THEATRE REVIEW: Frank Loesser’s ‘Guys and Dolls’

Posted on June 2, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Movie star Ewan McGregor has chosen well for his West End musical debut as Frank Loesser’s American classic “Guys and Dolls” spreads the heavy lifting across the entire cast and director Michael Grandage has assembled a splendid ensemble in a winning production.

Loesser’s melodic songs boast very clever and often funny lyrics and the show is greatly helped by a solid book by Jo Swerling and Abe burrows. The colorful Broadway characters created by Damon Runyon are softhearted bad guys and goodhearted bad girls, and every one’s a dreamer.

guysdolls x325McGregor (above left) plays Sky Masterson, the role Marlon Brando played in the 1955 movie, with Douglas Hodge as Nathan Detroit, the Frank Sinatra part. They are both gamblers but while Masterson’s expertise clads him in fine suits and takes him to exotic places with glamorous women, Detroit is an amiable loser just savvy enough to run “The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York,” which provides for one of the big numbers in the show.

Detroit has run out of places to hold his crap game and he badly needs $1,000 to pay for a place. Fortunately, Masterson is attracted to complicated wagers and when Detroit bets that he cannot get a woman of his choosing to accompany the charmer to Havana, Cuba, he accepts.

The woman in question, however, is a sergeant in the Salvation Army named Sarah Brown (Jenna Russell, pictured above second left) and Masterson’s work is cut out for him. There’s as much chance of him getting the sergeant to Havana as there is of Detroit’s long-time fiancé Adelaide (Jane Krakowski, above with Hodge) getting the lug to the altar.

The quartet of star-crossed lovers sing and dance their way through several of the best show tunes that ever caused an audience to hum itself out of a theater before the predictably sentimental finale.

McGregor can certainly carry a tune and he hits the high notes as required. He delivers his big number, “Luck Be a Lady” with enormous brio. He can also hoof well enough not to cause havoc with the dancers but his main contribution is his considerable star wattage and immediate likeability.

Hodge has the affably rumpled look of a Bowery Boy who can sing and dance, and he presents a pleasing combination of blustering buffoon and winsome innocent.

Russell is sweetly convincing as she goes from straight-laced missionary to rum-fueled wild-girl in the pulsating number “Havana,” and makes Masterson’s passion for her believable.

Krakowski, a Tony winner and former costar in TV’s “Ally McBeal,” is the biggest crowd pleaser with some of the sexiest and most entertaining tunes including “Adelaide’s Lament” about how being in love can give you a cold.

The show stopper “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat.” delivered by the entire cast led by Martyn Ellis as Nicely Nicely Johnson, is placed conveniently toward the end, guaranteeing that the audience will leave the theater not just humming but dancing.

Venue: Piccadilly Theatre, runs through March 4;  Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jane Krakowski, Douglas Hodge, Jenna Russell, Martyn Ellis, Cory English, Niall Buggy, Patrick Brennan, Sevan Stephan; Music & lyrics: Frank Loesser; Book: Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows; Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon; Director: Michael Grandage; Designer: Christopher Oram; Choreographer: Rob Ashford; Lighting designer: Howard Harrison; Donmar Warehouse Production presented by Howard Panter for Ambassador Theatre Group, David Ian for Clear Channel Entertainment in association with Tulchin/Bartner Productions, Arielle Tepper and David Binder.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Marivaux’s ‘The False Servant’

Posted on June 2, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – It’s not just the servants who are false in this sleek and entertaining story of sexual intrigue in that elegant segment of French society known for its dangerous liaisons.

Martin Crimp has updated Pierre de Chamblain de Marivaux’s play from 1724 to an indeterminate but distinctly continental era that encompasses both a sense of 18th century flair and modern hubris. Director Jonathan Kent presents it with pace and flourish so that a piece of sexual gamesmanship, or rather gameswomanship, becomes both amusing and enthralling and finally quite moving.

In a swanky country chateau setting, designed wonderfully by Paul Brown and filled with tarnished silver and deceptive mirrors, a cavalier woman-chaser named Lelio (Anthony Calf) is set on a course of emotional destruction by a lithe but louche fellow known as Chevalier (Nancy Carroll).

