Monsieur Shakespeare’s holiday… Much Ado About Nothing, Antic Disposition at Gray’s Inn Hall

The Antic Disposition theatre company meld William Shakespeare with the physical comedy of Jacques Tati, place the action in rural France at the end of the second world war and then perform in cathedrals with an Anglo-French cast who also sing and dance… It’s a winning formula and you wonder why no one has done it before! 

This marvellous, multi-tasked Much Ado was performed Gray’s Inn Hall, one of the few remaining original Shakespearean venues, where The Comedy of Errors was performed in 1594. 424 years later portraits of James II, Charles I and a bust of Winston Churchill looked down on the Hall transformed into a period French café, a bar at one end and tables and chairs laid out for the braver audience members as the performers ranged dangerously up and down and imaginary village square.

Directors Ben Horslen and John Riseboro saw the French comic-connection in the form of Dogberry, the play’s constable of the watch who has much in common with the officious, jobs-worth’s of Tati’s films and they also felt the physical comedy would help channel the original humour. This sounds brave, if not foolhardy in principle but the Bard can rest easily as they deftly weaved their way around the core text and re-energised what can be a slightly irritating storyline if not done well (sorry Bill!).

This was in no small part due to a truly vibrant cast who played their hearts out on another muggy evening in sunny London.

The Much Ado About Nothing company – Photo Scott Rylander

The play starts with the business of the café in the village of Messina as it’s clumsily-officious manager, Dogberry (Louis Bernard), “serves” the locals with the care-less help of his assistant… Mark them well for we will see them again later.

Then the real story begins as a troop of British soldiers is announced at the home of local dignitary Leonato (Chris Hespel). They are led by the victorious General Don Pedro (Theo Landey), an old friend, who has brought two of his officers, Claudio (Alexander Varey) and Benedick (Nicholas Osmond) along with his brother, Don John (Alfie Webster) who is, in all ways, a right bastard.

Claudio falls for Leonato’s daughter Hero (Floriane Anderson) as he must whilst his pal Benedick renews adversarial discourse with her cousin Beatrice (Chiraz Aich); the two relationships are almost the reverse and as one gets harder the other gets easier, giving the play an unusual but satisfying balance.

The two couples are played with conviction and you have to admire anyone who can convey Elizabethan meanings through complex verse but if you’re French it’s additionally impressive. Floriane Anderson positively glows as Hero, her dancer’s flow evident in the gracious poise with which she plays out her lines. Chiraz Aich is absolutely fierce as Beatrice spitting out venomous couplets at Benedick whilst in a blur of continuous motion; strutting with athletic menace and with a smile that can turn to sneer in an irritated instant.

Louis Bernard as Dogberry, Scott Brooks as Verges - Photo Scott Rylander

On the English side, Nicholas Osmond gives as good as he gets as Benedick… he has a very British face, think Colin Firth meets Edward Fox (circa 1969) and yet can also play the clarinet.  Not to be outdone, Alexander Varey is upstanding, for the most part as Hero’s hero Claudio and also performs a most remarkable impression of Norman Wisdom/Lee Evans as Georges, one of the local lad’s army under command of Dogberry.

Throughout there’s songs which serve the double purpose of advancing the plot and punctuating the drama. The main players are accordionist with attitude Scott Brooks, who plays Verges and Molly Miles who plays violin, sings and also the maid-servant Margaret… who will stay loyal to her mistress and still be abused by the evil characters around her.

Talking of which, Alfie Webster is marvellously malevolent as the aforementioned dastardly brother who hatches a plot with the Tommy Burgess’ Borachio – a foul nave who I’m sure is world’s away from the actor (who can also play guitar and sing so he must be alright). Between them they plan to drive a wedge through this new alliance of affection and a knife through the innocent heart of Hero…

Molly Miles, Tommy Burgess, Floriane Andersen, Alexander Varey in Much Ado About Nothing – photo Scott Rylander

Will they succeed, and will the ultimate heartbreak engulf those who have already endured far too much? The clue’s in the title and neither William of this company leave us in any danger of sustained misery.

The play ends with a rousing singalong and dance, the company and audience smiling at an evening’s energies well spent. Thus something did come from Nothing and the grand old Hall almost dipped it's ancient arches in architectural appreciation.

Much Ado… continues at Gray’s Inn Hall until 1^st September so you better be quick – tonight’s show was a sell out and rightly so. Tickets are availablefrom the Antic Disposition website.

