Everything, everywhere all at once… Slaughterhouse-Five, Southwark Playhouse

 

"All this happened, more or less…”

So goes the first sentence of Kurt Vonnegut Jnr’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, widely regarded as amongst his best work and one which contains elements of stunning autobiographical detail. Vonnegut was a US Army Prisoner of War in Dresden at the time of the Allied bombing between 13 and 15 February 1945. He had survived along with other prisoners held deep in the cold store of the abattoir Schlachthof-fünf – as the city above was raised with fatalities currently estimated ranging from 25,000 to 30,000. Either way, so much death… and an attack that was controversial even at the time, with Dresden being an “Open City” with few targets and the architectural heritage of an Oxford with a population of Leeds. Over two thousand RAF and USAF bombers dropped a mix of incendiaries and high explosives… so it goes.

It’s a bit “woke”… but imagine being underneath all of that and having to try and save lives as your side unleashed such destruction? Vonnegut is overwhelmed as his narrator says he didn’t have much to write about it just after the war and not much more to say in 1968: how can you put it into words? So, to deal with senselessness, the incomprehension and inhumanity his way was to come at it from an angle, his meaning and feeling filtered through the shards of a life smashed into fragments by the event and living all of his lifeline out of order, the Event’s meaning for him presenting itself in different ways and at different points. It’s nominally science fiction but it’s also documentary in terms of the human experience.

Alex Crook, Patrick McAndrew and Ethan Reid at war (Photo Henry Hu)

George Roy Hill had a decent if commercially unsuccessful stab at making this into a film in 1972 but to turn it into a play you really do need to be brave. Clearly Eric Simonson is one of those writers who believe that you don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps and in director/video designer Douglas Baker he has found a like mind. Using a team of just four actors playing many parts and in various accents as well as the superb design work of Laurel Marks (lighting) and Calum Perrin (sound) they have pulled it off too. After a double Office Award-winning run at the Brockley Jack Theatre in 2024, they have just begun a five-week run here in Southwark and it is complex, energetic and righteously funny – I urge you to see it.

Patrick McAndrew plays Billy Pilgrim who is the author’s cypher albeit an unreliable narrator of his experience with the shock of his capture by German soldiers in 1944 causing him to become unstuck in time so that he experiences his past and future all at once. He also gets kidnapped by an alien race, the Tralfamadorians who also live their lives all at once and who are also two-foot tall and shaped like arms with a single eye in the palm. Their state of existence means they don’t see death as the end of life just one of many things that occur. They are also fatalistic knowing that they destroy the universe experimenting with new fuels for their flying saucers – a test pilot’s error they cannot change as it is already happening/has already happened/will always happen.

Sofia Engstrand (all photographs Henry Hu)

I’m never sure how much of Billy’s extra-terrestrial experience is imagined – Vonnegut was non-committal – but they show Billy’s increasing detachment not least when they provide him with glamour model, Montana Wildhack as a mate whilst keeping him in their zoo. She is played by Sofia Engstrand who doubles up as a German officer, also Bernard O’Hare one of Vonnegut’s friends who was with him in Dresden. All four are performing almost none-stop throughout the play, this is a characterful tour-de-force!

Alex Crook plays, amongst others, frequent KV protagonist/antagonist Kilgore Trout, a bitter and unsuccessful writer of science fiction who Billy likes and again is another Vonnegut cypher. Alex and Ethan Reid play soldiers and as many other characters as they need to, I lost count but both master the American angst especially with Billy’s sworn enemy and future/past assassin Paul Lazzaro. There are so many aspects… and a narrative that slips between the years back and forth as we see Billy move forward from the war to a successful career in optometry, marriage and a family with ill health and tragedy all of a piece.

Back to the future (photo Henry Hu)

 Here is where the staging is so integral to the understanding and feeling of the performance as the scenery, characters and historical events are projected onto the see-through mesh placed centre stage behind which the actors pass in time-dislocated sequences and in front of which they address us in the now… whatever that is? This enables us to see Billy in the war, in Dresden, giving a speech or on the planet of Tralfamador surrounded by the natives looking into his zoo cage and even urinating into a WC… so he goes? 

