Persona... The Maids, Jermyn Street Theatre

I contain within me both vengeance and the maid and give them a chance for life, a chance for salvation.

This performance pulls you in confronts you and leaves you staggering into the dark on Jermyn Street questioning not only reality but the meaning of cruelty. Jean Genet’s play maybe almost 80 years old but it has lost none of its power to shock in its display of the fantasies that kill even as they sustain the existence of two sisters locked into a life of servitude with no chance of escape.

Foucault wrote about how society can be measured by its approach to incarceration and this has a wider relevance to the prisons of wage poverty and duty which have trapped many of our forebears and many still. My great grandmother was in service, her mother too and the grandmother who brought her up after – presumably – one of the masters put her in the family way.

This is a great play for women to perform as you can tell from its heritage both on stage – Huppert, Blanchett and Elizabeth Debicki in Sydney – and film - Vivien Merchant as Madame, Glenda Jackson as Solange and Susannah York as Claire in 1974. Big shoes to fill but there’s a special energy from Anna Popplewell as Solange, Charlie Oscar as Claire and Carla Harrison-Hodge as Madame on another one of those nights in which the discrete performance space of the JST transformed into a stark Parisian apartment, overlooked at the highest level by a room full of onlookers – the audience cleverly reflected in the glass window.

Charlie Oscar and Anna Popplewell - all photography by Steve Gregson

This is a very wordy play even with the fluidity of Martin Crimp’s translation, yet the cast are remarkably sure-footed throughout as if they’d just spent a year in a verbal boot camp, toughening themselves up for the pace of delivery as well as the expression of the essential brutalities of Genet’s play, trust me, if you see Anna, Charlie or Carla outside after rehearsals or a performance, give them space and don’t try make any jokes!

Inspired by the real events involving the Papin Sisters in 1933, the play examines not just the class struggle but the nature of imprisonment and the combined imaginative power of the sisters. They start the narrative by play acting with Solange as Claire the Maid and Claire as their Mistress, there are various transgressions not least in their wearing of their mistresses make up and clothing but also in the sexual undercurrents of their play. They are so in character its hard for the audience to know what is real and what is not. A perfect start to a play to confounds expectations and challenges our sympathies.

Anna Popplewell is excellent as the older sister, forceful and yet considerate, worrying about her sister even as she tries to order her about. Charlie Oscar has the playful air of a younger sibling but is also protean convincing in play as the mistress and then switching from doubt to resolution as their grand plan takes shapes and big decisions and resolution are required. Both take the roles of their mistress equally well, switching from dominance to submission across the full spectrum of the power relationship.

Anna Popplewell and Carla Harrison-Hodge - all photography by Steve Gregson

When their mistress does appear, as eloquently portrayed by Carla Harrison-Hodge, we see what they’ve been contending with. Their employer is more than that and not for nothing does she refer to them as her “children”, she infantilises them and knows she is in complete control. Her lover has been arrested thanks to a letter sent by Claire who fears exposure but, before hearing of his release on bail, Madame is in a self-indulgent strop offering her expensive clothes as gifts to her temporary friends only to withdraw them without a thought. 

Within this oppression the girls’ only escape is fantasy and thoughts of taking control in the only ways possible. They are the most unreliable of narrators but the beauty of the play is in gradually allowing the audience to solve the clues pointing to reality. It is such a playful yet deeply unsettling experience as they look to gather the courage to kill their Madame and find the freedom they long for. 

IThankYou rating: **** It’s impossible to not be impressed with the performance level as the cast delivers the story in such visceral ways you’re sucked into the concerns of these desperate women whose lives are only ordinary in so many ways. 

Annie Kershaw directs with pace and power as her cast patrol the stage like frustrated animals in an overlooked zoo robbed of the enrichment of their natural conditions. She is a graduate of Jermyn Street Theatre’s Carne Deputy Director Scheme and The Young Vic’s Genesis Future Directors Award – it’s great to see such new dramatic talent coming through!

The Maids runs until 22^nd January and is a coproduction between Jermyn Street Theatre and Reading Rep and the show transfers to Reading from 28 January to 8 February. 

Full details and tickets are available on the respective websites: 

Jermyn Street Theatre 

Reading Rep Theatre

Charlie Oscar - all photography by Steve Gregson

Driving the bus… Laughing Boy, Jermyn Street Theatre

This adaptation will bring what should be a national scandal to new audiences. I look forward to the laughter, the love and the sheer brilliance it will encapsulate, while packing a mighty punch.

Professor Sara Ryan

Some plays you watch with a kind of detached engagement, invested in the characters and plot but letting your admiration for the skill and performance professionalism. Others, far rarer, hit home in deeply personal ways and, like this one, make you tear up with pride for the actors on stage and in sympathy with the people they represent.

Connor Sparrowhawk was present throughout Stephen Unwin’s extraordinary transfer to stage of the book Justice for Laughing Boy written by Connor’s mother, Professor Sara Ryan, as was his entire family, including his beloved Mum. They were seen in projections on a large white background, Connor at an early birthday party, the family seen together after their triumph in the courts and in snippets of media appearances as they fought for justice… Connor’s funeral.

