Crystalwords

Spring Awakening

2012-02-04T15:00:00.110Z

book and lyrics by Steven Sater
music by Duncan Sheik
based on the play by Frank Wedekind
Pangdemonium!
Drama Centre Theatre, Singapore

Pangedemonium!'s decision to stage the Singapore premiere of one of the most celebrated musicals of recent years caused ripples of excitement when it was announced over a year ago and in the past few weeks, Spring fever has descended all over the island like a tropical storm. Indeed, it may seem difficult to understand just what exactly is the appeal of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's Tony Award-winning musical. It takes a controversial 1892 play by German playwright Frank Wedekind about teenagers grappling with their sexuality and sets it to rock music. The collision is surprisingly electric.

When I first caught Spring Awakening on Broadway five years ago, I was somewhat less than enthused. I remember queueing up for student rush tickets on a cold winter morning amidst the sound of teenagers belting out the soundtrack and building up my expectations to a feverish pitch. However, I was rather let down by the incongruous feel of watching a period play that featured hard-hitting themes of teenage pregnancy, suicide and sex which kept breaking out into jarringly modern rock numbers. I can't say the feeling has entirely subsided this time round but I found myself enjoying the vibrant contrast and the dark themes of tradition versus modernity much more.

It is a credit to Pangdemonium! for having the courage and chutzpah to mount this edgy musical, one which is not particularly well-known to Singaporean audiences more accustomed to big-name international productions, and for casting a young, relatively unknown group of actors led by teen singing sensation Julia Abueva as Wendla and sultry jazz crooner Nathan Hartono as Melchior.

The spunky, energetic cast as a whole do a very competent job but their relative inexperience in both singing and acting on stage prevents the audience from fully connecting with the plot. Abueva's stunning vocals easily carry her scenes but her acting is too tentative at times. Hartono nails Melchior's abstracted, bookish charm but one feels that his typical singing style does not gel with the demanding, upbeat songs of the book and more than once, his voice appears to be drowned out by the powerful score. Eden Ang's cheeky, mohawked Moritz is a clear crowd-pleaser but his transition from sexually-curious goofball to desperate, suicidal teen is not articulated very well and there is a lot of focus on getting the style and look of the character down pat (his famous 'jump shot' is now synoymous with the production) but not quite allowing the emotions to land.

There is fantastic support from Adrian Pang and Candice de Rozario who play all the adult men and women, conjuring up a world of "them and us" that distances the kids from their rigid, traditional and generally unyielding elders who refuse to let the kids experience the world on their own terms. Apart from the three leads, there are some strong performances by the talented ensemble cast. Rachel Marley as Martha delivers a beautifully harrowing account of sexual abuse at the hands of her father in "The Dark I Know Well" and Rayve Tay is a joy to watch as cocky gay teen Hanschen who expertly seduces his naive friend Ernst.

Tracie Pang's fine direction keeps the many scenes in Spring Awakening flowing well. The kids help each other out with the scene changes and are seen in the corridors between scenes, suggesting a strong sense of community and togetherness. In a delightful added prologue, the Pang boys Zack and Xander flex their comic muscles as a young Melchior and Moritz, suggesting a happy, carefree world where all order is restored when the boy rescues the girl from the evil pirate. Moritz's funeral scene ("Left Behind") is exquisitely directed too, the image of the young Melchior and Moritz horsing around in the background and Moritz's stoic father breaking down in a silent paroxysm of grief powerfully bringing out the pathos.

Production values are superb across the board. Eucien Chia, who impressed with his poker-themed set for Dealer's Choice, conjures up a world steeped in tradition with his beautiful cathedral set and imposing brick walls. This is cleverly toppled in Act II as a symbol of the world of order finally caving in to youthful impulse. The stage is brilliantly lit by Lim Yu-Beng and I liked the effect of the tin foil backdrop glinting in the light. Kudos also to choreographer Bill Calhoun for communicating the vitality and urgency of youth in the songs, particularly in standout numbers "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked". On a minor note, the individual microphones worn by the cast seemed to get in the way as they moved around and there were occasional dips in the sound quality of a line.

Great entertainment as it is, there are aspects of Spring Awakening that could have been better developed. The disturbing revelations of Ilse and Martha's sexual abuse do not receive any closure and there seems to be barely any time between the pregnant Wendla's nocturnal visit to the doctor and Melchior discovering her grave. As much as the rock musical treatment is inspired (all complete with hand-held microphones being whipped out as the kids break into song), part of me still feels that Frank Wedekind's original play would have been far more poignant. The fact that it was previously staged by Tim Supple in a translation by acclaimed poet Ted Hughes only makes me wish that this were revived.

Pangedemonium! must be commended for its excellent publicity campaign for Spring Awakening. Members of the public were treated to regular Facebook and Twitter updates, rehearsal video diaries on YouTube and roadshows by the cast around town. The Pangs certainly know how to throw a show.

With Spring Awakening, Pangdemonium! has tucked a whole quartet of solid shows under its belt - two musicals and two plays. Considering Adrian and Tracie's track record in dramatic pieces, I am all for them to focus on staging classic and contemporary plays. However, it would be very difficult not to tap into their Spring Awakening success by putting up excellent homegrown versions of West End and Broadway musicals. There is certainly room to develop both in our ever-burgeoning theatre scene and with Swimming With Sharks as their next project, Pangedemonium! seems to have both avenues covered.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10

Crystalwords Theatre Highlights 2011

2011-12-28T07:41:00.005Z

One of my resolutions for 2011 has been to write more and I'm pleased that not only have I restarted my blog this year after a two-year hiatus, I've also managed to write up a full review of every theatre production I've caught. Since relocating back to Singapore in September, I've joined online arts journal The Flying Inkpot as a theatre critic so hopefully there will be a steady stream of Singapore theatre reviews from now onwards.

2011 has a been a very mixed year for me career-wise - it started off in London, continued on to Paris where I spent six months on secondment and finally ended in Singapore. Through all that, I've managed to keep up my theatre-going, chalking up a total of twenty productions: twelve in the UK and eight in Singapore. Plays, as usual, feature predominantly on my list with a bumper crop of six Shakespeares:

1. Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Company)
2. La Bohème (OperaUpClose/SoHo Theatre)
3. A Flea in Her Ear (The Old Vic)
4. King Lear (Donmar Warehouse)
5. Life of Riley (Oxford Playhouse)
6. The Children's Hour (Comedy Theatre)
7. Snake in the Grass (The Print Room)
8. Frankenstein (National Theatre - Olivier)
9. Prisoner of Mumbai Mansion (HuM Theatre)
10. Macbeth (Singapore Repertory Theatre)
11. Richard III (The Old Vic)
12. Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham's Theatre)
13. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Theatre Royal Haymarket)
14. The Tempest (Theatre Royal Haymarket)
15. The Gunpowder Trail (Teater Ekamatra)
16. Dealer's Choice (Pangdemonium!)
17. Almost, Maine (The Mechanicals)
18. Gemuk Girls (The Necessary Stage)
19. Aladdin (W!ld Rice)
20. Mata Hati (Teater Ekamatra)

Regular readers of my reviews (yes, all six of you) will know that I rate all productions out of ten. My rating is based on a combination of factors - acting, directing, script, production values and the overall feel: that indefinable X-factor. For those who like statistics, you will be pleased to hear that the average production score for 2011 was 7.1 which indicates a solid year of theatre across the board. In particular, a record three productions scored a 9 - a tremendous acheivement in my book.

So, with the preliminaries aside, on to my 2011 theatre highlights. I have chosen to stick to six simple categories for the year, reflecting acting, writing and production values.

Best Actor - Kevin Spacey, Richard III
It goes without saying that it was Kevin Spacey who made the show in Sam Mendes's hugely accessible production, the concluding instalment of the transatlantic Bridge Project that has mesmerised audiences around the globe for the past three years. His Richard was arresting because it brought out the dark comedy behind this most reviled of Shakepearean villains, making him a figure you somehow root for in a twisted way even as you despise his actions. Spacey has always been a vibrant stage actor (see my review of Speed-the-Plow) but the sheer energy and physicality of this role - including being suspended like a slaughtered animal almost every day for months - was awe-inspiring.

Best Actress - Siti Khalijah, Gemuk Girls
I never expected much from Gemuk Girls before catching it and this revival of Haresh Sharma's blistering play about political detention in the Sixties blew me away. The Necessary Stage's simple black-box production emerged as the best Singaporean production I've caught this year. All three actors do a fantastic job but none more so than Siti Khalijah who marries youthful pragmatism, acerbic wit and fiery activism in her matchless portrayal of political aspirant Juliana. Siti made an effortless transition between three languages and was able to extract the best possible performance from every scene she was in, drawing out both laughter and pathos.

Best Ensemble - Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado was an absolute hoot from beginning to end. The entire ensemble cast pull their weight and come together to conjure up a lively world of laughter, boozing and games where there is a steady stream of action all around the circular set. Adam James's Don Pedro strikes the right note of avuncular jocularity, Tom Bateman and Sarah Macrae's Claudio and Hero are both amusing and tender as the perfect couple blown apart by a misunderstanding and John Ramm's superb constable Dogberry has the audience eating out of his hands with his swarthy, Rambo-esque bravado and comic malapropisms. A delightful team effort.

Best Script - Nick Dear, Frankenstein
We all know the horror story but Nick Dear's script was the first version I encountered that sought to humanize the Creature and chart his emotional growth rather than focusing on the scientific doings of Victor Frankenstein. There are beautiful, tender scenes where the Creature learns about language and nature and we realize that it is ultimately circumstance that results in him turning out the way he does: it is telling that when asked what he likes about Milton's Paradise Lost, he replies that he identifies less with Adam and more with Satan, the fallen angel. The plot is developed in a rich, evocative manner and even as Frankenstein and the Creature stand facing each other in the bitter wilderness, we realize that they are two sides of the same coin - men who just crave acceptance in the world.

Best Set - Mark Tildesley, Frankenstein
The 1100-seat, fan-shaped Olivier Theatre is a grand space to begin with and Danny Boyle's lavish production somehow made it even grander. All the stops are pulled out and Mark Tildesley's set conjures up effects such as rain, snow, revolving sets and steam engines bursting through the stage. Yes, it may have been too grand and awe-inspiring at times compared to the elegiac script but kudos is most certainly due for the sheer wow factor that dazzles us from the very beginning. That email from The National certainly got it right.

Best Director & Best Overall Production - Josie Rourke, Much Ado About Nothing
I have decided to combine these two awards as the director's vision and approach to a play is ultimately what gives it its entire flavour. I've enjoyed a very mixed year of theatrical offerings and there have been quite a number of contenders for the top prize. Ultimately though, it was Josie Rourke's whimsical take on Much Ado that scored the winning hand for me. The sets were a veritable burst of Eighties kitsch, David Tennant and Catherine Tate turn in their best comic performances (the image of a paint-splattered Tennant and comically flapping Tate is not something I will forget anytime soon) and the attention to detail in all the scenes is superb. A wonderful production all round and certainly one of my most enjoyable Shakespeare experiences.

So with that, it's on to 2012 and what looks set to be my first serious year of theatregoing in Singapore. And judging from the shows on offer over the next few months, things are off to a good start.

Mata Hati

2011-12-17T20:00:00.536Z

by Robin Loon
Teater Ekamatra
Drama Centre Black Box, Singapore

Teater Ekamatra's output this year has been impressive, ranging from a restaging of the racially-explosive Charged to the slick thriller The Gunpowder Trail. If there is one company slated to take Malay theatre in Singapore to the next level, it would most certainly be my choice. And therefore I really wanted to like Mata Hati, Ekamatra's year-end production. It was controversial, broad in its thematic range and seemed to hit all the right notes. However, all this did not quite add up to a satisfying finish.

Robin Loon's play about a high-flying Malay minister and his (homo)sexual shenanigans is certainly intriguing. It adopts a fairly basic premise: a retired minister is interviewed by a postgraduate student and the secrets from his past are slowly unravelled, trapping him in a pit of emotional torment. I have had a limited exposure to Loon's plays over the years but recall his writing style as one that was fresh, revelatory and naturalistic. However, there is a awkwardness to his dialogue in Mata Hati that wears the play down. Smooth Anglophilic cadences and Singaporean characters who speak in overly articulate tones may look good on paper but somehow don’t strike a credible note when performed.