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Fey but confident, Chevalier quickly learns that Lelio is promised to their hostess, the Countess (Charlotte Rampling, pictured with Carroll), but determined to drop her for a better catch. Little does he know that the Chevalier is in fact the new object of his purse-driven lust convincingly dressed and coiffed as a man.

The Countess is similarly fooled by Chevalier’s feigned masculinity and as the intrigue continues, she falls under “his” spell, leading to a merry old cross-dressing romp.

It is some trick to accept that the beautiful Nancy Carroll is a handsome young boulevardier but costumes and makeup and fine acting largely suspend disbelief. It helps that the pacing is swift, the jokes funny and the dialogue tart.

the-false-servant-at-the-national-theatre-20041Anthony Calf is all decayed sophistication as Lelio and there is a wonderful performance by Adrian Scarborough as the servant whose self-interested conniving helps fuel the mischief.

Dominating proceedings, however, is the Countess, played by Charlotte Rampling with the authentic stillness and sexual dominance that she has brought to some memorable screen roles. Dressed in the most elegant gowns but looking as if she has lost faith in the power of her sensuality, Rampling plays the Countess as a fading beauty on the verge of exhaustion with romance. Pursued falsely by both Lelio and Chevalier, she suggests a fabled equilibrium that has lost its assurance.

In the scenes of seduction by Chevalier with Carroll all dinner jacket and Marlene Dietrich decadence, Rampling toys with the sly implications and the stage is redolent with salacious possibilities.

There is a cold cruelty about all of these characters, however, and Marivaux does not let any of them off the hook. In Crimp’s lively and insightful translation, there are issues of love and deception that go deeper than simple French farce.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Sept. 15; Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Nancy Carroll, David Shaw-Parker, Adrian Scarborough, Anthony Calf, David Collings; Playwright: Pierre de Chamblain de Marivaux in a new translation by Martin Crimp; Director: Jonathan Kent; Designer: Paul Brown; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Music: Jeremy Sams; Sound designer: Rich Walsh; Movement: Jack Murphy; Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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CANNES FILM REVIEW: Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Five’

Posted on May 17, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

CANNES – Iranian director Abbas Kiaraostami’s documentary ‘Five’ is like a bad day at the seaside in winter. The 74-minute film comprises four segments with a fixed camera focused on a patch of seafront and one by a large pond accompanied mostly by the sound of rushing water. It’s clear that Kiarostami’s artistic pebble skips along a unique path but many viewers may decide this is a beach too far.

The first 10-minute segment shows a log being rolled back and forth by a shallow outgoing tide. The second has a promenade with several people and a couple of seagulls walking across the frame in either direction. Four elderly gentlemen gather briefly for an unheard confab and there’s the brief hope they may attack the person with the camera with their walking sticks but they split up and leave. 

The third sequence features five indolent dogs lazing at the edge of blue water at twilight. A sixth dog trots on but sizes things up pretty quickly and departs. In the fourth segment, a duck ambles across the screen followed by several more and then a whole waddle of ducks in single file, made more humorous by the sound-effect of footsteps. Then the ducks run into some kind of boondoggle offscreen as the next thing you know, they’re all striding back in the other direction.

The final sequence lasts 20 minutes and is shot mostly in the dark with perhaps the moon glimmering on the surface of a patch of water. It’s for people who don’t know that at night watery creatures can make a noisy racket that sounds curiously like human chatter but when there is thunder and lightning, they go quiet. 

All the folks who walked out of the film during the first three segments, though, will be kicking themselves for missing the ducks.

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CANNES FILM REVIEW: ‘The Edukators’

Posted on May 17, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

CANNES – “The Edukators” is that rare beast, a terrific movie that boasts intelligent wit, expert storytelling, delightful characters, and grown-up dialogue plus suspense and a wicked surprise ending. Continue reading →

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THEATRE REVIEW: Stephen Rea in ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’

Posted on May 11, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – There are many things that need to be right in a production of “Cyrano de Bergerac” and among the most essential, right off, is Cyrano’s nose. If we don’t buy the poet’s prominent proboscis, we won’t buy his poetry or his panache.