The choreography is perfect and the atmosphere of the story remains true to Vonnegut’s book as we join with Pilgrim in trying to make sense of the rules of war, the "children" who are sent to fight and the relationship of their sacrifice to our continuing civilization. In that respect, we are all Tralfamadorians now. 

IThankYou appreciation: **** This is an innovative and affecting production that pins the audience back in their seats for an unpredictable journey through time and into inner space. The cast create so much characterful dramatic twists on the Little’s discrete performance space and you are pulled into the most cinematic of live action dramas I’ve seen for some time.

Presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd on behalf of Playscripts, Slaughterhouse-Five runs at the Playhouse until 5^th July. Book now at this address - it's happening now but not always forever. Tralfamador awaits you.

All photographs from Henry Hu

All about Alec... Two Halves of Guinness, Park Theatre

 

You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Two halves of Guinness turned out to be two pints far fuller than empty and featuring a life overflowing with stories and character. Alec Guinness was the epitome of post-war British performers with iconic roles for Ealing and for David Lean, all topped off by his Obi-Wan Kenobi role for which the unconvinced Shakespearean was paid $150,000 plus 2.25% of profits and in which he featured in three sequels, and even in the latest episodes with The Force Awakens in 2015.

Fair to say, whilst he appreciated the money, Sir Alec was not that enamoured with “the fairy tale” science fantasy and at the start of this play we see an interaction with a fan during which the actor agrees to misquote a line from the film – “may the Force be with you…” on that condition that the young enthusiast never watched the film again.

The remarkable Zeb Soanes not only inhabits the character of his subject but also the man’s attempt to work out the value of his career and the issues that drove him. Soanes sounds enough like Guinness to quickly gain the audience’s confidence and as he asks for contributions offering other roles he has been in, he recognises and contextualises them all off script although I don’t think he quite caught my suggestion of the Llandudno-based comedy, The Card. Kind Hearts and Coronets, Bridge Over the River Kwai, Tinker Tailor… there’s no end of worthwhile work and all over so many decades.

The Entertaining Mr Soanes. (Photo by Danny Kaan) 

The play is written by written by Mark Burgess and is an extension of his original play from 2010 with new research adding to already meticulous details of career and character following Zeb’s request to perform the play again. All of the diligence allows the actor plenty of room to repeat key anecdotes with relish and, remarkably, to provide all the voices too from Sir Ralph Richardson to Sir Laurence Olivier and all points in between. Soanes also portrays Guinness’s mother – who turned up at the stage door on far too many pay days looking for a drink – as well as addressing the unknown ghost of his father who, unlike Hamlet’s, never answers back. The actor never knew who his father was – the entry was blank on his birth certificate – although he suspected it may have been his “Uncle”, Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes who paid for his boarding-school education at Pembroke Lodge.

Unsure of who he actually was and with such uncertainty in his relationship to the fixed point of his mother, Guinness resolved to be everybody who he could through acting – there may have been a deep-seated need to find himself in his roles although as with Peter Sellars, losing himself may have been just a much the aim.

Family uncertainty fed into fiscal frailty as the almost penniless actor tried to get a scholarship at RADA only for it to fall through – they were perhaps expecting some of the other Guinness family fortune? But on the same day he obtained a scholarship at another acting school, Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, and his career began. He had boldly asked Sir John Gielgud's to offer him acting training and the two met with the older man offering him brief advice and recommending the skills of Martita Hunt at £1 a session… it was she who told him to always stress the noun before the verb giving rise to his distinctive vocal cadence.

