Betrayal (Theatre Royal, Bath)
Verdict: Pinteresting
Love From A Stranger (Theatre Royal, Windsor)
Rating: 
Verdict: Who do you think you are kidding Mr Covid?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Flute Theatre (flutetheatre.co.uk)
Rating: 
Verdict: Shakespeare for autistic people
Harold Pinter is a good choice for socially distanced theatre. The characters in his plays usually like to tantalise and menace one another from afar — or so I thought.
Jonathan Church’s absorbing and sometimes fascinating revival of Pinter’s 1979 adultery drama Betrayal is different. As well as sexual tension and intimations of violence, there is . . . kissing (the cast of three are in a bubble).
The play is regarded as Pinter’s most autobiographical work, sketching his seven-year affair in the 1960s with Joan Bakewell, who was married to his friend Michael Bakewell, while he himself was married to Vivien Merchant. His theme is guilty denial and the painful paradox of cheating in the name of love.
Jonathan Church’s absorbing and sometimes fascinating revival of Pinter’s 1979 adultery drama Betrayal is different. As well as sexual tension and intimations of violence, there is . . . kissing (the cast of three are in a bubble)
It can feel quite mannered and even frigid today, and there is some queasy misogyny, too. But Church’s production teases out the emotional nuance of Pinter’s writing and catches the mathematics of guilt that drives, and ultimately destroys, the affair.
Edward Bennett, in the Pinter role of the man having an affair with his best friend’s wife, brings emotional uncertainty to a part which in other hands could seem cold. Joseph Millson, meanwhile, is fascinatingly evasive as the wronged husband, cunningly testing his wife and best buddy while grimly swallowing his pride.
Even more fascinating is Nancy Carroll, as the woman they both prize. In a very middle-class, North London scenario, she plays a gallerist torn between her publisher husband and literary agent lover. She is solicitous of both, yet saddened by the situation. The story spools backwards through time and, although it’s intriguing as a theatrical puzzle, I have never been entirely moved by it.
But Church’s production teases out the emotional nuance of Pinter’s writing and catches the mathematics of guilt that drives, and ultimately destroys, the affair
Even so, I’m unequivocally impressed by the courage of the producers in hatching a live show that is not just another monologue. You could almost make believe the pandemic never happened.
- In Windsor, there are more signs of defiance. Covid may have initially triumphed where Hitler failed — the Fuhrer could only shut the Theatre Royal for a few weeks, while the virus managed six months. But they are fighting back, with a season of one-week dramas which this week includes Iain Glen and his wife Charlotte Emmerson in a radio-style performance of Agatha Christie’s psychological thriller Love From A Stranger.
Still to come are Alan Bennett’s The Lady In The Van (with Jenny Seagrove and Sara Crowe); Felicity Kendal and Tom Conti in Lloyd George Knew My Father; and Will Young in A Thousand Clowns.
CHECK OUT CHEKHOV ON THE BIG SCREEN!
Watch out for Toby Jones in Sunday’s Olivier Awards (postponed from April). He’s been nominated for a Best Actor gong in Ian Rickson’s atmospheric revival of Anton Chekhov’s melancholy masterpiece about life in provincial 19th-century Russia.
Jones plays the depressed middle-aged Vanya, vexed by the presence of his celebrity professor brother-in-law (Roger Allam). In some ways it’s a race to the bottom of despondency — at one point one character protests to another: ‘I’m at least as unhappy as you!’
It’s a typically elf-like, almost jolly performance from Jones, among tall, handsome Premier League depressives. But I’d have liked more rage, pain and desperation — and I’ll be astonished if Wendell Pierce doesn’t snatch the Olivier for Best Actor on Sunday for his mighty turn in Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman last year.
There are good performances, though, across the board in Vanya. Richard Armitage agonises as the tormented and introspective country doctor self-medicating with vodka. Aimee Lou Wood carries the emotional pulse as the daughter who struggles to win Armitage’s heart.
And as her father, the irascible, surly professor, Roger Allam is a like for like swap with Ciaran Hinds, who originally played the role with stentorian pomposity.
But the star, by some distance, remains Rosalind Eleazar, playing the professor’s frustrated young wife whose beauty makes her a target for unwanted attentions. She is as subtle and magnetic on screen as she was on stage, brimming with thwarted passion, yet also bringing a terrific sense of anger and, of course, sadness.
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Be warned: Stranger is a shoestring production, with the cast in 1930s evening wear in a radio recording studio; and sound effects provided by a Foley artist at the rear. Still, if this was at the National Theatre, directed by Katie Mitchell, we would be calling it avant-garde.
Glen plays the handsome but dastardly American Bruce Lovell who sweeps Emmerson off her feet after she has won a whopping cash jackpot.
But when they move to the country, she discovers he’s up to something sinister with peroxide. He also refuses to see a doctor about his ailing health (one curious symptom is that his accent changes from Yankee Doodle Dandy in the first half to Pathé News in the second). Still, Glen is a theatrical Rolls-Royce, with tanned upholstery and, damn it, even his bald patch looks high-spec.
Emmerson is fun, too, as his slowly twigging missus. There’s Lady Bracknellish spice from Liza Goddard; and a nicely clipped cameo from Missy Malek as her posh young friend.
But it was sound man Martin Carroll, labouring away at the back in a green janitor coat, who caught my eye — and ear — as he conjured up the sounds of creaking doors, crinkling paper, clacking crockery and crunching gravel. Oh, and he makes a gloriously stereotypical village doctor, too.
Flute Theatre are an extraordinary bespoke theatre company specialising in working with autistic people and their families. When I say ‘bespoke’, we are talking six actors playing to an audience of a single autistic individual and their family – or three people, if they’re together at school. Either way, I was hugely impressed by the simple love and joy that Flute Artistic Director Kelly Hunter and her young actors bring to their extraordinary work.
This is not Shakespeare’s Dream as you’ll have seen it before. The actors use specialist sensory and musical games to encourage their audience member(s) to join in the story of Bottom the weaver (Paul Gorostidi) being turned into a donkey, before Queen of the Fairies Titania (Hephzibah Roe) is put under a spell and falls in love with him.
Their acting style is the very distinctive ‘Hunter Heartbeat Method’ combining rhythmic language and big physical gestures. This means pulling broad faces, singing simple songs and urging their viewers to copy them. And during the hour they introduce the other four young characters who fall in and out of love in the forest.
It was wonderful, during the show I witnessed, to see the face of the young autistic man watching light up with delight, but this is not for general viewing. I can scarcely believe that the company charge just £10 for a performance on Zoom – or free, if you can’t afford that. They surely deserve an award, so it’s no surprise Ms Hunter has an MBE.