Jose Ferrer had an Oscar-winning nose in the 1950 movie; Steve Martin’s was rapier-like to match his wit in the 1987 “Roxane”; and Gerard Depardieu’s was robustly Gallic in the 1990 “Cyrano.”

In the National Theatre’s new production, Stephen Rea has a rough and ready olfactory device reminiscent in its ruggedness of another Academy Award-winning snout, the strapped-on attachment worn by Lee Marvin as Kid Shelleen’s evil twin brother Strawn in “Cat Ballou.”

It’s a completely successful nose, however, that is emblematic of a street-smart and enthusiastically vulgar adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s play by Irish poet Derek Mahon. Under Howard Davies’s rudely vigorous direction, the setting becomes an incongruous but fascinating melding of County Down and Gascony.

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The stage is dominated by a vast scaffold construction like an immense set of monkey bars on which the players prance and dance, tumble and fight. It becomes a fortress, a theatre, or a mansion. At times it appears to be a giant space station out of “Star Trek” and that’s fitting as the story does not appear fixed in time

Stephen Rea’s Cyrano is less of a stylish Gascon swashbuckler and elegant wit and more of a Northern Irish roughneck who’s handy with cutting blade and quick tongue. Rea’s world-weary demeanor and hangdog expression work well with Mahon’s obscenity-laced verse and his romantic odes to the lovely Roxane (Claire Price, pictured with Rea) are laced with pessimism.

Cyrano is an obstinate man. “I like to be difficult; hostility keeps my backbone straight,” he says. He duels ruthlessly with any man who mentions his extreme features and keeps the Cadets de Gascogne well contained with his humor and willingness to brawl.

Roxane alone gets under his skin. “A star danced at her birth,” he says. But he believes she could never love him so when she falls for the inarticulate but handsome cadet Christian, Cyrano gladly spins the golden phrases that win her heart.

These, too, reflect a working-class sensibility and when Cyrano stands in for Christian in the famous balcony scene, calling up to her from the shadows below her window, Rea reveals the pain of the impersonation as much as the love within.

Director Davies employs the large space of the National’s Olivier stage for big musical numbers involving the cadets’ swordsmanship and later creates a spectacular battle sequence with great movement, lighting and crashing sound effects.

William Dudley’s inventive set also includes two walkways that reach out over the stalls so that characters emerge speaking from behind the audience. It both enlarges the action and allows for moments of great intimacy.

Aside from Cyrano, few characters stand out from the winning ensemble. Zubin Varla’s Christian appears mostly bewildered, both by Roxane’s apparent love for him and the threat of death. Malcolm Storry delivers the snap and arrogance of Count de Guiche, who also covets Roxane. Claire Price makes the object of everyone’s attention flighty and fractious at first but she grows to be quite moving in her understanding and acceptance of what fate hands her.

But it’s Rea and his feeling for words that make this “Cyrano” memorable. He speaks his lines as if making them up on the spot and while romantics may wish for a lighter, more debonair character, his wry and rueful countenance rings true.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through June 24; Cast: Cast: Stephen Rea, Claire Price, Zubin Varla; Malcolm Storry, Anthony O’Donnell, Nick Sampson, Katherine Manners; Playwright: Edmond Rostand, a new version by Derek Mahon; Director: Howard Davies; Set designer: William Dudley; Costume designer: John Bright; Music: Dominic Muldowney; Movement and dance: Christopher Bruce; Fight director: William Hobbs; Lighting designer: Paul Anderson; Sound designer: Paul Groothius; Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Pirandello’s ‘Henry IV’

Posted on May 6, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – It’s a not so fine madness that has an unnamed present day Italian aristocrat believing for 20 years he is the medieval German King Henry IV in Luigi Pirandello’s steely fable, here in a new version by Tom Stoppard.

It was a fall from a horse while dressed as the Teutonic monarch during a pageant that brought on the delusion that has led to the loss of his lover, Matilda (Francesca Annis), to his rival Belcredi (David Yelland) and a life of pampered seclusion.

