BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Angelo Cianci’s ‘Top Floor, Left Wing’

Posted on February 14, 2011 by admin

top floor, left wing x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Angelo Cianci’s “Top Floor, Left Wing” is a genial urban comedy about an Algerian father and son who end up holding a bailiff hostage when the boy thinks police have come to their apartment building to look for him.

Early events turn out not to be a serious as they seem in a film that takes a benign look at what it takes to get by in the present day with rundown accommodations and a social system that is as inept as it is well-intentioned. Box office prospects look good in French-speaking territories and the film’s comic take on society’s view of drugs, terrorism and urban housing might also give it legs elsewhere.

The picture begins with cross cuts of several characters as they begin their day including a group of police who arrive at an apartment building to help with a wedding in the community center. Meanwhile, bailiff Echeverria (Hippolyte Girardot) makes his daily round of collecting late payments and issuing threats of eviction.

Algerian ex-patriate Mohand (Fellag) is far behind on his rent and when the bailiff starts to inventory the place to see what might be sold, Mohand’s volatile son Salem (Aymen Saidi) gets edgy. When he sees all the police, he starts to panic.

It turns out he’s holding 5 kilos of cocaine for a local dealer and the man wants it back. Feeling trapped and with little respect for his docile father, Salem takes out a gun and ties up the bailiff. Much argument ensues and the gun goes off, which does bring the police and soon the deputy mayor has brought in the SWAT team and a major standoff develops.

Writer and director Cianci has a good deal of fun with the fussy conflicts of the officials outside, especially when Echeverria’s unhappy wife Anna (Judith Henry) shows up for the TV cameras gathered there.

The hostage and his two reluctant kidnappers turn out to have secrets that are revealed gradually and some sort of bond is established despite their predicament. Dad isn’t the pushover that his son thought he was, and the boy turns out to be not quite as stupid as he first appeared. The bailiff also is much more than simply a man who is cruel to poor people for a living.

The plight of the threesome escalates as police, media and crowds gather but the film is clearly on the side of the oppressed as it becomes apparent that their best chance of resolving the crisis is to kick off a general riot in the area. With several neighbors sympathetic to their cause, the comedy builds to an “Italian Job” climax that will leave audiences with a smile.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama; Cast: Hippolyte Girardot, Fellag, Aymen Saidi; Director, screenwriter: Angelo Cianci; Director of photography: Laurent Brunet; Production designer: Christina Schaffer; Music: Gast Waltzing; Editor: Raphaele Urtin; Production: Tu Vas Voir, Iris Productions, Kasso Inc.; Sales: Memento Films International; Not rated; running time, 93 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Berlin International Film Festival, Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Angelo Cianci’s ‘Top Floor, Left Wing’

BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Ralph Fiennes’s ‘Coriolanus’

Posted on February 14, 2011 by admin

coriolanus x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – At a time when revolution is once again in the air around the world, Ralph Fiennes delivers a ferocious reminder of the perils in store when a warrior becomes the head of state.

He directs and stars in “Coriolanus” as William Shakespeare’s Rambo, an invincible soldier who survives odds so overwhelming that he becomes to believe that he alone merits the title Consul of Rome.

Set in current times with Shakespeare’s language adapted skilfully by John Logan, and performed under Fiennes’ direction with modern phrasing, the film illuminates the playwright’s astonishing gift for timeless insight into what moves the human spirit and motivates ambition.

It could be sold as a straightforward action picture and should not put off those who find Shakespeare daunting. It’s a tough, violent and moving tragedy with splendid performances by Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, Brian Cox as his friend Menenius, and Gerard Butler as his enemy Aufidius. Its success should carry beyond festivals and scholars to a mainstream audience.

There are more battles in “ Coriolanus” than any other Shakespeare play and while Fiennes deploys tanks, rockets and automatic weapons in the many scenes of urban combat, he gives pride of place to cold steel to echo the story’s origins.

Filmed in Belgrade, Serbia, the setting is “A place calling itself Rome” that could be anywhere. Caius Martius (Fiennes) arrives back in the city-state bloodied but victorious after his most recent battles to be acclaimed as a peerless warrior. His mother Volumnia (Redgrave) exudes unquenchable pride in her son even as she observes, “Before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.”

