Thoughts and Critiques

A blog about theater and the arts

Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! 

by Lisa on posted in

From the jump, Cabaret’s emcee (an electrifying Callum Scott Howells) invites us into the world of the Kit Kat Club, a 1930s Berlin cabaret.

And we really are at the Kit Kat Klub, since the West End’s Playhouse Theatre has been converted into that seedy joint. We enter via a stage door, where we’re given a glass of schnapps before proceeding along dingy corridors to a series of bars set up for pre-show entertainment. I stayed in the Grüne Bar (the Rote Bar and Goldene Bar were upstairs) and sipped my schnapps alongside a beaded curtain, through which I could watch musicians and scantily clad dancers.

The illusion continues when we enter the theatre proper. I did not hand over £200+ to get a café table next to the stage (the small circular stage is surrounded by the audience), but my seat, next to a dim table lamp, had a worn wooden table for drinks, and I was close enough to feel that I was present in the club. 

And that’s important. Director Rebecca Frecknall has designed this whole experience so that we feel not just immersed, but complicit, in everything that takes place in this story.

Callum Scott Howells as the emcee. Photo: Marc Brenner

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An Unsettling Henry V at Shakespeare’s Globe

by Lisa on posted in

Bardolph, hanged for stealing from a church, slowly rocks in his noose as the lights come up for intermission. This image haunts me, summing up as it does Holly Race Roughan’s brutal take on Henry V.

And what’s more exciting than to see a familiar play in an entirely new way? Roughan’s production at Shakespeare’s Globe takes a familiar text and makes it utterly unfamiliar and unsettling.

Oliver Johnstone as Henry V. Photo: Johan Persson

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Oliver Twist and the Richness of Disability-Conscious Casting

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Race-blind, gender-blind, disability-blind casting. All have become increasingly commonplace in theater and don’t normally merit comment. Conscious casting of minorities is another matter. I find it an increasingly interesting choice since it demands that we pay attention to, rather than ignore, the race or gender or disability of an actor. It brings the unexpected to the fore and make us rethink our initial ideas about a work.

Miranda Cromwell and Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of Death of a Salesman as the story of a Black family is perhaps the most prominent and exciting recent example. A recent production of Oliver Twist (now available to stream on NT at Home) also shows how powerful conscious casting can be. This new adaptation of the familiar story was developed by Leeds Playhouse in conjunction with Ramps on the Moon, a collaborative group whose stated aim is “to enrich the stories we tell and the way we tell them by normalising the presence of deaf and disabled people both on and off stage.”

Photo by Anthony Robling

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The Meaning of Falling Snow: Experiencing Chekhov in France

by Lisa on posted in

I had not expected a two-week vacation in southern France to get me thinking about Chekhov. But then I had not expected to find a theater in Uzès, the small market town where I was relaxing with friends.

Regardez la neige qui tombe: Une promenade dans la vie et l’œuvre de Tchekhov is a lovely exploration of the life and work of Chekhov. A two-person show originally produced at the Festival Off in Avignon, it’s now touring France and played Uzès for one night.

Regarder la neige qui tombe © Philippe Mangenot

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For this Willy Loman, the American Dream is More Remote than Ever

by Lisa on posted in

Death of a Salesman has been owned by White actors–and by White audiences.

André de Shields

The Loman house in this astonishing new production of Death of a Salesman consists of an explosion of isolated windows, doors, and furniture suspended by wires. I’m reminded of Arthur Miller’s original title for the play, The Inside of His Head, as these precarious furnishings, which descend and rise throughout the play, reflect the fractures within Willy’s mind as well as the tenuous state of the Loman family.

Sharon D Clarke and Wendell Pierce. Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

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Leopoldstadt is Stoppard’s reckoning with his family history

by Lisa on posted in

Tom Stoppard’s holocaust play begins in 1899 on a stage teeming with life. The extended Merz family, assimilated Viennese Jews, some of them Christian converts or married to Christians, are celebrating the holidays. While the adults discuss Klimt, Mahler, Herzl and the Jewish question, children run in and out and one puts a Star of David on top of the Christmas tree. Grandma Emilia regrets that no one remembers some of the people in the photos she’s leafing through. “It’s like a second death to lose your name in a family album,” she observes, introducing Stoppard’s main concern in this play: remembering family.

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Qui est-ce ? Et qu’est-ce qu’un portrait ?

by Lisa on posted in ,
Fragonard, Jean-HonoréFrance, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, RF 1972 14 – https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010064338 – https://collections.louvre.fr/CGU

Pendant de nombreuses années, l’homme sur ce portrait de Fragonard a été identifié comme Denis Diderot, et le tableau a été considéré, en fait, comme presque l’image définitive du philosophe. Mais, en 2012, le Louvre a identifié de nouveau le sujet du tableau comme un M. Meunier, “dit autrefois Portrait de Denis Diderot.”

Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé ?

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Jamie Lloyd’s Cyrano de Bergerac

by Lisa on posted in

I found Jamie Lloyd’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac at Brooklyn Academy of Music both exhilarating and exhausting. It clocked in at nearly three hours and I suspect the text at a normal conversational speed might have run closer to four. Jamie Lloyd is especially known for his bare-bones productions of Pinter (one of which I saw in London several years ago), and this production was similarly bare bones—not as obvious a choice for staging Rostand as it is for Pinter.

James McAvoy as Cyrano. Photo: Marc Brenner

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