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Exit, Stage Right

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

In the five years that I've been the Spectator's drama critic, one of the nicest afternoons I've spent was in the company of my fellow critics. No, not at a matinee, but at a lunch for John Gross who was retiring as the Sunday Telegraph's man in the stalls after 16 years. Charles Spencer made a speech in which he quoted Bernard Levin describing John as "the nicest man in London" and, afterwards, John got up and said the thing he'd enjoyed the most about the job was "getting to know you lot".

Amy's View / Whipping It Up

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Some playwrights mellow with age, but not David Hare. His sense of righteous indignation knows no bounds. According to press reports, the reason he decided to open his latest play on Broadway is because he still bears a grudge against Nicholas Hytner for refusing to schedule more performances of Stuff Happens at the National.

The Sound of Music / Porgy and Bess / Therese Raquin

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Connie Fisher, the winner of Andrew Lloyd Weber's search-for-a-star reality show, hits the ground running in The Sound of Music. Indeed, she's so high energy, it's as if she's starring in an infomercial rather than a West End musical. She overdoes everything, right down to the smallest hand gesture. As contestants in reality shows are fond of saying, she gives it "one hundred and ten percent".

Cabaret / The Cryptogram

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Reading the obituaries of William Styron last week, I was surprised to learn about the controversy surrounding the publication of his novel Sophie's Choice. Even though it was only 27 years ago, he was attacked in some quarters for having the temerity to write about the Holocaust. Some critics took Elie Wiesel's view that no work of fiction, however powerful, could possibly capture the unimaginable horror of mankind's darkest hour.

Spamalot / Caroline, or Change / Dirty Dancing

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0100

According to Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph's man in the stalls, the only people who won't enjoy Spamalot are "the chronically depressed, the criminally insane and the snootier drama critics". He might have added a fourth category, namely, those of us who admire the Pythons for their radical, groundbreaking humour.

A Moon for the Misbegotten / The Seafarer / The 39 Steps

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0100

Like most of my colleagues, I've been fairly critical of Kevin Spacey's reign as the Artistic Director of the Old Vic. In the UK, his reputation is based almost entirely on his legendary performance in Howard Davies' production of The Iceman Cometh, so why did he insist on appearing in such trifles as Cloaca and The Philadelphia Story? Why didn't he give the public what it wants and simply revive another Eugene O'Neil play?

Piano/Forte / The Alchemist

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0100

As someone who's just published a book, I'm keenly aware that the negative reviews that hurt the most are those by critics who begin by saying that, up until now, they have been huge admirers of your work. After all, if the book in question doesn't even appeal to your biggest fans, who else is going to stomach it? I'd much rather get a bad review from someone who states at the outset that he hates everything I've ever done.

With this in mind, I'm loathe to admit that I'm a fan of Terry Johnson's.

Rabbit

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0100

"Envy is like farts," says Bella, the main character in Rabbit. "Everyone suffers from it. But if you let it out...you don't smell very nice. And everyone moves away from you."

This is an observation that, at first glance, appears to be true, but on closer inspection turns out to be rubbish--which is why I have no hesitation in admitting that I envy Nina Raine, the 30-year-old author of this dazzling new play.

Frost/Nixon

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0100

There's a moment towards the end of Frost/Nixon when the narrator, Jim Reston, launches an attack on television that is guaranteed to strike a chord with the entire metropolitan class. "The first and greatest sin of television is that it simplifies," he says. "Great, complex ideas, tranches of time, whole careers, become reduced to a single snapshot."

Rock 'N' Roll / Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell / On the Third Day

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0100

Mick Jagger was in the audience at the first night of Rock 'N' Roll, Tom Stoppard's new play, and his loyalty was amply rewarded. As far as I'm aware, no intellectual of Stoppard's calibre has ever offered a more favourable assessment of the historical significance of the devil's music. In essence, the message of Rock 'N' Roll is that bands like the Rolling Stones brought about the collapse of the Marxist control system in Eastern Europe. Not even Camille Paglia, who bows to no man in her admiration for Keith Richards, would go that far.

