Two Of Us (Palace Theatre, Watford)

Verdict: Beatle juice

Change is afoot at Watford’s Palace Theatre thanks to their grandly тιтled new CEO and Director of Programming Steve Marmion. In case you’re wondering, he’s no relation I know of — although my father guessed our great-grandfathers could have been brothers, in Liverpool.

My namesake made his reputation running the saucy and frequently outrageous Soho Theatre, attracting acts including Fleabag in its early days.

A similar though more mainstream menu is lined up for Hertfordshire’s former powerhouse; one that promises music, drag, comedy and cabaret — as well as theatre. But first, this other Marmion is going back to his Merseyside roots with Two Of Us: the tale of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s last meeting in New York in 1976.

Adapted by Richard Short and Barry Sloane (who also plays Lennon) from the Michael Lindsay-Hogg film written by Mark Stanfield, it’s a moving, absorbing and melancholy account of the last time the two Beatles met.

Barry Sloane plays John Lennon (left) and Jay Johnson plays Paul McCartney (right)

The play is set in Lennon’s New York City flat near central park

The setting, slickly rendered by Amy Jane Cook, is John’s flat in the Dakota building, overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park. Here John has grown depressed and isolated, reluctant to engage with his former best friend Paul, who shows up unexpectedly.

The duo bicker, sulk, drink tea, smoke dope, defend their other halves (Yoko and Linda), listen to reggae, disguise themselves to go out, and reminisce about old times, as if caught up in a Goon Show. But much of the meeting is filled with not so much pregnant pauses as toxic silences, in which both seem overwhelmed by their past.

Most remarkable are Sloane and Jay Johnson as John and Paul. Sloane, who recently played Yosser in the stage version of Boys From The Blackstuff, portrays a touchy John eager to rib Paul for writing ‘nursery rhymes with happy beats’ for his band Wings. Yet John is unwilling to take flak in return.

Persistently pᴀssive aggressive — even when tinkling a Buddhist meditation bell — John deflects Paul’s friendship with snarky jokes. Beneath it all you feel a tide of sadness in the man who never grew up, after losing his mother — and a dad he always hated.

Paul, too, has lost his parents; Johnson portrays a man grieving not just their loss, but that of the long-haired friend in front of him.

McCartney is flattered by Johnson’s generously wigged and thickly bearded version of him, like a young Gabriel Byrne. He catches Paul’s typically halting Liverpool accent and defends his commercial instincts against John’s demand to ‘start feeling your pain’.

Two of Us will move to Manchester on September 26

The meeting was destined to end badly. As Marianne Faithfull once said about Mick Jagger, there was simply ‘too much blood under the bridge’. No matter how much you wish this time will be different, for the two of them it can only ever end with a sad, desolate hug. Yet before that, we have a chance to dream and, dare I say… imagine.

Two Of Us will move to Home, Manchester from September 26. 

 

I Wish You Well (Criterion Theatre, London)

Verdict: Gwyn-dolent

Gwyneth Paltrow does a good job of satirising herself via her wacky wellness brand Goop — but there’s no harm in giving her a helping hand. Cue a musical spoof of last year’s trial in which retired optometrist Terry Sanderson sued her for $300,000 after a skiing altercation in Utah. She countersued for $1, and won.

First seen at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, the show is now in the West End for three weeks. Anyone hoping for gags about Gwyneth’s intimate ‘Jade Eggs’ and their healing power will be delighted — her brand has been renamed Poop, for starters.

It’s a pastiche of everything from Frozen to Cabaret. Nonetheless, the cartoon Utah courtroom is made to bounce thanks to Idriss Kargbo’s botty wobbling Judge Jude, Tori Allen-Martin’s prosecutor Kristin (a Gwyneth super-fan), and Marc Antolin’s cartwheeling Terry.

Diana Vickers stars as Gywneth in the production I Wish You Well

The show based on last year’s high-profile trial is in the West End for three weeks and closes on October 12

As the goddess of Goop herself, Diana Vickers blows kisses at us and hisses at Terry, while plugging her gynaecologically scented aromatherapy candles. 

I Wish You Well runs till October 12.

 

Murder On The Orient Express (touring)

Verdict: First-class sleeper

Michael Maloney is a wonderful Poirot: prim, gently authoritative, his accent likeable, his Continental man-hugs with his old friend Monsieur Bouc of the Wagons-Lits very endearing.

Around him the multinational ­pᴀssengers, smartly dressed and befurred, each with their own quirk and secret, gather round a bloodstained corpse at dawn, shuddering in horror — or are they?

