London (Apr 28-May 6, 2018)

• Witness for the Prosecution, 4/28/18 (Sat), London County Hall
• Chess, 4/30/18 (Mon), ENO
• The Encounter, 5/2/18 (Wed), Barbican
• An Ideal Husband, 5/3/18 (Thurs), West End
• The Best Man, 5/4/18 (Fri), West End
• Mood Music, 5/5/18 (Sat), Old Vic
• Red, 5/5/18 (Sat), West End
• Bedroom Farces, 5/6/18 (Sun), Fringe
• Brief Encounter, 5/6/18 (Sun), Empire Cinema

Witness for the Prosecution: The Agatha Christie courtroom chestnut revived in an actual courtroom, the decommissioned and now privately held London County Hall. The show, better known in its Billy Wilder film incarnation, revolves around the trial of a young man accused of killing a rich woman who he recently befriended. The victim happens to have left him all her money in a recent rewrite of her will, which has aroused suspicions. He insists on his innocence, but the only witness who can vouch for his alibi is his wife – and she proves not entirely cooperative. The usual twists and turns follow, down to an entirely unexpected development in the final seconds.

It’s nice harmless fun, well paced and constructed. Other than the lawyer’s office and a secret dark meeting spot, the action is in the courtroom, and the venue offers an extra thrill. The spectators seated in what was the jury box had to take the oath, and the staging otherwise was similarly tailored to the space. Lucy Bailey, who did the wild Titus at the Globe some years back, kept the action moving efficiently in a semi theatre-in-the-round touch. I was sitting just beside the witness box and thus behind the stage, as it were, but didn’t miss a thing. The occasional set changes (not including the two intermissions) were also smooth. The acoustics were problematic at times, and that corny dramatic underscoring should be scrapped. But otherwise the concept worked well. The actors were well cast. A pleasant diversion.

Chess: A high-tech realization of a mediocre show, a former concept album that had been staged in London to some success in 1986 (the NY run was less happy). The story remains a muddle of betrayals and defections with uncertain motives by all characters. But it is dressed up in an elaborate production with huge video projections, lavish costumes, large set pieces and a multi-tiered set. The floor is conceived as a chessboard with the tiles deconstructing beyond the proscenium. Live video was taken with three cameras and broadcast in multiple images on the back wall in an impressive technical feat. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a comment on the mass media (as in Hal Prince’s production of Rice’s previous show Evita) or just an attempt to enliven the material. It didn’t really work in either case. The stereotypes were spread worldwide, encompassing Russians in Cossack dances, Thai drag queens, American cheerleaders and Italians in lederhosen (not sure about that one). The songs range from pedestrian to genuinely exciting; both of the famous numbers, “One Night in Bangkok” and “I Knew Him Too Well”, were presented and sung extremely well. Michael Ball is a tremendous singer and did his best with the role of the Russian chess champ, while Tim Howar was at least energetic as his media-loving counterpart Trumper (yes, that’s the real name). Alexandra Burke, a singing star in the UK, was the best of the rest as Svetlana, including an extra song added presumably (and deservedly) to give her more material.

The Encounter: A one-of-a-kind experience by the endlessly creative Simon McBurney based on a book about a man who explored a Brazilian tribe that had been unknown by the outside world. Simon goes to Brazil to examine this for himself, and he alternatively plays the man in the book and the narrator of his own story, complete with interruptions by his five-year-old daughter wanting to be told a bedtime story. The sound in this one-man tour de force is delivered through headphones where each side has been recorded separately or “binaurally”. This results in incredibly lifelike sounds: when Simon whispers in the right side, we can almost feel him blowing in our ears, and I was startled by a buzzing fly moving around me that turned out to exist only in the earphone. At other times, Simon seems to be speaking live but turns away as the voice continues, revealing it to be a recording. A disconnect grows between what we are seeing, which is just Simon and microphones and various props, and what we are hearing, including echoes and sound effects and distant rumblings and overlapping conversations by various professorial types discussing the phenomenon of hidden tribes. The daughter’s voice (recorded some years ago when she was a child) frequently breaks in asking for a story, and Simon, trying to put her to bed, talks with this virtual being as if she were real.

