THEATRE REVIEW: Michael Frayn’s ‘Democracy’

Posted on September 5, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Michael Frayn’s absorbing new play has a straightforward surface as it look at the years from 1969 to 1974 when Willy Brandt, played by Roger Allam, was chancellor of West Germany until he was brought down by an East German spy who worked as his personal assistant.

Frayn is both a humorist (“Noises Off”) and a philosopher, however, and so those historical facts prompt him to explore how the machinations of high-level politics are matched by the drives, impulses and behavior of individuals.

Beneath its surface, “Democracy” is about the complexity of human beings and it suggests in both central characters – Brandt and his betrayer, Gunter Guillaume, played by Conreth Hall (pictured top left with Allam) – that any one individual contains all the lives that he or she might once have been or could be again.

Brandt himself is presented as an ambivalent man of many identities, several of which served him well during his exile from Germany during the Third Reich. The “clean hands” with which he returned, having fought the Nazis from outside, served him well as a leader but made his fellow politicians, whose allegiances were less transparent, suspicious of him.

Frayn’s Brandt is a contemplative man, given to second-guessing himself although not when it comes to seducing as many admiring women as he can on the campaign trail nor in his view that treaties with East Germany and the Soviet Union were essential to future peace.

Guillaume, meanwhile, is the most successful espionage mole ever, establishing himself innocently in the west and only called upon to spy for the East German secret police when he lands a job with Brandt. An ingratiating if sometimes irritating toady, Guillaume makes himself indispensable to Brandt and while not ceasing to report to his Stasi masters, develops an increasing respect and affection for him.

Frayn uses a device in which Guillaume speaks over his shoulder to his control, who sits at a café at the side of the stage. Occasionally the spy joins his contact there while the action in Brandt’s office continues. Director Michael Blakemore employs Peter J. Davison’s twin-level set to great effect to further establish the divide between the characters’ interior emotions and their external actions.

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Swirling around the two principals is a roster of political matchmakers, wheeler-dealers and spin-meisters, all with their own ambitions and alliances. Frayn’s scenes of nefarious politics are finely calibrated and there are clear echoes of the modern day White House and Downing Street.

Roger Allam is compelling as Brandt: charismatic when required to be and amiably lackluster in his most vulnerable moments. Allam’s mastery of silence on stage is remarkable. Guillaume requires a quite different tone and Conleth Hill captures his unctuous manner so convincingly as to sometimes be off-putting, but it’s a winning performance. The conniving politicos around them are played splendidly, especially by David Ryall as the wily old Herbert Wehner.

Frayn’s stagecraft is wise and his ironies subtle, and “Democracy” deserves to be seen. The play only lacks a crucial tension because in the short term Brandt and the Soviets, and their East German puppets, wanted much the same thing. In the end, of course, Brandt was proven to be right and the world became a better place. Frayn’s play is memorably instructive on how that came to be.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Dec. 30; Cast: Roger Allam, Conleth Hill, Steven Pacey, Jonathan Coy, Paul Gregory, Paul Broughton, David Ryall, Glyn Grain, Nicholas Blane, Christopher Ettridge; Playwright: Michael Frayn; Director: Michael Blakemore; Set Designer: Peter J. Davison; Costume Designer: Sue Willmington; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Sound Designer: Neil Alexander; Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Top photo by Conrad Blakemore.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Anthony Sher’s ‘I.D.’ at the Almeida

Posted on September 5, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – “I dream of a girl waiting for me somewhere in Africa,” says Demetrious Tsafendas, a man of very mixed heritage but mostly Greek and Mozambican who appears unable to settle anywhere. Mostly that’s due to officious immigration officers and petty bureaucrats but when this much-traveled wayfarer finally settles it’s in South Africa where he assassinates the prime minister.

Noted actor Anthony Sher, in his first play, relishes exploring the true story of how Tsafendas, a temporary parliamentary messenger, came to stab to death Hendrik Verwoerd, the Dutch-born “architect of apartheid” in 1966. In Sher’s hands, it becomes a story of identity – the “I.D.” of the title – that affects everyone in South Africa in that sorry time. This includes not only Tsafendas but Verwoerd, who is portrayed as a man deeply conflicted in his own sense of identity, having been a keen supporter of Nazi Germany before going to South Africa.

For Tsafendas, rendered as a kind of sad-sack Odysseus, his Penelope is a black woman and in order to be able to woo her he claims to be mulatto in order be re-registered as “colored.” There is a jarring scene in which a uniformed jobsworth uses calipers to measure his lips and nose and pushes a pencil into his hair to see how tightly it curls.