At the heart of Mata Hati is Amir Mahmood, the classic Malay success story. Scholarships, prestige and impressive portfolios all come his way and he rapidly rises to the highest echelons of the civil service. Yet, Amir's biggest secret is his homosexuality, a fact that is finally revealed when his sordid exploits with rent boys on a state trip to Paris are leaked to the authorities. Throughout the play, Amir is confronted by the ghosts of his past: his free-spirited childhood friend who urges him to stand up for who he is, his estranged daughter who reveals her disappointment in him for living a life of deceit and his former civil servant subordinates who remind him of his immense potential and how much he has going for him.

The problem I found, despite the rich themes and clever wordplay, was what the play was driving at. It delves into issues of Malay culture, political expediency and homosexual relations but does not seem to make a clear statement about anything. There are scenes about the delicate way the government handles a potential scandal and a successful Malay leader feeling disconnected from fellow members of his community. However, none of these issues are teased out into a significant conclusion. The final image we are left with is simply of a man who has been undone by his actions and is resigned to the fact that life ploughs on. Much like Ekamatra's last production, The Gunpowder Trail, I welcomed the image of an emancipated Malay professional but was disappointed by the lack of any hard-hitting social commentary to provide some depth.

Mata Hati does however benefit from decent acting across the board. Isabella Chiam gives a heartfelt performance as the mild-mannered postgraduate student from mainland China, Eleanor Tan is all silky efficiency as a senior government aide sent by the PM to sort out Amir's situation and Tan Shou Chen has a superb turn as an effete civil servant in Amir's office judiciously keeping his sexual "proclivities" under wraps. Johari Aziz turns in a competent performance as Amir, bringing a hint of ironic detachment and flippancy to the character that is tempered with an increasing sense of regret and emotional isolation. However, his performance is slightly compromised by the play's artificial dialogue and tendency to delve into melodrama.

Irfan Kasban's dusky lighting conjures up a moody room of reckoning and maintains the suspense in each scene. Zizi Azah also does a commendable job in directing once again, manipulating the action over the limited theatre space. I enjoyed her stylised, almost ritualistic opening and closing sequences and the deliberate use of chalk and water to draw on the floor and then wash it away: a quasi-religious allusion to something dirty being cleansed. What I felt was somehow less well communicated was the choice of set – a cross-shaped platform with a throne-like chair in the middle. There is a lot of pacing back and forth during the play which does not seem to be wholly warranted and the central throne remains under-utilised; if there was a deeper significance to this, it somehow escaped me.

Where Mata Hati achieves its resonance is its ability to highlight the different layers of discrimination that operate in society and by contrasting Amir's decided lack of self-awareness compared to everyone else. The immigrant student interviewer is acutely aware of her place as an outsider and makes a conscious effort to blend in, even changing the way she speaks her native Chinese. The junior civil servant is candid about not being able to rise up the civil service hierarchy as he is gay and not a scholar. Even the senior government aide flatly remarks that she would never be in the same scrape as Amir as she is of the "wrong race and wrong gender". We are reminded that despite the so-called meritocracy of our society, everyone is still a victim of labels that are difficult to shake off.

Mata Hati is a play rather grandly billed as the downfall of a "tragic hero" but I could not quite draw the same parallel from the story of a gay Malay minister who leads a fairly successful life and only seems to regret his actions much later. Does Mata Hati invoke pity or horror on the level of Hamlet or Oedipus Rex? I don't think so. At a more basic level, one finds it hard to connect with Amir - is he really a victim? Perhaps not the best choice of play for Ekamatra then, but kudos to them for constantly pushing the boundaries of Malay theatre and delivering a flawed but nuanced examination of the uneasy relationship between sex and politics.

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

Aladdin

2011-11-27T20:00:00.387Z

script and lyrics by Jonathan Lim
music by Elaine Chan
W!ld Rice
Drama Centre Theatre, Singapore

W!ld Rice's annual Christmas pantomime is an elaborate affair, bringing together audiences of all ages to send off the year in style. Ever since W!ld Rice's first take on the Singaporean panto in 2003, which fused the uniquely British tradition of pantomime with colourful local characters and themes, they have faithfully churned out a new family extravaganza every year. And it is perhaps due to this repertoire of inventive, well-received pantos such as Cinderel-lah! (revived in 2010 as part of W!ld Rice's 10th anniversary celebrations) that I feel this year's production gleams but fails to truly sparkle.

This year sees the return of Aladdin, a panto which was first staged by W!ld Rice in 2004. The script has been entirely rewritten by Jonathan Lim of Chestnuts fame and features his trademark mash-ups and comic interludes. Political and pop culture references litter the script and the lyrics of the (mostly pop) songs have been imaginatively substituted to suit the wacky storyline. In this exuberant retelling, Aladdin is a juvenile delinquent fresh out of the Boys' Home, Jasmine is a lonely heiress in Malacca and the all-important magic lamp is sequestered in the Batu Caves. Along the way, there are monkeys, a wizard of dubious Central Asian persuasion and major family melodrama. It's all good fun and there are plenty of laughs but I found myself wishing for just a little more biting social satire and a more coherent plot. The production occasionally feels like a comedy sketch show with various scenes being yoked together - maybe it's just Lim's Chestnuts background getting in the way.

Aladdin is headlined by Hady Mirza and Sylvia Ratonel of Singapore Idol fame, both of whom make their professional stage debuts as Aladdin and Jasmine. Hady and Ratonel acquit themselves well but there is unfortunately not much chemistry to this pairing at all: they are fine individually but hardly come across as star-crossed lovers. When Aladdin gives Jasmine a lingering look for the first time, it seems almost incongruous and even the climactic magic carpet kiss looks awkward. In terms of singing, Ratonel emerges as the stronger of the two, dazzling the audience with her solo I Want to Break Free and belting out Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway with panache. Asian Idol winner Hady is immediately likeable and performs some mean gymnastics on stage but the melodramatic panto songs unfortunately do not give him the chance to showcase his impressive vocals.

The whole Apple technological craze is a recurring topic. Cue numerous iPhone references, the genie being locked in an iLamp and the wizard being punished by being locked into an phone app that resembles Angry Birds. Another theme is Peranakan culture: Jasmine's imperious grandmother is thus styled Amelia of Amethyst Rise, a humorous nod to Stella Kon's famous character (who is herself an unseen guest) and we get references to the sexual preferences of Peranakan men as well as tasty buah keluak dishes. After a while though, the jokes tend to feel a bit stale: when asked why she brought a Tiffin carrier to the Batu Caves, Jasmine brightly replies, "I'm a Nyonya, I bring kueh wherever I go."

In the wacky world of pantos, nothing is ever quite what it seems and cross-dressing is often central to the action. I was pleased to note that this aspect of the show was a resounding success. Darius Tan had proved rather disappointing as a comic sidekick in HuM Theatre's Prisoner of Mumbai Mansion earlier this year but as a larger-than-life cleaning auntie with an opera obsession, he has the audience eating out of his hand. Theatre veteran Karen Tan is also a delight as the mustachioed nemesis Wizard Abba'k'adab-rah. Her attempts at being evil and frightening seem almost self-consciously half-hearted but this is more than compensated for by her superb ad libs and sardonic jibes. "Elmo is no more" she mutters at one point, indicating her furry red staff, a joke that (perhaps fortunately) was lost of most younger members of the audience.

A crucial ingredient of a good panto is something that no actor, director or writer can anticipate - the audience's participation. You only achieve a really good vibe when the audience is loudly cheering on the heroes and booing the villains, yelling back when asked questions and genuinely being a part of the mayhem on stage. On the gala premiere night that I attended, there was a relatively good response from the crowd. However, Singaporean audiences tend to be a little reticent and there were times when, despite the best efforts of the actors, the audience was just not playing along. On that note, Darius Tan and Karen Tan did do a very good job of engaging with the audience, even singling out the occasional person to deliver a line.

As always, W!ld Rice dazzles with its excellent production values. Elaine Chan's music is fun and catchy, the set design by CK Chia is a fantastic effort for a first-timer and keeps the audience guessing where the story is going to take them and the costumes by Moe Kasim show beautiful attention to detail.

The Young & W!ld kids are a complete delight, scampering around as little monkeys or dressed in a brilliant medley of colours as a Peranakan chorus. It's great seeing the kids having fun on stage and this is something that W!ld Rice have really excelled in: creating a theatre occasion for the family where adults and children alike can have a good time and celebrate the festive season together. And I have to admit: that's where the real magic lies.

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

*This review was written for The Flying Inkpot. See original post here.

Gemuk Girls

2011-11-10T20:00:00.008Z

by Haresh Sharma
The Necessary Stage
The Necessary Stage Black Box, Singapore

Gemuk Girls begins with a speech. A long, slightly rambling soliloquy by a photographer called Marzuki who describes being arrested by the police in the middle of the night in front of his family. He is chatty and earnest, even jokey, as he tells us how he was accused of being a communist and a socialist with an agenda against the government. As he lies down in his solitary prison cell, the only sound ringing in his ears is of his daughter Kartini counting to a hundred as he is handcuffed, thinking her father is just playing a game and that when she finishes counting, he will be back. It is a speech that paints a masterful portrait of one man's anguish, desolation and tenacity in the face of adversity, a speech that brilliantly catapults us into this most visceral of plays.

Haresh Sharma's critically-acclaimed play about political detention under the Internal Security Act first premiered in 2008, presenting us with an image of Singapore where citizens believed in standing up for their beliefs and being true to their ideals. Just three years on, Sharma's script is revealed to be not only powerful but indeed prescient. We have just witnessed a landmark general election where, more than ever before, ordinary citizens have unambiguously voiced their feelings against the ruling party and campaigned for change. Furthermore, Malaysia has just passed a law to abolish its own ISA, recognizing the unfairness of incarceration without trial. A revival could not be better timed.

Gemuk Girls is another of TNS' plays with a strong humanist slant. It focuses on contemporary issues facing society and the action is driven by just two or three characters. Stripped of rhetoric and flourish, acting forms the very heart of this play. Najib Soiman's Marzuki, who never leaves the stage, exerts a powerful presence throughout. Najib excels in quiet understatement and this is especially manifest in the hugely affecting scene when he believes he is about to be released from prison. As he is made to sign a confession for a crime he never did, he stares at his hand in a piercing manner, then forces himself to smile at his waiting wife and return once more to his cell. Only then does he cry. It a scene that could so easily have been overplayed, but Najib does it with a quiet dignity that shatters the soul. I was reminded of Derek Jacobi's matchless Lear who whispers in the storm scenes, highlighting that the raging tempest outside is nothing compared to the storm in his mind.

Alin Mosbit (a grown-up Kartini) and Siti Khalijah (Juliana, her high-flying daughter on the cusp on entering local politics) - the play's eponymous Gemuk Girls - display excellent chemistry and are a pleasure to watch. Alin is perfectly competent in her comic scenes but once feels that she is somehow too comfortable in her role, never quite rising to match the emotional weight of the others in the more poignant moments. Siti, on the other hand, turns in one of the most impressive performances I have seen this year - effortlessly switching between three languages, moving from sardonic witticisms to rousing passion and imitating the staccato retorts of "gahmen" cronies with a deliciously authentic air.

Another strength of Gemuk Girls is that it never lets one emotion overwhelm the others and the script adroitly interpolates the comedy and tragedy. After Marzuki's powerful opening monologue, the amusing banter between Kartini and Juliana is infectious and the two actresses do a great job of bringing in the laughs. Alin in particular delivers the play's many comic quips with panache: "The average Chinese woman is a mother at 40. The average Malay woman - a grandmother."

Sharma's deceptively simple title reminds us of the importance of roles and their capacity in shaping an individual. Forty-odd years down the road, Kartini is a confident middle-aged woman, adamant on her identity as a vivacious Gemuk Girl. Perhaps as a result of the childhood trauma of having a father who disappeared and never returned from prison, she revolts against all conventional values - mocking fellow members of her Malay-Muslim community, marrying a man whom she seems to ignore and denouncing her own mother as a "vampire bitch". She relishes in this role she has created for herself, all the while ignoring her more important role as the daughter of a political detainee, a part of her history she chooses to obliterate completely.

The essential contradictions that shape both Kartini and Juliana are triggered off when they find out that Marzuki has died after a lifetime of incarceration. The play then veers off into two separate scenarios, each set three years later. In the first, Kartini is coolly unaffected by her father's demise, ploughing on in her lucrative halal health foods business while Juliana is an activist desperate to exonerate her grandfather and makes a rousing speech to champion the abolishment of the ISA. In another parallel scene, we see Kartini as a sombre, homely gardener who is distanced from her politically ambitious daughter who has now become an MP with a newfound conservatism and religiosity.

