ECHO – Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen review: A trip to old Iran with a fresh actor each night and an unseen script, writes GEORGINA BROWN

ECHO – Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen (Royal Court, London)

Verdict: Reverberating real-life drama

Rating:

On press night, it was a brave Adrian Lester who became a participant in this potent, penetrating piece by Iranian theatre-maker Nassim Soleimanpour.

Reading cold from an unseen text, Lester — like the audience — was experiencing the play for the very first time. Every performance will feature a different artist; 15 in all including Toby Jones, Monica Dolan and Jodie Whittaker.

Tonight’s volunteer, Lester, is told to put on white socks and black sandals, identical to those worn by Soleimanpour, who welcomes us, via his laptop screen, to his Berlin flat.

Footsteps are important in this boldly experimental show in which the structure and the camera work are infinitely more contrived than they pretend to be, endlessly taking us through doors into unexpected places.

An informal Nassim can’t see us, but we can see him at his desk. Puck-like in his playfulness, he appears to go off-script to meet Shirin, his wife, cooking dinner in the kitchen. On the walls, smiling from photographs, are their relations: living far away in repressive Iran.

Adrian Lester (left) read cold from an unseen text during press night for ECHO at the Royal Court in London. Every performance will feature a different artist; 15 in all including Toby Jones (right)

He jokes about his cheap version of the precious floral Persian carpet he bought when he left Iran, which he has sent to the Royal Court as a prop. To him, a carpet means home. A carpet is altered by everyone who steps on it. He asks Adrian to take off his sandals and walk on it.

So begins our journey, as Lester retraces Nassim’s footsteps, back to his childhood in Tehran, the disappearance of a classmate, his clashes with an oppressive regime.

Almost imperceptibly, as time goes on, Lester becomes Nassim, his innate integrity and flawless fluency bringing the writer’s story to life. And life, as Nassim says, is like a play without rehearsals. Ideas echo: about loss, being lost, home, family and immigration.

For me, two images will linger. Of Nassim’s mother in Iran, telling her son she loves him. And of Nassim stepping out onto a vast, unmarked, frozen landscape, wearing only his sandals.

Ingenious and unforgettable.

Until July 27.

The Baker’s Wife (Menier Chocolate Factory, London)

Verdict: Delightful confection

Rating:

This jaunty 1976 musical isn’t often revived, so Gordon Greenberg’s new production is a welcome treat. Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Joseph Stein (book) were inspired by the 1938 French film La Femme du Boulanger.

We’re in prewar Provence (on Paul Farnsworth’s evocative set), where villagers eagerly await the arrival of a new baker, after the previous boulanger died, leaving them — mon Dieu! — without their daily bread for seven long weeks.

When the baker, Aimable (Clive Rowe), does arrive — with his much younger wife Genevieve (Lucie Jones) in tow — the men’s tongues hang out and the women’s start wagging.

Genevieve is soon swayed by local bad boy Dominique (Joaquin Pedro Valdes) and they run away together, jeopardising the village’s recently restored bread supply, as Amiable sinks into despair and stops baking.

Lucie Jones (right) plays Genevieve in the Baker’s Wife at Menier Chocolate Factory in London

Clive Rowe (centre) plays Aimable the baker in the jaunty 1976 musical

The villagers leap into action (whether in the cause of saving their baguettes or saving the baker’s marriage isn’t entirely clear, in a work that doesn’t delve too deep into the human condition) to bring Genevieve back.

Along the way, fractured friendships and marriages are healed, including that of the bickering cafe owners (Norman Pace and Josefina Gabrielle, part of the excellent 19-strong cast).

Mr Greenberg brings out the comedy (although some of the male/female attitudes are a bit dated these days); and the songs, while not memorable, are beautifully performed.

Mr Rowe and his pipes add value to any production he’s in, while Miss Jones gives a show-stopping performance of her solo, Meadowlark. Another standout number is Bread, where the cast are in paroxysms of joy at the reopening of their boulangerie.

The Menier has an excellent track record on musical revivals, and while The Baker’s Wife is as light as puff pastry, this production can be chalked up as another success.