He has defeated Aufidius, leader of the rebel Volsces and won the city of Corioles, so he is dubbed Coriolanus. Urged on by his mentor Menenius and the ambitious Volumnia, Martius expects to be given the highest rank in the Senate despite opposition from Tribunes Brutus (Paul Jesson) and Sicinius (James Nesbitt).

Before he may claim that position, however, he must gain the support of the people and there’s the rub because he has led brutal reprisals against social protestors and has no taste for the posturing required to appease the crowd.

With hunger and deprivation widespread, campaigners Cassius (Ashraf Barhom) and Tamora (Lubna Azabal) help the opposing Tribunes turn the crowd’s reaction into a frenzied rejection of their proposed leader. Outraged and betrayed, Martius is banished. He leaves home and family with only vengeance in mind, and heads off to find Aufidius so they can assault Rome together.

The meeting between the two sworn enemies is fraught with danger since their most recent bloody encounter has left them both scarred and vengeful. But Martius’ fearless approach and unmatched skills in battle win over the Volsces and they come to worship him almost more than they do Audifius.

With Rome now desperate, the story plays out as Martius plots his return, Audifius contemplates his own future, and the desperate Tribunes send first Menenius and then Volumnia to plead for peace.

It’s a Shakespearean tragedy, however, and things do not go well. Along the way, Fiennes and Butler have the martial swagger to match their incisive vocal delivery while Cox and especially Redgrave have emotional lines that they render with grace and delicacy. Redgrave also can change temper and spit out vituperation to match the agile Fiennes. They make a vitriolic pair – heavyweight screen acting at its best.

With great help from a fine cast plus production designer Ricky Eyres and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, with whom he worked on “The Hurt Locker”, Fiennes produced a piece of Shakespeare with a cutting edge as sharp as it is bloody.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival; US release Jan. 13, The Weinstein Co.; UK release Jan. 20, Lionsgate UK; Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave; Director, producer: Ralph Fiennes; Producers: John Logan, Gabrielle Tana, Julia Taylor-Stanley, Colin Vaines; Screenwriter: John Logan, based on the play “Coriolanus” by William Shakespeare; Director of photography: Barry Ackroyd; Music: Ilan Eshkeri; Editor: Nic Gaster; Costume designer: Bojana Nikitovie; Production: Artemis Films, Hermetof Pictures, BBC Films, Lonely Dragon; Distributors: U.S. The Weinstein Co., U.K. Lionsgate; US rating R; running time, 122 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Berlin International Film Festival, Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Ralph Fiennes’s ‘Coriolanus’

BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Dirk Lutter’s ‘The Education’

Posted on February 13, 2011 by admin

the education x650By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – German director Dirk Lutter’s “The Education” is clearly intended to be a cautionary tale that takes a bite out of large companies for the way they often mistreat their staff but it’s a toothless affair with no dramatic highlights or surprises.

Shot like a television show with bright colors and simple set-ups, it features actors with bland faces who tend to stare vacantly with no apparent thought process going on. Like several of the unfortunate employees in the story, it is not destined for a long career.

The one who gets the lesson in office politics is Jan, played by blond and inexpressive Joseph K. Bundschuh, whose chatty manner with customers catches the eye of smarmy and duplicitous boss Tobias (Stefan Rudolf, pictured with Bundschuh).

The company is run strictly on results with no personality permitted within the office. Lunch is in the cafeteria, desks must be left spotless at the end of the day, and individual laptops are locked in cases and stacked away before each employee leaves.

Jan’s overworked team leader Susanne (Dagmar Sachse) has difficulties at home and works unpaid overtime in order to keep up, but the department has fallen behind and Tobias asks Jan for information he might use to help improve matters.

Meanwhile, Jan has begun an affair with a young intern named Jenny (Anke Retzlaff) so he’s anxious for her to be hired full-time, and his mother (Anja Beatrice Kaul), a union official at the firm, has upset the bigwigs upstairs.

There is nothing tense or engaging about any of this: one thing just follows another with some strange interruptions including the occasional break for a 16-member choir to sing for the camera without explanation.

