THE COMEUPPANCE – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – one of the USA’s foremost young dramatists scores another deadly bullseye

Anthony Welsh, photograph by Marc Brenner

THE COMEUPPANCE

by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins

directed by Eric Ting

Almeida Theatre, London – until 18 May 2024

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/the-comeuppance/

The idea of death being present in all things and at all times, sometimes quite tangibly as the scythe-carrying Grim Reaper, was a constant preoccupation in the medieval ages but less so for subsequent generations. The concept, tuned out ana anaesthetised for so long with mass media and the horrors of history, made a brief reappearance for many people during the Covid pandemic as mortality encroached naggingly on the minds and consciousnesses of a global population, particularly in nations, such as the USA and the UK, that pride themselves on being advanced specimens of human civilisation. Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins taps into this in his thought-provoking but richly enjoyable play, first seen off-Broadway last year in a production from which some of the creative team are recreating their work for this London premiere.

Death isn’t listed in the dramatis personae of The Comeuppance but bursts out of the mouths of the five human characters who pop out of the play at regular intervals to deliver monologues on mortality. As personified in Jacobs-Jenkins’ writing, Death isn’t necessarily malevolent, but more wry, reflective, dispassionate, cajoling even.

The premise is that this group of former classmates are meeting for a pre-party prior to their 20th anniversary school reunion. They’re living in the post-Covid era but they each have their own additional crosses to bear: hostess Ursula (Tamara Lawrence) has lost the sight in one eye to diabetes, artist Emilio (Anthony Welsh) has a rootless, lonely existence overseas in Berlin, Caitlin (Yolanda Kettle) is in a loveless marriage and with step kids she hates, her former flame (one of many, apparently) Paco (Ferdinand Kingsley) is traumatised by military duty in foreign war zones, and doctor Kristina (Katie Leung) has a serious drink problem.

So far, so dysfunctional, but Jacob-Jenkins fleshes this disparate bunch with such bleak humour and fascinating backstories that it’s impossible not to be fully engaged. If this self-proclaimed “multi ethnic reject group” is a little too pat in its representation of a polyglot America (the recurring visual motif of an apocalyptic wind ripping through the Stars and Stripes banner also feels a little heavy handed), they’re so well written as individuals and their longstanding relationships and mutual grievances feel so convincing that The Comeuppance remains fully engrossing, even as its savagery threatens to give way to sentimentality in its latter scenes.

Not many plays, as yet, have dealt with the trauma following the world shutdown and mass deaths caused by Covid. The Finborough hosted James McDermott’s Jab earlier this year which dealt with the reaction of a middle aged British couple to the pandemic, but The Comeuppance feels more expansive and universal. It’s not as shocking as the same author’s Appropriate (currently enjoying an acclaimed Broadway production) or as inspirationally crazy as his An Octoroon, but it shares much of the same theatrical imagination, as well as the laudable ability to make deadly serious points while being immensely entertaining. It certainly cements Jacob-Jenkins’s reputation as one of the greatest American dramatists currently at work.

The acting in Eric Ting’s propulsive but sensitive production is impeccable. Not a single false note is struck, even when the characters are at their most outrageous. The American accents are also flawless, which is especially noticeable given that the actors deliver their Death speeches in their own voices. Technically, Arnulfo Maldonado’s designs, Natasha Chivers’s lighting, Emma Laxton’s sound, and the special effects by Skylar Fox and William Houstoun, are all ingenious and noteworthy but never at the expense of the integrity of the script or this brilliant cast.

The Comeuppance is a chilling blast of a play, shot through with genuine belly laughs and shudders of recognition. It interrogates how our past experiences mould us, how striving to find the past in the present is doomed to failure or at least discontent, and it has a quizzical semi-hopeful ending. A fine, funny, troubling evening.

MINORITY REPORT – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – human will and A.I. go head to head in this flashy thriller

Photograph by Marc Brenner

MINORITY REPORT

by David Haig

based on a short story by Philip K Dick

Directed by Max Webster

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 18 May 2024

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/minority-report/

Philip K Dick’s 1956 sci-fi novella has already spawned a Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, and now actor-writer David Haig and hotshot director Max Bennett take on this futuristic thriller that pits human will and determinism against an authoritarian state in a co-production between Nottingham Playhouse, Birmingham Rep and the Lyric Hammersmith. Minority Report probably feels even more timely now with the ongoing threat of Artificial Intelligence meddling in our perceptions and day-to-day lives. Haig further updates this preposterous yet undeniably troubling tale by making the neuroscientist central character hoisted by their own petard when their own technology predicts the possibility of them committing a murder, into a woman.

Jodie McNee plays, brilliantly, Dr Julia Anderton, all smug self-assurance and with an affected upper crust accent as she addresses a conference of peers while caressing an actual human brain at the outset, before unravelling spectacularly as she goes on the run from the authorities. In a nice, telling touch, McNee’s own Liverpuddlian accent comes to the fore as Anderton’s panic and distress rises, as though everything this woman had suppressed about herself bursts through the urbane sheen of success she’s carefully cultivated, leaving her raw, open and terrified.

