Thoughts and Critiques

A blog about theater and the arts

A Pretty Wild(e) Importance of Being Earnest

by Lisa on posted in

Everyone is having a grand time on stage in Max Webster’s exuberant new production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Lyttelton Theatre (NT Live will show it in movie theaters in February).

And I enjoyed myself very much, too—if not, perhaps, quite as much as everyone on stage. The cast—all of them outstanding—has mastered a particular style of British comedy: part panto, part public school gender subversion and part, of course, Oscar Wilde.

It’s a dream cast: sexy Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon, hapless Hugh Skinner as Jack, randy Ronke Adekoluejo and Eliza Scanlon as their love objects, and the incomparable Sharon D. Clarke as Lady Bracknell. Amanda Lawrence, Richard Cant and Julian Bleach provide luxury casting in the smaller roles.

Having become a bit wearied of the tendency toward minimal sets and costumes, I was delighted by the explosion of color and detail in this production. Did the National blow its entire year’s budget on this show? If so, I’m glad to have been the beneficiary of such a profusion of design talent.

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Why Should I Dance? Oedipus at the Old Vic

by Lisa on posted in

Oedipus is famous for his ability to solve riddles. I’m in need of an Oedipus to solve the riddle of this production.

The creative team (Ella Hickson has written the adaptation, Matthew Warchus and the choreographer Hofesh Shechter co-direct) has set the play in an undefined time—post-apocalyptic, or post-climate catastrophe. The plague afflicting Thebes is now a drought and a harsh sun shines over a largely empty stage. Jocasta tries to convince Oedipus to abandon Thebes for a less drought-stricken area. Technology has taken a step back: the oracle’s pronouncements are delivered via an old reel-to-reel tape recorder!

So far so good. But what might one do with the Greek chorus in such a concept? The solution chosen here is to eliminate the text of the choruses entirely and bring in Shechter’s dance company to “comment” via dance on the action.

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What Have We Here?

by Lisa on posted in

“What have we here?” is a wonderfully open question. It can be literal: what is this object before me? Or it might have a more general sense: what’s going on here? It could be prelude to an investigation, as when a detective in a police procedural asks this question upon arriving at a crime scene. Above all, it expresses some kind of curiosity, a desire to know.

All of these meanings are in play in Hew Locke’s terrific exhibition at the British Museum, what have we here?

Locke, a Guyanese-British artist, has put together a fascinating and provocative show in which he has looted (I use the term advisedly) the British Museum’s collection for the purpose of re-examining how the collection has been shaped by Britain’s imperial past.

But that makes it sound hectoring. And disturbing as the exhibition is, I found the title apt: Locke is clearly governed by curiosity and seems genuinely more interested in stimulating conversation and reflection than in lecturing his country about its moral failings.

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“Paul Mescal rides ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ to Brooklyn”

by Lisa on posted in ,

So announces the New York Times headline. Meanwhile, Vulture reports that the “Irish sad-boy hunk of Normal People and Gladiator II … is bringing the production to Brooklyn.”

It is true that Rebecca Frecknall’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire is transferring from London (where I saw it two years ago at the Almeida Theatre) and will open at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February. And it is true that Mescal will reprise his award-winning performance as Stanley.

What bothers me about the breathless Paul Mescal coverage, though, is that he forms just a third of a remarkable ensemble of award-winning actors that includes Patsy Ferran as Blanche and Anjana Vasan as Stella. 

And good as Mescal is, this revelatory production foregrounds the relationship between Stella and Blanche, suggesting that the heart of the play lies not in the gladiatorial combat between Stanley and Blanche—exciting as that is!—but in the relationship between the two sisters.

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