It seems to be difficult to square the circle - are these really the same people? The way I see it, they are both. Kartini's initial callousness and material concerns give way to a genuine sense of affection and nostalgia for her father and a bitter acceptance that her fellow Gemuk Girl daughter now moves in a different trajectory. Even visually, Kartini appears fatter and more whimsical in her gestures while Juliana is seemingly slimmer and more precise, highlighting the gulf that has developed between them. Juliana's early activism may have finally given way to serving the country as a dedicated, orthodox politician and quietly effecting change from within. Sharma also offers us some closure; in separate dream-like sequences, Marzuki reaches through to both these women and they each have their private audience with him. Even as Juliana reaches the zenith of her career in a future scenario as Singapore's first Malay PM who finally brings about the abolishment of the ISA, Kartini is revealed to be a shrunken old lady smoking opium alone, presumably estranged from her daughter. Political recognition has finally arrived, but only at the expense of personal ties.

True to a traditional black box staging, Gemuk Girls is minimalist and stark. Set designer Vincent Lim has come up with large wooden platforms that can been rolled back and forth and locked in place and this simple feature conjures up a world that is both transcient and immutable. Sometimes they provide a platform for the actors to march up and down on. At other times, the actors lie beneath them: they become a quiet resting point where the actors can hide away from the world. The way the platforms are used also cleverly suggests an interdependence between the characters; the image of Marzuki physically putting the boards in place for the other two actors echoes how the memories of his imprisonment exert a hold upon their daily lives, even many years later.

The multimedia design deserves a special mention. In a play that features long chunks of Malay dialogue that can be hard to follow, the surtitling was presented in a highly original manner. At times, it appears in traditional horizontal lines on a side wall. Yet, as Marzuki becomes more agitated and worked up in his prison cell, the text itself grows unruly and jagged. In an especially arresting sequence, the surtitles blended into each other in a dizzying pastiche, with a giant image of Marzuki's face superimposed on the background so that we could see him speaking even as his words swirled around the screen. It was a masterstroke of visual presentation, showing a man quite literally swallowed up by his thoughts.

It has been a monumental year for local politics and Gemuk Girls brings it to a fitting end, reminding us of all we have achieved as a nation and the distance we have yet to traverse to be, as Juliana declares, "truly independent". TNS has given us a play to be proud of and as they blaze into their twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations, we can only wish for more instances of local theatre that are just as incisive, illuminating and incandescent.

The Crystalwords score: 9/10

*This review was written for The Flying Inkpot. See original post here.

Singapore Writers Festival 2011

2011-10-30T05:51:00.001Z

The 14th edition of the Singapore Writers Festival (22-30 October 2011) draws to a close today and I've had a great time attending talks, book launches, exhibitions and other vibrant literary events. This has been my first literary festival of any sort and I made good use of the general Festival Pass that allowed entry to most events.

I always love to see writers sparring about their craft and one of the highlights for me were the thoughtfully curated panel discussions. The ones I attended were:

Are Singapore Playwrights Playing their Cards Rights?
Featuring: Huzir Sulaiman, Chong Tze Chien, Damon Chua
Moderator: Eleanor Wong

Politics and Society: Is the Pen Always Mightier?
Featuring: Andrey Kurkov, Yang Lian, Catherine Lim
Moderator: Cherian George

Getting Lost: The Sly Art of Travel Writing
Featuring: Brian Thacker, Rahul Bhattacharya, Tan Wee Chong
Moderator: Stephen McCarty

Drooling over Food Porn: How to Write Deliciously
Featuring: Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Christopher Tan, Damian D'Silva
Moderator: KF Seetoh

Malay Theatre: Is Language Key in Reaching Out to New Audiences
Featuring: Alfian Sa'at, Aidli 'Alin' Mosbit, Zizi Azah
Moderator: Oniatta Effendi

From Stage to Screen
Featuring: Lee Shinho, Vikas Swarup, Prabda Yoon
Moderator: Tan Kheng Hua

Writing Across Cultures: Fiction Through a Foreign Lens
Featuring: Kunal Basu, Meira Chand, Justin Hill , Dawn Farnham
Moderator: Deepika Shetty

Liaisons Between Law and Literature
Featuring: Nicholas Hasluck, Aaron Lee, Jeffrey Lim
Moderator: Eleanor Wong

Congratulations to the organizers for a job well done. It's been an engaging and insightful nine days and I'm already looking forward to attending next year's Festival. Time to tuck into some new books!

Almost, Maine

2011-10-07T19:30:00.568+01:00

by John Cariani
The Mechanicals
Se7en 1nch, Singapore

John Cariani's Almost, Maine premiered in Portland five years ago, enjoyed an off-Broadway run and has since become a staple of theatre groups around the country. The premise is simple: it's a bitterly cold winter in Maine and the residents of the fictitious town of Almost are restless. On the night that the rare northern lights make an appearance, bringing a luminescence to the otherwise cheerless sky, we journey through the lives and loves of these quirky individuals.

This is a fun, crowd-pleasing debut production for The Mechanicals, a company consisting of young theatre professionals who first staged the play in Manila earlier this year. The nine two-person plays, which range from wistful romance to whimsical comedy, take us through the pleasures, pains and pitfalls of love, painting a colourful tapestry of the human heart and all its foibles.

Directors Lauren Go and Kevin Lagrange have made a great choice by staging Almost, Maine at Se7en 1nch, a trendy bar at Clarke Quay. The play literally makes use of the entire acting space of the bar: the aisles, doors, bar counter and even the pool table are all effectively integrated into the scenes, giving them a rich fluidity. By playing right at the audience, the production gains a strong sense of intimacy and we are drawn towards these characters, joining in their laughter, pain and anguish. Perhaps the concept could have been been taken one step further by having the actors actually talking to or directing lines at members of the audience, increasing the feeling of joint participation and solidarity.

Several of the cast members double up as more than one character and do an excellent job in their scenes. Pavan Singh turns in a fresh, naturalistic performance in Sad & Glad about a guy who encounters an old flame at a bar and realizes that she has moved on with life. Lauren Go (equally adept at acting as in directing) is memorably touching in Getting It Back as a girl returning "all the love" her boyfriend had given her. And Kluane Saunders is an absolute comic gem in Seeing the Thing as a rambling, tomboyish girl too blind to open up her heart to the guy standing right in front of her.

There is a strong contingent from LASALLE and it is great to see them developing their talents in an independent production with their peers. That being said, there are some weak performances amongst the ensemble and the cast as a whole is less adept at conveying the delicate emotions required in the more poignant scenes. Comedy is definitely a strong suit and memorable scenes include two guys literally falling all over each other and a couple peeling off layers and layers (and layers!) of winter clothing before making a beeline for the bedroom.

The production boasts some decent directing and enjoyable acting but there are some technical issues that should have been ironed out. Blocking was not dealt with adequately. Due to the configuration of the space, members of the audience found themselves unable to see the faces of the actors for certain scenes. My theatre companion actually had to stand and move to a better viewing point for an entire scene and when you have people shifting around and craning their necks, it's never a good thing. The manually-operated spotlighting was also rather sloppy in its execution and seemed to be unnecessarily bright at times.

There is a clever conceit in Cariani's play about the town of Almost having an amorphous identity (one character remarks how it is "Almost" but not quite an independent geographical entity) and this being reflected in the dislocated nature of its residents. The backdrop of the northern lights also drives this point home; like energetic sub-atomic particles that give rise to this glorious burst of colour in the sky, these people inhabit a strange orbit of their own, colliding frequently but only occasionally making that vital human connection. It's a neat idea, but only two scenes explicitly drew our attention to the world outside, and it would have been nice for the natural landscape to be better integrated into the scenes.

Almost, Maine is an assured debut by The Mechanicals and though there is some way to go in terms of refining its acting and production talents and building up a coherent identity as a company, it is refreshing to see them break out using such an innovative venue. I certainly believe that this has tremendous potential in Singapore - why not stage plays in cafes or bars, allowing viewers to have a drink and unwind without the formal setting of a theatre or performance space? Musicians and comedians have been doing it for ages and perhaps it's high time our theatre groups caught on.

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

*This review was written for The Flying Inkpot. See original post here.

Dealer's Choice

2011-10-01T15:00:00.546+01:00

by Patrick Marber
Pangdemonium!
Drama Centre Theatre, Singapore

Pangdemonium!, the maverick theatre company started up by Adrian and Tracie Pang last year, has dealt another winning hand. After Patrick Marber's blistering drama Closer which examined the emptiness of modern sexual relationships, the company's third production taps into the talents of this fine playwright once again in Dealer's Choice, Marber's award-winning debut play about the complex relationship between men and gambling.

Dealer's Choice is set in a restaurant in London's East End and crackles with raw, masculine energy. There is an easy chemistry between Daniel Jenkins' affable chef Sweeney and Andy Tear's bumbling waiter 'Mugsy', their clipped East End accents lending a refreshing authenticity to Marber's dialogue. The gangly Tear in particular turns in an excellent comic performance as Mugsy with his naive aspirations of opening up a restaurant in a vacant toilet in Mile End, subjecting himself to endless teasing by the others. Daniel York also brings an brooding, enigmatic air to Ash, a hard-core gambler who joins in the men's weekly poker game, his secret agenda setting off a frisson of unease.

Despite Tracie Pang's generally slick direction, there are some uneven performances amongst the cast. Keagan Kang's Frankie, a Casanova-like waiter who is all set to move to Vegas to make it big as a professional gambler, tries a little too hard with his overcompensating hand gestures and larger-than-life antics. Julian Low's Carl, the gambling-addicted son of restaurant owner Stephen (Adrian Pang), also does not measure up to the other more seasoned actors and suffers from a patchy accent which occasionally lacks intonation. Low strikes one as being overly exuberant and energetic, as if he is trying too hard to make his presence felt.

Adrian Pang is entirely at home as the boss Stephen, a role he invests with a measured air, neither overdoing the accent nor drawing too much attention to the character. I was glad for the note of realism in the casting: Low looks like he could well be Pang's son and there is even a passing reference to Stephen's wife choosing to sit on her "fat Buddhist arse" while he went on with life, suggesting a Chinese immigrant family coping with their own domestic problems while trying to do the best for themselves in the gritty East End.

Marber uses poker as a metaphor for men's desperate desire to connect with others, yet it is ironic that even this connection is itself a transaction. In a tender scene, Stephen gives the broke Carl the hundred pound buy-in for the evening's game, literally paying for his estranged son's company at the game. Similarly, Mugsy is desperate to play even though he always inevitably loses and has to take on extra shifts to pay for his debts. We sense that ultimately, playing poker is how these men reach out to each other to overcome their own loneliness.

Eucien's Chia's excellent set for the first two acts is a cross-section of the kitchen and dining room, the poker theme picked up in the large playing cards on the floor demarcating the two areas. The climactic third act which takes place around the poker table in the basement is also brilliantly conjured up, with a turning table suggesting the constantly changing face of Lady Luck. Indeed, as we move below the restaurant, we also journey deeper behind the raw, base motivations of the players.

There is an aching sadness in Marber's writing about how these men survive in the absence of women - the divorced father, the serial womaniser, the lonely bachelor - and how the game of poker is part of the armour they use to shield themselves from the harsher realities of life. At the poker table, each man is on his own and his vulnerabilities are all laid bare. When he realizes that he has gambled away all the money he had set aside to take his daughter out the next day, Jenkins's Sweeney weeps on the stairs, the spectre of an utterly broken man. Likewise, Frankie's macho facade collapses like a house of cards when Ash notes that whenever Frankie bluffs, he has a scared look on his face.

Most poignantly, we realize that the biggest gambler of the lot is not Ash or Carl but the level-headed Stephen. In an impulsive moment, he bets the four thousand pounds owed by his son to Ash over the mere toss of a coin. For all his compassion and equanimity, it is Stephen who emerges the most tragic figure, sitting alone at his computer when everyone else has left, presumably to document the evening's game in detail. Poker for him in not so much an addiction or a power trip; it is a ritual he is unable to shake off.