Now and then, Jan gets in his car and drives with the camera on the hood to emphasize the speed. He goes to a mall where he likes to buy a new top. Then he bites the zipper and exchanges the item for a new one, but it’s never clear why. Also without comment or follow-up, he stands naked before a mirror and shaves his public hair. If this pleases Jenny or makes her frown, we’ll never know.

The film has one startling image when Jan watches pornography at home and the cinema screen is filled suddenly with a close-up of the nether parts of a man and a woman in a busy moment of heightened excitement. It’s brief and goes by without remark, but so dull are the rest of the proceedings that it’s tempting to yell out, “Wait!”

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Perspektive Deutsches Kino; Cast: Joseph K. Bundschuh, Anke Retziaff, Stefan Rudolf, Dagmar Sachse, Anja Beatrice Kaul, Frank Voss; Director, screenwriter: Dirk Lutter; Director of photography: Henner Besuch; Production designer: Christiane Krumwiede; Music: Falko Brocksieper, Lars Niekisch; Costume designer: Manfred Schneider; Editor: Antonia Fenn; Producer: Titus Kreyenberg; Production: Unafilm; Sales: Media Luna New Films; Not rated; running time, 85 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Berlin International Film Festival, Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Dirk Lutter’s ‘The Education’

THEATRE REVIEW: Keira Knightley in ‘The Children’s Hour’

Posted on February 12, 2011 by admin

children's hour x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Lillian Hellman’s 1934 Broadway melodrama “The Children’s Hour” shows its age in this new West End production, but it does afford screen stars Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss a chance to show they are just as much at home on the stage.

They play teachers who run a small private school for girls where a malevolent child makes a false accusation that is believed. The consequences are destructive in several ways.

Mary Tilford (Bryony Hannah) is a willful and manipulative piece of mischief who hates the school and wants to live with her doting grandmother (Ellen Burstyn). Punished for yet another duplicitous act, she runs away to her grandmother’s home and declares that she has seen and heard the teachers do “unnatural” things with each other.

This was powerful stuff in the 1930s, and a good deal of controversy surrounded the play through its 691 performances in New York. (It was made into a 1961 film with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn also known as “The Loudest Whisper”.)

Hellman seems unable, however, to settle on whether the play’s focus is the way society loves to rush to judgment when fingers are pointed or on the ways that passion and jealousy affect friendship and love. The playwright opts to deal with both in melodramatic ways that suffer from being so obvious.

Karen (Knightley) and Martha (Moss) (pictured, left) are the closest of friends who have scrimped and worked hard to fulfill their dream of running the school and soon, Karen will marry her long-term doctor fiance Joe (Tobias Menzies).

The problem begins when Martha tries to get rid of her batty aunt Lily (Carol Kane), a failed actress who works at the school teaching elocution. In an angry confrontation before she departs, Lily lashes out and accuses Martha of having an unnatural affection for Karen and deep jealousy over her impending marriage.

Two students overhear this and soon tell Mary, who cannot wait to use it to her advantage. When she makes her scandalous claim, her grandmother accepts it at face value and withdraws her from school. Then she phones the parents of every other student, who do the same, and the school is closed.

Ian Rickson makes all this exposition less labored than it sounds, yet the melodramatics still creak. And while Hannah is a whirling devil of a child villain, the decision to make her habit for duplicity so obvious damages the production. It beggars belief that even a cloistered grandmother given sympathetic dignity by Burstyn would believe the girl.

Events transpire offstage as the teachers sue the old lady for slander but lose when Mary blackmails another student into supporting her and Lily cannot be found. The two women are left to pick up the pieces as both Joe and Martha begin to have second thoughts about the claim at the heart of the scandal, which leads to a contrived and unsatisfying climax.

The two leads succeed in adding depth to their characters, with Knightley poised and elegant as a woman unaware of her own appeal beyond that Joe loves her and Martha is a great friend. Moss makes Martha stiffer, still attractive but capable of holding back to observe with something like resentment the way her friend responds to her man. Menzies does well to convey how insidious suspicion becomes, and all three go beyond the words in the play to make poignant and memorable scenes of incomprehension and revelation.

