Dodie Smith began her career as a successful playwright before World War II. Dear Octopus It was first performed in 1938. He wrote the novels for which he is known. One Hundred and One Dalmatians And I’m Capturing the Castle – after the years. It’s easy to see why his subtle play, his sixth, is rarely performed: It’s an entertaining but almost uneventful portrait of three generations of a family coming together for a golden wedding anniversary. What he needs is a first-class, meticulous, perfectly constructed production, and that’s exactly what he got at the National with director Emily Burns.
What ensues is an extraordinary evening of country time travel – a miracle – in which we are transported back to the 30s and into a grand English house with sage green walls (exquisite design by Frankie Bradshaw) outside Birmingham. What’s fascinating and fun is seeing how family life suddenly changes and stays the same. To Smith, family was an octopus from whose tentacles you could never escape.
This production of Dorian Gray reveals the seriousness of the novel with a vaudeville bravado bordering on madness
Preparations for the party are underway, and one of the grandchildren insists on saving a rose from an otherwise dead bouquet of flowers: “Not everything should die before it has a chance to live,” she wisely observes. How people do and don’t take their chances in life is at the heart of this drama, which perceptively explores aging (Smith was in his early 40s when he wrote it). The inimitable Lindsay Duncan plays the famous 70-year-old Dora: elegant, controlling, seasonedly malevolent. Kate Fahy is superb as her aging rival, unprepared for her own efforts at cosmetic updating.
A love story develops in the younger generation between Dora’s son Nicholas (plausibly played by Billy Howle), who displays a severe lack of self-awareness, and the high-strung Fenny, a companion/maid and the human equivalent of the rose in need of rescuing. (Beautifully played by Bessie Carter). Writing is a happiness. I loved the amusing exchange in which Dora’s husband Charles (a respectable Malcolm Sinclair) explains how he never achieved his ambition of becoming a member of parliament because there were too many “minor jobs” to be done around the house: shelves to be put in, shelves to be taken down. Despite (or because of) this, he is happy. The play is a snapshot of pre-war happiness, a living period piece, a tonic for our turbulent times.
Sarah Snook is known as Shiv Roy on HBO Subrogation. Her remarkable performance combined ruthlessness with vulnerability and seething mischief and earned her two Golden Globes and an Emmy. And now, briefly in London’s West End, he plays Oscar Wilde’s doomed narcissist Dorian Gray, described in the novel as a “tall, elegant young man” with a “romantic olive face and weathered expression.” The casting is so far off the mark that it’s intriguing. An evening grounded in the hellish arrogance of Snook, who vigilantly impersonates everyone in the novel (26 people), from the poisonous aristocrat Lord Wotton to the painter Basil Hallward to Dorian’s rejection, with endurance, comic excitement and vampire camp. his lover, Sibyl Vane.
The film, which was first staged by another actor in Sydney in 2020, A picture of Dorian Gray It is enthusiastically directed and adapted by Kip Williams. The conceit is playing with screens (today’s canvas), recalling the vanity of today’s selfie and smartphone filters. The screen proves more powerful than the stage (video design is by David Bergman), and Snook, with her auburn bob and smoldering cigar, is projected in one incarnation as a larger-than-life, twinkling cupid who wallows in Aristotelian nonsense, sending the novel up in smoke. . Make no mistake: this Picture of Sarah Snookhis famous vehicle, his showcase, is a furiously staged flirtation that’s so wrong you can almost convince yourself it’s right.
The novel (1891) is a sinister moral tragedy in which Dorian turns to good but finds evil stronger. He lives on a canvas he did not choose, in a frame from which he cannot escape. He has become more of a concept than a person. The portrait he kept reveals his corruption. Wilde’s darkest exploration concerns Dorian’s longing for immortal youth. This production undermines the seriousness of the novel, sending it into vaudeville bravado bordering on madness. The fatal ending is more of an exclamation point than a sobering response to Wilde’s utterly brutal conclusion.
Transforming Live Aid, the groundbreaking fundraising musical event on two continents, into theater is a big ask; It has no chance of conveying the 72,000-strong crowd at Wembley on July 13, 1985, nor the spontaneous excitement of the headlines: David Bowie doing his best, Elton John adding to the on-air energy, Freddie Mercury punching the air with enthusiasm. Live Aid was watched by 1.5 billion people worldwide. raised £150 million against famine in Ethiopia; approximately £458 million in today’s money. It’s a shame that on the stage of the Old Vic the songs rarely run their own path and are arranged into a little collage. However Only for a day remains an excuse for great songs and boasts a fantastic ensemble, tightly led by Luke Sheppard.
John O’Farrell’s book attempts to avoid the danger of becoming nothing more than a nostalgia fest by educating young audiences. But like many tribute pieces, it’s dangerously safe and poorly worded. It tries to be edgy by adding risk factors that no longer work, such as Bob Geldof’s fight to dissuade Margaret Thatcher from sticking with VAT. Still, Craige Els captures Geldof’s undeluded quality, and I was captivated by Jo Foster playing Rebel, Rebel with flamboyant uncertainty: “Your mother’s in a whirlpool / She’s not sure if she’s a girl or a boy.” Abiona Omonua’s Amara, who works for the Ethiopian Red Cross, sings a-Gonna Fall from A Hard Rain with such a beautiful voice that I wanted her to sing it forever (cancel the rest of the show, we’ll stay and listen).
Star ratings (out of five)
Dear Octopus ★★★★
A picture of Dorian Gray ★★
Just for one day ★★★
• Dear Octopus At Lyttelton, National Theatre, London until 27 March
• A picture of Dorian Gray At London’s Theater Royal Haymarket until 11 May
• Just for one day At the Old Vic in London until 30 March