It says much for the strength and authority of McNee’s tremendous performance that she isn’t lost amongst the bells and whistles of Bennett’s über-flashy production. In depicting the London of 2050, Bennett and his crack design team (video by Tal Rosner, set by Jon Bausor, lighting by Jessica Hung Han Yun, illusions by Richard Pinner, sound by Nicola T Chang) have hurled everything at the wall….. A taxi hurtles through city streets, platforms rise and fall, searching spotlights sear as they rove, whole rooms appear then disappear in the blink of an eye, avatars pop up in unexpected places….. Visually and aurally, the staging is a sensation. Webster has proved before, most notably with Life of Pi, and the Donmar versions of Macbeth and Henry V, that he is a director most comfortable and adept at utilising multimedia in his productions but never at the expense of the theatricality, and that reaches an apotheosis here.

Bennett’s work is augmented by movement direction by Lucy Hind that is so elaborate and striking that you almost wish they’d gone the whole hog and given us Minority Report – The Musical. Certainly, this is as exciting an attempt to stage the apparently unstageable as you’ll find in any current London theatre, except for the Phoenix and Palace (homes, respectively, to Stranger Things and Harry Potter). Where the show comes unstuck slightly is in the latter half lurch into melodrama as a gun-wielding Anderton seeks to avenge her sisters death: it feels overwrought and messes up the pace of the evening. For all the hi-tech ingenuity of the staging and the commitment of the cast, the story doesn’t always grip as much as it should: in condensing the whole saga into ninety minutes, a certain amount of clarity has been lost, and we’re sometimes left dazzled but not always entirely sure as to what’s going on.

Not all the supporting performances are as strong as they might be, but Nick Fletcher excels as Anderton’s bewildered husband, and Tanvir Virmani is unsettling and amusing as her virtual AI-generated confidante. Even if ultimately Minority Report convinces primarily as a flashy thriller held together by a stunning production and an accomplished central turn, the tensions between human choice and the sinister machinations of technology that is supremely intelligent but ignores the possibilities for rethinking and rehabilitation, are persuasively conveyed. It’s not a great play but it’s an enjoyable, frequently discombobulating one.

PIPPIN – The 50th Anniversary Concert – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Alex Newell leads the players in this Broadway classic

photograph by Pamela Raith

PIPPIN – The 50th Anniversary Concert

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Book by Roger O. Hirson

Directed by Jonathan O’Boyle

Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London – 29 & 30 April 2024

https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/pippin-50th-anniversary-concert/

This 1974 Broadway smash, which flopped in London originally but has been revived numerous times since, is an incredibly malleable beast. Bob Fosse’s striking initial vision for it was as a macabre commedia dell’arte, a smirking, snarky dance of death, making it the show that, even more than A Chorus Line which it predates by a year, established ensemble dancers as a group of individuals rather than a homogenised, faceless bunch of chorines. The 2012 Menier production presented it as a computer game, the Tony-winning Diane Paulus Broadway revival a decade ago set it in a circus and the post-Covid London revival that transferred from a pub garden in Vauxhall to Charing Cross saw it as a hippie festival, just steps away from Hair which it sometimes resembles. With its innate theatricality, illusion and emphasis on dance as a mode of storytelling, Pippin is not necessarily a show one would automatically think of for a concert treatment.

Staged concerts have become more elaborate of late however, and director Jonathan O’Boyle has history with this piece: his pre-pandemic production that played Manchester’s Hope Mill then Southwark Playhouse in London, is one of the finest accounts of Stephen Schwartz and Roger O Hirson’s musical that I’ve seen. This new Pippin, featuring an all-star cast, a sizeable choir courtesy of Arts Educational School, and the onstage 20 piece London Musical Theatre Orchestra under the baton of Chris Ma, is basically the show as written but minus the scenery. In order to achieve maximum emotional impact, this loosely structured tale of a troupe of players putting on a show about the youngest son of medieval emperor Charlemagne and his quest for the meaning of life ideally needs more specificity than it gets here, but there’s still a heck of a lot to love.

The blazing talent on stage, Joanna Goodwin’s fabulous Fosse-lite choreography (of which there is plenty) and the transporting tuneful songs (it’s not as well known as the same composer’s Wicked but it’s a considerably stronger score) go a long way to papering over the cracks in the book, which, without an overriding theatrical concept, feels dramatically undernourished and self-consciously peculiar, especially in the second act which gets bogged down in a half-hearted romance and lots of existential pontificating. The ending, where the Leading Player (Broadway’s Alex Newell) strips everything away (sets, lights, costumes, wigs…even the band “get your hands off that goddamn keyboard”) to show Pippin what a “regular” life would be like without magic, isn’t as powerful when there’s not much to strip away…the transformation in Diane Paulus’s Broadway version where the colourful Big Top, with its elaborately costumed cast members, becomes the bare brick back wall of the theatre under harsh strip lighting is probably the most effective and astonishing to date. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinatingly downbeat ending to a show, or rather concert edition, where dazzle dazzle is its predominant stock in trade.

