Tag Archives: Amanda Boxer

“Medea” at the Almeida Theatre

We all know Medea’s biography – a sorceress who kills her kids when her husband leaves her – but it might help also to know more about the writer of the Almeida’s new version, Rachel Cusk. The prize-winning author of controversial novels about motherhood and marital breakdown has created a fiercely modern adaptation – the most radical of the theatre’s acclaimed Greek season.

Euripides’ play is a starting point (an altered conclusion tells us that much), inviting us to examine the topic of women and injustice. Cusk’s Medea is a writer, a magician with words, whose talent provides her chance for revenge. But the odds are against our heroine, as made clear by her former husband Jason (Justin Salinger) and Andy de la Tour as Creon, father of the younger woman she’s been deserted for.

Other women don’t help either. Amanda Boxer plays her mother, full of insulting criticism, while Michele Austin, as Medea’s cleaner, is relentlessly negative. The chorus consists of yummy mummies, obsessed with their husbands’ careers and trivial gossip. It’s close to the bone in Islington, an easy target, and I didn’t find them all that convincing. It can’t be that bad at the school gates, can it?

The arrival of a messenger from the gods is incongruous. Presented as both male and female, it’s an idea not even the excellent Charlotte Randle in the role can make effective, and a stumble in Rupert Goold’s sure-footed direction. But at least the messenger provides a welcome break by speaking in verse. Cusk’s theatrical dialogue is unusual. There are few conversations here: Medea talks to her friend Aegeus (Richard Cant) striking a deal over revenge, but she confronts Jason over the phone, while others just lecture her and the chorus’ conversations are deliberately one sided. The play has people pontificating rather than communicating and, at times, is tiring.

Kate Fleetwood in the title role is really the highlight of the show. Her Medea is truly scary – when she picks up a knife, the air crackles – but she is even better when controlling that tension. Forcefully intelligent, which adds credibility, her revenge will be… different. Best of all is Fleetwood’s ability to convey the physical pain of the character, clutching her stomach and clenching her hands. At its most effective, this is a close-up portrayal of rejection, masterfully conveyed.

Until 14 November 2015

www.almeida.co.uk

Photo by Paul Thompson

“The Sea Plays” at the Old Vic Tunnels

Filing through the Old Vic Tunnels to your seat for The Sea Plays you pass a tableau of a ship’s boiler room. The scene has an energy that continues into the first thing we see on stage – a storm at sea with the crew struggling against the elements. It’s an exciting piece of theatre that stirs the blood.

Unfortunately, matters go downhill as soon as The Sea Plays properly start. Eugene O’Neill’s three sketches show an injured crewman facing his death, a sailor subjected to the espionage-fuelled paranoia of his shipmates and finally a tavern scene with a criminal landlord exploiting those just off the boat. It’s honest of director Kenneth Hoyt not to make more of these pieces than they deserve; they are short and sharp but have little point. Critics often like brevity, but most audience members should beware if they are in search of a satisfyingly full night of theatre.

The cast sometimes struggle with roles only outlined and seldom developed. Matthew Trevannion gets the best bargain, in all three plays playing a character named Driscoll, a fiery Irishman he portrays with appropriate vigour. There are also good performances from Raymond M Sage and Amanda Boxer as a sailor with a dream and an elderly prostitute who helps swindle him. Van Santvoord’s set and Alex Baranowski’s music and sound design cleverly use the space of the tunnels, but creating these fascinating male-dominated environments is a tough ask and the swaggering machismo of the cast often falls short.

The Sea Plays are interesting for O’Neill fans but they are difficult to be passionate about. The scenarios are powerful enough and Hoyt’s direction taut and strong – he is clearly convinced of the trilogy’s power. But these vignettes are so short, and the writing often surprisingly melodramatic, despite O’Neill’s naturalist credentials, that the evening is more a matter of squalls than storms.

Until 18 February 2012

Written 27 January 2012 for The London Magazine

“The Painter” at the Arcola Theatre

The much-acclaimed Arcola theatre has relocated closer to Dalston’s refurbished train stations, and it opens its barn-like doors with The Painter, a new play by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The painter in question is Turner, but biography is really just a primer for Lenkiewicz’s ambitious and engaging look at women, art and society.

With the smell of fresh plaster filling the former paint factory, it’s all very East End art scene. The temptation might be to see Turner as some kind of early YBA, but Lenkiewicz is too clever for this. She manipulates chronology and uses modern idioms to abstract Turner’s obsession with creativity, his battles with patrons and the relationships in his private life.

Toby Jones is excellent in the title role. Under Mehmet Ergen’s skilled direction he gives a refined, understated performance. His character’s complexity is clear, but Jones allows those who perform alongside him to shine.

We encounter three women who seem dangerously close to cliché. A young tart with a heart (Jenny Cole), a widow looking for a new husband (Niamh Cusack), and an overbearing, insane mother (Amanda Boxer) whose fate, like many an awkward woman, is to be institutionalised. Despite the danger of caricature, all three performances are stunning, the actresses bringing out the subtlety of Lenkieweicz’s characters. It’s a close call as to who succeeds most completely. I go for Boxer, who shows unbearable cruelty to her son and then painful lucidity about her mental decline. She edged me to tears.

Lenkiewicz writes taught, short scenes that command attention. All are impeccably handled by Mehmet: offstage screams are chilling and Jim Bywater plays Turner’s father so endearingly that a scene of only a few moments showing his collapse is a sharp, brutal shock.

Unfortunately such brevity doesn’t always serve. In particular Turner’s fumbling lectures at the Royal Academy need elaboration to clarify the connection between the painter’s life and art. As an essay in sublime abstraction Turner himself would probably have approved of Lenkiewicz’s work, but her effort ultimately feels slim. Taking Turner’s work and using it as a palimpsest is a fascinating prospect, but the result is a shadow that is sometimes too faint.

www.arcolatheatre.com

Until 12 February 2011

Photo by Simon Annand

Written 17 January 2011 for The London Magazine