Branagh Theatre Live: ‘The Entertainer’

I have posted here several times about NT Live screenings (most recently Les Liaisons Dangereuses) but not about the similar offerings this year from the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company, in partnership with Picturehouse Entertainment. The Winter’s Tale and Romeo and Juliet from the Garrick theatre in London have now been followed by John Osborne’s The Entertainer, broadcast on 27 October.

The Entertainer was Osborne’s second success at the Royal Court Theatre following his Look Back in Anger in 1956. Laurence Olivier, under the influence of Arthur Miller, had asked Osborne for a part in his next play and in 1957 took on the role of Archie Rice, the music hall performer whose best days were behind him. Branagh, although not a protégé of Olivier, seems to have been drawn inexorably to follow his footsteps, starting at drama school when he wrote to Olivier for advice and was advised “to have a bash and hope for the best.” Later for example, in 1990 Branagh directed and took the lead role in a new filming of Henry V, in 2007 he directed an update of Sleuth and in 2011 he played Olivier himself in My Week with Marilyn (set in 1956 when Olivier filmed The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood with Monroe, then married to Arthur Miller). Unsurprisingly, in his company’s revival of The Entertainer Branagh has cast himself as Archie.

For a detailed synopsis of this play about the decline of the theatrical Rice family, see Wikipedia, although this production has been restructured into two acts. Was it worth reviving yet again? In many ways the play is dated and increasingly inaccessible – who under 75, or even 80, now remembers the world of music halls (the UK’s equivalent to vaudeville)? And the electrical counter of Woolworth’s is already almost as forgotten as Max Miller. But some of Osborne’s themes, like the grip of Britain’s class system, particularly its elite private schools, remain familiar, and it is still the same gloved hand which waves at us from a golden coach, poignantly described by Archie’s daughter. In an interview with Andrew Marr televised on 23 October, Branagh probably over emphasised the resonances in The Entertainer between post-Brexit Referendum Britain and the country 60 years ago in the humiliating aftermath of the Suez debacle, though he could have mentioned Archie’s dislike of his Polish neighbours. More fundamentally, Branagh was unconvincing as Archie. Energetic for sure, and a master of tap, song and dance, but the well set-up theatrical knight and actor-manager talking on The Marr Show failed to make the transition required to be totally believable as the seedy, end-of-the pier, end-of the-road “has been”, Archie Rice. The older parts are the best ones in The Entertainer: Gawn Grainger as Archie’s dad, Billy, and Greta Scacchi as Phoebe, Archie’s second wife, were first class. But Sophie McShera as Jean looked and sounded too juvenile for a character who turns out to be more worldly and committed as the play went on. The clever set morphed from stage to home to accommodate Osborne’s numerous scene changes with the minimum of interruption.

Three stray points. Firstly, did people really drink neat gin so copiously in the 1950s? Secondly, was Branagh deliberately bringing in what seemed to me like a hint of Tony Hancock’s delivery? Perhaps it was quite unconsciously done, but it’s worth noting that Hancock came from a stage family at the end of the music hall era. Finally, was I alone in finding some of Osborne’s dialogue uncannily like that of Harold Pinter, people speaking past rather than to each other? Pinter began to write for the theatre in 1957, The Birthday Party premiering in 1958.

Sitting in a cinema, this production was an unsatisfactory experience by comparison with the NT Live performances I’d seen previously. Those were free of transmission glitches of the type which interrupted the first Act of The Entertainer, albeit briefly. Much more trying was the projection which utilised “CinemaScope within a 16:9 frame” (as for the transmission of Romeo and Juliet, apparently). No doubt there were good technical reasons for this (the staging and cinema projection technology perhaps) but the resulting image quality at the left and right extremes of the frame was poor. This might not have mattered if the characters had remained together on the centre of the set but Archie seemed to like to address his family and the audience from stage right!

NT Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Sexual intrigues among amoral aristocrats while the tumbrils await 

For most of us back in 1988, in the absence of NT Live or anything like it, Stephen Frear’s film Dangerous Liaisons was our first encounter with Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Christopher Hampton had based the film’s script on his own play, first staged in 1985* and taken from a novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, an artillery officer, published in 1782. Hampton has since written numerous screenplays (notably Atonement), stage plays and translations. His appearance at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 2013 to discuss the Académie Française was the subject of a post here.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been revived several times in recent years and was recently broadcast by NT Live from its current run at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Cleverly staged in their small space, it reveals how the cynical Vicomte de Valmont (Dominic West), in league with the equally amoral Marquise de Merteuil (Janet McTeer), sets about the seduction of two women, one young and naïve, Cécile Volanges, the other married and virtuous, Madame de Tourvel (Elaine Cassidy). These manoeuvrings do not end well for anyone. Unlike de Laclos, we know that the French Revolution was almost upon these characters, one might think no more than some of them deserve, but on reflection they could all be regarded as being trapped in their class and time, particularly the women.