Newell lacks the sinister edge of a really great Leading Player but sings the score sensationally well, riffing and opting up to exhilarating effect, and is often very funny. Jac Yarrow in the title role also sings superbly, and successfully projects the self-absorption and bravado of the character, although the vulnerability that makes Pippin so compelling mostly eludes him. Cedric Neal’s glittering Charlemagne is great fun, and Lucie Jones, despite being saddled with a bizarrely unflattering costume, displays terrific comic chops, as well as a real sense of heartbreak, as Catherine, the widow who falls for Pippin. The four players who make up the versatile, athletic chorus – Jak Allen-Anderson, Sally Frith, Amonik Melaco and Gleanne Purcell-Brown – carry the show, and are just glorious.

The evening is stolen though by two women in supporting, but essential, roles. Firstly, Patricia Hodge, who was the original London Catherine back in the mid 1970s at what used to be Her Majesty’s Theatre, sidles on as Pippin’s majestic but thoroughly naughty grandmother and delivers an object lesson in seducing an audience while never breaking character. She’s simultaneously haughty and earthy-warm, and makes the life-enhancing, ear-wormy singalong ‘No Time At All’ (“join in with the choruses, but the verses are all mine”) the uplifting heartbeat of the show. It’s a wonderful fully-rounded performance which deservedly got the first huge ovation of the night.

Then there’s Zizi Strallen firing on all cylinders as Charlemagne’s scheming wife Fastrada. Sexy as hell, with legs that go on forever, and an exhilarating vocal belt that I did not know she was capable of, she’s authentically stunning. It’s a triple threat performance that transcends mere camp (although she certainly is that)….she’s deliciously nasty, overpoweringly erotic and absolutely hilarious. A real star turn.

The orchestra and choir are magnificent, although the sound design could be a little more crisp and some of the tempi seemed a little off at times, although that may just be teething troubles. There are several moments where the sheer wall of sound hits you like a bombastic sugar rush of gorgeous noise, and it’s in those sections where any reservations are swept joyfully away. The excellent O’Boyle’s knowledge of, and respect for, the piece ensures that, strange as it sometimes is, it’s admirably clear in its focus and storytelling. It’s just a shame that this Pippin is only on for two nights.

OH, MARY! – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Cole Escola is the funniest First Lady America never had

Conrad Ricamora and Cole Escola, photograph by Emilio Madrid

OH, MARY!

by Cole Escola

Directed by Sam Pinkleton

Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York City – until 12 May 2024

Lyceum Theatre, New York City – 26 June to 15 September 2024

https://www.ohmaryplay.com

Probably the hottest ticket in New York right now and the kind of downtown audience and critical darling upon which theatrical fortunes, legends and reputations are founded, Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is utterly, joyfully ridiculous. Watching it, I was reminded of the work of Charles Ludlam’s acclaimed Ridiculous Theatre Company which gleefully, and similarly, took a queer hatchet to conventional straight sensibilities and themes. Escola, as both writer and star, makes an equal impact here: this gorgeous comedy is crazed, super-smart and entirely irresistible as it rewrites American history and leaves audiences helpless with hysteria.

Escola plays Mary Todd Lincoln, yes the First Lady of Abraham, but this is neither drag nor slavish historical recreation (God forbid), although it does feature references to the Civil War. That’s as nothing though compared to the Uncivil War waged between the Lincolns: upright, repressed gay Abraham, forever eyeing up the male domestic staff when he thinks nobody’s looking, and cabaret-obsessed, easily triggered, vicious alcoholic Mary whose determination to return to the stage is outdone only by her loathing for her husband and interest in getting herself around the nearest bottle. This Mary is more than quite contrary, she’s absolutely unhinged and, as represented by Escola, entirely irresistible, even, or maybe especially, when she’s being a total nightmare.

Clad in a funereal black hoop dress and a ringleted wig that is trying so hard to be period specific but seems strangely at war with both itself and Mary’s head, Escola’s Mrs Lincoln raises malice and indignation to an art form, and their comic timing is exquisite. Amazingly, they even find some pathos in the character. When we finally get a taste of the cabaret act Mary was forced to abandon, the mirth stakes are raised even higher, I can’t remember the last time I saw people laughing that hard in a theatre. It’s all the funnier because Cole’s Mary takes herself and her art very seriously indeed.

Conrad Ricamora’s grandstanding, lecherous Lincoln is equally hilarious, which is no mean feat given what he’s up against, and James Scully is attractively manic and also tremendous fun as an acting coach engaged for Mary, and who ends up playing a bigger part in the unfolding history than you might imagine. Bianca Leigh is rather gorgeous as a chaperone with an ice cream based shame that’s never to be spoken of (which means basically that Mary can barely shut up about it) and, surprisingly, a whiskery benign barkeep. Tony Macht is the fifth member of this merry team as the assistant that President Lincoln can’t seem to get enough of.