Director Nancy Meckler uses an almost bare stage with only a desk that rises and sinks to build the landscape for what becomes an oppressively dour saga. Tsafendas served 28 years in jail for the murder and we see him encased in a narrow cage that rattles every time another convict shudders on the gallows. They are brutal images and serve to underline the terror of that time.

Sher employs another device that works less convincingly. Tsafendas claimed that he was unbalanced as the result of having borne in his body a massive tapeworm since he was young. The South African authorities actually chose to regard him as insane in order not to have the kind of trial, and outcome, that might make him a martyr.

Strangely, Sher makes the tapeworm — Lintwurm — into a living, breathing character with a bullet head and a foul mouth. It’s an odd sort of alter ego and when Tsafentas turns to speak to the Lintwurm in the middle of other scenes it becomes distracting.

This surrealism does not detract, however, from the precision of the political scenes in which officers try to justify apartheid nor from the power of the scenes of interrogation and intimidation.

Sher makes his Tsafentas a bit too much a crowd-pleaser to be entirely believable but he is well accomplished in the art of being ingratiating. As the Lintwurm, Alex Fearns is a feral if not wholly believable presence and Marius Weyers portrays the mild-mannered evil of Verwoerd with utter conviction. The remainder of the cast performs admirably and while the production lingers in the mind, the longer thought is that Sher will almost certainly write better plays.

Venue: Almeida Theatre, runs through October 18; Cast: Anthony Sher, Marius Weyers, Alex Ferns, Jennifer Woodburne; Playwright: Anthony Sher; Director: Nancy Meckler; Designer: Katrina Lindsay; Lighting designer: Johanna Town; Music: Ilona Sekacz; Movement: Scarlett Mackmin; Sound: John Leonard; South African Music Consultant: Sello Maake Ka Ncube.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photo by Tristram Kenton.

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EDINBURGH FILM REVIEW: ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’

Posted on August 23, 2003 by admin

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD, Clive Owen, 2003, (c) Paramount Classics

By Ray Bennett

EDINBURGH – “Most thoughts are memories, and memories deceive,” says Will Graham, the central character played by Clive Owen (above and below) in director Mike Hodges’ new film. In Graham’s case, the deceptive memories are of a violent life that he seeks to erase.

Hodges, whose recent “Croupier” was well received, remains best known for his underworld classic “Get Carter,” starring Michael Caine. Like that film, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” is about a toughened criminal who returns to his home to find out why his brother is dead. The new film is a far more mature work, however, filled with slow menace but also deep regret over life’s inevitabilities.

With the summer blockbusters proving limply familiar, the rich character development and inventive surprises here may prove satisfying to audiences prepared to take on a film that takes for granted their understanding that in some stories the ending doesn’t need to be told.

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“Will Graham was the hardest man I’ve ever known,” says one of his London crew, but Graham has been gone from that city’s criminal underbelly for three years, living in a van, working pickup jobs as a logger in faraway forests. He left his charming scoundrel of a brother, Davey, and elegant mistress, Helen (Charlotte Rampling, below), and the manor he ran with an iron fist has been taken over by another hard man named Frank Turner (Ken Stott).

But Davey, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Bend It Like Beckham”), has been selling cocaine to the beautiful people and his insouciance and winning charm catch the resentful eye of a bad man. Boad, played by Malcolm McDowell, is well off and married but his ferocious envy leads him to assault and bugger Davey, who is destroyed by the rape and commits suicide.

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD, Charlotte Rampling, 2003, (c) Paramount ClassicsAway in his solitude, Graham’s constantly churning memories prompt him to call Davey and when he hears nothing he returns to London. When Helen is puzzled by what she sees in Graham’s bearded, haunted features, he says: “It’s grief for a life wasted. And now there’s Davey, another fucking wasted life. And I’m going to find out why.”

But while Graham pursues the man responsible for his brother’s despair, the new hard man on the patch is looking for Graham. “Frank is bad to the bone; he’s going to come for you,” he is told. The conflict is laid out in almost mythic terms with the fate-driven purpose of a classic western or samurai tale. “Don’t ever underestimate Will Graham,” Frank says. “He’s a fierce man who’ll go the distance.”