The Donmar setting projects into the audience, some of whom can be glimpsed in the across-stage camera angles – only mildly disconcerting in the second act to see someone finishing their G&T.  Les Liaisons Dangereuses ends at the Donmar on 13 February. There will be NT Live Encore showings this month onwards – well worth seeing for the excellent acting, particularly McTeer and Cassidy.

*In the original 1985 RSC Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which after Stratford went to London and Broadway, the part of the Vicomte de Valmont was taken by Alan Rickman who died on 14 January 2016.

NT Live: Jane Eyre

Being a National Theatre Live enthusiast, I regret having to miss any of their transmissions and have no problem with going to an Encore, as the repeats are called. It was as an Encore that I saw Jane Eyre last month – it will be available again in the UK in January and will be shown overseas in coming months, I believe. The production’s run at the Lyttleton in London ends on 10 January.

Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel was first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, and this dramatization stays close to the spirit of that original title. It began at the Bristol Old Vic in 2014 when it was played for four and a half hours spread over two nights, as devised by the company of 10 actors and musicians with the direction of Sally Cookson. The version for the NT has been reduced in length by over an hour and runs on one night only.

We follow Jane, played through life by Madeleine Worrall, from birth to final rapprochement with Mr Rochester (Felix Hayes). It’s a long time since I read the book, but I was assured by a recent reader that all its key events are represented in this staging, whatever might have been dropped in the truncation since Bristol. I suppose the style of the production could be described as fussy minimalism. There is one set, formed of platforms, ladders and a ramp, which, with lighting changes and real flames on occasion, provides at least six locations. The company are similarly stretched by taking on numerous parts including that of an ensemble railway train. The versatile Laura Elphinstone takes on, among others, Jane’s pupil, Adèle, and the missionary, St John Rivers. On the other hand, there is a band, almost continuous music, and some fine singing from Melanie Marshall, who is also Mrs Rochester, the one in the attic.

Although Worrall and Hayes’s performances were sterling, Jane Eyre would never have been my favourite NT Live offering, and left me looking forward to Donmar’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the end of the month. The NT version of Jane Eyre is going on tour, back to the Bristol Old Vic from 21 January to 6 February, then the Theatre Royal Nottingham 9 to 13 February and the Hong Kong Arts Festival 18 to 21 February.

UPDATE 4 JANUARY 2015

I have just come across an interview with Sally Cookson on the Bristol Old Vic website in which she explains what she intended to achieve in this adaptation of Jane Eyre. The photographs show the set, starting with what I referred to above as an “ensemble railway train ”.

NT Live: Hamlet

The Barbican's Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch has had so much coverage that I will be brief here. And I haven't seen many Hamlets. However, I have posted about all the NT Live productions I've seen recently, so just briefly ...

I thought Cumberbatch was better as Hamlet than any other role I've seen him perform. After losing interest in BBC1's Sherlock, that would probably have been August: Osage County. Before that, Christopher Tietjens in the BBC's version of Parade's End - a stiff, principled character, played appropriately. Cumberbatch's Hamlet, whether by his choice or the director's, was energetic rather than cerebral, and revealed that he can move with feline agility. A lot of the business, and there was plenty, seemed to have Cumberbatch's fan base in mind (female, early teens?) - but do they know who Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra were?

More impressively, Cumberbatch was able to put over some of the best-known lines in English literature with enough freshness to sustain attention and suppress any involuntary desire to join in. If the rest of the cast had been allowed to speak as slowly, it would probably have been a four hour performance, rather than three-ish, but perhaps that's not unusual. On the other hand, some of the supporting cast would be barely adequate at any pace. The eclectic costuming could not fail to go with the Scandi cum vintage country house Elsinore set - such a shame that during the interval it seemed to have been hit by a cruise missile. As discussed here previously, NT Live makes extensive use of close-ups, like movies and the telly, so the scale of the set was not as overwhelming as I can imagine it might have been in the theatre.