The infamous assassination of the President at the theatre is reenacted here but with a backstory that is anything but predictable. Sam Pinkleton’s pacy production never misses a comic beat and, if its brief running time of eighty minutes leaves you wanting more, you’re unlikely to feel shortchanged, when you account for your sides and face aching from laughing. If this sometimes feels like a Saturday Night Live sketch writ large (and with more swearing) it’s undoubtedly a gloriously fun time, and Cole Escola is a magical, one-off talent. I adored it.

The Who’s TOMMY – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the Pinball Wizard is back on Broadway!

Photograph by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

The Who’s TOMMY

Music and lyrics by Pete Townshend

Book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff

Additional music by John Entwistle and Sonny Boy Williamson II

Directed by Des McAnuff

Nederlander Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

https://tommythemusical.com

Can the same director reinvent a beloved show more than once? On the basis of this crowd-pleasing revival of The Who’s Tommy, returning to Broadway by way of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and once again staged by Des McAnuff who won the 1993 Tony for his previous version of the legendary rock opera, the answer is an emphatic, if slightly qualified, yes.

The world has changed considerably in the 30+ years since McAnuff’s mind-blowing original vision of The Who’s rock rollercoaster first exploded onto Broadway (it transferred to the West End’s Shaftesbury Theatre for a years run in 1996 with a cast that included Kim Wilde and a young Nigel Harman) and certain elements of this tall tale of “that deaf, dumb and blind kid [who] sure plays a mean pinball” have not aged well. Those lyrics from the most famous number (‘Pinball Wizard’, which once again brings the first act to a thunderous, thrilling conclusion, with go-for-broke choreography by Lorin Latarro, who is fast turning into one of New York’s preeminent dance directors) are a major indication as to what has altered.

Looked at through a 21st century lens, Tommy appears uncomfortably ableist. The titular character’s instantaneous descent into silence and blindness (apart from staring into a mirror) after witnessing his father murder his mother’s lover, may be intended as symbolic but it now seems as insensitive as it’s poignant. Furthermore, the young Tommy, unprotected by his senses, is thrown around like a rag doll, sexually abused by his uncle (John Ambrosino) in a terrifyingly intense sequence that’s thankfully at least not graphic, before being assaulted by a prostitute (Christina Sajou’s extravagantly feral Acid Queen) in a misguided attempt to “cure” him.

While I would defend to the death the right of popular entertainment to explore and confront some of the more disturbing facts of life, Tommy, in 2024, feels like an outlandish special effects fest and collage of (admittedly fabulous) music, and these darker aspects tend to register as jarringly exploitative, sensationalist add-ons to a fantastical narrative. Die-hard fans may not care, but newcomers may find the more unpalatable aspects of the story pretty hard to take, especially when they’re presented with minimum illumination or explanation but maximum razzle dazzle.

Furthermore, the principal characters Mrs Walker (Alison Luff) and Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs), Tommy’s parents, school bully Cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte) and Tommy himself (Ali Louis Bourzgui) aren’t nuanced enough to penetrate through the flash and spectacle of the staging and seem more like archetypes than flesh and blood people, which is no fault of the excellent performers but more that the bells and whistles of McAnuff’s vision and the sheer, roof-shaking bombast of this mostly enthralling score don’t allow for much in the way of humanity.

All that said, there’s still a heck of a lot here to like: Latarro’s choreography, dynamically mixing up styles and moods, is absolutely terrific, and performed with precision and glorious energy by a crack ensemble, who also sing like dreams. Tommy feels nearer to a dance show now than it ever did previously, and that’s possibly the only area where this version improves upon its predecessor.

All the voices are wonderful, although Bourzgui’s Tommy was struggling with the higher notes at the performance I attended. Probably best to draw a veil over the attempts at British accents (the majority of the show is set in London during and after WW2) and just enjoy the uplifting spectacle and musical excitement. Conte displays commanding stage presence as the bullying Kevin, and Luff and Jacobs inject their roles with more purpose and feeling than are in the writing. Luff’s voice in particular is a thing of wonder and when she cuts loose in Mrs Walker’s angry rock tirade ‘Smash The Mirror’ she’s like a severed power cable. Bourzgui’s Tommy has undoubted charisma but feels diminished by the decision to turn him from a messianic cult figure to effectively a social media influencer.

All kudos to McAnuff for not simply rehashing the work that won him accolades thirty years ago. This new Tommy is genuinely reconceived, and in some ways, for all technical ingenuity of Peter Nigrini’s projections, Amanda Zieve’s lighting and above all Gareth Owen’s truly awesome sound design, feels less hi-tech at times than the previous production: human figures and inanimate objects are borne aloft and spun through the air by black-clad figures, kuroko-style. Nigrini’s work and David Zinn’s gleaming settings favour a black and white pallet with occasional flashes of acidic yellow; the whole thing moves with an oil slick smoothness.

Those of us who were knocked sideways by the earlier iteration of The Who’s Tommy, whether here on Broadway, in the West End or during its extensive North American tour, might experience a certain sense of anticlimax though. This new version undoubtedly achieves lift-off some of the time when it needs to, but overall feels less urgent, less sensorily overwhelming, less epic, with the result that the lameness of much of the storytelling, the absence of humour and the random nature of some of the character motivations are left more obviously exposed. McAnuff’s new concept of setting part of it in the future doesn’t entirely work since there is little correlation between that and the core story.