Dealer's Choice is a bold, confident choice for Pangdemonium! and one which is extremely topical in a country increasingly seduced by casino culture. It seems that they have discovered their own niche in Singapore theatre - the dark comedy - one which packs in the laughs but also delivers deeper lessons about life's realities. In that vein, I would love to see Pangdemonium! take on the gritty street plays of David Mamet or bittersweet domestic comedies of Alan Ayckbourn in future productions. In the meantime, I shall be putting my dancing shoes aside for their upcoming rock musical Spring Awakening in February 2012.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10

The Gunpowder Trail

2011-09-10T20:00:00.551+01:00

by Zizi Azah
adapted from the short story by Claire Tham
Teater Ekamatra
Esplanade Theatre Studio, Singapore

One cannot deny that Teater Ekamatra's latest excursion, an adaptation of Claire Tham's award-winning short story The Gunpowder Trail, has the hallmarks of compelling black-box theatre: an intriguing non-linear plot, strong female characters and an unconventional mother-daughter relationship set against the backdrop of modern Singapore.

Tham is known for her strong, character-driven plots and this slick two-hander, written and directed by Ekamatra's Artistic Director Zizi Azah, is largely faithful to the original text. Lina (Onietta Effendi) is a Yale scholar, formidable banker and single mother. Her career is everything and she barely has time to raise her teenage daughter Alia (Natasha Thangamany), whom she had abandoned for 12 years before returning home from the States. Lina then mysteriously disappears with 50 million dollars of client money. The play proceeds through a series of flashbacks and monologues, interspersed with scenes of Alia being interrogated by police officers as to her mother's whereabouts.

Zizi shows a mastery of space in her direction and has the characters pace up and down, run round in circles, shout from opposite ends and share intimate scenes in the very middle, all the while playing to audience members seated on both sides of the theatre. In the post-show dialogue, she describes how she had conceived of Alia's space (the dressing table) and Lina's space (free rein over the rest of the stage) and this contrast between the contained and the uncontained is paralleled in the characters as we see parts of them being reined in, yet others spilling out.

A key theme of The Gunpowder Trail is the distance between people in modern relationships and this is echoed by set designer's Izmir Ickbal's long dining table with a chair at either end. When Alia kisses her mother's hand, it is deliberately played such that we see the daughter lean forward and kiss and the mother receive whilst they remain seated at opposite ends of the table, the flat distance between them making the show of emotion all the more poignant.

Structurally and aesthetically, it all hangs together quite well but I spent most of the production pondering over one question: what does Zizi seek to achieve by introducing a new racial/religious angle into the plot, changing the race of the two women from Chinese in the original text to Malay-Muslim?

Racial politics is certainly nothing new for Teater Ekamatra; their recent productions of Charged and Pariah dealt with issues of race with an uncompromising frankness. What The Gunpowder Trail however lacks is that same level of trenchant social commentary. Zizi certainly does try to weave in a religious backdrop to the story. It is revealed that as an undergraduate, the pregnant Lina had wanted to get rid of her child but had experienced a religious awakening at the abortion clinic when she heard the azan (Muslim call to prayer), making her fall to her knees in forgiveness. In another memorable sequence, an inebriated Lina stumbles home after a client dinner and is chastised by her daughter with images of hellfire and damnation for drinking as a Muslim. Yet such scenes, while providing a religious gloss to the play, are piecemeal and do not fit together as a coherent whole.

What emerges from a Malay-Muslim interpretation of this particular story is the rarely seen image of an emancipated and educated Malay woman who, unlike so many others from her background, is in every respect the equal of her peers. As she recounts her days of academic glory, Oniatta's Lina arches her back and repeats her mother's words: "kibarkan bendera Melayu" (fly the Malay flag high), miming the brandishing of a flag with the ferocious air of a social nobody who has reached the zenith of accomplishments. It would have been nice for this motif of the simple Malay girl having succeeded in life to feature more. Yet Lina's material success is for the most part universal; apart from the occasional colloquial reference, one may struggle to place this in a specifically Malay context.

Oniatta cuts a striking figure as Lina in her cropped hair and designer clothes, marrying feline charm with world-weary cynicism. Her accent itself is modulated perfectly; Oniatta's clipped anglophone tones are a world apart from the coarse Malay which she employs to portray the role of an intimidating police inspector.

Natasha Thangamany, in her professional debut, is rather wooden in comparison. Of course, this is only to be expected from a newcomer and one playing a more passive character like Alia. Yet, her speeches seem rather forced and it is difficult to imagine her playing a lascivious Caucasian man with very little change in her mannerisms. The fact remains that in a two-hander, there is very little room to hide one's inexperience.

Even at her most callous, it is difficult to paint Lina as a terrible mother; by giving her daughter up for 12 years and letting her be raised by her grandparents, she allows Alia to be brought up in a home full of warmth and religion, a home which she herself had been brought up in. As she drops Alia off at school, Lina reminds her daughter to say her prayers and silently breaks down in the car before driving away. We sense that deep inside Lina, there is a good mother who wants the best for her daughter and Oniatta's strength lies in being able to draw out the tenderness buried underneath her cold corporate shell.

It is refreshing to see a bold take on a Malay character and despite the uneven acting and the racial theme not being integrated into the plot quite as much as I would have liked, this is a play of great potential that is beautifully staged. Singaporean theatre needs to see more Linas and the three-day run of this production at the Esplanade Theatre Studio certainly does not do it much justice. As Lina herself would say, "kibarkan bendera Melayu"!

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

*This review also appears as a guest review for The Flying Inkpot. See here.

The Tempest

2011-09-02T19:30:00.356+01:00

by William Shakespeare
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Trevor Nunn's debut season as artistic director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket has indeed been a season of personal firsts. He kicked off the year by delivering the first major revival of Terence Rattigan's wartime drama Flare Path in more than half a century. Then came the Chichester transfer of Tom Stoppard's tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, a play he was meant to have directed the inaugural production of back in the Sixties. Now, his third offering of the season presents The Tempest, which, in a career involving a good 30 plays in the Shakespeare canon, he has interestingly never directed.

The Tempest falls into that odd category of Shakespeare plays that resists the clear labels of "comedy" and "tragedy". These so-called "late romances" feature strong redemptive plots and reconciliations, fantastical elements and a mix of courtly and pastoral scenes. Partly due to the inherent problematics of the play's interpretation, Nunn chooses to adopt a very traditional staging.

It has become fashionable in modern productions of The Tempest to explore its colonial implications: Prospero the callous coloniser versus Caliban the subsumed native. Nunn resists this by deliberately locating his Tempest in its original Jacobean setting, an era when being marooned on an unknown island did indeed plausibly amount to a permanent exile from the rest of the world. Nunn also also takes pains to emphasize that the action of the play proceeds over just a few hours, setting a large hourglass down in the middle of the stage to remind us of this temporal aspect. His Tempest therefore highlights that this play, commonly believed to be Shakespeare's last work, respects the classical unities of Time, Place and Action.

After a sparse, Beckettian-inspired Rosencrantz & Guildernstern Are Dead which occasionally felt rather languid, Nunn's Tempest is a richer, more evocative creature. The world of magic is brought to the very fore; the shipwreck scene is cleverly conjured up in a medley of light and sound design by Paul Pyant and Paul Groothuis. Music is also integrated very well into the scenes. Nonetheless, there are times when Nunn lets theatrics get in the way; the dream-like sequence with the three goddesses strikes one as being overly indulgent and carnivalesque.

Nunn's production highlights the clear distinction between the world of the spirits and that of the humans. Tom Byam Shaw's Ariel is all lightness and air, floating up and down the stage in a white tunic. Nunn even has two other actors portray the divided selves of Ariel to suggest a magical, fluttering omnipresence.

Ralph Fiennes resists the urge to make his Prospero a hapless, tragic figure or a vengeful sorceror. Unlike the rather self-indulgent, librarian-like figure played by Stephen Dillane in Sam Mendes's Bridge Project production last year, the bookish element of the character is not taken to extremes. There is an equal blend of calmness and fervour in Fiennes' Prospero, a man who has been wronged and who simply wants things to return back to their rightful order. Fiennes also highlights a compassionate side to Prospero that is not often seen; he takes his brother's hand in the reconciliation scene and makes his peace willingly. Indeed, in that final stirring moment when he breaks his staff and discards his magical cloak, we really believe him as he declares his "charms are all o'erthrown" before disappearing into the brave new world that lies ahead.

There is a good ensemble cast with strong, likeable performances by Michael Benz and Elisabeth Hopper as a sweetly besotted Ferdinand and Miranda and Andrew Jarvis as a well-meaning Gonzalo. Nicholas Lyndhurst rightly gets the lion's share of the laughs for his turn as blustering jester Trinculo who makes an excellent double act with Clive Wood's drunken Stephano. Giles Terrera's Caliban also stands out, a swarthy figure with a resonant baritone. Terrera delivers his verse with the right note of resentment and misplaced hero-worship, the "thousand twangling instruments" speech being suitably stirring.

There is perhaps nothing raw and startlingly imaginative in Nunn's production but in this age of modern, sometimes jarringly innovative productions, it is a pleasure to experience a truly traditional rendering of Shakespeare. A simple and sincere affair, perhaps the way Shakespeare himself had planned to announce his exit from the world of theatre.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10

End of an era

2011-08-31T19:30:00.005+01:00

As recently as a year ago, if anyone had told me that I would be spending six months living in the heart of Paris, I would have raised an eyebrow. France, indeed!

Yet here I am, wistfully thinking about the delicious côte de boeuf I had during my farewell lunch at the cosy neighbourhood bar a vin. It's my final night in Paris and I'm munching on slices of Comté cheese and sipping a glass of rich, honeyed Sauternes as I look out of the (French) windows at sunset descending over the 9th arrondissement. Incroyable!

Many friends have come to visit, countless bistrots, brasseries and bars have been frequented, and now all that remains is to pack my bags and haul myself onto the Eurostar to London.

Au revoir, Paris. I was ambivalent about you for a long time, but now, I can't wait to be back again.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

2011-07-30T19:30:00.477+01:00

by Tom Stoppard
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Tom Stoppard's first commercial success, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, still sparkles after nearly half a century. Playing with the idea that "every exit is an entry somewhere else", it inverts the events in Shakespeare's Hamlet, placing the two eponymous minor characters in the leading roles and the main characters of Hamlet in the periphery, imaginatively reconstructing scenes of the play as seen from the duo's eyes.

Trevor Nunn's production, a Chichester Festival Theatre transfer and the second instalment in his debut season as Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket, stars Samuel Barnett (Rosencrantz) and Jamie Parker (Guildenstern) from the acclaimed stage and film version of Bennett's The History Boys. Nunn's production starts with a nod to Beckett, presenting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perched on their rucksacks under a withered tree in a tableau reminiscent of Vladmir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot.

However, apart from this resonant image of stasis, Nunn's characteristic stark and minimalist staging strikes an uncertain note and with the exception of the beautifully realized final scene on a ship, he does not appear to have articulated a particular take on Stoppard's play. The set and staging for the most part seem curiously inchoate, being little more than a series of corridors upstage and wooden slats in the ceiling. The rest is drab, grey and empty.

Nunn's production gives both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern distinct personalities rather than the classic portrayal of them as two halves of a single character. Parker's Guildenstern is the insistent philosophiser prattling on endlessly with a self-righteous indignation while Barnett's Rosencrantz is the placid, more naive companion who is perfectly happy to amuse himself with coin tricks rather than ruminate about their dubious circumstances. Barnett's slightly camp delivery also suggests a latent sexual chemistry amongst the pair; they swing hands, hug and seem in many respects like an old married couple. One wonders if this may well be another factor that increases their isolation from all but each other.

Barnett and Parker have an easy camaraderie in their banter and are both competent and likeable. Their performances however lack the assurance and polish one expects from more than a year's experience of working together on both stage and screen. Parker's verbose expostulations at the beginning rapidly begin to grate and Barnett strikes one as being rather gormless. I somehow suspected that the dynamics between them would have emerged a lot fresher at Chichester where the production premièred, without the strains of a West End schedule nearing the end of its run.

The arrival of the travelling band of actors spices things up. Chris Andrew Mellon as the Player does an outstanding job of conjuring up the sordid world of Renaissance entertainment with a mixture of weary resignation and lascivious relish: "I can do you blood and love without rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without blood. Blood is compulsory - they're all blood, you see." Mellon's Player is brash and flamboyant and a good counterpoint to the rather reined-in, morally upright stance taken by the two men.

As underscored by the title, death is a constant, looming presence. We start the play knowing what happens to these two young men even though they remain clueless for the most part as to their role in the grand scheme of things. As Rosencrantz muses about the idea of "lying in a box" and what it would be like to be dead, the cruel irony of the fate's determinism versus one's freedom of choice is driven home. It is poignant that the dumb-show presented by the players, which depicts the two men's eventual death, seems to engender nothing more than mild puzzlement on their part, the tragedy bleeding into the comedy.