Connor was killed by the negligence of Southern Health at Slade House, an Assessment and Treatment Unit (ATU) in Oxford who had not correctly marked his epilepsy and, consequently, left him alone having a bath in a locked room where he had a seizure and subsequently drowned. Southern was fined £2 million in 2018 for "serious systematic" management failings after Connor’s death and the resultant campaign for justice which led to deeper investigations such as the extensive Mazars report for NHS England. This looked at all 10,306 deaths at the trust between April 2011 and March 2015 - 1,454 of these deaths were unexpected, and only 195 were treated as a serious enough to require investigation. Almost no cases involving special needs patients were investigated.

Forbes Masson, Charlie Ives, Alfie Friedman, Daniel Rainford and Janie Dee photos by Alex Brenner

There is obviously a huge amount of detail in this case and intense emotional weight yet Stephen Unwin’s play and his magnificent cast, take us through it in a spirited, informative and life-affirming way. It’s presented as the family were talking directly to the audience which is a bold and difficult task which has the affect of demolishing that fourth wall as well as uniting the players in a way that is familial; they’re so at ease with each other, improvising their way past the odd verbal fumble as families do, laughing and crying together in ways that eventually break the viewer’s heart.

Leading is Janie Dee as Professor Sara Ryan who thoroughly convinces with her drive and her hurt, a mother still devastated by the grief of her child’s untimely and unnecessary passing who galvanizes all in the pursuit of the truth. Sara as with my wife, and so many of the mothers of our group of autistic families, lets nothing go and having fought for ever inch of provision over her child’s life, carries on fighting for him after his death. As one of the parents of a severely autistic boy we know said, people and services come and go on your journey to look after your child but you have to keep driving the bus*.

Sara is a relentless bus driver and as we see the back projection of Oxford High Street on their journeys up to Headington, you know that the bus-obsessed Connor would just love this analogy. Connor here is played so well by Alfie Friedman and I say that as someone who recognises so many of the aspects of ASD. My son is more into tube trains and Daleks but their joy in the things they love is unbounded. David has a different profile, all autistic people are unique, as you and I, but he too was sectioned and taken into an NHS unit in London – one of the lowest points of my life. But we were lucky.

Janie Dee, Molly Osborne, Forbes Masson, Alfie Friedman, Charlie Ives, Daniel Rainford and Lee Braithwaite. Young Connor on the screen... Photo by Alex Brenner

Forbes Mason plays Rich, Sara’s partner and father of the group so many families with special needs struggle to stay united but Rich is a constant source of support and humour. Connor’s siblings are played by Lee Braithwaite (Owen), Molly Osborne (Rosie), Charlie Ives (Will) and Daniel Rainford (Tom) – four young actors who also pick up a remarkable number of other roles from the staff at the Unit, senior figures of Southern, or rather “Slovern” as Sara renames them, barristers, friends and lawyers. It’s a fast-moving narrative and mind-boggling in terms of the changes in character but behind these characters lie the gang’s main role as the family and, this adds the intimacy and the straight talking.

The events start with “Before” in the build up to Connors death, then After and the steps along the way to the truth finally being established. We see much of the young man’s character and this is such an affectionate and loved person, it is overwhelming when we see the actual Connor on screen. As a remembrance and recognition of this person it is poignant enough yet, as Sara says, it is not just for Connor, the fight must continue, parents must continue to push for the best provision and make governments and the powers that be respond.

The sections showing the incredible support for Connor and his family online are also very powerful: there is a community of carers, of the sympathetic and allies from all quarters who recognised the nature of the tragedy and the type of cover up we’ve seen many times in this country. Connors death is far from a one off and when a group of fellow victims was projected on screen you could sense the anger and dismay in the audience. 

Lee Braithwaite, Forbes Masson, Janie Dee, Molly Osborne and Daniel Rainford. Photo Alex Brenner

And, as the current government fails to make up the overall funding gap over the 14 years since they introduced Austerity, the risks to other patients are only growing.

The friends I mentioned above have a son is a one in a million with Childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) and has resided in units like Slade in which there have been deaths and abuse. They are currently involved in an investigation of another unit, owned by private equity, and their story will soon be national news via Channel 4. Who decided that our children should be grounds for anyone making profit? It’s an extension of the neglect and callous attitudes that have seen the growth of modern poorhouses for those with special needs who, like Connor, and our son, struggle to find their way after they pass out of the educational system into adult care.

When someone like Connor turns eighteen. There’s all this jargon. People “transition to adult services”. Then they face “dropping off the cliff edge…” … and suddenly everything changes. 

I Thank You Theatre Rating: ***** One of the most important plays you will see all year. This is the story of one family tragedy which must help to improve provision for some of the most vulnerable families in Britain: this is a human right and also underpins the ability for those families to contribute to our national wellbeing. A magnificent cast who fully demonstrate the solidarity and singularity of purpose we now need!

In addition to Stephen Unwin’s firm handed grip on the narrative the design of Simon Higlett also deserves mention, enabling the stage to shift from live performance to projected images, allowing “reality” to intrude without knocking the play off-course. Props too for Ben Omerod’s lighting design, Holly Khan’s sound design, Matt Powell’s video design and Anna Wood’s SFX design. A formidable team all round.

What I found most moving though was the presentation of Connor… loved and loving, an innocent but a fully rounded human being who should have been protected, he should have been given a chance… It’s up to us now, we all need to drive the bus!

