Stoppard’s sparkling romcom still fizzes
Rebus: A Game Called Malice (Cambridge Arts Theatre and touring)
Verdict: Hostilities and lies
Sir Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus accounts for a tenth of all crime book sales in the UK: the ancient, maze-like alleys around Edinburgh Castle symbolise the riddles the detective solves.
A novelist can evoke a city, play around with time and space and live in the investigator’s head; screen adaptations reflect that.
So it was brave of Rankin, bored in lockdown, to write this for the stage and confine it to one room.
It’s a grand dining-room, featuring a startlingly crowded set of paintings under picture-lights (Scottish 20th-century colourists, an important element in the plot). Harriet’s first husband collected them, but her second, Paul, is more inclined towards gambling.
John Rebus is played by an agreeably dry, spry Gray O’Brien
Rebus A Game Called Malice is a 2024 production touring to November 30
Hence their guests are Jack the casino owner (Billy Hartman, affably shady) and his influencer girlfriend Candida; Rebus is the plus-one for lawyer Stephanie (Abigail Thaw, cool enough to make you wonder if she’s a killer or a love interest).
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There’s a menacing thump of music as the lights drop, but then comes some very un-tense banter about a murder-mystery game — all butlers and wine-cellars — as well as remarks about Jack’s questionable past.
In an aside, Rebus (an agreeably dry, spry Gray O’Brien) explains that he hopes to nail Casino Jack.
An offstage chef, Brendan, may by the interval be ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. A murder game with a real corpse? It feels like an Agatha Christie tribute act, only set in Scotland and with mobile phones (Jade Kennedy’s Candida, a serpentine Instagram dream, does a lot of Googling).
It’s clunky, in a relaxing Sunday-night-telly sort of way, and despite director Loveday Ingram’s valiant efforts to keep the cast moving, wastes too long explaining back-stories (Rankin being a novelist, even while co-writing with Simon Reade).
The second half livens up, as hostilities and lies are exposed about everything from a Dubai freebie to a possibly bloodstained vase. Is Brendan really ᴅᴇᴀᴅ? Wait and see.
In Cambridge until tomorrow, then touring to November 30.
Stoppard’s sparkling romcom still fizzes
By Patrick Marmion
The Real Thing (Old Vic, London)
Verdict: Romantic Coca-Cola
Tom Stoppard and Alan Ayckbourn are two of the oldest swingers in English theatre. Now aged 87 and 85 respectively, their plays about the tragi-comic ins and outs of romantic love have a reputation for pulling a crowd.
Stoppard’s 1982 comedy of infidelity, The Real Thing, is a thinly veiled autobiographical account of the thrice-married writer’s personal pains, inflicted by Cupid’s dart.
A middle-aged ‘intellectual playwright’ called Henry leaves his wife for an actress called Annie — a role originated by Felicity Kendal (opposite Roger Rees), who went on to become Stoppard’s lover.
Other famous pairings have included Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close and Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle. Now, at the Old Vic, we have James McArdle and Bel Powley.
Stoppard’s 1982 comedy of infidelity, The Real Thing, is a thinly veiled autobiographical account of the thrice-married writer’s personal pains, inflicted by Cupid’s dart
Theatre production of The Real Thing at The Old Vic starring James McArdle and Bel Powley
Peter McKintosh’s minimalist set, in electric blue, white, and splashes of yellow, has the look of a modern boutique H๏τel — without quite releasing the action from its period
The play is starting to show its age — with Henry calling Annie a ‘silly cow’ and telling her to ‘shut up and listen’. And Stoppard’s lofty preoccupation with Shakespeare, and what makes truly great literature, can feel out of touch.
But sparkling wit and a cunning plot — together with Henry’s dogged pursuit of the meaning of true love (‘the real thing’ of the тιтle) — ensures the work continues to delight a modern audience.
The big challenge for the leading man is to try to pretend that Henry isn’t Stoppard. For McArdle, that means turning the reticent and omni-charming master into a mostly affable, public school twit. More acid might have helped sharpen his flavour, but when Henry’s bluster collapses, leaving him stricken and vulnerable, McArdle does indeed hit a raw nerve.
In the role of Annie, Powley is a deceptively kittenish creature. As her character says, she brings the often-taboo perspective of an ‘unrequiting’ lover (cheater, not cheatee). But she packs emotional dynamite behind her girlish facade.
Peter McKintosh’s minimalist set, in electric blue, white, and splashes of yellow, has the look of a modern boutique H๏τel — without quite releasing the action from its period.
