Tree’s rich and complex production isn’t discredited by a simplistic narrative

Tree

Young Vic, London                                                   Until August 24, 1hr 30mins

Rating:

There was a bit of a stink around this production when it opened at the Manchester International Festival: two playwrights, Tori Allen-Martin and Sarah Henley, accused Idris Elba and director Kwame Kwei-Armah of using their work without due credit. 

The Luther star and the Young Vic artistic director disputed the women’s involvement, insisting the show is based on Elba’s Mi Mandela album, and written by Kwei-Armah.

Is that relevant to a review? Well, the irony is that the story and script are the weakest links here. There’s something a little too neat about Tree’s balanced narrative, something too pat about its ending.

Cast members Andile Sotiya, Mbulelo Ndabeni and Daniella May are pictured running to Alfred Enoch, who plays young Londoner Kaelo

Cast members Andile Sotiya, Mbulelo Ndabeni and Daniella May are pictured running to Alfred Enoch, who plays young Londoner Kaelo

Following his mother’s death, Kaelo (Alfred Enoch), a young mixed-race Londoner, takes her ashes back to his white Afrikaner grandmother’s farm in South Africa. He’s plagued by bad dreams; it turns out he has a lot to learn about both the country’s history and its present, as well as his own family. 

His grandmother and mother both lost men they loved in apartheid violence: one white, one black.

Kaelo can seem remarkably naive as he navigates this history and faces two strong women pulling in very different directions. Sinéad Cusack is brilliant as the belligerent grandmother, a tough but resentful survivor who won’t budge from her farm, while Joan Iyiola plays Kaelo’s sparky, ferocious half-sister Ofentse, who is determined to reclaim the land for black South Africans.

IT’S A FACT 

When Idris Elba left school, he won a place in the National Youth Music Theatre thanks to a £1,500 grant from The Prince’s Trust.

Can they overcome the multi-generational hatred and find some common ground? They can, literally and metaphorically, but such swift reconciliation feels a little simplistic – as does much of the dialogue. 

The style of the production, however, is rich and complex. If there can be something uneasy about a good-time, song-and-dance spectacle used to tell a harrowing story, it still makes for exhilarating viewing.

A chorus represents Kaelo’s ancestors, spiralling him through dreams, while acrobatic dance sequences provide a stylised way to convey riots. Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante’s music blends club beats with African rhythms that have the cast moving through the standing crowd with joyous litheness.

A circular basket above the stage becomes an effective screen for kaleidoscopic video footage, which also brings the violence of apartheid vividly into the room.

Combined with Jon Clark’s lighting, the show has a fiery heat.

    

Peter Pan 

Troubadour, White City, London               Until October 27, 2hrs 30mins

Rating:

One of two new multi-million-pound theatres in west London, Troubadour White City is off to a flying start with this revival of Sally Cookson’s version of J M Barrie’s classic. 

A high-class pop-up, the temporary structure is perfectly comfortable and has the technical spec to give the show lift-off: Peter Pan flies over the entire audience. That the production makes no secret of its theatrical trickery – flying wires are dubbed ‘fairy string’ – does nothing to dim the magic.

The show retains the undertow of real melancholy in Barrie’s story, while also attempting to undercut its cloying Edwardian tweeness. Neverland is more an urban jungle, with graffitied walls and a rusty skip for the Jolly Roger, while a live band delivers a funky reggae and ska-toned soundtrack (and some forgettable songs).

Daisy Maywood puts on an excellent performance playing Wendy, the young girl who is shocked to find Peter Pan flying around her bedroom one night

Daisy Maywood puts on an excellent performance playing Wendy, the young girl who is shocked to find Peter Pan flying around her bedroom one night

Tinkerbell is a man in a tutu, and Wendy – an excellent, forthright Daisy Maywood, is exasperated at being forced to ‘play mother’.

John Pfumojena’s Peter Pan is dapper but a bit bland, and the fights with Hook underwhelming. But played by Kelly Price in a goth frock, this Hook is often genuinely scary. 

The ticking of the crocodile’s clock and Peter’s mummy issues never sounded so loud. 

 

Uncle Vanya  

Theatre Royal, Bath                                                                                                     2hrs 

Rating:

This may be Rupert Everett’s first attempt at theatre directing but it feels like a creakingly familiar way of doing Chekhov: samovars and period costume, RP and ennui.

