The Tempest (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon)
Verdict: Mum’s the word
Rating: ****
She’s still a Duke, her name is still Prospero but Shakespeare’s desert island magician has gone all-out female in the fearsome shape of Alex Kingston.
And make no mistake, this is no politically correct stunt by the RSC, but an inspired piece of celebrity casting.
The actress best known (to me) as Dr Elizabeth Corday from ER, who starred alongside George Clooney (and was unhappily married to Dr Mark Greene), gives one of the Bard’s most revered patriarchs a thoroughgoing matriarchal makeover.
Amazingly, she is the first female Prospero in a major Shakespeare production with a mixed-sex cast.
The actress best known (to me) as Dr Elizabeth Corday from ER, who starred alongside George Clooney (and was unhappily married to Dr Mark Greene), gives one of the Bard’s most revered patriarchs a thoroughgoing matriarchal makeover.
Her rags-to-witches tale is set in the aftermath of a storm she has summoned to shipwreck and punish the treacherous usurpers who deposed her from her Dukedom in Milan years before.
Now boasting supernatural powers and a magic cloak made of beach junk, she has herself seized control of the island by deposing the previous ruling sorceress, Sycorax.
Setting the scene, Elizabeth Freestone’s tumbledown production, designed by Tom Piper, uses the collapsing beams of a derelict theatre for a play that is often seen as Shakespeare’s last hurrah.
And although the set is filled with depressing modern marine debris including flip flops, oil drums and plastic bottles, Piper captures the island’s idyllic quality with dreamily lit woodlands beyond.
Yet the most impressive thing about Freestone’s production is that it digs deep into the treasure trove of Shakespeare’s glittering poetry — nowhere more so than in the vast, flapping harpy summoned from hell to torment Prospero’s enemies.
And this is followed by an enchanting pagan pre-nuptial celebration, as Prospero pairs the shipwrecked youth Ferdinand (Joseph Payne) with her until then zesty and impatient daughter Miranda (Jessica Rhodes).
Setting the scene, Elizabeth Freestone’s tumbledown production, designed by Tom Piper, uses the collapsing beams of a derelict theatre for a play that is often seen as Shakespeare’s last hurrah
The great thing about Kingston is that she humanises the often-distant figure of Prospero. She makes him — her! — thoroughly relatable as a gutsy middle-aged mum who still has to do the laundry (her magic powers don’t stretch to a washer-dryer). Formidably volatile, she has the look of an alpha female who’s let herself go and been working her vegetable patch way too hard.
Heledd Gwynn has a lot of fun as Prospero’s airborne servant Ariel, styled as a New Age traveller in dungarees and matted plaits. And yet her devotion to Prospero is tinged with fear: a reminder that the island’s new headmistress — for all her Earth mother inclusivity — is still every inch the colonial taskmaster.
This, of course, is also the complaint of Caliban, the island’s resident swamp creature and bogeyman. Yet in that disaffected role, Tommy Sim’aan has the look of a buff, well-adjusted hipster-bearded barista.
Although fallen on hard times, his instincts seem fundamentally decent and I’d certainly trust him to fix me a Flat White.Yes, there is singing that would struggle to make a low-budget toddlers’ TV show, and an outbreak of rustic prancing (that falls mercifully short of a full, stick-bashing Morris dance).
But it’s a small price to pay for a show that makes a familiar text sing anew, and proves what wonders the RSC can perform when they match their loftily woke political agenda with serious artistic ambition.
A bunch of bankers you might like to meet
The Lehman Trilogy (Gillian Lynne Theatre, London)
Verdict: Theatrical banker
Rating: ****
First time around, it’s easy to be blown away by the glitzy bravura of Sir Sam Mendes’s hymn to American banking.
Now reinstalled in the West End, it’s a three-and-a-half-hour whirlwind, whisking you from the landing of Hayum ‘Henry’ Lehman in the New World on September 11, 1844 (note the date), followed by his brothers, to sell cotton in Alabama — before branching out into coffee trading and establishing the bank that funded railways, the Panama Canal, the U.S. military and much more.
And yet on second viewing, the originally nine-hour script by Stefano Massini, filleted by Ben Power, is an oddly weightless experience. It is blithely oblivious to moral and cultural issues that have made a ferocious return to the political landscape since the show premiered in 2018.
In particular, there is the question of the Lehman brothers’ eager exposure to the cotton-picking slave trade. We are glibly assured that the American Civil War ‘drove out the shame of slavery’ and anyway ‘war is good for business’.
Now reinstalled in the West End, it’s a three-and-a-half-hour whirlwind
And what are we to make today of the Victorian Philip Lehman foreshadowing Donald Trump by scoring potential wives?
Yes, Lehman Brothers helped facilitate America’s rise to global economic supremacy and doubtless they gave much to charity. But it’s unsettling how so many issues are set aside.
Nigel Lindsay, Michael Balogun and Hadley Fraser, the stars of the show, are more like guilt-free cogs on a production line than morally accountable human beings.
But along with a steady flow of piano music, their three-way bickering and brokering lends continuity to a story that runs as swiftly as a hedge fund manager to an off-shore tax haven.
Lehman Brothers helped facilitate America’s rise to global economic supremacy and doubtless they gave much to charity
Lindsay is the patriarch and ‘head’, Henry. Balogun’s fiery Emanuel is Henry’s right ‘arm’. And Fraser is the peacemaking Mayer, ‘smooth as a freshly peeled potato’.
Their character names change over time, but their archetypal roles remain the same. And the fluidity of their detached, third-person storytelling is part of what keeps you rapt.
The other part is Es Devlin’s design of a concrete and glass office backed by a panoramic video showing seascapes, plantations and the Manhattan skyline, like projections on Times Square.
