Right direction for Sondheim
Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1
THERE HAVE been some cracking revivals of Stephen Sondheim musicals over the past few years. This one is up there with the best, which is not bad for a debut director. Butthenthedirectorinquestionisthe Sondheim-savvy Maria Friedman, who as a bill-topping performer has earned awards while starring in the composer’s musicals, including this one.
The show’s quirky core — which was prettyradicalwhenSondheimandbook writer George Furth wrote it in 1980— is thatitsstoryaboutthreetalentedfriends istoldbackwards.Beginningin1976,and ending 20 years earlier, we first encounter film producer Franklin Shepard as he looks back in solitude on his past life as a composer with lyricist Charley and their mutual friend Mary, a novelist.
The tight-knit trio are superbly played by Mark Umbers, Damian Humbley and JennaRussell,eachof whomstamptheir copious talents on a terrifically sung production.
That is to be expected with a singer of Friedman’squalityatthehelm.Butthere is a good deal of directing nous too, making this longish evening feel less than its near three hours. And although we never quite get the story’s promised poignancy, perhaps that is something to do with the artifice of a show that is more interested in how its structure can be exploited by Sondheim’s score than it is in the characters who inhabit it. Never mind — it is exploited brilliantly.
Soutra Gilmour’s vaguely art deco set, if lacking in inspiration, does efficiently serve as a blank canvas for the action. Meanwhile Humbley’s delivery of the complex number, Franklin Shepard Inc — which satirises the main theme, the selling out of talent -— is nothing less than masterful and typifies the kind of wry, urbane music-making that has madeSondheimalegendinhisownlifetime. His friend Friedman has done him proud. ( Tel: 020 7378 1713)
Donmar Warehouse, London WC2
PHYLLIDA LLOYD’S all-female production stages Shakespeare’s play as if it were performed by inmates in a women’s prison. And because Lloyd incorporates actors from theatre company Clean Break, which supports women offenders, it is all the more convincing.
Alongside Harriet Walter’s gaunt Brutus and Jenny Jules’s febrile Cassius, there are good, if less refined performances from Clean Break’s Jen Joseph and Carrie Rock, which help imbue the production with real authenticity.
Guards patrol gantries overhead — sometimes they interrupt the action to keep order. As prison-set drama it works brilliantly. As a production of Shakespeare, it does not, because the whole enterpriseappearstobeunderpinnedby a dated objective — to show that women can be every bit as barbaric and aggressive as men. To that end, Frances Barber’s Caesar is an unremitting bully.
In this pared-down production of just over two hours, the drama has been filleted of nuance and complexity in order to make a petty blunt point — one I reckon a production in a real women’s prison wouldn’t have bothered with. ( www.donmarwarehouse.com)
Roundhouse Studio, London NW1
MICHAEL LAMBOURNE puts in a fine performance as Latke, the title role in this adaptation of the Lemony Snicket children’s book, in which a frustrated potato pancake attempts to assert his Chanucah identity in a Christmassy world.
Olivia Jacob’s YaD Arts production — which was co-commissioned by the Jewish Community Centre for London — is a gem of a children’s show. Despite its handmadefeel,thereisnothingroughly hewn about it.
Slickly performed by a cast of five, Christmas paraphernalia, and even war between Antiochus and the Maccabees, are wittily portrayed with the use of knitted hats and chunky vegetables.
You know something is going right when noisy members of the audience are not shushed by adults, but by other children. ( Tel: 0844 482 8008)