This new Tommy is unquestionably a big, flashy Broadway night out. The music remains hugely exciting, and when the stellar vocals, athletic dancing, and visual effects coalesce it provides maximum musical theatre uplift. It’s just that in a season that includes stunners like Hell’s Kitchen, The Outsiders and the import from London of Cabaret, this melodically profligate, dramatically undernourished throwback feels a bit lacking. It’s certainly an enjoyable journey, but not an entirely amazing one.

SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – a modern dress Sweeney to haunt your nightmares (spoilers included)

SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Hugh Wheeler, from an adaptation by Christopher Bond

Directed by Graham Hubbard

Produced by Adrian Jeckells for London School of Musical Theatre

Bridewell Theatre, London – until 3 May 2024

https://www.lsmt.co.uk/tickets

It’s pretty unexpected to go and see a drama school production of a beloved musical and to discover that it’s more satisfying, and possibly more coherent, than the version of that same show which is currently on Broadway (until the end of next week when the starry Thomas Kail revival closes). Of course, one thing that Graham Hubbard’s fascinating new Sweeney Todd for London School of Musical Theatre has going for it is that the cast (split into two performing teams, wittily entitled Steak and Kidney…I saw the Kidney company) can actually do the accents. Another special frisson to this iteration is that it’s being performed at the Bridewell, literally steps away from actual Fleet Street. Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical thriller may have been conceived and created in Manhattan, but its spirit and soul are inextricably rooted in Grand Guignol and the Victorian stews of London’s Square Mile.

Most importantly and persuasively, Hubbard’s vision for this endlessly malleable musical masterpiece demonstrates a total and utter understanding of the material, and a rock solid faith in it, while also having the courage and imagination to take certain liberties that illuminate rather than detract from what is one of the greatest American tuners of all time. Ravishingly melodic then jarringly dissonant, operatic in structure and ambition, Sweeney still, over forty years after its premiere, takes the breath away with its juxtaposition of the macabre and the comic, and a score that owes as much to British Music Hall and Britten’s Peter Grimes as it does to its Broadway antecedents.

Like most meticulously crafted pieces, Sweeney Todd is able to withstand a robust concept. The acclaimed Bill Buckhurst staging that played both sides of the Atlantic placed the show in an actual pie factory, John Doyle’s actor-musician version had the action unfold in the fevered mind of the already incarcerated Tobias. Even the Harold Prince original had a central conceit, setting the entire show in a giant factory where all the workers were making the story happen, with a genuine 19th century Rhode Island iron foundry transplanted onto the stage of Broadway’s Uris (now Gershwin) Theatre, subsequently recreated for Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Hubbard’s takes place in an abattoir, a place of clinical killing and abject despair, with parts of human-shaped mannequins hanging overheard like carcasses of meat, and phantom whispers of “I will have vengeance” come over the sound system as the audience files in. It’s an environment that feels recognisable but hermetically sealed off from the rational, light-filled outside world.

The ensemble wear the shiny, white, wipe-clean boiler suits of slaughterhouse workers and sit observing on the sidelines when not fixing the front rows with threatening stares and screaming ‘Attend the tale…’ at us with considerable power. If some of the older roles are perhaps too complex to be full fleshed out by youthful performers at this stage in their careers, the cast deliver with commendable commitment and generally superb voices. Alex Maxwell finds a frightening intensity in the titular character and frequently soars vocally.

The principals are in modern dress – for instance, Lydia Duval’s Mrs Lovett, with scruffy top knot, strappy top and filthy apron over baggy jeans in act one, then with immaculate coiffure and scarlet cocktail dress for her more affluent act two, could have come straight out of Eastenders. I also particularly liked gender-swapped Beadle Bamford (Alanagh Murray) as a hard-as-nails, flick knife-toting Scouse glamazon, listening to the ‘Parlour Songs’ on her iPhone. As with the John Doyle version, the scheming Pirelli is also female here. The Beggar Woman (Aaliya Mai, rivetingly tragic) is a recognisably contemporary vagrant, trawling around with her Lidl and Tesco bags and, most heartbreakingly if you know the story, a baby doll on a string.

Bob Sterrett’s set consists of little more than a raised platform, clear PVC curtains through which shadows of characters appear like ghosts, some sterile tiling, a trapdoor, a few stepladders, and buckets of blood, and it’s hugely effective, especially in the disused Victorian swimming pool that is the Bridewell and lit in harsh whites and brutal reds by Ric Mountjoy. Huw Evans’s six piece band playing a pared down version of Jonathan Tunick’s still-stunning orchestrations make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and David Beckham’s crystal clear sound design ensure that every lyric and harmony is heard.