It takes strong and believable actors to deliver such lines and in Owen Hodges has a leading man entirely capable of taking on that responsibility. Already noted for “Croupier” and currently filming the title role in Jerry Bruckheimer’s “King Arthur,” Owen has a star-making role here, handsome but intelligent and all coiled anger, and he grabs it. He’s already been tipped as the next James Bond and although he may be too big a star by the time Pierce Brosnan steps down, there’s a scene in “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” when Graham emerges clean-shaven and expensively tailored, that suggests 007 is his for the taking.

Rhys Meyers, too, further enhances his career with an eye-catching performance as the flamboyantly smooth-edged ruffian younger brother. Rampling adds to her recent catalogue of intriguing women and McDowell plays his villain with understated fury. Stott and Jamie Foreman, as Davey’s buddy Mickser, are equally strong.

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD, Director Mike Hodges on the set, 2003, (c) Paramount Classics

I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD, Director Mike Hodges on the set, 2003, (c) Paramount Classics

Trevor Preston’s screenplay charts a course that leads to unforeseen paths along the way to a conclusion that we can imagine but do not see. A key aspect of the story that he explores in ways that prove unsettling is that Davey is found to have ejaculated when he was raped. That apparently common occurrence throws a massive and confusing wrench into the self-regard of the male-bonding tough guys. The finish, too, is enigmatic but in the hands of Hodges (right) with his masterful touch in conveying how deep run the rivers of regret, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” will take its place with “Get Carter” as a classic British gangster film.

Venue: Edinburgh International Film Festival;  Cast: Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Malcolm McDowell, Ken Stott, Jamie Foreman, Sylvia Syms; Director: Mike Hodges; Writer: Trevor Preston;  Director of Photography Mike Garfath; Production Designer: Jon Bunker; Music: Simon Fisher-Turner; Costume Designer: Evangeline Averre; Editor: Paul Carlin; Producers: Mike Kaplan, Michael Corrente; Executive Producer: Roger Marino; Production: Mosaic Film Group, Revere Pictures, Will & Company; A Paramount Classics Release; A Revere Pictures/Seven Arts presentation; Rated: UK: 15; running time: 103 minutes. DVD release: UK: Momentum Pictures, US: Paramount.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Polly Teale’s ‘After Mrs. Rochester’

Posted on July 29, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – She was the mad Creole woman in the attic, the tormented creature whose existence gave Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” its dark, Gothic power. She was Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, and her trapped rage haunts the pages of that celebrated novel.

She haunted Jean Rhys even more. Born, like Bertha, in the West Indies, to a white Creole mother, Rhys was sent to England in 1907, when her life took many dark turns before writing provided an escape. Still, it wasn’t until 1966 that she published her great novel, “Wide Sargasso Sea,” which tells the story of Bertha before she became Mrs. Rochester.

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Polly Teale’s extraordinary play “After Mrs. Rochester” tells the story of Rhys’ own life and her obsession with Bronte’s Creole madwoman in a manner so vivid and evocative that it sparks an urgent need to rediscover both novels.

Rhys is an aging, gin-soaked recluse in Devon when we meet her. But she’s not alone as she has with her constantly Mrs. Rochester, a creature of her imagination made manifest on the stage. And as she writes, there is her young self to talk to and to remind her of the days and nights of the Sargasso Sea.

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Many others stride through her writing room, too: her repressed and strict mother and well-meaning father, the Creole friends of her childhood, the men who choose and then abuse her and the characters from “Jane Eyre” that inspire her. “Charlotte Bronte never tasted a mango,” she says, “or saw one rot in the heat.”

Teale recounts the alienation Rhys felt as a child in the West Indies and the echoes she found in Bronte’s writing. And then being sent to cold England, where, flopping as an actress, she becomes a chorus girl, an escort and then a “kept woman.” There is an abortion, men who mistreat her and end up in jail, and then a daughter she cannot keep. Jean drinks and has fights and spends time in Holloway Prison for assault.

The play shows all this over two hours with the older Jean always onstage and her younger self living her life, her alter ego always there too. Her daughter also arrives as she strives to finish her classic novel, and at the heart of the play is their acceptance of each other.

Diana Quick (above right) is a ruined glory as Jean, her voice cracked, clothes rumpled, stockings askew. It’s a magnificent performance. Madeleine Potter (top), as the young Jean, shows us what she was: vital but vulnerable, her fragile beauty obscuring the strength within. Sarah Ball is a marvel as Mrs. Rochester. At first unmoving at Jean’s feet, she becomes a tangible presence, an often feral manifestation of Jean’s torments and dreams. From something still and stiff, Ball becomes fluid and sensuous. While she is acting constantly throughout the play, she never upstages anyone.