Venue: Comedy Theatre, London (running through April 30); Cast: Keira Knightley, Elisabeth Moss, Ellen Burstyn, Carol Kane, Tobias Menzies, Bryony Hannah; Playwright: Lillian Hellman; Director: Ian Rickson; Set designer: Mark Thompson; Lighting designer: Neil Austin; Music: Stephen Warbeck; Sound designer: Paul Groothuis

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Keira Knightley in ‘The Children’s Hour’

THEATRE REVIEW: Royal Court’s ‘Clybourne Park’

Posted on February 12, 2011 by admin

clybourne park x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Race relations in a Chicago suburb in 1959 and 50 years later take a savage but hilarious beating in the Royal Court’s “Clybourne Park” by Bruce Norris, now transferred to the West End.

In 1959, the residents’ association in a fictional all-white community becomes alarmed when a black couple want to buy a home there. In 2009, the area has long been a thriving black community and now a white couple aim to move into that same house.

Observant, insightful and outrageously funny, Norris turns racial attitudes upside down to explore if they have changed over the decades or if racism will never go away. The play has no easy answers but the conflicts involved certainly shine a bright light on the topic. On Robert Innes Hopkins’ evocative set, which changes from a comfortable home to a ruined hulk, director Dominic Cooke shepherds a talented cast with absolute precision.

Openly influenced by the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun”, the production starts in the home of a comfortable middle-aged, middle-class white couple whose American dream has turned sour. Russ (Stuart McQuarrie) and Bev (Sophie Thompson) grieve the loss of their soldier son in different ways: the father unsociable and filled with barely suppressed anger, the mother with fussy housekeeping and determined good cheer.

Bev is kind, if patronising, to her black maid Francine (Lorna Brown, pictured with Sophie Thompson) but unaware that she is married with three children until husband Albert (Lucian Msamati) picks her up one day. The two happen to be there when neighbor Karl (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his pregnant wife Betsy (Sarah Goldberg) show up to try to talk Russ out of selling the house to a black couple.

In the second act, Brown and Msamati play members of the current residents’ association who are keen to make sure that prospective homeowners Steve (Moore) and pregnant Lindsey (Goldberg) don’t harm the neighborhood’s cultural heritage with their rebuilding plans.

Norris uses contrasting techniques for each sequence. The first part is more theatrical with Russ and Bev packing up to move home when the unwelcome persuaders show up. McQuarrie explodes in a remarkable show of fury when what happened to their son is revealed while Thompson channels every chirrupy mother from 1950s sitcoms. Bev’s misguidedly charitable attempts to give an unwanted chafing dish to Francine despite the maid’s determined indifference typify the play’s subtlety.

Moore succeeds in showing Karl’s financially inspired racism even as the man attempts to become more reasonable, another successful Norris device. It’s an ensemble show, however, with all of the players in top form. In the second act, Brown shows exactly how to stop a conversation with a single snap of the neck and an eyes-wide glare.

The second part is really just six people who sit around having an argument, but it works because of the crackerjack exchanges that escalate, or rather descend, into an open discussion of the conflicts at hand. Norris uses two old and completely scurrilous and obscene jokes to illustrate hilariously where intolerance leads.

A massive hit at the Royal Court, the play is in line for awards and a long run with its clever mix of human fallibility and the apparently relentless self-interest of every part of society.

Venue: Wyndham’s Theatre, London (running through May 7)
Cast: Stuart McQuarrie, Sophie Thompson, Lorna Brown, Stephen; Campbell Moore, Sarah Goldberg; Playwright: Bruce Norris
Director: Dominic Cooke; Set and costume designer: Robert Innes Hopkins; Lighting designer: Paule Constable;Sound designer: David McSeveney

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Royal Court’s ‘Clybourne Park’

THEATRE REVIEW; ‘Vernon God Little’ at the Young Vic

Posted on February 12, 2011 by admin

vernon god little x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – The Young Vic’s new production of “Vernon God Little”, based on DBC Pierre’s 2003 Booker Prize-winning novel, tries to jam in as many of its characters, incidents and ideas as possible, but ends up in Jerry Springer territory with little of the book’s vitality and wit.

It’s a noisy parade of rural American stereotypes aimed at the lowest common denominator with well-known country and gospel songs placed cynically to underline the scurrilous nature of low-lifes whose “Southern” accents reach Texas by way of Mayberry and Hazzard County.