Sondheim aficionados will appreciate Hubbard putting in Sweeney’s chilling door slam at the very last moment of the show, in an homage to Prince’s iconic original, but will hopefully be equally pleased with some of the innovations (some spoilers to follow). The infamous factory whistle, notably absent from the current Broadway version, has been replaced by a scream of outrage from Lucy, Benjamin Barker (later Sweeney Todd)’s young wife, when her husband is shipped off to the Australian penal colony on a trumped-up charge in an intelligently rethought prologue. Lucy reappears after the Beggar Woman is murdered and the bereft Sweeney sings his final, heartbroken farewell to her rather than the corpse he has just despatched. It’s a smart, moving adjustment.

At the conclusion, Sweeney offers himself up to Tobias for death, actively handing him the razor, a powerful moment foreshadowed right at the beginning where Todd is revealed to have self-mutilating tendencies. Having Lucy reappear spectrally, like a figure from a horror film, when Sweeney murders Judge Turpin, as if to put a definitive end to the killing spree, is another inspired touch. Mrs Lovett doesn’t die by being tossed into her own oven but by being frenziedly slashed to death with the same razor that claimed all the other victims. The ambitious, almost cinematic ‘City on Fire’ section that sees the lunatics literally taking over the asylum while major plot points are kept spinning, is staged with notable clarity and dynamism.

All in all, this is a tremendous Sweeney Todd, not as humorous as it could be perhaps, but giving full rein to the uncomfortable bedfellows of revulsion and lyricism that characterise this glorious piece. It puts an interesting spin on a familiar piece, that feels fresh but never detracting from the original, magnificent work by the peerless creatives. The legend is reminted but not at the expense of its integrity or power.

MOTHER PLAY – A Play In Five Evictions – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Jessica Lange returns to Broadway in new Paula Vogel drama

Photograph by Joan Marcus

MOTHER PLAY – A Play In Five Evictions

by Paula Vogel

directed by Tina Landau

The Hayes Theater, New York City – until 16 June 2024

https://2st.com/

An all-star cast headed by a member of American acting royalty making her return to Broadway after almost a decade in a new play by a Pulitzer prize winner, staged by one of the New York theatre scene’s most respected and innovative female directors… On paper, Paula Vogel’s Mother Play – A Play In Five Evictions starring Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger sounds like a sure fire winner. On stage however, Tina Landau’s production is a mixed bag, with moments of genuine power jostling up against a surprising amount of dead air.

Like much of Vogel’s work, this is an autobiographical play, explicitly so. Lange plays Phyllis (which was Vogel’s mother’s actual name) across multiple decades as daughter Martha (Keenan-Bolger, in a really lovely demonstration of truthful, selfless stagecraft) recalls, in a series of memory-vignettes, life with this narcissistic alcoholic (there are shades here of The Glass Menagerie‘s Amanda and Long Day’s Journey‘s Mary Tyrone, both of which Lange has portrayed on Broadway and in the West End), and also the loss, to AIDS, of her beloved brother Carl (Parsons). The text makes it clear that this isn’t a naturalistic play, yet Landau’s production works best when it isn’t firing off the bells and whistles and focuses on letting these fine performers, particularly the two actresses, do their thing.

Landau has liberally applied lashings of stage magic to Vogel’s brutal, witty, somewhat meandering text, pointing up the fanciful tricks that memory can play. Some of it is wonderful (the two siblings seem to conjure Lange out of thin air, sparking some of the most heartfelt entrance applause currently on Broadway), some of it subtle (look out for the apparently bottomless handbag, à la Mary Poppins) and some of it plain bewildering (projection designer Shawn Duan has created a festering cockroach effect to denote the squalor of one of this family’s homes that makes your skin crawl, which is followed by a sequence involving a giant dancing bug that is more of a head scratcher).

Lange is magnificent, and brave. Phyllis, for all her fun flamboyances such as the knock-off designer outfits (costumes by Toni-Leslie James) and the exuberant disco dancing, is a bit of a monster. She’s vindictive, she writes off her own daughter while idolising and nearly suffocating her son. Then there’s the homophobia, which is probably the bitterest pill to swallow here: she rejects both of her gay children and reacts to her son’s life-claiming illness with a load of self-dramatising grandstanding and not one ounce of compassion. While I’ve no doubt this is an accurate picture of Ma Vogel it makes the character impossible to like, and renders the final scene -dementia-afflicted Phyllis, in a wheelchair, being tended to by a daughter who doesn’t want to be there- deeply depressing rather than moving.

There’s a particularly telling section, exquisitely rendered by Lange and Landau, that goes on for several minutes and is completely wordless but shows the emptiness and loneliness of this woman’s life as she gets progressively drunker, reacts to music and the television and settles down to a microwave dinner….it’s the minutiae of a solo life, self-inflicted after years of wearing everybody else down. It’s incredibly bleak but riveting in its precision and understanding of human behaviour.

Mother Play is frequently not an easy watch, which is understandable given the subject matter some of which might be more suitable for the analysts couch rather than the stage, but Vogel’s guilt and rage infused writing has some real bite, even if it’s not her best work. The switches between real and fantastical are clunky, and Parsons is disappointingly bland, although his few moments of rage feel authentic. Great as Lange is, it’s Celia Keenan-Bolger who holds the evening together, painting a touching, haunting picture of a kind soul whose needs and anger were repeatedly subsumed into a peripatetic existence and the needs of more obviously robust personalities.