Ithankyou Theatre rating: ***** It’s Shakespeare but not as we know it sir… C’est Tati mais pas comme on le sait monsieur!

Nicholas Osmond as Benedick, Chiraz Aich as Beatrice  – Photo Scott Rylander

Love and loathing in Soho… The One, Soho Theatre

“’Rich irony’ ... you’re such a ponce.”

It was cracking the flags outside on Greek Street, but even with the Soho Theatre’s very effective aircon, this play was one to make the audience sweat. In the after-show Q&A the actors explained how the same moments that generate gasps from their audience sometimes produce laughter…  the narrative sits on an exhausting knife-edge of uncertainty.

The One is an exceptionally well written play in which the two main characters swap lines like Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn in a very modern way – Kate never asking her man to “rape” her for a start. It’s a dom-rom-com with the dominance shifting from he to her and back again.

Harry and Jo are in a long-term relationship and we’re never clear who wants out and who is just clinging on; at various points it’s both or neither. John Hopkins is superb as the thirty-nine year old English Literature academic often at a loss for words in endless competition with Jo, pitch-perfect Tuppence Middleton, a former pupil of wicked tongue and fearless phrasing, ten years his junior. Both on the verge…

Jo’s sister is about to give birth and it’s going to be a long night. Jo checks her phone in a deadpan way warily enthused about her sister’s entry into the next stages of adulthood – pressure on or pressure off, she’s at the stage in life where she has to stick of twist. She appears detached from her partner as she watches TV and flicks Wotsits into her mouth to create some interest as he works away behind her making love on the couch.

Tuppence Middleton and John Hopkins (Photo Jonny Birch)

I’m no expert but Wotsits are not the food of love and in the first of many dizzying about turns, they reveal a couple using humour, sex, violence and anything they can lay their hands on, to mask their biggest question: should they carry on.

As Jo’s sister waits for Baby Godot, her friend Kerry (Julia Sandiford) is also having the biggest of nights as she splits up with her partner, Bradley, and comes looking for help from Jo and Harry – also a close work colleague. There’s a lot unsaid between Kerry and Harry and Jo mocks her for suggesting that Bradley forced her into sex, when he knew she didn’t consent; even though as Jo says, Kerry made no mention and relied on the indications of body language.

Vicky Jones, co-creator of Fleabag, writes these moments so well and, naturally enough, some are based on personal experience and the fine lines between yes, no and grudging obligations. 

Kerry’s febrile sensitivity makes Harry and Jo seem coolly mature and having pushed her back out into the night, they seem surer of themselves, but without the emotional triangulation provided by their distressed friend, they soon fall in on themselves.

The night passes on, the cast members moving the hands on a large clock and pouring litres of red wine off the side of the stage… This is a long-night of the soul and we are at no point certain of the outcome.

Julia Sandiford and John Hopkins (Photo Jonny Birch)

Jo tries to goad Harry into sexual violence and you feel he undoubtedly has the capacity – when he checks this is what she really wants you feel he means it… he can’t beat her for words, but he knows he can physically. This leaves the audience uncomfortable and adds an element of risk to Jo’s ceaseless challenges.

Kerry returns and really ups the ante… her honesty and vulnerability so at odds with the multi-layered bonded conflict between her friends yet she’s a catalyst for a deepening of their game of truth or dare.

Theirs is a universal struggle both to communicate and the evaluate. There are so many levels on which they are perfectly attuned yet so many more where they are not. Do you love the one you’re with or step outside for the one you can’t be sure even exists? It’s fear versus hope and the ticking time-bomb of the next big birthday… last chance or no chance?

Tuppence Middleton and John Hopkins truly convince with astonishing, fearless performances: we were glad of the Q&A to talk through our own issues … It was like watching two athletes warming down knowing they have to go again for the next round (this was the matinee); the measured intensity of people who work out most of the day and every day.

I should also mention that Mr Hopkins has a fine baritone as revealed in the karaoke as he sings The Music of the Night from Phantom… will the mask slip? Go see it and find out, if you dare!

Ithankyou Theatre Rating: **** This is a very intelligent, visceral play that reaches out to the audience. It will leave you questioning not only the ending but yourself… we’ve all been in relationships like this and some of us may very well still be…

The One runs at the Sogo Theatre until 25th August, tickets are available from the Box Office and online.

Happy family... The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, Arcola Theatre

“Men are like yam, you cut them how you like.”