In the post about NT Live The Beaux’ Stratagem, I wondered whether transmissions were in 4K definition. This time, a few cinemas are making a feature of their 4K re-screenings on later dates than the real time screening, so I think the answer, at least for the present, must be no, only some recordings.

Hamlet ends at the Barbican on 31 October. NT Live showings continue in November.

NT Live: The Beaux’ Stratagem

Like a lot of other hicks in the sticks (and a good few Londoners who don’t get seats at the National Theatre), I’ve enjoyed NT Live cinema screenings and posted about them here (Skylight, The Hard Problem, Man and Superman). I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the Restoration comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem, first performed in 1707 and written by George Farquhar (1677 – 1707). This revival is running at the NT until 20 September. 

There is a summary of the plot on Wikipedia. In brief, two young and unscrupulous toffs, Aimwell and Archer, on the lookout for some women with money to marry, fetch up at an inn in the city of Lichfield in the English Midlands. They encounter Lady Bountiful’s daughter, Dorinda and her sister-in-law, Mrs Sullen, unhappily married to Lady Bountiful’s son. The actions of the innkeeper, his daughter, the highwaymen they collude with, and Lady Bountiful’s factotum, Scrub, provide the sub-plots which might stop the main characters getting what they want, but eventually, of course, they do. I could see some parallels with Da Ponte's plot for Mozart's Così fan tutte (1790).

Simon Godwin who directed The Beaux’ Stratagem, also directed Man and Superman but this time kept to the original period. This was a good idea -  the sort of audience this play is likely to get can work out the relevancies to contemporary life (feminism, Anglo-French relations* etc) for themselves. Lizzie Clachan’s set design (above) was ingenious and even more complex than it seemed at first sight. The craft of the performers – they sang, they danced, they made complicated coordinated movements across, up and down the set, every word being clearly delivered – was faultless. Hours of work must have gone into the staging. All the performances were good but Susannah Fielding as Mrs Sullen right) and Geoffrey Streatfeild as Archer were particularly impressive.

The NT Live showing in the UK and Europe was on 3 September; Encore showings in the UK and other countries can be found on the NT Live website. The interval included a brief “Making of …” film which will probably get onto YouTube. It concentrated on the staging but it would be interesting to learn a little about the transmission techniques, presumably via satellite, for example is it in 4K resolution?

*The War of the Spanish Succession  (1701-14) was presumably the reason why French officers were being detained in Lichfield circa 1707. The Recruiting Officer (1706) is another well-known play by Farquhar.

NT Live: Man and Superman

George Bernard Shaw’s comedy drama Man and Superman was published in 1903 and first performed in 1905. Set in an upper class London milieu, but one with ‘advanced’ (progressive as we might say) views, it revolves around a radical political activist, John Tanner, and his reluctance to form a relationship with his (feisty as we might say) ward, Anne Whitfield. Simon Godwin’s adaptation for the National Theatre includes the play’s rarely seen third act, a dream in which Tanner/Don Juan encounters Anne/Ana and the Devil in Hell (below). Ralph Fiennes’ Tanner is a tour de force of physical and mental stamina, with only the interval as respite over more than three hours, almost matched by that of Indira Varma as Anne, while Tim McMullan is so cool as the Devil.

Hell: Fiennes and other people

For me, the director’s decision to put Man and Superman in the present day (it starts with Desert Island Discs) rather than play it as a period piece led to some uneasy anomalies – Tanner receives a text message on his mobile phone and an American is the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer - he wouldn't be now, he would be a Chinese, from the country where the phone was made! More seriously, Shaw’s ideas about the relationships between men and women, the dominance in them of marriage

It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.

‘the Life Force’ and ‘political economy’ belong in a remote world, not only more than a century ago but one that the First World War would turn upside down. Moving Shaw’s views to the present day makes them seem backward, misleadingly so when he was, in his time, a progressive and feminist.

The inclusion of the third act was probably a good idea in revival. Its removal in the past was possibly as much due to Shaw’s irreverence for religion – there is much ironic debate about the virtues of Hell as opposed to the dullness of Heaven - as it was for brevity. But the whole play should have been cut, retaining Shaw’s wit

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

and removing his long windedness - a job for a Tom Stoppard.