The book is a difficult read since it deals with a Texas teenager accused of being an accomplice to a murderous high school rampage. It takes the form of a scabrous farce that indicts small-town folk, the media, the law, psychiatry, educators and what it deems to be America’s fondness for guns, the death penalty and televised spectacle.

The book’s saving grace and principal charm lie in the inventive and exotic language of the 15-year-old title character. Everyone else is seen through his eyes and filtered through his vivid but not entirely reliable imagination. It takes a raucous path as Vernon is accused falsely of helping his buddy Jesus commit mass murder in the classroom as vengeance for being bullied constantly at school and preyed on by a sanctimonious pederast.

Jesus shoots himself afterwards and so the community seeks someone else to punish. After a scheming TV news reporter manipulates events so that Vernon is accused of more murders, he flees to Mexico but is eventually brought back to face a trial that could end with his execution.

His docile mother, a gaggle of her nosy female friends, assorted law officers, the intrusive newsman, and various kids populate Vernon’s world, which he views with a venom borne of being dismissed and taken advantage of generally since the mysterious disappearance of his father.

In the book, these characters bob and weave as the after-effects of the killings wash across the locality. The author contrives to make penetrating sense of the absurdities that result from the clash between the horrifying event, everyday banalities and the relentless power of institutions such as media and the law.

Tanya Ronder’s stage adaptation, however, renders them as caricatures that the energetic performers can do little to make credible. It might have been better to re-imagine the tale and make it more focused rather than attempt to force in so much from the novel. Some characters and events have been changed, but not for the better.

Joseph Drake (pictured with Lily James) works hard as Vernon but without the book’s cultivated guile to work with, his performance stays on one anguished note. Peter De Jersey is smooth and sinister as the unstoppable newsman, and Clare Burt’s mother is far less sympathetic than in the book; while she sings sweetly, the performer cannot overcome the part’s lack of heft.

Lily James is an absolute knockout as a conniving beauty who puts Vernon in more jeopardy but she can’t do much with the more interesting role of a dirt-poor girl who surprises Vernon with compassion and smarts. The playwright appears to have no idea what to do with the character and so she fails to register onstage.

Ian MacNeil’s design is entertaining with furniture on wheels, improvised cars and TV sets, and curtains to make rooms, a courthouse and jail cells. Director Rufus Norris keeps a frenetic pace but the sheer number of characters with dubious accents and players in multiple roles make the proceedings dense and confusing, and the running time of around two and three-quarter hours including an interval does not help.

Venue: The Young Vic, runs through March 5; Joseph Drake, Lily James, Peter De Jersey, Clare Burt; Playwright: Tanya Ronder, from the novel by DBC Pierre; Director: Rufus Norris; Set designer: Ian MacNeil; Costume designer: Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting designer: Paule Constable, Jane Dutton; Sound designer: Rich Walsh.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Books, Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW; ‘Vernon God Little’ at the Young Vic

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Greenland’ at the National Theatre

Posted on February 2, 2011 by admin

Production images for Greenland, directed by Bijan Sheibani at the National Theatre, Jan 2011

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – A very convincing Polar Bear strolls onstage at one point in “Greenland,” the National Theatre’s ambitious but disappointing play about climate change but it’s about the only believable character in the production.

Four British playwrights, Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne, interviewed a raft of experts in order to devise the play, which has an impressive design but lacks focus and is woefully out of date.

greenland-polar-bear x325It’s a series of set pieces staged busily by director Bijan Sheiban that involve recurring characters in an assortment of settings from the Arctic Circle to the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change to the TV game show “Deal or No Deal”.

Designer Bunny Christie makes it a very big show with videos splashed large across the back of the stage that show maps, graphs, news footage, talking heads and, most effectively, a flock of Guillemots seeking shelter in the melting icepack at the North Pole.

There are some attempts at narrative with Lyndsey Marshal as Phoebe, a government aide looking for ammunition for the green cause from an intense researcher named Ray (Peter McDonald). His computer models that predict what will happen to the planet are terrifying in the extreme and he likes to play a game with Phoebe that he calls “the worst case scenario.”

One of them seems irrelevant but curious: the 500 million members of Facebook combine to pay off Africa’s debt and the US government closes down Facebook. But Phoebe works for the UK’s Labour government, which is ancient history since last year’s election put a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats in power.

