Privates on Parade

Privates on Parade runs at the New Theatre from February 15 – March 8. By Peter Nichols, music by Denis King, directed by Alice Livingstone.

It’s really hard to know what to say about Privates on Parade. It is a mess. A glorious mess – an officers’ mess – but a mess nonetheless.

Mess isn’t necessarily a bad thing (in fact, there are scholars who have devoted lots of time and space and energy to thinking through the poetics and erotics of mess). But mess has to be carefully contained, otherwise you end up with the literary/textual/theatrical equivalent of one of those houses you see on Hoarders. That’s kind of what I felt happened with Privates on Parade. There is just way too much going on in it. All this stuff has been thrown into a big heap and jumbled around and then strewn chaotically across almost three hours, and… and it’s a mess. It’s difficult and confusing and occasionally rewarding, but mostly, it’s just cluttered. And that is a problem, because all that junk is hiding the bits in this show that are genuinely fabulous.

Privates on Parade is set amongst a group of British soldiers stationed in Singapore in 1948. If I was going to try and describe the plot, it would a) be confusing, and b) probably be spoilers, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that it follows a group of British soldiers in an environment they don’t really understand, coping the best they can. At the beginning of the play, Private Steven Flowers (David Hooley) is introduced to the group, and quickly realises that there are two distinct groups: one, spearheaded by the nefarious Sergeant Major Reg Drummond (Matt Butcher), and the other, a group devoted to entertaining. These include drag queen Acting Captain Terri Dennis (James Lee), and gay couple Corporal Len Bonny (Martin Searles) and Lance Corporal Charles Bishop (Jamie Collette). The avowedly straight Steven also has to negotiate his growing relationship with half-Welsh, half-Indian dancing girl Sylvia Morgan (Diana Perini). Ideas of sexuality, race, and class are mobilised and explored.

If that summary was confusing, don’t worry – I was confused too. It was hard to tell whether Privates on Parade had too much or too little plot. There was so much going on it was genuinely hard to keep track of, and yet the actual linear thread of the story seems to be quite insubstantial. It’s almost like there are too many genres cobbled together here: there’s vaudeville and pantomime and dance and all kinds of things going on, as well as scenes between characters that might be interesting in terms of elucidating character but didn’t really go anywhere. Some of it enhances the story, but some of it obscures it.

I feel like this was an actor’s play – there was a lot in here for the performers to sink their teeth into, and they clearly relished this, because there were some fabulous performances. Diana Perini as Sylvia was particularly outstanding, but there were no weak links across the board. However, I’m not quite sure if it’s an audience’s play. It seems strange to say this about a play from the 1970s which won the Olivier award for best new comedy, but it feels like it’s one or two good workshops away from being ready for the stage. It needs taming. It needs a firm hand to turn its messiness into delicious complexity. The direction here goes some way to achieving that – I think Alice Livingstone has done a fine job – but it’s the kind of thing that probably needs to start from the ground up.

Privates on Parade is a lot of fun. There are great performances, and a lot of the songs are genuinely toe-tapping. But there is just way, way too much going on in this piece. It’s fun, but it’s messy.

Hay Fever

Hay Fever runs at the New Theatre from 10 October – 2 November 2013. By Noel Coward, directed by Rosane McNamara.

When I was in London recently, I was lucky enough to catch one of the final performances of Private Lives at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End, starring Toby Stephens and Anna Chancellor. It was the most wonderfully enjoyable show: fizzy and frothy and funny and just gorgeous. When I was thinking about it afterwards, I realised that it was not really that substantial: Private Lives deals with love in some interesting ways, as I discussed in my review of the Belvoir production of the same show last year, but overall, it’s not going to be the show that changes your life, you know? But that doesn’t matter. It is what it is, and this particular production was like a glass of champagne – wonderful and crisp and light and leaving you feeling a bit merry for quite a while afterwards. It was the kind of show that went straight to your head.

What it also was – or, at least, felt like – was effortless. And that is where this production of Hay Fever at the New Theatre falls down. I don’t want to compare this show to the high-profile, high-budget one I saw in the West End – that would be totally unfair – but on this point, I think it’s illustrative. When you can feel the cast trying oh-so-hard? when the wheels are showing? when you can see the sweat beneath the sparkle? Comedy – especially champagne comedies like Coward’s – do not work so well.

Comedy is notorious for being one of the most difficult of the dramatic arts, and this need for effortlessness is, I think, one of the reasons why. Wit isn’t as witty when you can see the witty one working at it. And that is what happens in this production of Hay Fever: it’s funny, but it’s laborious. Coward’s script is so brilliant that it’s still a terribly enjoyable couple of hours at the theatre, but it lacks the fizz and the froth that it really should have.

This is particularly true of the first act. The scenes where the Bliss family – mother Judith (Alice Livingstone), father David (James Bean), son Simon (David Halgren), and daughter Sorell (Jorja Brain) – are talking together before their guests arrive feel like really hard work. The words and the jokes were there, but they didn’t quite make it to the level of “witty banter”. The actors all felt a little uneasy in their skins, especially the younger two. The timing wasn’t quite right (although I should note that this problem was mitigated somewhat as the show progressed). It was still funny, but it was also a bit awkward – especially because I think some of the cast were struggling a little bit with their accents.

