Tag Archives: Barbican Theatre

“The Master and Margarita” at the Barbican

Mikhail Bulagakov’s classic novel, The Master and Margarita, is a work known for its complexity. A satire, full of politics and philosophy, it is marked by what has come to be known as magical realism. With the action moving speedily between the trial of Christ and Stalin’s Moscow, and a cast including the devil and his cat, it’s easy to see why many would regard it as unstageable. But Simon McBurney, and his theatre company Complicite, love a challenge and this production shows that, as they approach their 30th anniversary, they are at the top of their game: drawing out the theatricality in the book, enjoying the farce, and injecting drama into the fantasy elements of the story.

Marked by a level of accomplishment that is truly breathtaking the action is presented with invention and wit. The set, designed by Es Devlin, is a facade of houses onto which some of the finest video work I’ve seen on stage is screened. Not content with this, McBurney uses the floor of the stage, filming live and projecting onto the walls; it’s appropriately disorientating and makes the production seem bigger than the theatre itself. The lighting from Paul Anderson is an essential part of the show, used with intelligence to great effect.

But no matter how stunning the show looks it would be just a bag of tricks without the acting that accompanies it. The text, devised by McBurney with Edward Kemp and the company, moves at a great pace, with short scenes that require instant emotions in surreal circumstances. Tim McMullan is so powerful as Pontius Pilate he seems to anchor the whole show and, taking the title role of The Master, Paul Rhys gives a stunning performance. Susan Lynch, who plays Margarita, shows great bravery (not least since she spends a good deal of the play naked) with the emotional rawness she brings to the part. Lynch and the company manage to make the story of The Master and Margarita, and the idea that is should appear on stage, believable.

Until 19 January 2013

barbican.org

Photo by Bohumil Kostohryz

Written 21 December 2012 for The London Magazine

“Mademoiselle Julie”at the Barbican

The Barbican offers Londoners yet another chance to see the very best of world theatre with French director Frédéric Fisbach’s bold new version of August Strindberg’s Mademoiselle Julie. Though written during its author’s naturalistic period, the production points to Strindberg’s later expressionist works and employs the conceit of updating the setting, if not the manners, of the story. The action starts with a wild celebration of Midsummer, with the mad mademoiselle defying convention to dance with the servants, to a pop music soundtrack, before bedding her father’s valet. Maybe I’ve been to too much theatre and too few parties, but this is a night like no other, with one guest dressed as an albino Wizbit and another wearing a bunny rabbit head.

There are some pretentious moments in Fisbach’s production but these can be forgiven for the French sophistication so palpably on offer. Artist Laurent P Berger’s set is a minimalist marvel (you can tell the guy has been hanging around white cubes), being part playground, part prison, with partitions to mirror the private and public power play Mademoiselle Julie is so full of. And Berger fully exploits the emotional potential of light and colour – no question that this show looks amazing.

The set is a work of art in its own right, but the draw for many will be superstar Juliette Binoche in the title role. She does not disappoint. Her Julie’s lust for life appeals but she really excels suggesting Julie’s thanatotic edge. In addition, Binoche enables Strindberg’s period details to retain their force – in both the shame and the erotic frisson that comes from a seduction between the social classes. As her lover, Nicolas Bouchaud does a superb job, suggesting his character’s complexity with a potential for violence that’s decidedly kinky – there’s boot licking and animal sacrifice, for heaven’s sake – but always riveting. I’m not sure about that rabbit though.

Until 29 September 2012

www.barbican.org.uk

Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage Festival d’Avignon

Written 21 September 2012 for The London Magazine

“Big and Small” at the Barbican

Among the many unmissable opportunities the Cultural Olympiad gives Londoners is the chance to see the renowned Sydney Theatre Company at the Barbican. Their star supporter, indeed Artistic Director, Cate Blanchett is performing, so no wonder its production of Big and Small is a hot ticket.

Don’t get too excited. Big and Small, originally Gross und Klein, is by the influential German playwright Botho Strauss and it is difficult stuff. It’s about, well, everything: big issues like society and the environment as well as how we experience the world epistemically. It’s difficult to describe without using big words – maybe it’s just about a woman who goes mad. In a series of disjointed, distinctly odd, scenes we see our heroine Lotte deal with a “sick minded” world and face rejection from friends, flatmates, lovers and family. For Lotte there is “disaster everywhere”.

Naturally, all eyes are on Blanchett. Lotte is a daring role for an actress to take on: childlike in her naivety, she becomes a kind of prophet with a belief she is one of the “righteous”. She has to be both an enigma and an everywoman. Blanchett prowls around with lots of “heavy breathing shit” and manages to do so convincingly: if she can talk to God then why shouldn’t she do so dancing, wearing a sequined dress and a crash helmet. It is a sense of fun, and some remarkable comic timing, that allows Blanchett’s star appeal to illuminate this occasionally opaque play.

The production is impeccably directed by Benedict Andrews. And it looks great with Johannes Schütz’s slick minimal design lit superbly by Nick Schlieper. The brave ensemble is precise, bold and committed. Even if you can’t quite keep up with the crazy antics you are sure to be impressed. Martin Crimp’s English text feels swift and sure and makes the most of the humour in the piece, managing to defeat a lot of the pretentiousness.

Until 29 April 2012

www.barbican.org.uk

Photo by Lisa Tomassetti

Written 18 April 2012 for The London Magazine

“The New World Order” at Shoreditch Town Hall

Promenade theatre has been fashionable for several years now. Theatre practitioners often want us to leave our comfy auditoriums and test an audience’s dedication by taking it to new and often less salubrious locations. It’s best to be agnostic about the practice but Hydrocracker has a production of five short Harold Pinter plays, presented as The New World Order, which is worth going a long way for.