A Voyage Round My Father / Cruising

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0100

The dramatic highpoint in A Voyage Round My Father, John Mortimer's famous autobiographical play, occurs near the end when Elizabeth, the central character's wife, accuses both her husband and her father-in-law of not being serious enough. They never talk about politics or religion, she complains. They're not interested in the state of the nation. They just tell stories and make jokes.

Jane Eyre / The Overwhelming

Sat, 27 May 2006 00:00:00 +0100

I can't make up my mind about Shared Experience. Since 1988, this company has been adapting classic works of literature, transforming some of the greatest books in the Western canon into visceral pieces of physical theatre. The results are distinctly mixed. On the one hand, the plays are rarely more than crude summaries of the original novels, almost as if they've been designed to help GCSE English students revise for their exams.

Donkeys' Years / Footloose / Crooked

Sat, 13 May 2006 00:00:00 +0100

At the matinee performance of Donkeys' Years I attended, Michael Frayn was seated in the row behind me. Seeing this revival of a sex farce he wrote in 1977 must have been an odd experience for him, not least because he more or less single-handedly killed off the genre with Noises Off in 1982. I don't mean commercially, of course--Ray Cooney is still capable of putting bums on seats--I mean artistically.

The Royal Hunt of the Sun / The Voysey Inheritance / Hay Fever

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0100

The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer's 1964 play about the conquest of the Incas, contains one of the most famous stage directions in modern drama: "They cross the Andes." On the face of it, these four words are completely preposterous. How could a theatre company possibly create the illusion that a 4,000-strong army is crossing a mountain range? Yet there was method to Shaffer's madness.

The Old Country / The Best of Friends / One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0100

The Old Country, an Alan Bennett play that dates back to 1977, covers much the same ground as An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution. The central character is clearly based on one of the Cambridge Spies--in this case, a former foreign office official called Hilary who is rotting away in the Soviet Union while pining for the comforts of home. This figure--the ruling class dissident overcome with nostalgia for the country he's betrayed--clearly fascinates Bennett.

The Crucible / A Whistle in the Dark / Smaller

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0100

According to theatrical lore, no play can be considered an out-and-out masterpiece unless it's initially rejected. The most famous example is Look Back in Anger, which received a critical mauling in the dailies and was only saved from closure by Kenneth Tynan's rave in the Observer. The second most famous is The Birthday Party, which had actually closed by the time Harold Hobson's favourable review appeared in The Sunday Times. (According to legend, one matinee was attended by just six people.)

The Winterling / Sinatra / Pete and Dud: Come Again

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Has Harold Pinter become too dominant a figure? I'm not just talking about the trophies he's picked up in the past 12 months--the Wilfred Owen prize, the Franz Kafka prize, the Nobel prize, the Europe Theatre prize--but, more worryingly, the fact that so many new British playwrights seem content to ape Pinter's idiosyncratic style. There was a time, not so long ago, when a writer wouldn't be regarded as having arrived until he'd discovered his own voice.

The Cut / The Exonerated / Steptoe & Son

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

There's a scene in The Cut, a new play by Mark Ravenhill, that is so dull I came within a whisker of walking out. It occurs about halfway through and involves two actors--Ian McKellen and Deborah Findlay--sitting opposite each other at a dinner table and eating their supper. From the moment they begin, to the moment they clear their plates, they exchange just one line. Dramatically, it's about as exciting as standing outside a restaurant with your nose pressed to the window.

Blackbird / Honour / Othello

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Blackbird is the kind of play critics absolutely adore. Indeed, the reason it has managed to secure a birth in the West End--a rarity for a new straight play--is because it got such rave reviews at Edinburgh last year. For one thing, it's about paedophilia, and that enables the critics to congratulate the writer, David Harrower, on his "bold" choice of subject-matter. They like playwrights who don't pander to commercial interests--it demonstrates how serious they are about their craft.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? / The Soldier's Tale / Mary Poppins

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It's been 44 years since Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? made it's debut on Broadway, but it still seems extraordinarily fresh. Why? The obvious answer is that the subject matter--the battle of the sexes--is timeless. Anyone in a heterosexual relationship will experience a shudder of recognition at certain points during a performance of this play, if not all the way through. But I don't think that's the reason. Rather, it's because Albee's ear for dialogue is so good.