Real vs. unreal, truth vs. fiction, our perception vs. their perception, the need for storytelling and more – all of this is considered in breathtakingly original fashion. It is pure theater, with the visuals and sound each having a decisive effect upon the other, neither sufficient on its own. The speculation on the dangers of civilization intruding upon an untouched culture did make me wonder about the effects of other cultures coming into contact with our civilization, one of the prime factors behind the Brexit vote. But the theme here is fortunately much broader than that. In any case, this four-dimensional show is indescribable, inimitable and unmissable. There was an interesting post-show discussion with the talkative Simon, who had much to say.

The Ideal Husband: A solid revival of the Wilde classic. I seem to have attended opening night. The setting and attitude were thankfully very much in period, with no winking campiness or attempt to make women stronger or any of that silliness. There were stunning sets in gold (main guy’s living room) and burgundy (young guy’s living room). The unfussy direction by Jonathan Church keeps things moving in a traditional rendering of a classic show. The entire cast was near-perfect, but special kudos to Edward and Freddie Fox, a real father-son team playing a father and son, and Frances Barber as the cunning Mrs. Cheveley, all of whom delivered their many bon mots with aplomb. The theme of forgiveness for past sins was an interesting contrast with US productions of My Fair Lady and Carousel, where such themes have been obscured by feminist critics. Sir Robert Chiltern, the politician with the scandal in his past, wouldn’t stand a chance these days. In another case, one character observes offhandedly that “someone should arrange a proper scheme of assisted emigration”. I don’t think this traditional production could be done in New York at present.

The Best Man: A revival of Gore Vidal’s 1960 political drama. Two candidates vie for nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate at the party convention. A well made drama, nothing overly innovative, presented in period style. It pits a principled egghead (think Adlai Stevenson) who is forced unwillingly into a mud fight against a win-at-any-cost Southern senator, including threatened exposure of mental illness and homosexuality. Vidal knew the world of politics well and presents it with flair. Both Martin Shaw and Jeff Fahey were excellent as the candidates, but the show was stolen by Jack Shepherd as the ex-president, whose support is seen as crucial for a convention win. The dirt flies without any real fireworks, but it is an interesting portrait of the times. The parallels with today were fortunately not emphasized in the show itself (just in the program notes) since the lessons are applicable to any era.

Mood Music: A fascinating show by Joe Penhall about the music industry. An overbearing record producer and a new promising singer have created a hit record and now clash over who deserves the credit – and royalties. The woman wrote the song, but the producer maintains that his innovations changed the end product dramatically (“I am the music”), resulting in the hit. The brief session scenes suggest that both contributed in their own way, making it difficult to pin down who did just what. The singer is at a disadvantage in the legal battle, being inexperienced and, she feels, because she is a woman. (The program goes on about that in more detail, bizarrely citing the “brief life of Karen Carpenter” as an example of the poor treatment of female musicians.) Anyone who’s been involved in a collaborative creative art will recognize the issues. I recalled Hamilton, where certain actors won a share of the royalties based on their insistence that their roles were shaped by their interpretations. I wonder what Ethel Merman would have done today.

The striking format has the producer and singer speaking not only with each other but variously with their therapists and lawyers in a fluid mixture of overlapping dialogues, with one character sometimes turning directly from one conversation to another in a different time and space. This cubist approach results in a much more penetrating exchange than the formulaic discussions in The Inheritance, expertly handled in fine-tuned direction by Roger Michell. The producer is a credible combination of ego, indifference and dismissal, comfortable in his own little world (“How would I know what my wife thinks?”) and uninterested in and unaware of how his actions may affect others as long as he gets the product he wants. He suggests with some justification that his heartlessness is irrelevant. The singer, whose young ideals typically stress her artistic feelings over the record’s commercial prospects, sinks from sympathetic to unlikable as she lets her emotions get the better of her. I’m not sure what her alleged abuse on the US tour had to do with anything here other than emphasizing her emotional vulnerability. Maybe women are different than men after all…? (That’s discounting, of course, that the character was created by a male playwright.)

In any case, the show offered a fair portrait of questionable characters. Ben Chaplin as the producer was especially memorable with a juicier role and better lines (“Girls are the new boys”), but Seana Kerslake as the despairing singer held her own. Neil Stuke was outstanding as well as the producer’s lawyer. A very good show.