Certainly, at least as far as Shoreditch Town Hall. After being frisked and given identity cards, the audience is taken to meeting rooms and then travels down to the building’s scruffy basement, shovelling around its seemingly labyrinthine rooms. The constant theme is Pinter’s nightmarish vision of a state slipping into totalitarianism. The short plays unfold with increasing violence and fit well with the promenade format, but that is the only comfortable thing about the evening – this is powerful political theatre.

Whether The New World Order is more forceful because of this format is an open question. Director Ellie Jones does a superb job: not only in marshalling the audience (although it must help to have a cast playing soldiers who can shout at people) but also in maintaining tension, atmosphere and linking the scenes. Nonetheless, the complicity with the soldiers that is hinted at can’t really grow. You are given the chance to try and help one of those held prisoner but few will, not because they are unfeeling, but for fear of disrupting the performance. Putting actors into the audience never really works – you can sense them a mile off! And while the often incredibly close proximity to the action is intense, it can be intimidating which, sadly, stifles Pinter’s savage humour.

Jones’ direction is impressive because she appreciates the urgency of Pinter’s late political writing. As a recent production at The Print Room demonstrated, these plays are strong enough to be performed with minimal sets, and Jones anchors her work in the script, bringing out a stringent performance from Hugh Ross, who plays the terrifying Minister of Cultural Integrity, and a small but remarkable cameo from Jane Wood. And Jones has a final trick up her sleeve: as one of the victims is released, the audience follows him into the night. This denies the cast its well-deserved applause, yet provokes thought on the long journey home.

Until 11 December 2011

www.barbican.org.uk

Photo by Matthew Andrews

Written 21 November 2011 for The London Magazine

“Black Watch” at the Barbican

Black Watch has the air of a theatrical phenomenon about it. Part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s first season of productions, premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, it returns to the Barbican after a world tour that saw this military drama conquer the critics.

The Black Watch was one of the most famous Scottish military regiments. Controversy surrounded its amalgamation with other Scottish regiments, especially since its demise was announced while it was supporting American troops in Fallujah during the second Iraq War.  Writer Gregory Burke is sensitive to the differences between most of his audience and the soldiers that serve in their name. Burke uses this difference effectively, in part by casting the excellent Keith Fleming as both a writer talking to men returning from war and as their Sergeant.

In alternating scenes, director John Tiffany explores the impact of politics and the media on the Iraq war. But his focus is on the men’s motivation for fighting. The result is a play more about experience than explicitly anti-war sentiment.

Tiffany’s inventive staging explores the ‘golden thread’ of history that unites the men fighting alongside their friends. Ian Pirie stands out as the company’s sensitive officer and, in an amusing flashback, as Lord Elgin recruiting for World War I.

It is the sense of camaraderie that you are left with through the powerful performances of this well-trained, uniformly convincing cast. As they fight, fall and march together, to an emotive soundtrack compiled by Davey Anderson, they become formidable and Black Watch becomes unforgettable theatre.

Black Watch deserves its acclaim. If audience preconceptions about the war and about the armed forces are not changed that is because this show is bold enough to acknowledge the complexity of war and those who live as soldiers. What it does succeed in is challenging those preconceptions. For this alone Black Watch should be compulsory viewing.

www.barbican.org.uk

Until 22 January 2011

Photo by Manuel Harlan

Written 1 December 2010 for The London Magazine

“Macbeth” at the Barbican

If the thought of Macbeth accompanied by Korean musical instruments, Corsican chants and martial arts-inspired dancing makes you raise an eyebrow – prepare to raise the other one as well, because Polish company Song of the Goat’s production is truly astonishing.

Director Grzegorz Bral makes this bizarre combination work. How exactly is surely a case of theatrical magic. And hard graft. Macbeth is ‘devised’ by the company. This can be a dangerously indulgent technique but Bral and his ensemble have produced a 75-minute show that is as taut as a kayagum string. And if you want to know what that sounds like, it’s yet another reason to see the show.

One proviso – you do have to know Macbeth well to follow what is going on. But this feels like a fair assumption and the intense collaboration process, bringing performers so close to the text, has resulted in great drama. The characters seem to know their fates from the start, which can be unsettling, but means that Gabriel Gawin’s virile Macbeth is deeply moving and both Ian Morgan and Ewan Downie get more out of the roles of Macduff and Banquo than I have ever seen.

There is only one witch in this production but Anu Salonen does enough work for three. More enchanting than supernatural, she dances around the stage manipulating characters and handing them wooden swords and bamboo canes that are used with frightening precision. Salonen grapples with Anna Zubrzycki’s Lady Macbeth, seeming to transform her into the provoking accomplice of her husband and then comforts her after she has been impaled on enough sticks to look like a game of human kerplunk. Both women join the men in striking combative choreography and have stunning voices, deeply melodic and playful or shrill as the need arises.

It is the music that really sets this Macbeth apart. The ensemble performs a variety of polyphonic chants and when they apply this musicality to Shakespeare’s verse the result is breathtaking. This Macbeth is beautiful, not a word you normally associate with the most bloody of plays. The Barbican’s bite festival has more than lived up to the advice that we should ‘do something different’.

Until 20 November 2010

www.barbican.org.uk

Photo by Grzegorz Hawale

Written 4 November 2010 for The London Magazine