I’m inclined to Present Kline with my approval
Present Laughter (Broadway HD — online and via app) Verdict: Lots of laughter present ★★★★✩
Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade (stream.theatre)
Verdict: Soft-focused eulogy ★★★✩✩
Waiting For Obama (stream.theatre, Spotify) Verdict: Guns, not roses ★★★✩✩
As Oscar Wilde cheekily suggested, we Brits have everything in common with america nowadays ‘except, of course, language’. i was therefore a little worried that Kevin Kline might drive a three-wheeled wagon through Noel coward’s quintessentially english comedy Present laughter.
even so, i couldn’t resist having a look at Kline’s 2017 production of the play, in a live recording available on Broadway Hd, an internet platform packed with tasty american shows and musicals.
as it happens, i had nothing to fear. From the moment he provided the correct, cowardian pronunciation of ‘ illusion’ (three carefully separated syllables — ‘ill-you-shun’), i knew i was in safe hands.
Kline is a consummate comedian in the role of Garry essendine — coward’s comic self-portrait of a vain, womanising thesp.
He is more than a match for andrew scott’s Olivier awardwinning turn in the role at the Old Vic two years ago.
Kline may be 73 but blithely passes himself off as 45. He adds plenty of physical comedy to coward’s repartee, getting the belt of his dressing gown caught round a banister, doing press-ups during a love scene and bashing his head on a swing door. Mercifully, this doesn’t bulldoze essendine’s acidic one- liners or lofty histrionics.
He also rolls over like a puppy for his ex-wife (Kate Burton), who has the practical manner of a Bavarian hill-walker.
and as a bejewelled predatory beauty, cobie smulders of The avengers smoulders (sorry!), even if her cut-glass accent sometimes ditches in the mid-atlantic.
The other character that comes off beautifully is the handsome stage set itself, which is a model of art deco bohemian chic. With a camera giving us a ringside seat (on a chaise longue), Present laughter is a visual treat, too.
BY cONTrasT, two new plays on stream.theatre illustrate how the U. s. has become bitterly divided. One is Kennedy: Bobby’s last crusade, a soft- focused account of the last days of JFK’s brother before he was assassinated as he campaigned to be the democrat nominee for the White House in 1968. The resonance with today is obvious, as Kennedy laments war, poverty, environmental destruction and racism.
actor-writer david arrow captures boyish Bobby down to the cute curl on his tumbling fringe.
Hisvoice quivers with sincerity; his melancholic gaze makes him look sorry to be smiling. arrow’s one-man portrait, set amid the bunting of a convention room, exposes Bobby as a benign but slightly constipated loner, fond of quoting from antiquity.
WaiTiNG For Obama, meanwhile, is a staged reading of a radio play that takes on america’s continuing row over gun control. also available on spotify, it imagines the 44th President visiting a family in colorado in a campaign to take back the firearms held in 65 million homes across the U.s.
He is not welcomed by grandpop Hank, a bumper- sticker thinker who takes delight in warning him he’ll have to prise his ar15 assault rifle ‘from my cold, dead hands’.
With gunfire heard between scenes, journalist John Moore’s play captures the political and social logjam of a society that can’t even agree on its constitution.
Yet there’s also a sweetness to a story that puts its faith in a humanity trampled underfoot by the rush to righteousness.