Production images for Greenland, directed by Bijan Sheibani at the National Theatre, Jan 2011

There’s a schoolboy, Harold (Sam Swann) who wants to study geography and we see him 34 years later as Harry (Michael Gould), a solitary monitor of what happens to birds and bears when the polar icecap begins to disappear. Gould is effective with some sorrowful lines about the beauty and tragedy of nature, and mankind’s role in its fate.

Isabella Laughland plays an earnest young woman named Lisa who is determined to do something, anything, to protest what is going on although she’s not very clear on what is going on. But Laughland captures the determination and charm of a committed youngster.

There’s a series of conversations between a mother and daughter who fail to communicate on any issue regarding efforts to lead a green life and leave the mother filled with uncomprehending guilt and deeply confused. She says, “On Monday, they say we’re all going to die and on Tuesday they want to sell me a pension.”

Production images for Greenland, directed by Bijan Sheibani at the National Theatre, Jan 2011

The politico and the researcher end up at Copenhagen with some representatives from Mali, and the videos show clips from the summit, but the description of what happened is out of date.

China’s carbon footprint, the impact of importing meat and fruit from far away countries, and the way supermarkets wrap it up in plastic are all invoked as matters of concern. There’s a lot of information and many sides of the issue are presented, often in eye-catching ways, but it becomes inevitably didactic.

The episodic production does serve to mirror what appears to be the world’s general confusion on how to proceed with all the things that affect the climate and there are some startling images. Attempts at humour are infrequent, though, and the play’s exchanges lack real bite. When the researcher suggests that the environment is not a religion, the politico insists heatedly, “Of course it is!”

Whatever it is, the National Theatre is right to address the subject even if this attempt is underwhelming. The most potent image of the night came at the end when from the theatre’s ceiling came tumbling masses of bits of paper of different sizes. Someone has to clean that up every night.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through April 2; Cast: Lyndsey Marshal, Peter McDonald, Isabella Laughland, Michael Gould, Sam Swann, Paul McCleary; Playwrights: Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, Jack Thorne; Director: Bijan Sheibani; Dramaturg: Ben Power; Set designer: Bunny Christie; Lighting designer: Jon Clark; Video designer: Finn Ross; Music and sound: Dan Jones; Puppetry: Mark Down.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photos by Helen Warner.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Greenland’ at the National Theatre

THEATRE REVIEW: Gina Gionfriddo’s ‘Becky Shaw’

Posted on January 21, 2011 by admin

becky shaw 2 x650By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Anyone who thinks there’s a huge gulf in the sense of humor of American and British audiences should have been at London’s Almeida Theatre where the first night audience for Gina Gionfriddo’s off-Broadway play “Becky Shaw” was in stitches.

The laughter and applause was so sustained after one lacerating line delivered by David Wilson Barnes, as an acerbic money manager, that Anna Madeley, as his adoptive sister and secret love, had to pause to let it play out.

The play is a firecracker that takes common assumptions about family, love and the redemption to be found in kindness, and turns them upside down. It originated at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY, and won rave reviews when it ran off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre.

Original director Peter DuBois and star Barnes (“Love and Other Drugs”, “The Company of Men”) are at the Almeida with an otherwise British cast, and with Gionfriddo, who has writer and producer credits on various “Law and Order” TV strands, they show that smart and acidic comedy works on both sides of the pond.

Barnes (pictured top with Daisy Haggard) has a gift for stillness and the ability to deliver straight-faced stiletto comments that bring to mind Kevin Spacey, and he appears similarly immune to any concern that he will be liked or not. He plays Max, a buttoned-down financial expert who was adopted at 10 by the parents of Suzanna (Madeley) and who has emerged as the only functional member of the family.

Suzanna seeks refuge in the gooey edges of the self-help industry that Max despises and ends up married to would-be writer Andrew (Vincent Montuel), a softhearted do-gooder who cries if exposed to pornography. Together they deal with Suzanna’s tough-as-nails widowed mother Susan (Haydn Gwynne) who has multiple sclerosis and a spendthrift toy-boy.