THE OUTSIDERS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – forget the film, the musical is a thing of wild, unforgettable beauty

Photograph by Matthew Murphy

THE OUTSIDERS

Book by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine

Music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay & Zach Chance) and Justin Levine

Based on the novel by S E Hinton, and Francis Ford Coppola’s motion picture

Directed by Danya Taymor

Bernard B Jacobs Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

https://outsidersmusical.com

If you like your musical theatre packing a ton of testosterone but also tenderness, with a side of irrepressible youthful energy and a great big dollop of uglycrying, then this electrifying, emotionally charged adaptation of S E Hinton’s coming-of-age novel, revered in the US but known mainly in the UK due to the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie version, will knock your socks off. You don’t even need to have any prior knowledge of either the book or the film to be thoroughly moved and exhilarated by Danya Taymor’s spellbinding production: this is one of the most exciting new musicals of the current Broadway season.

Although it’s set in a different city (Tulsa, Oklahoma) and a decade later (1967), The Outsiders is often reminiscent of West Side Story with its tale of warring gangs, accidental death, and youthful disenfranchisement, although the love story, such as it is, is much further down the list of key elements. Here the impoverished Greasers are up against the privileged Socials, and the dramatic stakes are high. Hinton was a teenager when she wrote the original novel and an authentic sense of youthful openness and hormone-driven histrionics permeates through to Adam Rapp and Justin Levine’s dynamic, well-fleshed-out book for the musical.

The score, by Levine and Texan folk duo Jamestown Revival, adds a rich, multi-textured layer of nostalgia and exuberance, vital enough to thrill younger audience members yet so haunting and full of plangent yearning that it feels like a lament for lost youth, which strikes a cord in more senior onlookers. This gorgeous, evocative collection of songs occasionally sounds a bit samey as the evening draws on but it’s such quality work it still feels like a total pleasure. The unforgettable ‘Great Expectations’ that builds from a simple solo line to a thunderous full company chorale is an anthem, and if a dying characters musical exhortation to narrator Ponyboy to ‘Stay Gold’ doesn’t have the tears pouring down your cheeks then you maybe need to check your vital signs. This is folk and blue grass but infused with a potent theatricality. Levine has done his own orchestrations and vocal arrangements and they’re spectacularly good. The cast album will be a must have.

The mind-bogglingly fit, prodigiously talented young male ensemble is the most dynamic bunch of Broadway heartthrobs since the original company of Newsies, although this show is grittier, darker, and, frankly, better. They execute Rick and Jeff Kuperman’s athletic, enthralling choreography with a fearless insouciance, when, that is, they’re not clambering vertiginously up the scaffolding of AMP’s multi-level set. Crucially, they dance in character, so the moves feel raw and spontaneous, even though they’re meticulously drilled. The climactic fight isn’t a traditional number as such, but a thrilling cinematic slugfest unfolding in pouring rain punctuated by great slabs of overwhelming sound and unforgiving light: it’s astonishing.

Taymor’s visionary direction conjures up a world on stage, conjuring up car lots, a cinema, a church on fire and a dinghy kitchen with simplicity but a fearsomely well honed stagecraft. The use of projections and Brian Macdevitt’s shape-shifting lighting is exemplary. Technically the show is a wow, but it’s so seamlessly done and the storytelling is so good that you may be sobbing too hard to notice.

There’s not a weak link in the cast but Brody Grant’s watchful, intelligent, sensitive Ponyboy Curtis lingers long in the memory. Jason Schmidt as his sunny, straightforward brother and Brent Comer as the elder, more responsible one, tasked with looking after his siblings after the death of their parents, are equally vivid. Sky Lakota-Lynch teases every last iota of dark and hurt out of Ponyboy’s doomed best friend Johnny and Joshua Boone has a voice and stage presence to thrill the blood as the rebellious Dallas. Although it’s a strongly male dominated work, there’s beautiful work from Emma Pittman as Cherry Valance, the popular Socials princess whose compassion takes her to the wrong side of the tracks.

This is a wonderful piece of work, full of rough magic; inventive, invigorating and ultimately deeply moving. I hope it becomes the long running Broadway fixture it undoubtedly deserves to be. If you’re visiting New York City any time soon, put this, along with Hells Kitchen, at the top of your must-see list.

THE CORD – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – a lot of good stuff packed into eighty compelling minutes

Eileen O’Higgins and Irfan Shamji, photograph by Manuel Harlan

THE CORD

written and directed by Bijan Sheibani

Bush Theatre, London – until 25 May 2024

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/the-cord/

Family dynamics, male fragility and the delicate balance of parenting come under the spotlight in this quietly compulsive new play by Bijan Sheibani. The title seems initially to be about the unseen but omnipresent connection between mother and child, two generations of which are on stage here, but Sheibani is on about something even more complex.

