Two classics — but only one’s worth the trip 

Redlands (Festival Theatre, Chichester)

Verdict: Gets the 60s swinging

You might expect a play about Mick Jagger and Keith Richards getting fitted up by the News Of The World in a 1960s drugs bust to centre on the Stones’s front man and famously mind-expanded lead guitarist.

And yet, you’d be wrong. It isn’t even clear that Charlotte Jones’s rowdy and entertaining new play, Redlands, is about the man who (eventually) got the rockers acquitted — one Michael Havers QC, later Attorney General.

A major role for that other star of the Swinging Sixties, Marianne Faithfull, is less surprising.

And yet, incredibly, it’s the fringe figure of a teenage Nigel Havers who turns out to be the story’s unlikely hero.

Jasper Talbot and Brenock O’Connor’s roles as Jagger and Richards are almost decorative

The 1967 saga started when the police raided Richards’s 15th-century baronial bolthole in SusSєx after a tip-off from a vindictive hack

Incredibly, it’s the fringe figure of a teenage Nigel Havers who turns out to be the story’s unlikely hero

The 1967 saga started when the police raided Richards’s 15th-century baronial bolthole in SusSєx after a tip-off from a vindictive hack.

Havers senior reluctantly took the case and initially failed to keep Messrs Jagger and Richards out of jail.

It was only on finding evidence of the NoW’s skulduggery that he secured their release. Happily for Nigel, it meant that Faithfull, distressed by her Sєxist treatment in court, drifted into his dreams as a jaw-dropping mentor.

Jasper Talbot and Brenock O’Connor’s roles as Jagger and Richards are almost decorative. Talbot cavorts in ʙuттock-­hugging bell-bottoms as Jagger; while O’Connor mugs around as a strangely manic Richards. Both lay on excellent vibrations covering Stones songs, though.

It is Anthony Calf who steals the show as Michael Havers. His story is that of an improbable transformation from pompous QC to paragon dad. His inquisitorial boom, glacial contempt and sense of mischief more than fill the theatre.

Emer McDaid’s Faithfull sings a sweetly melancholy As Tears Go By. She’s deployed as a fantasy figure for our Nigel. Louis Landau wins hearts as Havers the younger — a disoriented teen in need of his emotionally absent father’s love.

Justin Audibert’s production is jaunty and good-natured. And thanks to covers of songs including Satisfaction and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the evening turns out to be a gas, gas, gas.

Talbot cavorts in ʙuттock-­hugging bell-bottoms as Jagger; while O’Connor mugs around as a strangely manic Richards

Justin Audibert’s production is jaunty and good-natured. And thanks to covers of songs including Satisfaction and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the evening turns out to be a gas, gas, gas

Should you fancy something lighter… much lighter… look no further than The Cabinet Minister, a stunning-looking revival of a ditzy Victorian comedy by the largely forgotten Arthur Wing Pinero.

Being about a Cabinet minister drifting into trouble for insider trading, thanks to his spendthrift wife, you might suppose it had some satirical bite.

Wrong. It’s a blissfully brainless production, abridged and expurgated by Nancy Carroll — who also plays the persuasively profligate Lady Twombley, wife to Nicholas Rowe’s lean and haughty Right Hon Sir Julian Twombley, who is being held to ransom by unscrupulous Cockney social climbers.

Add to that young debutante Imogen Twombley (Rosalind Ford), whose betrothal to a nervous Scottish laird has been secured by a busybody dowager (Sara Crowe) in league with a fearsome Scottish matriarch (Dillie Keane of Fascinating Aida) and you have a deliciously frothy comic soufflé.

Paul Foster’s lavish production presents an encrustation of Victoriana, yielding to a draughty Scottish castle in the second half — and a parade of period frocks that would make the National proud.

– Redlands until Friday; The Cabinet Minister until November 16.

 

Two classics — but only one’s worth the trip 

Roots/Look Back In Anger (Almeida Theatre, London) 

Verdict: MOT pᴀss & fail

Classic cars more than 40 years old may be exempt from an annual MOT, but I wonder if the same should apply to classic plays.

These two examples, in rep at Islington’s Almeida Theatre, are not equally roadworthy.

Arnold Wesker’s 1959 drama, Roots, about starry-eyed Beatie (Morfydd Clark) returning from London to her family of farm labourers in Norfolk, isn’t too much of a liability.

But John Osborne’s 1956 gas guzzler Look Back In Anger, about young Jimmy Porter (Billy Howle) bullying his pregnant wife (Ellora Torchia), belches out toxic fumes.

Wesker’s play is a generational drama looking at the rift between over-educated townies and struggling farmers after World War II. It works best as social history.