Laughing Boy runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 25 May before moving out on 4 to 8 June to Theatre Royal Bath – full details are on the JST website.

Connor Sparrowhawk

London, is the place for me? The Lonely Londoners, Jermyn Street Theatre

There is a rage in this play but also the sweetest feelings of love and resilience as the characters pull together through the toughest of circumstances, not just their poverty, the bewilderment and aggression of their new British neighbours but an attack on their identity and their very existence. “Go home…” they would if they could but their one-way trip just has to work.

Watching the BFI’s recent documentary on Cymande, a ground-breaking band who found success in the US but not at home in the United Kingdom of the seventies when they too were told to go home by some. Where to, Brixton, South Norwood? As with the characters in this play, Cymande were part of the Windrush generation, the sons of the kind of men represented in Roy Williams stunning adaptation of Sam Selvon’s book, The Lonely Londoners first published in 1956. Selvon was born in Trinidad and also co-wrote the film Pressure (1976) * with director Horace Ové about the second generation of Windrush immigrants and their experience in the hostile Seventies. 

Roy Williams uses an audacious mix of theatre – songs sung by the sublime Aimee Powell who also dances and acts, along with moments when the whole troupe are choreographed in ways that carry such emotional force in the JST’s discrete and intensely focused performance area. Props to the movement direction of Nevena Stojkov whose work leaves you breathless and gives you pause to really think beyond the words we hear. This injustice is far from over and as the Right attempts to reinvent “racism” as the act of merely pointing out factual inequality, we shouldn’t ever take our privilege for granted nor other’s experience both in peacetime and in war.

You should have been here in fifty-two. London was so cold. It got so bad here, when you try and speak, the words freeze as they come out of your mouth and you have to melt it to hear the talk. 

Gamba Cole. All photos by Alex Brenner!

Ebenezer Bamgboye directs a potent cast with Gamba Cole just a powerhouse as central figure Moses who acts as a mentor to many new arrivals “cos only I know which of London where dem slam doors in your face, and which ones let us in.” As he says, he’s hardly living the dream himself but at least he knows how to pronounce the street names unlike his pal Big City (Gilbert Kyem Jnr who dwarfs the rest of the cast) who has his own way of pronouncing things leading to much frustrated hilarity. 

The dream they are living is a nightmare of loneliness, unemployment and forced pigeon eating, renting poor rooms in Bayswater and often at the mercy of the minority of landlords who will offer them accommodation; “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs…” is contested but there were plenty of “no coloureds”, “no West Indians” notices put up for people who were encouraged to the UK by a government in search of cheap labour to aid the post-war recovery.

Tobi Bakare

But there are always punctuations of humour, the comforts of friends and family even as relationships and personalities are stretched to the limit. Tobi Bakare is superb as Lewis who, having fibbed about earning five pounds a week, invited his wife Agnes (Shannon Hayes) to join him only for his domineering mother, Tanty (Carol Moses) to come as well. They are in a situation where her call for him to be a man only makes matters worse as he has already tried everything he could. Desperate, he starts to doubt his wife’s faithfulness, Agnes is indeed formidable, a trained nurse and an intelligent woman who easily bests a grocer who tries to give her over-ripe fruit, disarming him with charm and resolution, but she is also resolutely steadfast. Lewis cannot cope with his disappointment of both these women and he turns to drink.

I tell you Galahad, this London man! The way it gets inside of you.

Fresh over from Trinidad is Henry ‘Sir Galahad’ Oliver (Romario Simpson) who comes to Moses for help even as he is experiencing the humiliations that the others know all too well. He is smart and cocky, thinking he can simply transpose his natural assets to this new, wet, grey environment. As he is gradually worn down by the obstacles of Britain, we catch glimpses of what also happened to Moses, his doomed love affair back home with Christina (Aimee Powell) and the son he can never see but one he drafts letters to every day.

Gilbert Kyem Jnr, Gamba Cole, Romario Simpson, Carol Moses, Tobi Bakare, Aimee Powell and Shannon Hayes. 

Galahad keeps on getting into fights with Teddy Boys as he tries to live his life, he grabs a knife from the wall and we fear for the direction he might take as his self-respect refuses to yield. Big City takes a gun and seems intent on following a life of crime as the prospect of a few hundred pounds from a post office robbery with two white crooks draws him in… 

The temptations of lawlessness, violence and self-medication are all that is left to men who are outcast, under-employed and left with only transactional relationships with sex workers to bring them fleeting compassion. And yet… they have each other, there are plentiful pigeons and they may well continue to fight, especially in this city which can indeed get under the skin. By the end of the play, we feel a closeness that you don’t always find in the theatre; this play draws you to the characters in rare and compelling ways. We root for them, we wish them the best. We look to ourselves.

Shannon Hayes and Carol Moses

IThankYou Theatre verdict: ***** This is an extraordinary play with Williams remixing Selvon’s story to create a compelling slice of lives that are still being lived in London and elsewhere. Its universal humanity stirs and shakes us from complacency and the only thing left is kindness and understanding. Go see it!

 The cast is such a solid team in this play and there’s no flicker out of character even as they sit and wait for their lines. The staging is also exemplary with design from Laura Ann Price, costumes by Anett Black, lighting from Elliot Griggs and immersive sound design from Tony Gayle. The whole space is switched on as the play runs as the JST transforms back to the 1950s, taking its audience with it! Outstanding! 