Zeb Soanes. (Photo by Danny Kaan)

There after we’re taken on a tour of Guinness’ progress as his early-stage career is interrupted by his service in the Royal Navy during World War Two before he returned to the Old Vic and theatre. His first feature film was David Lean’s Great Expectations (1947) and he was to work with the great director on a number of occasions. Soanes is great in showing the then 33-year-old’s change of posture and accent to become Fagin proving Lean wrong in his assertion he could play that role and is such good value in retelling stories of the director.

One of these involves Lean bullying Sessue Hayakawa into giving a tearful performance as the Japanese camp commander Colonel Saito breaks down. This is as Guinness saw it but Hayakawa was an actor of such experience – a silent film great – I’m not sure how much encouragement he would have needed. But actors in the moments between being themselves may leave a trace of imagination in their recollections… this is Guinness on Guinness.

I shot an arrow in the air; she fell to earth in Berkeley Square.

Soanes quickly dies eight times in tribute to Guinness’ multiple parts in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1948), it’s a parlour trick but there’s no doubting that the actor could and did make those roles quite distinct. This ability to reimagine yourself from some kind of null space may have been linked to the actor’s own uncertain identity: Hitchcock may have turned his audience into voyeurs but here we’re light-heartedly urged to join the psychiatric dots in the manner of one of Sir Alec’s own… not least in relation to his family life and his sexuality with his list of London steam bathhouses for post-performance relaxation being a lengthy one.

Onwards across The Bridge, through the desert and finally up into space and that galaxy, far, far away until, at the last, a remarkable thing happens as piece by piece, Zeb appears to transform into Guinness as George Smiley… it’s a stunning impersonation; for once the noun accentuated just after the verb. Had we been hypnotised?

One actor in search of eight characters...

IThankYouTheatre verdict: ***** This play just flies by in a thoroughly engrossing blur of knowing flicks and revelatory twists as Zeb Soanes pays tribute to the man who inspired him to become an actor* and whose memory he has taken such care to preserve. Two Halves of Guinness is poured out with as much love and attention as the malted barley beer in the finest bars of O’Connell Street. You are in safe hands and will emerge feeling refreshed and enriched: Guinness is good for you whatever the measure.

Ably directed by noted actor Selina Cadell who has an increasingly impressive list of directorial credits including Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya for the Donmar, Great Expectations at the Garrick and Hamlet starring Eddie Izzard.

As for Zeb Soanes he shows performance dexterity of the highest order and whilst he might be better known as a radio presenter he is a man of many parts – not just the 34 in this play! – and has always maintained his acting career. He played Derek Nimmo in the radio drama All Mouth and Trousers, by this play's author Mark Burgess… which reminds me of my father’s plans for a play with his old school friend Derek – Quarry Bank Grammar School knocked the scouse out of their accents but Nimmo as with Guinness could be who he wanted to be.

Two Halves of Guinness plays at the Park Theatre until 2^nd May, do not miss it! Details of tickets are available right here.

*In the programme, there’s a copy of a note from Guinness to young Zeb when he wrote to him in his teens. Very similar to Guinness contacting Gielgud – the virtuous cycle of courtesy and encouragement!

Hot metal, cold heart… In the Print (2026), King’s Head Theatre

I just want to print newspapers…

I was just starting out in publishing when the events depicted in this play were taking place and we too were looking at the emergence of desktop publishing, online (oh yes), expert systems and methods of production that would soon cut out traditional typesetters as well as plate makers and various stages in the production process. Artwork had to have the designer’s NGA membership number on and it was presented to printers with overlays and instructions for printers to photograph and turn into printing plates. Technology was changing fast and, as this play points out, that was an issue for those with costs to cut and others with livelihoods to protect. Of course, Fleet Street was also riddled with “Spanish Practices” and union-based agreements that lowered productivity whilst protecting jobs. There’s blame on both sides here as there always is.

Aware of all this is SOGAT General Secretary, Brenda Dean (here played with wit and resolution by Claudia Jolly) but as she tells the seemingly impenetrable Rupert Murdoch (Alan Cox, playing the Devil with conviction and no heart) “there are ways…”. There might indeed have been other paths to follow in changing the production process for the Australian media Moghul’s four UK titles – The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times – including a negotiated plan involving the various unions and natural wastage but he preferred a more callous and immediate course of action.