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The remainder of the cast is uniformly fine and each takes more than one role. Hattie Ladbury is striking as both Jean’s frightened mother and the tolerant wife of one of Jean’s admirers. Amy Marston draws eerie parallels between Jean’s daughter and Jane Eyre. Syan Blake is blithe as a childhood friend and bleak as another kept woman in London. David Annen makes clear the lines and distinctions between Jean’s father and one of her lovers, while Simon Thorp brings full measure to Mr. Rochester and another lover.

The play is produced by Shared Experience, a theatrical company noted for its attention to all elements of dramaturgy, and the production achieves a resonance that is every bit the equal of a great motion picture. The credits include one for dramaturgy, by Nancy Meckler, and for movement, by Leah Hausman.

Teale directs her own work and they combine to create an astonishing harmony of words and motion. The lighting, too, by Chris Davey, is remarkable as it achieves the tones and subtlety of great cinematography.

A critic is quoted in the play to say of Rhys’s book that it is “frighteningly alive, dark and truthful”. The same can be said of “After Mrs. Rochester”.

Venue: Duke of York’s Theatre, runs through Oct. 25; Cast: David Annen, Sarah Ball, Syan Blake, Hattie Ladbury, Amy Marston, Madeleine Potter, Diana Quick, Simon Thorp; Playwright-director: Polly Teale; Designer: Angela Davies; Movement director: Leah Hausman; Dramaturgy: Nancy Meckler; Composer: Howard Davidson; Lighting designer: Chris Davey; Ambassador Theatre Group & Maidstone Prods. present a Shared Experience production.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Kenneth Branagh in David Mamet’s ‘Edmond’

Posted on July 22, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – After a decade’s absence from the London stage, Kenneth Branagh could not have chosen a better showcase for his prodigious talents than David Mamet’s pugnacious little play “Edmond”.

As the title character in Mamet’s allegory, he descends from stagnant middle-class civility into a hellish netherworld where his bourgois assymptions are tested and every bias and savage impulse is unleashed. An encounter with a fortune teller causes bland businessman Edmond to confront the emptiness in his life and marriage. His wife’s shrill complaint that the maid has broken a lamp prompts him to flee the safe boredom of his home into the quaqmire of New York’s darkest streets.

The act of leaving his wife tilts him into a freefall that allows no purchase as he sinks into a bog that he mistakes for freedom. To Edmond’s surprise, hookers are expensive, pimps are violent, and the guy who runs a three-card monte game on the street is a cheat. Still, Edmond wanders the streets and encounters big-city nightcrawlers until he is robbed and beaten and left bewildered.

“We live in a fog; we live in a dream,” he declares.

But then he turns and discovers liberation in killing a black man who has attacked him. Screeching racial hatred, Edmond finds what he thinks is a kind of peace in living in the moment. Freed, he goes home with a waitress but their riotous sex play leads to conversation. She balks at his refusal to accept her self-delusions so he knifes her bloodily to death. Undone by his crime, he seeks redemption but the salvation he finds is not so very different from the life he fled.

All this is accomplished in 75 minutes, driven by Edward Hall’s spiky direction and fleshed out by Mamet’s trademark arsenal of language with his asphalt harshness and lacerating tone. There is a large cast for a one-act play and everyone onstage catches the urgency and spirit of the production.

Tracy-Ann Oberman as Edmond’s outraged wife, Nicola Stephenson as an enthusiastic peep-show girl, Rebecca Johsnon as a matter-of-fact hook and Nicola Walker as the unfortunate waitress play off Branagh’s energy splendidly. Carol Macready makes her three roles vivid and Nonso Anozie destroys the stereotype of his massive convict at the climax.

Branagh bites into the prose and spits it our as poetry with his extraordinary ability to utter every phrase and fragment as if they were fresh-born and not from a writer’s page. Onstage throughout the play,Branagh is fearless and confidently naked – once literally – as he makes Edmond’s torment and bewilderment believable.

This is not small accomplishment as much of what Mamet has Edmond say is the direst adolescent blither; callow bleating about life, sex, love, God and fate. The play was written in 1982 and it’s hard to imagine even then that a city-dweller such as Edmond could be so naive.