The second and the third act pick up a lot. I’m not sure whether the actors managed to get their groove back after a flat start or whether this is a larger problem, but it certainly feels like a different show after interval. The greater stage time allocated to the Bliss family’s houseguests is a big part of this – everything suddenly becomes a lot snappier when the characters are interacting one on one. I’d like to especially commend Tess Haubrich as Myra Arundel, who was fantastic the whole way through the show. She absolutely owned her role and lit up the stage whenever she was on it.

If you go and see this production, I think it would be pretty hard not to enjoy it. It’s difficult not to enjoy Coward, even when you can see the cogs turning. With some tighter direction and some snappier, punchier interaction – and maybe a week’s extra rehearsal? – I think this could be a really great show. As it is, it’s good fun, but it’s not quite champagne.

 

Top Girls

Top Girls runs at the New Theatre from 9 July – 3 August 2013. By Caryl Churchill, directed by Alice Livingstone.

Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play Top Girls is a seminal work of feminist theatre. Despite this, I think that is possible that an anti-feminist reading of the play could be advanced, one that condemns all the characters in it for their choices and criticises women who attempt to combine corporate success with a family. Thankfully, New Theatre’s production does not take this direction. This is an excellent production of Churchill’s play – lucid, pointed, and incisive, critical not of the choices its female protagonists make but of the oppressive system that has forced them to make them.

Top Girls follows the story of businesswoman Marlene (Julia Billington, in an outstanding performance). The show famously opens with a dreamlike sequence in which she dines with famous women from history, other women who have broken the mould, shattered the glass ceiling, and pursued success outside the typical mould of marriage and motherhood. The exception to this, Patient Griselda (Ainslie McGlynn), who obeyed her husband in all things, is treated with some derision by the other women, who scoff at and are horrified by her choices. These women are from all different periods and different walks of life, but their struggles and sorrows are surprisingly similar. All are unusual and remarkable for doing things that would not be especially extraordinary for a man, whether becoming a high powered executive like Marlene, travelling the world alone like Isabella Bird (Cheryl Ward), or becoming pope like Joan (Sarah Aubrey). In the next two acts, we see Marlene in the real world – first, the corporate world, where we see her as a hardnosed, ruthless businesswoman; and the second, with her family, whom she is visiting for the first time in six years. We see quite clearly just how much Marlene has had to sacrifice to achieve the success that she has, and how impossible success can be for other women.

The focus the show casts on the unhappiness and loneliness of these women – especially Marlene – is where I think it is possible for an anti-feminist lens to be applied. It would be possible (although certainly not Churchill’s intent) to see Marlene’s unhappiness, as well as the unhappiness of her fellow successful women, as a direct result of her ‘unfeminine’ choices. But no one is allowed to be happy in this play, a fact that this production highlights deftly. Marlene’s foil is her sister Joyce (played fantastically by Sarah Aubrey), who has followed the more conventional path, and is still clearly miserable. This production does a great job of emphasising what I think is the real underlying message of Top Girls: the unhappiness that these women experience is not the fault of the individual women, but because they must live in a culture that is distinctly unfriendly to them. Marlene must make outrageous sacrifices to carve out a space for herself in the professional world, and she is still blithely asked to give up her success by the wife of a male executive who was competing for the same position, because he has children and will not like working for a woman. Likewise, Joyce, abandoned by her husband, is reduced to domestic drudgery to make ends meet. For Angie (Claudia Barrie), whom Joyce has raised, the future seems to be hopeless: she has no hope of a career, nor of finding a man to support her. They exist in a culture that has no space for autonomous women in it, even if these women do their best, like Marlene, to compete with and beat men at their own game.

What hope there is seems to be in sisterhood, in female support networks, and this is another aspect of Churchill’s script that director Alice Livingstone has managed to highlight very well, albeit subtly. There is an inherent sense of competition between many of the women of the play – between the successful women at the dinner in the first act, who regularly talk over one another; between Marlene and the co-workers who have become her employees; and most especially between Marlene and Joyce. But there is a possibility of sisterhood and support. The women at the dinner find common ground. Marlene’s co-workers are friends, gossiping to each other about their lives. And while the tension between Marlene and Joyce is certainly not resolved, the class issues between them an almost insurmountable barrier, there is still a glimmer of hope. “I do love you,” Joyce says to Marlene, reaching out and pressing her hand. In this production, this is an incredibly poignant and powerful moment.

The only real problem I had with this production was the portrayal of Lady Nijo (Bishanyia Vincent) in the first act. The geisha-style makeup, along with the strong accent, ran the risk of turning this character into a racial stereotype. The performance did get more nuanced as the act progressed, but the portrayal of non-white characters by white actors is obviously an area which needs to be navigated with care (if not navigated around altogether).

Otherwise, this production is a fantastic realisation of Churchill’s script. The emphasis on female support networks as important in navigating the oppressive culture is not only a commentary on Thatcherism, which was prevalent at the time Churchill was writing, but remains important as a feminist tenet. This production also offers a powerful argument for an inclusive and intersectional feminism, one that cuts across many boundaries, the most pointed one in this case being class. Alice Livingstone has directed a lucid and intelligent production, abetted by some truly inspired performances. This is definitely a show you should go and see.