The supporting actors from the Hamlet scenes are strong and there are fine performances by Jack Hawkins as an impetuous Hamlet, Fiona Gillies as Gertrude and James Simmons as an regal and imperious Claudius. Fotini Dimou's excellent costume design also contrasts the lavish period outfits of the Hamlet characters against the two courtiers' fusion garb of Renaissance-style doublets and modern jeans, suggesting that they are individuals trapped between two worlds - ones who both belong and not quite belong. And even though we already know the ending, we still feel and a pang of sadness when we hear, once again, that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead".

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

Much Ado About Nothing

2011-07-30T14:30:00.360+01:00

by William Shakespeare
Wyndham's Theatre, London

"Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent."

Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing has been described as the "Renaissance version of Friends" and this most breezy of the comedies proves the perfect antidote for the rather lacklustre British summer. Josie Rourke's stylish production at the Wyndham's boasts two of British television's most popular stars - David Tennant of Doctor Who fame and Catherine Tate of her eponymous comedy sketch show - and reinvents this timeless classic with panache.

Rourke relocates the action of the play from sixteenth century Messina to 1980s Gibraltar, conjuring up a heady world of crisp white uniforms, booze, smoking and dancing. Tennant's Benedick bursts onto the stage driving a golf buggy festooned with flags to the sound of loud cheers from the men while Tate's Beatrice, dispassionate about the world of romance, slouches about in denim overalls and dark sunglasses, swigging a beer.

Robert Jones's white circular set incorporates perfect period details and manages to captivate without detracting anything from the exuberant performances. The props evoke the brash disco-feel of the era - oversized radios, boom boxes and electronic keyboards (which Tennant has a lot of fun with). This is complemented by amazing costume designs that capture the heart of the groovy Eighties: even Hero's wedding dress is a nod to Lady Diana's famous puff-sleeved, long-trained gown.

Tennant has indeed matured as an actor in the three years since his acclaimed Hamlet for the RSC and brings a cheeky and dapper charm to Benedick as a man for whom the pursuit of love is almost as appealing as the actual prize. Tate, last seen on the London stage as an overlooked housewife in Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings, lends a frumpy tetchiness to Beatrice whose caustic barbs are just part of the emotional architecture she constructs around herself to avoid the vulnerabilities of love.

Part of the charm of this Benedick and Beatrice is that they emerge as genuine sexual equals whose verbal sparring is the very heart and soul of the play. There is a witty sexual dialectic between them till the end; at the scene of Hero's denunciation at the altar, Beatrice's chilling retort "Kill Claudio" to Benedick's romantic entreaties is both an order and a challenge. It comes as no surprise that in the masked ball scene, Tennant is in garish disco drag while the tomboyish Tate lounges in a black suit, cleverly inverting the traditional notions of gender.

Rourke's production also showcases the matchless comic skills of Tate and Tennant, whose slapstick antics bring out the comic potential of the play to its full extent. A particular crowd-pleaser are the two complementary scenes where Beatrice and Benedick overhear concocted stories about how the other is in love with them in a plan by their friends to matchmake them. Tennant's Benedick prances about in a tight Superman T-shirt, getting increasingly jittery and paint-splattered behind pillars as he digests the news while Tate's Beatrice ends up suspended in the air, flapping about ineffectually like a large fish. Tennant's bemused "Why?" at the end of the scene is only matched by Tate's incredulous "What?" after an incredibly long and pregnant pause, bringing the house down.

One of the dangers of a play of this sort is the risk of running out of steam and Rourke manages this well. After an incredibly strong first half complete with images of steamy hen and stag parties, the second half maintains the same vigour. The initial marriage scene between Claudio and Hero is is beautifully staged and the aspersions cast on Hero's character and subsequent tensions fuelled by the malicious Don John temper the emotional barometer, setting a darker tone to the play that acts a good counterpoint to the frivolity at the start.

Music is also integrated very well into the scenes. In a poignant sequence, a heartbroken and desolate Claudio (a commendable debut performance by Tom Bateman) mourns Hero's apparent death by drinking heavily while listening to the radio. The song then spreads out to engulf the whole theatre, as he briefly contemplates suicide, before being contained once again in the radio as reality reasserts itself.

There are fine performances from the ensemble cast. Adam James's Don Pedro strikes the right note of avuncular jocularity, Tom Bateman and Sarah Macrae's Claudio and Hero are both amusing and tender as the perfect couple blown apart by a misunderstanding and John Ramm's superb constable Dogberry has the audience eating out of his hands with his swarthy, Rambo-esque bravado and comic malapropisms.

Indeed, by eschewing the milieu of courtly love and evoking a world that seems both familiar and fantastical, Rourke's Much Ado brings us along one romantic journey to which we will be drawn to over and over again.

The Crystalwords score: 9/10

Richard III

2011-07-09T00:00:00.077+01:00

by William Shakespeare
The Old Vic, London

The Bridge Project, that supreme, transatlantic theatre feat between London's The Old Vic and New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music, has entertained close to half a million people across some 15 countries. This final production of the three-year collaboration, Shakespeare's Richard III, is in many respects the perfect send-off to the whole saga, bringing Old Vic Artistic Director Kevin Spacey back to the stage in a feverishly exciting rendition of Shakespeare's most prolific anti-hero.

It would not be untrue to say that in this production it was Spacey the actor first and Richard the character second; one would be hard-pressed not to be overwhelmed by the sheer energy and physicality that Spacey brings to the role, a fact well-established from his previous Old Vic appearances in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow in 2008 and Lawrence and Lee's Inherit The Wind in 2009. From his brooding stance at the beginning of the play as he voices his "winter of discontent" to the exhilarating final image of a slaughtered villain pendulously suspended over the stage, this is well and truly, a Spacey production.

Director Sam Mendes has gone out of his way to make Richard III, originally intended as the concluding instalment of a four-part series by Shakespeare following the Henry VI plays, a robust stand-alone piece. Each scene is neatly captioned with the name of the principal character or location featured. One may feel that this labelling is too deliberate, almost cinematic, as it reduces the play into a series of glossy vignettes. Yet, it achieves its aim of showcasing the different facets of Richard's character - the manipulative brother, the arduous seducer, the sycophantic relative and finally the dastardly King out to quash all his rivals. Through all this, Spacey invests this "poisonous bunch-backed toad" with an unbridled tenacity, commanding all his scenes despite pottering around with a whimsical gait with his walking stick and large leg brace.

Tom Piper's set is a succession of grey walls and corridors, boxed-in and sinister. The minimal props allow the scenes to move fluidly, without any one set or scene being given emphasis. A particularly interesting perspective is offered in the break between the first and second halves of the play (always an interesting directorial choice). The first half ends with Richard slowly making his way upstage for his coronation and finally sinking into his throne far away from the audience in a fanfare of drums. The second half picks off right after this but suddenly the action has been brought downstage, almost as if the audience has now been pushed up close to see the real ugliness of the spectacle. This acts as a clever metaphor for the tenor of the second half, as we see Richard for who he really is and grotesque reality begins to intrude.

There are also some fine supporting performances. In a memorable sequence, Annabel Scholey's Lady Anne makes a swift transition from grieving daughter to a woman enamoured by the sheer monstrosity of Spacey's Richard, strangely drawn to him even as she viciously spits on his face as he seduces her over the corpse of her father. Hadyn Gwynn endows Queen Elizabeth with a hard-edged elegance, her contempt for Richard always threatening to spill out but remaining reined in. Chuk Iwuji's Buckingham also strikes the right note of ambitious co-conspirator and oily businessman, assisting Richard in his exploits to be King until he realises that there is nothing in it for him and fading, quite literally, into the grey background.

Mendes's modern-dress production benefits from excellent use of video projection. A particular highlight is the scene where Richard, desperate to portray himself as a humble and pious man who prefers a life of religious servitude over ascending the throne, gets his henchmen to disguise themselves as monks and pretends to be in deep prayer when publicly asked to be King. The whole charade, captured on a large-screen television that zooms in on Spacey's face and coupled with heckling "citizens" planted at all the corners of the theatre, acquires a fiercely humorous resonance.

Indeed, there is something incredibly complex about Spacey's Richard; even as we see the depths of his iniquity and grow increasingly repulsed by his actions, there is a macabre sense of being drawn in and, like Lady Anne, seduced by his magnetism. His constant self-loathing induces pity; one's heart goes out to him as he trips on his way to the throne during his coronation and then hastily gets up, waving any help away and goes on to crown himself. This is a man intensely aware of his own dastardly actions and hideous appearance and this only goads him to heights of new evil, ordering the execution of his two young nephews and viciously stabbing the severed head of Hastings when it is brought to him in a box.

Mendes has helmed a superb production of Richard III and my one reservation is its length. The first half of this production seems so drawn out that one wonders if the entire play would be performed without an interval. Being one of Shakespeare's longest plays, tighter editing could have been employed, especially in the second half which tends to flag. A lack of familiarity with the political backdrop and the relatively large host of characters also makes the play rather more difficult to keep up with at this length. Nonetheless, the plot sustains dramatic interest throughout and the climactic fight scene (excellently choreographed by Terry King) ends on a suitably impressive note.

The Bridge Project has come a long way in its three years and five productions featuring the talents of Simon Russell Beale, Rebecca Hall, Ethan Hawke, Stephen Dillane, Christian Camargo and last but certainly not least, Kevin Spacey and is, without doubt, one of the defining moments of early twenty-first century theatre. It is a great privilege to have been part of this experience at The Old Vic for all three years and one hopes that the success of this venture inspires similar partnerships and excellent theatrical moments as it embarks on its mammoth journey across the globe.

The Crystalwords score: 8/10

Macbeth

2011-04-29T00:00:00.020+01:00

by William Shakespeare
Singapore Repertory Theatre
Fort Canning Park, Singapore

The Scottish play is back. Though perhaps there is no need for all the theatre superstitions this time round, since it is being staged outdoors at the Fort Canning Park. With seductive posters lining the roads, swanky corporate sponsors and a director specially flown in from the UK, this latest edition of SRT's bi-annual Shakespeare in the Park looks set to be a night to remember. And indeed, this slick, thriller-like production of Macbeth certainly delivers its promised "mystery, madness, suspense and suspicion". Whether it manages to be a sensational or definitive rendering of this, one of the Bard's most well-known tragedies, is rather a different question.

As one enters the cordoned-off section of Fort Canning Park to spread out one's picnic mat, Morgan Large's set immediately captivates. The two-tiered structure is austere, white and fortress-like with a black glossy stage. There is also a long thrust stage that snakes its way well into the heart of the audience, making for many dramatic entrances and exits. The lighting design by Andy Lim complements this well, the stage alternating from black-and-white starkness to shimmering hues of blue and red.

Local theatre veteran Adrian Pang displays a competent range of verse-speaking as Macbeth and is particularly good in scenes of madness or misery, such the beautifully observed banquet scene where the ghost of Banquo (William Landsman) takes his seat at the table, literally and metaphorically asserting his rightful place. Upon hearing of his wife's death, Pang gives a little shrug and delivers the "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow" speech with a resigned nonchalance, the light converging on the spectre of this man whose life is as a "tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing."

However, one is left feeling that Pang has not really developed a conception of his Macbeth, be it an ordinary man forced onto a terrible path due to one fatal mistake or a ruthless, tyrannical dictator as portrayed by Patrick Stewart in Rupert Goold's celebrated Chichester Festival Theatre production in 2007. Pang's Macbeth has occasional bouts of scene-stealing lucidity but there is a nebulousness about who exactly this man is and how he has become the way he is. It is perhaps this lack of a specific vision that makes the production as a whole just competent rather than truly spectacular.

Director Nikolai Foster's Macbeth is clearly informed by British theatre heavyweights such as Rupert Goold and Trevor Nunn, particularly in the use of powerful visuals on the stage such as light and colour. In a chilling sequence, Macbeth shoots Macduff's son, shocking us with the loudness of the unexpected gunshot, and then mimes shooting Lady Macduff before walking up the thrust stage with a look of manic contentment at having quashed his rival.

There are however some elements of the production that could be played up. In the famous "Is this a dagger" soliloquy, Pang's Macbeth produces a very real dagger which he jabs in front of him and occasionally brandishes. This motif of the dagger always being in his hand as he blazes a trail of bloodshed could have been sustained throughout the play. Another aspect that was missing was a clear sense of location. One wonders if the historical associations of Fort Canning Park could be made better use of - Macbeth as a WW2-era Japanese dictator in Singapore perhaps? Universality is always a good thing but it would have added a nice angle if the production was rooted in particular context.