There is something of Jackson Pollocl about Mamet; he appears to splash words on his canvas, often artfully, rich and colourfully. Certainly, actors relish them. When delivered by Branagh and the other first-rate actors in this production, an audience might also be enthralled.

But the words bear little examination for any lasting meaning. Pollocl’s style, but perhaps not his genius. “Edmond” is, however, a brillian actor’s showcase and Branagh does it brilliantly.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Oct. 4; Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Carol Macready, Nicola Stephenson, Rebecca Johnson, Nicola Walker, Nonso Anozie; Playwright: David Mamet; Director: Edward Hall; Set designer: Michael Pavelka; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Score/sound: Terry Davies, Paul Groothius.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Simon Russell Beale in Stoppard’s ‘Jumpers’

Posted on June 20, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – A professor of moral philosophy named George, played superbly by Simon Russell Beale (pictured) dictates his arguments for a speech in defense of the existence of God while, in the adjacent ballroom-sized lounge of his Mayfair flat, a wild party is going on.

Star of the party is the professor’s champagne-addled wife Dorothy (Essie Davis), erstwhile first lady of musical theater, whose entertainment includes a troupe of acrobats called Jumpers, one of whom falls dead from a gunshot wound.

If that’s not the start to a farce, it’s hard to know what is. First produced in 1972, Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers” has lost none of its zest and ability to enthrall. The Jumpers of the title are in fact fellows of the professor in academe, being led by the college’s vice-chancellor, an unctuous chap named Archie Jumper, who holds doctorates in medicine, law and gymnastics, and may also be Dorothy’s lover.

The question of who shot the dead Jumper, although it forms a sort of mystery basis for the play, is of little consequence. Like everything else in “Jumpers,'” it is simply a vehicle for Stoppard’s deft wit. In this case, the joke is on the audience, which is led to care more about the fate of a tortoise and a hare named Thumper, which George intends to use as illustrations in his speech.

Stoppard sets the earnest waffle of George’s lecture on goodness –“What is so good about ‘good’?” — against Dorothy’s sentimental reaction to men walking on the moon and Archie’s cynical pragmatism and the contrasts pay off hilariously.

George is the faculty’s “tame believer,” a man ready to argue the existence of God but afraid he’s regarded as a “joke vicar.” While capable of invoking Cantor’s Proof and Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs of the existence of God, George also finds himself asking if the question should be “Is God?” or “Are God?”

“Is God what?” asks the no-nonsense policeman Bones, called in to investigate the murder, and George is at a loss to explain. Stoppard fires on all cylinders in George’s speeches, and it is a measure of Simon Russell Beale’s wonderful performance as the professor that he makes him an intelligent as well as a well-meaning figure.

Essie Davis, who spends a considerable amount of time onstage either naked or next to it, is thoroughly diverting as Dorothy whether bewildered, in a tantrum, or spooning for the moon. Jonathan Hyde as Archie and Nicholas Woodeson as Bones are pitch-perfect.

There is little slack in David Leveaux’s direction over two hours, plus a 20-minute interval, and the action keeps pace with Stoppard’s flights of fancy, well matched by Vicki Mortimer’s moonstruck sets.

He’s been knighted since and become an Oscar-winning screenwriter (“Shakespeare in Love”), but “Jumpers” is a delightful reminder of Stoppard’s maxim that, as a character here says, “language is only an approximation of meaning.”

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Sept. 9; Cast: Simon Russell Beale, Essie Davis, Jonathan Hyde, Nicholas Woodeson, Eliza Lumley, John Rogan, Jean-Felix Callens, Jonothan Campbell, Leo Kay, Robert Barton, Gary Cross, Karl Magee, Dodger Phillips, Phil Seaman, Ashley Stuart, Lewis Young; Playwright: Tom Stoppard; Director: David Leveaux; Set designer: Vicki Mortimer; Costume designer: Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting designer: Paule Constable; Music: Corin Buckeridge; Choreographer: Aidan Treays; Music director/keyboard: Ian Townsend; Double bass: Rutledge Turnland; Drums: Michael Gregory.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Roy Williams’ ‘Fallout’

Posted on June 19, 2003 by admin

Royal Court Theatre presents FALLOUT by Roy William Directed by Ian Rickson Playing at The Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from 12 June until 12 July 2003. For further press information, please contact: RCT Press Office on (020) 7565 5011. http://www.royalcourttheatre.com Pictured: Michael Obiora, Ony Uhiara, Marcel McCalla. Photography by Gautier Deblonde. Please credit. Distributed on behalf of the Royal Court Theatre by EPO Online (020) 7968 1560. Email: info@epo-online.com http://www.epo-online.com This image has been supplied for free use to accompany editorial, reviews and listings during the run of this production/cast only. For any other uses, please contact EPO Online. Ref: 703414a

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – On an inner-city estate, in an opening more heard than seen due to clever staging, a straight-A black student is stomped to death, his head “used for a football,” his running shoes stolen.