Lonely Londoners plays until 6^th April and I urge you to take a trip to Piccadilly whilst there are still tickets available. Details on the JST website.

*Pressure was recently restored and re-released by the BFI; you can find it on the BFI Player here.

Song... 

... and Dance!

Great lighting and photos by Alex Brenner

Childhood’s end… The Good John Proctor, Jermyn Street Theatre

I never thought you but a good man, John, only somewhat bewildered…

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

‘Tis the season for hunting witches, when is it ever not? Evil is everywhere, as the young women featured in Talene Monahon’s play keep on repeating and yet here it’s an obscure thing only dimly conceived in the minds of children in what amounts to a prequel to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Monahon’s script cleverly avoids all obvious allusions with only passing references made to modern witchery made in a discourse conducted in the modern idioms of a high school friends.

The characters are some of the women who make the fateful accusations in Miller’s play and they have been taken back to the actuality of their youth, Abigail Williams in The Crucible is 17 but here she’s played as 12 by the excellent Anna Fordham and her cousin and best friend Betty Parris, played with child-like nuance by Sabrina Wu, is just nine. This is the age they were when in 1692 they made their accusations against over two dozen of their fellow villagers in Salem including the good John Proctor.

The story takes place largely in the year before the witch trials and begins in the bedroom of the cousins as Betty relates a dream she’s had about flying through the woods, “like an owl” an exhilarating dream of freedom that her cousin advises her not to relate. Keeping a secret is difficult for a nine-year-old but Abigail knows already that accusations of witchcraft are all to easily made.

Sabrina Wu and Anna Fordham - all photographs by Jack Sain

Their friend Mercy Lewis (the vibrant Amber Sylvia Edwards) is 14 and knows all about the world including the fact that it is full of evil and, seemingly, large numbers of her fellow citizens are in congress with The Devil even though they still go to church the next day as if the rather florid descriptions of Old Nick worship she presents should leave them exhausted. Where has she learned all these lurid rumours? The play seems in no doubt about the corruption of these innocents. 

Abigail gets a job with the Proctor family much to her cousin’s despair - why are all the people we love dead or working? – and she becomes dazzled by her employer, as good a man as she has ever met. But her childish view of his benevolence soon gives us hints of a darker relationship that adds unwelcome depth to the evils of the original play. She has a child’s conception even of this though and either cannot nor will not express her treatment in direct terms. This is the skill of the playwright; understatements serve to highlight the sins of this new world were none stay innocent for long.

Sabrina Wu and Amber Sylvia Edwards, photo by Jack Sain

A new party arrives from Maine, and another without living parents – only Betty’s remain alive or present – Mary Warren (Lydia Larson) who at 18 has seen more of life as can be quickly seen. Lydia Larson is quite remarkable as the sensitive Mary giving the most febrile of performances, her eyes and face alive with meaning and the overwhelming wonder her character finds in the world in general and the woods in particular. Mary has fits when her imagination runs too wild but Lydia presents this lightning potential at all points, as thoughts flicker across her face in contrapuntal flow to her dialogue.

This is one of the wonders of the Jermyn Street Theatre, even with my eyesight you can see the performers at work and this breaks down the barriers you might find up in the expensive Gods of the West End giants round the corner. 

So, it is we see in close quarter how the girls’ exploitation and confusion leads to their seeking even the most outlandish explanations for their helplessness: what good is rationality when you are orphaned and abused. But the play lets us make our own minds up and doesn’t proscribe specific causality just the probabilities of society’s most vulnerable. The evil is throughout society and it is other people.

Anna Ryder's direction allows her performers free rein even as they are tightly choreographed across every inch of the stage.  The soundscaping from Bella Kear has a narrative atmosphere all its own and the lighting design from Laura Howard is superb transforming the JST’s discrete performance space from puritan loft to the deep disorientation of the woods and a quite astonishing moment when the focus shifts from stage to stalls.

Lydia Larson, detail from photo by Jack Sain

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ****

 This is a magical-realist, visceral delight that, literally, turns the spotlight on the audience in terms of our judgement and responsibility to these characters and young people like them. Who makes the “witches”, well, we do, and people very much like us if we’re not very careful. 

The play is being staged as part of the Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival and runs from 10^th – 27th January, so I suggest you get your booking in quick. 

Full details of tickets and the rest of the Footprints productions are on the JST website.

I actually can’t believe how wicked this town has become.

Incidentally, my favourite performance of John Proctor came from Tom Wilkinson at the National Theatre in 1990. He was a powerful presence on stage and on screen and it is him I always think of when I think of The Crucible. RIP.

Madame Bovary, est mort… The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary, Jermyn Street Theatre

 

Every tragedy can have a silver lining…

John Nicholson’s approach to Flaubert’s genuinely iconic heroine is akin to Tom Cruise’s to the Mission Impossible franchise, he, or rather his cast, are genuinely hanging off the side of an airplane in front of our very eyes, frequently breaching the fourth wall in ways that carry potential danger both in terms of narrative cohesion but also audience ad-libbing. At one point the action is stopped and Dennis Herdman, aka Ratman 1 and  various Emma Bovary lovers, asks for a show of hands of those who have read the book, about half of us raised ours and he quickly pointed at me to ask what my favourite part was, “I love the bit with the hamsters” came my reply, cue side-eyed response as the cast discussed whether we were just pretending to be well-read.