It is to his theatrically dressed home that a group including Matilda, Belcredi and a psycho-babbling shrink arrives intending to shock him out of his bewilderment. Since Himself, as his acolytes refer to the nobleman, is known to be fixated on a portrait of Matilda dressed as a medieval duchess, the notion is to surprise him with the very much alive Matilda along with her look-alike daughter Frida in period costume.

Pirandello’s great joke, embellished usefully by Stoppard, is that, once the conspirators are out of earshot, Himself bellows: “What a bunch of wankers!” In fact, he has been recovered from his madness for eight years but chooses to perpetuate the illusion of his delusion: “I decided to stay mad, to live as a madman of sound mind.”

Still, he allows the conspirators to act out their own pageant and the issue of masks and madness becomes profound leading to an act of violence that shatters any complacency on the matter.

Christopher Olam’s imposing set, spare but with tall columns; Adam Cork’s spirited music and sound score; and the mix of Olam’s period costumes and Armani modern dress, combine to put the senses successfully off kilter.

Francesca Annis, as the vain but anxious Matilda, and David Yelland, as her elegantly jealous lover Belcredi, smack of cocktails in St. Moritz and contrast nicely with the sackcloth-clad “madman”.

When Ian McDiarmid enters as “Henry IV,” he appears frail and lost, his voice plaintive but cunning and high like Maggie Thatcher’s. He simpers in his pretended insanity but bemoans his fate and keeps potential violence close to the surface. When he sheds his pretence, the emergence of a forceful and vengeful man is vivid and convincing.

Stoppard loves to entertain and he writes brilliantly for actors. McDiarmid takes his words and captivates entirely with his grasp of the subtleties between pretended madness and pretended sanity, and the treacherous gulfs between the two.

In director Michael Grandage’s firm hands, with ample use of the Donmar space, memories of the fancy-dress show where the fateful fall took place are seen from different viewpoints and life’s own rich and complex pageant is explored in the process. “The life we live as puppets,” sighs the king. What at first seems like a flight of fancy as a rich man indulges himself in games becomes a powerful examination of the way people masquerade as something other than their true selves while not always knowing who they really are.

Venue: Donmar Warehouse, runs through June 26; Cast: Ian McDiarmid, James Lance, Stuart Burt, Neil McDermott, Nitzan Sharron, Brian Poyser, Orlando Wells, David Yelland, Robert Demeger, Francesca Annis, Tania Emery; Playwright: Luigi Pirandello, a new version by Tom Stoppard; Director: Michael Grandage; Set & costume designer: Christopher Oram; Contemporary wardrobe: Giorgio Armani; Lighting designer: Neil Austin; Music & sound score: Adam Cork; Sound designer: Fergus O’Hare. Presented by the Donmar Theatre, supported by Stuart and Hilary Williams.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photo by Ivan Kyncl.

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THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Jailhouse Rock The Musical’

Posted on May 4, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Elvis Presley was crowned the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll but few would argue that Little Richard did not have a more legitimate claim to the throne. The point is illustrated, more by accident than design, in the new British production, “Jailhouse Rock The Musical.”

The show is based loosely on the 1957 Presley movie. Loosely, in the sense that they’ve kept the plot but failed to secure rights to the Lieber and Stoller songs, including the hit title number. So the warden does throw a party at the county jail and the prison band is there but it doesn’t wail to quite the same effect.

Mario Kombou is Elvis as Vince Everett, the quick-tempered, curly-lipped, pelvis-swiveling hunk who is sent to the Big House for manslaughter and is there taken under the wing of an old-time country singer named Hawk Houghton (Roger Alborough). Hawk is a long-time con who is not the teeniest bit attracted to Vince,. Don’t even go there. He just wants to be his pal and teach him to play guitar. And collect 50% of his earnings when he’s released and becomes a big star.

That’s exactly what Vince becomes on the outside although it takes the love of a good, albeit rich, woman (Lisa Peace) and fights with cheating record label executives before he makes it. But what will happen when Hawk gets out and demands his cut, and will Vince remember his promise to help his good black jailbird buddy Quickly Robinson (Gilz Terera) obtain parole?