As a NT Live production it seemed less ‘filmic’ in its use of close-up than The Hard Problem (posted about last month), but, for me, still spent too much time too close to actors whose technique was theatrical and meant to be seen at a distance. Nonetheless we hicks in the sticks remain grateful for the opportunity to see first rate ‘live’ performances which we wouldn’t get near otherwise. Next up here, Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in the autumn I hope.

There will be NT Live Encore performances of Man and Superman later this month and in June, depending on location. Good luck when you are trying to locate them on NT Live’s website.

NT Live: The Hard Problem

Even in a career as distinguished as Sir Tom Stoppard’s, 16 April 2015 must have been noteworthy. The London newspapers carried a photograph of 19 of the 22 men and the one woman who constitute the Order of Merit and who had lunched at Windsor with the Queen the previous day. Admission to the Order recognises distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture and is the personal gift of the Sovereign. There is at present one vacancy; David Hockney was among the absentees on this occasion. Stoppard is on the Queen’s left but one in the photograph below. On the evening of 16 April NT Live broadcast a performance of his most recent play, The Hard Problem, from the National Theatre in London. This would have increased its audience immediately by several Orders of magnitude more than the all the seats which could be sold at the NT in a run from January to May.

The critics didn’t warm to the play when it opened – see, for example, Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph. I’m not surprised, there was too much science in it for the arts-educated opinion formers predominant in the UK media (though I would have expected the Spectator’s reviewer to appreciate that the main character was at the outset a student of psychology, not philosophy). Very unusually, out of the ten characters in The Hard Problem, only two, a schoolgirl and a Pilates teacher, are clearly not qualified at a high level in science or maths.

The Hard Problem appears to be set in the recent past, probably the early and late years of the last decade (Note 1). At the opening a psychology student, Hilary (2), slightly older than her contemporaries for reasons which become apparent, is about to graduate from Loughborough University. She has set her sights on a job in the prestigious Krohl Institute for Brain Science set up by a successful hedge fund manager, Jerry Krohl. Her tutor and lover, Spike, helps her with her application although they are at odds over her religious inclinations and her belief in the power of prayer and, for example, as to whether altruism or “goodness” in any form is anything other than a product of evolutionary biology, “evo bio”, and best understood by game theory (3).

She obtains the post she wants at the Krohl after impressing Leo, head of the Institute’s psychology department, who sees her as an ally in an internal scientific turf war. Other scientists in the Institute with a mechanistic view of the human brain believe that sufficient computing power is all they need to model human behaviour. The “hard problem” is at the centre of these different approaches to identifying the nature of human consciousness. At the interview Hilary encounters Amal, a clever mathematician who, although not wanted by Leo, is immediately recruited by Jerry as a “quant” to work at his hedge fund (4). She meets an old school friend who teaches Pilates, a Googleplex-style perk the Institute provides to its employees. This coincidental encounter leads to a revelation about Hilary’s past.

A few years later Hilary has become well-established at the Institute but the hard problem remains unresolved and her views remain at odds with other scientific opinions including Spike’s. She gives a controversial paper at a conference in Venice and on return discovers that a basic error has been uncovered in some research for which she was responsible. She resigns from the Institute to become a philosophy student at New York University. But something she has prayed for has happened as a result of a remarkable coincidence - or not.

The Hard Problem was sold out in advance at the National Theatre and I would never have seen it but for NT Live. Like other Stoppard plays it needs to be read to fully appreciate all the ideas and wit he deploys. Unlike the critics I thought it was as good as Arcadia, but I’m just a techie with an evo bio world view. Whereas Arcadia was firmly set in England, I suspect Stoppard had an international audience in mind at the outset for The Hard Problem – one of the quants is Indian, another Chinese while Jerry is an American with a Japanese wife. I wonder whether the play’s approach to religion might have been shaped with consideration to US susceptibilities. The acting was all of a high standard, and, although personally I found Hilary difficult to understand, Olivia Vinall was totally convincing, an actress who will no doubt go far. Anthony Calf conveyed all the complexities, good and bad, of Jerry’s character, to me the most interesting in the play.

Whether it was the play, the nature of the Dorfman Theatre or an evolution in NT Live’s approach I don’t know, but by comparison with David Hare’s Skylight (posted about here last year) much of the sense of being in a theatre was lost in this showing. There were too many close-ups (below top) and camera angles which would not be available to a theatre audience and little sense of viewing a stage (below lower). Nonetheless the acting style in terms of gesture and voice projection remained theatrical rather than cinematic or televisual. Just because something can be done doesn’t make it desirable and not just in neuroscience. Too much elaboration by NT Live just because it is technically feasible may prove self-defeating if their intention remains that of offering an in-theatre experience.