Nothing was going to throw panto-hardened Mr Herdman though and it is indeed a valid question for this play works both as a stand-alone comedy but also as an examination of so many nineteenth century heroines who loved and lived only to face the ultimate penalty. In another section the cast discussed the inevitability or otherwise of Emma’s fate, with the actress playing her, Jennifer Kirby (late of Call the Midwife but also the RSC, and it showed), saying that she wanted her character to have agency which is very much how Flaubert challenged his audience in 1856. I was reminded of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in which he added substance to two minor and easily dismissed characters from Hamlet to show what choices any of us have. In its own way, Nicholson’s play is closer to his source material but then there is so much to work with, Emma Bovary is a character written with substance, as well-detailed as any of the descriptive passages in the “realist” novel.

This play is realist only to the extent that its players know they are in a play and, have to make decisions that honour their characters. Other than that, it is a rip-roaring pantomime that looks to blow the narrative off course through the introduction of two rat catchers, or Vermin Termination Officers, played by Dennis Herdman and Sam Alexander. Ratman 1 just happens to buy all of the arsenic in the chemists, a necessary ingredient for their new vermination business, leaving none left for the suicidal wife of the local GP/health officer. In the Ratcatchers’ room at the Golden Lion, Emma unfolds her tale to Ratman 1 and thus the play meets the book… and you wonder how the gap in tonality can be joined.

Jennifer Kirby - all photographs from Steve Gregson

The whole enterprise rests on a fabulous performance from Jennifer Kirby, who is with one brief exception, always playing Emma Bovary throughout and grounding events in a version of the character that exists in both comedic and tragic variations. Her delivery is strong and the classical background pays dividends along with her physicality as a well-cast Madame B. Her steadfast presence allows Herdman and Alexander to play the fool along with the marvellous Alistair Cope… who transitions from a man with a wooden leg to a pharmacist, inn keeper and a cow with ease.

Alexander plays Dr Bovary as an innocent largely unaware of the depth of his wife’s needs, he’s achieved his ambition of being a general practitioner in a small town but cannot fathom why she needs more, exhibiting what Flaubert described as “the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.” Emma’s needs, founded on her heavy addiction to romantic fiction and her search for the truest emotions described within, lead her not just to the many men played by Herdman, but also to fine fabrics and expensive clothes aided by the unscrupulous Monsieur Lheureux (Mr Cope), happy to extend her ruinous credit.

But it’s in her relationships with earnest local clerk Leon and wealthy gadfly Rodolphe Boulanger who’s scene riding in the woods with Emma as they consummate their attraction is performed through the means of prestidigitation, as flowers are pulled from under dresses, bunting from the Bovary bodice and red balls from hands and mouth… it’s the play’s party piece, and based on a show of hands at the start of act two, they did it all over again as Emma announces she has a lover… a lover.

Sam Alexander, Jennifer Kirby and Alistair Cope get medical...

IThankYou Theatre verdict: The theatre was full and, as this was not the press night, the audience were there with no other expectation than to be entertained and the play certainly succeeded on that front. It’s a tricky path to “find the comedy in tragedy” but I think, in the end, the play finds the tragedy in comedy too; it’s a celebration of a book we all should read and in the hands of these four marvellous actors, it is the perfect pantomime for those who seek integrity in their heroes and villains.

Marieke Audsley directs with authority and clearly has the team on stage playing for each other, as we’d say in soccer and props also to Amy Watts stage design (see what I did there?) for an innovative set that allows the actors to chalk up signs, poems, ducks and record players – a needle drop of Noel Harrison singing Michel Legrand’s Windmills of You Mind (written for the Thomas Crown Affair) being especially welcome.

I’d say: **** Fearlessly funny around and not about the story, with a sympathetic Emma in Jennifer Kirby, humour as well as longings all intact, as she looks to the future now, it’s only just begun.

The play runs until 17^th December and you can order via the Jermyn Street Theatre website here.

Flaubert is further examined in the JST’s forthcoming Promise Season with the debut play by historian Orlando Figes.  The Oyster Problem tells the story of the French novelist’s catastrophic search for a day job. 

New energies are flooding through Jermyn Street and 2023 promises to be very interesting indeed!

Sam Alexander and Dennis Herdman: Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

The state we’re in… Cancelling Socrates (2022), Jermyn Street Theatre

Even if one is unjustly treated, one should not return injustice…

There are many ways of addressing the condition of our political discourse but it’s hard to think of one as eloquently elegant as Howard Brenton’s new play. Using contemporary writing and accounts, Plato's dialogues for a start, he uses Socrates own reasoning to examine the concepts of justice and duty. No spoilers but, even at the age of 71 the old philosopher was still claiming that he knew nothing and was working every day to understand the nature of self and service. As a historian this is way out of my period and in terms of political thought I started with Hobbes and ended with Marx, but there’s always something to be learned from the birthplace of democracy and critical thinking.

