Theatre - Plenty - Sheffield Crucible Studio

Star rating – 8/10

When ‘Plenty’ first opened at the National Theatre in 1978, the then Theatre Director Peter Hall, refused to give in to the calls for it to be taken off in the face of terrible reviews, as he believed it was a truly good play by a young radical writer, David Hare. It was later turned into a film starring the wonderful Meryl Streep as Susan, a woman struggling with the unbearable compromises of her life and marriage in the post war peacetime period. And it is revived now in Sheffield as part of a three play David Hare season.

It is directed by the talented Thea Sharrock, whose production of Terence Rattigan’s ‘After the Dance’ at the National last year was a triumph. The Crucible’s Studio Theatre in Sheffield is a much smaller canvas to play on, but again this production is wonderfully handled. Hattie Morahan plays the fragile and unhappy Susan with enough roundedness to engender a degree of sympathy with her predicament. After her role in the French Resistance in the Second World War, nothing else feels quite the same, or gives her the thrill of living on the edge when the peace comes. It is a highly accomplished performance in this pivotal role, of a character who is hardly out of a single scene in the play. Sharrock employs the clever device of getting Susan to change clothes between scenes in the full view of the audience, which only adds to her vulnerability.

Hare combines the personal stories of Susan and her contemporaries, with the wider post war political context of the Suez crisis and the material abundance of the Macmillan era. She lives on shredded nerves and grows more unstable as the years pass, and is both supported and challenged by her husband, played by Edward Bennett, who has to sacrifice his diplomatic career because of her outbursts.

The play is also a biting commentary on the society which emerged after the war. It is very funny in places and condemnatory in others, but is always extremely clever and highly entertaining. David Hare may not be so young these days, but he is still a radical and his plays still have a message for our times.

Theatre - Becky Shaw - Almeida Theatre

Star rating – 9/10

Gina Gionfriddo’s ‘Becky Shaw’ won both awards and critical acclaim when it premiered on Broadway, but that does not always guarantee a successful transfer to these shores. Happily, the new production directed by Peter DuBois at the Almeida is an absolute triumph. It is the story of the relationships between Suzanna and her newly wed husband Andrew; and her sort of but not really brother Max, who was taken in by her parents and has become very close to her.

Andrew works with a new office temp called Becky, who is a bit down on her luck, and consequently is set up on a blind date with Max. But the evening does not go smoothly to say the least. And the relationships between the main characters are not all they seem. This is a witty, insightful, black comedy with very smart dialogue. It deals with manipulation within relationships, and the tyranny of the weak, in the shape of Becky, who comes to have a greater influence over the lives of Max, Suzanna and Andrew than they could ever have imagined. There is no great moral message here – things are not black and white in these particular repationships at all – but it is a very intelligent play, which is also extremely and acerbically funny.

David Wilson Barnes as Max gives a particularly sparkling performance, as he reprises the role he plays in the States. His clever put downs and whip smart one liners are fantastic, as he tries to dodge all emotional attachments, except that is, with Suzanna. He is the only American actor in the five strong cast, and it is worth noting that the accents of the four British cast members were faultless throughout – a detail that when not spot on can really disrupt the illusion of theatre.

Haydn Gwynne is great as Suzanna’s dry and caustic mother, and Anna Massey as Suzanna, and Daisy Haggard as Becky are also impressive. This is a joy of a play - clever, funny and thought provoking. Another winner for the Almeida.

Theatre - Greenland - National Theatre

Star rating – 4/10

I remember a phrase that we used a lot when I was a student - ‘the personal is political’. This brave new play at the National Theatre, about climate change and the urgency of taking global warming seriously, ultimately fails to pack a punch, partly because it doesn’t connect personal stories with this critical political issue well enough.

It’s safe to assume that any one who chooses to go to a play about climate change is not a vehement climate change sceptic, or at least is au fait with the main issues involved in the debate. And to that extent the play failed to reveal anything particularly new and fresh. In fact a lot of it felt like it had been written a couple of years ago at the time of the Copenhagen Climate Change summit, when Ed Miliband was a mere Energy & Climate Change Secretary, with a bit tagged on at the end to bring it up to date.

