This Week's Theatre

In the first week of this two-week theatre-oriented trip to London, we've been to five plays. This coming week we expect to see three more, maybe four if we hear of one more wonderful thing we must see. I made an effort to include visits to theatres that are a bit out-of-the-way, not in the parts of the West End where we've seen most things in the past, but it took me a bit by surprise when Steve remarked yesterday that we haven't yet seen a single play in that area where there is the highest concentration of theatres (and where some of our favorite London restaurants are located).

When we lived here in the 1970s, the National Theatre had not yet been built, nor other new theatres such as the Bridge, below the south end of Tower Bridge, and the Turbine in the new Battersea development district. As previously described, I also wanted to go to Chichester, where last Tuesday's trip to see The Butterfly Lion remains the high point of this trip's theatrical experiences.

At right are the programs for the other four shows we've seen this week. Wednesday it was Hansard, at the National Theatre, a two-actor family drama set in the political atmosphere of the Margaret Thatcher era, with fine performances by Lesley Duncan and Alex Jennings.

Thursday we went to the Almeida Theatre in Islington, a part of London that used to be among the poorest but which is gentrifying and becoming more prosperous. The Almeida is well known for its experimental edgy plays, and Vassa is an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's play Vassa Zheleznova. We found it hard to keep straight what the relationships were between the ten cast members who revolved around the central matriarch, Vassa, a nasty woman if the term were ever to be aptly applied, but almost all the characters indulge in cruel humor. Reviews suggest that the original 1910 Gorky play was meant to be tied to its time and place whereas this production is rootless and, with its stage set made up of a large number of doors, resembles farce. It was not one of our favorite plays so far (but we had a lovely Murcian-style paella at a new Spanish restaurant around the corner).

Friday evening we ventured to the new Turbine Theatre, which is part of a lively new development area on the site of the former Battersea Power Station. That coal-fired plant has been decommissioned and turned into an entertainment district--at this point mainly bars and restaurants (we went to one called Fiume and enjoyed it), but shopping and an extension of the Underground are projected. The play, only the second production at the Turbine, is a musical version of High Fidelity, based on Nick Hornby's book of that title (which was also made into a 2000 movie with John Cusack). The young performers, all early in their careers, are talented and lively, we found the music (in an antiquated '90s style) generally agreeable, and the show was fun, even though it seems not to be much of a hit.

Saturday: at the National Theatre for Parts One and Two of My Brilliant Friend, a marathon adaptation of the four books of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. It was a serious commitment of time, attention and energy but worth it, retaining the essence of the four books' action-packed plots and the frequently violent atmosphere of Naples. The two parts at 2 hours 45 minutes each are shorter than those of the other marathon two-part show we saw this fall, the superb The Inheritance, in New York in October. The huge cast is led by two strong actresses, Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack; the Olivier Theatre's vast stage did a lot of revolving, the predominant colors of everything were grimly dark, and as Steve noticed, puppetry was again involved. .