You might have thought that once the producers realized they weren’t going to get “Jailhouse Rock” and other great Presley songs from the film such as “Treat Me Nice”, “Don’t Leave Me Now” and “Young and Beautiful”, they might have gone back to the drawing board. Presley made 32 pictures in a 13-year Hollywood career and surely “Roustabout”, “Clambake” and “Harum Scarum” are fine titles to hang an Elvis stage musical on.

But they probably had the sets by then and double-decker jail cells form the backdrop throughout so that Vince’s connection to the downtrodden black inmates can be underscored with slide guitar and harmonica blues riffs and a little bit of gospel thrown in.

The result is a strange mishmash that devolves into a muddy-sounding rock concert as the plotlines are all resolved and it becomes an Elvis impersonator show without the fancy costumes. On the plus side, there are a couple of well-staged prison numbers involving “Stomp”-like percussion created by the chain gang chorus.

The only early Presley songs included are “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, “A Fool Such as I” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”. Curiously, but pleasingly, two of the big showpieces are built around songs associated with country star Charlie Rich – “Lonely Weekends” and “Big Boss Man.”

A fine group of singers and musicians has been assembled to not only pound out the rock stuff but also perform unlikely but entertaining versions of left-field songs such as “Pretty Little Angel Eyes”, “Winter Wonderland” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

Of course, it all comes down to the key performers. Roger Alborough is a far cry from the film’s indispensable Mickey Shaughnessy, looking a lot like Bill Haley without the kiss curl. Lisa Peace is given precious little to work with as Vince’s love interest. In the Presley role, Mario Kombou has all the charisma of Fabian although he can carry a delicate tune close to the Presley manner and grows in confidence once he’s belting out the big Elvis in Vegas numbers such as “Burnin’ Love” and “Suspicious Minds.”

The star of the show, however, is Giles Terera, who tops a series of crowd-pleasing cameos throughout with a genuine, show-stopping blast of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”. Long live the King!

Venue: Piccadilly Theatre, runs through Sept. 18; Cast: Mario Kombou, Roger Alborough, Lisa Peace, Giles Terera, Dominic Colchester, Melanie Marcus, Mark Roper, Annie Wensak, Gareth Williams; Writers: Rob Bettinson & Alan Janes; Director: Rob Bettinson; Producers: Alan Janes, Rene Sheridan; Co-producers: Jonathan Alver, Stephen Dee; Designer: Adrian Rees; Musical supervisor: Davi Mackay; Choreographer: Drew Anthony; Lighting designer: Alistair Grant; Sound designer: Simon Baker. Presented by Theatre Partners, the Jailhouse Company and Volcanic Island by arrangement with the Theatre Royal Plymouth.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Ben Whishaw in Trevor Nunn’s ‘Hamlet’

Posted on April 28, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Trevor Nunn’s breathtaking new production of “Hamlet” sees the Danish prince as James Dean in “East of Eden,” an immature and deeply torn young man whose love for his father and conflicted feelings for his mother drive him to extremes.

For his first staging of the play since 1970, Nunn has chosen a 23-year-old unknown named Ben Whishaw, who catapults instantly to fame with his unforgettable performance. As the young rebel with a cause, Whishaw actually looks more like the early Anthony Perkins, knife thin and gangly, his fear striking out from jangling neuroses and hormones, but who also possesses great calm with beseeching eyes and a killer smile.

hamlet x325As artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and later director of the National Theatre, Nunn invigorated the Shakespeare canon and reinvented the musical with hits such as “Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “Oklahoma” and “Anything Goes.” His fresh take on “Hamlet,” with many of the youthful cast making their West End debuts, makes a luminous addition to those formidable accomplishments.

When first the ghost of Hamlet’s late father is seen, Elsinore appears to be a vast and daunting place in an indeterminate age. John Gunter’s design offers tall walls and high-climbing steps, and Paul Pyant’s lighting throws huge and moody shadows. But that soon gives way to the bright and creamy court of the newly crowned Claudius (Tom Mannion) and his fresh bride, Gertrude (Imogen Stubbs, pictured top with Whishaw), widow of his brother, the deceased king.

This is a palace in modern dress with Champagne and tennis, Versace and rock’n’roll, secret service agents and Uzis. The language, too, feels new, spoken conversationally rather than declaimed, gaining enormously in clarity and losing nothing of Shakespeare’s gorgeous poetry and marvelous wit.