Until September 14 (menierchocolatefactory.com)

Written by Veronica Lee   

I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire (Southwark Playhouse, London)

Verdict: Frantic fun

Rating:

American actor Tobey Maguire, Spider-Man in three films in the early 2000s, has (reputedly) upset a few people in Hollywood during his career.

But all credit to him that he hasn’t sought to cancel Samantha Hurley’s new play, which originated in New York last year and characterises him as a solvent-sniffing, acerbic egotist.

It’s 2004 and we are in 14-year-old Shelby’s basement; she is a Tobey Maguire superfan, as we can see in Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez’s striking design: every available surface is covered in publicity shots of the actor.

Maguire (Anders Hayward) is chained up because Shelby (Tessa Albertson) has kidnapped him and plans to marry him.

Gradually, though, her fantasy turns sour. The man she thought she knew everything about is merely a Hollywood PR construct and — OMG! — he’s scared of spiders.

Superfan Shelby, played by Tessa Albertson (left), kidnaps Tobey Maguire, played by Anders Hayward (right) in I’m Gonna Marry You, Tobey Maguire

The playwright packs a lot in, moving from teen crush to emotional breakdown via fever dreams and broad comedy as she examines the power of celebrity and the effect of childhood trauma.

While much of the humour is universal, the occasional joke doesn’t land (I had to look up ‘cornhole’…a garden game where you toss beanbags, apparently).

But the references to Britney Spears and Tamagotchis give a nice nostalgia hit, and there are plenty of cheeky one-liners, including one about an A-list actor’s taste in girlfriends.

Miss Albertson, reprising the role she created Off Broadway, is terrific, full of manic energy and menace; while Mr Hayward brings light and shade to the confused Maguire, never entirely convinced he isn’t being punked for a television show.

Kyle Birch, meanwhile, playing a few roles, ramps up the evening’s hamminess.

The play, at 105 minutes straight through, is too long and occasionally palls despite its often frantic nature.

But under Tyler Struble’s spirited direction it’s good fun.

Until August 10 (southwarkplayhouse.co.uk)

Written by Veronica Lee   

Skeleton Crew (Donmar, London)

Verdict: Assembly-line drama

Rating:

A 2008 calendar on the wall of the breakroom at a Detroit automotive plant helpfully places Dominique Morisseau’s play about the city’s motor industry.

Decades earlier, ‘Motor City’ had attracted millions of poor black people dreaming of a better life. Now, it’s a ghost-town.

It takes a few moments to tune in to the colloquial, inarticulate but eloquent chat; and even longer for the play to clank into gear, partly because Matthew Xia’s production lacks atmosphere.

The breakroom is implausibly clean and oddly underpopulated. A spookily quiet factory is operated by a skeleton crew of four who, like the industry, are ‘running on soul’.

Every scene has the same structure: an employee comes through a door, then another, the chat begins and each character reveals a tough back story.

Then out they go, through the same door, the pattern as repetitive as their work.

Indeed, the play feels as if it has been created on an assembly line, component by component, with an underpowered motor the last thing to be installed. Expertly done, but without any va-va-voom.

Fortunately, the richly drawn characters and stellar performances keep things moving. Pamela Nomvete’s union leader (and gambling addict) Faye, having done 29 years, is a mother figure to the younger ones, and quite literally a second-mom to Reggie (Tobi Bamtefa), son of her dead best friend.

The Skeleton Crew plays at the Donmar Warehouse. The set (pictured) resembles a break room – implausibly clean and oddly underpopulated

Pamela Nomvete (pictured) plays union leader (and gambling addict) Faye

Proud to have climbed the greasy pole, Reggie’s soul remains down with his mates. And he is feeling torn. ‘I’m sick of walking that line. The line that say I’m over here and you’re over there.’

Dez (Branden Cook) is scrimping to start his own business, maybe thieving stuff; and has a gun in his locker. All he really cares about is drop-dead gorgeous, heavily-pregnant Shanita (Rachel Ofori).

Too late, the engine sparks into life — by which time our sympathy has run out of gas.

Skeleton Crew is on until August 24.

Written by Georgina Brown

***
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