mallardo

Rooms is subtitled A Rock Romance.  It's a two hander written by Paul Scott Goodman (Bright Lights Big City) and his wife Miriam Gordon, both of them Scots living in New York - and it's about two young Scottish singer/musicians from Glasgow and their journey toward, well, the bright lights and the big city.

If it sounds a bit self-obsessed it's not. Goodman and Gordon are exceptionally talented people and their little musical soars and resonates and, in the inventive new production just opening at the Finborough, works like a dream.  Cassidy Janson is the girl, a Scottish/Jewish princess with her eyes on the prize, and she is wonderful.  If you saw her as Amy in the Southwark's Company or in the West End in Lend Me A Tenor, you'll know that she can not only sing and act but that she's VERY funny and totally endearing. If the boy, Alexis Gerred, is not quite at her level he's very good and they have genuine chemistry. They share the tiny stage with a terrific four-piece band whose members dip in and out of the action at just the right moments in Andrew Keates's clever staging.

I have to say that, going in, I feared a rock band would blow the walls off the little Finborough but such was not the case - the sound levels are perfect - mainly because the score is so much more than "rock".  Goodman is a sophisticated and original composer able to write memorable tunes in all genres, as needed.  There is a cast recording from the New York production that is well worth hearing.

Anyway, it's great.  A full house last night gave it a rousing standing O, well deserved.

I'm getting a bit bored with heaping praise upon Finborough theatre productions but what can one do - they turn out gem after gem.  London Wall, an early comedy of sorts from John Van Druten ( I Am A Camera) is yet another small triumph.

It premiered in 1931, the same year, coincidentally, as The Captain of Kopenick, but, on this evidence, Mr. Van Druten's smart and funny and deeply involving little piece far outshines the German work being given such a bombastic outing at the NT.  It's a slice of life office comedy set in a London Wall law firm over a period of three weeks.  Its main focus is not on the lawyers but on the typists and secretaries and their collective plight - low wages, constant fear of losing their job - in a man's world.  The way ahead for them all is to latch onto a husband and this is the big issue of the play.  There are four girls, all in different social situations, including a young 19 year old office ingenue who is subjected to a campaign of seduction by the in-house lothario.  If it were set now it could be a Reality TV show.  But it's so much better and wiser and more profoundly human than that.

The nine person cast is uniformly excellent but a special shout out to Maia Alexander as the ingenue and to Alix Dunmore as her veteran older (35) colleague who tries to watch out for her.  The set and costumes, as always at the Finborough, are minor miracles.  The sense of period is pitch perfect in every detail.

It's got two weeks left to run and, given its size, tickets at the Finborough are usually hard to come by.  But this one is worth the effort.

This is a touring production that I caught in Richmond, a rewriting of Euripides by Mike Bartlett who also directed.

I went along because of Rachael Stirling in the title role and she did not disappoint.  It was fascinating watching her play a wild and crazy, foul-mouthed bitch (as everyone keeps calling her), the polar opposite of everything I've seen her do before.  But. alas, her rants were not enough to sustain a drama that really doesn't translate well to contemporary middle-class England.  I didn't believe it for a second.

The set, the exterior and interior of Medea's house, looked to me like a video game - The Sims, came to mind - with its bright colours and carefully delineated areas. Was that intentional?  I was never quite sure what Bartlett was going for.  Or why he was going for it.  Brava to Ms Stirling though - what a wonderful actress she is.

No one here seems much interested in this but it's a Eugene O'Neill play that gets an airing every once in a while - it was on Broadway two seasons back with the lucious Carla Gugino - so I went along to Hammersmith.

It's a bizarre play as almost all O'Neill plays from the early 20s seem to be.  Brute-like hard scrabble farmers with poetic souls enacting a Greek tragedy in 19th century New England.  It takes a while to warm up but it does become oddly compelling and Sean Holmes makes a good case for it in this production.  The set by Ian MacNeil is a series of boxes containing rooms that are shoved in and out individually or together as they're needed.  The rooms are all small and cramped - there's a party scene with dancing that made me think of the famous stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers' Night At The Opera - which actually works to good effect providing the right stifling atmosphere.  There are no elms.

The cast is dominated by Denise Gough who I didn't know and who is absolutely wonderful in the difficult role of Abbie, the patriarch's new bride.  She's the hinge of the plot and she makes the most of it.  The patriarch himself, Ephraim Cabot - the names say it all - is given an interesting interpretation by Finbar Lynch who is very good but somewhat wrong for the role.  He gets laughs where I'm not sure he should.  The weak link however is Morgan Watkins as the tortured younger son, Eben. He represents the Desire part of the title but he's just too weird and infantile to make it work. Why Abbie gets so worked up about him is a mystery.  And that's the core of the story.

It doesn't entirely work then but there's much to like.  Recommended to the afficionados.

As this was extensively commented on when it was at the Royal Court I'll skip a review - except to say that the play is wonderful and Tamsin Greig is astonishing - and just note that there are ten pound day seats - rows AA and BB - at the Duke of York's theatre.  Both have good views of the relatively low raked stage but I would opt for BB if given the choice because a stage extension somewhat impedes on the first row space.

For those - like me - who love to be up close this is the number one theatrical bargain in town!