Arnold Wesker’s 1959 drama, Roots, about starry-eyed Beatie (Morfydd Clark) returning from London to her family of farm labourers in Norfolk, isn’t too much of a liability

Wesker’s play is a generational drama looking at the rift between over-educated townies and struggling farmers after World War II. It works best as social history

Could Clark have packed more hurt and frustration into her slightly delusional Beatie, over-fond of quoting her mansplaining boyfriend (widely supposed to be based on the author)? Perhaps. And Diyan Zora’s frugal production could be more fastidious in its domestic details.

For me, though, Look Back In Anger should be taken off the road. The ‘hero’ Jimmy Porter is even more boorish, bullying and gaslighting than I remember.

There’s a strong seam of misogyny in all Osborne’s writing — and Howle does little more than lend this sullen, self-pitying exponent a babyish whimper. The play has little to teach us, and does less to amuse.

– Until November 23.

 

You’ll weep at this raw take on the ravages of dementia 

A Tupperware Of Ashes (National Theatre, Dorfman)

Verdict: Home is where the heart is

By Georgina Brown 

There’s a saying that you can take a person out of the place, but you can’t take the place out of the person.

It’s one of many fascinating ideas Tanika Gupta explores in her rich, raw family drama about the ravaging impact of dementia on an individual — and on those trying to care for them.

It’s the story of Queenie, who came from Kolkata to Britain as a newlywed in the Seventies.

Widowed young, life is tough; but even so she becomes the first Indian chef to win a Michelin star, raises three children and proudly drives a Mercedes.

And everything is rosy until the children, now working hard as a teacher, lawyer and doctor, notice that their capable and competent mother is losing her grip.

Meera Syal as Queenie who came from Kolkata to Britain as a newlywed in the Seventies.

Alzheimer’s gets the better of Queenie in every sense. Her decline — forgetfulness, shattered moral filter, explosive temper — is rapid and desperately distressing, not just to her family, but to herself as well

Burning the rice may be carelessness, but plunging into the North Sea when she can’t even swim is more worrying. Worse, saying precisely what she thinks, with no expletives deleted, may be funny — but also uncharacteristically unkind.

Alzheimer’s gets the better of Queenie in every sense. Her decline — forgetfulness, shattered moral filter, explosive temper — is rapid and desperately distressing, not just to her family, but to herself as well.

Gupta amplifies the tragedy with echoes of Shakespeare’s King Lear, another family pulled apart when an ego-maniacal parent loses the plot.

But it is what survives in Queenie’s scrambled mind that makes this study of dementia so moving: the ghost of her beloved husband reciting smutty limericks; the smell of mangoes; the desire to have her ashes scattered into the Hooghly River.

Washed by Nitin Sawhney’s haunting Indian music, Pooja Ghai’s atmospheric production will strike a chord. And Meera Syal’s heartbreaking, and surely award-winning, performance will make you weep.

 

Ignore the Emperor’s new clothes and fall under the Snowmaiden’s spell…

The Snowmaiden (English Touring Opera)

Verdict: Very enjoyable, only a few idiocies

By Tully Potter  

While our main opera companies turn up their noses at Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourful scores, the ETO leaps in with this very creditable pocket presentation of the composer’s own favourite.

It is my preference too, although I shall not try to unravel the folksy plot, based on a play by Ostrovsky.

Suffice it to say that the Snowmaiden, Snegurochka, suffers the fate of all denizens of Fairyland who mix with mortals.

We hear the best voice in the Prologue, firm-toned bᴀss Edward Hawkins as Grandfather Frost — he returns later as the Tsar’s confidant.

Ffion Edwards is a slightly shrill Snegurochka but one gets used to her, as she has a lot to sing.

Her mother Spring Beauty is nicely portrayed by Hannah Sandison.

In Act 1 we meet shepherd boy Lel, a travesti role (a male character performed by a female singer; sometimes called a trouser role) beautifully taken by Kitty Whately; and merchant Mizgir, who no sooner becomes betrothed to Kupava than he is smitten by Snegurochka.

Ffion Edwards is a slightly shrill Snegurochka but one gets used to her, as she has a lot to sing

Suffice it to say that the Snowmaiden, Snegurochka, suffers the fate of all denizens of Fairyland who mix with mortals

He is no great catch, as he is totally bald and looks like an alien from Planet Zog, but Edmund Danon sings well enough.

Tsar Berendey is not a travesti role, but director Olivia Fuchs puts him into a green ball gown (in time-honoured fashion the courtiers ignore the Emperor’s clothes). No wonder he complains of an icy heart, with such a low-cut dress, and he must be skint, having just one outfit. Tenor Joseph Doody handles his tricky aria splendidly.

Katherine McIndoe, a strident Kupava, acts convincingly and generally there is much to beguile the audience.

An eight-strong ensemble copes gamely with the great Shrovetide chorus and other big moments.

I am not sure why Snegurochka, having melted, returns to dance at the end.

Hannah Quinn and the orchestra keep things moving, minor roles are well cast and Eleanor Bull’s sets are aptly conceived for touring.

If this lovely piece comes anywhere near you, try to see it. There is one more Hackney Empire performance tonight.