This week’s theatre reviews: ‘Richard II’, ‘American Psycho’
By Nick Levine
Phil Willmott gives his verdicts on the hottest stage productions in London this week…
David Tennant in RICHARD II
Barbican Theatre, London, until January 25
* * * * *
Matt Smith in AMERICAN PSYCHO
Almeida Theatre, London until February 1
* * * *
Lesley Manville in GHOSTS
Trafalgar Studios, London until March 8
* * * *
London Theatre currently has a treat for Dr Who fans.
Two of the most celebrated recent Doctors are delivering phenomenal stage performances that prove there’s definitely life beyond Gallifrey.
The trouble is you’ll have to undertake your own intergalactic quest to get one of the much sort after tickets. Both shows are sold out in theory, but in both cases it’s well worth turning up at the venue before a performance in case the box office has returned tickets. They often do, particularly in bad weather.
We know David Tennant is a terrific Shakespearean actor. In recent years he’s given critically acclaimed performances in Hamlet and Much Ado about Nothing but he’s currently excelling himself at the Barbican Theatre as King RICHARD II.
Shakespeare portrays a rather ineffectual monarch prone to tantrums and flights of poetry when action is called for. Tennant plays him with long flowing hair and a light reedy voice that nonetheless can silence a chamber of quarrelsome warlords on the odd occasions when he’s provoked to steely indignation. The futility of a romantic mind in a time of realists is perfectly symbolised by Stephen Brimson Lewis’s beautiful set with its projections of ethereal architecture.
It’s fascinating and very moving to watch the tragic descent of this misfit king, who is obliged to rule a court of marauding thugs rather than the beautiful young men he craves. But the production is so good you can also relish a sub-plot led by the superlative Oliver Ford-Davies that sees an aristocratic father and son attempt to keep one step ahead of the political wheeling and dealing as the future Henry IV attempts to snatch the crown.
Whenever Tennant’s on stage, it’s electric. Less so between his appearances. It’s a long evening but invest the time and concentration and you’ll witness a superlative lead performance in a fascinating play.
The new musical AMERICAN PSYCHO opens with Matt Smith naked but for a pair of skimpy white briefs rising up through the floor. His lean, toned body is near-perfect – as is everything else about the life of the character he plays in the decadent world of ’80s Wall Street.
At first the show is a nostalgia-fest for those heady days of million dollar bonuses and beautiful men in beautiful suits out-doing each other for the most stylish business cards and girlfriends. But like Smith’s character, Patrick Bateman, you soon begin to recognise the emptiness of all this soulless consumerism. The difference is that where we might reach for the Haagen Dasz to dispel the blues, Bateman reaches for a chainsaw and starts slaughtering hobos, call girls and rivals. Or does he?
Based on an infamous book by Bret Easton Ellis, Rupert Gould’s production perfectly captures the cold glamour of the period as well as the surreal perspective of an unhinged mind. The songs aren’t very interesting or memorable. They too capture the cold electronic heart of the ’80s but that’s the point. Combine them with the ice white set and Matt Smith’s abs and you get a perfect snapshot of overachievement and loneliness.
There’s another troubled young man at the Trafalgar Studios at the moment where Richard Eye’s highly acclaimed production of GHOSTS has transferred from the Almeida.
This 19th century Norwegian play is a late work by Ibsen, who had earlier scandalised theatre-goers with his portrayal of a young wife walking out on her husband in The Dolls House. Here he dramatises the devastating repercussions for a woman who, having done the same, is persuaded back to her hideous marriage.
The years of keeping up a public pretence that all was well now take their toll when an orphanage erected as a memorial to the cheating, drunken, abusive husband burns appropriately to the ground like a glimpse of hell and her son, the troubled youth, returns with a terrible secret.
As has been widely reported, Lesley Manville is heart-breaking as the mother haunted by all this tragedy – her quiet life of misery and reflection suddenly explodes in her face over a devastating 12 hours.
If this sounds rather grim, it is. But whereas so many productions wallow in all the misery this short, sharp interpretation has been trimmed of superfluous fat and grips you by the throat for 90 intense minutes.
Go. It’ll haunt you.
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