In 399 BC Athens was recovering from a plague and the political aftermath of war with Sparta and the brief rule of the Thirty Tyrants. At such times the last thing anyone needs is a guy asking too many fundamental questions and so Socrates was sent to trial for a variety of crimes including corrupting the youth of Athens, and the crimes of Asebeia, the "desecration and mockery of divine objects", for "irreverence towards the state gods". The movement against him was organised by the young poet, Meletus, about whom history records little. Socrates, according to Plato, seemingly ran rings around him in the court but not well enough to convince the majority of the 501 jurors gathered to bear witness. They decided against the philosopher and whilst the result may not have been 52% to 48%, or 211 to 148… the same forces of confusion, habitual anger and confusion were at play.

Sophie Ward, Robert Mountford, Jonathan Hyde & Hannah Morrish - all photography by Steve Gregson 

Brenton’s Socrates is played with good-humoured patience and a questing innocence by Jonathan Hyde who delivers the philosophical complexities with relish, the philosopher’s method of assuming nothing and examining everything. There’s not a word out of place in this script and as director Tom Littler commented after the show, Mr Brenton has written a few of these. Tom and the performers make the absolute most of this dialogue; the arguments are complex but complete and it’s a very satisfying, almost intimate debate focused between the players and the audience at the JST.

Given that this was press night, the equivalent of the Glasgow Empire for a home-counties stand-up comedian, there were laughs aplenty and an uproarious ovation at the end. Like Rafael Nadal wins trophies and Mohammed Salah scores goals, Howard Brenton crafts his work with a light heart and focused complexity with hidden meanings smuggled through his dialogue like a golden thread amassing volume as the narrative progresses.

Robert Mountford plays Euthyphro, a relative of Socrates who meets him outside the court at the play’s start. Euthyphro is not daft but he finds Socrates frustrating not least for his refusal to wear shoes or bathe regularly but mostly because he cannot fathom his relentless questioning. Like most of us, Euthyphro accepts the habitual realities of Greek society and religion and doesn’t want to have to keep thinking about the nature of this reality.

Robert Mountford and Hannah Morrish Photography by Steve Gregson

Euthyphro is like a long-suffering Doctor Who assistant used to help explain the nature of Greek beliefs as well as the challenge Socrates presented to them. He despairs of Socrates’ approach to his trial; the old thinker just doesn’t seem to take the experience seriously at all unlike the more decided minds railed against him.

They say Pericles caught democracy from you in bed.

Sharing this frustration are Socrates’ long-standing mistress Aspasia (Sophie Ward) and his current wife Xanthippe (Hannah Morrish) who both understand their man and the importance of their co-existence – among his other fancies – in keeping the philosopher out of too much trouble. Aspasia is the more experienced and pragmatic of the two who operates very effectively within male-dominated Greek political society with an appeal to men’s hearts and minds… all points in between. 

Xanthippe, the mother of his children, is the more theocratic, aligned with the part of her husband that still accepts some form of godly universe albeit one that he doesn’t understand. She has the certainty of belief though just as Aspasia does on secular matters and so both are perfect partners for the man who has everything in terms of questions.

Jonathan Hyde and Sophie Ward

Together they try to direct their man towards a compromise but he’s not taking the jury’s verdict lightly and only makes things worse through his honesty. He ends up on death row and his exchanges with the jailer, played by Robert Mountford multi-tasking superbly as the down to earth everyman who in the modern day may possibly come from Essex and have voted to take back control. If the first half of the play was Socrates against authority, the second is very much the intellectual versus the masses as represented by his affable but irritable goaler who has clearly more than had enough of comfortably well-off philosophical experts.

IThankYou Theatre rating: ***** A pretty much perfect theatrical experience that really allows audience and cast to connect with ancient and modern philosophy at a time when we all need reminding just why society, democracy and culture matters.

Brenton picks his targets with unerring accuracy and hits every one with emphatic skill, entertaining us with every home truth nailed and each complexity left hanging in the air for the penny to gently drop in front of us. It’s another to add to Brenton’s eclectic and lengthy catalogue from Christie in Love (1969), The Romans in Britain (1980), Pravda (with David Hare in 1985) and, more recently, the outstanding Anne Boleyn (2010) with marvellous Miranda Raison as Wife No.2 at Shakespeare's Globe.

The play is part of the JST’s Outsiders Season and I look forward to the next instalment. In the meantime, Cancelling Socrates runs until the 2^nd July and will be a very hot ticket so I’d advise you to book as soon as you can!

I’ll leave the last word to Howard: Sartre said that there are three kinds of writers: writers who write for God, writers who write for themselves, and writers who write for other people… I write for other people. The play doesn't reside in heaven, or in a library. As a dramatist, that's your instinct: without other people, the play doesn't exist.

Found in translation… 15 Heroines, The Desert/The War/The Labyrinth, Jermyn Street Theatre

 

It's typical of Ovid - the wittiest, naughtiest, cleverest writer of his age - that he should spot the chance to express himself through these lesser-told aspects of well-known myths. Forget Theseus - let's hear from Ariadne. Never mind Ulysses' journey- what about Penelope?