Amongst the supporting cast, there are fine performances by William Ledbetter as Duncan and William Landsman as Banquo. A particularly unfortunate piece of casting is Patricia Toh's Lady Macbeth. Macbeth as a tragedy is buttressed by the emotional and sexual chemistry between the husband and wife pair and this was something which was sorely lacking in this production. Toh's very Singaporean accent also proves jarring and at times her intonation is plainly off the page, descending into screechy melodrama. I could not help but wistfully recall Judi Dench's matchless Lady Macbeth in Trevor Nunn's stage and screen production.

The Weird Sisters are brilliantly conceived as Victorian gothic creatures with white dresses and white faces who potter around with a manic air; they deliver the three prophecies on the upper level of the set, white phantasms suspended on a black backdrop. They are also cleverly employed at the very end where Malcolm is crowned king, repeating their chant of "When shall we three meet again" while truncated recordings of political leaders are played. It is upon this haunting final image that the lights dim, giving the play a timelessness as we realize the cycle of destruction and violence is always there waiting to happen, at another time and another place.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10

*This review also appears as a guest review for The Flying Inkpot. See here.

Prisoner of Mumbai Mansion

2011-04-22T00:01:00.019+01:00

adapted from a Neil Simon play

HuM Theatre

DBS Arts Centre, Singapore

HuM Theatre burst onto the Singapore theatre scene last year with their debut production, Ayub Khan-Din's Olivier-award-winning Rafta Rafta. They gave this entertaining British-Indian play about marriage and domestic life a local twist - by making the central couple an inter-racial pair living in Singapore - a choice that only served to enhance the comedic elements of the original script even further. This second production of the company, an adaptation of Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue, follows much of the same formula by capitalizing on the star acting talents of real-life couple Daisy Irani and Subin Subaiah and taking a well-known play and tweaking the original setting, relocating the action from 1970s New York to present-day Mumbai.

It's been a good forty years since Neil Simon's Prisoner first hit the stage. Despite all the decent acting and production values, a recent West End revival fronted by Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl that stuck to the original setting revealed the play to be slightly tired and stale, a "prisoner of Broadway feel-good convention". A fresh Indian adaptation of the play therefore seemed an inspired choice, one that would be sure to breathe new life into a slightly dated classic. Evoking a merry Mumbai vibe from the outset, audience members were handed little packs of chana (chickpeas) from a "street vendor" to munch on whilst waiting in the foyer.

And indeed, modern-day Mumbai, the so-called "Maximum City", is in many respects the ideal backdrop for the play - a thick urban jungle of skyscrapers, noise, grime and crime. Sam Bandookwalla (Subin Subaiah) and his wife Ruby (Daisy Irani) are a middle-aged Parsi couple living on the fourteenth floor of a nondescript high-rise apartment. Sam is practically driven to insomnia from an air-conditioning unit that refuses to work, a job on the brink of collapse, annoying neighbours and the general state of pollution that pervades the city. Ruby tries her best to distract him but to no avail.

Irani and Subaiah, whose masala-hot chemistry on both stage and television needs no introduction, are the perfect choices for the leading roles. Director Dinkar Jani deliberately allows the play to be performed slightly over the top, a decision that would have been garish and stagey in any other context but which works extremely well with two native Indians in a brash Mumbai setting. From the start, Simon's trademark one-liners bounce off the page and produce a steady stream of laughs as Sam slouches around in his pajamas with a baleful air, venting his frustration on everything from stray dogs barking outside to a pair of frisky air stewardesses next door. However, one cannot shake off the feeling of increasing claustrophobia and tiredness as the first Act ploughs on with just two actors, the banter slowly starting to grate.

A particular highlight of the play is the excellently recorded news blasts that punctuate the end of each scene. With Amit Joshi as a fictitious news anchor, these replace the radio voiceovers in the original script. HuM Theatre's version of the play also uses these blasts to a provide a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the state of Indian politics, crime and general mayhem that goes on in the city alongside the events in the Bandookwalla household. The prospect of Amitabh Bachchan stripping nude on a film set due to the heat and being called "Big B" and a captured police inspector being forced to undergo a sex change are just a few rip-roaring examples.

There is good support by Sunita Kapoor and Sonja Steinmetz as a pair of penny-pinching and weepy sisters respectively. However, Darius Tan's portrayal of Sam's older brother seems distinctly incongruous. One wonders what the point is of casting a youngish Chinese actor in this most Indian of plays, one whose very patchy accent does not help in suspending the disbelief any further. Tan's character is also unfortunately not explored in any depth; the overtones of a largely ignored older sibling who has nothing to fall back on but his material success scarcely intrude.

Prisoner of Mumbai Mansion continues to tap into HuM Theatre's niche in English-language theatre aimed at the growing Indian expatriate community in Singapore. While enjoyable for the most part, I was ultimately left feeling that it was the choice of play that perhaps did not work quite that well for this production. Simon's play has indeed aged in the four decades since it was written and it requires more than a superficial rewrite to work for a Singaporean audience. The script could also have easily done with some editing, especially in the first Act, to keep up the energy and pace. A good evening out with plenty of laughs from Irani and Subaiah but after the rollicking ride that was Rafta Rafta, one cannot help but feel that the bhangra has lost a bit of its steam.

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

*This review also appears as a guest review for The Flying Inkpot. See here.

Theatre updates

2011-04-05T17:13:00.002+01:00

Because I'm having major withdrawal symptoms from not having watched a play for nearly a month (horrors!), here's an updated list of my theatrical scoffings (playwrights I've seen more than one play by only).

Perhaps I really should consider Un tramway nommé désir (Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire) at the Comédie-Française...

William Shakespeare (12)
-Hamlet
-Othello
-King Lear (x2)
-Macbeth
-Romeo & Juliet (x2)
-Coriolanus
-Julius Caesar
-The Taming of the Shrew (x2)
-Twelfth Night (x2)
-A Midsummer Night's Dream (x2)
-The Winter's Tale
-The Tempest

Alan Ayckbourn (9)
-Absurd Person Singular
-Table Manners
-Living Together
-Round and Round the Garden
-Bedroom Farce
-Taking Steps
-Season's Greetings
-Life of Riley
-Snake in the Grass

Noël Coward (5)
-Present Laughter
-Blithe Spirit
-Private Lives
-Hay Fever
-Design for Living

Harold Pinter (4)
-The Lover (x2)
-The Dumb Waiter
-The Collection
-Betrayal

Anton Chekhov (3)
-The Seagull
-Ivanov
-The Cherry Orchard

David Mamet (3)
-Glengarry Glen Ross
-Speed-the-Plow
-November

Arther Miller (3)
-The Man Who Had All the Luck
-The Crucible
-All My Sons

Haresh Sharma (3)
-Mixed Blessings
-Mobile
-Off Centre

Neil Simon (3)
-Rumors
-The Odd Couple (female version)
-The Prisoner of Second Avenue

Tom Stoppard (3)
-Rock 'n' Roll
-Arcadia
-The Real Thing

David Hare (2)
-Gethsemane
-The Power of Yes

Henrik Ibsen (2)
-Hedda Gabler
-The Master Builder

Joe Orton (2)
-What the Butler Saw
-Loot

Peter Shaffer (2)
-Black Comedy/White Lies
-Equus

Tennessee Williams (2)
-Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
-The Glass Menagerie

Epicurean delights: Brussels & Bruges

2011-03-27T00:00:00.004Z

It was spring, it was just over an hour by train from Paris and it was a perfect opportunity to rediscover the multicultural Belgian capital. A spontaneous weekend trip to Brussels and the quaint Flemish town of Bruges sounded ideal and I was glad to go along when Nick suggested it.

Eating well was highest on my list of priorities for Belgium and first up was chocolate! After snapping up the customary boxes of Leonidas pralines, I steered us firmly in the way of the flagship Brussels store of Pierre Marcolini. Internationally renowned for elevating chocolate-making into an art form, his products are aesthetically stunning and a delight to behold. I decided to avail myself of an assortment of pieces from the dizzying selection at the counter, including Thyme & Orange, Four Spice and Earl Grey Tea. I liked the spice blends so much that I later bought a speciality box of spice and floral infused chocolates.

This was followed by a stop at The Chocolate Line, one of the most exciting traditional chocolate makers in Bruges. Dubbed a 'shock-a-latier' for his bold and experimental flavours, Dominique Persoone's confections are certainly not for the traditional. Sake, lemongrass, fried onions and even curry powder are just some of the unique ingredients blended into his chocolates. A particular highlight was buying rough 'bricks' of hazelnut-studded chocolate fresh from the glass-walled chocolate factory at the back of the shop and enjoying them on the sunny bench outside.

Food-wise, the outstanding meal of the trip was at Restaurant Den Dwyer, an understated beacon of tranquillity located by the canals in the heart of Bruges, serving up delicious set menus with beer pairings. I've had wine matched with food before and seeing beer treated with that same pride and attention to detail was a rare pleasure. The aromatic, amber-coloured Petrus Speciale complemented our starter of grilled mackerel with paprika coulis.

This was followed by the more complex, coppery-blond Saison Dupont alongside the main course of baked weever with asparagus, parsley potatoes and garlic mousseline. I found out that even the dishes at Den Dwyer were cooked in Belgium's favourite nectar!

Of course, one must not forget the fine, fruity Flemish tipples we sampled over the weekend. Proost!

Cherry and raspberry beer by Mystic.

The provocatively named Forbidden Fruit beer, featuring none other than Adam and Eve.

Paris revisited

2011-03-13T11:26:00.002Z

And here I am...the Parisian adventure begins.

I thought I would never quite be able to pack everything that I had accumulated over the course of six years in London but finally managed to pull it off, only sending two large boxes in an advance shipment and lugging several small bags in the Eurostar. Thank goodness for taxis.

More updates to follow in due course. Off for an afternoon in Montmarte!

Oh, and this is the view from my living room balcony. The lovely 9th arrondissement and the majestic Sacre-Coeur!

Frankenstein

2011-03-05T00:00:00.080Z

a new play by Nick Dear
based on the novel by Mary Shelley
National Theatre (Olivier), London

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein has an enduring role in popular culture as the quintessential gothic horror story. A creature fashioned out of human body parts, with an appearance so ghastly that even his own creator abandoned him, it is one fictional character that is truly larger than life. In Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle's visually stunning production and Nick Dear's incisive script, this classic tale is brought to the stage and given a particularly human slant.

One of the most exciting aspects of this production of Frankenstein was Boyle's choice in having the two leading actors alternate the roles of maverick scientist Victor Frankenstein and the Creature. It was Boyle's belief that this would keep the production fresh and with stars like Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, it was no surprise that fans had booked themselves in for two separate performances to see each actor in a different role. I debated long and hard about which version to catch and finally decided on the one with Cumberbatch as Frankenstein and Miller as the Creature. A week before my performance, an email from the National Theatre duly reminded me to get there in time so as not to miss the opening scene. I was intrigued.

Entering the Olivier theatre for this production gives one a strangely elemental feeling: the stage is a vast, reddish oval expanse with a circular contraption in the middle. There is a huge chime that is rung every few minutes before the play begins, its echoes reverberating round the auditorium with a protracted, pendulous persistence. This atavistic mood is indeed apposite for a play whose subject matter deals with a reversal of nature itself: the creation of life from death.

The much-vaunted opening scene takes us straight to the birth of the Creature. On a darkened stage, we see something wrestle behind the curtained portal and a human being eventually bursts through, scarred and naked, onto the floor. The rest of this arresting, wordless prologue shows the Creature slowly gain control of his physical faculties as he learns first to crawl, then kneel, then walk and finally run around the stage in wild, childlike ecstasy. It is like watching a snapshot of evolution in progress, and one of the most arresting play débuts I have ever seen.

We then move through the early encounters of the Creature's life: him being shunned by society due to his appearance, learning about the elements and finally discovering acceptance by a blind old man, De Lacey (a quietly moving performance by Karl Johnson) who takes him in and teaches him language and reason. Miller does a tremendous job in capturing the Creature's growing self-awareness and it is very difficult not to empathise with this character, one who doesn't understand why everybody runs away from him and why he doesn't seem to belong anywhere. There is a beautiful scene as Miller's Creature stands outside De Lacey's hut and experiences snow for the first time, trying to catch the snowflakes and being absolutely delighted at the prospect of this miracle of nature.