Tug the thread of the story’s sub-prime moral obfuscations and the whole blanket might unravel.
But as pure, dizzying, audio-visual spectacle this is unrivalled — and still very much a show worth being able to say you’ve seen.
From Edinburgh to Essex, Rebus is on the case…
Rebus: A Game Called Malice (Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch)
Verdict: Rebus untroubled
Rating: ***
John Rebus, the dyspeptic hero in Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh detective novels, has popped up in Essex for a cosy little drawing room murder mystery.
Set in a posh Heriot Row house in the Scottish capital’s New Town, the story convenes five Edinburgh socialites for an after-dinner game of whodunnit — which is rudely interrupted by a ‘real life’ dead body.
Rebus is played by John Michie from TV’s Taggart — looking as weathered as Edinburgh’s wind-blasted Arthur’s Seat.
Chief suspect is gravel-voiced Jack (Billy Hartman): a casino millionaire with a complexion like the inside of a teapot, a fine line in tailor-made tweeds, and a hard-man personality to rival Alex Ferguson’s.
Set in a posh Heriot Row house in the Scottish capital’s New Town, the story convenes five Edinburgh socialites for an after-dinner game of whodunnit — which is rudely interrupted by a ‘real life’ dead body
But we are also required to suspect mousey hostess Harriet (Rebecca Charles), and her spineless, bullying husband Paul (Forbes Masson).
Butter, it seems, wouldn’t melt in the mouth of QC Emily (Stephanie Jeffries) with her volumized grey bob. Or would it?
And Jack’s shapely escort Candy (Emma Noakes), in her tiny red dress, is smarter than she looks.
But Rebus, of course, is no more impressed by the suspects’ fine ways or slippery alibis than he is by their posh nosh or vintage claret.
What’s missing is drama. The story, written by Rankin and Simon Reade, doesn’t demand any more of the actors than that they sit down, cross their legs and take turns to tell tales.
The same applies to Robin Lefevre’s ultra-light touch direction, which in its own way gets away with murder. The actors could easily be working from home — and it’s all over in just 90 minutes (including a 20-minute interval).
And yet, Terry Parsons’ design — filled with a collection of early 20th-century Scottish Colourist paintings and cream covered Chippendale furniture — is very easy on the eye.
And there’s just enough intrigue to occupy the little grey cells.
Flight from war drama has a heart but no buzz
The Beekeeper Of Aleppo (Nottingham Playhouse, and touring)
Verdict: Stinging tale
Rating: ***
Christy Lefteri’s bestselling novel, partly based on her experiences as a volunteer at a refugee centre, has been adapted for the stage by Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler.
It tells the story of Nuri (Alfred Clay, leading a talented cast of nine), the titular beekeeper, who is bombed out of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war and makes a perilous journey to safety in the UK with his artist wife Afra (Roxy Faridany).
As the action shifts across time and place — England, Syria, Greece, Turkey — we see at what cost (emotional and financial) the couple’s safety has come.
The characters they meet are mostly broad-brush; well-meaning but ineffectual aid workers, aggressive border officials, predatory human traffickers.
But the play is world-weary rather than cynical, with some sharp flashes of wit — a Somalian whom Nuri and Afra befriend in a transit camp describes the ‘hierarchy of refugees’, knowing exactly where she is placed in it.
And while beekeeping gives the writers great potential for allegory — did you know that angry bees secrete a chemical which smells like bananas? No, me neither — they drop them into the narrative only occasionally, to make telling points.
Miranda Cromwell’s production, which is not helped by Ruby Pugh’s static set, lacks real urgency but its heart is in the right place.
VERONICA LEE
- Until February 25 (nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk); then touring until July 1.
Down in the dumps? Nothing perks you up like a parade…
My Son’s A Queer (But What Can You Do?)(Ambassadors Theatre, London)
Verdict: A blast of joy
Rating: ****
There are nights when you need a bit of Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Disney music blasts out before this 65-minute solo spree by Rob Madge. It reassures us that LGBTQ+ matters need not always involve divisive identity politics with everyone tearing lumps off one another. Queer can be jolly, gay can be camp, each side happy to laugh at the others’ absurdities.
It’s an account, laced with wonderful wobbly 20-year-old amateur videos by Rob’s Dad, of growing up as a joyfully exhibitionist kid whose Princess fantasies and DIY Disney parades were wholly indulged by a devoted family. ‘Anything is possible!’ Rob trills, ‘when the stage is your living room!’
We see the artist as a tot, flying (assisted by long-suffering Dad); and devising costumes from Matalan — Cinderella to a horned Maleficent — with the aid of Granny.
We see cries of delight at a puppet theatre on Christmas Day, and Rob pleading for a Santa hat with attached plaits and then giving the pigtails a girly-swirl.
It’s an account, laced with wonderful wobbly 20-year-old amateur videos by Rob’s Dad, of growing up as a joyfully exhibitionist kid whose Princess fantasies and DIY Disney parades were wholly indulged by a devoted family
Wisely, this excellent Midlands family send their precocious theatrical child to Stagecoach, where an inkling of future love interest is displayed by falling for the Pied Piper in a show.
Sure, there are moments when starting school and finding friends is not easy for a non-football type; the most beautiful of the songs (by Pippa Cleary) is about realizing that a gleeful infancy is over. Tidying the beloved frills away, Madge sings: ‘Pack up the treasures of my past, I should have known it wouldn’t last.’
And at the end, before the glorious shambolic attempt to single-handedly recreate that Disney parade (Poppins and all), there’s a serious point. Why choose between pink and blue? Why shouldn’t every child find their own character and inclination, whether it requires princess dresses or rugby kit?
But this is not an angry show. It aims to please, and succeeds.
LIBBY PURVES
- Until March 18, www.atgtickets.com
***
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