Retrograde (Kiln Theatre, London)
Verdict: Sidney Pointier sanctified
Jules and Jim (Jermyn Street Theatre, London)
Verdict: Bohemian rhapsody
The title, Retrograde, is a mystery. Ryan Calais Cameron’s cracking new play might better have been called The Last Temptation Of Sidney Poitier. He’s a Jesus figure, tested by the Devil in Tinseltown’s moral desert.
We find ourselves in the 1950s office of Hollywood king-maker Mr Parks, where the young actor is due to sign a contract that will make him a megastar.
The hitch is that he’s got to sign an oath renouncing his Left-wing past — and his association with Communist sympathiser and legendary singer Paul Robeson.
To start, it’s just badinage and bourbon, with the feeling either Parks or Bobby (the producer of a TV film set to star Sidney) will make a hideously racist gaffe.
Instead, Parks subjects Sidney to a hard-ball interrogation. Will he sign up to the realpolitik of American showbiz? Or allow himself to be blacklisted?
We find ourselves in the 1950s office of Hollywood king-maker Mr Parks, where the young actor is due to sign a contract that will make him a megastar
It’s a strong moral dilemma. But the real fun of Cameron’s 90-minute examination of conscience is the dialogue, packing the cussive intensity of David Mamet at his best.
At one point, the tricky, manipulative Parks boasts: ‘If I were any more broadminded, my brain would fall out.’
And yet for all the great lines, glittering like gems in a designer dung heap, the obvious agenda of canonising Poitier weakens the play as drama. Cameron never doubts Poitier’s integrity — and nor do we.
The most interesting character is therefore the Devil, in the form of Daniel Lapaine’s mischievous Parks. ‘The horns on my head hold up my halo,’ he grins.
Ian Bonar, as the nerdy Bobby, also has to pull off some fancy footwork to land Sidney in his new movie and bills himself as ‘the blackest white guy you know’. Some of the play’s best riffing is between the two execs, fighting over who’s boss.
Still, Ivanno Jeremiah, as Poitier, oozes the cool charisma necessary to maintain interest in the role of a good and virtuous man . . . who remains good and virtuous.
Jeremiah will play more complex characters. But he’s perfectly cast in Amit Sharma’s immaculate production pitching holy virtue against infernal intrigue.
Timberlake Wertenbaker’s hearty stage adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel Jules et Jim is a no less enjoyable hymn to historical pace-setters. Only in this case, they are fictional bohemians pioneering free love.
The story is best known from Francois Truffaut’s 1962 film about two Belle Epoque buddies, bonking their way through the early 20th century. But it being set in France, they are required to philosophise about it, too.
Stella Powell-Jones’s effervescent production opens with Jules, a German-Jewish expat, in search of the ideal woman in 1907 Paris. He meets a similarly dreamy Frenchman, Jim, in a bookshop. Both men soon fall in love with Kath, a Parisian artiste.
Samuel Collings is a donnish German idealist as Jules, who finds Kath first. Alex Mugnaioni is a towering but handsome Jim, whose passion for the same girl is cooled by his dodgy ticker.
Kath, played by Patricia Allison (from Netflix’s Sex Education), is a plucky belle dame sans merci.
Add to that a pleasingly old-fashioned commitment to national stereotypes — stiff Brits, amorous Gauls and earnest Germans — and you’ve got a bohemian rhapsody, billowing with hot air but terrific fun.
Perils of keeping mum for monstrous Mary
Dixon and Daughters (Dorfman, National Theatre, London)
Verdict: Family secrets and lies
Comfy sofa, squishy rug and through the gauzy walls to the kitchen beyond and into the bedrooms, everything looks cosy and safe.
So is that disconcerting flickering just a bulb on the blink? And what on earth is that clanking sound?
This house is indeed haunted and Deborah Bruce’s intense, illuminating play a ghost story of sorts.
Abusive Dixon is dead, but his toxic legacy, like the bloodstain beneath the rug, can’t be washed away.
It begins with Mary arriving home, greeted by daughters Julie (Andrea Lowe) and Bernie (Liz White), who have taken time off work, and granddaughter Ella (Yazmin Kayani), back from uni.
Brid Brennan’s brilliantly sour Mary is frothing with fury following three months in jail for ‘saying nothing’.
As the secrets and lies spill out, it becomes clear that saying nothing about her husband’s abusive control of her and of her daughters has been as damaging as the abuse itself.
Comfy sofa, squishy rug and through the gauzy walls to the kitchen beyond and into the bedrooms, everything looks cosy and safe
Monstrous Mary shamelessly accuses Julie, an alcoholic, battered by her husband (yes, she too is caught in this cycle of violence) of neglect.
Mary is a superb creation, as is her step-daughter, Tina, whose testimony was responsible for sending Mary down.
Initially, Tina appears to be a figure of fun, spouting therapy-speak mantras (‘straight back!’) and insisting her name is now Briana (which means ‘strong, virtuous and honourable’) as part of her reinvention of herself as a survivor rather than a victim.
An outstanding Alison Fitzjohn plays her as a self-help evangelist. ‘You’re like Oprah, you are,’ says Ella. Full of black comedy, this potent piece pierces the darkness. Bernie describes dealing with Mary as ‘like trying to kick a horse uphill’.
When Mary gives her bed to homeless ex-prisoner Leigh (Posy Sterling), her daughter says: ‘She’s got you running round her like she’s Meghan Markle.’
Perhaps the resolution is too neat. But Julie’s determination as she walks out, back straight, practising Briana’s preaching, is as moving as it is mighty.
By Georgina Brown
SPONGEBOB MUSICAL’S A DAMP SQUID
The Spongebob Musical (Oxford New Theatre, and touring)
Verdict: Hole-y inadequate
Should you have come of age around the millennium and had parents who subcontracted a fair amount of parenting to the Nickelodeon channel, you’ll remember SpongeBob as a quirky cartoon.
Living in the town of old Bikini Bottom, he’s the campest, most childishly optimistic adult sea sponge going, with pals including stupid starfish Patrick and the clinically depressed clarinet-playing squid, Squidward.
Musicals are increasingly, lazily hooked on milking established brands. Years after he trod the Broadway boards, SpongeBob has beached on our shores for a national tour.
It is dreadful — commercialisation-at-sea’s biggest flop since the Titanic. Kyle Jarrow’s bland, wooden book wades through a simple plot (a volcano threatens the town) but gets lost in a kelp forest of minor character diversions to squeeze in the whole gang.
Tapped out: Gareth Gates
The music is a nonsense collection of ‘original songs’ from a long list of random pop-types spanning Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and Aerosmith. Earnest dirges about the best day ever or looking forward to tomorrow. Drown me.
The bankable ‘star’ turns here are Pop Idol’s Gareth Gates as Squidward (who barely appears but to kill a tap number) and Drag Queen Divina de Campo who phones it in as plankton villain Sheldon.
It’s a shame because, all this aside, there’s a really talented ensemble. Our SpongeBob, Lewis Conway, has a tremendous voice. He and Chrissie Bhima (his squirrel best friend) are far too good for this.
By Luke Jones
***
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