Alan Cox and Claudia Jolly (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

Under the guise of producing a new daily paper, The London Post, Murdoch set up a new printing works in Wapping in which he set up all the print capacity he would need to run his papers and, having done a deal with one of the unions, the EETPU (Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union) he had the technical staff trained up and ready to go with neither SOGAT or the NGA aware. The NUJ was also easily neutralised with the help of The Times Editor Andrew Neil and The Sun’s amoral bundle of unresolved masculine crisis, Kelvin McKenzie. I had a friend who worked for Neil at the time and he was apparently a “good boss” but – she was blonde, good-looking and maybe he had his favourites – and he certainly did his master’s bidding in persuading most of his journalists to betray their brethren.

Alasdair Harvey plays Neil as a tool of Murdoch’s and rather lacking in the principles he has always demanded from others. Such is the life of a critic – those who can do, Andrew, those who can’t just write about it! If ‘Drew is simpering, Kelvin MacKenzie - Russell Bentley having a ball! - is the monster we all know now to be unrepentant, a salesman role-playing as an editor, selecting and twisting the stories he thinks his readers want. I knew someone at The Sun too and in 1989, when Kelvin ran his lies about Liverpool fans stealing from the dead at Hillsborough, his staff pleaded with him not to publish this unevidenced story… he ignored them in favour of the lies.

At the time, as Michael Crick observes in the programme notes, Dean was seen as being too close to Murdoch but the reality as presented here seems to be that she was doing her best to save as many jobs as she could. Written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky who also wrote the excellent, informed and entertaining, Gang of Three – also fabulous at this venue, the play is heavy on detail and yet the assured direction from Josh Roche makes light of this and enables the characters to breath as this complex narrative unfolds.

Jonathan Jaynes and Claudia Jolly (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

This is all the more remarkable as the actors take on multiple roles, Jonathan Jaynes plays Eric Hammond as well as Dean's SOGAT right-hand man Bill Sargeant, whilst Georgia Landers plays the union’s legal brief as well as a whistle-blower from Wapping. The whole space is used with the cast often joining in from the shadows to highlight the voices of workers but all the while Cox’s Murdoch is centre stage facing them all down in his desire to “just print newspapers…”

In the end, we all know that Murdoch was allowed to carry on printing his news… and the crisis averted he was able to secure a foothold in the USA with Fox News where he sent over Mr Neil to work his peculiar magic. But, in a similar way to all political lives ending in some kind of failure what will be his legacy now, not only given the unfortunate impact his type of entertainment has had on democracies and the strength of debate.

More to the point, the revolution started in the mid-80s has accelerated through the dot.com boom and now onto social media news and AI… It was a splendid surprise to see Brian Cox take his seat just before the show started - no pressure Alan! - and you wonder who will succeed Murdoch now and has anyone the skillset to deal with news agendas and breaking narratives that are almost uncontrollable.

Georgia Landers and Russell Bentley (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

IThankYou Verdict: ***** This is such a well-wrought play in terms of covering the complexity of the issues and the key personalities in a way that entertains and informs and educates: Lord Reith is smiling in his heavenly Broadcasting House: The Truth will out!

In the Print plays at the Kings Head until 3 May 2026 and I strongly urge you to book to see it! Not just Brian Cox, but Neil Kinnock – mentioned in the play – and other notables were in attendance, including Michael Crick who wrote about these events as they unfolded. It’s a production of The Spontaneity Shop, James Quaife Productions and King’s Head Theatre Productions and a World Premier – I hope it runs and runs: this is how power and the media works, now as then. But the centre of that power is again in flux and who knows if the Murdoch family empire can master the digital arena as young technocrats with even more money, begin to over power him and his successors…

 

Full details on the King’s Head website. Another winner!