David Hare’s svelte new version has teeth but lacks bite. Everett’s direction is too static and rather soporific – there’s little modulation between bored afternoons, drunken evenings and furious mornings.

As Vanya he’s very good, delivering both a husky, growling sarcasm and lugubrious, self-loathing languor. Katherine Parkinson is awkward, exasperated but still vivacious as Sonya. 

Rupert Everett as Uncle Vanya delivers husky, growling sarcasm and lugubrious, self-loathing languor on a drunken evening

Rupert Everett as Uncle Vanya delivers husky, growling sarcasm and lugubrious, self-loathing languor on a drunken evening

Clémence Poésy perfects the elegant boredom of Yelena but rattles through lines without much sense of anything behind them.

John Light’s visiting Doctor Astrov is high-minded – obsessed with reforesting, he actually says ‘the climate is changing’. His interactions with Yelena and Sonya could use a bit more heat, though.

Although it has only had a short run in Bath, the starry cast suggests further life for this Vanya – even if Everett hasn’t wrung the best out of them. 

 

Blues In The Night

Kiln Theatre, London                                                       Until September 7, 2hrs

Rating:

This musical tour of the blues is set in the bar of a fleabag Chicago hotel during the Thirties. Conceived by Sheldon Epps in the Eighties, the show has no dialogue, no action. 

There’s a jazz quintet and three female singers, all taking stock of the perfidy (and occasional ecstasy) of men.

The excellent Debbie Kurup and Gemma Sutton lend vocal variety. But Sharon D Clarke is the star here: her pained, stoical persona is perfect for the terrifying Wasted Life Blues, one of seven songs by blues legend Bessie Smith in a total of 26 numbers by Duke Ellington, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter and others. 

The title song is by Harold Arlen (who wrote Over The Rainbow) and Johnny Mercer.

Sharon D Clarke is the star here: her pained, stoical persona is perfect for the terrifying Wasted Life Blues, one of seven songs by blues legend Bessie Smith

Sharon D Clarke is the star here: her pained, stoical persona is perfect for the terrifying Wasted Life Blues, one of seven songs by blues legend Bessie Smith 

It’s not all dark, though. There’s comedy in Clarke’s winking, jelly-roll-obsessed Kitchen Man. Clive Rowe – as a man-who-gone-done-you-wrong stereotype – is a counterpoint to the black female tragedy.

If the excellent band doesn’t really get cooking until the second half, Susie McKenna’s saxy, smoky production is still a hot date for any blues fan. 

Robert Gore-Langton

 

Malory Towers 

The Passenger Shed, Bristol                               Until August 18, 1hr 45mins 

Rating:

The wooden hammerbeam roof of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s unique Temple Meads railway station arches over this family show. It provides a suitably Hogwartsian feel to a new take on Enid Blyton’s boarding-school world, adapted by the ever-funky Emma Rice.

The japes, quarrels and clifftop adventures – with a nostalgic score and lots of jolly hockey sticks – feature kind Sally, hot-tempered Darrell, timid Mary Lou, joker Alicia and spiteful Gwendoline.

To subvert the books’ privileged Forties boarding-school setting, the cast features mixed-race backgrounds. The tomboy ‘Willhelmina’ is played by Vinnie Heaven, an actor ‘identifying as non-binary’ (it’s best just to go with it) and the lion-hearted Sally is Francesca Mills, a feisty comic actress with dwarfism.

The tomboy ‘Willhelmina’ is played by Vinnie Heaven, an actor ‘identifying as non-binary’ and the lion-hearted Sally is Francesca Mills (above), a feisty comic actress with dwarfism

The tomboy ‘Willhelmina’ is played by Vinnie Heaven, an actor ‘identifying as non-binary’ and the lion-hearted Sally is Francesca Mills (above), a feisty comic actress with dwarfism 

The show rather effortfully bigs up diversity and girl power. But Emma Rice does clearly respect Blyton’s enlightened vision, parlayed through the digitally sketched headmistress with Sheila Hancock’s voice.

The evening is at its best when the author’s moral passion for the education of independent young women ‘the world can lean on’ shines through.

A good bet for a family outing, it’s rated suitable for children aged eight and over.

Robert Gore-Langton 

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