London—Since most plays are to a greater or lesser extent political, there’s no surprise that blatant or only slightly veiled politics crop up no matter where you turn. To begin these days here, there’s the first-rate, sold-out revival (but almost always a single seat to be had) of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the National. Other offerings—one absolutely remarkable—are just around the corner.
The Ferryman – Gielgud. Not to be coy about it, Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, the follow-up to his smashing, clashing Jerusalem, is one of the two or three best plays of the decade—possibly even a better work than its immediate predecessor. It’s not to be missed.
The place is Ireland. The time is the early 1980s where the Troubles are hot as the sun. Quinn Carney (Paddy Considine) is some years past pulling out of the IRA. The action, he believes, led to his brother’s disappearance, which he believes was a vengeful IRA assassination. When a body identified as his brother is found, he expects a visit from IRA leader Muldoon (Stuart Graham) to angle for Quinn’s not implicating the movement in the now-recognized death. It’s a request Quinn has no plan to honor
This episode is played out as Quinn oversees his large farm family, including frequently under-the-weather wife Mary (Genevieve O’Reilly), anxious sister-in-law Caitlin (Laura Donnelly), aunts Maggie (Brid Brennan) and Patricia (Dearbhla Molloy) and several children and neighbors.
As Butterworth unfolds his tense, sophisticated melodrama, there are 22 actors—all of them superb—on stage (23 counting the infant), directed miraculously by Sam Mendes on Rob Howell’s commodious set. Some of what transpires is pure magic, as, for instance, the sequence during which often consciousness-indisposed Aunt Maggie suddenly perks up to tell Quinn’s rapt, excited daughters stories of the past. “Brilliant” is a pale word to describe what Butterworth has wrought.
******************
Ink – Almeida. James Graham’s last play, This House, was a rousing, encompassing look at how Parliament is actually run by the anonymous whips. In Ink he goes for the far less anonymous, and he makes of it something of a tragedy.
For a production Rupert Goold directs with his usual flair for the theatrical, Graham follows 37-year-old Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 takeover of the failing Sun with a determination to put it right and, in particular, to out-Daily Mail the Daily Mail. For this feat, Murdoch (Bertie Carvel, a long way from Miss Trunchbull in Matilda), hires Larry Lamb (Richard Coyle) to do anything he can to make the unexpected purchase a success.
Reluctant at first, Lamb becomes fired (in the goaded sense) to find any way he can for the Sun to flourish. He begins by hiring a determined staff, and—in a highly amusing scene—prods them to think of everything readers would like to find in a lively newspaper. For instance, Joyce Hopkirk (Sophie Stanton, here a Rebekah Brooks redhead) brings up sex—“Woman masturbate,” she say coolly
Lamb’s mission begins to go awry and his self-regard to sink when he pushes the rich, connected Muriel McKay’s kidnapping too disastrously far. His problems are further compounded when he insists on—and comes to regret—inaugurating the page 3 topless-woman image.
On Bunny Christie’s ever-pop-up set, Graham holds and shakes up the interest throughout. Incidentally, this is before the computer-silent newsroom, of course, but only one typewriter can be seen.
******************
Committee – Donmar Warehouse. There are those who maintain anything whatsoever can be turned into a musical. It looks as if bookwriters-lyricists Hadley Fraser and Josie Rourke and composer Tom Deering have set out to offer an example as proof.
The long title for their startling and persuasive short-ish piece is, as it appears on the program is “The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Take Oral Evidence on Whitehall’s Relationship With Kids Company.” It’s just that—and it’s more than that.
Everything sung to Deering’s serious music, played by piano and strings, is taken from the hearing’s transcript but not unchanged. At times, Fraser and Rourke, who directs with sober intent, lift certain phrases used for choral effect. For instance, the committee members and facilitators—beautifully acted and sung by Joanna Kirkland, David Albury, Alexander Hanson, Liz Robertson, Robert Hands, Anthony O’Donnell and Rosemary Ashe—repeat several time their desire to learn from the erstwhile Kids Company executives (Sandra Marvin as Camila Batmanghelidjh and Omar Ebrahim as Alan Yentob).
What they hope to learn is how to avoid similar problems in the future when “value for money” is at stake. In the often contentious give-and-take that follows—ambiguity emerges—and this is where the value for Donmar Warehouse money is strongly manifested.
While the two Kids Company speakers (not defendants; this is only a hearing) are clearly evading some of the committee’s probing questions about where funds actually went, they advance a cogent argument for children’s rights, which the committee doesn’t seem to keep in foremost concern. The result: a thoroughly involving, even delightful one-of-a-kind musical.
******************
The Mentor – Vaudeville. Every once in a while, a production rears its head to beg the question, How did it get a commercial West End viewing? Part of the answer is that Daniel Kehlmann’s comedy(?), translated from the German by Christopher Hampton, was evidently praised when it debuted here in Bath. A larger explanation seems to be that Kehlmann is a literary force to be reckoned with in his homeland.
Oh, well. As it begins, tuxedoed Martin Wegner (Daniel Weyman, acting to beat the band) races from the stalls to accept the esteemed Benjamin Rubin Award. He goes on to issue a few fulsome encomia on his now deceased play mentor Rubin.
His tribute is—for any sentient theatergoer—a huge tip-off that when Rubin (Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham) arrives in flashback, he’ll be an A-number-one jerk. And so he is, eventually calling the Wegner play he’s meant to assess “dreadful.” The mentor-mentee conflict leads to Wegner fleeing the beautiful retreat to which they’ve escaped for ten thousand pounds apiece (Polly Sullivan the designer). In the process he abandons wife Gina (stunning Naomi Frederick) to Rubin’s clutches.
Playwrights mentioning dreadful plays are ill advised to do so. What may be said in Kehlmann’s behalf is he’s attempting to declare that all writing—all art? all life?—is relative, that at the end of the day all talent is in the eye of the beholder. If that’s his message, he doesn’t make it well.