The Italian job, enviable Pride and a sea plus
Lyttelton, London SE1
THIS IS not the usual f a r e f r o m I t a l y ’ s convention-busting d r a mat i s t L u i g i Pirandello. Although the way this Sicilys e t t r a g i c o medy b e g i ns , wi t h t he characters introducing themselves to the audience, there are hints at the mind-expanding techniques that came later with Six Characters In Search Of An Author or Absolutely (perhaps), both of which blur the lines separating the worlds inhabited by actors on stage and those inhabited by the audience.
But after the introductions, Liola delivers few shocks to the system. And yet the author’s small provincial characters still grapple with big existential themes. Everything here revolves around the childless marriage between rich, ageing landowner Simone Palumbo (James Hayes) and his young wife Mita (Lisa Dwyer Hogg), who after five years has still not produced an heir. As Signore Palumbo’s workers shell almonds, their gossip is about whether their seventysomething employer has the virility needed to produce a child.No one believes the fault is Mita’s.
Into this world of bountiful harvest and human sterility skips Rory Keenan’s happy-go-lucky Liola, a charmer who enters followed by an entourage of folk musicians. Liola has fathered three children, each by a different woman. His latest conquest, Tuzza Azzara (Jessica Regan), is pregnant but although Liola offers his hand, she sees a more secure future in giving Simone the son he craves. The plan goes well until Liola impregnates Simone’s wife, thereby making Tuzza and her offer of a child somewhat redundant.
Richard Eyre’s production, which uses a new translation by Tanya Ronder, feels somewhat lost on the Lyttelton’s massive stage. But the director very cleverly has his cast speak with Irish accents, which perfectly fits the gossipy, lyrical milieu of a Sicilian village.
This Pirandello piece is a charming rediscovery. All the major players are schemers, each extracting from others what they need. The musical theme, That’s How It Goes, is like hymn of resignation to poverty, but also to how best laid plans usually turn to dust.
Trafalgar Studios, London SW1
ALEXI KAYE Campbell’s first play, previously seen at the Royal Court in 2008, is known as a very good gay rights play. This is a shame because attaching the word “rights” — or indeed “gay” — to a play immediately saddles it with a worthiness that can only narrow its appeal. True, in the shorter second act, the play gets close to speechifying and proselytising. But never mind. The fizzing first act is one of the best new pieces of stage writing this century.
The play’s three main protagonists exist in the unenlightened 1950s and anything-goes now. With remarkably deft direction by Jamie Lloyd — who directed the play at the Royal Court and revives it here as part of his eyecatching Trafalgar Transformed season — the action ingeniously segues back and forth between the two eras.
In London-then, married professionals Sylvia (Hayley Atwell) and Philip (Harry Hadden-Paton) have a cordial relationship with writer Oliver (Al Weaver), whose new book Sylvia is illustrating.
Polite conversation between the three is charged by the men’s increasing awareness that they are attracted to each other. In London-now, Philip and Oliver are much freer but not much more fulfilled.
While modern-day journalist Oliver is addicted to exploring his sexuality, often in parks, Philip is only alienated by the infidelities, and leaves. Sylvia, meanwhile, is now needy Oliver’s confidant.
It’s a beautifully structured piece of work. And Hadden-Paton is rather devastating as the secretly gay married man shackled by convention and his own self-loathing. Weaver is also terrific depicting latter and modern-day versions of camp — one suppressed, the other a riot.
And Matthew Horne turns in two flashy but enjoyable cameos as a gay escort and lads’ mag editor.
The main issue — the fight for gay rights — is less thought-provoking when it is over-articulated. But the play is brilliant where it depicts the solitude of lives lived in lonely denial — and none lonelier than Atwell’s 1950s Sylvia, who is as trapped as her husband.
Southwark Playhouse, London SE1
A GANTRY, a couple of ropes and a big step-ladder are all that Thom Southerland’s production needs to suggest a ship. To evoke size, the excellent cast — who brilliantly double-up as upper class and below-stairs passengers and crew — do something that reminded me of how people respond to the Grand Canyon. They stand dumbstruck, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the sheer scale of the thing. To this, add spine-tingling singing, often climaxing in appropriately stirring choral crescendos.
Maury Yeston’s 1997 multi Tonywinning musical, which opened six months before James Cameron’s movie, is an education. Maury’s lyrics and Peter Stone’s book are full of fascinating facts — how much steel was used, how many oranges were on board and, still shockingly, that there were 450 empty places on the lifeboats when the ship went down, killing over 1,500.
Even more illuminating, the show reveals that the captain was put under pressure by the ship’s owner to go faster than both he and the designer thought prudent. It’s all thrillingly staged and performed. But it’s not just the ship that sinks after it collides with the iceberg. So does the considerable tension generated before the fateful moment. Thereafter the show loses energy and momentum. It’s the fault of Stone’s book.
A more imaginative, less linear storyline could have positioned the terrible, climactic moment much nearer to the end of the evening.
Puns are all too easy with this superbly performed and ambitious show. But something is not quite right if you want to jump ship before the end of the final act.