Four young black men flee the crime, one more guilty than the others, and it is the nature of their edgy and competitive existence as smalltime gang-bangers that occupies playwright Roy Williams’ play “Fallout” more than any question of justice.

The same issues of respect and thwarted hope infect the two police officers who investigate the murder. Joe (Lennie James), a black detective constable, grew up in what the British call a “sink estate” and he hates the envy and resentment they breed toward anyone who wishes to escape. Matt (Daniel Ryan), his white detective sergeant, is a true-blue liberal who only waivers in his orderly pursuit of something resembling the truth when his constable forces the issue.

Central to the fate-driven story is the behavior of two young women involved with the tearaways. Shanice (Only Uhiara) is strong and bright and draws men and women to her confident beauty. Ronnie (Petra Letang), who is completely under Shanice’s spell, is fearful and weak and her jealousy ultimately leads to betrayal.

Stark and spare on a stage created as a rectangular pit in the round with the audience mostly looking down on the action, the play moves quickly through 1 hour and 50 minutes. For the younger characters, Williams employs a believable argot that in its derivative poverty of language argues the tragedy of their limited horizons. He uses the curt and ugly lingo in fine staccato fashion, however, creating riffs of interchanging lines that achieve a form of poetry.

Director Ian Rickson uses the empty space to full effect with fight sequences that involve bodies slamming off cages protecting the closest audience members. He draws splendid performances from a thoroughly committed cast. Ony Uhiara is outstanding as Shanice, fully aware of the power of her sexuality but torn between her own aspirations and loyalty to her friends.

Michael Obiora, as gang boss Dwayne, and Marcel McCalla, as Shanice’s troubled boyfriend Emile, convey intelligently the way their characters are mutually dependent, as leader and follower, each destined to play out his fate. James, as angry cop Joe, and Ryan, as well-intentioned Matt, bring taut intensity to their exchanges.

Williams blends in comic relief masterfully to offset what is clearly tragic. His dialogue lapses occasionally  into four-letter words and racial slurs that sound dated and unnecessary but for the most part it’s a crisp and unsentimental piece of work.

Stephen Warbeck’s music catches the urgency and sadness observantly.

Venue: Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court Theatre, runs through July 12; Cast: Jason Frederick, Michael Obiora, Marcel McCalla, O-T Fagbenie, Lennie James, Daniel Ryan, Ony Uhiara, Petra Letang, Clive Wedderburn, Lorraine Brunning; Playwright: Roy Williams; Director: Ian Rickson; Designer: Ultz; Lighting: Nigel J. Edwards; Sound: Ian Dickinson; Music: Stephen Warbeck.

A version of this review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photo by Gautier Deblonde.

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CONCERT REVIEW: Shirley Bassey’s 50th anniversary

Posted on June 15, 2003 by admin

Singer Dame Shirley Bassey

By Ray Bennett

Shirley Bassey received a five-minute standing ovation just for showing up at Wembley Arena on June 14 and that set the standard for the rapturous response that greeted all 22 songs in her 105-minute set.

It was the London leg of her 50th anniversary tour and the capital’s fans were on their most demonstratively devoted behavior. Britain’s premiere pop diva responded in kind and delivered a sunnily sophisticated performance with the confidence of an artist in peak form.

Honoured last year by the Queen of England, you wouldn’t think that this gorgeous Dame, moving jauntily across the stage in a long shimmering gown with the skirt split to the thigh, was a grandmother in her 60s. Sassy and sexy and in complete control of her remarkable voice, gym-trained Bassey squatted in her high heels constantly to retrieve a steady stream of gifts delivered to the front of the stage.

“Goldfinger” set the bar high at the outset and musical director Peter Hagen put the strings and brass of his 21-piece orchestra to work in fine fashion. Bassey said she had chosen her songs from the five decades of her extraordinary career and the top songbooks were represented by such as Rodgers and Hart’s “Johnny One-Note” and “Lady is a Tramp,” Coleman and Fields’s “Big Spender,” and Jerry Herman’s “I Am What I Am.”

