Imagine This

***
Imagine This has already closed which is a shame. The show had heart, and obvious flaws, but of course it couldn't address these halfway through the run; telling us already that the creative team aren't West End standard if they could realise this during the previews or it's run at the Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Imagine This is set in a Warsaw Ghetto - already losing a chunk of it's market as it's got more depth than a jukebox musical like Mamma Mia - it's hen party audiences would be so innappropriate here. However Imagine This could welcome that sort of audience. Glenn Berembeim's HUMOUR in a GHETTO? An inexplicable element that ruins the many potentially poignant moments readily available in this setting so that it becomes a simple, awkward story within a story. An acting troupe living in this Ghetto (lead capably by Peter Polycarpou) attempt to bring hope to everyone through their show 'Masada', of course the leading lady (Leila Benn Harris) and man (a surprising gem in this show, Simon Gleeson) fall in love. It's an uplifting romance with truth and overcoming all obstacles at it's heart.

The music is gorgeous, however is marred by it's lack of theatrical climaxes, and music so delicate is murdered by harsh voices, even if that reflects the fight in the characters. The choreography was a wonderful element of the show and staging and set creative for it's small stage. The acting isn't outstanding, but then again neither is the script they work with.

Veronica Grubb

Blood Brothers

*
It's been running 20 years...yet I can't comprenhend why!
It's cheesey in it's appeal (yes it may be a musical but please!). It's an undoubtedly heartfelt show, to the point it felt somewhat sickening and felt extremely unbelievable. Set in 80's Liverpool, Mrs Johnstone, with the reproductive ability equal to a rabbit, has too many children and when she discovers she's expecting twins, knows she can only afford to keep one. So Mrs Lyons, a superstitious, rich woman that can't have children who Mrs Johnstone cleans for ,makes a pact with her that they'll take a child each. When these twins meet (and Mickey introduces Eddie to Linda who they both fall in love with), Mrs Lyons moves away, but not before the boys agree that they're blood brothers. Mrs Johnstone is rehoused to the same area and the three are together again. Life goes by and while things are good for Eddie, Mickey is struggling. He goes to prison and when he returns home to Linda he's depressed - Mrs Lyons tells Mickey that Linda has been seeing Mickey and he confront Eddie in the tragic ending. There was no depth to it to think about, everything on display meaning so I wasn't held by the action. I am perhaps marred by the fact I studied Blood Brothers last year so knew everything that was going to happen however. There are some good moments of comedy, but I got tired of the jokes that an upper class person like Eddie came across very camp, and that there were adults playing children for a whole act.
The Narrator (Craig Price) tells the story, a wonderfully dark presence (enhanced by creative lighting) with a rocky anthem, 'The Devil's Got Your Number' stirring the audience. However this is the only positive element I found in the show. No doubt the direction was good, the acting fine although nothing spectacular, and the choreography average. The music was so traditionally music theatre but there was nothing innovative it - any of it - it's just not good enough. Niki Evans (another reality contest reject) has a big belt as Mrs Johnstone but yet again - there is nothing individual about it! The show's curse of mediocrity, how many times do I have to stress the repetitive fact?

Veronica Grubb

Piaf

***
Elena Roger gives an remarkably intense performance; a living echo of Piaf from with her street wise feistiness, mirrored in the unbelievably intimidating voice that emerges from a woman with her tiny wraith like figure. This strength carries her through her self inflicted, turbulent life of drugs, illness and lust for men that come and go, showing that singers like Amy Winehouse weren‘t the first of their kind.
Pam Gems crams Piaf’s life into 1 hour and 30 minutes worth of fleeting scenes that cause the audience to fail to build any connection with the characters. Despite the outstanding performances by the cast, a feeling of dissatisfaction lingers amongst the audience at the fault of it’s soulless script that doesn’t know whether it’s a play or musical. The only time I felt a small pang in the heart for any of the characters, was when Owen Sharpe as Charles Aznavour, who charms the audience with his Irish lilt, is cast off in one of Piaf’s moods and his heart breaks before our eyes. The ensemble mostly play 3 characters each - it’s difficult to differentiate them, and appears confusing and cheap. Somehow the talent of the actors propels us open mouthed through the story. One fault is that Roger is the only one with an (unintelligible) French accent so that we miss a lot of the script that is necessary if you know nothing about Piaf’s life, amid the pronounced spitting and swearing.
Soutra Gilmour’s set is barren and makes for awkward exits and entrances, although the cobbles of the Paris streets present throughout the play as a clever physical representation of where Piaf came from that you are constantly reminded of in the grit of her songs. The majority of songs are French, and the ballads lacking in familiarity bore the audience occasionally and leave this generation wondering why Piaf was so popular in her prime. However Neil Austin’s creative lighting builds an atmosphere beneath these songs we don’t understand.
Jamie Lloyds direction of the actors is infallible, and copes with the fleeting scenes with puppetry of pace that influences the mood. The meeting of Piaf and her greatest love Marcel is illustrated beautifully, time slowing down around her as she is enraptured at the sight of the gigantic boxer celebrating his win.
I left the theatre in awe of the actors but let down by the feeling of emptiness and confusion, the script does not do justice to a legendary singer. I looked, but was not touched.