Dear's script highlights the essential humanness of this monstrous beast; when asked what he likes about Milton's Paradise Lost, he replies that he identifies less with Adam and more with Satan, the fallen angel. Deep down inside, we see that in the Creature there is just someone wanting to be loved and who wants a place to belong in the world. Yet when De Lacey finally persuades the Creature to meet his son and daughter-in-law, they cruelly beat him and drive him away. Just when he finally thought he might be accepted by society, he is treated as an outcast once again. We are shocked but innately understand why the Creature acts with such vehemence towards them and becomes capable of such horrific acts of violence: he is after all a creature of circumstance.

Cumberbatch's Victor, by contrast, is given a slightly muted role. All the early scenes in the novel of him being a young student full of scientific hubris are excised and the play starts with him an a reclusive man, keen to forget about the monster he had created until it comes looking for him. Cumberbatch, last seen in the BBC series Sherlock as the eponymous sleuth and the Olivier award-winning revival of Terence Rattigan's After the Dance, acquits himself well in capturing the simultaneous delight and disgust of the inventor when he meets his Creature for the first time. He reluctantly agrees to the Creature's request to make him a female companion but his eventual abandonment of this project when he fears the repercussions seems slightly unconvincing. There is a constant nervous tension which affects Cumberbatch's performance in the second half of the script when he starts to fear the Creature and what he may do. It would have been nice to explore the psyche of Victor a little more; a visitation from the ghost of his dead brother seems the only point when he displays a rare side of vulnerability.

The visual tableau is truly impressive and Mark Tildesley's set includes effects such as rain, snow, revolving sets and steam engines. There is an epic grandeur about the scenes but perhaps all the fanfare is not needed at times; Dear's script is quietly powerful and would have worked equally well on an intimate scale without all the special effects. The one outstanding detail is the lighting design by Bruno Poet which comprised hundreds of lights bulbs suspended in the air. These would alternately glare with a piercing luminescence, fade to an amber glow or sparkle incandescently, resembling jewels in the sky.

Unlike the novel, Dear's play ends with both Victor and the Creature together in the North Pole, having finally accepted their fate that they are bound to each other. It is perhaps in this final scene, as we see the Creator and Creature head out into the freezing wilderness together, that we realize that they are two sides of the same coin. Both could not find acceptance and ultimately, are all the other has. There is a quiet pathos about their unnatural yet symbiotic relationship and I could not help but wonder how my experience of the play would have been affected had I seen their roles being reversed.

It is refreshing to see an adaptation of Frankenstein that breaks clean of the traditional horror story mould and which manages to be both epic and intimate in charting the emotional landscape of Victor and the Creature. A great return to the stage for Boyle and another brilliant success at the National.

The Crystalwords score: 8/10

A friendly reminder

2011-03-01T19:38:00.001Z

Dear Mr Kapadia,

We hope you are looking forward to seeing Frankenstein.

Please note that the production will start promptly at 7.30pm. The opening scene is not to be missed, so please allow enough time to travel to the theatre and be in your seats for that time.

Please remember the production is only suitable for ages 15yrs+.

We look forward to welcoming you to the National Theatre.

National Theatre Box Office

I love the way how it's practically an order not to miss the opening scene. Yes, we're all looking forward to seeing that.

Snake in the Grass

2011-02-26T12:00:00.008Z

by Alan Ayckbourn
The Print Room, London

A rare 2002 Ayckbourn play about women and abuse, maverick director Lucy Bailey whose gripping, visceral production of Julius Caesar was one of the highlights of the recent RSC season and finally, a new and atmospheric venue. Indeed, there were many things going for this production. The Print Room, a converted Fifties warehouse nestled in the heart of Notting Hill, was opened by Lucy Bailey and Anda Winters back in 2008. Making one's way there is like heading over to a friend's place for a cosy dinner party, the unobtrusive entrance lined with candles.

The most stunning aspect about this production of Snake in the Grass is the way the theatre space has been utilised. The play is set in a garden, near a disused tennis court. Bailey's production moves the action right into the tennis court itself with the audience seated on either side of what was once the net. This is an inspired choice; sitting directly opposite members of the audience gives one the feeling of being joint spectators of a verbal tennis match. William Dudley's impressive set design includes rusty grilled fences covered with creepers, peeling rubber floors and an old umpire's chair, completing the scene of decay and neglect.

Being a branded as a "psychological thriller" with sinister, ghost themes, Snake was never set out to be a conventional Ayckbourn. For starters, there is a cast of just three and all of them are women. The play starts with middle-aged Annabel (Susan Wooldridge) returning to the home of her recently-deceased father after years abroad in Australia. She is confronted by her father's ex-nurse, Alice (Mossie Smith), who informs her that her sister Miriam (Sarah Woodward) allegedly murdered the old man and demands a hefty amount of money in exchange for her silence. When the mousy Miriam finally appears, Annabel discovers to her horror that all this is true and soon becomes embroiled in a dastardly plan to keep Alice's mouth shut.

Susan Wooldridge's Annabel is all business-like efficiency at the start, wanting to deal with the aftermath of her father's death with as much emotional detachment as she can muster. Sarah Woodward's Miriam, on the other hand, is a frail creature who bursts into tears as soon as she enters the scene, collapsing on a chair in a sniffling wreck. Coupled with Mossie Smith's vindictive, blackmailing nurse character, the opening scenes smack of a slightly tired daytime soap. Even as Annabel grows increasingly unsettled and jittery by the ghosts of her past and Miriam evolves into a hardened, vengeful person desperate to shed the suppressed good-daughter image she had played her entire life, this neat contrast seems too artificial. The performances of the actors are competent but lack any real emotional resonance.

There seems to be a clear aim on the part of Bailey to highlight that this is a play about women and their abuse at the hands of men. There is the physical abuse which Annabel suffered as a child with tennis balls being hurled at her by an impatient father, emotional abuse which she suffered later in life as a battered wife and most poignantly, the sexual abuse Miriam endured as a teenager from her father. Ayckbourn's plays very often highlight man's inhumanity to women in marriage and family relationships but this is one of the rare times that the nature of such abuse is made so painfully manifest.

All this is perfectly fine if not for the very conscious attempt on the part of Bailey not to emphasise the comedy that so often seeps through an Ayckbourn play. Ayckbourn's recent play Life of Riley dealt openly with the moribund prospect of death but maintained a comic vigour as the main character tried to live life to the fullest in his final days. This production, by contrast, offers very little comic relief except for one or two little moments. For example, when a horrified Annabel asks Miriam if she had indeed had quadrupled their father's dosage of pills, removed all the lights in the house and pushed him down the stairs, Miriam calmly replies, "It was only a little push". There is also a memorable scene when the sisters attempt to drag the drugged Alice and throw her down a well, struggling with the weight of her body in an awkward comic tango. However, for the most part, the tone is kept solemn and dark as the play progresses.

In classic Ayckbourn style, some of the most significant revelations about the characters are made in an offhand manner. In a disturbing midnight chat, Miriam reveals that she secretly enjoyed being touched by their father because he had never let her form a relationship with anyone and it was the closest she had gotten to being physical with a man. It is also particularly tragic that Annabel left home years ago to distance herself from an abrasive father only to be saddled with an abrasive husband halfway across the world. There is a tremendous compassion which Ayckbourn invests in his women characters and Snake is one of those plays which manages to powerfully convey this. The sisters are who they are today because of the circumstances that have shaped them.

While it is difficult to be really bowled over by the plot twists at the end of the play, Ayckbourn must nonetheless be applauded for his versatility. Doing a thriller which feels rather similar at times to Ira LevIn's Deathtrap is a major change from his usual domestic comedies and there is a lot of potential in the material even if it does feel rather weak in its execution. My major gripe was the play's final scene: as Miriam dances in the silver party dress she wore as a teenager, having finally rid herself of all the people in her life, she is still confronted by the spectre of her father's ghost who seems to stare at her from the chair in the middle of the tennis court. In Bailey's production, an actor playing the father suddenly appears in this final scene, unbuttoning his trousers as her stares at her dancing. This literalism felt too heavy-handed for my liking, clearly not being part of the original script.

Ultimately, the best thing to take away from this production of Snake in the Grass is the chance of seeing a very different type of Ayckbourn play, one that doesn't shy away from exploring the plight of women and how they live in the shadows of men all their lives. The venue and staging are brilliant and I have no doubt that The Print Room has the potential to become a great fringe theatre venue in central London. Bailey's approach to the script however lacks the softer comic vein that so many Ayckbourn plays thrive on. Perhaps her focus on big-name theatre and violent, arresting scenes in the past made her try to be as explicit as possible in constructing the play as a feminist, or perhaps anti-feminist work. Yet, as always with Ayckbourn, doing less is infinitely more.

The Crystalwords score: 6/10

Dinner by Heston

2011-02-26T00:00:00.005Z

Mandarin Oriental Hotel
66 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LA

There is no way one can deny it: this was the restaurant opening of 2011. After years of quietly working his magic at The Fat Duck in tiny Bray, Heston Blumenthal was finally opening a restaurant in London. Like any faithful foodie, I had been following Twitter updates, scanning food-related websites and promptly made my reservations as soon as the lines opened. Considering that this place is completely booked out till the end of May and looks set to be one of London's most elusive tables for a good many months to come, I was not the only one.

Dinner occupies a spot on the ground floor of the Mandarin Oriental and the interior has been brilliantly decorated by Adam Tihany with quirky touches such as jelly-mould shaped lamps and exposed filament bulbs. Most notably, there is a large glass-walled kitchen at the heart of the restaurant so diners can either opt to see the drama in the kitchen or sit by the window to enjoy the sylvan delights of Hyde Park.

Proudly showcasing British cuisine through the centuries, every dish on the menu at Dinner comes captioned with the approximate historical period it was derived from and the source of the particular dish. Even the word 'dinner', which means 'the main meal of the day' sums this historical element up, having meant different things over the centuries.

The menu was simple and straightforward - starter, main and dessert.

Meat Fruit (c.1500)

Mandarin, chicken liver parfait & grilled bread

This was something that just had to be ordered, being one of the most talked-about new dishes of Dinner. It is a perfectly recreated mandarin, which looks almost too real to be anything more than an ordinary piece of fruit. Yet it cuts open to reveal a rich, velvety parfait that blends perfectly with the richer, more sour flavour of the peel (actually mandarin jelly) and went extremely well with the grilled bread. Who would have thought grilled bread could taste so good? A fantastic starter.

Rice and Flesh (c.1390)

Saffron, calf tail & red wine

This was something I would have completely glossed over as a result of its rather dull-sounding name. It turned out to be a bright yellow risotto-like dish infused with the delicate aroma of saffron and studded with chunks of perfectly marinated calf tail stewed in red wine. Text printed behind the menu tells us that this dish was derived from a manuscript called The Forme of Cury written in the 1390s, one of the earliest written collections of English recipes. It felt rather grand eating something that had a history of over six hundred years!

Savoury Porridge (c.1660)

Cod Cheeks, pickled beetroot, garlic & parsley

The moment I saw this I was reminded of the snail porridge at The Fat Duck and this certainly did not disappoint. A mild, flavourful herby porridge that was complemented with sweet-salty beetroot and succulent cod.

Powdered Duck (c.1670)

Smoked Fennel & potato puree

The 'powder' in the name actually refers to an old-fashioned style of curing the meat with salt and spices. This was two extremely juicy and plump duck legs but I felt it wasn't anything that could not be found in a decent gastropub or French restaurant. Nice play on flavours with the smoky taste of fennel and creamy mash but a little on the ordinary side of things.

Beef Royal (c.1720)

72 hour Slow cooked short rib of Angus, smoked anchovy & onion puree, Ox tongue

When Heston says slow cooked, he means slow - three whole days to be precise. The result was meat of incredible juiciness. The accompaniments of smoked anchovy, onion puree and ox tongue were so tasty that I rather regretted eating them too quickly and having nothing to finish the rest of the beef with.

The menus for dessert and tea.

I was particularly impressed by the tea list - short, succinct and wonderfully international, boasting fine varieties such as Iranian rose-bud tea, Japanese Gyokuro and Silver Needle white tea.

Taffety Tart (c.1660)

Apple, rose, fennel & blackcurrant sorbet

Look familiar? Yes, this was the one dish on the menu that is identical to the one served at The Fat Duck. It was as complex and unique as I remembered, a dessert and evoked all the different taste sensations. Very interesting but perhaps just too much going on in terms of the flavours.