Always a flamboyant entertainer, the Welsh-born singer can still shiver the timbers at the back of a very large hall with something like Lionel Bart’s “As Long as He Needs Me,” arms outstretched, fingers dancing. She can kick out the jams on Al Timothy and Michael Julien’s “Kiss Me, Honey Honey” or the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” But she can bring it all down and caress the shadows with George Harrison’s “Something,” Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” and “(Where Do I Begin) Love Story” by Francis Lai and Carl Sigman.

Alex Gifford’s “History Repeating,” a ’90s hit for Bassey with the Propellorheads, was fresh and challenging and her version of Lennon and McCartney’s “Hey Jude” made it perfectly clear that you can’t sing along with Shirley Bassey unless she wants you to. Making the song her own, she took its melody and rhythm beyond reach before lowering her voice to let everyone join in.

Ebb and Kander’s “New York, New York” and Barry and Black’s “Diamonds Are Forever” got the big treatment but it was never too much, always under control. And at the end, the tears seemed genuine when Bassey sang Andy and Elizabeth Neve’s new song “Thank You For the Years,” from her new Sony album.

There were very few empty spaces at the 12,000-seat auditorium and the multi-generational crowd clearly went home happy. “Eat your heart out, Catherine Zeta Jones,” cried one fan, and no one disagreed.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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FILM REVIEW: Charlotte Church in ‘I’ll Be There’

Posted on June 13, 2003 by admin

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By Ray Bennett

LONDON – “I’ll Be There” follows the Elvis Presley pattern of how to introduce a hot young musical talent to the movies – in this case, Welsh classical singer Charlotte Church – and it’s the right way to go.

Like “Love Me Tender” all those years ago, it’s a lightweight picture about a love triangle with sturdy character actors, and the young star sings just four songs including the title number.

As a result, there’s little resting on Church’s shoulders and as she’s an immensely appealing teenager who can walk and talk, and especially smile, on camera at the same time, “I’ll Be There” will do her no harm.

This is a small family film, however, and unless director, co-writer and leading man Craig Ferguson’s “Drew Carey Show” fan base rallies around, it’s unlikely to excite moviegoers as much as Church excites record buyers.

Fans of the “Voice of an Angel,” whose Sony debut album of that name shipped 10 million copies around the world and was followed by three more hit releases, may even feel cheated that she doesn’t sing more.

But even though it’s innocuous and unmemorable, the film shows that Ferguson has promise as a director. It’s his first directing stint, having co-written and co-exec produced “The Big Tease” and co-written and co-produced “Saving Grace” (2000).

Ferguson (pictured with Church) plays Paul Kerr, an ’80s Scottish rocker who lives a lonely, self-destructive life in a very fancy pile in the Welsh countryside. In a nearby town lives a woman named Rebecca (Jemma Redgrave) who has a fiery old Ronnie Hawkins-style rocker named Evil Edmonds (Joss Ackland) for a father and a sweet-faced daughter named Olivia (Church) whom she has raised alone. When Kerr makes the papers for an apparent suicide attempt driving his motorcycle out of a second story window, Rebecca has to face the question of telling Olivia that her father is a drunken rock star.

Thus the love triangle as sweet Olivia and her dad meet and make up while fiercely protective mom fights to keep the girl away from the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll that made her own life so hard. But her daughter has kept a secret from Rebecca too, and of course that’s her extraordinary voice. The outcome is entirely predictable and only a likeably quirky script by Ferguson and Philip McGrade and some naturalistic playing redeem the saccharine sentiments.

Ferguson’s ageing rock star is appealing in his wasted self-regard that begins to change in a cuckoo’s nest psych ward when he leads the fellow patients in a raucous piano-led jam. As the stalwart mother, Redgrave (Corin’s daughter, of the famous dynasty) is pleasingly unglamorous and she captures Rebecca’s ambivalence toward her old love effectively.

In a story close to her real life, Charlotte Church has no great stretches to make and she handles lines and movement with the aplomb of the outstanding concert performer that she is. As the old-time rock’n’roller, Ackland is a revelation viewers will either find quite captivating or maddeningly over the top.

In the end, the film exists to set the stage for Church to sing and she does, wonderfully, Gershwin’s “Summertime” and a new tune by multi-Oscar nominee Diane Warren titled “Would I Know?”

Veteran music supervisor Budd Carr’s savvy song choices help things greatly and Ferguson shows that he has a true director’s eye with more than a few subtle touches that make the film quite endearing for all its blandness.