Veronica Grubb

Ivanov

*****
Chekhov’s trademark scripts of character, rather than deliverance of some great controversial philosophical message, still managed to change man’s opinion in it's emotional display of human complexity. There are no heroes or villains in this play. Stoppard’s adaption includes his witty one liners that further enhance the humour always present in Chekhov alongside the sorrow present in this play. Combined, these two great playwrights are great puppeteers pulling at the audience’s heartstrings, making Ivanov a wondrously powerful play. You ride upon an emotional wave, swinging from laughter to despair in a heartbeat. Stoppard makes Ivanov more understandable and there are delicious one liners about the credit crunch and gooseberry jam, and a constant, cheeky mockery of the boring trifles in upper class life.
Ivanov played by Kenneth Branagh, more than meets expectations. Ivanov, plagued by bad luck, is self tortured by his over analytical mind and self disgust - his depressed, unstable emotional state at the hands of debt and being a subject of gossip, a heartbreaking mystery to him. Tears flow freely in the audience’s empathy for Branagh’s remarkable performance. The air is as heavy as Ivanov’s heart as we watch a man weep, and collapse into the foetal position and asks, stuttering with the meekness and innocence of a child, “What’s wrong with me?” I have never experienced an audience so deadly silent as in that moment. Branagh is Ivanov.
Chekhov shows human complexity in his wonderful dynamic between Ivanov and Doctor Lvov, played excellently by rising star Tom Hiddleston. Chekhov defies traditional, simple good and evil roles, and shows how there is both in a man, challenging audience opinion. Ivanov is both high and low in opinion, everyone respecting him as a good man, but under the impression he is marrying for money, whereas Lvov, motivated by a sense of duty plays the man who would be perceived the hero, thinking he is an ‘honest, upright man, disgusted by human cruelty’, but coming across as foolish and rude by voicing his opinions.
Ivanov is superbly directed by the Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage, with a strong cast. Pale faced Gina Beck play’s Anna, Ivanov’s wife who is dying of tuberculosis, beautifully, a physical reflection of Ivanov’s ill fragile mind. Shabelsky (who sounds uncannily like Jim Broadbent…) and Lebedev, grumpy old men lighten the tone as a comic duo, and Lorcan Cranitch is suitably unbearably annoying as Borkin, Judas to Ivanov. Only Andrea Riseborough as young Sasha who loves Ivanov and inspires hope for a new beginning in him, feels unconvincing in her overacting that is meant as a contrast against the old cast, her abundance of energy representing her youth.
The audience reluctantly left their seats in a slow motion daze. Gushing praise echoed around the theatre. It’s won my love despite the fact I queued three hours in the pouring rain for tickets - it was SO worth it. And that’s longer than even a nation of queuers can bear.

Veronica Grubb

No Man's Land

**
With the death of the legendary playwright Harold Pinter on Christmas Eve, it felt appropriate that my first show of the new year would be the last night of this. However, the disappointment I felt was worsened by guilt at having to remember him through this mediocre production.

I confess that I have never seen any of Pinter's work onstage before (and this is also only the third play I've seen) but I have studied a couple of his plays and am familiar with his style and the fabulous subtext within his plays. The use of language was undoubtedly brilliant, but the lack of action and abundance of confusion made it occasionally boring, made worse by the trademark silences that rarely contributed to the atmosphere.

It is difficult to decipher what No Man's Land is about (and that's not just me, it's all you could hear the audience wondering during the interval). No Man's Land cleverly creates an atmosphere in an odd environment entirely unlike it's war namesake. Hirst (Michael Gambon) is an alchoholic, senile poet living with two shady characters, Foster (David Walliams) and Briggs (Nick Dunning) doing all manner of jobs for him. Hirst meets wordsmith Spooner (David Bradley), on Hampstead Heath and invites him home for a drink but is locked up there for the night.

No one but Spooner seems to have any definite character. Hirst swings from mood to mood, and memory to memory so often the audience feel as confused as he must. Foster and Briggs appear menacing in Act One during the night but vulnerable and polite the next morning. Gambon and Bradley have brilliant comic timing, and Walliam's moments of self pity are the most emotional of this static play but Dunning is unconvincing as mouthy Briggs. Despite Walliams bad reviews, I found his ominous presence as he stalked about the stage a highlight of the show.

As always, Adam Cork's music was perfect, however Giles Cadle's bland set was impersonal and Rupert Goold's direction not at it's best, although the light relief of the comedy couldn't have been better.

No Man's Land may create an intriguing world true to it's namesakes atmosphere, "which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever icy and silent" yet it isn't right for the theatre, too puzzling and failing to stimulate the audience with it's boring, repetitive script about nothing in particular.

Veronica Grubb