 

 

 

The things we do for love… America the Beautiful (2026), Kings Head Theatre

Liam Jedele and Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

LaBute refuses comfort… That willingness to sit inside discomfort is what makes the work so compelling.

Borris Anthony York

"America the Beautiful" is a patriotic song first published on 4^th July 1895 with lyrics written by Katharine Lee Bates and music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, though the two never met. Together they created a song for the ages and one that means something different to every age as the shifting signifiers of American Beauty coagulate into a murderous slop.

Oh sorry, that’s just my take but, to the point, what to make of one of the USA’s finest playwrights Neil LaBute, epic nine-scenario cycle addressing his homeland, love and persuasion in the 2020s? Tonight we saw the first of the triptych with three of these scenarios presented at the Kings Head all different in tone and building a bigger picture that forms itself in your mind as you dash for Kings Cross after realising that Angel Station is closed.

As played by various combinations of just four actors: Liam Jedele, Borris Anthony York, Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley there is so much thinking required to map the emotional content of three widely different situations and never has the personal being so political in terms of the wider meaning in this, the second week of the Third Gulf War or, as might be said, WWIII.

The first sequence sees Liam Jedele as an anxious and conflicted man aiming to commit murder at the behest of a man Borris Anthony York whom he desires and wants to commit to a life together. Borris plays his paramour as an almost light-hearted and playful guy who winds his uptight boyfriend up with forgetting his key card, buying Danish pastries and turning up with a strict no contact clause in their relationship.

His character is about to marry a rich older man and, sizeable insurance policies being what they are, he can bear the repulsive sexual contact just long enough to get married before sending his new groom to his death at the hands of his younger lover. We’re just not sure, the longer they talk, if things will work out, Liam’s character apparently battling his own disgust at his sexuality and winding himself up to do the dead so that he can be with his love.

Any relationship between the flirtatious and ultimately faithless rulers of certain states and the War-maker in Chief are purely coincidental.

Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

Talking of which, Borris Anthony York makes a quick change of character and posture as his morphs into an American soldier on trial for the apparent killing of his wife, her lover and several others… This is the fanatic deceived by his own lack of logic – perhaps little reason to believe in his wife’s fidelity whilst also blaming her for what he “had” to do… cognitive dissonance in the face of so many dead.

Women have a “power”… his wife almost bade him do it and he had no rational explanation for his vengeful ferocity. It’s only a short leap to imagine the ICE agent’s decision to execute US citizens in the streets for simply getting in his way or for being “unfaithful” to a common culture someone had convinced him was shared widely. America is Ugly in different ways as it is beautiful: the kill switch is in the hands of the beholder.

Then last we saw either the greatest saleswoman in the world or the sweetest lover as Anna María works to persuade Maya-Nika Bewley that they should be lovers by firstly sleeping with her faithless boyfriend and then telling the other woman that she had to do it as a chance encounter had left her instantly smitten and convinced that she was the love of her live.

Taken at face value this is a sweet story but nothing is clearly as it seems in any of these acts, and given that there are six more to come, one should reserve judgement even as new possibilities emerge the more you think about what has just transpired.

It’s an exercise in persuasion and logic and, given this can be as much technique as anything else you’re not quite so sure that this is a love match or a power play? Have we not seen sexual power – or just force of personality – used to make people act against their will?

Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley credit Ross Kernahan

IThankYouTheatre verdict: I’m reeling on the train post show and can only throw four big stars back in the play’s direction. It’s daring and engaging and so well performed by the four leads who make the most of LaBute’s outstanding words. ****

These are actors we will want to see more of and the direction from Artistic Director of Greenwich Theatre James Haddrell is outstanding creating another world just yards away from the comforts of Upper Street.

The first two chapters play at the King’s Head until 21^st March and then transfer to the Greenwich Theatre from 31^st March to 4^th April.

Do not miss these intimate and impactful shows, you won’t stop thinking about them for days…