Nunn has cut the play so that it runs for 3 hours and 19 minutes with a 20-minute interval. He also, crucially, has placed Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” monologue 45 minutes into the play at a much more fitting moment than its typical place in the third act. Whishaw makes the scene his own and renders the contemplation of suicide, pills and Evian water at hand, with a teenager’s confusion over the romance and grisly reality of dying young.

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Younger still, Samantha Whittaker defines Ophelia as a skittish teenager thrown into emotional chaos by the death of her father, Polonius (Nicholas Jones) and the escalating turmoil around her. Kevin Wathen and Edward Hughes play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as schoolboy innocents, pawns of Claudius and his minions, while Jotham Annan (pictured with Whishaw above) is stalwart as the prince’s loyal friend, Horatio.

Rory Kinnear makes Laertes a vigorously vengeful son, howling in his own grief over Polonius’ death and willing to be the instrument of Claudius’ murderous plans for Hamlet.

Mannion and Stubbs bring glamour and guile to their roles as some kind of Kennedys in an all too brief Camelot, and Jones hides his chief of staff’s cunning behind jovial bluster. James Simmons is strong in three roles, including a shrewd first player, as so is Sidney Livingstone, especially as the canny gravedigger.

Maggie Lunn’s casting is splendid throughout but Nunn must take the credit for melding them into a production that makes “Hamlet” fresh and relevant and gives the world a brand new star in Whishaw.

Venue: The Old Vic, runs through July 31; Cast: Ben Whishaw; Tom Mannion; Imogen Stubbs; Nicholas Jones; Rory Kinnear; Samantha Whittaker; Jotham Annan; Kevin Wathen; Edward Hughes; Playwright: William Shakespeare; Director: Trevor Nunn; Design: John Gunter; Lighting: Paul Bryant; Composer: Steven Edis; Sound: Fergus O’Hare; Associate Costume Designer: Mark Bouman; Fight director: Malcolm Ranson; Movement: Kate Flatt; Casting: Maggie Lunn; Voice: Patsy Rodenburg; Presented by Old Vic Productions, Ron Kastner and Background.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Simon Gray’s ‘Holy Terror’

Posted on April 27, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – “The Holy Terror” is neither holy nor a terror although it is wholly terrible, being partly a satirical blast at book publishing that misfires on all cylinders and partly a dissection of a man’s descent into paranoia and madness that doesn’t bear scrutiny.

Simon Callow x325It’s difficult to imagine why writer Simon Gray wished to so completely revise his 1987 play, “Melon,” that starred Alan Bates and was quite well received when its targets appear already dated. You don’t have to know much about British publishing of the 1980s to suspect that Thatcherite era of greed to be one of ruthless excess. Mystifyingly, Gray sets up his play in the form of a speech by ex-publishing wizard Mark Melon to a meeting of the Chicester or Cheltenham, he’s not sure which, Women’s Institute. We then see episodes of his rise and fall as it were in flashback but the device serves no purpose other than to provide a quick fade for each scene.

Simon Callow (pictured) plays Melon and his miscasting is evident quickly as this personable actor who has so well established himself as a jolly bachelor uncle is asked to play a sleek shark in the deadly shallows of publishing. In business, Melon tells the gathered ladies, “I knew not only whom to fire but how, which meant quickly.”

Melon throws himself into the task of ridiculing the old-time publishing chief (Robin Soans) and cutting to the quick his roster of writers. They strive mightily but fail miserably to be amusing, from an oddball from the Highlands whose prose is in some weird Scottish patois to the predictable housewife author of erotica to a bland lister of lists who turns his hand to a treatise on masturbation.

Melon not only “bonks” the office poppets and seduces the female writers but tries to entertain the Women’s Institute by making “bonking” out to be an onomatopoeia, so lame are the jokes.

By the second act, Melon has carved his way to the top and the only way to go is down. Being a ceaseless cheat himself, he develops the irrational belief that his faithful wife has been cheating on him. This becomes an obsession to the point that it drives him into therapy and finally electric shock.