In his programme notes, JST artistic director, Tom Littler, discusses the origin of this project and how “imitative” translation, as defined by the poet Dryden, could bring out new elements of existing stories as opposed to what he described as “meta-phrasing”, more literal linguistic transpositions. A bit like literate jazz improvisation versus straight ahead replication of a “standard”; John Coltrane’s endless spontaneity versus Johnny Hodges, who led the saxophone section in the Duke Ellington Big Band in highly structured breaks.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Ovid took the former approach in placing the side-lined heroines of Middle East and Mediterranean oral tradition, centre stage with a series of imaginary letters. These stories were so well known to every Roman and they persist to this day in many aspects of modern culture. One of the oldest books in my family is an Eighteenth Century edition of Ovid’s Metamorphises – featuring some of the characters referred to in these plays - but you don’t have to look far to find stories of Helen of Troy, Jason and the Argonauts, Theseus and the Minotaur.

Patsy Ferran as Ariadne

Having only recently studied an epic German silent adaptation of Helen from 1924 (based on Homer’s take…), I was well placed to contextualise some of the stories but the strength of this production is that you don’t need to know too much of the myth; these stories all resonate not just in the narrative content but also in the way the text connects to recognisable individual concerns. These are women devastated by loss, ignored by so called heroes – just “thugs” as Penelope calls them – who prefer the distractive glory of battle to their domestic responsibilities – and the chase of new loves to the woman left behind.

The plays were rehearsed, performed and filmed live at Jermyn Street Theatre in socially distanced conditions and all capture the intimacy and power of this unique venue. You can almost feel your knees pressing against the seat in front and sense the reactions of the audience packed around you: this is what we’ve been missing!

Remarkably, each piece was performed and filmed live in a single take and this freshness comes across so well as each actor is absolutely in the moment. So many plays though yet whilst each is so different, so is every performance and all are high quality, engaging, warm, sorrowful, funny and, occasionally frightening. The monologues are in three strands with the pays directed variously and expertly, by Tom Littler, Adjoa Andoh and Cat Robey.

Olivia Williams as Hypsipyle, the wife of Jason

The Labyrinth - the women who encountered Jason and Theseus.

Are you friends, are you foes… are you gods?

String by Bryony Lavery features Patsy Ferran as Ariadne, half-sister to the half man-half bull, Minotaur who is wrestling with the fact that her lover has just killed her brother. Ariadne is shocked as she turns to face us before realising that we’re hear to listen to her story. Lavery’s script is literate and witty – I loved the play on words especially when Ariadne “loses her thread” as she discusses the ball of string given to Theseus to prevent him getting lost in the Labyrinth. He found his way out and has gone far beyond yet she is the one now lost even with the string. Ferran is funny and heartfelt, a classical mix. 

Pity the Monster by Timberlake Wertenbaker has Dofia Croll as a fiery Phaedra, Ariadne’s sister, who marries her beloved, Theseus, also the killer of her half-brother… but, of course, she really loves his son Hippolytus. There are so many taboos broken by this woman but she is passionate in seeking “acceptance for desire…”.

Dofia Croll as Phaedra

I imagined you dead… in a nice way… 

I'm Still Burning by Samantha Ellis has Nathalie Armin as Phyllis, married to the son of Phaedra and Theseus, Demophon, another faithless man who forgets to return home after his adventures. Nathalie Armin delivers the poetic truths with passionate deliberations and has the best costume of the show with leaves and branches growing from her head: an excellent physical performance too. The play, as with the story, examines the “political” and Phyllis regrets not writing it all down before any man could; Ovid, Chaucer and the rest betraying her as much as her lover.

Nature is her goddess? Nathalie Armin as Phyllis

Someone in love, is always full of fear…

Knew I Should Have by Natalie Haynes features Olivia Williams as Hypsipyle, the wife of Jason, sat in her home office wondering if her king will ever return after taking up with a new lover on his quest for the golden fleece. It’s another powerful performance with Williams swinging from tender devastation to bitter anger whilst the modern trappings serve only to remind us of the loneliness of the lovelorn; eternally, “tears flow down your fake face…”

The Gift by Juliet Gilkes Romero has Nadine Marshall as Medea, the woman Jason deserted Hypsipyle for and who, herself is now abandoned by him. Honestly Jason, once you’ve had your way and your golden fleece, you’re just not bothered, are you? Medea is now hunted having for so long been the hunter and Marshall’s playing is so poignant.

Nadine Marshall as Medea

The War - untold stories of the Trojan War

You know what I’m like, I can get a little bit extra!

Our Own Private Love Island by Charlotte Jones takes the prize for the funniest play with Sophia Eleni on fire as the laddette, Princess Laodamia of Phylace, aka “Lady P” who is “Greek, innit?” This is the Mycenaean Wars via Middlesex with Helen guilty of having “… broken the Girl Code, ain’t no coming back from that!” It’s not hard to see these characters as being in some kind of reality TV show and with seemingly mundane concerns. Yet all tragedy is mundane and our girl worries about her Prince going to war; “fight for your life and not to win”. Whatever you do, don’t be the first Greek to set foot on the Island of Troy…

Sophia Eleni: Greek, innit?

The Cost of Red Wine by Lettie Precious see Ann Ogbomo as a ferocious Odenone, so in love with Paris and so disappointed in him for choosing Helen. She had sheltered him before and there are clear indications that not only is Helen as “step up” in the world she is also white and Paris is “moving on” in a racially segregated world. It’s a stunning performance from Lettie who leaves nothing left on the stage as she hates and rages always in love… stunning!