The play is a collaboration between four different writers, including the talented Moira Buffini. The problem was that it didn’t feel like they had collaborated nearly enough, if at all, and so we were left with a bit of a jumbled mess that was very hard to follow. It is not that political issues cannot make great plays – I loved David Hare’s ‘The Power Of Yes’ when I saw it here in October 2009. It was gripping, highly entertaining, and followed the fortunes of a character through the economic and moral maze of the global banking crisis to great effect. In fact it was everything that ‘Greenland’ is not. (http://culturaltalesoftwocities.blogspot.com/2009/10/theatre-review-power-of-yes-at-national.html)

Good points about Greenland were the acting – couldn’t find fault although there were no juicy roles to get to grips with; the great special effects including what looked like waterfalls in front of the stage, but may have been a clever trick; and how could I not mention the wonderful polar bear, who saved the night from disaster for me – just.

I hope the National does not stop trying to put on productions like this, but maybe gets just one great writer to do justice to the subject matter, and remembers that, as well as making a political point, a strong coherent plot is essential to the success of theatrical entertainment.

Books - The Facility - Simon Lelic

Star rating – 6/10

This promising thriller by Simon Lelic starts off with what seems to be a Guantanamo style plot. Arthur Priestley – a dentist from Ealing – is not the most likely person to have been captured by security forces under repressive new terror legislation – the Unified Security Act – but he nevertheless finds himself in some sort of captivity and he is not quite sure why. It transpires that this is not about politics, but a new and deadly disease that is starting to affect certain groups of people such as gay men, so that the right wing Government feel they have to take draconian, if not Orwellian, measures to combat it. The parallels with HIV are obvious but this disease is much deadlier and quicker to kill than any other. And Arthur cannot see why he should have been rounded up.

Cue Priestley’s separated wife Julia, who won’t simply sit back and accept her husband’s disappearance, so she goes to young left wing investigative journalist Tom Clarke to see if he will help her. She is attractive and her story compelling, so Tom can’t resist either. The book is a real page turner as they try to track down the top secret place where they think Arthur and others are being held. They embark on a romance in the process of their search, which feels slightly clichéd but is not a major criticism.

The issue for me is that Lelic makes his story hover half way between a frightening dystopian nightmare, and an everyday reality that could very well happen anywhere today. And it is slightly less powerful for that. His use of characterisation is also a bit erratic. For example another main character, Harry Graves, who is really a prison governor but shipped into run the secret facility and to ask no questions, starts off as a man guilty because of his very sporadic communications with his daughter, and his failure to let her know where he is at the moment. We then only get a heartless, faceless bureaucrat for another 200 pages or so before his personal life encroaches again when he goes to visit his daughter. That feels a bit unconvincing.

Which is also the problem with the plot – it just fails to convince enough to grip the reader all the way through the book in the way a thriller such as this should do. It is very well written, but just maybe needs to nail its colours to the mast of being a modern Orwellian nightmare a little more than it does. But Lelic shows in this, his second novel, that he is certainly a very good writer, who can twist a plot and thrill along the way. Definitely one to watch.

Film - True Grit - Ethan & Joel Coen

Star rating – 8/10

The Coen brothers claim not to have produced a remake of the 1969 John Wayne classic, but instead to have gone back to the source material itself and to the novel of Charles Portis. Not having seen the original movie, or read the book, it was all fresh to my eyes anyhow. The story in their version is narrated by Mattie Ross and told very much from her perspective.

Mattie is a fourteen year old girl bent on justice for her murdered father – which she sees as capturing his killer, Tom Chaney, and letting him hang. And despite all the plaudits surrounding the performance of Coen brothers’ favourite Jeff Bridges as the grizzly old, liquor soaked, marshal Rooster Cogburn, with a reputation for being particularly mean, who Mattie seeks out to help her with her quest, it is Hailee Steinfield as Mattie who walks off as the real star of the piece by a wild west country mile. Towards the start of the film she needs to get her hands on some money to be able to pay Cogburn and persuade him to undertake the dangerous task, and the powers of persuasion that she uses to get her little hands on the money have to be seen to be believed.