NOTES

(1) “… the early … years of the last decade” - the prop in this Tweet from NT Live supports 2000ish; sadly Hilary’s name is misspelled:

(2) Fashions in names change like much else - were there any Hilarys, male or female, under 30 in 2000?

(3) Armand Leroi, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Imperial College London, talks about some of these themes in the play on SoundCloud.

(4) Amal’s pessimism about the hedge fund’s trading prospects, after he discovers a weakness in its computerised risk assessment system, enrages Jerry. A very similar problem in a bank is identified by a young quant like Amal in JC Chandor’s 2011 film, Margin Call.


UPDATE 30 MAY

The Guardian on 23 May 2015 reported a debate it had arranged "between a sceptical Tom Stoppard and the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson", the latter believing that there is an evolutionary justification for altruism.  Anyone interested in the issues raised by Stoppard's play should read it.

NT Live: Skylight

David Hare’s play Skylight was first performed in 1995 at the National Theatre in London. It transferred to the West End and later Broadway and returned to the West End in 1997. To put Skylight in the context of contemporary British politics, there had been a succession of Tory administrations from 1979, firstly under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, which would end with the election of Tony Blair in May 1997. The play has now been revived again in the West End for a three-month run under the direction of Stephen Daldry. Under the auspices of National Theatre Live, the performance on 17 July was transmitted for live projection in cinemas all-round the UK.

There are only three characters in Skylight: Tom Sergeant, a successful restaurateur and businessman, played, as in 1997, by Bill Nighy; Bill’s son, Edward (Matthew Beard); and Kyra Hollis (Carey Mulligan, who was in the film, Inside Llewyn Davis). Tom, recently a widower, arrives in Kyra’s cold, run-down flat, seeking to rekindle a relationship with the woman who had been both his employee and his lover. She has chosen to teach and live in tough areas of London, he has moved to Wimbledon. The play is a clash of personalities and attitudes, but between a man and woman who have loved, and still have something, for each other. In some ways, Skylight has dated in 20 years. The references to “Yellow Pages” seem archaic until you remember that “Google” didn’t become a registered domain until 1997. And state education in the poorer parts of London is now regarded as much improved – ironically it’s now the rural and seaside areas of England (Kyra’s hometown was one of the latter) which are falling behind.

Nonetheless the play remains engrossing with its enduring major themes of the tension between free market capitalism, embodied by Tom although he hates bankers, and Kyra’s self-sacrificing social responsibility, and of the eternal one of unfulfilled and probably unfulfillable love. The subtle structure of the play – the opening and closing scenes between Kyra and Edward counterpoint Tom and Kyra’s encounter –the sharpness of the dialogue - as when Tom says scathingly of a management guru, “He's one of those people who's been told he's good with people” – and the quality of the acting by all three of the cast were most impressive. And so much better than Hare’s recent BBC TV drama series with Nighy: Page  Eight, and its two sequels, together forming The Worricker Trilogy.

This was the first time I’d seen a play live as a cinema projection. It is an experience in itself and not the same as being in the theatre where a member of the audience has a fixed viewpoint, so might see something like this:

and be aware throughout of the three-dimensional nature of Bob Crowley’s clever set and the actors moving within it. For the live cinema there were, I believe, four cameras available so extensive use could be made of cinematic devices like close-ups:

In the case of a glass of wine held by Kyra which gave Tom a chance to touch her hand, perhaps it was too close-up, and over-emphasised an action which would have been less conspicuous to the theatre audience. A screening is a different experience than actual theatre, and not necessarily worse or better, although it has to be recognised that the quality of the cinema’s projection and sound systems  is an extra complication – I’m not sure the one I was in would have coped well with live opera. Not that the acoustics or seating arrangements of London theatres are perfect.

Something which was unique to the NTLive experience was the interview David Hare gave to Emma Freud during the interval. Hare said that he had made it a condition of this revival that it would be made available widely in this way, and anyone who consequently had the chance to see Skylight should feel grateful. The last Hare play I was able to see in a theatre was Pravda, many years ago, and I would very much like to have had the chance to see some of his more recent theatre work, for example, South Downs.

Anyone who wanted to see Skylight in this way and couldn’t get a seat should look out for forthcoming Encore showings on the National Theatre Live website. There will be an international screening on 23 October.