress and Flora Dawson’s Sam was a mighty creation: troubled but clever, loyal and loving.

HE(ART) runs at Theatre N16 from the 10th – 29th January. Each performance on a Tuesday will be a relaxed performance. I couldn’t recommend it more highly but don’t be surprised if you end up arguing the pros and cons of street art on your way home…

To purchase tickets visit the N16 Theatre site.

For more detail on EBD please visit the Social, emotional & behavioural difficulties association site. SEBDA is a charitable organisation and exists to promote the well being of children and young people who are experiencing social, emotional and mental health difficulties (SEMH).

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ****

Primal queen… Gertrude – The Cry, Theatre N16, Balham

 
“The cry isn’t in you; it’s outside you…” exclaims Claudius who earlier on had talked of the religion of his lover’s sexuality. Gertrude is a force of nature and this richly-textured play is in raptures about the language and the act of sex, love and bloody life.

This is a revival of Howard Barker’s extraordinary play which had its world premiere in the great hall of Elsinore Castle, a building Barker’s Hamlet wants to rebuild in glass so that there are no hidden corners for secrets or smuggled meanings.

Here Gertrude’s loyal servant, Cancan (Stephen Oswald) talks of walking the maze – a maze of meaning? This is one where I need to write carefully: I’m out of my depth and to paraphrase this Hamlet: “there are things in this World I don’t understand but others understand them entirely…” I think this is a play you need to see twice: the first time to allow the full visceral force of the ferocious performance and the second to pick the bones from Barker’s labyrinthine word-play.

In this respect, there are similarities with Tom Stoppard’s expansion of two characters from the same play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Stoppard looked for meaning in the lives of two plot devices who are stuck in an existential spiral as helpless as the coins they toss to alter the course of their lives whilst Barker has a freer approach in seeking out the motivations of Gertrude: the mother who so bewildered her son in marrying his father’s brother so soon after his father’s untimely death. But his approach is more counter-factual: what if…?

No time is lost in the revelation of the nature of Hamlet senior’s death and his widow-to-be’s role in it...I had always read it that Claudius was the ambition and the cruel drive but here it is not so: he is in thrall to a higher power and that is Gertrude herself.

Theatre N16 is an intimate space and the audience was left reeling by the opening moves as the sexually-charged coupling of Gertrude (Izabella Urbanowitz) and Claudius (Alexander Hulme) indulge in murder as erotic sport, poisoning their man before stripping off and consecrating their transgressive love on his dying body. A few hours before I’d been stuck in a particularly dull spreadsheet, but all thoughts of budgeting were blown away never to return for the rest of the evening: nothing was held back – this was a crime of passion in every sense.

A new look at the King and his stolen Queen...

The relationship between Gertrude and Claudius explodes the original characterisation to present a couple deeply in lust and driven by a primal urge to succeed, to live and to rule: their bond based on boundless sexual fascination.                                

The body of his father springs up to be revealed as Hamlet (Jamie Hutchins) who declared himself surprised at not feeling “it” more… he imagines he will grieve later; his mind a maze and his speech always obfuscating meaning, this Hamlet is  already playing the fool – a figure of unknown capacity and uncertain threat to the royal couple. People always give the Prince a hard time for his hesitations but in this psychotic environment how else could he survive?

Cascan and Isola

Other players emerge, Claudius’s mother Isola (Liza Keast) who begs Gertrude to leave her one son, knowing how destructive such a woman can be, having perhaps been one herself. She is Gertrude in thirty years having survived the ravages of rule with delicate cunning and feminine power of her own.

She chides Gertrude’s mourning skirt as being too short whilst admiring her long legs – she is always dueling with meaning and careful feminine challenge. But this is Gertrude’s hour and, power coursing through her; she encourages Claudius to perform another transgressive, and very public, display of affection at the funeral.

Ragusa's controlled tie-backs are replaced by a tousled rage of red hair by the end

Hamlet’s sort-of girlfriend, Ragusa (LJ Reeves, whose red hair becomes almost a character in itself as her narrative develops…) is surprised at how this family speaks so forcefully true – there is little time for mourning and even love and always they act impulsively, even Hamlet, shockingly in the end… his soliloquies more circular and to the point than in Shakespeare: in musical terms this is not pastoral-progressive- folk but punk – a cry of truth with no bushes beaten...

Hamlet not worrying about the sleep of death

Cascan provides a commentary on proceedings and Stephen Oswald’s Scottish burr grounds the words in sinister reality – Elsinore is a harsh place much like our own. He is fiercely loyal to his Queen bound to her as much as any man by his own form of love.

Claudius seeks his counsel, struggling to understand how, so soon after their exultant victory, he no longer hears Gertrude’s “cry”… has her passion out-matched his? He is blown away by the force of her and kindly love is not what she needs.

Hamlet’s friend, Albert of Mecklenburgh (David Zachary) attracts Gertrude's attention and is willing to reciprocate as deeply as physicality will allow. His is still a youth and she is now pregnant but they find an erotic approach that feels like more like a negotiation than sex.

The younger man stakes his claim to passion

Perhaos the cry is for survival as much as for the affirmation of life (and sex) and in such a febrile environment survival is in flux and characters die in the matter-of-fact ways of a war – animals in the grip of forces they hardly comprehend.

It’s a wildly-thought-provoking ride and one of the most audience-challenging productions I’ve seen: no one feels safe in this space and you cannot fail to be engaged as you respond to the emotional exposure and devastating betrayals in close-proximity.

Has Albert the power to match Gertrude's desire?

Chris Hislop directs with chilling assurance and brings out the best of his extraordinary players. Izabella Urbanowitz gives her all as a regally-raunchy Gertrude for whom Nature no doubt is her goddess whilst Alexander Hulme’s Claudius is her equal and yet, held back by his own manhood, he cannot, finally, keep pace.

You have to see it. I doubt there’s a more incendiary play anywhere in London.

The show was produced by Andrea Leoncini and Jamie Eastlake for LWL Investments & Entertainment Ltd and Theatre N16 as part of Shakespeare 400. A richly-rewarding evening just three stops down from Victoria at the famous Bedford public house - historical home of alternative comedy and the darker elements of South London entertainments... 

 

IThankyou Rating: ****