In the opening sequence, Church sings a gorgeous Celtic song alone in a beautiful old church and on the lectern the briefly seen text is “Apocrypha.” At the end, when all the principals get up on a pub stage to bang out the Four Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There),” the clashing styles are noisily and engagingly out of tune, just as they would be.

We can hope that having made a benign start Church will find success in films but won’t churn out the kind of movie musical pap that trapped Presley, but we can also hope that Ferguson’s next gig gives him much freer rein.

Opens: UK June 20 (Warner Bros.); Cast: Charlotte Church, Craig Ferguson, Jemma Redgrave, Joss Ackland, Ralph Brown, Ian McNeice, Steve Noonan,  Imelda Staunton, Marion Bailey, Anthony Head; Director: Craig Ferguson; Screenwriters: Craig Ferguson, Philip McGrade; Director of photography: Ian Wilson; Production designer: Tim Harvey; Music: Trevor Jones; Costume designer: Stephanie Collie; Editor: Sheldon Kahn. Producer: James G. Robinson; Executive producer: Guy McElwaine, Executive music supervisor: Budd Carr; Production: Morgan Creek; MPAA rating PG-13, running time, 102 minutes.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Toyah Willcox in ‘Calamity Jane’

Posted on June 13, 2003 by admin

Toyah Calamity Jane 1 x325By Ray Bennett

LONDON – When Doris Day blew in from the Windy City as the buckskinned tomboy in the movie “Calamity Jane,” she was ornery but toothsome and it didn’t take much for handsome Howard Keel to figure out that under all that trail dust and chapped leather was a darned tootin’, fine lookin’ gal.

That was in 1953 and times have changed although not on the stage of the Shaftesbury Theatre. The denizens of Deadwood City still sing about the Black Hills of Dakota, ogle showgirls at the local saloon and listen to Calamity Jane’s tall tales of fighting Injuns, shooting gunfighters and riding the pony express.

The show is “Annie Get Your Gun” and “Kiss Me Kate” all over again except the former had songs by Irving Berlin and the latter by Cole Porter. “Calamity Jane” has songs by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. At their high end, Fain and Webster could turn out Oscar-winning numbers such as “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” from the 1955 film of the same name, and “Secret Love” from “Calamity Jane.” Webster won a third Oscar for the lyrics to Johnny Mandel’s “The Shadow of Your Smile” from “The Sandpiper” in 1965.

“Calamity Jane” also boasts lively show pieces in “The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack Away)” and “Windy City” and a lyrical ballad, “Black Hills of Dakota.” After that it all gets a bit grim and with 11 other songs in the show, it’s no wonder the movie is best recalled for Day’s zestful performance and lovely singing.

In this stage version, most of the weight falls on Toyah Willcox, a former U.K. pop and soap star, and it’s a testament to her sheer determination to ingratiate that she just about carries it. Employing an accent that combines cornpone with grits and bits of Strother Martin, Willcox bounces onstage and, leaving no surface untouched whether verticle or horizontal, keeps bouncing until the final curtain.

Ed Curtis’ lighthearted and engaging production gives Willcox lots to bounce off including two leading men, Michael Cormick, a laconic, slow-moving Wild Bill, and Garry Kilby, as a handsome cavalry officer. Cormick wins the day and the singing honors with a fine tenor voice deep enough to suggest echoes of Keel’s rich baritone.

Kellie Ryan is appealing as the maid who Jane brings back from Chicago to perform in Deadwood thinking she is a top showgirl and who promptly falls for Jane’s beloved. Secret love doesn’t stay secret for very long, though, and it’s thanks to a cast of enthusiastic pros and the tireless Willcox that what should seem tired and dated ends up simply oldfashioned and charming.

Venue: Shaftesbury Theatre, runs through Sept. 20; Cast: Toyah Willcox, Michael Cormick, Kellie Ryan, Garry Kilby, Duncan Smith, Abigail Aston, Phil Ormerol, Ahmet Ahmet; Music: Sammy Fain; Lyrics: Paul Francis Webster; Adapted for the stage by: Charles K. Freeman; Based upon the motion picture produced by: Warner Bros.; Director: Ed Curtis; Designer: Simon Higlett; Choreographer: Craig Revel Horwood; Lighting Designer: James Whiteside; Sound designer: Simon Whitehorn for Orbital; Musical director: Robert Cousins; Presented by Tristan Baker.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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