Bridges plays old Rooster as a very rough and tough character, sometimes so gruff it is hard to follow what he is saying. And mention must also be made of Matt Damon, who is a revelation as the Texan lawman LaBoeuf, who is also on the trail of Tom Chaney. Mattie embarks on the quest with these two unlikely companions, even though at first she is not a welcome guest on the trail, and the story is essentially one of the triangular relationship which develops between the three along the way. She picks Rooster for his true grit, but it is Mattie herself who displays such remarkable tenacity, stubbornness, and bravery that the title must surely refer to her.

The cinematography is stunning, with the harsh winter of Indian country shown to great effect. It is a violent and harsh film, but a fairly uncomplicated story with a predictable ending. It’s certainly not the best Coen brothers’ film, lacking the originality, twists, and humour of ‘Fargo’; and the thrills and brilliance of ‘No Country For Old Men’, but it is by no means their worst, and many, many times better than their last spectacularly off the mark effort, ‘A Serious Man’. It is not immediately obvious why they wanted to remake this classic film, or to make another film of this book- whichever way you want to look at it – but this is a brilliantly acted and thoroughly enjoyable film, which is sure to make a deserved star out of the wonderful Hailee Steinfield.

Theatre - Winterlong - Royal Exchange Studio

Star rating – 4/10

It feels churlish to find so much fault with a play that is being put on at the Royal Exchange’s Studio after winning a great playwriting competition. But I am sorry to say that in ‘Winterlong’ by Andrew Sheridan, the issue is the writing. It is the sad story of Oscar who has been abandoned by his useless parents aged 4 into the care of his grandparents. But his Granddad never loved him so when his Nanna dies of cancer he has no one to turn to. But there needs to be more attention to plot and finesse in the storytelling, instead of shock value being wrung from every line.

The problem is certainly not with the acting - both the more accomplished and the youthful actors impress in equal measure. Harry McEntire is great as the young Oscar, who is innocent, and sad, and infuriating at the same time. Gabrielle Reidy and Paul Copley are also excellent as his struggling grandparents, who find it hard to show any emotion at all in their forlorn lives, either to each other, or to their charge Oscar. And various other shocking incidents and people cross Oscar’s path along the way. Sadly, what could have been a moving and interesting play never really moves out of first gear. Oscar is the only character with any real depth. The play is funny in only a very few places, and tasteless in many many more. Encouraging new writing is laudable, and is always worth taking a chance on, but it is a shame that this feels like something of a wasted opportunity.

Books - The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zackary Mason

Star rating – 5/10

I loved The Odyssey when I read it as an eighteen year old, but have not returned to it since. So my knowledge of the exciting adventures of Odysseus was a bit blurry round the edges but I was not in total ignorance. However, I have to say that I found this acclaimed new book by Zachary Mason to be puzzling, confusing and arrogant.

On its jacket the book claims to be a ‘radical and thrilling renovation’ of the classic ancient Greek tale, but it seems to be more of an attempt to dazzle the reader. We get the familiar stories of Odysseus for example being bewitched by the sound of the beautiful Sirens; and battling with the dual monsters of Scylla and Charybdis. Much of the book is about his home coming, after decades of wandering, to the islands of Ithaca, and to his wife Penelope, who has long given him up for dead.

But the chapters are muddled up chronologically, they tell the same stories differently in different parts of the book; and just end up being confusing. I struggled to stay with it right to the end, despite the chapters being in a reader friendly short format. Some of the stories Mason has reinterpreted from the original book, and some he has made up. To be honest I couldn’t see what he was trying to achieve. Maybe you have to be a classical scholar to get it, rather than someone who just happens to love the classics. If so that is a great shame, as making classical literature accessible in today’s age of instant gratification would be a very noble thing indeed to achieve.