No villages or vicars; this most glamorous of Agatha Christie stories stars the Orient Express in its 1930s glory. Mike Britton’s set and costumes revel in it: gorgeous compartments swivelling to become cabins and dining-car, a snowdrift overhead.

It’s one of Christie’s most familiar plots (though some in my matinee couldn’t remember whodunnit).

But without spoilers I can at least say that while the corpse in the sleeper-car is not, it turns out, a figure to grieve for, Lucy Bailey’s production revolves vividly around another victim from years before.

Michael Maloney as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express

The set comprises of gorgeous compartments swivelling to become cabins and dining-car – with a snowdrift overhead

There is something excellently respectful about the way this production evokes an old tragedy: a child’s imagined face ghostly overhead at the start, her voice heard.

There is also a shiver of respect in Poirot’s famous dilemma about what to do with the solution. Mentioning an old case at the start, he reiterates his steely belief in doing justice, whatever the provocation.

And when he makes his final judgement we are reminded that this story lies between the wars: he’s a Belgian whose country was illegally invaded in 1914. Without laws, he says, we are all lost. For all the fun and thrills, it gives the production a thoughtful, sober edge.

It’s all beautifully done, even if you know the plot. And as for Debbie Chazen, never mind her Calendar Girls Olivier nomination — I insist she should now play far more stroppy old Russian princesses. She’s priceless.

For tour details, visit murderontheorientexpressplay.com.

By Libby Purves for the Daily Mail 

 

Abigail’s Party (Theatre Royal Stratford East, London)

Verdict: Retro riot

Mike Leigh’s 1977 play is regularly revived, because it’s just so darned funny. But examining that decade’s social mores through a modern lens can give it new life — which is the case with Nadia Fall’s farewell production at Stratford East before she takes over as artistic director of the Young Vic.

‘London side of EsSєx’ couple Beverly and Laurence (Tamzin Outhwaite and Kevin Bishop) are having new neighbours, monosyllabic Tony and excitable Angela (Omar Malik and Ashna Rabheru), over. Also invited is neighbour Sue (Pandora Colin), escaping her teenage daughter’s тιтular party.

It’s an acute study of 1970s social mobility; cheese-and-pineapple sticks (on a tinfoil hedgehog base), kitsch erotica and the works of Dickens that look nice but remain unread on the wood-veneer display unit tell us where Beverly and Laurence are, on the social scale — and what they aspire to be.

As she bickers with her husband, plies guests with booze and fags they don’t want — which cause Sue to be sick in the loo — and patronises the newcomers, we see what an overbearing host Beverly is. Her generosity — ‘a top-up?’ — is actually controlling behaviour. That Beverly is queen bee here is underlined by a neat coda, where she positions people about the set (a hideous riot of orange and brown by Peter McKintosh).

Tamzin Outhwaite has a blast as the monstrous Beverly in Abigail’s Party at the Theatre Royal Stratford East

Another successful tweak in Ms Fall’s faithful production is casting Tony and Angela as British Asians, making Laurence’s remarks about ‘the area changing’ more acidic.

Mr Bishop neatly parlays Laurence’s neurotic pᴀss-agg, and Ms Rabheru’s comically awful dancing deserves an award. But this is Ms Outhwaite’s show, having a blast as the monstrous Beverly.

Until October 12.

By Veronica Lee for the Daily Mail 

 

The Lightest Element (Hampstead Theatre)

Verdict: Enlightening

In 1925, the 20th century English astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin made the astonishing discovery that stars are composed mainly of the lightest element in the Universe: hydrogen. ‘Without hydrogen there is darkness’ she remarks triumphantly in Stella Feehily’s play, which sketches a career obstructed by a cynical, blinkered, male establishment.

Speaking nine languages including Latin and Greek, CPG was a force of nature who pursued her research in Harvard, Mᴀssachusetts, having been denied graduation in 1920s Cambridge by the misogynistic regulations of the day.

Here, though, Feehily is inspired by Cecilia’s having a Russian husband who we never meet (a fellow scientist, also devoted to the stars), to invent a fictional plot to frame CPG as a Communist during the McCarthyite purges of the 1950s.

A spirited canter through all the usual tribulations follows, but there are otherwise no Earth-shattering discoveries to match CPG’s work.

Feehily instead reveals her eagerness to put her heroine on a pedestal, thanks to verbal anachronisms about ‘progressivism’, and ‘the right side of history’.

Astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, played by Maureen Beattie, made the astonishing discovery that stars are composed mainly of the lightest element in the Universe: hydrogen

Annie Kingsnorth (left) plays rookie journalist Sally in The Lightest Element

Maureen Beattie’s Cecilia is, however, very good company. Urbane, sardonic and driven, she has the thirst of Mrs Thatcher knocking back Polish, paint-stripping potcheen, and the patient, political forbearance of former Liberal MP Shirley Williams when dealing with her dinosaur colleagues.

The men are more weakly-written but well-acted by a strong cast including Simon Chandler and Julian Wadham as her mentor Fred Whipple, and her nemesis PhD supervisor Henry Norris Russell. Otherwise, it’s down to Annie Kingsnorth as a rookie journo on a campus newspaper to power the drama with a crisis of conscience over whether to honour Cecilia’s science or betray her liberal politics.

 

Why Am I So Single? (Garrick Theatre, London)

Verdict: Swipe right (if you must)

‌Why Am I So Single? is the new show from Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow, the creators of the hit musical Six, about Henry VIII’s wives.

It ponders the (for them) vexed question of why they can’t get laid, and does so in the style of a sweary, primary coloured CBBC television programme.

The idea is, in part, to correct the writers’ traumatic experience of growing up in ‘a hetero-normative culture that wasn’t representative or empowering’.

Bombarded with cod-self analysis, we’re launched into a forest of neon-framed phone screens in a world of social media dating on a sofa echoing the couch featured in their favourite TV show, Friends.

Both privately educated and graduates of Cambridge University, Moss and Marlow interestingly cast themselves as a working-class Glaswegian rose (Leesa Tulley) and a working class Lancashire non-binary (Jo Foster).

In these downwardly aspirant avatars they rename themselves Nancy and Oliver (after their favourite musical Oliver!), and steer us through two-and-three-quarter hours of noisily derivative jingles influenced by everything from Disco to Frozen.

Why Am I So Single is a new show from the creators of Six – Toby Marlow (left) and Lucy Moss (right). Both are privately educated Cambridge graduates

Leading lady Leesa Tulley looks at her phone as the ensemble of Why Am I So Single surronds her

Jo Foster performs a disco dance routine at the Garrick Theatre in London

Although the tone is highly repeтιтive, M&M prove that the snappy lyrics and bouncy beats of Six were not a one off. A particularly clever tap number catches the rhythm of keyboard sounds on mobile phones, while loading their swipe-right dates into pink shopping trolleys also amuses.

Tulley and Foster are technically versatile and naturally gifted singers. They spend much of their time pursued by a troupe of dancers, as if in a Bollywood film (the dancers also dress up as domestic props…dustbin, fridge, curtains…when required).

Some of this is clever and creative (gold stars all round!). But quite honestly WAISS? needs an age restriction of tweeny-twentysomethings. For kidults only.

 

My English Persian Kitchen (Soho Theatre)

Verdict: A recipe for success

A young woman sings to herself as she stands at her kitchen counter with a knife in her hand and expertly dices onions, chops mountains of mint, dill and parsley, crushes garlic and grinds saffron to a dust.

Their intense, raw scents fill the theatre.

Hannah Khalil’s play begins as a straightforward cookery demonstration. But it is quickly evident that something else is cooking.

The woman (a wonderfully engaging Isabella Nefar) laughs off her tears as being caused by the onions, which doesn’t quite wash.

Why is the overhead light flickering ominously? Who or what is making the knife turn in her hand towards her neck?

Little by little, while preparing Ash Reshteh, a mouth-wateringly aromatic Persian herb and noodle soup, her story emerges: her traumatic flight from oppressive Teheran and from her abusive, controlling husband. All just an hour before the brute cancelled her pᴀssport. As she says, in life, not just cooking, timing is everything.

She cuts a lonely figure and yet she is without self-pity. She finds London cold, the people polite but indifferent and her husband’s voice continues to fill her head.

She learns the English language quickly, but understanding Englishness is something else.

Isabella Nefar stars in My English Persian Kitchen at the Soho Theatre

Cooking becomes her consolation. For this woman, food means home, gathers people together, crosses cultural barriers. It becomes her way of connecting with her past and forging a new connection with her neighbours.

Nefar’s coordination is impressive, her timing flawless. She rustles up this dish without ever losing the thread of the narrative. Which, alas, is less compelling.

Shapeless and a bit sloppy, the play is more of a soup than a main meal. Concentrated and reduced to an hour, it would pack more of a punch. Never mind.

Much more satisfying is the Ash Reshteh which we are invited to taste at the end. Fresh, fragrant and flavourful, it’s a richly sensory feast.

By Georgina Brown for the Daily Mail