Chocolate Bar (c.1730)

Passion fruit jam & ginger ice cream

This was a very indulgent, rich bar of dark chocolate with a passion fruit filling and tart ginger ice cream on the side. We made a good choice to swap desserts halfway - it would certainly had been too decadent to eat the entire thing!

Tipsy Cake (c.1810)

Spit roast pineapple

We were told almost as soon as we sat down that orders for the Tipsy Cake had to be placed a good 30 minutes in advance to prepare the spit-roasted pineapple. One could not help noticing the pineapples slowly roasting in the large medieval oven in the centre of the kitchen and I knew this was something I had to try. The dish looked deceptively simple once again. A firm wedge of pineapple that had caramelised on the outside with the appearance of a wafer but which was yet extremely sweet and succulent on the inside. The actual Tipsy Cake was a moist pudding that tasted like a caramel-flavoured brioche. A great, simple combination of bread and fruit.

Silver Needle White Tea
Fujian, China

Our refreshing white tea was served with some truly delectable petits fours - a white chocolate ganache that tasted like Earl Grey tea served with a caraway seed wafer. I loved the simplicity of the collision of the sweet and savoury and this stood out even more than the actual dessert!

It's hard to believe that Dinner opened just a few weeks ago; it already feels like a well-oiled machine. The atmosphere has a relaxed, buzzy vibe without any formal pretensions, service is thoughtful and most importantly, the food is simple and unfussy, using everyday ingredients but given a unique historical twist. It would be an exaggeration to say that every dish is a runaway success but by and large, the hits outstrip the misses by a mile. The only detracting factor to all this is that a meal here does come with a bit of a price - a three-courser with wine and tea easily sets one back by about £70. Still, it is a considerably smaller price to pay than the tasting menu at The Fat Duck.

Dinner by Heston is a supremely accomplished restaurant that makes a worthy addition to the London gastronomic scene. Heston has helmed another success and I have no doubt that the Michelin inspectors will bestow their largesse upon him in next year's awards. I will definitely be returning.

The Crystalwords score: 8/10

UPDATE (Oct 2011): As rightly predicted, Dinner by Heston has been awarded one Michelin star in the 2012 Michelin Guide for London. Go quickly before the prices start to rise!

The Children's Hour

2011-02-19T00:00:00.028Z

by Lillian Hellman
Comedy Theatre, London

Boasting top-name actresses and a controversial theme, it will come as no surprise that Ian Rickson's glamorous West End production of The Children's Hour has been one of the most sought-after shows of early 2011. It's a pity Lillian Hellman's 1934 play has not been revived for over half a century, it being a subtle study of the impact of lies and their potentially devastating consequences in a closed community.

Karen Wright (Kiera Knightley) and Martha Dobie (Elisabeth Moss) are two close friends running a girls' boarding school in 1930s New England. A problem child, Mary Tilford (Bryony Hannah) starts a rumour about them to avoid having to be sent back to school, telling her grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) that they are having a lesbian affair. Before they know what is happening, Karen and Martha's world starts collapsing around them as rumours begin to fly amongst the moralistic community of the time. One might not be that far off the mark to suggest that Arthur Miller's more popular and richly characterised play The Crucible was inspired at least in part by the plot - after all, it was also set in a conservative New England town similarly gripped by hysteria following the lies of a group of girls.

Kiera Knightley needs no introduction, her prolific film career and immense popularity being one of the chief reasons, no doubt, for the majority of the ticket prices being marked up to £60, a new West End high. Always at home in the world of period drama, she gives an elegant and largely competent performance as Karen, her American accent only faltering occasionally. Elisabeth Moss, best known for her portrayal of Peggy Olsen in the acclaimed television series Mad Men, is the more assured of the two and is particularly arresting in a confrontation with her thespian aunt (a delightfully comic turn by Carol Kane).

There are hardly any hints that anything is amiss in the early scenes. Karen is about to be married to Dr Joe Cardin (Tobias Menzies) and Martha is slightly upset that they have decided to have the wedding so soon as she was looking forward to their yearly holiday. It is only when Martha's aunt remarks that her apparent hostility to the marriage and Karen's fiancé is "unnatural" that we gain the first frisson of unease. But we are never given anything more than a hint.

Silence is a powerful theme in the play and Rickson's production contains many visual scenes that provide a far greater impact than the actual text. In a wordless prologue, a group of pre-pubescent schoolgirls gather around an apparently controversial book, all fighting for a closer look at its contents. We never hear what exactly Mary tells her grandmother about Karen and Martha - she whispers this into her ear - but it is apparently serious enough to warrant immediate action. There is a sense that there is a world out there that is best kept away from the surface, something that should not be referred to at all and this somehow makes it even more sordid and mysterious that if it were mentioned out loud.

Bryony Hannah gives an incredible performance as Mary and plays a young schoolgirl so convincingly that it is impossible to believe that this talented actress is actually twenty-six. Her Mary has a dark, ruthless streak that is perfectly balanced with a childlike gait. In the opening scene, she deliberately forces her way to the front of the group of girls, pulling the book away until it tears in half. This destructive bent is also paralleled in a later scene as she angrily smashes a vase on Karen's table and demands money from one of the girls in order to run away, going so far as to pin her down and stab her with a pencil. When the gormless Rosalie is questioned as to the source of the rumours, Mary lingers in the background, writhing almost as if in physical agony. Yet, she quickly regains her composure and shrewdly blackmails Rosalie into submission by threatening to expose her petty theft.

Stage and screen veteran Ellen Burstyn is suitably impressive as Mrs Amelia Tilford, Mary's conservative grandmother who takes swift and decisive action once she is apprised of Mary's tale. She is the obvious symbol of old-world morality for whom any form of unconventional relationship is frowned upon as a compete abomination. Yet, she ultimately shows the capacity for realizing her mistakes and becomes a contrite old lady desperate to make amends when she finally learns of her niece's fabrication.

Mark Thompson's set, brilliantly lit by Neil Austin, also deserves mention. Despite the drab greyness of the schoolroom where the first scene is set, one gets a cosy and homely feeling, almost as if to remind us that there is a bit of beauty amidst all the harsh realities of the world. The scene change is coordinated extremely well; various actors come on stage to move and rearrange the props as the lights are dimmed while columns and bookcases are lowered. All this while, a silent scene is played downstage as Mary prepares to run away from the school, helped by her friends.

There is a measured subtlety to Hellman's script and things are brought to a poignant close in an extended scene between Karen and Martha set months later when their case has been lost and their reputation forever stained. It is at this point that Knightley and Moss are at their best, capturing the tenderness borne of a strong female friendship in the face of adversity. For all this though, I somehow didn’t feel the dénouement of the play to be as affecting. While undoubtedly tragic, it does seem too melodramatic and one does not feel that it was justified, even when reprieve finally does arrive in the form of Mrs Amelia Tilford.

Nonetheless, the play ends with a stirring image of renewal: Karen throwing open the curtain and letting bright light flood into the boarded-up room, no longer afraid to hide from the world, no longer an outsider.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10

Life of Riley

2011-02-12T00:00:00.111Z

by Alan Ayckbourn
Oxford Playhouse, Oxford

Do not be disappointed, Alan Ayckbourn tells us in the programme: despite the title of the play, the eponymous Riley is never seen on stage. Offstage characters are not entirely new to Ayckbourn; indeed, they are a plot device used in many of his comedies. In Absurd Person Singular, we are continually made aware of the antics of Dick and Lottie Potter behind the scenes even though we never actually meet them. The entire premise of The Norman Conquests rests on what characters are doing in other places and how that affects what's going on now. In Life of Riley, Ayckbourn's 74th and latest play which premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in September 2010, he takes the device of the offstage character to an entirely different level by making him the central character of the play.

So who exactly is George Riley? Ayckbourn chooses to reveal this in snippets as the play progresses. He presents us with his classic combination of three couples, each of whom is connected to Riley in some way. The stolid, rather ineffectual doctor Colin (Kim Wall) and his wife Kathryn (Liza Goddard) are in the midst of rehearsing a play for their local dramatic society when Colin lets slip that Riley has been diagnosed with cancer and has six months to live. A thunderstruck Kathryn immediately calls her friend Tamsin (Laura Doddington), whose husband, the successful businessman Jack (Ben Porter), is Riley's best friend. They decide to invite him to join their play to include him in their lives and also contact his estranged wife Monica (Laura Howard), who is currently living with a farmer, Simeon (Jamie Kenna).

Death is a constant theme on everyone's mind and this only makes them reflect about their individual lives - those they have lived and those they want to live. Yet Ayckbourn keeps the mood light with mordant humour and his ever-present comic eye. At one point, the short, bumbling Colin and the tall, suave Jack stand next to each other at Jack's daughter Tilly's sixteenth birthday party, reminiscing about old music and subconsciously swaying together in perfect sync, two middle-aged men having a little boyish moment. There may be very little on the surface, but one soon gets the sense that these couples are not very happy and preoccupying themselves in the life of Riley is just one way of escaping from their own lives. Colin and Kathryn's married life has gone on as mechanically as the clocks he absorbs himself with and getting into an argument about when to make an appropriate pause in a play is the closest they come to a real exchange of opinions. Likewise, Jack lavishes money on Tilly with reckless indulgence almost as a way of making up for the fact that he can't achieve the same level of intimacy with his wife, Tamsin.

Ayckbourn demonstrates once again his capacity to explore the peripheral areas of the house. Having dealt with bedrooms in Bedroom Farce and kitchens in Absurd Person Singular, this time he gives us a play set entirely in different gardens all appearing in different parts of the stage. And in each garden (beautifully designed by Michael Holt), we see snippets of the characters and their class - the grand trees and benches of Tamsin and Jack, the conservative patio table of Colin and Kathryn and finally, the messy, earthy farmyard of Simeon and Monica. There is an constant exploration in Ayckbourn's work about the way people behave at these peripheries and we get hints of that here. Laura Howard's Monica, who keeps nervously trying to light a cigarette when her partner is not around, suggests a constant unease at trying to replace her life with another man but never quite being comfortable about it. Liza Goddard's excellent Kathryn sneaks in a covert drink every now and then as it is the closest she comes to having a thrill in her otherwise barren, sexless marriage.

The frailty of marriage and the inhumanity of people in relationships are classic Ayckbourn themes and all this is abundantly on display here. It soon transpires that Riley has asked all three women to go on holiday with him and even though they initially deny it, each secretly longs to go: Kathryn, hoping for a revival of their once-romantic relationship in the past, Tamsin, to live in the present and distract herself from the emptiness of her own marriage, and Claire, to embrace the possibility of a newfound future. We can't help but wonder what the secret of this man is, a perfectly ordinary schoolteacher who is somehow able to draw three very different women to him even in the final chapters of his life. In a beautifully moving scene, all three men sit in their gardens waiting for the women to show up, anxious but yet resigned in the knowledge that they have somehow lost their hold on them.

It has been said that Pinter and Ayckbourn set out to write essentially the same play - only Pinter does it with a sad face and Ayckbourn does it with a happy face. Indeed, that rings true perfectly in this play where despite the moribund theme, Ayckbourn expertly regulates the emotional barometer. In a shocking twist, we learn that it is Tilly who ends up being whisked off on holiday with Riley. But even as we sit there stunned at the implications of this, we are quickly told that nothing ever happened; it was purely a holiday borne out of companionship between a girl and her old schoolteacher. When we finally learn of Riley's passing, it is not because he has been beaten by cancer at last but due to a para-gliding accident in Tenerife. We laugh even amidst the sadness: this is truly a man who believed in living his life to the fullest. The play that began with the looming image of death aptly ends with a scene set in a funeral but of course, just at the point when it all gets too emotional, Jack's mobile phone bangs out a ridiculous tune.

Life of Riley may not be a play with an incredible plot. One does get the sense that one has seen a lot of the material before and it is hard for Ayckbourn not to tread on the same territory after 73 plays. Yet, it does say something about a playwright to still find new ways to sustain the comic interest. Perhaps that was why he chose to remove the main character entirely and let the play be driven purely by other people's perceptions of this ordinary-yet-extraordinary individual. While there is an intense sadness hovering just beneath, it rarely breaks through and we are swayed along by streams of good humour. Ayckbourn directs the strong ensemble cast beautifully and ultimately, Life of Riley stands on its own as a meditation on life, death, thwarted dreams and everyday disappointments. And that, indeed, is truly vintage Ayckbourn.

The Crystalwords score: 7/10