Love and loss: Ann Ogbomo 

Perfect Myth Allegory by Abi Zakarian sees Jemima Rooper as Briseis, concubine of Achilles, and a major reason, through no fault of her own, why her man and Agamemnon (Helen’s husband) argued. In this take of men fighting over as much as for women, she takes “joy in being free to wander into a history, I also will make.” She is able to take control of her feelings and use the men’s to her advantage. 

Jemima Roper

Will You? by Sabrina Mahfouz takes another dramatic change of pace and venue as we see Rebekah Murrell as Hermione, being interviewed by the Police in connection of her former husband’s murder of his mother. Hermione’s life is complicated… the only child of Menelaus, and Helen, she was promised to Achilles' son, Neoptolemus even though she truly loved her cousin, Orestes.

Murrell is so assured as she roils her own in the interview room and the narrative soon switches from her character’s resilient confidence to the darker tones of arranged marriage among the upper classes and the marital rape that ensued. The Police support the pointlessly rich and “… we are both as bad as each other”.

Rebekah Murrell 

If you won’t come home for your wife, come home for your sheets…

Watching the Grass Grow by Hannah Khalil features a superb turn from Gemma Whelan as Penelope, waiting for her husband Ulysses to return. Penelope in this instance is a home-working dress-maker whist her man has gone on a team-building exercise, yes, even in the midst of lockdown… Another script that emphasised the eternal truths of love and lies, Whelan’s adept turns of tone brought the tragedy out from her concerns for emails, texts and work/life balance.

Gemma Whelan waiting for the man

The Desert - women going their own way

The Striker by April De Angelis has Indra Ove as an embittered but resilient Deianaria, bemoaning the fall from grace of her husband Hercules Nevile… a fading soccer star who has played away once too often and become “… more like a guest than a husband.” Deianaria has a noble heritage and won’t be shamed as she plans the ultimate reckoning.

Indra Ove, a WAG scorned

In his arms I blossomed… and yet, it was not enough time – the Gods cannot bare to see us happy! 

The Choice by Stella Duffy sees Rosalind Eleazar as Dido, a princess of Lebanon, married to her uncle at 14, “a valued bride…” and raised to rule alongside her brother, Pygmalian. She escaped it all to found Carthage at the age of 25 which is verging on the upper reaches of over-achievement! She gives shelter to Aeneas after he arrives following the end of the Trojan Wars… the two fell for each other deeply. 

The Gods call Aeneas away to Rome – a poor choice versus glorious Carthage – and Dido resolves to settle her own course, divine intervention be damned: “my life, my love, my city my choice…”

Rosalind Eleazar

“I can understand why for some people it might be weird… I’m not an idiot.” 

A Good Story by Isley Lynn features Eleanor Tomlinson as Canace, daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds as she’s interviewed on television about her relationship with her own brother Macareus… which comes as quite the bombshell if you’re not familiar with the story. She has six sisters and seven brothers… and it’s funny/discomforting to hear Canace voice her position with modern sensibilities threaded through a well-worn situation in classical myth! Tomlinson with her delicate nervousness in character, gives one of the most affecting performances for what is in every way a tragedy.

Eleanor Tomlinson

To satisfy our honour, kill your husbands

Girl on Fire by Chinonyerem Odimba sees King Danaus’ daughter Hypermestra, played by Nicholle Cherrie, tasked, along with her 49 sisters, with mariticide… “the knowing lunacy of men!” She is the only one to refuse this slaughter, and waits her day in court having spared her husband, Lynceus. 

The language, as throughout the plays is quite delicious, “I get to write only one letter to you… So much to say, so little papyrus.” Throughout there is an intake of breath repeated off stage, whilst Nicholle gets to sing and has such a lovely tone, I may well have wiped away a tear…

Nicholle Cherrie

I See You Now by Lorna French has Martina Laird as Sappho, singer and poet for the ages and perhaps the most famous and misunderstood of these women? Here she has come to “the Mother Country” from Trinidad as a 16-year old… years later, she has given up everything for love but must decide whether he adopted country is worth her sacrifice.

Has it come to this? Mere days after Trump was deposed you hope not.

I ripped up pictures of my sister in her nurses’ uniform tending to Britain’s sick for years and years…

Martina Laird

15 Heroines is a suitably epic and richly satisfying journey through these endless concerns and timeless characters, temporally recast in our modern setting. All hail Ovid’s invention but also everyone involved from the players, playwrights, and directors to the whole crew. This is a beacon of welcome hope for an industry under siege and, as with Carthage, one that has many glories to come!

The shows will stream at designated performance times from 7.30pm today, Monday 9^th to Saturday 14^th November. So, get set for a week of wonders!

The War Mon 9 7.30pm; Thurs 12 7.30pm; Sat 14 3.00pm

The Desert Tues 10 3.00pm; Weds 11 7.30pm; Friday 13 7.30pm

The Labyrinth Tues 10 7.30pm; Thurs 12 3.00pm; Sat 14 7.30pm

Tickets are £20 per household/device and are on sale now from the Jermyn Street website.

IThankYouTheatre rating: ***** Unmissable lockdown theatre, switch on your screen, dim the lights and get swept away by the grandeur of these performances and these naturalistic tales of epic humanity!