The last part of the play is devoted to Melon’s assorted treatments and increasingly hysterical encounters with his doctors and bewildered wife. If the psychiatric scenes were not so stridently unfunny, Melon’s fate might engender some sympathy but even Callow cannot generate any. It all goes to his blameless wife Kate, endearingly played by Geraldine Alexander, who remains safely above the fray.

As the play careers into disarray, Callow appears to redouble his efforts to save it, dancing, chortling, and hurling himself to the floor. He becomes so red-faced and sweaty that you fear for his own health rather than anything that happens to Melon. It’s a shame that such a big-hearted performance is wasted on such a trying piece of work.

Venue: Duke of York’s Theatre, runs through Aug. 7; Cast: Simon Callow, Robin Soans, Lydia Fox, Tom Beard, Matt Canavan, Beverley Klein, Geraldine Alexander; Playwright: Simon Gray; Director: Laurence Boswell; Design: Es Devlin; Lighting: Adam Silverman; Music: Simon Bass; Sound: Fergus O’Hare. Presented by Theatre Royal Brighton Productions, Laurence Boswell Productions, Richmond Theatre Productions and Ambassador Theatre Group.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: David Mamet’s ‘Oleanna’

Posted on April 23, 2004 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – David Mamet seems like he would be the kind of scholarly poker player who, when someone hauls in a big pot through intuition and luck, chides the player for staying in with that hand.

Mamet writes clever and thought-provoking plays and he stacks the deck cheerfully, using his knowledge of feints, bluffs and tells to keep his audience off-balance. In “Oleanna,” the set-up is seven-card stud with one Queen wild.

The early cards suggest an everyday encounter between a confused young student and a caring professor. Carol (Julia Stiles) comes to the teacher’s study to beg for help. She says she doesn’t understand anything, not the book he wrote and nothing in his class. “I don’t know what it means and I’m failing. I’m stupid,” she says, sobbing.

John (Aaron Eckhart) is distracted by phone calls from his wife as they are in the middle of buying a new home. He’s up for tenure and his career is going well. He teaches education and he has all the confidence and arrogance of a successful middle-class male.

He hardly sees the condescension in the way he tries to mollify his student as he promises to tear up her marks, urges her to visit him again in his study, and steadies her shoulders as she sobs.

But then Mamet ups the ante and the wild Queen shows up. Carol accuses the professor of everything from elitism to sexism to sexual harassment. John stands to lose not only his shot at tenure but also his house and his job.

Here, the playwright uses cards that shouldn’t be on the table, however, as it’s inconceivable that a male teacher once accused of improper behavior by a female student would ever again be alone with her. But Mamet wants to build the pot and if Carol and John are to go head-to-head, they need private confrontations.

The play builds to a clash that when it was first produced in the early ’90s caused audiences to yell out at the actors and led to fierce male/female arguments afterwards. Mamet’s craftsmanship is so good, however, that the tone of the play is very much in the hands of director and actors.

Here, director Lindsay Posner takes the middle road and inclines to neither side. Julia Stiles is completely convincing as Carol as she emerges from dowdy submissiveness in the first act to great authority later when she quotes from the copious notes she’s taken and invokes the power of the group that supports her. Aaron Eckhart plays the first act in a very easygoing manner and it’s only as the conflict builds that it becomes apparent how subtle and detailed his earlier work is.

If “Oleanna” ends up more as a conversation piece than anything deeply involving it has to do with the mechanical way Mamet uses words. He gives his actors half-words and staccato syllables and expects them to sound as if they’re arguing, but the sound is of rhetoric, not two people engaging. They repeat phrases such as “Do you see?” that seek no answer. They talk a lot without saying much. At times you wish someone would simply tell them to shut up and deal.

Venue: Garrick Theatre, runs through July 17; Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Julia Stiles; Playwright: David Mamet; Director: Lindsay Posner; Designer: Christopher Oram; Lighting designer: Howard Harrison; Sound designer: Mic Pool; Costume supervisor: Sue Coates; Presented by Edward Snape for Fiery Angel Ltd., Clare Lawrence and Anna Waterhouse for Out of the Blue Productions, Broadway Partners by arrangement with Really Useful Theatres.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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