And although it could do with a twist of lemon to balance its sugary, Coca-Cola fizz, Max Webster’s production keeps the tone playful.
Bedroom Farce (Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch)
Verdict: Comic obsolescence
Ayckbourn’s 1975 comedy Bedroom Farce hails from the heyday of mᴀss-produced RAAC concrete.
Charting the highly improbable movement of four couples between three bedrooms — in different houses — in one night, I’m afraid it now feels like it should be condemned as structurally unsafe.
Elderly Ernest and Delia prepare for an umpteenth wedding anniversary, as their son Trevor causes modest confusion at the housewarming of Kate and Malcolm, after his nervous wife Susannah catches him kissing his ex Jan — who’s now married to Nick (writhing in bed like Basil Fawlty after putting his back out). Keeping up?
The height of riskiness (not to say friskiness) is eating pilchards on toast in bed, and the risk of crumbs.
Ayckbourn’s 1975 comedy Bedroom Farce hails from the heyday of mᴀss-produced RAAC concrete. Charting the highly improbable movement of four couples between three bedrooms — in different houses — in one night, I’m afraid it now feels like it should be condemned as structurally unsafe
The height of riskiness (not to say friskiness) is eating pilchards on toast in bed, and the risk of crumbs
Younger, Gen-Z theatregoers may be stumped not just by the pilchards, but lines like ‘make sure he pays for the call’ and ‘it’s not normal for women to fancy girls’.
The improbability of characters ᴀssembling flat packs in anger at 3am, or seeking Sєxual counsel from their in-laws is one thing.
But the stakes are so low, that the sheer inconsequentiality of it all simply isn’t funny.
Alex Thorpe’s terrific, hard-working cast do their best. They have dealt nobly with the adversity of losing one of their number to illness, only for his replacement to be struck by a loss of his own.
Rosie Wyatt and Nadi Kemp-Sayfi are bright and breezy as Kate and Susannah, while Nicholas Prasad and Adam Sopp are blokeish and bemused as Malcolm and Trevor.
But while Alys Whitehead’s set of Seventies chintz inevitably hits the G-Plan (furniture — look it up!), Ayckbourn’s play sadly fails to find the G-spot.
The Real Thing runs until October 26; Bedroom Farce until September 21.
Tense journey into Le Carré’s morally murky Cold War epic
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Minerva Theatre, Chichester)
Verdict: Chilling spy drama
John le Carre’s 1963 noirish thriller dared to expose ‘the dirty business of spying’, in sharp contrast to the Technicolor fantasies of the first Bond movie a year earlier, in which any number of baddies were deservedly eliminated by a glamorous, guilt-free good guy.
Not surprisingly, the novel blew the young spook’s cover and turned him into a full-time author.
This is the story of a lonely British agent, Alec Leamas, tired of hiding behind a mask of deceit, of ᴀssumed idenтιтies and trusting no one. He wants to come in from the cold and experience genuine emotion.
This chilly, morally murky world is powerfully captured in David Eldridge’s lean, pointed adaptation, matched by Jeremy Herrin’s tense, atmospheric production, which he fills with potent images.
The chilly, morally murky world of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is powerfully captured in David Eldridge’s lean, pointed adaptation, matched by Jeremy Herrin’s tense, atmospheric production, which he fills with potent images
Theatre production of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold at Minerva Theatre, Chichester
This talented team tells the story well and poses the pertinent question: where are you left morally if you become the same as your enemy?
An agent is sH๏τ and falls from his bicycle. The upturned wheel continues to spin, its spokes catching the light, whirring inexorably like the minds of those who’ve been primed and programmed to carry out their mission.
A searchlight sweeps the auditorium. Everyone — us included — is under scrutiny.
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High on a watch post at the end of the Berlin Wall stands John Ramm’s tweedy spy-master George Smiley, apparently mild but actually merciless. Despite occasionally removing and wiping his specs, he evidently misses nothing.
A detached Rory Keenan vividly suggests the price Leamas has paid for a life under surveillance, fluently fabricating an endless tissue of lies.
He seems punctured, vulnerable. No wonder he can’t resist the pretty young woman (excellent Agnes O’Casey) in the library where he has been placed by his puppeteers.
Having seen the fabulous 1965 black-and-white movie with Richard Burton and Claire Bloom undoubtedly made it easier to follow the intricately plotted tale.
But this talented team tells it well and poses the pertinent question: where are you left morally if you become the same as your enemy?
Until September 21.
Written by Georgina Brown