There are moments that transcend expectation and your understanding of theatre and as we clapped along to the musicians at feverish pace, standing with broad smiles all around the sold-out Arcola, this was undoubtedly one of them. The audience was so warm for this amazing and talented cast and there were in-jokes that sometimes flew around my head but that only reinforced the joyous connections between the watchers and the watched.

Who would have thought that a play about the most shocking of turns in a polygamist marriage could entertain so thoroughly and, most importantly, strike some important dramatic points concerning family, honesty and intimacy beyond the Nigerian location.

My (only) wife, was born in Nigeria but she left too early to experience much of the culture. This play features a mostly West-African cast who do justice to the accent, the style and the humour in a play that features Yoruba music, song and dance woven through the narrative with subtlety and purpose.

The ensemble all photographs from Idil Sukan

The play is adapted from Lola Shoneyin’s bestselling novel, by Caine Award-winning playwright Rotimi Babatunde. Femi Elufowoju, jr directs his company so very well making such good use of the Arcola’s main stage with performers everywhere, speaking, singing and occasionally breaking the fourth wall… tonight that wall had well and truly gone: we were all immersed in this hi-energy, rich-textured world…

Patrice Naiambana (fresh from a highly-successful run at the National Theatre in The Barbershop Chronicles) is simply spell-binding as Baba Segi a man with fixed ideas of squad rotation for his four wives. Naiambana has an immediate rapport with the audience and gets many of the laughs as the man some of the men might think has a good deal. At one point he announces – in character – that he’s about to play a completely different character and then knocks us dead with a sophisticated English accent as a dastardly yet debonair seducer… He can also play his own 4-year old son.

He is ably supported by four “wives” who are all fulsome characters. Jumoké Fashola plays Iya Segi, his wife of 16 years whose union was arranged by their parents as the young woman was far too fascinated by money and, seemingly not interested in men… unknown to them, she was rather more interested in a beautiful tomato seller who she had seen in the market. Baba was at a loss as a business man and given Iya Segi’s acumen, it seemed a logical solution to pair them off.

Tania Nwachukwu, layo-Christina Akinlude, Marcy Dolapo Oni and Christina Oshunniyi (Credit Idil Sukan)

Second wife, Iya Tope (Christina Oshunniyi)“… a peace offering from a desperate farmer…”  and third wife, Iya Femi (layo-Christina Akinlude) married to escape her grandma’s tyrrany, impressing her future husband with her humility, as he saw it.

The line-up is completed by the latest, Bolanie (Marcy Dolapo Oni) a university graduate far more sophisticated than the rest and who, even in the crowded household, expects a different relationship with her husband – more accepting than the younger men of her own age, who pursue her: “he is content when I say nothing…” And, for long periods she had nothing to say having been brutally raped aged 15… the way of things but for all his posturing and faults, Baba has principles.

Bolanie disturbs the equilibrium in the Segis household like none before and soon Iya Segi and Tope are trying to turn their husband against her. Two years on she’s still around and in desperation they try to poison her only for things to work out in the worst possible ways.

Jumoké Fashola and Tania Nwachukwu (Credit Idil Sukan)

Meanwhile, Bolanie has yet to produce any further children for Baba and, being a modern girl, decides to seek medical assistance and to take her husband with her.

There’s intrigue and shocks aplenty but there’s also honesty, love and songs… it’s light but with a serious side and is so well balanced in terms of its messaging – a splendid adaptation that allows each character to breath so that we care about them all in the end.

Marcy Dolapo Oni has great presence and lights up the room with her smile; everyone has their tale to tell but she is the one we follow the most. Patrice Naiambana is a force of nature with charisma to burn and pin-point timing. The wives are universally excellent, and Tania Nwachukwu is outstanding as Baba’s eldest daughter, another woman emerging into this complex way of living but still a child at heart.

The whole cast is energised with everyone playing their part(s) with multiple roles, daughter, doctor, singer, dancer… The singing and dance is thrilling with the percussion playing of Ayan de First and Usifu Jalloh mind-bogglingly ferocious… there is so much physical energy in this play and choreographer Kemi Durosinmi and Uche Onah should take a bow and a heel turn each.

Ayan de First and Usifu Jalloh (Credit Idil Sukan)

It is a joyous collaboration and a play that will live long in the memory especially whenever I dance…and I should dance alot more!

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is presented by The Elufowoju jr Ensemble and runs at the Arcola Theatre until the 21^st July. Tickets are going to be like baked Yams so you better get in quick! Details on the Arcola website and fromtheir Box Office.

Ithankyou Theatre Rating: ***** This is going to be one of the plays of the summer – hot, hot, hot!!!