Red: The day’s second show about artists. This explores painter Mark Rothko’s acceptance in the 1960s of an unlikely commission by Philip Johnson for the upper-set Four Seasons Restaurant. His intended design reflects the darker palettes of his older years when his era is being supplanted by pop artists, just as his generation “killed” cubists and surrealists. His new young assistant wonders whether Rothko’s art is suitable for this space and whether the artist is selling out. The irascible Rothko doesn’t take criticism lightly and debates the subject intensely. He eventually withdraws from the project, and the play hints at his subsequent suicide in its references to blood (assistant’s narrative of his parents’ murder) and Rothko’s, and every generation’s, obsolescence. A fascinating look at the role and motivations of the artist. In one thrilling scene, Rothko and his assistant furiously paint a red undercoating on the blank canvas, giving a sense of the transformation from nothingness to a work of art. The set featured several large canvases (some of which are in the Tate), shown to terrific effect in varied lighting. Alfred Molina was superior as the brooding and prickly artist, and Alfred Enoch, a fixture in Harry Potter films, was a solid foil. (Side note: My friend noted that the quote “We have Art that we may not perish from the Truth” was wrongly attributed in the play to Goya; it’s actually by Nietzsche.)

Dinner at 8:30: The tiny Jermyn Theatre was putting on an ambitious program of nine one-act shows in three parts from Noel Coward’s 1937 cycle for himself and Gertrude Lawrence (a tenth in the series is not being presented). All parts, two-and-a-half hours each, were being presented in a single day, but I limited myself to the first and most interesting-looking third, here given the name “Bedroom Farces”. The first of the mini-shows, We Were Dancing, takes place on a resort island, where a man is ever-so-peeved that his wife has suddenly fallen madly for a passing stranger. His respectfully British response drives the drama. It is a flimsy one-joke show, though it does boast a nice title song. In Ways and Means, a couple slumming through the Cote d’Azur is buried under gambling debt, ejected from their friend’s villa, and unable to collect their loans from others. Salvation comes in the form of a deus ex machina, i.e., a thief who breaks into their room at night, which gives them an ingenious idea of how to dig themselves out of their overspent hole. Funny enough in a sitcom sort of way.

It was the third play, Shadow Play, where Coward hit his form. A frightened woman on the verge of divorce takes an overdose of sleeping pills and begins to hallucinate images that may or may not be true (a subject explored in more detail some decades later by Alan Ayckbourn in Woman in Mind). Repeated snatches of song (like Gertrude Lawrence’s later Lady in the Dark), lines of dialogue and numerous characters emerge in various configurations in reflection of the woman’s fragile mental state. To the end, it’s not clear what was real or even what was real to her. A fascinating concept superbly realized. All three songs were winners, especially the half-remembered “You Were There”. Sara Crowe excelled as the woman.

Brief Encounter: Just around the corner from the Coward show was a revival of Emma Rice’s stage adaptation of his movie classic, which was itself based on one of the one acts in Dinner at 8:30. I had seen this some years earlier, but having finally just recently seen the movie, I figured this was a good chance to revisit it. It’s shown in an old movie theater, where the ushers prove to be the actors in the show. They sing some golden oldies in various configurations, a nice start to the proceedings. The show opens as the lovers meet, then the woman escapes through the curtain and reappears in a filmed version of her home projected on the curtain, a seamless blend of stage and film. The story thereafter follows the film fairly closely: a bored housewife and a young single physician meet by chance and fall madly in love, but their love is never consummated due to various social and logistical restraints, keeping it a matter of the heart. Their final meeting prior to the man’s departure for South Africa is heartbreaking.

The story proves less the point than the magical touches achieved not only through film and lighting but whimsical moments like the characters suddenly blown by the wind, the bursts of random Noel Coward songs sung by the cast, the minimal scenery used to maximal effect, and the lovers, overwhelmed by emotion, falling backwards in a faint to represent their state of mind. This is a smart approach to the British restraint in the story, exploring the underlying emotions that are hinted at in the film. While the cutesy parts like those wind scenes remain eye-rolling, the show overall enhances the material, visualizing the emotions that the characters keep bottled up inside. I loved the melding of live and film such as when the man boards the train, walking through curtains to emerge instantly in the projected train window. The show works better as a complement to the film than as a replacement for it; I appreciated it much more after seeing the movie. But the characters were nicely realized, and it was very moving at the end. Laura Jesson, who had the unenviable task of taking on Celia Johnson’s role, did a beautiful job as Laura, Alec Harvey as the doctor was fine in a more limited range of emotions, and Dean Nolan (husband, etc) and Lucy Thackeray (shop proprietress, etc) were both fun in a number of roles. The show has evidently been tightened since its last go-round and is now done in a single 90-minute spurt. I approve. A lovely adaptation.