New parents Ash (Irfan Shamji) and Anya (Eileen O’Higgins) are having what would appear to be fairly standard challenges in the aftermath of the birth of their new baby boy, although Ash seems unusually preoccupied with his perceived lack of involvement from his own mother Jane (Lucy Black) while Anya’s parents seem much more ‘hands on’. To the onlooker, Jane seems to be doing just fine, offering love and advice but giving the fledgling parents room to breathe and discover, but Ash keeps pushing it. The only other cast member is cellist Colin Alexander whose exquisite, sometimes foreboding musical contribution runs under dialogue like an expressive, but never obtrusive, film score.

Sheibani’s highest profile credit is probably as writer on Netflix’s One Day, and his dialogue for The Cord has a naturalistic quality that could work equally well on film or TV as in the Bush’s intimate auditorium. Being in the theatre gives it an extra frisson though, so that loaded small asides and build-ups from normal conversation to full scale row become authentically compelling. His spare, cool, mime-infused staging (there are no props at all) plays out on Samal Blak’s muted, pared-down set almost like a ritual, with actors entering the raised space to play their scenes then sitting on the sidelines watching.

Interestingly, Sheibani makes Ash the most self-absorbed character, the sort of man-child who makes everything about him, perceiving wounds and slights where none exist, while the two most important women in his life struggle and strain. Shamji has an innate likability and cuddly Everyman quality that ensures he’s almost never entirely unsympathetic but his constant “what about me” whingeing is a curious choice. Shamji’s flatly naturalistic line delivery at first seems so disengaged and throwaway that it’s hard to get a handle on him, but he manages Ash’s furious flailing and hyper-neediness beautifully, even if it’s still not easy to fully warm to him.

Gently magnetic Eileen O’Higgins accurately captures Anya’s wonder and fatigue at being a new mum then moves powerfully into anger and disbelief at Ash’s failure to support. Lucy Black, so good in Sheibani’s staging of Till The Stars Come Down at the National earlier this year and every bit as fine here, is really terrific as Jane: practical, warm but unsentimental, sometimes a little fractious, and battling an unspecified pain that sometimes sees her doubled up in agony while her unaware son rages down the phone at her. Black delivers astonishing work, completely truthful and tapped into a complex well of emotion that feels 100% accurate. It seems that Jane suffered from severe post-natal depression after Ash’s birth, which explains somewhat his ongoing anxiety, and the look on Black’s face when her adult son brings it all up to her as his own family unit teeters on the brink of collapse, is unforgettable.

This is a play that looks deceptively simple on the surface but haunts and sears in its sometimes uncomfortable depiction of the way people who genuinely love each other can also perpetrate great hurt, even without thinking, and of the almost mystical bond between parents and their children. It’s suffused with a lovely rueful humour and an unshowy but persuasive theatricality. Writers directing their own work can sometimes come a bit unstuck, leaving room for laughs that an audience doesn’t always rush in to fill for example, but Sheibani has done a delicate, impressive job here. I’m not a parent but in the space of eighty minutes I went from reasonably engaged to deeply moved. Recommended.

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – humanity and mortality laid bare amid raucous laughter

Photograph by Ryan Buchanan

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

created and performed by Adam Scott-Rowley

co-created by Joseph Prowen and Tom Morley

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 4 May 2024

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/you-are-going-to-die/

“To die will be an awfully big adventure” so said J M Barrie in his perennially popular fantasy Peter Pan. There’s something of the boy who refused to grow up about Adam Scott-Rowley’s unique, shape-shifting creation in this bracingly original piece of theatre, that embraces, explores, reveres and often blows a raspberry in the face of human mortality.

Naked, unkempt and crudely painted, there’s also something of the clown, the shaman, the tragedian, and the unreconstructed Northern club circuit comedian about Scott-Rowley. He’s by turns inviting, threatening, charming and utterly magnetic. The nakedness isn’t for titillation but to give a sense of the primal about this sort-of apocalyptic solo vaudeville that is sometimes too esoteric to be fully comprehensible but is more often hypnotic and surprisingly hilarious. The lone toilet on stage, and which is the only set we get, feels indicative of the show’s attitude to existence….as though this is where humanity is heading. It’s a funny conceit, but also a nihilistic one.

Although male genitalia are clearly on display, Scott-Rowley is a curiously androgynous figure for much of the performance, a sort of conduit and representative of humanity in all its squally, plaintive, anxious imperfection. You Are Going To Die seems calculated to unsettle, amuse and baffle in equal measure, and it succeeds.

This was a sell out sensation at Edinburgh and the Vaults festival, and it’s not hard to see why. Scott-Rowley’s astonishing performance is augmented only by the aforementioned toilet, Matt Cater’s evocative, majestic lighting design and a doom-laden sound score. It’s simultaneously simple and hugely challenging. Prepare to laugh a lot, gasp in sheer astonishment…and take part in the most ribald audience singalong you’ve ever heard.

About an hour of this level of intensity and insanity is probably about as much as anybody can cope with, but it really is a hugely rewarding piece of theatre. And even its detractors can’t cry emperors new clothes…as he’s all too aware that he isn’t wearing any. Strangely life-enhancing stuff, for all its desolation and shock value.