There is such a performance of truth in Benedict Andrews’ production. Cherry Orchard It takes your breath away. In the opening moments, June Watson squeaks across the stage as the old maid Firs: shuffling laboriously as if she were walking across the Russian steppes. Insulted (you bore me, a pampered teenager tells him), he finds heart in the play, eliciting groans from the audience. As he asserts his allegiance – “I sided with the ruling classes” – he highlights the divisive politics of the show. The resignation of the woman, forgotten in the abandoned house as the ax falls on the orchard, makes the outcome even more miserable than ever.
Watson turns his small role into a vital focal point. This is all the more remarkable since Andrews’ staging of his own adaptation mostly proceeds at a different pace. Wavy and violent. The atmosphere is charged with individual and social change: first performed in 1904, the play revolves around the ambiguous sounds of change in land ownership and emancipation. Andrews searches for echoes of the 21st century: “fuck” and “no shit, Sherlock” are sprinkled throughout the text; A maid wearing headphones. No navigation. The action is fragmented: Episodes rush onto the stage, wrapped in an angularly patterned, richly colored carpet by Magda Willi’s design; As soon as the characters finish a scene, they sit down in the audience.
Seeing a samovar in Chekhov’s plays becomes much more surprising than a drum kit like this one
Nina Hoss, as the landowner Ranevskaya, is saddened by both the death of her young son and the loss of her home. She moves with the attitude of someone accustomed to following a house behind, but she delivers a speech about compassion with a generosity that could have been newly written to illustrate Chekhov’s lack of self-respect. Adeel Akhtar, in his upcoming role as Lopakhin, is as intriguing, unpredictably flashing and bursting with anger as he was when playing the dour cop in the Netflix series Fool me once.
The move to make Chekhov less decorative and show him as shocking, funny and prophetic is welcome. But it becomes almost more surprising to see a samovar instead of a drum kit in his plays, and there is a loss in making every subterranean tug visible: the absence of that signature Chekhovian image of characters seething together in their own isolation. There are many flashes and flares here: they cannot be called a revelation.
visual buzz Minority Report It is directly proportional to the weakness of his psychology. Director Max Webster has an impressive history as a theater wizard: he recreated it last year Macbeth with a wild soundscape; He staged the puppet in 2019 Life of Pi. But the production of David Haig’s play, based on a 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, tilts only the eyes, not the minds.
Set in 2050, where the NHS has long been disbanded and Apple watches are experiencing an interesting retro revival, the plot focuses on questions of free will and surveillance. What would the world be like if murders could be predicted by monitoring chips implanted in the brain, and future perpetrators could be imprisoned, making the country blameless? Should we choose security or freedom? Or is it a wrong choice?
Jodie McNee, with a flamboyant, stern and authoritarian air as if digitally created, plays the scientist who invents a brain-invading crime-fighting system only to find herself compromised by it. Featuring a thin backstory and surrounded by some dodgy dialogue – “I did this for you – for us” – he (in Dick’s story the figure is a man) has the impossible task of making the edge of a 2ft-high railing look dangerous. The danger takes the form of men in big boots and coats squaring their shoulders in slow motion.
The evening belongs to Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting (torches float in the darkness, huge shadows appear) and Tal Rosner’s space-dissolving videos: the glass-encased skyscrapers of future Islington disappear beneath Rosner’s waves; metal-lined rooms filled with neon numbers; Ensembles of human brains are displayed floating like cabbages in the air. There is much dazzle but little dichotomy.
tremendous impact Mr Bates vs. Post Office It raises the question of why there are so few campaign games. Laughing Boy is one of them: a sensitive, angry account of a preventable death. Stephen Unwin’s drama is based on Sara Ryan’s book about her son Connor Sparrowhawk, who was 18 when he died in an NHS assessment and treatment unit.
Unwin’s production warmly evokes Connor’s determination: he hated sleeping, was passionately interested in London buses, and insisted on wearing a police robe with bright orange binoculars. He was autistic, had epilepsy and had learning disabilities, but because he had good relations with his immediate family, he seemed to have a secure future until he began experiencing violent rages, especially as he moved from child care to adult care. He was taken to a unit that specialized in short-term help for people with autism. He had an epileptic attack in the bathroom and died there.
Ryan campaigned to expose the institution’s failings: Connor was left unsupervised, his epilepsy was not properly documented, staff did not listen to what he said. Some caricatures of medical staff undermine the play’s argument, but the underlying theme of inadequate care for people with learning disabilities comes through strikingly. At least because mother and son are very sensitive. Janie Dee was tense, not trembling; His anger gives him a sharp edge. Alfie Friedman’s Connor has an openness that is utterly seductive. They love together very much. This embodiment, this remembrance itself is a campaign. Something that theater is well equipped to offer.
Star ratings (out of five)
Cherry Orchard ★★★★
Minority Report ★★★
Laughing Boy ★★★