Max’s affection for Suzanna is a bit more than brotherly love, however, and the story appears to be about them until Gionfriddo introduces the title character, played by Daisy Haggard (pictured below with Madeley and Montuel). Becky Shaw is a walking example of all that Max hates in life but Suzanna goes along with Andrew’s suggestion that she would make a splendid blind date.

becky shaw x650

Max is horrified at his first sight of Becky: “Wow. You’re like a birthday cake,” he exclaims. It becomes apparent that the young woman is short of a few candles with tales of woe that move Max not at all. Still, to keep the peace, he goes on the date only for the couple to be mugged at gunpoint.

Max is sanguine about life in the big city, but Becky claims to be traumatized and her neediness leads to scenes of great hilarity as Max attempts to be rid off her while trying to keep Suzanna’s marriage intact and solving his adoptive mother’s money problems.

DuBois uses designer Jonathan Fensom’s clever rotating set design to keep events moving swiftly and one of the great pleasures of the play is that the ground beneath the characters gradually changes too. That’s true even of the mother although Gwynne never lets down her guard. Madeley and Montuel show some steel inside their married couple’s fragile exterior and Haggard makes Becky more than ditsy with abrupt changes of tone.

Best of all, Barnes delivers Max’s scabrous remarks with an extraordinary lightness of touch. Under his sharp and savage wit, Max has a vulnerability that not only Suzanna but also Becky manages to tap into. Max is not a man to hang out with, but he’s more than welcome every time he steps on stage.

Venue: Almeida Theatre, runs through March 5; Cast: David Wilson Barnes, Haydn Gwynne, Daisy Haggard, Anna Madeley, Vincent Montuel; Playwright: Gina Gionfriddo; Director: Peter DuBois; Set & costume designer: Jonathan Fensom; Lighting designer: Tim Mitchell; Sound designer: John Leonard.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Gina Gionfriddo’s ‘Becky Shaw’

THEATRE REVIEW: Peter Hall directs ‘Twelfth Night’

Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin

twelfth night 2 x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – British stage legend Peter Hall celebrates his 80th birthday by directing his movie star daughter Rebecca Hall in a lyrical and musical production of Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy Twelfth Night that shows his touch is as deft as ever.

Anthony Ward’s sumptuous design sets the scene with a golden canopy that curves above the stage and alights down gently upon it with just scattered cushions, some light screens and a row of miniature houses at the back to suggest a seaside town in some jolly place.

Clad in brilliantly colored period costumes and accompanied by Mick Sands’ sprightly music for cello, mandola and flutes, the players engage one other like sure-footed dancers and the play’s insightful wit is given full measure.

As Orsino, Marton Csokas manages well the familiar and daunting opening lines, “If music be the food of love, play on,” and soon there in a bright red man’s costume is Rebecca Hall (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, “The Town”) as Viola, safe from a shipwreck but fearful that twin brother Sebastian has been lost at sea.

twelfth night 1 x325Hall (pictured top with Simon Callow and left with Peter Hall), in her debut at the National Theatre, captures with confidence Viola’s twin emotions as she enters Orsino’s court, being both confident in her ability to remain incognito but also afraid of betraying that she is not a eunuch named Cesario. Later, when Viola’s disguise frustrates her true feelings, the tall and slim actress portrays her desire to display her femininity with modern grit and simplicity.

As she falls for the prince, Orsino pines only for the lovely Olivia (Amanda Drew) and director Hall’s remarkably keen eye for fine detail is revealed in a scene in which Orsino lies back with his head on the kneeling and disguised Olivia’s legs as he proclaims his love. The action is elsewhere but like a close-up in a movie, the eye goes to Olivia’s elegant fingers as she is unable to resist caressing Orsino’s forehead.

The prince sends Cesario to woo her on his behalf, whereupon Olivia promptly falls in love with the young man who is really a woman. Drew plays Olivia as a haughty beauty quite undone by the strength of her feelings for the one she thinks is a mere boy and when the truth comes out she appears to be amused as well as shocked by the possible permutations.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare has much frivolity to offer as Sir Anthony Aguecheek (Charles Edwards) arrives also to woo Olivia and conspires with the drunken Sir Toby Belch (Simon Callow) to thwart similar aspirations held by Olivia’s pious steward Malvolio (Simon Paisley Day).

Callow (Four Weddings and a Funeral) is an accomplished scene-stealer and his Sir Toby is suitably loud and full of bluster but it is Edwards who steals a march with a performance that is hilarious and touching as the dimwitted Aguecheek. His manner of determined self-interest let down by limited intellect and bad timing is a constant delight, and yet the vulnerability of his quiet aside, “I was adored once,” is very sad.

Finty Williams catches the eye too as Olivia’s brazen and flirtatious maid Maria and Paisley Day adds a chilling bite of nastiness as the pompous and tormented Malvolio. And David Ryall threads a skein of wisdom throughout the proceedings as the fool Feste, observing human folly and frailty with tolerance and good humor.

“Twelfth Night” was written around 1600 and Peter Hall first directed it at the Oxford Playhouse in 1954, but in this joyful production it seems fresh as a daisy.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through March 2; Cast: Rebecca Hall, Simon Callow, David Ryall, Amanda Drew, Charles Edwards, Finty Williams, Simon Paisley Day; Playwright: William Shakespeare; Director: Peter Hall; Set and costume designer: Anthony Ward; Lighting designer: Peter Mumford; Sound designer: Gregory Clarke; Music: Mick Sands.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Peter Hall directs ‘Twelfth Night’

THEATRE REVIEW: Georges Feydeau’s ‘A Flea In Her Ear’

Posted on December 16, 2010 by admin

flea in her ear x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – The best way to perform farce is to be perfectly serious and in the Old Vic’s revival of the Georges Feydeau French classic “A Flea In Her Ear”, Tom Hollander plays two roles with such perfect gravity that they are hilarious.

Translated in 1966 by John Mortimer, the late English novelist and playwright who created “Rumpole of the Bailey” and scripted the 1981 TV miniseries “Brideshead Revisited”, it’s a scandalous romp about a Parisian society wife at the turn of the 20th century who gets the notion that her husband is having an affair.

As Raymonde Chandebise (Lisa Dillon) tells best friend Lucienne Homenides de Histangua (Fiona Glascott), it’s one thing for her to enjoy an extra-marital dalliance, but for her husband to do is “is going too far”.

Hollander plays her husband, Victor Emmanuel, a prim and pompous insurance man, whom she plots to catch red-handed by sending an anonymous invitation from an admirer for a rendezvous at a well-known hotel of ill repute called Le Coq D’Or. She gets Lucienne to write it but it falls inevitably into the wrong hands, not least those of Lucienne’s volatile Spanish husband, Carlos (John Marquez, pictured, left, with Hollander).

As a consequence, both couples and assorted other roués and their paramours end up at the garish hotel in a frantic round of musical beds and doors with multiple misunderstandings. To further complicate matters, the hotel porter, a sad-sack drinker named Poche, is Victor Emmanuel’s double. In both roles, not only must Hollander join the others in mad dashes about the stage, but also disappear offstage frequently for extraordinarily quick costume changes.

The diminutive actor (“Pirates of the Caribbean”, “Pride and Prejudice”) is a gifted physical comedian and he succeeds in not only making the two characters quite distinct but also as the farce develops in showing they have some traits in common. Hollander is responsible for most of the laughs as director Richard Eyre makes Feydeau’s clockwork plotting race along with exquisite timing.

Some of the comedy derives from character traits that are non-PC these days, such as the speech impediment of earnestly randy young Camille Chandebise, who has a cleft palate, and Carlos, whose English is minefield of tongue-tied Spanish. But Freddie Fox, as Camille, and John Marquez, as Carlos, play them with such sympathy and innocence that it becomes impossible not to laugh.

Dillon and Glascott give the conspirators appropriate flourish and feigned outrage and Rebecca Night catches the eye as a pretty and knowing hotel maid amongst a cast of talented performers who know the best jokes are told with a straight face.

Venue: The Old Vic, runs through March 5; Cast: Tom Hollander, Lisa Dillon, Tim McMullan, Fiona Glascott, Oliver Cotton, John Marquez, Freddie Fox, Rebecca Night; Playwright: Georges Feydeau, translated by John Mortimer; Director: Richard Eyre; Set designer: Rob Howell; Costume designer: Sue Blane; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Music: Stephen Warbeck; Sound designer: Gregory Clarke.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Georges Feydeau’s ‘A Flea In Her Ear’